Fic: Outbreak
Title: Outbreak
Characters: America.
Rating: T
Key Words: Angst, Apocalypse, and Zombies.
Summary: Nation!verse. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Alfred is certain he has a front row seat for what he's done.
* * * * *
Outbreak
* * * * *
Alfred’s problems began with a string of bad weather. No, that was not entirely true; his problems really began when the idea for a potential cure for cancer entered the head of one of his top scientists, but in his mind the weather marked the destruction that was to come. Of course, for the most part, he waved the concerning changes in climate off as nothing more than his normal problems. Sure, the heat waves measured in at a higher average than usual, and at least a handful of his states seemed to be battered with rough storms on a daily basis, but these were problems he could handle.
It was only when those problems began to pile up that he began to succumb to the effects. With his economy still in a state of struggle, and the onslaught of illness symptoms-fever for the heat waves, dehydration for the droughts, clogged sinuses for the storms and resulting floods, and the usual aches and pains for everything else-attacking him at every possible moment, he soon found himself overwhelmed by it all. Though he rested when he could, and lived a healthier lifestyle as per his boss’s (and body’s) insistence, he just couldn’t shake off the state of perpetual illness that seemed to have consumed him completely.
For that alone, the reports of a cure for cancer came as a blessing.
Even as one half of those people aware of the project dreamed of all the ways this cure could help the American citizens currently dying in the hospital, the other half mapped out ways to turn this tremendous breakthrough in the medical field to the nation’s advantage.
“If we sell these cures to the other nations, just imagine the kind of money we’ll bring in,” they told him.“We can boost the economy, work to pay off our debt-we can do all of the things this country needs to get it and its people back on its feet.”
Looking back, Alfred couldn’t say that the sort of monetary benefit they spoke of didn’t tempt him, though he didn’t see it as greed. Building the economy back up would help so many people, wouldn’t it? They could continue helping those citizens in need, become a little less reliant on outside nations for economic support, and do all of the things that needed to be done to set things right. Besides, the cure alone would save countless lives. Experts reported the number of people dying from cancer across the world to be in the millions. If he could extend this medicine out to them, and to anyone else who may one day need it, then why shouldn’t he?
Alfred, who wanted so much to help others, to prove to England and the others that his dream to be a hero wasn’t as ridiculous or farfetched as they seemed to think, leapt at the opportunity to save so many lives outside of those in his borders. With the go ahead from the Senate and the House, he and his boss worked with experts to take the cure to an international level.
They called all the big names in the media, world leaders, his fellow nations-anyone they could think of who could get the word out to the average person, anyone who could create a demand for this cure that they, the American people born from all the people of the world, had created. The requests came pouring in. Nations began to clamor for this thing that the media and reports called ‘the miracle drug.’ Alfred watched the precious shipments of medicine go out, and couldn’t help but beam with pride. The reports typed up accounted for all of the doses sold and shipped, but all he saw were the number of lives being saved.
As the cure went out to the world, the money poured in. Though he tried not to pay it too much attention, Alfred couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief as the funds were put toward recovering his economy. The weather still made him ill, but without the constant pains and colds of a struggling economic system to go with it, he could push past everything as he usually did and go about his daily routine before his boss forced him to go healthy. Burgers as per the usual, with copious amounts of cola to wash it down; he basked in the normality his life returned to, and hoped with this cure he and the rest of the world could finally step forward into the right direction.
Only something didn’t quite feel right. Despite the progress his people made, he could feel the heavy weight of something-subconscious knowing? A fear for the price he’d have to pay for this success?-settle in the pit of his stomach. As the days passed and turned into weeks, that feeling gradually spread throughout various parts of his body. He felt nauseous in places he couldn’t even feel nauseous. At times, the muscles beneath his skin felt as though they were burning, and other times he feared they were actually bubbling. Would the intense heat waves he battled slowly boil him alive from the inside out?
Having never experienced this horrible, building sensation-this feeling of something crawling beneath his skin, lurking there, rotting and dying and slowly killing him from the inside out-a part of Alfred feared for the worst.
As he paid more attention to his body over the days, Alfred was able to pinpoint the source of the feeling. One spot in particular on his stomach, so close to his right hip, seemed to twitch and spasm more so than anywhere else. Whatever was causing him to feel this strange, unwanted sensation had to be somewhere in one of his central states. However, the only thing he could think of that resided there, the only thing in recent events that seemed to have any significance, was the lab that created the cure and the towns that surrounded it. Could this be, then, a possible side effect on his part as his people battled cancer with the help of the medicine?
Alfred went to his boss, but didn’t receive any answers.
“Everything is fine, America,” they said. “Don’t worry.”
Only he had to worry, because the feeling only seemed to be getting worse, and even though the people appeared to be getting better, he needed to know what this boded for them, for him. He pushed for answers, came back to his capitol as often as possible and drove out to some of the top secret medical research facilities scattered across his lands when his politicians wouldn’t give him the answers. No one would tell him anything. They simply slapped him on the back, told him not to worry, that he was doing a good job and nothing was amiss, and sent him on his way.
Alfred didn’t believe them.
(Looking back, he would see that he had good reason not to, because the feeling that plagued him only marked the turning point in his life.)
Soon after he started asking questions, the people who denied him answers started to look nervous. Their pretty lies weren’t so pretty anymore. Word trickled through the media, slow but sure, that something was amiss in the heart of his country. Strange attacks were all the reports said, and even the details on those were sparse. A number of police investigations were shut down by the FBI. They confiscated boxes’ worth of papers from police departments, hospitals, and newspapers, and burned them. Agents started to arrest those involved, and anyone else who tried to stir up trouble, and threw them somewhere where no one would remember them.
Unaware of the barely contained chaos that plagued his people, or even the unjustified and outrageous actions made by people in his own government, Alfred started to scan every news source he had available to him-the television, the paper, and even the Internet-but aside from the occasional mention of a strange attack that leaked through, he found nothing that would help him. When the media failed him, he turned to government documents. Every report he could get his hands on, especially those that required top clearance, became his bedtime stories.
War reports, intelligence in foreign countries, top secret operations, audio recording transcripts; he dreamed of them late at night, tossed and turned to the sight of heads distorted without faces, and the feeling of nails-human nails-that clawed and tore and shred while teeth dug into the tender flesh that covered his jugular vein. Needless to say, sleep became increasingly difficult. If it wasn’t the nightmares that kept him up, it was the feeling of something foreign crawling beneath his skin, walking amongst his people, and if it wasn’t that, then it was his body breaking out into another fever that left him sweating in entangled sheets.
After what seemed like an eternity after the release of the cure to the international public, but in truth could only be a few months, Alfred finally got the answers he had been searching for. Men in suits came to his apartment in New York City.
“There’s been a problem. We need to get you evacuated to a secure location now.”
His first thought was of his monuments, his people. Had there been a terrorist attack? Were they suddenly embroiled in a war he hadn’t even sensed approaching?
(And a part of him laughed at that, because he had been at war with himself ever since he first started experiencing problems.)
At first, the men tried to maintain their silence, but the plane ride to an emergency, underground complex he had in Nevada was long, and England always had said he excelled at wheedling people until they ‘bloody well cracked and, really, Alfred, could you cease pestering me for one moment?’ Slowly, the truth poured out. Something had gone wrong with the cure. Although it did eradicate the cancerous cells like the reports and tests had indicated, there had been an unknown, unforeseen side effect that kicked in after a long incubation period. The doctors and scientists were baffled.
Perhaps once it ran out of cancerous cells, the cure started to attack healthy ones in the body, or maybe there had been an unknown reaction that the tests hadn’t detected. Whatever the cause was, it resulted in a loss of sanity, loss of all brain function, loss of life-only, not really. Those afflicted with this new strain of virus retained all uses of their body, despite the fact that the neural synapses in their brain were completely fried from the illness. They could walk, run, climb, and even make noises, though human speech thus far seemed to be an uncommon ability among them, and they did so all in the quest of human flesh.
In short, those humans and animals infected with the cure became what Hollywood had presented as the zombie for the last few decades, only on steroids.
Alfred pressed them for more answers. Why didn’t anyone know yet? Containment, of course. The government had to keep the problem under wraps. If word got out in the media, the American people would descend into a panicked frenzy. The other nations, did they know? Not yet, but they will. When? Soon. Alfred reached for his cell phone, then remembered that he never grabbed it off his nightstands. He had to call Canada, had to call England, had to warn them-everyone-about this new problem they as nations faced. If he could only talk to them, explain to them just what was going on…
The men in their pristine black suits-agents of his own government-refused to let him use a phone, any phone, even when the plane landed and they began their long drive out into the dessert. All the while, they kept telling him not to worry. Alfred began to hate those words. Don’t worry. To him, they sounded more like don’t ask questions, don’t demand answers, leave everything to us, really, America, don’t you trust you own people?
Alfred didn’t quite know the answer to that.
He needed to know more, needed to know whose fault this was, whose ass he would have to kick six ways ‘til Sunday in order to put the world right again. (Justgivemeatarget,please,Ican’tfeelsouseless.) At first, the agents didn’t answer. That was fine; they had gone through this before. Only, this time, before he could even start peppering them with question after question until they wanted to tear their hair out, they answered him.
“We don’t know.”
Not knowing wasn’t good enough.
However, no matter how hard he pushed, it seemed as though they really didn’t know. Rumors had been circulating in the various departments trying to handle the decision. Outside job. Biological warfare. Set up. Tampering with the samples. So many ugly words, and all of the fingers pointing the blame at someone different. (Please, just say it isn’t our fault. Tell me that we didn’t create this mess, didn’t sentence our own people to be death.) Beneath his skin, near his hipbone, the truth burns and festers even if he won’t-can’t-see it. The agents shared a look, and told him the lie that he would wrap around himself in the upcoming days.
It wasn’t your fault.
“It’s why,” they argued, “we have to get you to the bunker.” If the word got out to the other nations before the American government could find out who was responsible for this, then the backlash on America-on the people, on Alfred-would be devastating. The amount of damage caused by the cure (oh,andhowthosenumberracethroughhismindagain), could be seen as an act of biological warfare from the United States against the rest of the world. They had to tread carefully, and to pinpoint the exact culprit before war broke out on their soil and those not yet hit by the illness suffered for the sins of whoever did this.
With such a large risk at stake, steps had to be taken to do their utmost best to protect their nation.
The men, with Alfred in tow, arrived at the compound, tucked him inside with more pretty words and promises to come back soon, and left with the closing door echoing behind them. A number of locks, some manual and other electronic, sounded in a long string of sounds. Slam, slap, bang, beep. Alfred could feel the very thing he had rebelled for-his freedom-slip from his grasp as their departing steps tapered off into silence. In that one, deafening moment, where his solitude rang louder the fading presence of the people’s will in his head, Alfred knew he had fallen.
To the government’s credit, they did not leave him without supplies. An ample stash of weaponry, ranging from a line of handguns to a rocket launcher, filled a closet in the back of the small, underground complex. He had all the necessities he lived by in the outside world-burgers, cola, fries, and enough spare generators to power the game systems tucked tidily beneath the flat screen television like the bribes they were. Abandon the people-abandon the world-and have all the time and more to do everything he always loved.
(Alfred discovered the bathroom, after that, and christened the toilet with a glut-clenching, throat burning projection of all the shame and guilt that shiny new Playstation 3 brought to the surface.)
Time passed, though he couldn’t say exactly how much. He slept fitfully (he’s running, being chased, and when he looks over his shoulder, he sees the faceless monsters chasing after him. Only this time he knows that they’re not monsters, but his own people, and that blank, smooth canvas of a face takes on his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his smile, andohdeargodhe’sgoingtobesick). Most nights, when he awoke, it was to throw up the meager amount of food he managed to coax down his throat.
There are some downsides to being locked away in an underground bunker. Sensory deprivation began to kick in. He had no one to talk to, no one to touch and be touched by, to curl his fingers around the warm skin on the back of someone’s neck as laughter washes over him and ha, Mattie, bet you can’t beat me at that again, can you? Alfred had always been a sociable, tactile person, and to be cut off from anything remotely human without warning ate at his very core.
Not only that, but trapped beneath the crust of his land, with nothing but the tenuous connection he could barely feel between he and what remained of his people, he could only speculate as to what happened. They used nukes, he could tell that much. He doubled over at the stove one day-evening? Afternoon? What time is it, please, someonejusttellme-and ended up twitching on the floor. A burning spread across his body, ate as his flesh as the radiation tore through cities. He screamed his throat raw (is this what I did to you? Kiku, Kiku, I’m-), and woke up hours later with his burger patties burnt and the taste of copper in his mouth.
The news stations said it was a nuclear power plant gone horribly awry.
(All he knew was that there was a burn that encircled his wrist and crept up his forearm, and a part of him felt like it was missing without any hope of being found.)
He spent the rest of his time in the bunker vomiting. His body worked through the radiation, though it didn’t like it, but there was still the feeling of dead flesh (hanging off his bones, won’t go away, Artie, Artie, why won’t you help me?) and dead minds crawling beneath his skin. Based on how much it left the surface of his skin itching, and made it difficult to stomach any more than a few bites per meal, he would have said that there wasn’t much of his people left. (Though, they hadn’t always been his, had they?)
Alfred didn’t know how much time had passed.
All he knew was that when something on the surface destroyed the last of his generators, he suited up and used the only rocket in the rocket launcher to blast his way into the apocalypse.
Characters: America.
Rating: T
Key Words: Angst, Apocalypse, and Zombies.
Summary: Nation!verse. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Alfred is certain he has a front row seat for what he's done.
* * * * *
Outbreak
* * * * *
Alfred’s problems began with a string of bad weather. No, that was not entirely true; his problems really began when the idea for a potential cure for cancer entered the head of one of his top scientists, but in his mind the weather marked the destruction that was to come. Of course, for the most part, he waved the concerning changes in climate off as nothing more than his normal problems. Sure, the heat waves measured in at a higher average than usual, and at least a handful of his states seemed to be battered with rough storms on a daily basis, but these were problems he could handle.
It was only when those problems began to pile up that he began to succumb to the effects. With his economy still in a state of struggle, and the onslaught of illness symptoms-fever for the heat waves, dehydration for the droughts, clogged sinuses for the storms and resulting floods, and the usual aches and pains for everything else-attacking him at every possible moment, he soon found himself overwhelmed by it all. Though he rested when he could, and lived a healthier lifestyle as per his boss’s (and body’s) insistence, he just couldn’t shake off the state of perpetual illness that seemed to have consumed him completely.
For that alone, the reports of a cure for cancer came as a blessing.
Even as one half of those people aware of the project dreamed of all the ways this cure could help the American citizens currently dying in the hospital, the other half mapped out ways to turn this tremendous breakthrough in the medical field to the nation’s advantage.
“If we sell these cures to the other nations, just imagine the kind of money we’ll bring in,” they told him.“We can boost the economy, work to pay off our debt-we can do all of the things this country needs to get it and its people back on its feet.”
Looking back, Alfred couldn’t say that the sort of monetary benefit they spoke of didn’t tempt him, though he didn’t see it as greed. Building the economy back up would help so many people, wouldn’t it? They could continue helping those citizens in need, become a little less reliant on outside nations for economic support, and do all of the things that needed to be done to set things right. Besides, the cure alone would save countless lives. Experts reported the number of people dying from cancer across the world to be in the millions. If he could extend this medicine out to them, and to anyone else who may one day need it, then why shouldn’t he?
Alfred, who wanted so much to help others, to prove to England and the others that his dream to be a hero wasn’t as ridiculous or farfetched as they seemed to think, leapt at the opportunity to save so many lives outside of those in his borders. With the go ahead from the Senate and the House, he and his boss worked with experts to take the cure to an international level.
They called all the big names in the media, world leaders, his fellow nations-anyone they could think of who could get the word out to the average person, anyone who could create a demand for this cure that they, the American people born from all the people of the world, had created. The requests came pouring in. Nations began to clamor for this thing that the media and reports called ‘the miracle drug.’ Alfred watched the precious shipments of medicine go out, and couldn’t help but beam with pride. The reports typed up accounted for all of the doses sold and shipped, but all he saw were the number of lives being saved.
As the cure went out to the world, the money poured in. Though he tried not to pay it too much attention, Alfred couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief as the funds were put toward recovering his economy. The weather still made him ill, but without the constant pains and colds of a struggling economic system to go with it, he could push past everything as he usually did and go about his daily routine before his boss forced him to go healthy. Burgers as per the usual, with copious amounts of cola to wash it down; he basked in the normality his life returned to, and hoped with this cure he and the rest of the world could finally step forward into the right direction.
Only something didn’t quite feel right. Despite the progress his people made, he could feel the heavy weight of something-subconscious knowing? A fear for the price he’d have to pay for this success?-settle in the pit of his stomach. As the days passed and turned into weeks, that feeling gradually spread throughout various parts of his body. He felt nauseous in places he couldn’t even feel nauseous. At times, the muscles beneath his skin felt as though they were burning, and other times he feared they were actually bubbling. Would the intense heat waves he battled slowly boil him alive from the inside out?
Having never experienced this horrible, building sensation-this feeling of something crawling beneath his skin, lurking there, rotting and dying and slowly killing him from the inside out-a part of Alfred feared for the worst.
As he paid more attention to his body over the days, Alfred was able to pinpoint the source of the feeling. One spot in particular on his stomach, so close to his right hip, seemed to twitch and spasm more so than anywhere else. Whatever was causing him to feel this strange, unwanted sensation had to be somewhere in one of his central states. However, the only thing he could think of that resided there, the only thing in recent events that seemed to have any significance, was the lab that created the cure and the towns that surrounded it. Could this be, then, a possible side effect on his part as his people battled cancer with the help of the medicine?
Alfred went to his boss, but didn’t receive any answers.
“Everything is fine, America,” they said. “Don’t worry.”
Only he had to worry, because the feeling only seemed to be getting worse, and even though the people appeared to be getting better, he needed to know what this boded for them, for him. He pushed for answers, came back to his capitol as often as possible and drove out to some of the top secret medical research facilities scattered across his lands when his politicians wouldn’t give him the answers. No one would tell him anything. They simply slapped him on the back, told him not to worry, that he was doing a good job and nothing was amiss, and sent him on his way.
Alfred didn’t believe them.
(Looking back, he would see that he had good reason not to, because the feeling that plagued him only marked the turning point in his life.)
Soon after he started asking questions, the people who denied him answers started to look nervous. Their pretty lies weren’t so pretty anymore. Word trickled through the media, slow but sure, that something was amiss in the heart of his country. Strange attacks were all the reports said, and even the details on those were sparse. A number of police investigations were shut down by the FBI. They confiscated boxes’ worth of papers from police departments, hospitals, and newspapers, and burned them. Agents started to arrest those involved, and anyone else who tried to stir up trouble, and threw them somewhere where no one would remember them.
Unaware of the barely contained chaos that plagued his people, or even the unjustified and outrageous actions made by people in his own government, Alfred started to scan every news source he had available to him-the television, the paper, and even the Internet-but aside from the occasional mention of a strange attack that leaked through, he found nothing that would help him. When the media failed him, he turned to government documents. Every report he could get his hands on, especially those that required top clearance, became his bedtime stories.
War reports, intelligence in foreign countries, top secret operations, audio recording transcripts; he dreamed of them late at night, tossed and turned to the sight of heads distorted without faces, and the feeling of nails-human nails-that clawed and tore and shred while teeth dug into the tender flesh that covered his jugular vein. Needless to say, sleep became increasingly difficult. If it wasn’t the nightmares that kept him up, it was the feeling of something foreign crawling beneath his skin, walking amongst his people, and if it wasn’t that, then it was his body breaking out into another fever that left him sweating in entangled sheets.
After what seemed like an eternity after the release of the cure to the international public, but in truth could only be a few months, Alfred finally got the answers he had been searching for. Men in suits came to his apartment in New York City.
“There’s been a problem. We need to get you evacuated to a secure location now.”
His first thought was of his monuments, his people. Had there been a terrorist attack? Were they suddenly embroiled in a war he hadn’t even sensed approaching?
(And a part of him laughed at that, because he had been at war with himself ever since he first started experiencing problems.)
At first, the men tried to maintain their silence, but the plane ride to an emergency, underground complex he had in Nevada was long, and England always had said he excelled at wheedling people until they ‘bloody well cracked and, really, Alfred, could you cease pestering me for one moment?’ Slowly, the truth poured out. Something had gone wrong with the cure. Although it did eradicate the cancerous cells like the reports and tests had indicated, there had been an unknown, unforeseen side effect that kicked in after a long incubation period. The doctors and scientists were baffled.
Perhaps once it ran out of cancerous cells, the cure started to attack healthy ones in the body, or maybe there had been an unknown reaction that the tests hadn’t detected. Whatever the cause was, it resulted in a loss of sanity, loss of all brain function, loss of life-only, not really. Those afflicted with this new strain of virus retained all uses of their body, despite the fact that the neural synapses in their brain were completely fried from the illness. They could walk, run, climb, and even make noises, though human speech thus far seemed to be an uncommon ability among them, and they did so all in the quest of human flesh.
In short, those humans and animals infected with the cure became what Hollywood had presented as the zombie for the last few decades, only on steroids.
Alfred pressed them for more answers. Why didn’t anyone know yet? Containment, of course. The government had to keep the problem under wraps. If word got out in the media, the American people would descend into a panicked frenzy. The other nations, did they know? Not yet, but they will. When? Soon. Alfred reached for his cell phone, then remembered that he never grabbed it off his nightstands. He had to call Canada, had to call England, had to warn them-everyone-about this new problem they as nations faced. If he could only talk to them, explain to them just what was going on…
The men in their pristine black suits-agents of his own government-refused to let him use a phone, any phone, even when the plane landed and they began their long drive out into the dessert. All the while, they kept telling him not to worry. Alfred began to hate those words. Don’t worry. To him, they sounded more like don’t ask questions, don’t demand answers, leave everything to us, really, America, don’t you trust you own people?
Alfred didn’t quite know the answer to that.
He needed to know more, needed to know whose fault this was, whose ass he would have to kick six ways ‘til Sunday in order to put the world right again. (Justgivemeatarget,please,Ican’tfeelsouseless.) At first, the agents didn’t answer. That was fine; they had gone through this before. Only, this time, before he could even start peppering them with question after question until they wanted to tear their hair out, they answered him.
“We don’t know.”
Not knowing wasn’t good enough.
However, no matter how hard he pushed, it seemed as though they really didn’t know. Rumors had been circulating in the various departments trying to handle the decision. Outside job. Biological warfare. Set up. Tampering with the samples. So many ugly words, and all of the fingers pointing the blame at someone different. (Please, just say it isn’t our fault. Tell me that we didn’t create this mess, didn’t sentence our own people to be death.) Beneath his skin, near his hipbone, the truth burns and festers even if he won’t-can’t-see it. The agents shared a look, and told him the lie that he would wrap around himself in the upcoming days.
It wasn’t your fault.
“It’s why,” they argued, “we have to get you to the bunker.” If the word got out to the other nations before the American government could find out who was responsible for this, then the backlash on America-on the people, on Alfred-would be devastating. The amount of damage caused by the cure (oh,andhowthosenumberracethroughhismindagain), could be seen as an act of biological warfare from the United States against the rest of the world. They had to tread carefully, and to pinpoint the exact culprit before war broke out on their soil and those not yet hit by the illness suffered for the sins of whoever did this.
With such a large risk at stake, steps had to be taken to do their utmost best to protect their nation.
The men, with Alfred in tow, arrived at the compound, tucked him inside with more pretty words and promises to come back soon, and left with the closing door echoing behind them. A number of locks, some manual and other electronic, sounded in a long string of sounds. Slam, slap, bang, beep. Alfred could feel the very thing he had rebelled for-his freedom-slip from his grasp as their departing steps tapered off into silence. In that one, deafening moment, where his solitude rang louder the fading presence of the people’s will in his head, Alfred knew he had fallen.
To the government’s credit, they did not leave him without supplies. An ample stash of weaponry, ranging from a line of handguns to a rocket launcher, filled a closet in the back of the small, underground complex. He had all the necessities he lived by in the outside world-burgers, cola, fries, and enough spare generators to power the game systems tucked tidily beneath the flat screen television like the bribes they were. Abandon the people-abandon the world-and have all the time and more to do everything he always loved.
(Alfred discovered the bathroom, after that, and christened the toilet with a glut-clenching, throat burning projection of all the shame and guilt that shiny new Playstation 3 brought to the surface.)
Time passed, though he couldn’t say exactly how much. He slept fitfully (he’s running, being chased, and when he looks over his shoulder, he sees the faceless monsters chasing after him. Only this time he knows that they’re not monsters, but his own people, and that blank, smooth canvas of a face takes on his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his smile, andohdeargodhe’sgoingtobesick). Most nights, when he awoke, it was to throw up the meager amount of food he managed to coax down his throat.
There are some downsides to being locked away in an underground bunker. Sensory deprivation began to kick in. He had no one to talk to, no one to touch and be touched by, to curl his fingers around the warm skin on the back of someone’s neck as laughter washes over him and ha, Mattie, bet you can’t beat me at that again, can you? Alfred had always been a sociable, tactile person, and to be cut off from anything remotely human without warning ate at his very core.
Not only that, but trapped beneath the crust of his land, with nothing but the tenuous connection he could barely feel between he and what remained of his people, he could only speculate as to what happened. They used nukes, he could tell that much. He doubled over at the stove one day-evening? Afternoon? What time is it, please, someonejusttellme-and ended up twitching on the floor. A burning spread across his body, ate as his flesh as the radiation tore through cities. He screamed his throat raw (is this what I did to you? Kiku, Kiku, I’m-), and woke up hours later with his burger patties burnt and the taste of copper in his mouth.
The news stations said it was a nuclear power plant gone horribly awry.
(All he knew was that there was a burn that encircled his wrist and crept up his forearm, and a part of him felt like it was missing without any hope of being found.)
He spent the rest of his time in the bunker vomiting. His body worked through the radiation, though it didn’t like it, but there was still the feeling of dead flesh (hanging off his bones, won’t go away, Artie, Artie, why won’t you help me?) and dead minds crawling beneath his skin. Based on how much it left the surface of his skin itching, and made it difficult to stomach any more than a few bites per meal, he would have said that there wasn’t much of his people left. (Though, they hadn’t always been his, had they?)
Alfred didn’t know how much time had passed.
All he knew was that when something on the surface destroyed the last of his generators, he suited up and used the only rocket in the rocket launcher to blast his way into the apocalypse.