Fic; the beginning of the end, PG, challenge: Apocalypse how?
It all begins on a Friday, somewhere in January.
Later Veronica will find it strange it had to start on a Friday, the day everyone looks forward to; for most it was the first day of the weekend. Still in the end it was the clearest thing she remembered later, it was after all the only thing that really made sense; the only thing she understood, the only thing she knew for sure. Nobody knows what really happened, nobody knows what made it begin or where it came from; all everyone is really sure of is that it all began on a Friday.
And it all began with Dick Cassablancas.
One second he was standing right there, completely healthy, he was saying something incredibly stupid to Logan and his brother; the next he was going down, dead before he touched the ground. According to the doctors he hadn’t felt any pain, he probably didn’t even know something was happening to him; it was a small comfort for his friends who watched him die, it would be a big comfort for those who were to die later. They would never truly know.
*~*
It reminded Veronica of a game she and Lilly used to play.
It was in the time that they used to spend their Friday nights watching the television; there was a time they were obsessed with shows like Buffy and Angel and even Charmed. They used to spend their time watching episode after episode, talking about it for hours; they invented this game, which they used to play for hours at end. They’d invent their own stories, their own ways they thought the world would end; they had all different theories, some ridiculous, some quite plausible (if they believed in Magic of course).
No matter how they decided the world would end one thing would always remain the same.
Dick Cassablancas was always the first to die.
Of course this didn’t turn out to be quit truth in the end; Lilly of course died first, then there were the Bush crash victims and Felix. Still if you only looked at that time period Dick would be the first to die, not that that meant anything of course.
*~*
There were no explanations given for what had happened.
Everyone was simply send home, told to stay inside their houses; hoping that there they would be safe from whatever came next. Maybe it was just an isolated case, maybe it was just something that was wrong with Dick; nothing to do with everyone else, and then the next one died. Every time Veronica turned on the news she heard the names of more people that had suddenly died; some she actually knew, others she had never heard from. In the end they would be just names on a list.
The news reported it was only happening in Neptune, whatever this was.
The entire town was put on quarantine, nobody was allowed in or out; they even preferred you’d stay in your own house, to stop the spread of what they called ‘The sudden-death illness’. Veronica and her dad spend hours in their apartment, eating all the food that was in the fridge; knowing that eventually they would have to run out. On Sunday they had nothing left, they had eaten it all; her dad kissed her forehead, before walking out, promising he’d be right back.
He never did come back, Veronica lay on the couch; Back-up’s head on her lap.
She knew he was dead, even before Lamb called to tell her.
*~*
There are no real symptoms you have to look out for.
At least there are none they have discovered yet, they don’t even know what is causing it; and as long as they don’t know, they won’t be able to stop it. Veronica stayed on the couch, hoping for it to come and find her; without her father she was pretty sure she had nothing left to live for. Every few minutes whatever show she was watching was interrupted with a special report, there was never anything new to say, the mystery illness just kept claiming lives.
For an unknown reason one by one all the citizens of Neptune were dying.
All she had to do was wait her turn, and if it would never come she would probably starve to death. Four hours later somebody knocked on her door; slowly she made her way towards it; not even checking who was there she opened it, after all if it was someone coming to kill her what would it matter? She would probably die anyway. It was Wallace shopping bags filled with food stood at his feet, he was carrying his little brother; his eyes were red, his cheeks tear-stained. One look at him and Veronica knew, Wallace’s mom had fallen to.
She allowed him entry without a second’s pause; if she were to die she would do it by his side.
They would wait together, best friends until their end.
*~*
Sunday passed into Monday without that anything really happened.
The nights seemed to be the safest, for whatever reason the illness doesn’t seem to strike at night; it was safe in that time period. Wallace had suggested after only an hour to put on some kind of movie, anything to distract them from what was going on; knowing who had died and how many were left and hearing they still didn’t know how to stop it wouldn’t help them at all. They began watching every movie Veronica could find in the house, maybe they’d make it trough the next week with these movies; whenever they ran out they would just start again.
Weevil arrived Monday night, his little niece by his side.
His grandmother and most of his crew had succumbed; from what he told them they concluded that at least a third of Neptune had gone down. He brought with him even more food and even a couple of kid’s movies; in Spanish of course but what did any of it really matter? The kids seemed to be content to just play, unaware of what was going on; unaware that any minute now their lives could end, any minute they could find themselves all alone. Weevil didn’t ask for her father, he knew what had happened to him; he hadn’t watched the news, but he knew that Keith Mars would never leave his daughter alone in a time like this.
It’s not like it would matter in the end, the rate this was going they’d be dead by the end of the week.
*~*
Lamb died somewhere on Tuesday.
Logan arrived with the news that same day; he also told them that Beaver and most of the 09’rs were gone. They had no police presence let in town, all the deputies had died; not that it truly mattered, everyone was huddled somewhere with their loved ones. Logan finds it weird that he would find himself in a room - waiting for his end to come - with Weevil of all people. They’d probably make a weird group for any outsider who would now look in; there was Wallace, while he was a jock he was also an outsider, and his little brother. There was Weevil, the head of a biker gang and his little niece; Veronica, his one time friend, and him the rich kid.
He had all this money at his disposal, yet none of it could save them.
All they could do was wait, wait to see how the world would end; wait to see if the illness would claim them as well. Slowly time began to tick by, day turned into night; night turned into day. With every hour that passed they thought their end came closer, yet at the same time a hope grew inside them; hope that they might make it trough this, hope that they would survive. On Friday they turn on the news, hoping for some fraction of news, anything to make them feel alright.
Then the hope inside grows even stronger.
Suddenly and as inexplicably as it began, it seems to have stopped.
*~*
The police finds them two hours later.
Veronica is glad it has ended, because one of them would have to go out eventually; the only thing they had left was a bag of cookies and milk. They were brought to the school and housed in the gym, along with all the other survivors; not that there were many, there was a handful of kids from pan high. One of which Veronica recognized from her short stint as Betty, and apart from Logan, two more 09’rs. Luke and a girl from cheerleading squad, one Veronica can’t name; despite the fact that she has known her probably her whole life. Cliff, thank god somebody she knows, and Vinnie, of course.
A handful of other people Veronica has never seen before.
In the end of the thousands of people that lived in Neptune, 17 people survived; and still in the end nobody can explain why. The mystery illness had not been identified, no symptoms were ever caught; the bodies of the death underwent an autopsy, but it couldn’t tell them anything. Medically there was nothing wrong with them, they were all very healthy; there was no reason they should die, no reason at all. And yet they did, suddenly and unexplainable; but at least whatever it was, it was over.
People that hadn’t been in town would count themselves lucky.
*~*
They stayed in the school gym, not knowing where else to go.
It was not as if they had lives to go back to, or somewhere to go outside of Neptune; there were no classes after all there were no teachers left. All the food had been brought to the school as well, for now they would have to live there; until the government figured out what to do with them. Veronica felt like she could breathe again, now she could also feel the pain of her father’s dead; with everything that had happened nobody had paid real attention to it, now they didn’t have to be afraid anymore.
Then the news reported that the illness had moved to Los Angeles.
Veronica felt sorry for the people in Los Angeles, but at least it was far away; now they could attempt to rebuild their lives. Slowly they did so, staying close together; there was nowhere left to go after all. Logan and Veronica thought for a second about going to the Kane estate, but seeing it completely abandoned would just make her cry. They were not allowed to leave the town, at least not until the government knew what was going on.
It couldn’t last Veronica thought, at some point it would all end.
*~*
5 years passed before the Illness stopped moving around.
Firs it went trough America, hitting town after town; there was no pattern to it, no real reason. It hit suddenly and just as suddenly it left, nobody could ever figure out what it was; it only lasted a week, if you found yourself in a quarantined town, a week after it started and you still lived, it wouldn’t claim you. If you were alone, you would wish it had. Once it had finished with America it went to other countries, hitting Mexico and Canada at the same time.
One by one towns all over the world were hit.
In every town some people survived, there was no real pattern behind the survivals either; they were not of the same age, some didn’t even know each other. But they had survived, for an unexplainable reason, and now they tried to gather the pieces of their lives. Celeste and her mother died as well, Jake seemed to be the only Kane that had survived the illness. Duncan was still alive, but the Illness hadn’t arrived in Australia yet so who knew.
It passed around the world, until after five years, it hit Paris.
And there it stopped.
*~*
Duncan and his daughter returned to the states, it’s not like anybody really cared.
Slowly they attempted to rebuild their lives, going to college would be hard, and a lot of professors had died. Together they attempted to move on, money wouldn’t really matter for a long time; eventually they might understand what had happened. Years passed them by and yet still nobody knew what had happened; the illness was never identified, a reason never given. At least those that died, died in peace is what people used to say; and eventually some actually tried to forget.
Some towns were lucky for some reason, in some towns only one or two died.
There seemed to be no reason behind it, no attainable explanation. For whatever reason the world had truly changed, everything was different now. From what Veronica gathered of the news she saw, all over the world maybe a couple of thousands of people remained. But nobody was really sure how many, the difference with how it was before was clear; the world suddenly seemed empty. Still the survivors were edgy, scared because they wouldn’t see it coming as it had before.
Scared they were still the next to die.
*~*
5 years after it ended it began again.
One second Logan was standing in front of them, the next he hit the ground; as suddenly as Dick had done on a Friday ten years before. Back then Dick had been the first to die and now on the second wave of the same illness Logan was next.
Veronica knew in that moment it had finally come to claim them all.
She closed her eyes; soon she’d be with the ones she loves.
It ended for them on a Friday night, ten years after it began.