![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neverrunslateThey hadn’t even heard the news on Day One. They weren't watching the Ukrainian news even if had covered it, which it hadn't. Local news in Denver had barely given it a mention--a half dozen patients with cases of what appeared to be a particularly virulent flu admitted to area hospitals--and Taylor hadn’t thought it worth mentioning on their daily check-in.
They’d still missed it on Day Two, Guy focused on gathering the intel they needed while Nick spent eighteen-plus hour days assembling the explosives and detonators they’d need from the seemingly innocuous parts they’d brought in their luggage combined with what they’d spent the first two days very discreetly acquiring. And Taylor still hadn’t mentioned it at that night’s check-in. Six fatalities from the day before, over sixty new cases in the Denver Metropolitan Area alone, all progressing exactly as the first had and, as national and international news finally picked up the story, more than three hundred patients with identical symptoms admitted to hospitals in five other major US cities.
By Day Three even living under a rock there was no way to miss the news. Over four hundred new fatalities scattered across the U.S., new cases in twelve major cities and over twenty minor, and almost all flights into and out of the U.S. cancelled. It was Frank who made the check-in that night, saying nothing about Taylor, and told them to wait it out where they were, no reason they should rush to get back into hell. They were already in Munich by then, though, operation abandoned because fuck that noise, and they made the check-in surrounded by panicking tourists and businessmen, trying to look innocuous while hoping like hell their connecting flight to Montreal didn’t get cancelled before they could get the hell out. It didn’t, and when all flights into and out of Canada were banned seven hours later they were already safely over Quebec, and it was too late to do any good anyway.
They arrived into a state of emergency, the first Canadian cases confirmed in the hundreds and Montréal-Trudeau International swarming with Canadian Defence forces in hazmat suits enforcing a complete quarantine. There had been over twelve hundred new deaths confirmed in the eight plus hours they’d been in the air, and every major Canadian city and most of Europe had seen their first victims. The news had stopped trying to count the new cases but the CDC confirmed that, so far, not a single patient had survived more than two days past the initial presentation of symptoms.
They’d had to leave everything but what they’d had in their carry-ons behind behind, evading the barricades and roadblocks around the airport, the island (they’d been obliged to shift and swim the Saint Lawrence after dark, paring down their sparse possessions even further into just what would fit into the small packs they carried for just such an emergency) and then the city, on foot. Not worth stealing a car even then, not with every road gridlocked with panicked city dwellers trying to escape this new plague.
No one answers when they call to check in on Day Four, hours late and barely over the U.S. border, and Nick sits in the shadows well beyond the edge of the road, eyes glowing a baleful gold as he stares at the phone in Guy’s hand and feels the world start to slip from beneath his feet. Because someone should answer, no matter how bad things are… unless there’s no one left. Neither of them tries to make excuses for the silence on the other end of the line, and when Guy puts the phone away and orders Nick into motion again he settles his pack in place and shifts, flowing back into the cat silently and without complaint, and follows him into the darkness. Away from the roads where, already too late, people have begun to put up their own roadblocks and barricades, trying desperately to keep potential carriers from breaching their illusion of safety.
They’d still missed it on Day Two, Guy focused on gathering the intel they needed while Nick spent eighteen-plus hour days assembling the explosives and detonators they’d need from the seemingly innocuous parts they’d brought in their luggage combined with what they’d spent the first two days very discreetly acquiring. And Taylor still hadn’t mentioned it at that night’s check-in. Six fatalities from the day before, over sixty new cases in the Denver Metropolitan Area alone, all progressing exactly as the first had and, as national and international news finally picked up the story, more than three hundred patients with identical symptoms admitted to hospitals in five other major US cities.
By Day Three even living under a rock there was no way to miss the news. Over four hundred new fatalities scattered across the U.S., new cases in twelve major cities and over twenty minor, and almost all flights into and out of the U.S. cancelled. It was Frank who made the check-in that night, saying nothing about Taylor, and told them to wait it out where they were, no reason they should rush to get back into hell. They were already in Munich by then, though, operation abandoned because fuck that noise, and they made the check-in surrounded by panicking tourists and businessmen, trying to look innocuous while hoping like hell their connecting flight to Montreal didn’t get cancelled before they could get the hell out. It didn’t, and when all flights into and out of Canada were banned seven hours later they were already safely over Quebec, and it was too late to do any good anyway.
They arrived into a state of emergency, the first Canadian cases confirmed in the hundreds and Montréal-Trudeau International swarming with Canadian Defence forces in hazmat suits enforcing a complete quarantine. There had been over twelve hundred new deaths confirmed in the eight plus hours they’d been in the air, and every major Canadian city and most of Europe had seen their first victims. The news had stopped trying to count the new cases but the CDC confirmed that, so far, not a single patient had survived more than two days past the initial presentation of symptoms.
They’d had to leave everything but what they’d had in their carry-ons behind behind, evading the barricades and roadblocks around the airport, the island (they’d been obliged to shift and swim the Saint Lawrence after dark, paring down their sparse possessions even further into just what would fit into the small packs they carried for just such an emergency) and then the city, on foot. Not worth stealing a car even then, not with every road gridlocked with panicked city dwellers trying to escape this new plague.
No one answers when they call to check in on Day Four, hours late and barely over the U.S. border, and Nick sits in the shadows well beyond the edge of the road, eyes glowing a baleful gold as he stares at the phone in Guy’s hand and feels the world start to slip from beneath his feet. Because someone should answer, no matter how bad things are… unless there’s no one left. Neither of them tries to make excuses for the silence on the other end of the line, and when Guy puts the phone away and orders Nick into motion again he settles his pack in place and shifts, flowing back into the cat silently and without complaint, and follows him into the darkness. Away from the roads where, already too late, people have begun to put up their own roadblocks and barricades, trying desperately to keep potential carriers from breaching their illusion of safety.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-02 03:29 am (UTC)Nick knows enough to know that power will be out throughout most of the country within the next two to three days at most, darkness cascading across the landscape as coal and gas-fired plants fail, taking the rest of the grid with them. That it'll last in isolated islands around nuclear and hydro-electric plants for maybe as much as a week or two... depending on if power plant staff had the time and foresight to prepare for the worst. He doubts they had.
They've been hammered back to the pre-Industrial age by a super-bug that no one had even been able to agree on the origin of before there were too few people left to bother arguing about it. He's not sure how much he cares, though, and he follows Guy in a numb haze, eeling through the dark like a shadow, sleeping the day away, for some values of sleep, pressed against Guy's side in the darkest thickets they can find. They shift back every evening before starting out again, make a call that isn't answered and probably never will be again, and talk--Nick mostly listens and grunts agreement--about what direction to go, what to avoid, what supplies they're going to need and where to risk picking them up. It turns out they need precious little, the trappings of civilization conveniences rather than necessities to men who are as much animal as human. Maybe more.
no subject
Date: 2014-05-12 08:10 pm (UTC)On Day Twenty they stop at an isolated farmhouse. Whatever the previous residents had been doing when the plague hit, they'd been doing it somewhere other than here, because there's no stench of decay, no bodies to deal with as they search silently from room to room. What there is is well water and a generator with fuel, a tank by the empty barn that supplies the house with gas. Nick had already forgotten the glory of a hot shower, and he positively wallows in it before raiding the master bedroom for a pair of old man boxers and some baggy sweats while his own clothes are in the wash. Even as rarely as he's worn them the last few weeks they could just about walk away on their own, and it feels amazing to put them back on clean again.
There's a cow and a calf in a pasture behind the barn, the grass high and green, with a small pond for water to explain why they're still alive, and they think about what steak or hamburgers would taste like, but they'd be more trouble than they're worth to actually butcher out. So they heat up canned food on the gas stove and Nick finds a stash of Twinkies at the back of the pantry that they share after Spaghetti-Os and Hormel chili and Bush's baked beans.
They don't risk lights, or a fire in the massive fieldstone fireplace, but after they eat they sit in the living room before the light fades, Nick at Guy's feet as they pour over maps spread on the coffee table and discuss their route. After, Nick looks up at Guy through lowered lashes, hands sliding up his spread thighs as he rises to his knees, and for the first time since Before he blows Guy, slow and messy and unmistakably desperate. Later, in the big bed in the master bedroom, Guy opens him up, fingers slick with the lube Nick unearthed from the bottom of his pack, then fucks him, long and hard and maybe just as desperate in his way. When they go to sleep after the bed smells of sweat and come and them, and something has loosened in Nick's chest and along his spine, settled him back into his skin so he doesn't feel like he might vibrate out of it at any moment, and when Nick curls closer sometime during the night, face pressed to Guy's shoulder so that every breath is laden with his scent, Guy neither kicks him out or leaves, and Nick wakes up still pressed against the older man in the cool dark before dawn.
The second day they gorge themselves on fresh meat, because it might be too much trouble to butcher but there's no way they're going to let it go to waste when it's enough to carry them for days. It means staying one more night while they digest, having one more hot shower and fucking in that big, too-soft bed before waking up curled against Guy one more time.
Nick's not sure if he'll miss the shower more or the bed, (okay, definitely the bed, and Guy pinning him to it while he fucks him hard enough to leave bruises that won't last and sinks blunt, still-human teeth into the nape of Nick's neck as he comes) but they can't stay. The place isn't defensible, it's a miracle that they're the first to have found it and they definitely won't be the last. So on the third morning they pack what they can carry from the pantry and eat what they can of their kill, and then two golden-eyed shadows disappear into the trees at the edge of the far pasture, heading South.
no subject
Date: 2015-01-27 09:45 am (UTC)It's been months now and there's no value in remembering, only in surviving. They're good at surviving.