shatterverse | (no subject)

Current Location: Gotham City

Entry tags:

(no subject)

It had begun during rush hour, in the very centre of Gotham. Blinding circles of white, opening above the heads of the people, sending waves of terror and fear through the commuters and the businessmen.

Blinding openings, the sky itself tearing apart --

-- but nothing had come through.

Nothing, save a wave of cold air and a damp, cold, spreading sense of fear.

The first case had been only moments later. A woman in the street had screamed, seized up, jerked convulsively -- and fallen.

It had been reported on every station. Famous actress fallen into unbreakable coma -- actress in vegetative state -- family mourns --

The second and third cases, the same. The tenth, just a name. The twentieth, just a number.

The hundredth, just a statistic.

The eight hundredth -- the fifteen hundredth -- the four thousandth --

The rate of infection grew exponentially, and rapidly. The streets of Gotham fell quiet. People were afraid to leave their homes. There were those who tried to run.

The sickness struck them in their cars as they left.

And everywhere, the mist grew thicker and thicker, until even in the height of noon the streets were shrouded in damp white fog.

"It's a town of the living dead," Ariella had said, clinging to Jim's shoulder. "They're all alive still, Jim, that's what makes it so bad..."

He'd held her and patted her shoulder, mourned with her, and then -- on the ninth day, when he went in to wake her and found her hanging from her ceiling, lost to despair -- he buried her.

And moved on.

The city still needed him; the city still needed everyone it could get.

On the twelfth day he made a feeble attempt at rounding up a group to escape. They met pale-faced and shaking, and two more seized and jerked and fell into comas while they stood talking; that was the end of that.

Everything stopped. The city was silent, except sometimes for a scream, or the sound of sobbing.

Holed up in the clocktower, Jim had entirely given up hope.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jim stares at her. Then he blinks up at the ceiling.

"...Big white flashy circle, lotta light? By any chance?"

"There was flashy and lights and the next thing I know my partners are gone and I'm in my car alone," Erin said peeking out the window and just looking at the street.

It's... too... new. The buildings.

"What year is this?" she asked instinctively.

"Two thousand seven."

Jim is staring at her now, wheels clicking over in his head.

"You came through from another --- place, didn't you?" he almost accuses, voice hard. "You're not from this world.

"--and that means the plague, the -- whatever it is -- that came through, too."

"About 200 plus years in the future," Erin agreed still looking out the window. "And from a place called Haddyn which I'm doubting sounds at familiar. This disease thing you are talking about is completely new to me though so I don't think we're from the same place."

Jim nods, straightening his shoulders.

"I'm starting to wonder if it isn't simply a disease."

"What then? Nerve gas? Environmental warfare?" Erin suggested. "Because if that's the case I'm thinking we need to get the hell out of this town."

"Out doesn't work," he says, flatly. "There's no out. I've seen cars of perfectly healthy people all seize and collapse at the same time, just trying to get out. Too many times to be coincidence."

That spark of enthusiasm is dying again, and his face falls back into tired, hopeless lines.

"There's no out."

"Any of them have a flying car?" Erin asked beginning to look disgruntled. "Because if traffic was the problem..."

"There's no traffic."

He sits heavily on a bench.

"Everyone's dead. Everyone who tries to leave is dead."

Small silence.

"There's a decent store of food here, and a spare bed. If you want it."

Erin gave off a little sigh. "I guess there's not much of a choice is there? Thanks... Gordon? Right?"

"Jim, if you like. Not as if rank matters now, is it."

He looks back out at the street, littered with bodies, disappearing from view within fifty metres because of the thickness of the fog.

"I guess we can look for a way out. Just ... don't get hopeful."

Erin is also looking at the street and doesn't much like the look of it.

"You know this city better than ours," Erin replied. "What's the best way out of here?"

Jim shakes his head, despairing.

"There isn't one."

The cold is coming back, the enervating distressing cold that eats at his bones.

Erin self consciously began to pull her coat tight around her. "Have you tried recently? The car out there can go pretty fast."

"Fast enough to outrace a disease?" Jim asks, and shakes his head. "Look ... it's just not going to work."

SADFACE, says Jim.

Erin felt the cold getting stronger and tried to shake her head. He was probably right but... Screw it.

She grabbed him by the arm and started heading for the door.

"C'mon. If we can get out of here maybe we can find a doctor or... anything. I don't know. It beats waiting here to die."

"You'd rather rush off into death?" he asks, gruff and bleak.

There's no point in anything, obviously, Erin! Why bother.

(But he lets her pull him.)

"I'd rather not die at all," Erin feeling glum but doing her best to fight against it.

She pushed open the door and hit the remote to the car. "Get in."

Jim is shivering.

"All right."

But he won't be much help. He's just going to sit there like a big wet blanket. (And he should be excited! It's a FLYING CAR, JIM! It's the most exciting thing he's ever seen! It's just ... there's this cold and damp and he's so D:.)

The cold is increasing, slowly but noticeably; the fog seems almost alive. Jim forces himself to lift an apathetic hand.

"The harbour's that way. Mainland the other way. Gotham's on an island, see."

Erin was doing her best to keep her wits about her as she powered on the car and it went into hover mode. Her initial panic and adrenaline at getting here was slowly ebbing away and being replaced by lethargy and the crushing idea that she may never get back home again.

"Which is closer?" She asked pulling back on the controls and away from the fog.

"Not sure."

He pulls his coat around him, slumping.

"Harbour, I guess."

Erin gunned the engine and the car flew off like a shot. Weaving through a couple of buildings it was only a few moments later that they were over the harbor. "Outside of the city what's the closest place we can find a doctor?"

Jim gives a half-hearted shrug.

"Doctors can't do anythin'."

Oh, he's just a bundle of joy. Even his moustache is drooping and shivering.

Something looms ahead that isn't a building. The bulk is indistinguishable through the fog.

"Maybe you're right," Erin replied, "but... what is that up ahead?"

Erin adjusted the spotlight on the car to the bulk up ahead.

From Jim, who's sunken and shivering in the corner of the seat, there's no answer.

Up ahead, the bulky thing shifts, emitting a vast and terrifying groan. It's vaguely brown; not a colour that's at home in the steel-and-stone of Gotham City. Unfortunately, it's too big for Erin's spotlight to see what exactly it is; it's shrouded by the fog that's everywhere.

What she can see, though, is the way the ground cracks and splinters under the thing's movement, the way those cracks rapidly grow and multiply, racing directly towards the hovering car -- and beneath it, passing it to crackle up the side of the buildings all around.

Three buildings ahead, a wall shivers and falls, crashing unnaturally loudly in the silent streets.

Across the plaza, the same.

Right beside them, about to come down on top of them ...

...move quick, Erin.