Epilogue

[Horsefan1023 (Seal)]

Okay, I have literally NO idea where this came from.  The idea just popped into my head out of the blue and I really loved it.

This isn't really a RAFfanfic, but I didn't know where else to put it and NEEDED to write it.  So here it is! 

And yes, the name is Epilogue. 

NOTE: This is gonna be pretty dark, so...read with caution? Idunnolol

***
PROLOGUE

It had all started with the meteor.

The goddamn rock, as Callsign Winter thought of it.

When it hit the Earth, in California, nobody ever found out exactly what it did.  But something in it, some sort of electrical properties shut down almost everything.  Internet died.  TV connections were severed.  Even the radios went down.  So if anyone did discover anything, nobody found out.

The impact was so large and heavy that it didn’t just wipe out a few cities instantly—it shifted some of the nearby fault lines.  Earthquakes and tidal waves were commonplace these days.  San Francisco was probably nonexistent because of it.

And, of course, just to top off the apocalypse, it brought a mysterious plague with it.

No zombies, luckily.  Just everyone dying.  By the time the scattered scientists found a vaccine, there were so many dead you could walk through whole cities filled with nothing but bodies.

Now, a month later, civilization had pretty much ended.  Winter put binoculars to her eyes, and scanned the city of Chicago from where she sat on top of one of the taller buildings.  She didn’t dare go into the city proper, but just stayed on the outskirts, as far out as she could.

Bodies.  Bodies.  Car fire.  Muggers.  Bodies.  Druggies.  The usual.

She sighed, turning to look out over the suburbs.  A small earthquake had caused part of Naperville to collapse.  Smoke rose from whatever had lit on fire over there.

“Wonder if Wheaton’s still standing,” Winter murmured.  She had gotten into the habit of talking to herself.  She also suspected she was going a little bit insane, since she had no reason to be “Callsign” Winter.  She could just go by any normal alias.  She could be an Alexandra.  She liked the name Alexandra.

But no.  Callsign Winter just…felt…right.

Winter sat down with a sigh.  “Wonder where you are,” she said to her friends.  They weren’t there, of course.  She had been out of town when everything had gone wrong.  Her family had come back to find the town empty.  No bodies.

Just gone.

Of course, her family was holed up somewhere.  Her brothers and parents were safe.  She had made sure of that.  She wanted to get out of Chicago, and quickly.  But…

She raised the binoculars to her eyes again, scanning the streets on the edge of the city.  They were still there.  Those...people.  Keeping everyone in, watching the slaughter and laughing.  She was surprised everyone in the city wasn’t dead yet.  Including herself and her family.  Thanks to them.

Winter clenched her fists, feeling icy anger work its way through her veins as she watched the people who guarded the perimeter.  There was a crackle behind her.

She didn’t even turn, just brushed her sloppily cut, short brown hair out of her eyes and ignored it.  The frost showed up whenever she got mad.

Callsign Winter indeed.

***

Callsign Wilderness plodded along the dirt road, keeping the collar of his shirt over his mouth.

He was immune to the meteor disease—he called it the Pathogen, capitalized in his mind—for some reason.  But that didn’t mean there weren’t other things out there.

He suddenly realized how little sense that made.  Covering his mouth wouldn’t protect him from disease. 

Oh right.  It was because of the smoke.

“I should really get some food,” he informed the nearest crumpled, burning building.  “And oxygen.  I think my head could use it.”

He had no idea where he was.  Wilderness was pretty sure he was heading north.  And had been for a while.  Just get away from California.  The closer to the meteor, the worse things were.

Not like things were much better here, of course,

“Callsign Wilderness,” he said to the next building.  “No idea why I call myself that.  I just really like it.  Is that a bad thing?  I think it’s probably more of a bad thing that I’m talking to a  building.”

He coughed violently.  Get out of the smoke, a voice in his head told him.  Someone was talking.  Was that his dad?

“Dad, why’re you in my brain?”  he mumbled with a slight giggle.  “I was at college, and you were at home when the meteor went bang.  You should be hiding, not in my brain.”

Get out of the smoke.

Just start heading towards those tall buildings over there. 

Wilderness coughed again, doubling over as they racked his body.  Sparks jumped between his fingers.

Huh.  That was odd.

***

Callsign Indigo read the sign.

“Xenia,” he said aloud.  “Xenia Ohio.  Population…” he trailed off.  The sigh used to say 25,000 or something like that, but it had been scribbled over in red spraypaint.

“LOWERING EVERY DAY” the grim message read.

“That’s not very nice,” Indigo muttered, running a hand through his short black hair.

He had walked for…how long had he walked?  It felt like forever.  Though it probably hadn’t been too long.

And his old home had been his with the meteor’s disease.

“Population of over 600 thousand,” Indigo muttered to the sign.  “And one survivor.  Lucky me.”

His family…

Indigo walked on.  He had figured, what with being The Survivor (capitalized of course) or whatever, he should have a new name.  And…his old name reminded him too much of home.

Calling himself Callsign Indigo was definitely better.

And at least it was quieter out here.  Less mind noise if he accidentally Attached to someone.

“He’s the one.”

Indigo turned, whipping out his favorite gun, an M19.  He had obtained it back home, from one of the bodies in an alley.  He had several others stashed various places.  And he had gotten plenty of practice during his journey.

Two women and a man were standing there.  Something was very off about them…other than the fact that they were pointing large guns at him.

“Drop the weapon, sir,” one of the women politely said.  “Or you will die.”

“Whatever happened to snappy one-liners?”  Indigo muttered, slowly putting the pistol down.  “‘Or you will die?’  Really?  Whatever happened to standards?”

The man stepped forward, holding a syringe.

“Wait, that might not work,” the other woman said, holding out a hand to stop him.  “He is the survivor.  He’s gone through three diseased cities without a cough.  We don’t know how his body will react.”

“So…what do we do?”  The man said.

“This,” the first woman said shortly, stepping forward.

“Wait!”  Indigo yelped, holding his hands up.   “Three diseased cities…how did you know—”

The first woman’s gun smashed into his head and everything went black.

***

“This is Callsign Ancient.  Can anyone hear me?  Anyone?  Hello?”

Callsign Ancient sat on top of a skyscraper, fiddling with a walkie talkie.  It had been ten days since she had been snatched from Moberly, Missouri, by some weird guys—who were clean, where the hell had they gotten the chance to shower?—and dumped in Chicago.

For some reason.  She had no idea.

“Oh well,” she muttered, switching to the next channel on the walkie talkie.  “I was going east anyway.”

Ancient had established several things.

One: she was immune to the disease that had killed most of the world already.
Two: she was a little big insane.  Why else would she go by Callsign Ancient.  That had nothing to do with her name whatsoever.
Three: somehow, she had been able to make things work.

All other electronics were down.  And nothing was making them work.  Ancient had seen computer whizzes take a perfectly fine looking computer, had them say that it was perfectly fine, and then it hadn’t worked.

And they’d been shot.  But details.

But somehow, for some weird reason, she could make this work.  It crackled with static, cutting through the silence of being so high up.

Well, not quite silence.  There were always the screams.

She tried again.

“This is Callsign Ancient, is there anyone else out there who can make these things work?  Hello?  Anyone?”

She let go of the button, listening for a moment.  Then she sighed.  She was crazy, hopping for someone else out there who could make things happen that shouldn’t be able to happen at all.

But she went through every channel.  Listening and hoping.  Hoping that what she had seen had been right.  She had seen someone answer.  With nothing more than a simple hello.

But...apparently not on this channel.  She picked it up, about to switch to the next one.

The radio crackled to life with an unfamiliar voice, making her drop it and yelp in alarm.

“Hello?”

***

Callsign Father sighed, sitting with his head in his hands.

“It’s only just begun,” he whispered to the floor.  “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.  It’s only just begun.”

[Blocky97]

I'm assuming your Winter? and I'm assuming I'm dead. Very good, though.

[Horsefan1023 (Seal)]

I thought I should base this close to home, since I don't want to have to do tons of research about a town I've never been in.  So...she's sorta based on me, yes.  But not me.

[Blocky97]

Okey Dokey, Its a cool idea though, reminds me of the Twelve.