Quiet Battered Voices (Addison/Derek, PG-13)
Title: Quiet Battered Voices
Pairing: Addison/Derek
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When the world ends, who will you tear the country apart to find?
Word count: 6,300. Exactly. No idea how.
For: flipflop_diva, who donated $50 via fandom4thecure to nursebadass’s The Three Day fundraising efforts. And who was so very understanding when I told her I wanted to write apocafic.
Warnings: End of the world. Tentacled aliens being mysterious.
Author’s Note: I apparently cannot get my head out of the apocalypse. No. Really. Everything I've written since January has been apocafic and I'd appreciate it if someone could make that stop. And this was not supposed to be this long. Title and cut text from "Catapult" by Counting Crows.
(Addison and Mark. New York City - Mt. Sinai Hospital)
[8:15pm, local time; February 20, 2005]
“This is the stalest bagel known to man.” Addison studies it to make sure she didn’t leave any teeth behind when she took a bite. She swipes her finger across the cream cheese and licks it off.
“That’s disgusting.”
“I haven’t eaten in three days,” she says, and tosses the now-bare bagel into the trash can on the other side of the room. It arcs perfectly over the table and lands in the empty can with a resounding thud. “What’s this meeting about?”
“I think it’s about what to do now that we all survived.”
“I read that book. We go to Colorado.”
Mark squints at her. He’s seeing double because he’s been standing for a week watching people die and can’t remember the last time he slept for more than twenty minutes. “The apocalypse makes you punchy.” He gives up trying to make the two Addisons merge into one. She’s pretty.
She stares at him. The world hasn’t slowed down enough to allow her to comprehend exactly what the hell just happened and this is the first time that someone’s mentioned the word apocalypse to describe the events of the past week. It’s appropriate, but she’s having trouble comprehending her stale bagel so she resolves to deal with that later. “No. Cream cheese for,” she checks her watch, “dinner makes me punchy.”
Footsteps echo in the hallway outside the closed door of the conference room. The steps are too heavy, too even and cadenced to be someone casually coming to tell them thanks for all your hard work, now go home.
“Nazis.”
Mark rubs at his eyes. He thinks he used to know that intern’s name. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t World War II.”
“Neo-nazis, then. Or a group with a similar agenda.”
Mark opens his eyes to see Addison lean back in her chair to grab a whiteboard marker and throw it at the kid’s head. She hits him square in the forehead and Mark smiles proudly before he remembers that the world ended last week and they broke up two weeks ago.
“Well, we were told to show up here by someone.”
“You’re bleeding.” Addison motions to her forehead and throws her napkin at the kid.
“The message was written in bright pink paint on the wall. Groups with enough structure to manage a full-scale biological attack like this are more organized than spray paint.”
Mark points at the resident who shot down the kid’s crazy idea. He can’t remember his name, either. “Knew I liked you.”
“I just started here last week.”
“Nice timing.”
“Hey, no talking while you’re bleeding.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a rule,” the resident says, diffusing the situation; he notices Addison reaching back for another marker. “Middle of your head,” he points, because the kid is dabbing at his temple and missing the blood entirely. “Nice aim,” he says to Addison.
Addison smiles. “Varsity softball.”
The door opens.
“Oh,” the kid says, still holding the napkin to his head. “There is not enough LSD in the world to make that shit okay.”
“I take it back,” Addison says. “I haven’t read this book.”
Mark squints, trying to figure out if he’s counting tentacles correctly or still seeing double.
(Derek. Seattle, Washington)
[6:37am, local time; February 21, 2005]
The last time he rode a motorcycle, he ended up with a scar in the middle of his forehead and a vow to never to do that again.
But he’s seen the highways and he’s only one person and a motorcycle is the best way to get where he’s going. He breaks into the REI on Yale and packs two bags. He figures he’ll hit up grocery stores as he needs them, but makes up a variety box of Clif Bars and sets it into the backpack for good measure. He doesn’t remember there being a whole lot in between Helena and Billings.
His ass is going to hurt in a matter of hours, but he doesn’t care. He’s alive, he’s pretty sure Addison’s alive, and the giant ships that now clutter the sky haven’t sent a landing party to Seattle yet.
It could be worse.
As he throws one leg over the bike and settles the helmet over his head, he thinks about the fax that was trying to come through just as the power died. He’s pretty sure it was the first page of a novel’s worth of divorce papers, with his name on the cover sheet.
He turns the ignition and the bike starts up with a roar. He heads east.
(Addison, Mark, The Kid, and Jacob. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[9:19pm, local time; March 3, 2005]
They’ve categorized them.
Land Squid are the dark purple, tentacled ones that gurgle at them in a lyrical language that might be beautiful if they could figure out where the mouth is. They haven’t seen one since New York. Nobody minds.
Darth Vaders are the guards that stand in the sun each day, dressed in black armor with masks covering their faces. They speak English, though have no grasp of colloquialisms or sarcasm, and their voices echo when they yell to work harder. The kid asked one, somewhere in Tennessee, to say Luke, I am your father. Nobody knows what they shot him with, but his hair now stands on end.
Hellboys showed up once the Vaders realized that the humans couldn’t actually lift much. They’re red and huge and prone to outbursts of anger and occasionally throw giant blocks of concrete without warning. Addison has a suspicion that the Hellboys aren’t doing this voluntarily; she noticed one watching a human mother and child with something akin to loneliness and despair. And then he saw Addison and he growled at her.
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” the kid says.
Addison turns her head and lays the other cheek on her clasped hands. “Just one?” She squints through the fire to check on the guards. They allow talking, but are very liberal in their interpretations of what qualifies as suspicious behavior. She may not like the kid (whose real name is Evan and he’s twenty-four today, but she can’t think of him as anything but the kid), but she doesn’t want their group split up. They’re sort of family.
“Why kill everyone? I mean, if they wanted to use us as slave labor, wouldn’t it make more sense to leave everyone alive?”
Addison closes her eyes and tries not to move. The explanation to three separate Darth Vaders of the necessity of sunscreen did not go well. She’s been red for days and she’s starting to blister.
“Because six billion people is impossible to control,” Jacob says. He winces when the wind changes and the firelight dances brilliantly across Addison’s back. She needs a shirt, sunscreen, and a dark room; even though he begged off of burn duty during his ER rotation, he can see that she’s only going to get worse without help. He glances around them for a shadow of Mark, who left to recon the availability of medical care; even if the concept of sunscreen isn’t understood, the concept of burning should be.
“So? Knock out 85%.”
“Did you pay attention during immunology?” Addison asks, her voice flat. She’s trying too hard not to think about being in pain to be sarcastic. When she’s met with silence, she continues. “That virus lived for far too long outside of a host and it was ridiculously airborne. Even if they only dropped it in China, it would’ve lived long enough to be brought over to California on the wind.”
“Not to mention how rapidly it spread,” Jacob adds. “There was no containing this.”
“But still…”
“Quiet,” Addison hisses, catching sight of a guard making its way over to them. They still haven’t figured out gender, though they’re pretty sure the Hellboys are all male. The guard hesitates once they settle down and returns to its post.
Mark returns a few minutes later. He shakes his head. “Sorry, Addie.”
She feels him sit down next to where she’s made her bed out of a sheet spread over the ground and a scrub top bunched up as a pillow. She pretends to be asleep.
She misses Derek.
(Derek. Deer Lodge, Montana)
[6:14pm, local time; March 5, 2005]
“Dammit,” he curses and pulls off of I-90 and maneuvers his bike into the snowed-in parking lot of a motel advertising free HBO and wi-fi; the motel’s name is hidden behind snow. It’s taken him far too long to travel not far enough and he’d completely forgotten about snow and crossing the Rockies. He turns off the bike and digs around in his pack for the blue tarp he picked up in Idaho and covers the bike. If it snows any more during the night, it’ll be an easy dig out in the morning. He hoists the two bags onto his shoulders and heads inside.
He rummages behind the counter for a key to an unoccupied room. Thankful that the motel is seedy enough to not have upgraded to keycards, Derek shivers in the unheated air and heads down the hall to room 7.
By the light of a flickering flashlight, he searches the other rooms for furniture he thinks isn’t coated in something that will asphyxiate him in his sleep. He chops up two nightstands into firewood with an axe he picked up at the same time as the tarp and breaks a window in his room for ventilation. Recalling his Boy Scout days, he builds a fire out of a nightstand frame and a ream of printer paper stolen from the front desk. The act of chopping wood has banished most of the chill from his bones, but he spends a few minutes warming up before going about the business of dinner and figuring out what the hell to do now that he knows the bike doesn’t handle snow.
The open window concerns him a bit: if the fire goes out while he’s asleep and he doesn’t wake up, he’s as good as dead. He sets his watch alarm to go off every two hours, just in case. If a blizzard starts in the middle of the night, he has bigger problems than snowdrifts inside.
The bike would’ve been a good idea if it were late May. As it stands, it’s March and the eighteen-wheeler tracks Derek has been riding in for days started to become more and more filled-in over the past twenty miles. He spent Idaho wondering where the semi came from, where it was going, and who was driving it, but he never caught up to it to find out and eventually just took it as a good sign that someone else was out there. He peers out the window into the dying light to see if he can make any of the snow-covered bumps in the parking lot turn into an SUV. He thinks there are at least a few good prospects out there and turns to the concept of dinner.
The silver lining to riding in the snow is that everything he snatched from the Fred Meyer in Coeur d’Alene has stayed frozen. He tugs a frozen pizza out of its plastic wrapping, covers it entirely in aluminum foil, and shoves it into the fire near the coals. While dinner is cooking, he pulls a notebook from his bag and digs around for the pen that doesn’t quite fit in the spiral binding.
3/5/05. Montana.
I built a fire inside, today. Somewhere, my mother is panicking that I’m going to set this place on fire with me trapped in it. I think the likelier method of my death tonight is inhalation of fumes, to be honest.
I’m trying to get to you, Addie. I know you’re alive. If I’m alive, there’s no good reason for you not to be.
I’m going to ditch the bike tomorrow. I know, I know. You thought it was a dumb idea from the start, didn’t you? And you also knew about the Rockies in March and how snow is a giant problem. You also would probably have a gourmet meal going right now.
Me?
I have a frozen pizza stuck on the coals of a fire created inside a seedy motel out of a nightstand I’m only 70% sure isn’t giving off poisonous gas as it burns.
Pathetic, I know.
I’ll find you. I may need to drive through every state in this damn country, but I’ll find you.
Love, Derek
After dinner - which is only partially done; he swirls his fork through the cheese and veggies and meat on top and tosses the crust outside for anything still alive and hungry - he looks at the map.
He decides to head south in the morning.
(Addison and Mark. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[1:42am, local time; March 10, 2005]
The tears sting her burned cheeks, but she can’t hold them. She grasps Mark’s hand tight in her own and squeezes against the pain as one of the Vaders spreads something across her back.
She collapsed in the sun earlier in the day and Mark spent two hours shouting at the nearest guard to just fucking do something already. Mark earned a black eye for his troubles, but the guard finally relented and pointed in the direction of medical help. A Hellboy had carefully lifted Addison into his arms and carried her into the tent. She managed a weak smile at him and he nodded in return before disappearing.
A Land Squid appeared to give what Mark assumes (hopes, really) is his gurgled opinion as to how best to treat Addison, and then three Darth Vaders dressed in green huddled about a table on the other side of the tent, concocting things. The whole scene unsettles Mark; he has no idea what they’re putting on Addison’s back and he’d kill someone for a bottle of aloe vera right now. They’re all burned, but Addison’s is the worst.
“Derek,” she whispers.
It’s so quiet, Mark almost doesn’t hear. He squeezes her hand.
She manages a faint squeeze in return. Her whole body feels like it’s on fire. Whatever they did, it didn’t help. “Derek,” she whispers again.
Mark realizes that she’s not wishing - she’s hallucinating. “I’m here,” he says, willing to feed the illusion if it helps her. He kisses her knuckles. “This isn’t helping,” he says to the Vader when it returns to Addison’s side.
He swears the mask rolls its eyes at him.
It holds up a spray bottle and sends a mist of something smelling faintly like lemongrass into the air and the mist settles on Addison’s exposed skin.
She sighs. Relief.
(Derek. Panguitch, Utah.)
[2:01pm, local time. March 16, 2005.]
It’s still slow going, but it’s better once he heads south on I-15 through Utah. There’s still snow and pileups and avalanches, but he’s now in a 4Runner with overactive heating and an inexplicably large CD collection in the passenger’s seat and, more importantly, a shovel in the back. He discovers that if he cranks the heat to maximum for twenty minutes and folds down the back seat and curls up in his sleeping bag, he stays warm for a good four hours after he turns off the car.
He figures he’ll hit Arizona within the next two days and be done with the snow.
(Addison. One mile north of the junction of US-60 and US-89, Arizona)
[3:31pm, local time; March 18, 2005]
Field trips happen, sometimes.
They’re hauled off during breakfast and packed into trucks and carted off ten, twenty, sometimes fifty miles away. Waiting for them is a stockpile of supplies - inert and useless on their own, but Addison assumes that three parts of one and two parts of another will make something incredibly handy. The recipe is secret, though, and she doesn’t remember enough physics or chemistry to hazard a guess at the final product.
She catches her reflection in the side mirror of the truck as she hops out. She grimaces. The burns have healed and they’ve given her something to protect her skin, but she still looks like she’s been to hell a few times and decided to stick around for the weather. She’s all hard angles and bone and covered in dirt; her shirt hangs awkwardly and if she wanted to, she thinks she could teach a small child how to count using her ribs. She bends down and rips a strip of fabric from the bottom of her pants and uses it to tie back her hair.
The sun travels high across the blue, cloudless sky and sweat drips down her back and she reaches the end of her rope. She takes the knife - some of the supplies are in packages and need to be inspected before loading - and runs the serrated blade through her hair, cutting it off above the dark blue tie. She drops the ponytail on the dusty ground and finger-combs her now-short locks. “Much better,” she says, and returns to work.
She thinks she hears a car in the distance. Nobody else looks up, so she writes it off to her imagination working overtime to fill her ears with sounds other than ripping, pounding and breathing.
(Derek. Junction of US-60 and US-89, Arizona)
[3:31pm, local time; March 18, 2005]
He’s getting tired of heading farther and farther south, just to go farther and farther north again once he’s east enough to avoid the worst of the snow. He considers turning left onto US-60 and hooking up with I-25, but that would put him into Colorado Springs, and then Denver, and he knows that if it’s not snowing there, it’s at least a big enough town to have survivors and be problematic to a single traveler trying to get somewhere else.
He stops, though, to give himself a few seconds to change his mind. He pops open the glove compartment and pulls out a set of binoculars, seeing something glinting in the sunlight. It’s probably a car or the roof of any number of roadside diners, but he checks it out anyway.
A group of trucks, people moving. They’re too far away for him to make anything out, but there is nothing strategic or useful about this slice of rock so the gathering can’t be voluntary. He’s seen signs in other towns, hastily-scribbled notes to out-of-town loved ones; they’re taking us that way →; Amy, 3/12/05, headed north.
He stays heading south.
(Addison and The Kid. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[9:19am, local time; March 30, 2005]
“I’m a doctor, not an engineer,” Addison grumbles. She’s lying on her back, frowning up at a relay of lights. The lights are blinking randomly; they’re supposed to be blinking in unison. “Fuck. Turn it off.” The hum around her silences and the lights turn out. She reaches for the screwdriver next to her and pops off the panel hiding the mess of wires and switches that’s been the bane of her existence for four days. “Flashlight,” she holds out her hand and the kid places the flashlight in her open palm. She flips it on and glares at the wires.
“Do you even know what you’re looking at?” he asks, bracing his hands on the ground behind him and leaning backward to look up at the sky. He likes this assignment, it’s low-impact. If he’d known that “accidentally” hitting a Darth Vader in the kneecap with a sledgehammer would get him reassigned from building duty, he would’ve done it earlier.
“Not really, no.” Her voice is distorted around the flashlight she has gripped in her teeth. She unwraps a wire from one electrode and hooks it onto another. With a finger, she traces the path of the electric current and, satisfied that she won’t be covered in a shower of sparks once the kid flips the power switch again, spits the flashlight out of her mouth. It lands on her chest and she winces. “Okay. Hit it.”
The kid waits a few seconds. There isn’t cursing, which is a good sign. But there isn’t jubilation, either. “Well?”
“Well, they’re not blinking randomly.”
“That’s good.”
“They’re not blinking at all.”
He sighs. “Want me to take a look at it?”
“Do you know more about electrical engineering than I do?”
“Built my own computer.”
Addison clenches her teeth to keep from killing him for neglecting to admit that piece of information days ago. She shimmies out from underneath the panel. “Go for it.” She runs her fingers through her hair - she’d spent time with a pair of scissors and her reflection in a puddle to get it somewhere approaching even - and lies down in the sun.
“What do you think this is?” His voice is accompanied by the knowing sigh of someone who’s in it for the long haul, fixing what someone else completely screwed up. “Turn it off, would you?”
She shrugs and flips the power switch to off. “Ray gun, maybe.” She wishes for sunglasses.
“Who the hell they gonna shoot?”
“A giant ice cream maker, then.”
It still sucks, and she still misses Derek. But at least she isn’t burned anymore and the Vaders have realized the importance of feeding their workers on a regular basis.
(Derek. New York City)
[10:19pm, local time; April 2, 2005]
She isn’t here.
No one is here.
There are hundreds, thousands maybe, of stray dogs and cats and he’s pretty certain he saw a parrot flying around Times Square.
But the city is abandoned.
She isn’t here.
He screams.
It echoes.
(Addison, Jacob and The Kid. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[7:00pm, local time; April 3, 2005]
“Mark’s dead,” she says, flatly. She sits down next to Jacob and is strangely unaffected.
The kid looks up from his dinner. It tastes like cafeteria oatmeal, but packs a good protein punch. “How?”
Addison shrugs and accepts Jacob’s hand on hers as his silent apology for something that isn’t his fault. “Mini-Vader said it was an accident.” She tosses her head in the direction of the shortest guard.
“I call bullshit,” the kid says. Mark had left with another group on a supply run four days ago; when the group returned without him, they’d started asking questions.
Jacob scrapes his bowl for the last remnants of oatmeal. “I call bullshit on this whole damn thing.”
Addison shoots him a warning glance. “Jacob…” She agrees with him, but there’s something dangerous in his voice and she can’t quite bring herself to do much more than call bullshit on the situation. She’s still alive and Derek tugs on her heart and she refuses to give up until she can’t feel him anymore.
(Derek. New York City - Mt. Sinai Hospital)
[5:43pm, local time; April 6, 2005]
He’s not sure why he goes to the hospital. He knows that’s where she would’ve been when it happened; she would’ve found some way to help people even if there was no help to be given.
What was it that he learned as a Boy Scout? When someone’s missing, start at their last known location and look for clues.
The city's empty, but she’s not dead. Derek knows she isn’t dead. He’d feel it.
He picks up a box and fills it to the brim with medical supplies. He can’t remember the last time he took Advil. He dry swallows two and hopes it will loosen up his back. He’s been driving too long. The box stays by the front door - no need to lug it up four flights of stairs when there’s no one around to steal it.
And if there is someone around to steal it, he has bigger problems than a missing box of band-aids and gauze.
He frowns at the hallway. Something looks off; there are scuff marks on the floor and a smear of blood on the walls. The virus didn’t cause you to stumble and bleed - it scrambled your brain. The blood has dried dark brown; it’s been there for a while. He thinks he can smell her perfume.
And then he sees it. On the whiteboard of the conference room, written in orange marker. It’s scribbled, as if it was written hastily, as an afterthought as its author was being rushed out of the room. The board is covered in names, but he only registers one.
Addison Montgomery-Shepherd.
And at the bottom corner, smushed to fit in amongst the names: we are alive.
(Addison and Jacob. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[2:41am, local time; April 7, 2005]
“There’s a section of the fence. Coyote dug underneath it; they haven’t filled it in yet.”
“You’re not serious,” Addison whispers, fiercely. She casts a glance toward the kid, still sound asleep. She can barely make him out; the moon’s only a silver sliver in the sky. It’s good he isn’t awake for this; his excitement would give them away and they’d all be dead before they agreed to start.
Jacob catches her gaze and holds it. “They killed Mark. You know that. They killed everybody and they’re killing us. Whatever they’re having us build,” he gestures to the hulking shapes on the other side of the camp that occupy their time during the day, “is not good.”
Addison bites her lip. She wants to leave, but she feels compelled to stay put. If you ever get lost, the camp counselor said, stay where you are. It’s easier for people to find you if you aren’t moving.
“Addison.”
She inhales sharply. “Where do we go, Jacob? Provided they don’t catch us and shoot us on the spot, where do we go? We have nothing. I don’t even have shoes anymore.” The soles finally gave out on the last trip to the supply point. She wrapped the laces around her wrist and left her sneakers by the side of the road.
“Does it matter?”
(Derek. New York City - Home)
[6:15am, local time; April 7, 2005]
He decides to leave the notebook on the kitchen table. It’s full now with letters to her he’s pretty sure she’ll never read. But his pen is almost out of ink and he’s switching back to a motorcycle in half an hour and he needs all the space he can get. And if, somehow, she does make it home, he wants her to be able to read them.
There are scorch marks outside of the hospital. Derek doesn’t know what made them, but he does know that they are replacing the tattered map he’s been carrying with him for a month and a half. He throws the map in the trash.
He changes into a pair of jeans he thinks might be Mark’s. The ownership doesn’t bother him, but the lack of an available belt does. He rummages through drawers and eventually finds one that doesn’t belong to Addison and uses it to keep his pants up. With a new wardrobe packed, he loads up the Ducati he’d always lusted after parked in the neighbor’s driveway.
4/7/05. New York City.
You’re not here. I’m honestly not surprised - nobody’s here - but I am a little disappointed. I’m tired of driving. Part of me was hoping you’d be here and I could sit down and rest for a bit. Oh well.
I’m going back to a motorcycle as the vehicle of choice. I passed a few labor camps on the way here and a bike’s easier to hide. I hope you’re not in one, Addison. I hope you’re with a merry band of survivalists living off the land in Colorado. Or hanging out on a beach in Florida, drinking piña coladas and building sand castles.
If you somehow manage to read this, if you made the insane decision to come back to this empty city, know that I’ve followed the scorch marks from the hospital. If you aren’t where they end, if I can’t find you there, I’ll stop. I’ll wait for you.
I love you.
Derek.
(Addison, The Kid and Jacob. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[1:15am, local time; April 9, 2005]
Addison still thinks this is a bad idea.
But Jacob and the kid are going and damn if she’s going to stick around here while they’re gone - even if she survives the interrogation a Darth Vader would put her through, she’d be bored out of her mind without someone to talk to; nobody would associate with her if she stayed, not with the reputation she’d carry - so she’s lying awake in the pitch black night, waiting for the guard to change.
She thinks it’s an insane stroke of luck that nobody bothered to install flood lights. Then again, the only thing waiting for them on the other side of the fence is an empty road and a long walk to nowhere, so maybe the logic makes sense.
“Now,” Jacob whispers.
Addison jumps to her feet and blinks against the vertigo. They may be fed regularly, but she knows she’s going to pitch over from malnourishment if she doesn’t get a vegetable into her stomach soon.
The stars give enough light to make out Jacob in front of her and the kid next to her, but not enough to dodge sharp rocks and glass. She keeps running, her lungs protesting the sudden aerobic exercise and her legs arguing against the speed. Wherever they end up, she hopes there’s a pair of shoes.
They make it to the fence and Addison spares a glance behind her. She’s expecting Vaders and maybe a Hellboy or two (though, as she waits for the kid to squeeze underneath the fence, she supposes she would’ve felt it if a Hellboy was following them).
Instead, she sees darkness.
“Go,” Jacob shoves her toward the fence.
She stumbles and inhales a cloud of dirt sent up by the kid’s feet as he kicks his way to the other side. She covers her mouth and holds back the cough. Her eyes water as she slides underneath the fence and she feels the kid hook his hands underneath her arms and pull her the rest of the way.
And then she feels the earth move.
Jacob’s halfway underneath the fence when she sees the lights coming in their direction. “Run,” he shouts, no longer concerned with being quiet. His shirt is caught on an uneven link. “Addison, go,” he yells when she doesn’t turn to follow he kid down the road. “Find Derek.”
She’s surprised to feel tears spring at her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispers. With one last look at him, she turns and runs.
(Derek. I-44 between Rolla and Lebanon, Missouri)
[4:27pm, local time; April 10, 2005]
He stops at a Dillon’s to restock. Everything in the produce section has turned to unrecognizable mush and the smell is unbearable as he makes his way past the dairy case.
He leaves with a box of Pop-Tarts, a bag of chocolate chips, and two giant bottles of One-A-Day multivitamins. It’s not a replacement for the real thing, but he figures that the multivitamin is enough to keep him upright until he can find a vegetable farm.
The water purifying tablets he picked up that first day in the REI are still going strong, but he picks up a 24-pack of bottled water anyway and lashes it to the back of the bike. The tablets make everything taste weird.
He gets back on the road, figuring he can get another hour or so before he needs to stop for the night.
(Addison. Three miles west of New Mexico)
[2:12pm, local time; April 13, 2005]
She finally finds a riverbed with water still in it. Dropping her backpack on the bank, she opens the zipper and digs out the shampoo, conditioner, soap and razor. She strips out of her clothing and folds it neatly on top of her boots next to her backpack and carefully makes her way down to the river.
It feels glorious.
She noticed within seconds that the kid had gone the other way. She’d thought about turning around and following him, but the guards were already at the fence and she couldn’t risk it. So she’d swallowed and whispered good luck in his direction and kept running.
Addison actually moans when she sudses the shampoo through her short hair. It takes three times before she’s convinced all the dirt and sweat and grime is gone.
She’d stumbled into a tiny town with, impossibly, an outdoor adventure supply store. She’d slept in one of the tents set up on the floor and the next morning taken everything she thought she’d need. Sunscreen, sunglasses and hiking boots were the first things she’d grabbed.
She found the bike the next afternoon. It was leaning against a house, as if its owner had dropped it in a hurry to get inside, almost begging for her to take it. She did. It took a few miles to figure out the right balance with the backpack, but it’s been her favorite thing ever since.
Clean, Addison climbs out of the river feeling like an entirely different version of herself. She wraps one of the towels around her body and dries off before pulling on underwear and a sports bra. She spreads sunscreen over her skin and then steps into a pair of clean shorts and tugs a clean tank top over her head. She even splurges for clean socks.
Deciding that she’ll have a massive case of helmet hair if she gets back on the bike right now and she did not bathe in a river just to end up with helmet hair, she spreads out on the grass to let her hair dry a bit. Plus, she’s been riding upwards of fifteen hours a day for three days. Her butt needs a break.
She consults the map she picked up in the store. It’s localized, not showing anything east of central Texas, but it’s good enough and will get her to a place with another map.
It’ll take a while, but she’ll get home.
She only hopes Derek has the same idea.
(Derek. I-40, thirty-one miles east of Amarillo, Texas)
[8:23pm, local time; April 15, 2005]
The bike breaks down. He kicks it and then hops around on the concrete, cursing.
He corrects himself. Back in Arizona, where he thought about going east on US-60, he was not as close to the middle of nowhere as he’s ever been. Now he’s as close to the middle of nowhere as he’s ever been and the only way to get out is by walking.
He curses again, loudly, and spits on the bike. He sets up camp for the night and decides to figure out what to do in the morning.
He promised her that he would find her. He isn’t letting a crappy motorcycle get in the way.
(Addison. Amarillo, Texas)
[4:59pm, local time; April 17, 2005]
Her legs are killing her. Even before, when she was going to the gym every day and working out and running and doing all those weight exercises her personal trainer was having her do, she wasn’t built to ride a bike for this long. She ditches the bike and decides to walk, hoping she’ll find a car with the keys still in it somewhere down the road. Or a house she can break into, with a car she can steal in the garage.
Movement on the sidewalk several blocks ahead of her catches her attention and she looks up sharply. She squints and makes out a person, shimmering in the heat radiating off the concrete even in April.
On guard, Addison ducks behind a building and digs out the binoculars from her backpack. She peers through them around the corner, fingers crossed behind her back that it’s a trick of the light or a lamp post or even a stray dog.
It’s human.
She plays with the zoom. “Holy shit,” she breathes out and suddenly has to place a hand on the rough brick to steady herself. She puts the binoculars back and shoulders her pack again and walks forward.
(Addison and Derek. Amarillo, Texas)
[5:03pm, local time; April 17, 2005]
He wraps his arms tightly around Addison’s back. She’d dropped her backpack on the sidewalk and broken into a run when he’d shouted her name. He thinks she might be crying, and he thinks he might be crying too, but they’re both whispering ohmygodohmygod over and over and refusing to let go.
He almost didn’t recognize her, with her short hair and the weight she’s lost, and he’s certain he looks a fright, with a scraggly beard and hair desperately in need of the same treatment she gave hers. But he doesn’t care, because she’s alive and he’s alive and they’re together.
She breathes him in and underneath the dirt and grime and sweat, she smells Derek. “I love you,” she whispers once she’s regained control over her voice.
Derek smiles and kisses her cheek. “I love you, too.”
She pulls back and studies him, keeping her hands on his upper arms. “You need a bath.”
He looks at her. “You need dinner.”
She laughs, really laughs, for the first time in two months. She lets go of his arms and clasps her hand in his. He picks up the pack he made out of the bike’s saddlebags and some duct tape and they walk back to collect her backpack.
“Where are we gonna go?” She lets go of his hand just long enough to hoist the pack onto her shoulders.
He shrugs and squeezes her hand. “Anywhere.”
.fin.
Pairing: Addison/Derek
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When the world ends, who will you tear the country apart to find?
Word count: 6,300. Exactly. No idea how.
For: flipflop_diva, who donated $50 via fandom4thecure to nursebadass’s The Three Day fundraising efforts. And who was so very understanding when I told her I wanted to write apocafic.
Warnings: End of the world. Tentacled aliens being mysterious.
Author’s Note: I apparently cannot get my head out of the apocalypse. No. Really. Everything I've written since January has been apocafic and I'd appreciate it if someone could make that stop. And this was not supposed to be this long. Title and cut text from "Catapult" by Counting Crows.
(Addison and Mark. New York City - Mt. Sinai Hospital)
[8:15pm, local time; February 20, 2005]
“This is the stalest bagel known to man.” Addison studies it to make sure she didn’t leave any teeth behind when she took a bite. She swipes her finger across the cream cheese and licks it off.
“That’s disgusting.”
“I haven’t eaten in three days,” she says, and tosses the now-bare bagel into the trash can on the other side of the room. It arcs perfectly over the table and lands in the empty can with a resounding thud. “What’s this meeting about?”
“I think it’s about what to do now that we all survived.”
“I read that book. We go to Colorado.”
Mark squints at her. He’s seeing double because he’s been standing for a week watching people die and can’t remember the last time he slept for more than twenty minutes. “The apocalypse makes you punchy.” He gives up trying to make the two Addisons merge into one. She’s pretty.
She stares at him. The world hasn’t slowed down enough to allow her to comprehend exactly what the hell just happened and this is the first time that someone’s mentioned the word apocalypse to describe the events of the past week. It’s appropriate, but she’s having trouble comprehending her stale bagel so she resolves to deal with that later. “No. Cream cheese for,” she checks her watch, “dinner makes me punchy.”
Footsteps echo in the hallway outside the closed door of the conference room. The steps are too heavy, too even and cadenced to be someone casually coming to tell them thanks for all your hard work, now go home.
“Nazis.”
Mark rubs at his eyes. He thinks he used to know that intern’s name. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because this isn’t World War II.”
“Neo-nazis, then. Or a group with a similar agenda.”
Mark opens his eyes to see Addison lean back in her chair to grab a whiteboard marker and throw it at the kid’s head. She hits him square in the forehead and Mark smiles proudly before he remembers that the world ended last week and they broke up two weeks ago.
“Well, we were told to show up here by someone.”
“You’re bleeding.” Addison motions to her forehead and throws her napkin at the kid.
“The message was written in bright pink paint on the wall. Groups with enough structure to manage a full-scale biological attack like this are more organized than spray paint.”
Mark points at the resident who shot down the kid’s crazy idea. He can’t remember his name, either. “Knew I liked you.”
“I just started here last week.”
“Nice timing.”
“Hey, no talking while you’re bleeding.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a rule,” the resident says, diffusing the situation; he notices Addison reaching back for another marker. “Middle of your head,” he points, because the kid is dabbing at his temple and missing the blood entirely. “Nice aim,” he says to Addison.
Addison smiles. “Varsity softball.”
The door opens.
“Oh,” the kid says, still holding the napkin to his head. “There is not enough LSD in the world to make that shit okay.”
“I take it back,” Addison says. “I haven’t read this book.”
Mark squints, trying to figure out if he’s counting tentacles correctly or still seeing double.
(Derek. Seattle, Washington)
[6:37am, local time; February 21, 2005]
The last time he rode a motorcycle, he ended up with a scar in the middle of his forehead and a vow to never to do that again.
But he’s seen the highways and he’s only one person and a motorcycle is the best way to get where he’s going. He breaks into the REI on Yale and packs two bags. He figures he’ll hit up grocery stores as he needs them, but makes up a variety box of Clif Bars and sets it into the backpack for good measure. He doesn’t remember there being a whole lot in between Helena and Billings.
His ass is going to hurt in a matter of hours, but he doesn’t care. He’s alive, he’s pretty sure Addison’s alive, and the giant ships that now clutter the sky haven’t sent a landing party to Seattle yet.
It could be worse.
As he throws one leg over the bike and settles the helmet over his head, he thinks about the fax that was trying to come through just as the power died. He’s pretty sure it was the first page of a novel’s worth of divorce papers, with his name on the cover sheet.
He turns the ignition and the bike starts up with a roar. He heads east.
(Addison, Mark, The Kid, and Jacob. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[9:19pm, local time; March 3, 2005]
They’ve categorized them.
Land Squid are the dark purple, tentacled ones that gurgle at them in a lyrical language that might be beautiful if they could figure out where the mouth is. They haven’t seen one since New York. Nobody minds.
Darth Vaders are the guards that stand in the sun each day, dressed in black armor with masks covering their faces. They speak English, though have no grasp of colloquialisms or sarcasm, and their voices echo when they yell to work harder. The kid asked one, somewhere in Tennessee, to say Luke, I am your father. Nobody knows what they shot him with, but his hair now stands on end.
Hellboys showed up once the Vaders realized that the humans couldn’t actually lift much. They’re red and huge and prone to outbursts of anger and occasionally throw giant blocks of concrete without warning. Addison has a suspicion that the Hellboys aren’t doing this voluntarily; she noticed one watching a human mother and child with something akin to loneliness and despair. And then he saw Addison and he growled at her.
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” the kid says.
Addison turns her head and lays the other cheek on her clasped hands. “Just one?” She squints through the fire to check on the guards. They allow talking, but are very liberal in their interpretations of what qualifies as suspicious behavior. She may not like the kid (whose real name is Evan and he’s twenty-four today, but she can’t think of him as anything but the kid), but she doesn’t want their group split up. They’re sort of family.
“Why kill everyone? I mean, if they wanted to use us as slave labor, wouldn’t it make more sense to leave everyone alive?”
Addison closes her eyes and tries not to move. The explanation to three separate Darth Vaders of the necessity of sunscreen did not go well. She’s been red for days and she’s starting to blister.
“Because six billion people is impossible to control,” Jacob says. He winces when the wind changes and the firelight dances brilliantly across Addison’s back. She needs a shirt, sunscreen, and a dark room; even though he begged off of burn duty during his ER rotation, he can see that she’s only going to get worse without help. He glances around them for a shadow of Mark, who left to recon the availability of medical care; even if the concept of sunscreen isn’t understood, the concept of burning should be.
“So? Knock out 85%.”
“Did you pay attention during immunology?” Addison asks, her voice flat. She’s trying too hard not to think about being in pain to be sarcastic. When she’s met with silence, she continues. “That virus lived for far too long outside of a host and it was ridiculously airborne. Even if they only dropped it in China, it would’ve lived long enough to be brought over to California on the wind.”
“Not to mention how rapidly it spread,” Jacob adds. “There was no containing this.”
“But still…”
“Quiet,” Addison hisses, catching sight of a guard making its way over to them. They still haven’t figured out gender, though they’re pretty sure the Hellboys are all male. The guard hesitates once they settle down and returns to its post.
Mark returns a few minutes later. He shakes his head. “Sorry, Addie.”
She feels him sit down next to where she’s made her bed out of a sheet spread over the ground and a scrub top bunched up as a pillow. She pretends to be asleep.
She misses Derek.
(Derek. Deer Lodge, Montana)
[6:14pm, local time; March 5, 2005]
“Dammit,” he curses and pulls off of I-90 and maneuvers his bike into the snowed-in parking lot of a motel advertising free HBO and wi-fi; the motel’s name is hidden behind snow. It’s taken him far too long to travel not far enough and he’d completely forgotten about snow and crossing the Rockies. He turns off the bike and digs around in his pack for the blue tarp he picked up in Idaho and covers the bike. If it snows any more during the night, it’ll be an easy dig out in the morning. He hoists the two bags onto his shoulders and heads inside.
He rummages behind the counter for a key to an unoccupied room. Thankful that the motel is seedy enough to not have upgraded to keycards, Derek shivers in the unheated air and heads down the hall to room 7.
By the light of a flickering flashlight, he searches the other rooms for furniture he thinks isn’t coated in something that will asphyxiate him in his sleep. He chops up two nightstands into firewood with an axe he picked up at the same time as the tarp and breaks a window in his room for ventilation. Recalling his Boy Scout days, he builds a fire out of a nightstand frame and a ream of printer paper stolen from the front desk. The act of chopping wood has banished most of the chill from his bones, but he spends a few minutes warming up before going about the business of dinner and figuring out what the hell to do now that he knows the bike doesn’t handle snow.
The open window concerns him a bit: if the fire goes out while he’s asleep and he doesn’t wake up, he’s as good as dead. He sets his watch alarm to go off every two hours, just in case. If a blizzard starts in the middle of the night, he has bigger problems than snowdrifts inside.
The bike would’ve been a good idea if it were late May. As it stands, it’s March and the eighteen-wheeler tracks Derek has been riding in for days started to become more and more filled-in over the past twenty miles. He spent Idaho wondering where the semi came from, where it was going, and who was driving it, but he never caught up to it to find out and eventually just took it as a good sign that someone else was out there. He peers out the window into the dying light to see if he can make any of the snow-covered bumps in the parking lot turn into an SUV. He thinks there are at least a few good prospects out there and turns to the concept of dinner.
The silver lining to riding in the snow is that everything he snatched from the Fred Meyer in Coeur d’Alene has stayed frozen. He tugs a frozen pizza out of its plastic wrapping, covers it entirely in aluminum foil, and shoves it into the fire near the coals. While dinner is cooking, he pulls a notebook from his bag and digs around for the pen that doesn’t quite fit in the spiral binding.
3/5/05. Montana.
I built a fire inside, today. Somewhere, my mother is panicking that I’m going to set this place on fire with me trapped in it. I think the likelier method of my death tonight is inhalation of fumes, to be honest.
I’m trying to get to you, Addie. I know you’re alive. If I’m alive, there’s no good reason for you not to be.
I’m going to ditch the bike tomorrow. I know, I know. You thought it was a dumb idea from the start, didn’t you? And you also knew about the Rockies in March and how snow is a giant problem. You also would probably have a gourmet meal going right now.
Me?
I have a frozen pizza stuck on the coals of a fire created inside a seedy motel out of a nightstand I’m only 70% sure isn’t giving off poisonous gas as it burns.
Pathetic, I know.
I’ll find you. I may need to drive through every state in this damn country, but I’ll find you.
Love, Derek
After dinner - which is only partially done; he swirls his fork through the cheese and veggies and meat on top and tosses the crust outside for anything still alive and hungry - he looks at the map.
He decides to head south in the morning.
(Addison and Mark. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[1:42am, local time; March 10, 2005]
The tears sting her burned cheeks, but she can’t hold them. She grasps Mark’s hand tight in her own and squeezes against the pain as one of the Vaders spreads something across her back.
She collapsed in the sun earlier in the day and Mark spent two hours shouting at the nearest guard to just fucking do something already. Mark earned a black eye for his troubles, but the guard finally relented and pointed in the direction of medical help. A Hellboy had carefully lifted Addison into his arms and carried her into the tent. She managed a weak smile at him and he nodded in return before disappearing.
A Land Squid appeared to give what Mark assumes (hopes, really) is his gurgled opinion as to how best to treat Addison, and then three Darth Vaders dressed in green huddled about a table on the other side of the tent, concocting things. The whole scene unsettles Mark; he has no idea what they’re putting on Addison’s back and he’d kill someone for a bottle of aloe vera right now. They’re all burned, but Addison’s is the worst.
“Derek,” she whispers.
It’s so quiet, Mark almost doesn’t hear. He squeezes her hand.
She manages a faint squeeze in return. Her whole body feels like it’s on fire. Whatever they did, it didn’t help. “Derek,” she whispers again.
Mark realizes that she’s not wishing - she’s hallucinating. “I’m here,” he says, willing to feed the illusion if it helps her. He kisses her knuckles. “This isn’t helping,” he says to the Vader when it returns to Addison’s side.
He swears the mask rolls its eyes at him.
It holds up a spray bottle and sends a mist of something smelling faintly like lemongrass into the air and the mist settles on Addison’s exposed skin.
She sighs. Relief.
(Derek. Panguitch, Utah.)
[2:01pm, local time. March 16, 2005.]
It’s still slow going, but it’s better once he heads south on I-15 through Utah. There’s still snow and pileups and avalanches, but he’s now in a 4Runner with overactive heating and an inexplicably large CD collection in the passenger’s seat and, more importantly, a shovel in the back. He discovers that if he cranks the heat to maximum for twenty minutes and folds down the back seat and curls up in his sleeping bag, he stays warm for a good four hours after he turns off the car.
He figures he’ll hit Arizona within the next two days and be done with the snow.
(Addison. One mile north of the junction of US-60 and US-89, Arizona)
[3:31pm, local time; March 18, 2005]
Field trips happen, sometimes.
They’re hauled off during breakfast and packed into trucks and carted off ten, twenty, sometimes fifty miles away. Waiting for them is a stockpile of supplies - inert and useless on their own, but Addison assumes that three parts of one and two parts of another will make something incredibly handy. The recipe is secret, though, and she doesn’t remember enough physics or chemistry to hazard a guess at the final product.
She catches her reflection in the side mirror of the truck as she hops out. She grimaces. The burns have healed and they’ve given her something to protect her skin, but she still looks like she’s been to hell a few times and decided to stick around for the weather. She’s all hard angles and bone and covered in dirt; her shirt hangs awkwardly and if she wanted to, she thinks she could teach a small child how to count using her ribs. She bends down and rips a strip of fabric from the bottom of her pants and uses it to tie back her hair.
The sun travels high across the blue, cloudless sky and sweat drips down her back and she reaches the end of her rope. She takes the knife - some of the supplies are in packages and need to be inspected before loading - and runs the serrated blade through her hair, cutting it off above the dark blue tie. She drops the ponytail on the dusty ground and finger-combs her now-short locks. “Much better,” she says, and returns to work.
She thinks she hears a car in the distance. Nobody else looks up, so she writes it off to her imagination working overtime to fill her ears with sounds other than ripping, pounding and breathing.
(Derek. Junction of US-60 and US-89, Arizona)
[3:31pm, local time; March 18, 2005]
He’s getting tired of heading farther and farther south, just to go farther and farther north again once he’s east enough to avoid the worst of the snow. He considers turning left onto US-60 and hooking up with I-25, but that would put him into Colorado Springs, and then Denver, and he knows that if it’s not snowing there, it’s at least a big enough town to have survivors and be problematic to a single traveler trying to get somewhere else.
He stops, though, to give himself a few seconds to change his mind. He pops open the glove compartment and pulls out a set of binoculars, seeing something glinting in the sunlight. It’s probably a car or the roof of any number of roadside diners, but he checks it out anyway.
A group of trucks, people moving. They’re too far away for him to make anything out, but there is nothing strategic or useful about this slice of rock so the gathering can’t be voluntary. He’s seen signs in other towns, hastily-scribbled notes to out-of-town loved ones; they’re taking us that way →; Amy, 3/12/05, headed north.
He stays heading south.
(Addison and The Kid. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[9:19am, local time; March 30, 2005]
“I’m a doctor, not an engineer,” Addison grumbles. She’s lying on her back, frowning up at a relay of lights. The lights are blinking randomly; they’re supposed to be blinking in unison. “Fuck. Turn it off.” The hum around her silences and the lights turn out. She reaches for the screwdriver next to her and pops off the panel hiding the mess of wires and switches that’s been the bane of her existence for four days. “Flashlight,” she holds out her hand and the kid places the flashlight in her open palm. She flips it on and glares at the wires.
“Do you even know what you’re looking at?” he asks, bracing his hands on the ground behind him and leaning backward to look up at the sky. He likes this assignment, it’s low-impact. If he’d known that “accidentally” hitting a Darth Vader in the kneecap with a sledgehammer would get him reassigned from building duty, he would’ve done it earlier.
“Not really, no.” Her voice is distorted around the flashlight she has gripped in her teeth. She unwraps a wire from one electrode and hooks it onto another. With a finger, she traces the path of the electric current and, satisfied that she won’t be covered in a shower of sparks once the kid flips the power switch again, spits the flashlight out of her mouth. It lands on her chest and she winces. “Okay. Hit it.”
The kid waits a few seconds. There isn’t cursing, which is a good sign. But there isn’t jubilation, either. “Well?”
“Well, they’re not blinking randomly.”
“That’s good.”
“They’re not blinking at all.”
He sighs. “Want me to take a look at it?”
“Do you know more about electrical engineering than I do?”
“Built my own computer.”
Addison clenches her teeth to keep from killing him for neglecting to admit that piece of information days ago. She shimmies out from underneath the panel. “Go for it.” She runs her fingers through her hair - she’d spent time with a pair of scissors and her reflection in a puddle to get it somewhere approaching even - and lies down in the sun.
“What do you think this is?” His voice is accompanied by the knowing sigh of someone who’s in it for the long haul, fixing what someone else completely screwed up. “Turn it off, would you?”
She shrugs and flips the power switch to off. “Ray gun, maybe.” She wishes for sunglasses.
“Who the hell they gonna shoot?”
“A giant ice cream maker, then.”
It still sucks, and she still misses Derek. But at least she isn’t burned anymore and the Vaders have realized the importance of feeding their workers on a regular basis.
(Derek. New York City)
[10:19pm, local time; April 2, 2005]
She isn’t here.
No one is here.
There are hundreds, thousands maybe, of stray dogs and cats and he’s pretty certain he saw a parrot flying around Times Square.
But the city is abandoned.
She isn’t here.
He screams.
It echoes.
(Addison, Jacob and The Kid. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[7:00pm, local time; April 3, 2005]
“Mark’s dead,” she says, flatly. She sits down next to Jacob and is strangely unaffected.
The kid looks up from his dinner. It tastes like cafeteria oatmeal, but packs a good protein punch. “How?”
Addison shrugs and accepts Jacob’s hand on hers as his silent apology for something that isn’t his fault. “Mini-Vader said it was an accident.” She tosses her head in the direction of the shortest guard.
“I call bullshit,” the kid says. Mark had left with another group on a supply run four days ago; when the group returned without him, they’d started asking questions.
Jacob scrapes his bowl for the last remnants of oatmeal. “I call bullshit on this whole damn thing.”
Addison shoots him a warning glance. “Jacob…” She agrees with him, but there’s something dangerous in his voice and she can’t quite bring herself to do much more than call bullshit on the situation. She’s still alive and Derek tugs on her heart and she refuses to give up until she can’t feel him anymore.
(Derek. New York City - Mt. Sinai Hospital)
[5:43pm, local time; April 6, 2005]
He’s not sure why he goes to the hospital. He knows that’s where she would’ve been when it happened; she would’ve found some way to help people even if there was no help to be given.
What was it that he learned as a Boy Scout? When someone’s missing, start at their last known location and look for clues.
The city's empty, but she’s not dead. Derek knows she isn’t dead. He’d feel it.
He picks up a box and fills it to the brim with medical supplies. He can’t remember the last time he took Advil. He dry swallows two and hopes it will loosen up his back. He’s been driving too long. The box stays by the front door - no need to lug it up four flights of stairs when there’s no one around to steal it.
And if there is someone around to steal it, he has bigger problems than a missing box of band-aids and gauze.
He frowns at the hallway. Something looks off; there are scuff marks on the floor and a smear of blood on the walls. The virus didn’t cause you to stumble and bleed - it scrambled your brain. The blood has dried dark brown; it’s been there for a while. He thinks he can smell her perfume.
And then he sees it. On the whiteboard of the conference room, written in orange marker. It’s scribbled, as if it was written hastily, as an afterthought as its author was being rushed out of the room. The board is covered in names, but he only registers one.
Addison Montgomery-Shepherd.
And at the bottom corner, smushed to fit in amongst the names: we are alive.
(Addison and Jacob. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[2:41am, local time; April 7, 2005]
“There’s a section of the fence. Coyote dug underneath it; they haven’t filled it in yet.”
“You’re not serious,” Addison whispers, fiercely. She casts a glance toward the kid, still sound asleep. She can barely make him out; the moon’s only a silver sliver in the sky. It’s good he isn’t awake for this; his excitement would give them away and they’d all be dead before they agreed to start.
Jacob catches her gaze and holds it. “They killed Mark. You know that. They killed everybody and they’re killing us. Whatever they’re having us build,” he gestures to the hulking shapes on the other side of the camp that occupy their time during the day, “is not good.”
Addison bites her lip. She wants to leave, but she feels compelled to stay put. If you ever get lost, the camp counselor said, stay where you are. It’s easier for people to find you if you aren’t moving.
“Addison.”
She inhales sharply. “Where do we go, Jacob? Provided they don’t catch us and shoot us on the spot, where do we go? We have nothing. I don’t even have shoes anymore.” The soles finally gave out on the last trip to the supply point. She wrapped the laces around her wrist and left her sneakers by the side of the road.
“Does it matter?”
(Derek. New York City - Home)
[6:15am, local time; April 7, 2005]
He decides to leave the notebook on the kitchen table. It’s full now with letters to her he’s pretty sure she’ll never read. But his pen is almost out of ink and he’s switching back to a motorcycle in half an hour and he needs all the space he can get. And if, somehow, she does make it home, he wants her to be able to read them.
There are scorch marks outside of the hospital. Derek doesn’t know what made them, but he does know that they are replacing the tattered map he’s been carrying with him for a month and a half. He throws the map in the trash.
He changes into a pair of jeans he thinks might be Mark’s. The ownership doesn’t bother him, but the lack of an available belt does. He rummages through drawers and eventually finds one that doesn’t belong to Addison and uses it to keep his pants up. With a new wardrobe packed, he loads up the Ducati he’d always lusted after parked in the neighbor’s driveway.
4/7/05. New York City.
You’re not here. I’m honestly not surprised - nobody’s here - but I am a little disappointed. I’m tired of driving. Part of me was hoping you’d be here and I could sit down and rest for a bit. Oh well.
I’m going back to a motorcycle as the vehicle of choice. I passed a few labor camps on the way here and a bike’s easier to hide. I hope you’re not in one, Addison. I hope you’re with a merry band of survivalists living off the land in Colorado. Or hanging out on a beach in Florida, drinking piña coladas and building sand castles.
If you somehow manage to read this, if you made the insane decision to come back to this empty city, know that I’ve followed the scorch marks from the hospital. If you aren’t where they end, if I can’t find you there, I’ll stop. I’ll wait for you.
I love you.
Derek.
(Addison, The Kid and Jacob. Eighteen miles northeast of Tuba City, Arizona)
[1:15am, local time; April 9, 2005]
Addison still thinks this is a bad idea.
But Jacob and the kid are going and damn if she’s going to stick around here while they’re gone - even if she survives the interrogation a Darth Vader would put her through, she’d be bored out of her mind without someone to talk to; nobody would associate with her if she stayed, not with the reputation she’d carry - so she’s lying awake in the pitch black night, waiting for the guard to change.
She thinks it’s an insane stroke of luck that nobody bothered to install flood lights. Then again, the only thing waiting for them on the other side of the fence is an empty road and a long walk to nowhere, so maybe the logic makes sense.
“Now,” Jacob whispers.
Addison jumps to her feet and blinks against the vertigo. They may be fed regularly, but she knows she’s going to pitch over from malnourishment if she doesn’t get a vegetable into her stomach soon.
The stars give enough light to make out Jacob in front of her and the kid next to her, but not enough to dodge sharp rocks and glass. She keeps running, her lungs protesting the sudden aerobic exercise and her legs arguing against the speed. Wherever they end up, she hopes there’s a pair of shoes.
They make it to the fence and Addison spares a glance behind her. She’s expecting Vaders and maybe a Hellboy or two (though, as she waits for the kid to squeeze underneath the fence, she supposes she would’ve felt it if a Hellboy was following them).
Instead, she sees darkness.
“Go,” Jacob shoves her toward the fence.
She stumbles and inhales a cloud of dirt sent up by the kid’s feet as he kicks his way to the other side. She covers her mouth and holds back the cough. Her eyes water as she slides underneath the fence and she feels the kid hook his hands underneath her arms and pull her the rest of the way.
And then she feels the earth move.
Jacob’s halfway underneath the fence when she sees the lights coming in their direction. “Run,” he shouts, no longer concerned with being quiet. His shirt is caught on an uneven link. “Addison, go,” he yells when she doesn’t turn to follow he kid down the road. “Find Derek.”
She’s surprised to feel tears spring at her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispers. With one last look at him, she turns and runs.
(Derek. I-44 between Rolla and Lebanon, Missouri)
[4:27pm, local time; April 10, 2005]
He stops at a Dillon’s to restock. Everything in the produce section has turned to unrecognizable mush and the smell is unbearable as he makes his way past the dairy case.
He leaves with a box of Pop-Tarts, a bag of chocolate chips, and two giant bottles of One-A-Day multivitamins. It’s not a replacement for the real thing, but he figures that the multivitamin is enough to keep him upright until he can find a vegetable farm.
The water purifying tablets he picked up that first day in the REI are still going strong, but he picks up a 24-pack of bottled water anyway and lashes it to the back of the bike. The tablets make everything taste weird.
He gets back on the road, figuring he can get another hour or so before he needs to stop for the night.
(Addison. Three miles west of New Mexico)
[2:12pm, local time; April 13, 2005]
She finally finds a riverbed with water still in it. Dropping her backpack on the bank, she opens the zipper and digs out the shampoo, conditioner, soap and razor. She strips out of her clothing and folds it neatly on top of her boots next to her backpack and carefully makes her way down to the river.
It feels glorious.
She noticed within seconds that the kid had gone the other way. She’d thought about turning around and following him, but the guards were already at the fence and she couldn’t risk it. So she’d swallowed and whispered good luck in his direction and kept running.
Addison actually moans when she sudses the shampoo through her short hair. It takes three times before she’s convinced all the dirt and sweat and grime is gone.
She’d stumbled into a tiny town with, impossibly, an outdoor adventure supply store. She’d slept in one of the tents set up on the floor and the next morning taken everything she thought she’d need. Sunscreen, sunglasses and hiking boots were the first things she’d grabbed.
She found the bike the next afternoon. It was leaning against a house, as if its owner had dropped it in a hurry to get inside, almost begging for her to take it. She did. It took a few miles to figure out the right balance with the backpack, but it’s been her favorite thing ever since.
Clean, Addison climbs out of the river feeling like an entirely different version of herself. She wraps one of the towels around her body and dries off before pulling on underwear and a sports bra. She spreads sunscreen over her skin and then steps into a pair of clean shorts and tugs a clean tank top over her head. She even splurges for clean socks.
Deciding that she’ll have a massive case of helmet hair if she gets back on the bike right now and she did not bathe in a river just to end up with helmet hair, she spreads out on the grass to let her hair dry a bit. Plus, she’s been riding upwards of fifteen hours a day for three days. Her butt needs a break.
She consults the map she picked up in the store. It’s localized, not showing anything east of central Texas, but it’s good enough and will get her to a place with another map.
It’ll take a while, but she’ll get home.
She only hopes Derek has the same idea.
(Derek. I-40, thirty-one miles east of Amarillo, Texas)
[8:23pm, local time; April 15, 2005]
The bike breaks down. He kicks it and then hops around on the concrete, cursing.
He corrects himself. Back in Arizona, where he thought about going east on US-60, he was not as close to the middle of nowhere as he’s ever been. Now he’s as close to the middle of nowhere as he’s ever been and the only way to get out is by walking.
He curses again, loudly, and spits on the bike. He sets up camp for the night and decides to figure out what to do in the morning.
He promised her that he would find her. He isn’t letting a crappy motorcycle get in the way.
(Addison. Amarillo, Texas)
[4:59pm, local time; April 17, 2005]
Her legs are killing her. Even before, when she was going to the gym every day and working out and running and doing all those weight exercises her personal trainer was having her do, she wasn’t built to ride a bike for this long. She ditches the bike and decides to walk, hoping she’ll find a car with the keys still in it somewhere down the road. Or a house she can break into, with a car she can steal in the garage.
Movement on the sidewalk several blocks ahead of her catches her attention and she looks up sharply. She squints and makes out a person, shimmering in the heat radiating off the concrete even in April.
On guard, Addison ducks behind a building and digs out the binoculars from her backpack. She peers through them around the corner, fingers crossed behind her back that it’s a trick of the light or a lamp post or even a stray dog.
It’s human.
She plays with the zoom. “Holy shit,” she breathes out and suddenly has to place a hand on the rough brick to steady herself. She puts the binoculars back and shoulders her pack again and walks forward.
(Addison and Derek. Amarillo, Texas)
[5:03pm, local time; April 17, 2005]
He wraps his arms tightly around Addison’s back. She’d dropped her backpack on the sidewalk and broken into a run when he’d shouted her name. He thinks she might be crying, and he thinks he might be crying too, but they’re both whispering ohmygodohmygod over and over and refusing to let go.
He almost didn’t recognize her, with her short hair and the weight she’s lost, and he’s certain he looks a fright, with a scraggly beard and hair desperately in need of the same treatment she gave hers. But he doesn’t care, because she’s alive and he’s alive and they’re together.
She breathes him in and underneath the dirt and grime and sweat, she smells Derek. “I love you,” she whispers once she’s regained control over her voice.
Derek smiles and kisses her cheek. “I love you, too.”
She pulls back and studies him, keeping her hands on his upper arms. “You need a bath.”
He looks at her. “You need dinner.”
She laughs, really laughs, for the first time in two months. She lets go of his arms and clasps her hand in his. He picks up the pack he made out of the bike’s saddlebags and some duct tape and they walk back to collect her backpack.
“Where are we gonna go?” She lets go of his hand just long enough to hoist the pack onto her shoulders.
He shrugs and squeezes her hand. “Anywhere.”
.fin.