Primeval fic: The Price - Halloween fic
Title: The Price
Author: knitekat
Word Count: 2097
Characters: Unnamed
Rating: 18
Disclaimer: Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures. Certainly not me. Writing for fun and will replace.
A/N: Based on Fredbassett’s prompt: Skulls in the moonlight
A/N 2: Dark and angsty and… dark. Implied blood and gore and death. Apocalyptic/Post-Apocalyptic darkness.
A/N 3: Thank`s go to Fifi for the beta.
I had no idea how long I had stared out of the window before the encroaching gloom brought me back to awareness. I started when I realised the moon was rising, I had not realised so much time had passed while I had been wool-gathering. I quickly turned and hurried to the desk, the chair dragged out with a shrill squeak, as I sat before my open notebook. I needed to get my thoughts, my memories, down before… No, I had no wish to think of that, not now. Not yet. I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts before my pen began to scratch words across the page, writing quickly yet legibly before I ran out of time.
***
I remember how it had all started as if it was only yesterday rather than… had it really only been a decade? That day seemed so distant and yet so clear in my mind. The day when everything changed. A day which had started so normally and yet… but more of that later. I should not jump ahead. I needed to get things in order while I still could.
Back to that day. It had been a warm, sunny late July day when an anomaly had opened in a deserted warehouse. Even after Convergence, that meant no witnesses and, more importantly, no casualties. By all reports, the other side had been equally pleasant - temperate, sunny, warm. A verdant grassland with forested hills in the distance. The only indication of habitation had been an abandoned village slipping into ruin, laying at the bottom of the valley beside a babbling brook. A quick investigation had yielded nothing concrete about the time period or how long it had been deserted for. It had appeared to be nothing special, just sometime in the past few thousand years, and so the field team had returned to the present and their reports had been filed and quickly forgotten.
Yes, the event which heralded the end of the world we had once known had started so simply, so quietly that no one realised until it was far too late to stop it.
Five days passed before the first member of the field team fell ill.
Followed by another and then another.
The field team was immediately ordered into quarantine but it was far too late to stop the disease from spreading like wildfire through the ARC staff, our families and anyone we had been in contact with. If only it had been winter, rather than summer, those five days might not have mattered so much and we might have had a chance to stop it spreading throughout the world. Instead, potentially infected individuals had flown off on their holidays. The world held its breath as we waited to see if this would be the next pandemic. We didn’t have long to wait as the swiftly named ‘New Plague’ swept across the globe.
The number who fell ill swiftly snowballed until the sheer quantity overwhelmed the health services. The true death rate will never be known, as whoever had kept count stopped when it reached over eight million - whether they had fallen victim or just stopped. Those who survived were weak for weeks, if not months. A vaccine was fast-tracked, rapidly tested and then given freely and the entire… well, surviving population was immunised. We breathed in relief and then the next wave struck as the disease mutated. The vaccine provided some protection but more died before the vaccine was tweaked. It became a race between the disease and the vaccine, even if each subsequent wave became weaker as our immune systems were already primed.
I truly believe we would have recovered, our crumbling infrastructures and faltering economies would have strengthened, and we would have mourned the dead and continued, even if not quite as before.
But then an anomaly opened.
And another and another… so bloody many, all across the world.
It was Convergence all over again. Except it wasn’t dinosaurs and other long extinct creatures prowling through. It was the Future Predators. Hordes of them, appearing everywhere. Chaos followed in their wake as they hunted and slew and hunted again. No one was safe from them, indeed they had slain the UK government when an anomaly had opened in their command bunker.
No one knows how many perished, whether from the Plague, the Future Predators or the panic and riots that followed in their wake. All I know is that it was too many for humanity to recover, to return to the world that once was. Society fractured as the surviving remnants of humanity, scattered here and there across the world, barricaded themselves in anywhere that seemed secure, never relaxing for fear of an anomaly opening within their shelter. Indeed, many fled here, to the ARC and we could only listen as the ADD screamed again and again, knowing the anomalies were disgorging more Predators and that we could do nothing. Nothing but wait and pray an anomaly didn’t open within the ARC.
And then came the day the ADD fell quiet.
Another silent day passed.
Then another.
A week.
A month.
And we dared to hope. Oh, the Predators still prowled outside, hunting anyone who stepped outside for supplies, and the numbers within the shelters fell even further, but we felt hope.
A hope which grew when another government facility contacted the ARC. One of their scavenging teams had encountered a pack of Future Predators and then made a wrong turn down a blind alley. No one should have survived but the Predators stopped. A single figure, dirty and ragged, darted from the crates where they had been sleeping rough, fist raised at those who had disturbed his slumber and the Predators turned and fled.
Predators never just stopped.
They never just left.
They never fled.
It was too far and too dangerous for the ARC to be involved, but the other facility sent people out to search for that individual and eventually, after numerous losses, captured them, howling and screaming. Then, as I understand, the experiments began. Experiments which showed a Predator would not approach, let alone attack him… or anyone within a certain radius.
A mad rush occurred, with everyone searching for anyone else the Predators would not approach. Those few surviving researchers who had sequenced the New Plague and developed the vaccines were now called upon to sequence the genome of the few. Any sequences in common were checked and tripled checked against the majority of the population. Anything unique was seized upon and the population was scoured for those who possessed the same sequences.
They were vanishingly rare.
Hope bloomed only to be quashed when one individual with the correct sequence was tested against a Predator. It leapt at him, only the cage walls keeping it at bay.
The researchers tested more samples and despair turned once more to hope. He carried only artificial antibodies to the New Plague, while the original man had natural immunity, he had survived the first wave of infection. Hope grew that maybe the sequence was somehow activated by infection. Further experiments were conducted, the man willingly infected with the disease… but the Predator still tried to attack him. The vaccine prevented the sequence being activated… and all of humanity was now vaccinated.
Only those few who carried the sequence and who had survived first wave infection before being vaccinated could keep the Predators at bay. And the disease had hit them the hardest, with every known individual having spent weeks in intensive care, followed by months in recovery.
The majority rushed to wherever one of the quickly named ‘Protectors’ were, even when they were only rumoured to be one. Some people did not believe the authorities or did not trust them, they soon cut off communication with the ‘Protected’ shelters. I do not know if those communities still exist as anything other than bones.
I still do not know who made the better choice in the end.
Chaos and disorder reigned in the shelters with ‘Protectors’ as people fought and struggled to get close enough to be protected, for those outside the ‘Protector’s range were still at risk if the Predators breached the shelter. With some groups without ‘Protectors’ even attacking shelters which might have one, just to gain that protection.
And that, I bit back a bitter laugh, was when the second ‘miracle’ was discovered. I have no idea how it happened, I have no wish to know why it happened - indeed, I sometimes wish it had never happened. Somehow, someone discovered how to increase the range of a ‘Protector’.
Faced with that choice - to protect more people or potentially doom them - how could any of the few refuse? Blood was donated and drank by the ‘Protector’ and their range grew until, after three months, it stabilised. The amount of blood required slowly increased over time, until several volunteers had to donate each and every day just to maintain the increased range.
Populations stabilised and grew once more within the shelters, once more running the risk of death for anyone outside even that increased range.
And I curse the individual or individuals who discovered the ‘answer’ of how to extend that range even further. Although I suppose it had been the logical next step to explore, although I… no, I had no wish to know how many died in their pursuit of survival.
Now on the morning of the each and every full moon, a name would be drawn at random from the shelter’s eligible adult population. It gave that individual enough time to put their affairs in order but not enough to escape - not that there was anywhere to run - and then, under the light of the full moon, they were completely drained by the ‘Protector’.
***
I started at a firm knock on the door, heralding that my time was up, and I put my pen down. The words I had written this night would have to be enough. I rose and walked to the window, my gaze drawn to the full moon above and I found myself praying to a god I did not, that I could not believe in that… but I knew there was no other choice. Not while the Predators still hunted outside. Not if the inhabitants of this benighted settlement were to survive.
My gaze dropped to the ground outside the window and I shivered as I stared at the fields of bones outside. Each one a polished skull, gleaming beneath the moonlight. Each one etched with the name of its former… owner and the dates of their birth and death - of their sacrifice to keep everyone else safe from the marauding hordes of Predators. Well, safe from the ones outside the walls.
Oh, humanity might have survived both the New Plague and the Future Predators, but we had swapped freedom for servitude. Protection paid for in blood and lives.
I heard the door creak open behind me and I knew my time had run out. That in the morning another polished and etched skull would join the mounting multitude outside the window.
I turned to face the cloaked and masked group standing in the doorway. One individual stepped forward, a half-bow towards me before they spoke, “Are you ready?”
I wanted to cry out ‘No!’, to beg them to leave me, but I knew they would not just as much as I could not ask.
Neither of us could.
Too many lives depended on this sacrifice.
I swallowed, my mouth too dry to speak, and nodded. I fell into step behind the leader as the others closed ranks behind me. We walked down a short corridor and then paused before the heavily barred door. I knew what lay concealed behind them and I wanted to turn and run.
The doors opened and I stepped through, flinching as they thudded closed behind me and I faced him. The moonlight shone through the windows and I stepped forward once more, almost against my will as he turned to face me.
I found myself praying he was not someone I knew - as if him being a stranger made what was about to happen any better - for whoever he was, I would have to accept his sacrifice.
I had to protect what was left of humanity, even if I doubted I was still human myself as my fangs dropped and I stepped ever closer, a predator on the hunt.
And only morning would show if I was still myself, even if I was tainted by blood and sacrifice.
Author: knitekat
Word Count: 2097
Characters: Unnamed
Rating: 18
Disclaimer: Primeval belongs to Impossible Pictures. Certainly not me. Writing for fun and will replace.
A/N: Based on Fredbassett’s prompt: Skulls in the moonlight
A/N 2: Dark and angsty and… dark. Implied blood and gore and death. Apocalyptic/Post-Apocalyptic darkness.
A/N 3: Thank`s go to Fifi for the beta.
I had no idea how long I had stared out of the window before the encroaching gloom brought me back to awareness. I started when I realised the moon was rising, I had not realised so much time had passed while I had been wool-gathering. I quickly turned and hurried to the desk, the chair dragged out with a shrill squeak, as I sat before my open notebook. I needed to get my thoughts, my memories, down before… No, I had no wish to think of that, not now. Not yet. I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts before my pen began to scratch words across the page, writing quickly yet legibly before I ran out of time.
***
I remember how it had all started as if it was only yesterday rather than… had it really only been a decade? That day seemed so distant and yet so clear in my mind. The day when everything changed. A day which had started so normally and yet… but more of that later. I should not jump ahead. I needed to get things in order while I still could.
Back to that day. It had been a warm, sunny late July day when an anomaly had opened in a deserted warehouse. Even after Convergence, that meant no witnesses and, more importantly, no casualties. By all reports, the other side had been equally pleasant - temperate, sunny, warm. A verdant grassland with forested hills in the distance. The only indication of habitation had been an abandoned village slipping into ruin, laying at the bottom of the valley beside a babbling brook. A quick investigation had yielded nothing concrete about the time period or how long it had been deserted for. It had appeared to be nothing special, just sometime in the past few thousand years, and so the field team had returned to the present and their reports had been filed and quickly forgotten.
Yes, the event which heralded the end of the world we had once known had started so simply, so quietly that no one realised until it was far too late to stop it.
Five days passed before the first member of the field team fell ill.
Followed by another and then another.
The field team was immediately ordered into quarantine but it was far too late to stop the disease from spreading like wildfire through the ARC staff, our families and anyone we had been in contact with. If only it had been winter, rather than summer, those five days might not have mattered so much and we might have had a chance to stop it spreading throughout the world. Instead, potentially infected individuals had flown off on their holidays. The world held its breath as we waited to see if this would be the next pandemic. We didn’t have long to wait as the swiftly named ‘New Plague’ swept across the globe.
The number who fell ill swiftly snowballed until the sheer quantity overwhelmed the health services. The true death rate will never be known, as whoever had kept count stopped when it reached over eight million - whether they had fallen victim or just stopped. Those who survived were weak for weeks, if not months. A vaccine was fast-tracked, rapidly tested and then given freely and the entire… well, surviving population was immunised. We breathed in relief and then the next wave struck as the disease mutated. The vaccine provided some protection but more died before the vaccine was tweaked. It became a race between the disease and the vaccine, even if each subsequent wave became weaker as our immune systems were already primed.
I truly believe we would have recovered, our crumbling infrastructures and faltering economies would have strengthened, and we would have mourned the dead and continued, even if not quite as before.
But then an anomaly opened.
And another and another… so bloody many, all across the world.
It was Convergence all over again. Except it wasn’t dinosaurs and other long extinct creatures prowling through. It was the Future Predators. Hordes of them, appearing everywhere. Chaos followed in their wake as they hunted and slew and hunted again. No one was safe from them, indeed they had slain the UK government when an anomaly had opened in their command bunker.
No one knows how many perished, whether from the Plague, the Future Predators or the panic and riots that followed in their wake. All I know is that it was too many for humanity to recover, to return to the world that once was. Society fractured as the surviving remnants of humanity, scattered here and there across the world, barricaded themselves in anywhere that seemed secure, never relaxing for fear of an anomaly opening within their shelter. Indeed, many fled here, to the ARC and we could only listen as the ADD screamed again and again, knowing the anomalies were disgorging more Predators and that we could do nothing. Nothing but wait and pray an anomaly didn’t open within the ARC.
And then came the day the ADD fell quiet.
Another silent day passed.
Then another.
A week.
A month.
And we dared to hope. Oh, the Predators still prowled outside, hunting anyone who stepped outside for supplies, and the numbers within the shelters fell even further, but we felt hope.
A hope which grew when another government facility contacted the ARC. One of their scavenging teams had encountered a pack of Future Predators and then made a wrong turn down a blind alley. No one should have survived but the Predators stopped. A single figure, dirty and ragged, darted from the crates where they had been sleeping rough, fist raised at those who had disturbed his slumber and the Predators turned and fled.
Predators never just stopped.
They never just left.
They never fled.
It was too far and too dangerous for the ARC to be involved, but the other facility sent people out to search for that individual and eventually, after numerous losses, captured them, howling and screaming. Then, as I understand, the experiments began. Experiments which showed a Predator would not approach, let alone attack him… or anyone within a certain radius.
A mad rush occurred, with everyone searching for anyone else the Predators would not approach. Those few surviving researchers who had sequenced the New Plague and developed the vaccines were now called upon to sequence the genome of the few. Any sequences in common were checked and tripled checked against the majority of the population. Anything unique was seized upon and the population was scoured for those who possessed the same sequences.
They were vanishingly rare.
Hope bloomed only to be quashed when one individual with the correct sequence was tested against a Predator. It leapt at him, only the cage walls keeping it at bay.
The researchers tested more samples and despair turned once more to hope. He carried only artificial antibodies to the New Plague, while the original man had natural immunity, he had survived the first wave of infection. Hope grew that maybe the sequence was somehow activated by infection. Further experiments were conducted, the man willingly infected with the disease… but the Predator still tried to attack him. The vaccine prevented the sequence being activated… and all of humanity was now vaccinated.
Only those few who carried the sequence and who had survived first wave infection before being vaccinated could keep the Predators at bay. And the disease had hit them the hardest, with every known individual having spent weeks in intensive care, followed by months in recovery.
The majority rushed to wherever one of the quickly named ‘Protectors’ were, even when they were only rumoured to be one. Some people did not believe the authorities or did not trust them, they soon cut off communication with the ‘Protected’ shelters. I do not know if those communities still exist as anything other than bones.
I still do not know who made the better choice in the end.
Chaos and disorder reigned in the shelters with ‘Protectors’ as people fought and struggled to get close enough to be protected, for those outside the ‘Protector’s range were still at risk if the Predators breached the shelter. With some groups without ‘Protectors’ even attacking shelters which might have one, just to gain that protection.
And that, I bit back a bitter laugh, was when the second ‘miracle’ was discovered. I have no idea how it happened, I have no wish to know why it happened - indeed, I sometimes wish it had never happened. Somehow, someone discovered how to increase the range of a ‘Protector’.
Faced with that choice - to protect more people or potentially doom them - how could any of the few refuse? Blood was donated and drank by the ‘Protector’ and their range grew until, after three months, it stabilised. The amount of blood required slowly increased over time, until several volunteers had to donate each and every day just to maintain the increased range.
Populations stabilised and grew once more within the shelters, once more running the risk of death for anyone outside even that increased range.
And I curse the individual or individuals who discovered the ‘answer’ of how to extend that range even further. Although I suppose it had been the logical next step to explore, although I… no, I had no wish to know how many died in their pursuit of survival.
Now on the morning of the each and every full moon, a name would be drawn at random from the shelter’s eligible adult population. It gave that individual enough time to put their affairs in order but not enough to escape - not that there was anywhere to run - and then, under the light of the full moon, they were completely drained by the ‘Protector’.
***
I started at a firm knock on the door, heralding that my time was up, and I put my pen down. The words I had written this night would have to be enough. I rose and walked to the window, my gaze drawn to the full moon above and I found myself praying to a god I did not, that I could not believe in that… but I knew there was no other choice. Not while the Predators still hunted outside. Not if the inhabitants of this benighted settlement were to survive.
My gaze dropped to the ground outside the window and I shivered as I stared at the fields of bones outside. Each one a polished skull, gleaming beneath the moonlight. Each one etched with the name of its former… owner and the dates of their birth and death - of their sacrifice to keep everyone else safe from the marauding hordes of Predators. Well, safe from the ones outside the walls.
Oh, humanity might have survived both the New Plague and the Future Predators, but we had swapped freedom for servitude. Protection paid for in blood and lives.
I heard the door creak open behind me and I knew my time had run out. That in the morning another polished and etched skull would join the mounting multitude outside the window.
I turned to face the cloaked and masked group standing in the doorway. One individual stepped forward, a half-bow towards me before they spoke, “Are you ready?”
I wanted to cry out ‘No!’, to beg them to leave me, but I knew they would not just as much as I could not ask.
Neither of us could.
Too many lives depended on this sacrifice.
I swallowed, my mouth too dry to speak, and nodded. I fell into step behind the leader as the others closed ranks behind me. We walked down a short corridor and then paused before the heavily barred door. I knew what lay concealed behind them and I wanted to turn and run.
The doors opened and I stepped through, flinching as they thudded closed behind me and I faced him. The moonlight shone through the windows and I stepped forward once more, almost against my will as he turned to face me.
I found myself praying he was not someone I knew - as if him being a stranger made what was about to happen any better - for whoever he was, I would have to accept his sacrifice.
I had to protect what was left of humanity, even if I doubted I was still human myself as my fangs dropped and I stepped ever closer, a predator on the hunt.
And only morning would show if I was still myself, even if I was tainted by blood and sacrifice.