(no subject)
It had begun during rush hour, in the very centre of Gotham. Blinding circles of white, opening above the heads of the people, sending waves of terror and fear through the commuters and the businessmen.
Blinding openings, the sky itself tearing apart --
-- but nothing had come through.
Nothing, save a wave of cold air and a damp, cold, spreading sense of fear.
The first case had been only moments later. A woman in the street had screamed, seized up, jerked convulsively -- and fallen.
It had been reported on every station. Famous actress fallen into unbreakable coma -- actress in vegetative state -- family mourns --
The second and third cases, the same. The tenth, just a name. The twentieth, just a number.
The hundredth, just a statistic.
The eight hundredth -- the fifteen hundredth -- the four thousandth --
The rate of infection grew exponentially, and rapidly. The streets of Gotham fell quiet. People were afraid to leave their homes. There were those who tried to run.
The sickness struck them in their cars as they left.
And everywhere, the mist grew thicker and thicker, until even in the height of noon the streets were shrouded in damp white fog.
"It's a town of the living dead," Ariella had said, clinging to Jim's shoulder. "They're all alive still, Jim, that's what makes it so bad..."
He'd held her and patted her shoulder, mourned with her, and then -- on the ninth day, when he went in to wake her and found her hanging from her ceiling, lost to despair -- he buried her.
And moved on.
The city still needed him; the city still needed everyone it could get.
On the twelfth day he made a feeble attempt at rounding up a group to escape. They met pale-faced and shaking, and two more seized and jerked and fell into comas while they stood talking; that was the end of that.
Everything stopped. The city was silent, except sometimes for a scream, or the sound of sobbing.
Holed up in the clocktower, Jim had entirely given up hope.