Umbrella Academy fic: The End of Something (1/2)
Title: The End of Something
Disclaimer: I own none of this.
A/N: This fic is pretty bleak, but it’s about a 13 year old who ends up stranded in the apocalypse, so there’s not really any way around it. No beta. Fills my desecration square for hc_bingo.
Warning: canonical death and apocalypse, desecration of a church/religious items, religious themes
Summary: Five stands at the end of humanity. And he has to find a way -- some way, against the odds he’s badly miscalculated -- to start again.
PART ONE
PART TWO
-o-
Five stands at the end of everything.
He stands amid the ruined buildings and the burning rubble. The cars are shells, parked and crashed, it’s impossible to tell. Telephone poles are felled; lights blown out. It smells like smoke and gas, and the sky is hazy with the ash.
Squinting, he looks up to where the sun should be. There’s an arid, oppressive heat, and the smell that clogs his nostril is thick and putrid. The desolation is everywhere; it stretches for miles. There are no plants, no animals, no people.
Five stands at the end of humanity.
And he has to find a way -- some way, against the odds he’s badly miscalculated -- to start again.
-o-
At first, this is a pragmatic sort of thing. If he’s stuck here -- and he does seem to be stuck here -- he needs to take stock, figure out his resources, chart out his assets and find a way to tide himself over until he can calculate a trajectory back home.
This is a pitstop, he tells himself. A means to an end. He’ll get out of here. He’ll make it back. It might take a day, a few days, a week. A month. He might be here a month.
That’s the first lie that Five tells himself at the end of the world.
It won’t be the last.
-o-
He figures a few things out, as he scavenges.
First, this was a sudden event. He finds corpses, charred where they are. They’re not in any kind of pattern; they’re not fleeing or hiding. Cars are abandoned on the street, burnt out at fallen traffic lights. Storefronts are ruined, but the items inside aren’t looted like you would expect with panic at knowledge of an impending apocalypse.
That’s what he’s calling it, then. It’s an apocalypse.
He reconsiders.
It’s the apocalypse.
Surely there can’t be more than one.
-o-
The second conclusion Five determines is that this isn’t as far in the future as maybe he wants to believe. The probability of mankind ruining the planet is high enough so that, technically, mass destruction at some point is not actually a surprise mathematically speaking. Add in other factors like asteroids and it’s probably more likely than not. The technology is familiar enough to him, though, and he wonders how long cars based on fossil fuels and standard electricity will be around. Though, if you’re talking about the end of humanity, then it’s safe to assume that maybe they didn’t evolve as much as you might expect.
Not that Five’s thought about that.
He’s thought about a lot of things, but not mass extinction. He’s never thought about humanity on a macro scale like this. The widespread implications of actions is something he has probably been woefully naive above.
But then, he’s been pretty naive about a lot of things.
He collects a few things along his way, a red wagon, a mannequin. Then, he stops at a newspaper stand and takes out the paper in curiosity.
The date makes him want to throw up right then and there.
2019.
The world ends in 2019.
Five looks around, trying to make sense of it. In 2019, he’s supposed to be, what? 31?
That means his siblings are 31.
He turns, looking over the vast landscape again, its ruined lines.
That means his siblings are here.
Shit.
His siblings are here.
-o-
It probably doesn’t make sense, really. When the whole of humanity has perished, what’s the point of worrying about six specific people. Seven, if you count his dad, and he is, with some reluctance and obligation. He knows he shouldn’t care about them more than everyone else whose lives have been cut short and ruined, but he does.
He does.
It’s the second time that day he’s run back to the mansion. This time, he has the wagon in tow, and he has to slow down at the corners to prevent tipping his mannequin out into the rubble. He’s not sure why it matters. He should sit down, do the math. Map the probabilities.
He turns another corner, down the street toward the mansion.
There’s no way that the math will tell him why it matters.
Some things are emotional. Some truths are things you clutch down inside your gut, even when your head tells you it’s pointless and stupid. Usually, he has more self control than this, but he ran away from home and wound up in the apocalypse today. There’s nothing usual about any of this.
This time, he circumvents the front steps and the ragged frame, which is what is left of the front door. The wall along the other side has collapsed, and there’s a section that’s been blown away entirely. He has to abandon the wagon as he steps over the rubble, finding traces of his father’s taxidermy collection and small portions of the archaic living room furniture. He stumbles forward and then he stops.
All his running, and he stops, cold and dead in his tracks.
Because he’s found his siblings.
Most of them, anyway. Luther, Diego, Allison and Klaus. He’s found them, lost at the end of humanity.
The problem is that, just like everyone else around here, Five excluded, they just happen to be dead.
-o-
It is hard to be sure at first. In the rubble of the house, of course, Five naturally has suspicions, but this isn’t the sort of thing he can confirm. If he has jumped into the future -- and at this point he can identify no other possible explanation -- then it is only logical that his siblings would have aged to the point of being moderately hard for him to recognize. Puberty, he imagines, must be a son of a bitch.
Also, there’s just something about the bodies. These bodies. Not just that they’re in the rubble of the mansion. But that they’re intact.
It’s a morbid sort of thing to think about, but it’s not something he can ignored. He’s seen bodies -- lots of bodies -- and all of them, thus far, have been charred beyond recognition. Sure, he can make out general sizes and shapes -- some even appear female or male. But these bodies are whole and, in theory, recognizable.
The first body is large, white and male. He’s larger than you’d expect, even given Luther’s powers. Luther’s always been big, but at 13, he’d still be skinny. Whoever this guy is, he’s bulked out in unimaginable ways. The fact that it is unnatural is what gives Five pause. Normal people don’t end up like this. People with super powers? Well, that’s harder to calculate based on his lack of current information.
Also, he’s holding an eye.
At first, he thinks it’s an actual eyeball, but the instant he pries it from the cold, stiff fingers, he realizes that it’s not. It’s a glass eyeball; synthetic. The blood is tacky, but he can still wipe it away, which suggests that this is a decently recent event. Of course, the fact that these bodies haven’t started to visibly decay is also a good indication.
Perplexed, he stands, and that’s when he sees the next two bodies.
Male, hispanic. Female, African American.
Coincidence.
Five walks toward them a numb legs. He checks for a pulse, shakes the bodies for some kind of response. He can’t make the numbers computer; he can’t make his brain work at all. The odds of this being a coincidence are not in his favor.
Standing again, he turns and then he finds one last body. Slight build, male, white. Nothing telling except the tattoo still visible on his upturned wrist.
It’s an umbrella.
Five recognizes it.
Doesn’t he?
Doesn’t he recognize it?
Dully, he looks down at his own wrist. He pulls up the sleeve of his dirtied jacket and sees the tattoo there. Looking up, he traces his eyes from one to the next as the facts compiled to the irrefutable truth.
These are his siblings.
Fully grown, come into their own.
And dead.
These are his siblings’ bodies.
For Five, the world ends all over again.
-o-
Five sits for several hours, not sure what to do. Logically, he knows this is probably shock. His body has been overloaded by the physical trauma of what has happened to him. The emotional weight of his siblings’ deaths is simply more than he can deal with in his current condition. There is a strand, detached part of his brain that recognizes that humans have limits to what they can process. It’s not merely likely that Five has met his limit. It is, instead, a near guarantee that he has surpassed his capability some time ago. He has, therefore, literally shut down, and his vestige of marginal self awareness allows him to realize this in the slightest capacity.
Despite his inability to function, he is besieged by the cold rationality of his predicament. In some clinical regards, the timing is remarkable. That Five should break now, after all he’s been through. This and nothing else is his breaking point.
He reflects, idly, on just how he has endured. His hasty decision to leave home had ended in disaster, landing him at the end of the world. He alone is the last witness to the downfall of civilization. He stands amid the death and destruction, a child as the last remnant of a society he had never fully embraced.
And it has not been easy, not even in the practical matters. He is mired in survival, eking out his living among the ashes. He has poked through burned corpses. He had ransacked cars from the dead. He has clawed his way through every day, eating anything he can find to fill his hungry stomach.
To say it’s a lot would not be an exaggeration.
If anything, it’s an understatement.
And he has prevailed. He has faced these trials with surety and determination. He has endured failure. He has looked loss in the face. He has become desolation. And now he break.
Now.
It strikes him as ironic, though he cannot surely explain why. He cannot quantify it. There are no words to capture it.
All the death, all the destruction. The utter hopelessness of his plight. The bitter inevitability of this encompassing failure. This devastation can be approached pragmatically, segmented by the logical workings of his brain.
But this, these bodies, this loss, is his family.
That’s what’s so different now.
That’s what’s so different.
This is his family.
He bows his head, the grief choking him. He catches on a sob, and feels the painful throbbing of his heart, the unwelcome reminder that he alone has survived, that he’s not dead yet.
It’s a horrible sort of thing. Because Five has arrived at the end of the world, and he’s known it all along. He’s assessed it and reasoned it and concluded it with regret, fear and uncertainty.
But he’s never felt it until now.
And that is the loss that breaks him irreparably. It is the loss from which he will never recover, the one that defines him.
Not the boy who got lost at the end of everything.
Rather, the boy who lost his family and was subjected to a lifetime of facing that failure by himself.
For that, there is nothing to do.
Five stares at his hands, his idle, empty, powerless hands, and lets the hours pass.
-o-
It’s unclear just how much time has past, but it is a pointless distinction. When Five remembers to move again, he is stiff and hungry. On his feet, he feels woozy, and though his knees threaten to give out, there seems to be no recourse. There is no comfort for weakness. There is nothing to be done for him.
All he can do, therefore, is work for himself. He eats whatever he has in hand, barely tasting the food as he forces it down his throat. He drinks tepid water, and flexes his stiff fingers. He feels tired but has no inclination for sleep. Instead. He stands over the bodies and makes the only decision still available to him.
He must bury the bodies. It is the proper thing to do, though he’s not sure why a sense of decorum matters. He is too logical to think it matters to his siblings, but Five recognizes the need for closure, however illogical it may seem. He feels like he owes them this. He left them, after all. He walked out and they faced this inevitability without him.
He has to bury them. Simply put, there is no one else to do the task, and Five will never be able to face this desolate world with them exposed.
In this regard, it is an easy decision in theory. In application, Five is aware of the challenge. It is, needless to say, daunting.
To start, he must attend to the bodies. Time has passed, though he’s not sure how much. The bodies have not visibly decayed, but there is evidence of stiffening. The state of the bodies will pose some difficulties, and he hates to think of causing damage in an effort to commemorate them.
He makes a few distinctions to see if such movement is advisable, which is unpleasant enough. He’s well read, but his study has not focused on medical realities after death, therefore he feels ill equipped to judge the passage of time or how long he has until the bodies start to decompose beyond the point of handling with respect.
That said, it’s a decision that’s made a little bit on a whim. Not exactly, of course -- he’s not devoid of logic -- but it is an emotionally charged choice. An impulse that comes from the heart, not the head. It seems, somehow, like the right thing to do. That’s a strange concept but this is a strange place. Maybe that’s why it matters. He’s possibly the last human on earth. So he should probably act that way.
Therefore, he decides to proceed without delay. The bodies can be moved without damage, but he figures his window of opportunity is scant. However, this implies he has a burial site in mind and the tools to accomplish the task.
It’s tedious work to say the least. Five scrounges up a shovel, and he digs through the debris in a nearby park to find ground he can till. This means he has to transport the bodies, dragging them one by one until their stiff bodies are lined up, pale faces toward the sunless sky.
Then, he digs.
He scoops the dirt out, one shovel full at a time. It takes hours the dig the first grave, and longer still to dig the second. He has to take a break to dig the third, and he tries to dig all night for the firth but his exhaustion gets the better of him, and he sleeps restlessly next to the open graves instead.
In the morning, he finishes the task. He’s sore, muscles aching from the exertion, and his hands are raw and bloody from blisters. He’s ready to collapse when he’s done, and it’s almost the last of his strength as he drags himself out of the grave.
In some ways, he thinks it would be easier to stay, lying at the bottom of a grave he’s dug with his own hands. It feels aptly poetic honestly, given the mess he’s made for himself.
But this isn’t his resting place. He has to deny himself eternal peace. It’s a respite he has not earned. It’s an escape he does not deserve. Five is too pragmatic to die now anyway. If he dies, then who will bury them?
He claws his way back up and wills his tired limbs into compliance.
The job, after all, isn’t done yet.
-o-
It’s inelegant.
That’s an understatement, but there is no one left to call him on it. Five is all but exhausted when he starts the actual burial, and he’s still 13 years old whereas his siblings are all fully grown adults. There’s no way it’s going to be easy.
That’s a laughable concept, however.
Easy.
Like any of this is ever possibly going to be easy.
Five tries not to think about it much, though. He tries not to think about how a week ago, he was at dinner with his siblings. Now, he’s piling their stiff, dead bodies into graves. That’s just too much.
Luther is the first one he handles, and he ends up rolling the large body into the grave. Luther has always been big, but this still seems unusual. He has a fleeting idea of doing more investigation in this matter, but he can’t bring himself to do it. To desecrate his brother’s body in that way.
Besides, he uses up most of his energy just getting him in the hole. He still has three siblings left.
Diego goes a little bit easier, though he’s still all lean muscle. It’s pretty apparent he’s spent most of his adult life working out, for all the good that it did him. Five notes the long scar on Diego’s face, but doesn’t recall him getting it when they were children. It’s another thing -- another thing of many -- that Five’s missed. The life he didn’t live in trade for this one he’s in now.
Allison is trim, but she’s not a lightweight. Her long hair gets caught on the ground as he rolls her into the grave, and she lands face first and awkward. Five cringes, but he suspects if he gets down into the grave, he’ll never get back out again, so he leaves her where she lays.
By the time he gets to Klaus, the task should be easier. Klaus is the lightest of them all, but Five is so spent by this point, that it’s still a trial. It doesn’t seem likely that Klaus has maintained his standing in the team, skinny as he is. There’s no way their father would let that stand; Klaus is in no kind of condition. Which makes Five wonder how he ended up here at the end of the world anyway.
No matter. Klaus’ body falls into the grace, spread eagle on his back. His face is turned up toward the sunless daylight.
It doesn’t matter now.
Five looks up at the sky and wishes he could cry, wishes he could remember how.
But it just doesn’t matter now at all.
-o-
The whole process carries an air of pointless repetition. All the dirt he painstakingly moved must be put back in place now, and the process is no easier in reverse. In fact, as he covers his siblings with each shovel full of dirt, he finds it hard.
Luther’s frame disappears under the weight.
Diego’s face is obscured by the black.
Allison’s broken figure is lost in the earth.
Klaus, no more than an empty vessel, is gone.
Five is sore; Five is spent; but Five is still alive.
There is no more painful truth than that.
-o-
When the graves are filled in, it is breaking dawn again. Five’s not sure if one day or two has passed, but he suspects it doesn’t matter. He’s not sure what time even means now. Not when he’s the only one left to mark it.
Time isn’t what he needs to mark anyway.
These are his siblings, in the end. For all that they’re corpses in a dying world, they deserve more than an anonymous fate. Five remembers, therefore it is his responsibility to remember.
At Luther’s grave, he sighs and tries to ready himself. “You were always strong,” he says, matter of fact. “I always envy you for that. How you made everything look so easy. All of it. If I had been able to be like that, like you, then maybe I wouldn’t be here.”
He sighs.
“Maybe you wouldn’t be here, either,” he ventures.
He has to take a moment, to breathe. Just to breathe.
“I never saw you lose a fight,” he finally finishes. “I wish you hadn’t lost this one.”
-o-
At Diego’s grave, second in line, he thinks how much his brother would hate that. It almost makes him smile.
“I know you always wanted to win, more than anything else,” he says. “You hated losing, being wrong, all of it. You hated being less.”
His words falter. The smile threatens to choke him, and he has to swallow hard.
“You’re not less now,” he says softly. “I just wish you were alive to hear it.”
-o-
He’s crying by the time he gets to Allison. Tears he can’t quite acknowledge on his cheeks. There’s nothing to be done for them.
There’s nothing to be done.
“I know some people might think you were too pretty for this kind of thing, but I never looked at you and saw beauty,” he says. “Just strength. Determination. I never wanted the same things you did, but I always respected how you set out to get your way.”
The words taste like ash on his tongue. He tries to wet his dry lips but it’s of no use. He’s trembling now, all out shaking.
“This isn’t what you wanted, though,” he says, voice threatening to break. “This isn’t what you wanted at all.”
-o-
With Klaus, the last commemoration, Five’s got nothing left. He’s openly sobbing now, and he can barely stay on his feet.
“I didn’t think I’d find you here,” he admits. “I mean, here, at the end of the world. Facing it, head on. That’s not like you, Klaus. It’s not like you at all.”
He wipes his face messily, and breaks down again.
“Shit, Klaus,” he sobs. “Why did you have to be a hero in the end?”
He asks, he cries.
Why did it have to end?
-o-
Five stays like that at their gravesides. He stays like that until his knees give out, and then he sits on his knees as the day rises and falls. He stays like that in the chill of the night. He stays like that until his tears are spent and the exhaustion plateaus.
Mostly, he stays.
At some point, he eats. At another point, he sleeps. He drinks the last of his water reserves and then stays some more. He doesn’t know how to leave.
No, that’s not it.
He can’t fathom a reason why he should leave.
There is no reason. For anything. Reason, purpose, logic -- it’s all gone now. Along with the rest of the world.
It’s so funny, then. Funny that they’re dead and Five’s alone and he’s never actually felt closer to them. He feels connected to them in their deaths in a way he never felt while they were alive. This is the importance of family, the gravity of it. Its purpose only made clear -- painfully, finitely clear -- in its unmitigated absence.
Their burial awakens something inside of him. Five is humanity’s last stand against the onslaught of the apocalypse.
He’s not sure he’s up for the task.
It appears, however, he has no choice.
-o-
When he finally thinks to move, it’s a dull realization borne out of necessity. Grief is not a productive emotion, and he does not think it is a fitting eulogy to die next to them in such a pointless and untold manner. If he’s the last of humanity, he is burdened with the unfortunate and unenviable task of living.
On his feet, he’s still shaky, but there’s a new numbness that helps. It seems overly sentimental to make a graveyard when the whole world is an open grave, but Five figures that burying his family in this manner will solidify the embers of humanity he needs to face the trials ahead.
Therefore, he sets about fashioning something to mark the graves. It’s hard to imagine him forgetting the spot, but it’s hard to imagine a lot of things. Five feels like it’s important to prepare for the unlikely at this point.
Besides, he’s come this far.
This is his family.
They will get grave markers.
There are stones and slabs of cement, of course, but those are not viable for a variety of reasons. The least of which is that they’d be difficult to enscribe. He lacks the tools to etch anything meaningful, and anything less permanent would simply not suffice. Besides, these things are heavy, and Five may have rested some, but he’s still pushing himself well beyond his limits.
Wood is not maybe as resilient as he’d like, but it seems like an apt solution, at least for now. He gathers several pieces that he thinks will be sufficient, then uses the tools that he’s managed to amass to start carving names into the wood’s surface. He debates on how to commemorate them, but finally settles on their chosen names. He can only imagine it’s what they would prefer.
Five has never had much affinity for the arts, but he’s the type to focus on precision, so he’s able to carve Luther’s name well enough into the wood. He thinks Diego’s lacks finesse and apologizes to his brother for lacking his acumen with a blade. He gives a little flourish to Allison’s, as he is sure she would appreciate, before picking up the final piece in his numb fingers to start engraving Klaus’ name into the void of existence.
He’s lost track of time again, and his vision is blurring. His stomach is too empty to growl, but it churns, and he thinks he might throw up for a moment. It’s possible that he’s getting a little dehydrated -- or maybe it’s sheer exhaustion. He blinks his eyes a few times, grits his teeth and keeps on going.
This approach has worked for him so far.
In fact, it has been the very anthem of his survival ever since he arrived in this wasteland of a world. As if sheer grit can see him through.
It’s probably no surprise that he’s wrong about that.
He has been spectacularly wrong about nearly everything else these days.
His next cut is off kilter and he badly screws up the a in Klaus’ name. He tries to bear down, forcing his hand to steady as he makes the next cut. He has the force but none of the coordination. His knife goes wide, gouging right into the hand that’s trying to hold the plank of wood steady.
At first, Five feels no pain. There numbness is white hot and encompassing. His ears ring and his vision goes white for a long, surreal second. He blinks, and then he sees the blood.
There’s a lot of blood, he thinks with an odd sort of detachment.
There’s a lot of blood.
He blinks again, and his adrenaline kicks in. With it, so do his pain receptors. He keens, dropping his tools as he reaches up to press down on the open wound. He holds it fast for a moment while it pulses, and he looks around himself at a loss. He has to stop the bleeding, he knows dimly, but he’s a little short on supplies.
No, he’s completely out of supplies. Even clean water and food.
He shudders and swallows back the pain, trying to harness the adrenaline for something vaguely productive. He can feel his blood as it thrums through him, and he grapples with dumb fingers for the jacket he’d throw aside hours ago, when the heat of the day had been too much. The sun is sinking low in the sky now, and Five can feel the chill picking up in the desolation. He needs to stop the bleeding; he needs food; he needs water; he needs shelter.
Turning back around, Five looks at the four freshly dug graves and the three planks of finished wood. Klaus’ plank is on the ground in front of him, stained with fresh blood.
He exhales shakily and tells himself that he can’t finish the job if he’s dead. His siblings are already dead; they won’t know the difference of a day. They won’t know.
It’s utilitarian, really. Survival is an asset only in the sense that death is pointless. It’s not so much a will to live as it is a refusal to die so pointlessly, due to his own vain ambition.
Wrapping his hand with the jacket, he continues keeping the pressure, pressing down until his fingers hurt. He stumbles away from the graves, past his wagon. He looks at the mannequin. “You watch them for tonight, okay?” he mumbles nonsensically. It’s possible he’s going into shock again, from blood loss this time. He hopes not.
He staggers back into the street, scanning up and down the row of decimated buildings.
He swallows and closes his eyes. He breathes.
Hope is a waning thing. It’s probably a pointless thing.
He opens his eyes.
Hope is, unfortunately, also the only thing he has left.
-o-
Five is usually quite methodical about these things, but with the blood he’s losing and the darkness falling, he is starting to panic a little. It’s building in the pit of his stomach, and he feels it tingling in his fingers and toes.
This could kill him, he thinks.
Blood loss alone could do him in. If not blood loss, then the injury could incapacitate him enough to prevent him from doing other basic tasks. If he can’t move around, then he won’t find food or water. Without food or water, he’ll get weaker. If he gets too weak, he’ll be unable to move. If he is unable to move, then he’ll die a slow, miserable and painful death.
And even if not. If he gets the bleeding under control, he still has to consider infection. These conditions aren’t sanitary. Even his jacket, which is pressed up against the wound, is laden with germs and debris.
Okay, he’s starting to panic a lot.
This is the apocalypse, and everyone is dead. He’s trapped in the future, and he should be back at home, eating dinner with his siblings. But his siblings are dead and he’s an idiot and Five feels very small and very young and very, very alone.
He’d been too flippant, too brash, too stupid. He has to be careful.
He staggers over the debris, blinking to clear his vision.
He has to be a lot more careful.
Tripping his way down, Five catches himself breathless on the next street. The lights are refracted in his blurred vision, and he’s trembling in earnest now.
It’s a lesson he’ll take to heart, he will. He promises he will.
If he survives.
-o-
Five’s not totally sure how he presses on, but he does. It seems there’s no other alternative, and the darkness feels ominous, but there’s been no sign of life, hostile or otherwise. The darkness poses a threat only in that he’ll miss his step and break his neck, which is a rather silly way to die when most every other living thing has been charred beyond recognition.
He wonders about that, if only vaguely. Most of the bodies are in horrible condition, but his siblings had not been. They had been special in life; he wonders what makes them so special in death.
The speculation is idle, and Five does not have the focus for it. He pushes on for nearly twenty minutes, scouring the streets for anything that looks promising. He starts with high expectations of something with obvious medical supplies. As he progresses, he starts to look for anything that won’t collapse on him.
It’s not going well, to say the least.
After nearly a half hour, Five is staggering with every step. Most of the buildings are too dangerous to explore in the dark, and the one or two he does manage to gain entry to are without any value. He comes up empty.
He’s going to pass out sooner or later, so Five throws all caution into the wind. “The next building,” he mutters to no one in particular. Even the mannequin, he’s left behind. He wets his lip in vain. “I’ll stop at the next building.”
It is an unenviable chore to get himself around the corner, and in the dark, he sees it, looming over him. It’s tall facade is still standing. In fact, the whole thing is still standing.
Five blinks and squints to clear his vision.
It’s a church, he realizes.
He stands for a second, dumbfounded in its shadow. It feels significant, but Five isn’t sure why. He’s compelled to pass it by, but he’s still bleeding and he’s still weak and tired.
This is the first viable building he has come across all night.
Which is ironic, he thinks as he lumbers up the stairs, because it feels a little bit like his last hope.
-o-
The front door is, of all things, locked. Five tries to pop himself into the church, but he’s too weak to make it work. He bypasses the door in a more traditional way. He breaks the window next to it instead.
It’s an awful noise in the still night, but there’s no one around to worry about. If anything, the clatter reminds him that he’s still alive, and he musters up enough adrenaline to get him inside the towering structure with all due haste.
He makes a mess in the entryway, scavenging for anything to help him move forward. He’s made a habit of sleeping at dark because fire is still a precious commodity to him. He has a supply of matches, but he’s stupidly left them back with the graves and his mannequin.
It probably serves him right, breaking into a church like this. Five is not religious in any sense of the word, but he has a vague sense of decorum. He knows it is frowned upon, even by hardened criminals, to take advantage of a church. The idea of social norms feels particularly ironic to him. Such norms cannot exist without a social group to utilize them.
At any rate, Five quickly finds a box of candles near doors to the sanctuary. Conveniently, they have been packed with matches. It’s not easy to strike the match one handed, but he uses one hand to light a candle, and he fills the dark space with the scantest of lights.
With uncertain steps, he pushes open the doors to the main sanctuary. His light is pitifully small in contrast, and it casts dim, sprawling shadows that dance around him up and down the line of empty, intact pews. The building is entirely without damage, as best he can tell. The tall ceilings are whole, and the stained glass on the windows hasn’t been blown out. He’s sure there are plenty of logical explanations to this -- the position of the building, its proximity to other, taller buildings, the directionality of the blast -- but Five winces and looks down. The blood has smeared everywhere, and he’s leave a trail of droplets behind him.
He can speculate when he’s not dying.
Dragging himself forward, Five makes his way up the aisle. There’s an altar and a cross on the wall. He braces himself for a moment on the pulpit before staggering past the choir chamber to the door just behind the stage. There’s a good chance that it’s a storage room, but Five is betting the last of his strength on the hope that it’s an office.
Priests have offices, don’t they?
Five opens the door and feels a cold, numb sort of relief. It is an office. An office with a sprawling desk, books lining the wall, a comfortable couch and--
Five seizes upon it, a burst of adrenaline moving him forward.
A first aid kit.
Hastily, he rips it off the wall, all but throwing it onto the desk. He scrabbles at it, his bloody fingers on his good hand finally prying the latch open.
It’s a goldmine.
Some might call it a miracle.
Five merely sees it as a much needed relief.
He hastily starts with the antiseptic, cleaning out the wound and flushing away the blood until it’s stinging and clean. With his teeth, he rips a length of gauze free, and he wraps it viciously tight around his hand, tying it off with unrelenting force. The wound throbs, but the gauze contains it. It’s the best he can do.
Exhausted, Five steps back and practically collapses onto the couch.
He shudders a sigh, eyes drooping.
It’s all he can do.
He lets his eyes close and he exhales again.
It’s all there is.
He feels himself drift and doesn’t stop himself.
It’s all.
-o-
Five doesn’t just sleep that night.
Five rests.
Five rests.
-o-
It’s light when he wakes, but he’s so sore and woozy that it’s not clear to him that it’s only been one night or two. For all he knows, it could have been several.
Shaking, he tries to sit up, and it makes his head spin. He sits for a moment, focusing on his breathing, and he sees his bandaged limb in his lap. The gauze is thicker and messier than he remembers, and there are hints of blood that have seeped through it. But it’s not soaked through, which is a promising sign. The bleeding, at the very least, has stopped.
That’s the good news, and it is good news.
The bad news, however, is that Five is still weak.
He makes an attempt to stand and sinks back down to the couch, his head spinning. He’s very weak. The combination of blood loss, dehydration and hunger are powerful forces. They are not going to be easy to surmount.
But quitting hardly seems like an option.
Five’s just not sure where the middle ground lies.
He rallies himself, slowly get back up on his feet. He’s cautious, bracing himself against the wall for a moment until his head stops spinning. With determination, he takes a step forward. The room spins and dips, but he doggedly keeps his balanced. Moving forward another two steps, he makes it in a rush to the desk and half collapses against it, heart pounding and a sweat breaking out in the cold across his forehead.
“Shit,” he mutters before remembering that he’s in a church. His intention had been to make it back to his family, but here he is, ready to pass out in a priest’s office. “So much for a miracle.”
He takes another few steps, guiding himself around the edge of the desk. He focuses his eyes on the door, but when he sets out to get there, it’s too much. Before he falls flat on his face, he sinks backward and sits himself down in the chair behind the desk, utterly spent.
For a moment, he thinks he’s done all this for nothing. He’s gotten this far and it’s not enough. He’s failed. The last person on earth, the final ember of a dying society. Humanity last -- and failed -- hope.
The thought threatens to break him, and he drops his head, the sob choked off in his chest. He lifts his eyes in desperation back to the room around him. He thinks of four graves, a fallen mansion and a ruined world. He thinks of stuipd decisions that he can’t take back. He thinks of his father’s voice as he calls after him, telling him to come back. Not a request; an order.
Then, Five’s eyes fixate on something else on the desk.
The desk is, of course, littered with the contents of the first aid kit. The roll of gauze is lying at one end, and there are other bandages, antiseptic, medicine -- the usual stuff. But closer still to him, positioned right in front of the chair, is a bag.
It’s a lunch bag, Five thinks dimly.
Clearly, the priest had put the bag there with the intention to eat his meal later in the day. That plan had been thwarted by an apocalypse. The priest is gone. The lunch…
Well, that’s still here.
The lunch is still here
Sitting right in front of Five.
Who, as it turns out, happens to be starving.
Five’s not looking for miracles.
But he’s not about to pass up a free meal if it’s literally sitting right in front of him.
With a renewed vigor, Five all but dives at the bag. His trembling fingers rip it open before he unceremoniously dumps the contents onto the desk. There’s a bag with a sandwich, which as clearly turned. The bread is moldy; the contents between the slices even more unrecognizable. Five throws it to the side, grasping at the banana instead. It looks a little on the brown side, and Five does the quick mental math. He’s been in the apocalypse for about a week. It’s not unfeasible to think that there might be fruit that is still ripe. It’s just that all other stores of food have been too badly damaged.
It still seems weird -- and quite unlikely -- that this place hasn’t been thus affected, but screw the math. The probability is unimportant. What’s important is that Five doesn’t die here while contemplating the mathematical probability of a damn banana when he really should just eat it.
With no further ado, Five rips the peel off. He doesn’t even care about the sections that are slightly mushy. He practically shoves the whole thing into his mouth, swallowing it down in greedy, desperate bites.
The food is what he craves, and now that he’s had a little, Five realizes just how absolutely starving he is. He is ravenous. He is hungrier than he ever thought possible. He needs to eat -- and he needs to eat now.
There is a granola bar in the lunch, and Five shreds the package, eating it before he even looks to see what kind it is. He eats it, the food against his dry throat. He can feel it as it churns in his anemic stomach, and he greedily scavenges for anything more. With a rush, he uncaps a bottle of water and chugs it, drinking half of it in a single gulp. The last item in the lunch is a bag of chips, and Five eats it with reckless abandon.
When he’s done, Five sits, not sure what he’s feeling. The sensation of food in his stomach is odd all of a sudden, and the sudden revitalization comes to him in the most surreal fashion. The stark understanding is this: he’s still alive.
The world is dead, but Five’s still alive.
Five’s not sure what that means, really, but he concludes that it warrants one, singular response: he’s got to keep living.
-o-
When he gets to his feet this time, he’s steadier than before. His hand has started to throb, but when he changes the bandage, all looks well. The gouge is deep and messy, but the wound looks like and there’s no obvious sign of infection. He cleans it again and wraps it, before finally leaving the safe haven of the office.
The church is much brighter in the daylight, streaks of light streaming in through the windows. There are even skylights, which he had failed to notice in the dark. The light shows that the church is grandiose in scale but actually rather diminutive in size. The quaint lines of pews could seat no more than 100.
The rest of the sanctuary is as one might expect. There are religious icons, Bibles and various other accoutrement; nothing of any apparent value at the moment.
In the entryway, he borrows a couple more candles and some of the matches before continuing his exploration of the church. There’s a lower level, which has a handful of classrooms and a fellowship hall. There is a kitchen.
Five checks the cupboards. They’re flush.
There is also another fully stocked first aid kit on this level along with more candles, flashlight and other such paraphernalia.
In short, this church is a coup. He’ll definitely have to be back.
But for now, he knows he has to leave. Trudging back upstairs, he takes stock of his new cache, which he has bundled up in a bag he found. He’s filled it food, candles and matches, and he starts toward the door before hesitating. There are a series of crosses arranged on the wall, and Five studies them carefully for a moment.
Not for their religious significance, mind you.
But because they look the perfect size and shape to mark a grave. He plucks them off the wall, tucking them into his sack. It’s not an ill usage, so he can’t imagine anyone would object. None of Five’s siblings had ever been religious, this is true, but the cross is a sign. A universal marker, if you will. An accepted symbol of humanity.
It’s apt, needless to say.
-o-
Five makes his way back through the streets with renewed vigor. The trip back is much shorter than he remembers, and in the plainness of the day, he’s not sure why it was so hard to get to the church in the first place. He makes a keen mental note of his location, so he can find his way back when his supplies run out.
Back at the park, the one he’s designated as the graveyard, all of his things are still there. The little wagon, the mannequin, and the small cache she’s guarding. Five dumps the bag there. “See? I brought more,” he tells her, just a touch smug.
He retrieves the crosses, taking the first one and pounding it into the dirt above Luther’s grave. He does the same with Diego and Allison before picking up Klaus’ half finished marker and pounding them both into the dirt. The sign still says Kla, but Five can fix it when his hand is healed.
He has time, after all.
All he has is time.
-o-
Five has been idle quite long enough. That’s probably a bit harsh in the assessment -- recuperating from an injury is hardly something that is blameworthy -- but this is the apocalypse. Five’s the last person alive. He can’t afford these things.
With his family’s burial arrangements settled, Five turns to other practical matters. At his wagon, he goes through his things again. It feels like a haul, but he’s not naive. He knows his supplies won’t last very long. He can’t afford to take them for granted. He sorts through the things, separating the more perishable items from the rest, and then concludes that he will carry a set amount with him and create a cache for the rest.
For that, he’ll need a homebase, and he can think of no better place than right here. This park has no particular strategic significance other than the fact that it is close to home. The sentimentality is one thing; the familiarity is another.
Besides, he is not likely to stray far from his family if he has any choice in the matter. It makes some sense to choose this as is center point and expand his search radius from here.
Thus decided, he scopes out the area. There is no evidence of life, which means he doesn’t have to worry about critters, but he supposes that the elements may become a problem at some point. He will want to organize and centralize his belongings for safekeeping. Also, just to make sure he knows what he has and where he has it.
There is a park structure that has been demolished, but a few of the playground toys are still partially standing. In particular there is a jungle gym, and Five finds a clean, sheltered spot underneath. He builds up the side with some rock, creating a neat little alcove. Inside, he neatly stacks his items and sits back, quite proud of himself.
When the task is finished, he allows himself to sit and eat a can of pears. Then he goes back to his wagon and looks at the mannequin. “You want to stay here?” he asks. He shrugs. “Or you want to go on an adventure?”
In her floral top, she looks demure. Five rolls his eyes.
“You know you want to stick with me,” he says, picking up the handle on the wagon and starting to drag it forward. “It’s not like you have a lot of other options.”
-o-
In the daylight, Five can afford to be both more analytical and more thorough. He sets his search pattern out in a grid, and he assesses the buildings more sensibly. This allows him to recover more usable items, and though the results are promising, Five is under no delusions that his position is good.
Long term, he’s still not sure how viable any of this is. As a scavenger, he has to wonder how long his resources will last. Even canned food has a shelf life, and it’s hard to imagine living on scraps for months on end.
Years, really.
An apocalypse is sort of the endgame. There is no coming back.
The weight of this disconcerting thought slows him down somewhat, though Five does not falter.
He presses on.
By nightfall, somehow, inexplicably, he ends up back at the church.
“Huh,” he comments to the mannequin, who seems quizzical about this. “Must have taken a wrong turn or two. I wasn’t supposed to be back here for a few days yet.”
The mannequin doesn't seem to believe him.
Five rolls his eyes. “Whatever,” he says, dragging his wagon up the steps. “I think you’re going to like it.”
-o-
Inside, he decides it’s a very pragmatic decision. Not a decision. Turn of fate. Luck.
It’s just pragmatic, mostly. It makes sense, being here. That’s all there is to it.
There are so few buildings left standing -- nothing in any condition close to this church. This structural stability alone makes it a viable refuge. Sure, he’ll explore other buildings, but if he’s going to rest for the night, he needs someplace beyond reproach.
This will do.
And honestly, it’s not a bad secondary home base. It’s a smart shelter, and its proximity to the gravesite is logistically convenient.
His home -- all he is -- belongs back at this graveyard. But if he’s going to survive this apocalypse, he needs a place like this, too.
Dragging the wagon across the sanctuary, Five pauses at the altar and looks up at the cross affixed above on the wall. He snorts. “It is ironic that this is the only place you leave unscathed,” he comments to no one in particular. “Some might accuse you have playing favorites.”
He shrugs, smirking.
“Fortunately for both of us, none of those people are here,” he says, adjusting his grip on the wagon as he makes his way back to the comfort of the priest’s office. “So I guess if it’s just you and me, then it might as well just be me.”
Because Five’s not impervious to the reality that everyone else is dead, but that doesn’t mean he has the luxury to feel guilty about the fact that he’s not. And the truth is -- the truth that Five doesn’t have to admit because there’s no one here to call him on it -- is that he’ll take the help however it comes.
-o-
The couch is comfortable enough, and the church is well sheltered. Five sorts the supplies in the kitchen downstairs, storing half of it over at the graveyard for safekeeping. He ransacks the other storage areas for anything that could be useful, but he is disappointed that the bookshelf in the main office is lined almost exclusively with Bibles and Bible study guides.
It’s just as well; Five needs to keep exploring. It is important to maintain other viable sources of food and water -- not to mention medical supplies. As he continues his gridwork through the city, he also begins to accumulate other things. Tools, clothes, weapons. Then, he starts collecting books.
After about two weeks, Five thinks things are going as well as can be expected. He’s discovered that everything is, indeed, dead except for colonies of roaches that nothing can kill. He has not been hungry enough to eat one yet, but he makes a note that they could be consumed in a pinch.
He seeks out confirmation of what happened, but still finds no signs of warning or trepidation. He finds high range radio equipment and scans all frequencies, but there’s nothing but static. He provides his siblings with daily update as he stands by their graves, and he spends his evenings there practicing his skills, desperately seeking for some way to access and control his ability to time travel.
This yields nothing, and every night, Five retires back to the church in the dark, where the mannequin is waiting for him quite expectantly. She comes with him sometimes, when Five is feeling lonely, but she always looks relieved when they’re back beneath the steeple together.
Five scolds her for being sentimental, but he can’t deny that it’s almost a comfortable routine. He keeps pushing his search radius, but he never ventures too far. He concludes that life like this, while lonely and difficult, is quite manageable.
That’s not to call it happy, but Five’s never been looking for happy.
Manageable is just fine, thank you very much.
Disclaimer: I own none of this.
A/N: This fic is pretty bleak, but it’s about a 13 year old who ends up stranded in the apocalypse, so there’s not really any way around it. No beta. Fills my desecration square for hc_bingo.
Warning: canonical death and apocalypse, desecration of a church/religious items, religious themes
Summary: Five stands at the end of humanity. And he has to find a way -- some way, against the odds he’s badly miscalculated -- to start again.
PART ONE
PART TWO
-o-
Five stands at the end of everything.
He stands amid the ruined buildings and the burning rubble. The cars are shells, parked and crashed, it’s impossible to tell. Telephone poles are felled; lights blown out. It smells like smoke and gas, and the sky is hazy with the ash.
Squinting, he looks up to where the sun should be. There’s an arid, oppressive heat, and the smell that clogs his nostril is thick and putrid. The desolation is everywhere; it stretches for miles. There are no plants, no animals, no people.
Five stands at the end of humanity.
And he has to find a way -- some way, against the odds he’s badly miscalculated -- to start again.
-o-
At first, this is a pragmatic sort of thing. If he’s stuck here -- and he does seem to be stuck here -- he needs to take stock, figure out his resources, chart out his assets and find a way to tide himself over until he can calculate a trajectory back home.
This is a pitstop, he tells himself. A means to an end. He’ll get out of here. He’ll make it back. It might take a day, a few days, a week. A month. He might be here a month.
That’s the first lie that Five tells himself at the end of the world.
It won’t be the last.
-o-
He figures a few things out, as he scavenges.
First, this was a sudden event. He finds corpses, charred where they are. They’re not in any kind of pattern; they’re not fleeing or hiding. Cars are abandoned on the street, burnt out at fallen traffic lights. Storefronts are ruined, but the items inside aren’t looted like you would expect with panic at knowledge of an impending apocalypse.
That’s what he’s calling it, then. It’s an apocalypse.
He reconsiders.
It’s the apocalypse.
Surely there can’t be more than one.
-o-
The second conclusion Five determines is that this isn’t as far in the future as maybe he wants to believe. The probability of mankind ruining the planet is high enough so that, technically, mass destruction at some point is not actually a surprise mathematically speaking. Add in other factors like asteroids and it’s probably more likely than not. The technology is familiar enough to him, though, and he wonders how long cars based on fossil fuels and standard electricity will be around. Though, if you’re talking about the end of humanity, then it’s safe to assume that maybe they didn’t evolve as much as you might expect.
Not that Five’s thought about that.
He’s thought about a lot of things, but not mass extinction. He’s never thought about humanity on a macro scale like this. The widespread implications of actions is something he has probably been woefully naive above.
But then, he’s been pretty naive about a lot of things.
He collects a few things along his way, a red wagon, a mannequin. Then, he stops at a newspaper stand and takes out the paper in curiosity.
The date makes him want to throw up right then and there.
2019.
The world ends in 2019.
Five looks around, trying to make sense of it. In 2019, he’s supposed to be, what? 31?
That means his siblings are 31.
He turns, looking over the vast landscape again, its ruined lines.
That means his siblings are here.
Shit.
His siblings are here.
-o-
It probably doesn’t make sense, really. When the whole of humanity has perished, what’s the point of worrying about six specific people. Seven, if you count his dad, and he is, with some reluctance and obligation. He knows he shouldn’t care about them more than everyone else whose lives have been cut short and ruined, but he does.
He does.
It’s the second time that day he’s run back to the mansion. This time, he has the wagon in tow, and he has to slow down at the corners to prevent tipping his mannequin out into the rubble. He’s not sure why it matters. He should sit down, do the math. Map the probabilities.
He turns another corner, down the street toward the mansion.
There’s no way that the math will tell him why it matters.
Some things are emotional. Some truths are things you clutch down inside your gut, even when your head tells you it’s pointless and stupid. Usually, he has more self control than this, but he ran away from home and wound up in the apocalypse today. There’s nothing usual about any of this.
This time, he circumvents the front steps and the ragged frame, which is what is left of the front door. The wall along the other side has collapsed, and there’s a section that’s been blown away entirely. He has to abandon the wagon as he steps over the rubble, finding traces of his father’s taxidermy collection and small portions of the archaic living room furniture. He stumbles forward and then he stops.
All his running, and he stops, cold and dead in his tracks.
Because he’s found his siblings.
Most of them, anyway. Luther, Diego, Allison and Klaus. He’s found them, lost at the end of humanity.
The problem is that, just like everyone else around here, Five excluded, they just happen to be dead.
-o-
It is hard to be sure at first. In the rubble of the house, of course, Five naturally has suspicions, but this isn’t the sort of thing he can confirm. If he has jumped into the future -- and at this point he can identify no other possible explanation -- then it is only logical that his siblings would have aged to the point of being moderately hard for him to recognize. Puberty, he imagines, must be a son of a bitch.
Also, there’s just something about the bodies. These bodies. Not just that they’re in the rubble of the mansion. But that they’re intact.
It’s a morbid sort of thing to think about, but it’s not something he can ignored. He’s seen bodies -- lots of bodies -- and all of them, thus far, have been charred beyond recognition. Sure, he can make out general sizes and shapes -- some even appear female or male. But these bodies are whole and, in theory, recognizable.
The first body is large, white and male. He’s larger than you’d expect, even given Luther’s powers. Luther’s always been big, but at 13, he’d still be skinny. Whoever this guy is, he’s bulked out in unimaginable ways. The fact that it is unnatural is what gives Five pause. Normal people don’t end up like this. People with super powers? Well, that’s harder to calculate based on his lack of current information.
Also, he’s holding an eye.
At first, he thinks it’s an actual eyeball, but the instant he pries it from the cold, stiff fingers, he realizes that it’s not. It’s a glass eyeball; synthetic. The blood is tacky, but he can still wipe it away, which suggests that this is a decently recent event. Of course, the fact that these bodies haven’t started to visibly decay is also a good indication.
Perplexed, he stands, and that’s when he sees the next two bodies.
Male, hispanic. Female, African American.
Coincidence.
Five walks toward them a numb legs. He checks for a pulse, shakes the bodies for some kind of response. He can’t make the numbers computer; he can’t make his brain work at all. The odds of this being a coincidence are not in his favor.
Standing again, he turns and then he finds one last body. Slight build, male, white. Nothing telling except the tattoo still visible on his upturned wrist.
It’s an umbrella.
Five recognizes it.
Doesn’t he?
Doesn’t he recognize it?
Dully, he looks down at his own wrist. He pulls up the sleeve of his dirtied jacket and sees the tattoo there. Looking up, he traces his eyes from one to the next as the facts compiled to the irrefutable truth.
These are his siblings.
Fully grown, come into their own.
And dead.
These are his siblings’ bodies.
For Five, the world ends all over again.
-o-
Five sits for several hours, not sure what to do. Logically, he knows this is probably shock. His body has been overloaded by the physical trauma of what has happened to him. The emotional weight of his siblings’ deaths is simply more than he can deal with in his current condition. There is a strand, detached part of his brain that recognizes that humans have limits to what they can process. It’s not merely likely that Five has met his limit. It is, instead, a near guarantee that he has surpassed his capability some time ago. He has, therefore, literally shut down, and his vestige of marginal self awareness allows him to realize this in the slightest capacity.
Despite his inability to function, he is besieged by the cold rationality of his predicament. In some clinical regards, the timing is remarkable. That Five should break now, after all he’s been through. This and nothing else is his breaking point.
He reflects, idly, on just how he has endured. His hasty decision to leave home had ended in disaster, landing him at the end of the world. He alone is the last witness to the downfall of civilization. He stands amid the death and destruction, a child as the last remnant of a society he had never fully embraced.
And it has not been easy, not even in the practical matters. He is mired in survival, eking out his living among the ashes. He has poked through burned corpses. He had ransacked cars from the dead. He has clawed his way through every day, eating anything he can find to fill his hungry stomach.
To say it’s a lot would not be an exaggeration.
If anything, it’s an understatement.
And he has prevailed. He has faced these trials with surety and determination. He has endured failure. He has looked loss in the face. He has become desolation. And now he break.
Now.
It strikes him as ironic, though he cannot surely explain why. He cannot quantify it. There are no words to capture it.
All the death, all the destruction. The utter hopelessness of his plight. The bitter inevitability of this encompassing failure. This devastation can be approached pragmatically, segmented by the logical workings of his brain.
But this, these bodies, this loss, is his family.
That’s what’s so different now.
That’s what’s so different.
This is his family.
He bows his head, the grief choking him. He catches on a sob, and feels the painful throbbing of his heart, the unwelcome reminder that he alone has survived, that he’s not dead yet.
It’s a horrible sort of thing. Because Five has arrived at the end of the world, and he’s known it all along. He’s assessed it and reasoned it and concluded it with regret, fear and uncertainty.
But he’s never felt it until now.
And that is the loss that breaks him irreparably. It is the loss from which he will never recover, the one that defines him.
Not the boy who got lost at the end of everything.
Rather, the boy who lost his family and was subjected to a lifetime of facing that failure by himself.
For that, there is nothing to do.
Five stares at his hands, his idle, empty, powerless hands, and lets the hours pass.
-o-
It’s unclear just how much time has past, but it is a pointless distinction. When Five remembers to move again, he is stiff and hungry. On his feet, he feels woozy, and though his knees threaten to give out, there seems to be no recourse. There is no comfort for weakness. There is nothing to be done for him.
All he can do, therefore, is work for himself. He eats whatever he has in hand, barely tasting the food as he forces it down his throat. He drinks tepid water, and flexes his stiff fingers. He feels tired but has no inclination for sleep. Instead. He stands over the bodies and makes the only decision still available to him.
He must bury the bodies. It is the proper thing to do, though he’s not sure why a sense of decorum matters. He is too logical to think it matters to his siblings, but Five recognizes the need for closure, however illogical it may seem. He feels like he owes them this. He left them, after all. He walked out and they faced this inevitability without him.
He has to bury them. Simply put, there is no one else to do the task, and Five will never be able to face this desolate world with them exposed.
In this regard, it is an easy decision in theory. In application, Five is aware of the challenge. It is, needless to say, daunting.
To start, he must attend to the bodies. Time has passed, though he’s not sure how much. The bodies have not visibly decayed, but there is evidence of stiffening. The state of the bodies will pose some difficulties, and he hates to think of causing damage in an effort to commemorate them.
He makes a few distinctions to see if such movement is advisable, which is unpleasant enough. He’s well read, but his study has not focused on medical realities after death, therefore he feels ill equipped to judge the passage of time or how long he has until the bodies start to decompose beyond the point of handling with respect.
That said, it’s a decision that’s made a little bit on a whim. Not exactly, of course -- he’s not devoid of logic -- but it is an emotionally charged choice. An impulse that comes from the heart, not the head. It seems, somehow, like the right thing to do. That’s a strange concept but this is a strange place. Maybe that’s why it matters. He’s possibly the last human on earth. So he should probably act that way.
Therefore, he decides to proceed without delay. The bodies can be moved without damage, but he figures his window of opportunity is scant. However, this implies he has a burial site in mind and the tools to accomplish the task.
It’s tedious work to say the least. Five scrounges up a shovel, and he digs through the debris in a nearby park to find ground he can till. This means he has to transport the bodies, dragging them one by one until their stiff bodies are lined up, pale faces toward the sunless sky.
Then, he digs.
He scoops the dirt out, one shovel full at a time. It takes hours the dig the first grave, and longer still to dig the second. He has to take a break to dig the third, and he tries to dig all night for the firth but his exhaustion gets the better of him, and he sleeps restlessly next to the open graves instead.
In the morning, he finishes the task. He’s sore, muscles aching from the exertion, and his hands are raw and bloody from blisters. He’s ready to collapse when he’s done, and it’s almost the last of his strength as he drags himself out of the grave.
In some ways, he thinks it would be easier to stay, lying at the bottom of a grave he’s dug with his own hands. It feels aptly poetic honestly, given the mess he’s made for himself.
But this isn’t his resting place. He has to deny himself eternal peace. It’s a respite he has not earned. It’s an escape he does not deserve. Five is too pragmatic to die now anyway. If he dies, then who will bury them?
He claws his way back up and wills his tired limbs into compliance.
The job, after all, isn’t done yet.
-o-
It’s inelegant.
That’s an understatement, but there is no one left to call him on it. Five is all but exhausted when he starts the actual burial, and he’s still 13 years old whereas his siblings are all fully grown adults. There’s no way it’s going to be easy.
That’s a laughable concept, however.
Easy.
Like any of this is ever possibly going to be easy.
Five tries not to think about it much, though. He tries not to think about how a week ago, he was at dinner with his siblings. Now, he’s piling their stiff, dead bodies into graves. That’s just too much.
Luther is the first one he handles, and he ends up rolling the large body into the grave. Luther has always been big, but this still seems unusual. He has a fleeting idea of doing more investigation in this matter, but he can’t bring himself to do it. To desecrate his brother’s body in that way.
Besides, he uses up most of his energy just getting him in the hole. He still has three siblings left.
Diego goes a little bit easier, though he’s still all lean muscle. It’s pretty apparent he’s spent most of his adult life working out, for all the good that it did him. Five notes the long scar on Diego’s face, but doesn’t recall him getting it when they were children. It’s another thing -- another thing of many -- that Five’s missed. The life he didn’t live in trade for this one he’s in now.
Allison is trim, but she’s not a lightweight. Her long hair gets caught on the ground as he rolls her into the grave, and she lands face first and awkward. Five cringes, but he suspects if he gets down into the grave, he’ll never get back out again, so he leaves her where she lays.
By the time he gets to Klaus, the task should be easier. Klaus is the lightest of them all, but Five is so spent by this point, that it’s still a trial. It doesn’t seem likely that Klaus has maintained his standing in the team, skinny as he is. There’s no way their father would let that stand; Klaus is in no kind of condition. Which makes Five wonder how he ended up here at the end of the world anyway.
No matter. Klaus’ body falls into the grace, spread eagle on his back. His face is turned up toward the sunless daylight.
It doesn’t matter now.
Five looks up at the sky and wishes he could cry, wishes he could remember how.
But it just doesn’t matter now at all.
-o-
The whole process carries an air of pointless repetition. All the dirt he painstakingly moved must be put back in place now, and the process is no easier in reverse. In fact, as he covers his siblings with each shovel full of dirt, he finds it hard.
Luther’s frame disappears under the weight.
Diego’s face is obscured by the black.
Allison’s broken figure is lost in the earth.
Klaus, no more than an empty vessel, is gone.
Five is sore; Five is spent; but Five is still alive.
There is no more painful truth than that.
-o-
When the graves are filled in, it is breaking dawn again. Five’s not sure if one day or two has passed, but he suspects it doesn’t matter. He’s not sure what time even means now. Not when he’s the only one left to mark it.
Time isn’t what he needs to mark anyway.
These are his siblings, in the end. For all that they’re corpses in a dying world, they deserve more than an anonymous fate. Five remembers, therefore it is his responsibility to remember.
At Luther’s grave, he sighs and tries to ready himself. “You were always strong,” he says, matter of fact. “I always envy you for that. How you made everything look so easy. All of it. If I had been able to be like that, like you, then maybe I wouldn’t be here.”
He sighs.
“Maybe you wouldn’t be here, either,” he ventures.
He has to take a moment, to breathe. Just to breathe.
“I never saw you lose a fight,” he finally finishes. “I wish you hadn’t lost this one.”
-o-
At Diego’s grave, second in line, he thinks how much his brother would hate that. It almost makes him smile.
“I know you always wanted to win, more than anything else,” he says. “You hated losing, being wrong, all of it. You hated being less.”
His words falter. The smile threatens to choke him, and he has to swallow hard.
“You’re not less now,” he says softly. “I just wish you were alive to hear it.”
-o-
He’s crying by the time he gets to Allison. Tears he can’t quite acknowledge on his cheeks. There’s nothing to be done for them.
There’s nothing to be done.
“I know some people might think you were too pretty for this kind of thing, but I never looked at you and saw beauty,” he says. “Just strength. Determination. I never wanted the same things you did, but I always respected how you set out to get your way.”
The words taste like ash on his tongue. He tries to wet his dry lips but it’s of no use. He’s trembling now, all out shaking.
“This isn’t what you wanted, though,” he says, voice threatening to break. “This isn’t what you wanted at all.”
-o-
With Klaus, the last commemoration, Five’s got nothing left. He’s openly sobbing now, and he can barely stay on his feet.
“I didn’t think I’d find you here,” he admits. “I mean, here, at the end of the world. Facing it, head on. That’s not like you, Klaus. It’s not like you at all.”
He wipes his face messily, and breaks down again.
“Shit, Klaus,” he sobs. “Why did you have to be a hero in the end?”
He asks, he cries.
Why did it have to end?
-o-
Five stays like that at their gravesides. He stays like that until his knees give out, and then he sits on his knees as the day rises and falls. He stays like that in the chill of the night. He stays like that until his tears are spent and the exhaustion plateaus.
Mostly, he stays.
At some point, he eats. At another point, he sleeps. He drinks the last of his water reserves and then stays some more. He doesn’t know how to leave.
No, that’s not it.
He can’t fathom a reason why he should leave.
There is no reason. For anything. Reason, purpose, logic -- it’s all gone now. Along with the rest of the world.
It’s so funny, then. Funny that they’re dead and Five’s alone and he’s never actually felt closer to them. He feels connected to them in their deaths in a way he never felt while they were alive. This is the importance of family, the gravity of it. Its purpose only made clear -- painfully, finitely clear -- in its unmitigated absence.
Their burial awakens something inside of him. Five is humanity’s last stand against the onslaught of the apocalypse.
He’s not sure he’s up for the task.
It appears, however, he has no choice.
-o-
When he finally thinks to move, it’s a dull realization borne out of necessity. Grief is not a productive emotion, and he does not think it is a fitting eulogy to die next to them in such a pointless and untold manner. If he’s the last of humanity, he is burdened with the unfortunate and unenviable task of living.
On his feet, he’s still shaky, but there’s a new numbness that helps. It seems overly sentimental to make a graveyard when the whole world is an open grave, but Five figures that burying his family in this manner will solidify the embers of humanity he needs to face the trials ahead.
Therefore, he sets about fashioning something to mark the graves. It’s hard to imagine him forgetting the spot, but it’s hard to imagine a lot of things. Five feels like it’s important to prepare for the unlikely at this point.
Besides, he’s come this far.
This is his family.
They will get grave markers.
There are stones and slabs of cement, of course, but those are not viable for a variety of reasons. The least of which is that they’d be difficult to enscribe. He lacks the tools to etch anything meaningful, and anything less permanent would simply not suffice. Besides, these things are heavy, and Five may have rested some, but he’s still pushing himself well beyond his limits.
Wood is not maybe as resilient as he’d like, but it seems like an apt solution, at least for now. He gathers several pieces that he thinks will be sufficient, then uses the tools that he’s managed to amass to start carving names into the wood’s surface. He debates on how to commemorate them, but finally settles on their chosen names. He can only imagine it’s what they would prefer.
Five has never had much affinity for the arts, but he’s the type to focus on precision, so he’s able to carve Luther’s name well enough into the wood. He thinks Diego’s lacks finesse and apologizes to his brother for lacking his acumen with a blade. He gives a little flourish to Allison’s, as he is sure she would appreciate, before picking up the final piece in his numb fingers to start engraving Klaus’ name into the void of existence.
He’s lost track of time again, and his vision is blurring. His stomach is too empty to growl, but it churns, and he thinks he might throw up for a moment. It’s possible that he’s getting a little dehydrated -- or maybe it’s sheer exhaustion. He blinks his eyes a few times, grits his teeth and keeps on going.
This approach has worked for him so far.
In fact, it has been the very anthem of his survival ever since he arrived in this wasteland of a world. As if sheer grit can see him through.
It’s probably no surprise that he’s wrong about that.
He has been spectacularly wrong about nearly everything else these days.
His next cut is off kilter and he badly screws up the a in Klaus’ name. He tries to bear down, forcing his hand to steady as he makes the next cut. He has the force but none of the coordination. His knife goes wide, gouging right into the hand that’s trying to hold the plank of wood steady.
At first, Five feels no pain. There numbness is white hot and encompassing. His ears ring and his vision goes white for a long, surreal second. He blinks, and then he sees the blood.
There’s a lot of blood, he thinks with an odd sort of detachment.
There’s a lot of blood.
He blinks again, and his adrenaline kicks in. With it, so do his pain receptors. He keens, dropping his tools as he reaches up to press down on the open wound. He holds it fast for a moment while it pulses, and he looks around himself at a loss. He has to stop the bleeding, he knows dimly, but he’s a little short on supplies.
No, he’s completely out of supplies. Even clean water and food.
He shudders and swallows back the pain, trying to harness the adrenaline for something vaguely productive. He can feel his blood as it thrums through him, and he grapples with dumb fingers for the jacket he’d throw aside hours ago, when the heat of the day had been too much. The sun is sinking low in the sky now, and Five can feel the chill picking up in the desolation. He needs to stop the bleeding; he needs food; he needs water; he needs shelter.
Turning back around, Five looks at the four freshly dug graves and the three planks of finished wood. Klaus’ plank is on the ground in front of him, stained with fresh blood.
He exhales shakily and tells himself that he can’t finish the job if he’s dead. His siblings are already dead; they won’t know the difference of a day. They won’t know.
It’s utilitarian, really. Survival is an asset only in the sense that death is pointless. It’s not so much a will to live as it is a refusal to die so pointlessly, due to his own vain ambition.
Wrapping his hand with the jacket, he continues keeping the pressure, pressing down until his fingers hurt. He stumbles away from the graves, past his wagon. He looks at the mannequin. “You watch them for tonight, okay?” he mumbles nonsensically. It’s possible he’s going into shock again, from blood loss this time. He hopes not.
He staggers back into the street, scanning up and down the row of decimated buildings.
He swallows and closes his eyes. He breathes.
Hope is a waning thing. It’s probably a pointless thing.
He opens his eyes.
Hope is, unfortunately, also the only thing he has left.
-o-
Five is usually quite methodical about these things, but with the blood he’s losing and the darkness falling, he is starting to panic a little. It’s building in the pit of his stomach, and he feels it tingling in his fingers and toes.
This could kill him, he thinks.
Blood loss alone could do him in. If not blood loss, then the injury could incapacitate him enough to prevent him from doing other basic tasks. If he can’t move around, then he won’t find food or water. Without food or water, he’ll get weaker. If he gets too weak, he’ll be unable to move. If he is unable to move, then he’ll die a slow, miserable and painful death.
And even if not. If he gets the bleeding under control, he still has to consider infection. These conditions aren’t sanitary. Even his jacket, which is pressed up against the wound, is laden with germs and debris.
Okay, he’s starting to panic a lot.
This is the apocalypse, and everyone is dead. He’s trapped in the future, and he should be back at home, eating dinner with his siblings. But his siblings are dead and he’s an idiot and Five feels very small and very young and very, very alone.
He’d been too flippant, too brash, too stupid. He has to be careful.
He staggers over the debris, blinking to clear his vision.
He has to be a lot more careful.
Tripping his way down, Five catches himself breathless on the next street. The lights are refracted in his blurred vision, and he’s trembling in earnest now.
It’s a lesson he’ll take to heart, he will. He promises he will.
If he survives.
-o-
Five’s not totally sure how he presses on, but he does. It seems there’s no other alternative, and the darkness feels ominous, but there’s been no sign of life, hostile or otherwise. The darkness poses a threat only in that he’ll miss his step and break his neck, which is a rather silly way to die when most every other living thing has been charred beyond recognition.
He wonders about that, if only vaguely. Most of the bodies are in horrible condition, but his siblings had not been. They had been special in life; he wonders what makes them so special in death.
The speculation is idle, and Five does not have the focus for it. He pushes on for nearly twenty minutes, scouring the streets for anything that looks promising. He starts with high expectations of something with obvious medical supplies. As he progresses, he starts to look for anything that won’t collapse on him.
It’s not going well, to say the least.
After nearly a half hour, Five is staggering with every step. Most of the buildings are too dangerous to explore in the dark, and the one or two he does manage to gain entry to are without any value. He comes up empty.
He’s going to pass out sooner or later, so Five throws all caution into the wind. “The next building,” he mutters to no one in particular. Even the mannequin, he’s left behind. He wets his lip in vain. “I’ll stop at the next building.”
It is an unenviable chore to get himself around the corner, and in the dark, he sees it, looming over him. It’s tall facade is still standing. In fact, the whole thing is still standing.
Five blinks and squints to clear his vision.
It’s a church, he realizes.
He stands for a second, dumbfounded in its shadow. It feels significant, but Five isn’t sure why. He’s compelled to pass it by, but he’s still bleeding and he’s still weak and tired.
This is the first viable building he has come across all night.
Which is ironic, he thinks as he lumbers up the stairs, because it feels a little bit like his last hope.
-o-
The front door is, of all things, locked. Five tries to pop himself into the church, but he’s too weak to make it work. He bypasses the door in a more traditional way. He breaks the window next to it instead.
It’s an awful noise in the still night, but there’s no one around to worry about. If anything, the clatter reminds him that he’s still alive, and he musters up enough adrenaline to get him inside the towering structure with all due haste.
He makes a mess in the entryway, scavenging for anything to help him move forward. He’s made a habit of sleeping at dark because fire is still a precious commodity to him. He has a supply of matches, but he’s stupidly left them back with the graves and his mannequin.
It probably serves him right, breaking into a church like this. Five is not religious in any sense of the word, but he has a vague sense of decorum. He knows it is frowned upon, even by hardened criminals, to take advantage of a church. The idea of social norms feels particularly ironic to him. Such norms cannot exist without a social group to utilize them.
At any rate, Five quickly finds a box of candles near doors to the sanctuary. Conveniently, they have been packed with matches. It’s not easy to strike the match one handed, but he uses one hand to light a candle, and he fills the dark space with the scantest of lights.
With uncertain steps, he pushes open the doors to the main sanctuary. His light is pitifully small in contrast, and it casts dim, sprawling shadows that dance around him up and down the line of empty, intact pews. The building is entirely without damage, as best he can tell. The tall ceilings are whole, and the stained glass on the windows hasn’t been blown out. He’s sure there are plenty of logical explanations to this -- the position of the building, its proximity to other, taller buildings, the directionality of the blast -- but Five winces and looks down. The blood has smeared everywhere, and he’s leave a trail of droplets behind him.
He can speculate when he’s not dying.
Dragging himself forward, Five makes his way up the aisle. There’s an altar and a cross on the wall. He braces himself for a moment on the pulpit before staggering past the choir chamber to the door just behind the stage. There’s a good chance that it’s a storage room, but Five is betting the last of his strength on the hope that it’s an office.
Priests have offices, don’t they?
Five opens the door and feels a cold, numb sort of relief. It is an office. An office with a sprawling desk, books lining the wall, a comfortable couch and--
Five seizes upon it, a burst of adrenaline moving him forward.
A first aid kit.
Hastily, he rips it off the wall, all but throwing it onto the desk. He scrabbles at it, his bloody fingers on his good hand finally prying the latch open.
It’s a goldmine.
Some might call it a miracle.
Five merely sees it as a much needed relief.
He hastily starts with the antiseptic, cleaning out the wound and flushing away the blood until it’s stinging and clean. With his teeth, he rips a length of gauze free, and he wraps it viciously tight around his hand, tying it off with unrelenting force. The wound throbs, but the gauze contains it. It’s the best he can do.
Exhausted, Five steps back and practically collapses onto the couch.
He shudders a sigh, eyes drooping.
It’s all he can do.
He lets his eyes close and he exhales again.
It’s all there is.
He feels himself drift and doesn’t stop himself.
It’s all.
-o-
Five doesn’t just sleep that night.
Five rests.
Five rests.
-o-
It’s light when he wakes, but he’s so sore and woozy that it’s not clear to him that it’s only been one night or two. For all he knows, it could have been several.
Shaking, he tries to sit up, and it makes his head spin. He sits for a moment, focusing on his breathing, and he sees his bandaged limb in his lap. The gauze is thicker and messier than he remembers, and there are hints of blood that have seeped through it. But it’s not soaked through, which is a promising sign. The bleeding, at the very least, has stopped.
That’s the good news, and it is good news.
The bad news, however, is that Five is still weak.
He makes an attempt to stand and sinks back down to the couch, his head spinning. He’s very weak. The combination of blood loss, dehydration and hunger are powerful forces. They are not going to be easy to surmount.
But quitting hardly seems like an option.
Five’s just not sure where the middle ground lies.
He rallies himself, slowly get back up on his feet. He’s cautious, bracing himself against the wall for a moment until his head stops spinning. With determination, he takes a step forward. The room spins and dips, but he doggedly keeps his balanced. Moving forward another two steps, he makes it in a rush to the desk and half collapses against it, heart pounding and a sweat breaking out in the cold across his forehead.
“Shit,” he mutters before remembering that he’s in a church. His intention had been to make it back to his family, but here he is, ready to pass out in a priest’s office. “So much for a miracle.”
He takes another few steps, guiding himself around the edge of the desk. He focuses his eyes on the door, but when he sets out to get there, it’s too much. Before he falls flat on his face, he sinks backward and sits himself down in the chair behind the desk, utterly spent.
For a moment, he thinks he’s done all this for nothing. He’s gotten this far and it’s not enough. He’s failed. The last person on earth, the final ember of a dying society. Humanity last -- and failed -- hope.
The thought threatens to break him, and he drops his head, the sob choked off in his chest. He lifts his eyes in desperation back to the room around him. He thinks of four graves, a fallen mansion and a ruined world. He thinks of stuipd decisions that he can’t take back. He thinks of his father’s voice as he calls after him, telling him to come back. Not a request; an order.
Then, Five’s eyes fixate on something else on the desk.
The desk is, of course, littered with the contents of the first aid kit. The roll of gauze is lying at one end, and there are other bandages, antiseptic, medicine -- the usual stuff. But closer still to him, positioned right in front of the chair, is a bag.
It’s a lunch bag, Five thinks dimly.
Clearly, the priest had put the bag there with the intention to eat his meal later in the day. That plan had been thwarted by an apocalypse. The priest is gone. The lunch…
Well, that’s still here.
The lunch is still here
Sitting right in front of Five.
Who, as it turns out, happens to be starving.
Five’s not looking for miracles.
But he’s not about to pass up a free meal if it’s literally sitting right in front of him.
With a renewed vigor, Five all but dives at the bag. His trembling fingers rip it open before he unceremoniously dumps the contents onto the desk. There’s a bag with a sandwich, which as clearly turned. The bread is moldy; the contents between the slices even more unrecognizable. Five throws it to the side, grasping at the banana instead. It looks a little on the brown side, and Five does the quick mental math. He’s been in the apocalypse for about a week. It’s not unfeasible to think that there might be fruit that is still ripe. It’s just that all other stores of food have been too badly damaged.
It still seems weird -- and quite unlikely -- that this place hasn’t been thus affected, but screw the math. The probability is unimportant. What’s important is that Five doesn’t die here while contemplating the mathematical probability of a damn banana when he really should just eat it.
With no further ado, Five rips the peel off. He doesn’t even care about the sections that are slightly mushy. He practically shoves the whole thing into his mouth, swallowing it down in greedy, desperate bites.
The food is what he craves, and now that he’s had a little, Five realizes just how absolutely starving he is. He is ravenous. He is hungrier than he ever thought possible. He needs to eat -- and he needs to eat now.
There is a granola bar in the lunch, and Five shreds the package, eating it before he even looks to see what kind it is. He eats it, the food against his dry throat. He can feel it as it churns in his anemic stomach, and he greedily scavenges for anything more. With a rush, he uncaps a bottle of water and chugs it, drinking half of it in a single gulp. The last item in the lunch is a bag of chips, and Five eats it with reckless abandon.
When he’s done, Five sits, not sure what he’s feeling. The sensation of food in his stomach is odd all of a sudden, and the sudden revitalization comes to him in the most surreal fashion. The stark understanding is this: he’s still alive.
The world is dead, but Five’s still alive.
Five’s not sure what that means, really, but he concludes that it warrants one, singular response: he’s got to keep living.
-o-
When he gets to his feet this time, he’s steadier than before. His hand has started to throb, but when he changes the bandage, all looks well. The gouge is deep and messy, but the wound looks like and there’s no obvious sign of infection. He cleans it again and wraps it, before finally leaving the safe haven of the office.
The church is much brighter in the daylight, streaks of light streaming in through the windows. There are even skylights, which he had failed to notice in the dark. The light shows that the church is grandiose in scale but actually rather diminutive in size. The quaint lines of pews could seat no more than 100.
The rest of the sanctuary is as one might expect. There are religious icons, Bibles and various other accoutrement; nothing of any apparent value at the moment.
In the entryway, he borrows a couple more candles and some of the matches before continuing his exploration of the church. There’s a lower level, which has a handful of classrooms and a fellowship hall. There is a kitchen.
Five checks the cupboards. They’re flush.
There is also another fully stocked first aid kit on this level along with more candles, flashlight and other such paraphernalia.
In short, this church is a coup. He’ll definitely have to be back.
But for now, he knows he has to leave. Trudging back upstairs, he takes stock of his new cache, which he has bundled up in a bag he found. He’s filled it food, candles and matches, and he starts toward the door before hesitating. There are a series of crosses arranged on the wall, and Five studies them carefully for a moment.
Not for their religious significance, mind you.
But because they look the perfect size and shape to mark a grave. He plucks them off the wall, tucking them into his sack. It’s not an ill usage, so he can’t imagine anyone would object. None of Five’s siblings had ever been religious, this is true, but the cross is a sign. A universal marker, if you will. An accepted symbol of humanity.
It’s apt, needless to say.
-o-
Five makes his way back through the streets with renewed vigor. The trip back is much shorter than he remembers, and in the plainness of the day, he’s not sure why it was so hard to get to the church in the first place. He makes a keen mental note of his location, so he can find his way back when his supplies run out.
Back at the park, the one he’s designated as the graveyard, all of his things are still there. The little wagon, the mannequin, and the small cache she’s guarding. Five dumps the bag there. “See? I brought more,” he tells her, just a touch smug.
He retrieves the crosses, taking the first one and pounding it into the dirt above Luther’s grave. He does the same with Diego and Allison before picking up Klaus’ half finished marker and pounding them both into the dirt. The sign still says Kla, but Five can fix it when his hand is healed.
He has time, after all.
All he has is time.
-o-
Five has been idle quite long enough. That’s probably a bit harsh in the assessment -- recuperating from an injury is hardly something that is blameworthy -- but this is the apocalypse. Five’s the last person alive. He can’t afford these things.
With his family’s burial arrangements settled, Five turns to other practical matters. At his wagon, he goes through his things again. It feels like a haul, but he’s not naive. He knows his supplies won’t last very long. He can’t afford to take them for granted. He sorts through the things, separating the more perishable items from the rest, and then concludes that he will carry a set amount with him and create a cache for the rest.
For that, he’ll need a homebase, and he can think of no better place than right here. This park has no particular strategic significance other than the fact that it is close to home. The sentimentality is one thing; the familiarity is another.
Besides, he is not likely to stray far from his family if he has any choice in the matter. It makes some sense to choose this as is center point and expand his search radius from here.
Thus decided, he scopes out the area. There is no evidence of life, which means he doesn’t have to worry about critters, but he supposes that the elements may become a problem at some point. He will want to organize and centralize his belongings for safekeeping. Also, just to make sure he knows what he has and where he has it.
There is a park structure that has been demolished, but a few of the playground toys are still partially standing. In particular there is a jungle gym, and Five finds a clean, sheltered spot underneath. He builds up the side with some rock, creating a neat little alcove. Inside, he neatly stacks his items and sits back, quite proud of himself.
When the task is finished, he allows himself to sit and eat a can of pears. Then he goes back to his wagon and looks at the mannequin. “You want to stay here?” he asks. He shrugs. “Or you want to go on an adventure?”
In her floral top, she looks demure. Five rolls his eyes.
“You know you want to stick with me,” he says, picking up the handle on the wagon and starting to drag it forward. “It’s not like you have a lot of other options.”
-o-
In the daylight, Five can afford to be both more analytical and more thorough. He sets his search pattern out in a grid, and he assesses the buildings more sensibly. This allows him to recover more usable items, and though the results are promising, Five is under no delusions that his position is good.
Long term, he’s still not sure how viable any of this is. As a scavenger, he has to wonder how long his resources will last. Even canned food has a shelf life, and it’s hard to imagine living on scraps for months on end.
Years, really.
An apocalypse is sort of the endgame. There is no coming back.
The weight of this disconcerting thought slows him down somewhat, though Five does not falter.
He presses on.
By nightfall, somehow, inexplicably, he ends up back at the church.
“Huh,” he comments to the mannequin, who seems quizzical about this. “Must have taken a wrong turn or two. I wasn’t supposed to be back here for a few days yet.”
The mannequin doesn't seem to believe him.
Five rolls his eyes. “Whatever,” he says, dragging his wagon up the steps. “I think you’re going to like it.”
-o-
Inside, he decides it’s a very pragmatic decision. Not a decision. Turn of fate. Luck.
It’s just pragmatic, mostly. It makes sense, being here. That’s all there is to it.
There are so few buildings left standing -- nothing in any condition close to this church. This structural stability alone makes it a viable refuge. Sure, he’ll explore other buildings, but if he’s going to rest for the night, he needs someplace beyond reproach.
This will do.
And honestly, it’s not a bad secondary home base. It’s a smart shelter, and its proximity to the gravesite is logistically convenient.
His home -- all he is -- belongs back at this graveyard. But if he’s going to survive this apocalypse, he needs a place like this, too.
Dragging the wagon across the sanctuary, Five pauses at the altar and looks up at the cross affixed above on the wall. He snorts. “It is ironic that this is the only place you leave unscathed,” he comments to no one in particular. “Some might accuse you have playing favorites.”
He shrugs, smirking.
“Fortunately for both of us, none of those people are here,” he says, adjusting his grip on the wagon as he makes his way back to the comfort of the priest’s office. “So I guess if it’s just you and me, then it might as well just be me.”
Because Five’s not impervious to the reality that everyone else is dead, but that doesn’t mean he has the luxury to feel guilty about the fact that he’s not. And the truth is -- the truth that Five doesn’t have to admit because there’s no one here to call him on it -- is that he’ll take the help however it comes.
-o-
The couch is comfortable enough, and the church is well sheltered. Five sorts the supplies in the kitchen downstairs, storing half of it over at the graveyard for safekeeping. He ransacks the other storage areas for anything that could be useful, but he is disappointed that the bookshelf in the main office is lined almost exclusively with Bibles and Bible study guides.
It’s just as well; Five needs to keep exploring. It is important to maintain other viable sources of food and water -- not to mention medical supplies. As he continues his gridwork through the city, he also begins to accumulate other things. Tools, clothes, weapons. Then, he starts collecting books.
After about two weeks, Five thinks things are going as well as can be expected. He’s discovered that everything is, indeed, dead except for colonies of roaches that nothing can kill. He has not been hungry enough to eat one yet, but he makes a note that they could be consumed in a pinch.
He seeks out confirmation of what happened, but still finds no signs of warning or trepidation. He finds high range radio equipment and scans all frequencies, but there’s nothing but static. He provides his siblings with daily update as he stands by their graves, and he spends his evenings there practicing his skills, desperately seeking for some way to access and control his ability to time travel.
This yields nothing, and every night, Five retires back to the church in the dark, where the mannequin is waiting for him quite expectantly. She comes with him sometimes, when Five is feeling lonely, but she always looks relieved when they’re back beneath the steeple together.
Five scolds her for being sentimental, but he can’t deny that it’s almost a comfortable routine. He keeps pushing his search radius, but he never ventures too far. He concludes that life like this, while lonely and difficult, is quite manageable.
That’s not to call it happy, but Five’s never been looking for happy.
Manageable is just fine, thank you very much.