Y:the Last Man: Weather Eye (1/1)
Title: Weather Eye
Author: schmevil
Summary: Yorick is having trouble sleeping, on the way to DC.
Characters: Yorick Brown
Word Count: 1513
Yorick was a feminist. Like, cradle to the grave. Regularly scheduled emotional hurricanes or not, there had always been a part of him that was convinced that the world would be a better place if run by the fairer sex. Witness Themiscrya. They didn’t call Wonder Woman’s homeland Paradise Island because of all the hot, scantily clad, warrior women. Or at least not only because of the warrior women.
Huddled in a ruined country house, praying that the looters had been there, done that, Yorick figured the world had finally offered up conclusive proof that he had been utterly and completely wrong about that one. So far the guys were winning, one-nothing, which hey, was only fair considering they were all dead and rotting in the streets. He was happy to accept the consolation prize of sucking less than a post-apocalyptic, feminine new world order, on behalf of his fellow Y chromosomes.
But to be fair, which he might as well be, the ladies were off to a rocky start, what with the looting, arson, and pockets of rioting, but it could have been so much worse. When slightly less than half the world’s population up and died, taking with it the vast majority of skilled tradespeople, emergency response workers and political leaders, the survivors were going to have a hard time coping.
And at least the guys were just dead. There were worse things than dead.
At least they weren’t trapped in a rickety old shack, with a terrified Capuchin, and outside, a storm that was clearly never going to end. Ampersand, thank god, had finally screamed himself to sleep, but Yorick still woke, every time the storm sent the windows rattling. The room lit up for a moment, then went dark again. It hardly made a difference. There was nothing in the house to look at, aside from his sack of canned food, and the water-stained walls. Outside was a solid wall of water.
Yorick took a sip from his canteen. Clean water, which might be hard to come by in the coming weeks, considering how things were going outside.
Outside-- it had taken him a long time to go outside, after. He probably wasn’t the only one whose first instinct was to get back into bed and wake up to the real world. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that he was the only guy still walking the streets of New York. It had taken him longer to figure out that he was the only guy walking.
He couldn’t find Hero. Yorick looked for her as long as he could, but eventually he had to get out of the city. It was just like every pulp fiction, apocalypse - New York was not the place to be when the bombs came down. Finally he’d packed up as much canned food as he could carry, and headed for the only place he could think to go - DC.
New York to DC on foot was not an exciting prospect. The roads were jammed with smashed up cars and trucks, and the rotting corpses of their drivers. Fires burned all over the city, and even along the highways. There was plenty of fuel, and fire fighters were thin on the ground. He’d figured it would clear up a bit, once he was out of the city, and it had, but getting out of New York --
Starting when he was fifteen, and ending the summer before college, Yorick read The Stand eight times. Clocking in at over one thousand pages of post-apocalyptic, Judeo-Christian, sex, lies and fever dream, it was a feat. His favourite character was Larry. New York born, successful musician and ladies man, Larry, who eventually (after sleeping with Damien’s bride), helped save the world. The remains of it, anyway. The whole way out of the city he was mentally kicking himself over it: pieces of Larry’s trip, laid over his own, in sickening double vision. It wasn’t just The Stand, of course. Stephen King was like the gateway drug of horror fiction. There were Poe and Lovecraft, who were supposedly a little more highbrow, and father-approved. Even Michael Crichton. He counted. Possibly.
He spent the whole walk out of the city looking for looters, and muggers, with one eye, and zombies and shambling plague victims with the other. Jumping at even marginally suspicious sounds. Taking less than direct routes, backtracking, hiding. Hiding constantly. Hoping he wouldn’t die of smoke inhalation, or tetanus, or pneumonia, or eating food from dented cans. Or hell, heat exhaustion. The city was burning. Not just from the fires, but the sun that boiled the still whole concrete and steel until it burned too.
It was better out of the city. Except for the part where it was harder to find food and shelter. Much to his own current disappointment, he’d never been the boy scout type. He couldn’t cobble together a shelter from a wool blanket and a copse of trees. Four walls and a roof with three or less holes, for this boy, and this monkey.
The windows rattled again, and the room lit up with a flash of lightning. Ampersand slept on. The storm would probably let up by morning. They usually did, he was discovering. Yorick was a city guy. Or he had been. Now he was a wherever-he-could-find-shelter guy.
Two months to DC, if he was lucky. More if he wasn’t. He had five routes planned, ranked in descending order of preference. The most direct route was not actually his best bet, he figured. Staying by the highway: good idea. Traveling by highway: not so much, although it depended on what highway you were talking about. Going by country roads: maybe, maybe not. A baseball cap, poncho and kerchief only disguised so much, and the further he got from the city, the fewer places there were to hide. Becoming the star attraction in some small town’s permanent ladies night? He had places to be, mothers and sisters to (please) find.
There had to be other guys out there, somewhere. So he hadn’t heard of any yet - that didn’t mean he was the only one. This, he could admit in the quiet comfort of his head, was becoming a mantra. (He’d gone to this documentary with Beth about extinction thresholds and the consequences of small population size. It wasn’t his thing, but that hardly needed saying. So yeah, it wasn’t his thing, but there was plenty in it that was extremely pertinent to his current situation. Such as: even if there were other guys, and enough to produce a viable next generation, there was still the unhappy chance that they’d go extinct from too many X chromosome babies. One in four went out that way. See also: the chance of inbred, pumpkin-headed, children of the corn action.)
Two months to DC, if he was lucky. More if he wasn’t. With only a monkey and some canned food for company. Or, to put a brighter spin on things, with a monkey and some canned food for company. But he couldn’t talk to people, couldn’t risk it, until he had a better disguise.
Another window-shaking crack had Ampersand pressing into his side. Yorick smoothed down fur that had ruffled in his sleep. Was Amp dreaming?
Yorick was a guy, and he was a feminist. How could he not be, with his mom, his sister, and his father? He’d liked to think that he was a forward thinking, pretty enlightened guy. He loved his girlfriend, and was pretty good with illusions. He was an English major in a world that didn’t value its artists and scholars (so sayeth his father - jesus, dad). He trained capuchin helper monkeys in his free time (of which there was plenty). He had excellent progressive, hipster-nerd credentials, of which he’d once been proud. But what the hell did any of that mean now?
He wanted to go to sleep, and wake up to his old world. At the same time, he didn’t want to go to sleep at all. Not without a Navy SEAL to guard his back, and a guarantee that there would be no more nightmares.
Two months to DC, if he was lucky. More if he wasn’t.
He lay down again, cradling Amp against his side. He closed his eyes, and tried to stop his ears - mentally - and ignore the storm outside. He might be woken up in a few hours by a flood. The house was in bad shape, and probably had been before the plague. He might be woken up by looters, which was categorically his least favourite way to wake up, because it involved running in the dark.
He concentrated on Ampersand’s breathing, which was even now. Metronome-like in its regularly. He’d managed to find his way to deep sleep.
This was a bad night, but it was late, going on early, and it would be over soon.
END
Author: schmevil
Summary: Yorick is having trouble sleeping, on the way to DC.
Characters: Yorick Brown
Word Count: 1513
Yorick was a feminist. Like, cradle to the grave. Regularly scheduled emotional hurricanes or not, there had always been a part of him that was convinced that the world would be a better place if run by the fairer sex. Witness Themiscrya. They didn’t call Wonder Woman’s homeland Paradise Island because of all the hot, scantily clad, warrior women. Or at least not only because of the warrior women.
Huddled in a ruined country house, praying that the looters had been there, done that, Yorick figured the world had finally offered up conclusive proof that he had been utterly and completely wrong about that one. So far the guys were winning, one-nothing, which hey, was only fair considering they were all dead and rotting in the streets. He was happy to accept the consolation prize of sucking less than a post-apocalyptic, feminine new world order, on behalf of his fellow Y chromosomes.
But to be fair, which he might as well be, the ladies were off to a rocky start, what with the looting, arson, and pockets of rioting, but it could have been so much worse. When slightly less than half the world’s population up and died, taking with it the vast majority of skilled tradespeople, emergency response workers and political leaders, the survivors were going to have a hard time coping.
And at least the guys were just dead. There were worse things than dead.
At least they weren’t trapped in a rickety old shack, with a terrified Capuchin, and outside, a storm that was clearly never going to end. Ampersand, thank god, had finally screamed himself to sleep, but Yorick still woke, every time the storm sent the windows rattling. The room lit up for a moment, then went dark again. It hardly made a difference. There was nothing in the house to look at, aside from his sack of canned food, and the water-stained walls. Outside was a solid wall of water.
Yorick took a sip from his canteen. Clean water, which might be hard to come by in the coming weeks, considering how things were going outside.
Outside-- it had taken him a long time to go outside, after. He probably wasn’t the only one whose first instinct was to get back into bed and wake up to the real world. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out that he was the only guy still walking the streets of New York. It had taken him longer to figure out that he was the only guy walking.
He couldn’t find Hero. Yorick looked for her as long as he could, but eventually he had to get out of the city. It was just like every pulp fiction, apocalypse - New York was not the place to be when the bombs came down. Finally he’d packed up as much canned food as he could carry, and headed for the only place he could think to go - DC.
New York to DC on foot was not an exciting prospect. The roads were jammed with smashed up cars and trucks, and the rotting corpses of their drivers. Fires burned all over the city, and even along the highways. There was plenty of fuel, and fire fighters were thin on the ground. He’d figured it would clear up a bit, once he was out of the city, and it had, but getting out of New York --
Starting when he was fifteen, and ending the summer before college, Yorick read The Stand eight times. Clocking in at over one thousand pages of post-apocalyptic, Judeo-Christian, sex, lies and fever dream, it was a feat. His favourite character was Larry. New York born, successful musician and ladies man, Larry, who eventually (after sleeping with Damien’s bride), helped save the world. The remains of it, anyway. The whole way out of the city he was mentally kicking himself over it: pieces of Larry’s trip, laid over his own, in sickening double vision. It wasn’t just The Stand, of course. Stephen King was like the gateway drug of horror fiction. There were Poe and Lovecraft, who were supposedly a little more highbrow, and father-approved. Even Michael Crichton. He counted. Possibly.
He spent the whole walk out of the city looking for looters, and muggers, with one eye, and zombies and shambling plague victims with the other. Jumping at even marginally suspicious sounds. Taking less than direct routes, backtracking, hiding. Hiding constantly. Hoping he wouldn’t die of smoke inhalation, or tetanus, or pneumonia, or eating food from dented cans. Or hell, heat exhaustion. The city was burning. Not just from the fires, but the sun that boiled the still whole concrete and steel until it burned too.
It was better out of the city. Except for the part where it was harder to find food and shelter. Much to his own current disappointment, he’d never been the boy scout type. He couldn’t cobble together a shelter from a wool blanket and a copse of trees. Four walls and a roof with three or less holes, for this boy, and this monkey.
The windows rattled again, and the room lit up with a flash of lightning. Ampersand slept on. The storm would probably let up by morning. They usually did, he was discovering. Yorick was a city guy. Or he had been. Now he was a wherever-he-could-find-shelter guy.
Two months to DC, if he was lucky. More if he wasn’t. He had five routes planned, ranked in descending order of preference. The most direct route was not actually his best bet, he figured. Staying by the highway: good idea. Traveling by highway: not so much, although it depended on what highway you were talking about. Going by country roads: maybe, maybe not. A baseball cap, poncho and kerchief only disguised so much, and the further he got from the city, the fewer places there were to hide. Becoming the star attraction in some small town’s permanent ladies night? He had places to be, mothers and sisters to (please) find.
There had to be other guys out there, somewhere. So he hadn’t heard of any yet - that didn’t mean he was the only one. This, he could admit in the quiet comfort of his head, was becoming a mantra. (He’d gone to this documentary with Beth about extinction thresholds and the consequences of small population size. It wasn’t his thing, but that hardly needed saying. So yeah, it wasn’t his thing, but there was plenty in it that was extremely pertinent to his current situation. Such as: even if there were other guys, and enough to produce a viable next generation, there was still the unhappy chance that they’d go extinct from too many X chromosome babies. One in four went out that way. See also: the chance of inbred, pumpkin-headed, children of the corn action.)
Two months to DC, if he was lucky. More if he wasn’t. With only a monkey and some canned food for company. Or, to put a brighter spin on things, with a monkey and some canned food for company. But he couldn’t talk to people, couldn’t risk it, until he had a better disguise.
Another window-shaking crack had Ampersand pressing into his side. Yorick smoothed down fur that had ruffled in his sleep. Was Amp dreaming?
Yorick was a guy, and he was a feminist. How could he not be, with his mom, his sister, and his father? He’d liked to think that he was a forward thinking, pretty enlightened guy. He loved his girlfriend, and was pretty good with illusions. He was an English major in a world that didn’t value its artists and scholars (so sayeth his father - jesus, dad). He trained capuchin helper monkeys in his free time (of which there was plenty). He had excellent progressive, hipster-nerd credentials, of which he’d once been proud. But what the hell did any of that mean now?
He wanted to go to sleep, and wake up to his old world. At the same time, he didn’t want to go to sleep at all. Not without a Navy SEAL to guard his back, and a guarantee that there would be no more nightmares.
Two months to DC, if he was lucky. More if he wasn’t.
He lay down again, cradling Amp against his side. He closed his eyes, and tried to stop his ears - mentally - and ignore the storm outside. He might be woken up in a few hours by a flood. The house was in bad shape, and probably had been before the plague. He might be woken up by looters, which was categorically his least favourite way to wake up, because it involved running in the dark.
He concentrated on Ampersand’s breathing, which was even now. Metronome-like in its regularly. He’d managed to find his way to deep sleep.
This was a bad night, but it was late, going on early, and it would be over soon.
END