A/N: Some of my favorite fics on here are of the AU/post-apocalypse/disaster-related variety. So I reckoned I've give it a go, too, because why not. I tried to start this back early in the summer, but couldn't seem to properly concentrate on writing two stories at once. Now that The Ultimate Currency is finished, I decided to revisit this, and for those who read that piece, I'm giving the whole writing two-at-a-time another go and 'The Loudest One in the Room' will be up soon. In the meantime...
I don't own Skins or the characters.
Post #1: My One Responsibility to the People
It was my mom's idea to start a blog chronicling my summer vacation before going off to college—uh, the American kind, I guess, since a lot of you out there probably call it uni. See, I hadn't traveled overseas since I was five, and at that age you remember very little of where you went. Sure, maybe you can jog your memory by looking through the old, stiff photos your mom had developed from the yellow, clunky disposable Kodak cameras that had been all the rage back then, but that's not really remembering if you have to look at the picture to make the association.
At least, not to me. So I told her around Christmas that I wanted to go to Europe before going off to start in the military commissioning program at State (reduced tuition, a book stipend, and a small monthly paycheck in return for working out and knowing how to drink without getting into trouble? I'd have been an idiot not to accept their scholarship). Besides, I told her, I'd have to keep my nose clean for four years to maintain that scholarship, and I needed to let off steam, unleash my inner rebel child.
'Cause I totally have one.
Somewhere, deep down.
At least, that's what I argued at the time. Now it's not so much a figure of a speech anymore. I am a rebel child, so to speak.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. The blog. The one you're reading right...now. This one. Ese blog. Or something like that; I've lost my Spanish over the year. But that's besides the point. The point is why I decided to start writing this blog.
My mom agreed to help me get everything together for my passport and help plan an itinerary. But money was tight for her (reason #31 why an ROTC scholarship sounded like all that and a bag of chips re: paying for college), and traveling overseas is juuuust a little bit expensive for a recently graduated senior. So she came up with the idea of fundraising for it, asking family and friends to donate x or y amount of money to my 'Eurotrip' fund. And yes the humor was lost on her—my mom's not big into raunchy comedies. In return for their "buying stock" in my trip, I was required to acquire certain knick knacks, postcards, or trinkets from various locales in Europe...'where the history comes from,' yeah? But no matter how much money my scam conned you into giving, it did buy you a 'subscription'' to this blog.
So first things first: sorry for admitting that I scammed you out of anywhere from a couple bucks (that was really heartfelt, Aunt Geraldine) to a couple hundred (you really didn't have to, Mr. Brown, even if you were trying to bribe me to date your daughter). But I hope you find this entertaining and enlightening. 'Cause it started out as a way to tell everyone in PG-terms how much fun I had backpacking across Europe, learning about my heritage, how not to play Risk, and how not to butcher accents that all my friends back here think they have down to a 'T.'
Obviously, it hasn't exactly panned out that way. I never actually made it to the Continent, at least not as quickly as my mom's carefully delineated itinerary expected me to. I did get there, for a brief time, but we'll get to that eventually.
I never expected to be diverted to Bristol on my flight into London, but then again, no one ever expected Guernsey to become a twenty-first century Atlantis, the Low Countries to become a malaria-infested marshland, the cliffs of Dover to crumble and fall into what used to be the English Channel, or for London to disappear in a sinkhole. Like a massive sinkhole.
Of course, it's pretty much all one big sea now, and we, the gang I mean—Effy, Cook, Freddie, Emily, and I—we'd all go down and hang out on the 'Urban Shore' where you could sit, toes in the warm water and your back up against what was still functioning as a coffee shop, albeit one with about a half inch of standing water on the floor at high tide.
But damn, I'm getting ahead of myself again. So yeah. Let's start at the beginning, when I met everyone.
Oh, and in case you've forgotten in the days and months since Lynx became the main security provider for the 1% and climate change ceased to be a theoretical exercise, I'm Ethan Theodore James the Third.
But everyone calls me Trey.
The gang does, just like my friends used to back home. Right, the gang. And how I met them. Well, actually, strike that. First a disclaimer: apparently the gang used to be bigger. A lot bigger than the four plus me, at least. They don't talk about it much. Effy doesn't talk much at all, really, so that's not a surprise. But Freddie and Cook clam up sometimes if something comes up, which happens maybe once a day or every other day. Emily...she handled it the worst at first, but over the months she's steeled herself. None of them let it affect what we do, but when we're just lounging, like right now, the tension is right there.
Names get floated out there sometimes, by accident usually: Thomas, Katie, Naomi, Pandora, Michelle, Karen. Some are siblings from what I've gathered; others friends; others more than that. And in this fucked up not-world that we're struggling through, of course the only communication they've had from any of them is a single-sentence email all the way from the bloody Congo (see that, sis? I used bloody in a sentence) that Thomas sent all of them letting them know his family was okay and he was protecting them. Otherwise, there's been nothing.
And judging by the sounds coming from behind me in the shed, Cook knicked Freddie's spliff again.
I'll be right back; that's really good shit. (Sorry Mom, yeah I've kinda figured it's okay to do drugs if the world's falling to pieces. It really is the end of the world as we know it, and I'm going to feel fine).
Okay, now I'm really gone. For now...
One Year Earlier
Naomi lazily smiled at the feeling of someone laughing while resting against her. The vibrations soothed her and intertwined harmoniously with the steady splash, advance, and retreat of the tide, and the rustling of ferns and cattails behind them along the hilly edge of the beach. She closed her eyes and focused only on the sounds around her, the peaceful scene disappearing from sight, only for it to be painted anew in her mind's eye from the images created by a plethora of sounds and smells. The briny sea salt smell mingled with the heavy scent of burning firewood; occasional crackles from the make-shift campfire at Naomi's feet added themselves to the sounds swirling through her mind. And yet, there was one last smell that lingered, penetrating the others...
"Is that vanilla?"
"Hmm?" Naomi felt Emily's head shift on her stomach as the smaller teen turned to squint with one eye along Naomi's body. "Yeah, s'pose."
"Huh," replied Naomi She rolled her bottom lip out thoughtfully, but lapsed back into silence. She reopened her eyes; gulls wheeled and squawked overhead in a sky painted in progressively darker hues of blue as she cast her gaze from east to west and populated with thicker and thicker steel grey clouds the farther out to sea she looked. Naomi was lying parallel to the coast, increasingly frothy waves marking high tide off her right shoulder and the breeze-bent ferns many meters uphill off her left. Looking out across the whitecaps, Naomi sniffed a new, distinct smell, that of impending rain.
She felt Emily sit up and Naomi wriggled to a reclining position, elbows sunk into the sand behind her. She watched Emily twist and look out at the thunderheads gathering off the coast, nose wrinkling at the same mood-darkening smell Naomi had detected. The first, faint reports of thunder echoed across the water from dozens of kilometers offshore, reinforcing the foul weather's insidious presence.
Further up the shore, nearer to the access road, tourists scurried to and fro, packing up beach chairs, picnic blankets, and improvised pitches while yelling at their children to pick up the ball instead of trying to kick it back to their car. Naomi shook her head and turned back to stare into the dancing, mesmerizing flames of their small fire.
"Have you seen Katie?" asked Emily, standing and shielding her eyes from the reflection of the dwindling afternoon sun as it shone off the sea.
Naomi looked back up the shore, then down it past the fire. "Not for hours. I—" She caught herself as a blip of familiar reddish-purple hair appeared amidst the green and beige cattails far down the beach. The small spot of color was accompanied by a slightly larger, brown shape that split and headed away down the beach as the blip Naomi thought was Katie coalesced into the other twin, hair tousled and skin flushed.
Naomi stood and made herself busy splashing water on the flames, gathering their towels, and shaking out the slips they had worn over their swimming costumes. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Emily, arms crossed and a perturbed look on her face, standing next to the dying fire as she waited for Katie to return from her tryst. Katie had insisted on coming with them on what Naomi and Emily originally planned as a celebratory getaway—celebrating the end of college, the end of their months-long animosity towards one another, and ultimately celebrating one last weekend of peace before a furious week of packing, planning, and organizing before their trip to Goa. It was the forthcoming trip that Katie used as her excuse to tag along: "You'll be able to shag on beaches half a world away, for Christ's sake. You can manage one weekend here without it. Besides, I won't get to see Ems again until we're moving into school, and that's rather pitiful, don't you think?"
Naomi didn't think so, since she'd had Emily all to herself for the first sixteen years of their lives, but she kept her mouth shut and agreed to tolerate the elder twin's presence for a couple days; regardless, it had not precluded them from the sex Katie seemed to think was so unnecessary for them to enjoy. And it's not like Katie had any trouble pulling either...where the fuck did she find that guy?!
"Who the hell was that?" exclaimed Emily scant moments later as Katie came within earshot. Naomi looked up with a smirk; clearly they had shared opinions on Katie's activities.
"John? Joel...Justin? Whatever. I was walking and he ran past me, then doubled back and we got to talking."
"Mmm, yeah, sounds like you skipped the pleasantries and got straight to it, then," commented Naomi dryly as the wind picked up, swirling sand around the campsite.
"Yeah, sounds like he's quite loquacious," added Emily as she walked behind Katie and picked up one of their bags. As she bent over, she winked at Naomi.
"Fuck off, you two. Just because—"
Lightning lanced down out of the sky far too close off shore for comfort and, seconds later, a loud clap of thunder resonated over the beach. The sky continued to darken over the tumultuous waves.
"I think we should probably be going," said Naomi softly.
"I think I agree with you," Katie replied, equally worried at the approaching storm. The three girls stood still, staring out at the lightning as the narrow, jagged streaks of bluish-white became more and more frequent. Intermittently, fat raindrops began to fall along the beach, staining the pale sand like a dark beige spotted print.
Katie shrieked and turned, fleeing towards the hills bracketing the beach, when a single drop of rain landed on her shoulder. Her bag and towel lay forgotten behind her; Naomi smirked across the ashes of the fire at Emily and called after Katie, "Afraid you're going to melt, Katiekins? It's just a bit of rain."
The rain-laden clouds chose that precise moment to unleash their payload on the beachgoers, the spotty drizzle of heavy raindrops giving way to smaller, faster bullet-like drops that stung and pierced the skin repeatedly; thunder rumbled overhead again.
"Shit! Come on!" Emily cried, following her sister's lead and taking off up the beach as the sand continued to darken and soften beneath her feet. Grabbing Katie's things in addition to her own, Naomi gritted her teeth and chased after the Fitch sisters, running with her head down and shoulders hunched slightly against the cold rain. An increasingly violent wind whistled across the water behind her.
Katie disappeared over the lip of the hills just as Naomi drew even with Emily at the foot of them. Lightning struck the sand a meter ahead of them, eliciting a surprised scream from Naomi as she hopped to the side. The deafening report of thunder was instantaneous, but as it faded, a harsh cracking continued to fill the air along the upper parts of the beach and further inland. Emily and Naomi exchanged a concerned glance, looking down at their feet.
"That didn't sound like thunder," Emily said as they slogged uphill.
"I think it came from below," Naomi replied in several gasps.
Their feet sank further and further into the sand. Emily grasped at ferns for support, but they snapped off in her hand. She pitched forward and scrambled towards the road on all fours, wet hair falling in her face and pebbles of sand sticking to her wrists, forearms, and knees. Her struggle did not last long, though, as she felt strong hands on her left tricep and under her armpit. Stumbling to her feet, Emily parted the soaked ends of her hair and looked up at Naomi with relief.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it," Naomi replied with a small smile.
"Are you two going to hurry up, or have a go in the rain?" Katie's exasperated voice cut through the wind, drawing Emily's attention. Her twin was standing at the crest of the hill, looking down on them disapprovingly. Emily and Naomi exchanged a bemused glance and resumed their trudge uphill. By the time they reached Katie, they were thoroughly soaked through, towels rendered useless and fringed with sand.
"Well, this is shit," observed Naomi dryly as they started across the road. A second sharp cracking sound like the slow splintering of a thick piece of wood under great strain emanated from the ground beneath their feet. It persisted for nearly a minute, bringing Katie to a halt in the middle of the street. Emily and Naomi quickened their pace as they headed for the car park on the far side of the road.
"What the fuck was that?" asked Katie as it died away. She looked down at her feet, frightened. Naomi and Emily turned together, squinting into the biting slant-rain still pressing in from the sea. Emily locked eyes with her twin; the sounds of waves crashing against the shore, of rain pelting against the road and her exposed skin, of wind howling in her ears muddled together in an increasingly loud buzzing that drowned out whatever Naomi was saying to her.
Without warning, the road behind Katie buckled and collapsed in on itself, black asphalt lined with yellow and white shattering into tiny pieces and large islands of rock. Jagged gaps spread out from some point not far out in the ocean, skeletal fingers of nothingness in the archipelago of stone that was only moments before a rain-slicked road. Katie screamed as the spot she was standing on shifted and sank slightly, fissures coursing around it as the cracking and shearing intensified.
Emily was frozen, rooted in place at the impossible destruction nature was delivering to the world around them. Naomi, however, was not: She darted forward, grabbing Katie by the hand and pulling her southward along the road—away from Emily. The sparsely grassed area between the road and car park shifted underneath Emily's feet, and she dropped her towel and bag to race after her twin and girlfriend.
The three of them scrambled down the road, sprinting as fast as they could on the slick surface as cracks spider-webbed the road underneath their feet and spread farther and farther inland to their left. Katie let go of Naomi's hand and looked back over her shoulder, reassuring herself that Emily was still following them. Lightning continued to strike down around them, spotting their vision and illuminating the rapidly expanding web of shattered stone and rock. Along their right, the beach pitched up and downwards as a pressure wave radiated outward from the epicenter of the earthquake off the coast. It passed underneath the road, upending cars and hurtling them into ever-expanding crevasses.
Emily staggered, placing a hand on the ground to steady herself, but found herself falling to the ground despite her efforts. Rock in the ground behind her sheared, and she jumped away from the growing gap in the road, looking for her sister or Naomi. She spied Katie pulling Naomi across a newly created crevice and the two of them teetering on the unstable island of asphalt. Focusing on not catching her foot in a small crack, or stumbling into a larger one, Emily made her way along the road until she was even with them.
"We have to get further inland!" she yelled into the wind. Naomi and Katie looked up, but their expression clearly told Emily that the exact message had not made it to them. "We can't stay here!" Two heads shook frustratedly in response.
Emily furrowed her eyebrows and picked her way closer to them, nervously feeling another large wave rumble through the broken ground beneath her feet. It seemed distant, but if the most recent wave was any indication, it wouldn't be long until it arrived. Naomi and Katie simultaneously made their way towards the middle of the road, moving laterally to the south as they did by necessity. Rivers of water raced down angled pieces of roadway into the fissures between broken pieces of bedrock.
Finally, Katie yelled out, "Ems, we have to get out of here!" The wind carried her voice, and Emily nodded vigorously in return. The three came to a sliding, awkward halt on a large, somewhat stable piece of highway by the boot of a dilapidated Ford. Emily looked up and down the road, trying to make out a landmark in the rain.
"There should be a bridge just down there, right?"
"I think so," shouted back Naomi. She looked at Katie who shrugged. Another ominous rumble created new veins in the rock around them.
"Right," said Katie definitively. "Let's head for the bridge and hopefully we can get across it before it's gone."
She set off at a jog, Emily and Naomi falling into stride next to her. Their pace was slow as they skipped over small cracks and tip-toed their way along the edge of large crevices. Where the road remained flat, they ran as quickly as they could with the rain and cross-wind working against them. The immediate return of thunder from the constant lightning intertwined with the more and more frequent reverberations of the next pressure wave as it neared the shore. All three pairs of eyes glanced out at the raging ocean, then back down at their feet to ensure their footfalls fell true.
Suddenly, the asphalt changed from black to a light grey concrete, still replete with innumerable cracks. Emily looked up hopefully and felt her heart soar. The bridge was still partially intact, its massive steel cables descending down from a single point high above the center of the bay like the spokes of some invisible wheel that bisected the middle of the bridge. While the steel support structure was visible in many places, enough concrete still remained that dozens of people were picking their way south ahead of them. Cars stood abandoned or damaged beyond repair in each lane of the highway; Emily, Naomi, and Katie were forced to climb over a couple that had slid perpendicular to the road and blocked passage along the shoulder-high barriers that blocked the steel suspension cables from the roadway.
They caught up to a young man and woman supporting one another as they slowly crossed the bridge—her right leg supported no weight and she leaned upon the man for support, despite the visibly painful cut he was sporting across the back of his left shoulder. Emily slowed to look back at them as they jogged past, and just as she slowed, the growing swell of a massive wave caught her attention. It was moving along the bay towards the bridge as the rumbling of the next pressure wave apexed. Emily whirled, screaming incoherently at her sister and girlfriend to find something to hold onto, but she was too late.
The seismic wave pushed the storm surge into the bridge first. The force of the wave slammed Emily and the couple to the concrete as water impacted the barriers, broke through, and washed violently across the bridge. Emily was tossed like a rag doll backwards with the flow of water, hitting the barrier on the inner part of the roadway. Air left her body in a rush, the wind knocked from her; she gasped for air only to take in briny water instead. Coughing and sputtering, she pressed against the barrier as water continued to rush over and past her.
She slowly turned her head to look left, down the bridge, at where she thought Katie and Naomi should be. The roadway was completely empty.
NO! The internal scream echoed in Emily's head as she struggled against the last vestiges of the storm surge, making it onto her knees with one hand on the barrier behind her. She looked back the way they had come, ignoring the young woman with the injured leg, who was curled in the fetal position maybe ten meters away. Making a slow turn, Emily looked back down along the highway, rubbing at her eyes to clear her vision from the rain and water still splashing at her from the surge.
Behind a car, which was angled unnaturally towards the outer barrier of the bridge, something shifted and Emily pushed herself to her feet. She gasped for air unsuccessfully twice before finally inhaling enough to move. Stumbling ahead, bent nearly double against the elements, she corrected herself: someone was seeking shelter between the car and outside barrier of the bridge. The person was sitting, back against the car, feet wedged against the barrier. Emily waved her arms in large circles as a gust of wind howled up the bay, threatening to knock her off her feet. She placed her left foot over her right, side-stepping across the road and into the wind, peering at the person hiding next to the car. As the person turned, Emily again lost the ability to breath.
"Naomi! Naoms!" What she intended as shouts came out as strangled cries, but somehow they carried the short distance and the blonde girl turned towards the sound, wincing fiercely as she did.
"Ems. Katie, she..." Naomi coughed up water and shook her head.
"Are you alright?" Emily crouched down and started shuffling towards her..
"I'm so—"
The pressure wave trailing the storm surge hit the bridge, buckling the supports beneath the roadway. Emily recoiled, scrambling backwards on all fours away from the chasm tearing through the bridge between her and the car. Naomi's eyes widened in fear, locking with Emily's as she stared across the impassable distance. The piece of bridge underneath the car and Naomi lurched downwards, the steel supports straining momentarily. As the roadway shifted, Emily saw that Naomi was cradling her left arm across her lap. Emily's attention was drawn, though, back up to her eyes, which seemed to be expressing regret, sorrow, and defiance all at once.
"Naomi, NO!" Finally, Emily's voice returned and she stood shakily, taking a step towards her girlfriend.
The supporting cables running inside the concrete of the bridge torqued and snapped, plummeting massive sections of the bridge in front of Emily down to the water below. She pitched forward to her knees right at the edge of the sheared roadway as the bridge collapsed, fingers scrabbling furiously for a grip as she watched the car—and Naomi—disappear into the roiling waters of the bay. Emily's fingers found purchase on the rough edge of the bridge, and she dropped to her belly, hand extended futilely towards the water.
"No, no, no..."