Fandom: Jericho
Rating: G
Char/Pair: Johnston Green
Disclaimer: All characters and recognizable themes belong to CBS and others. I am in no way earning money or other profit from this fanfic.
Prompt: Jukebox hits at bailey's tavern on livejournal
W/C: 507
Warnings: Spoilers for season 1 finale
A/N: None
All around me are familiar faces Worn out places, worn out faces Bright and early for their daily races Going nowhere, going nowhere ⌠Mad World■ by Tears for Fears
The bright white flash is something heard about, something anticipated, so many people teeter on the edge of death come back to tell the tale of a tunnel and booming voices, but he winces anyway after being blinded by the dark for so long. The ground is post-apocalyptical dust beneath him, the sky a red that has nothing to do with a setting sun. He didn't expect to be alone. He sits up, belly taught with dried blood that flakes against his fingers as he scratches. No wound, not even a scar. He'd be relieved if he weren't convinced he was in hell.
There's no air. Or there's air it just doesn't move, there's no feeling to it. It's not warm or cold it's just. Not. He doesn't know what to make of it, doesn't know why the trees don't sway or why the sun's so bright it could make a man blind but he can see clear as anything. He wonders if he had actually died when the bomb hit, if he had died and everything over the last few months had just been some kind of in-between, a hold-over until The Powers That Be decided what to do with him and this is where he ended up. After everything, this is where he ends up?
He picks himself up off the ground, grunts and muscle-pop, a half-hearted attempt at brushing the dust from his pants. He feels weird, maybe a little disoriented and the fact that he's the only person around does little to settle him; it doesn't matter that this is (was) his home, it is unfamiliar, and, perhaps wrong.
The land beneath him, once recognizable is now something he doesn't understand as he picks his way down the gravel road, just outside the Jericho border. There's a cold, quick-building panic in his belly, he doesn't know why he's in this place, why the God he had prayed to for so many years had decided to plop him down in this wasteland.
He wonders idly if time is passing, if it really did take 5 minutes to get to where he is now; figures it doesn't really matter anyway. The grass is flat here, pressed to the earth like a flower between the pages of a book, like something heavy had passed by, or a lot of somethings.
He continues on, crests the hill, and that's when he sees it, that's when he sees them. Thousands of people (souls?), a mass exodus to where he doesn't know. Thousands of faces he's never seen, never would have known under any other circumstance, but he thinks maybe they are familiar. It's quiet and unnerving and when he gets closer they don't look up, when he falls into step with them they don't notice.
He wonders how long they've been shuffling through, if they'll ever finally get to where they're going and it's too late to turn back now. He never expected it to be this way, the end. But at least now he's no longer alone.