Author's note.
This lovely work of fiction is the first part of a series of one-shots I've called 'Where Were You When the World Was Ending'. Some are long, some are short. I hope you enjoy them.
Disclaimer: I have a cat and a room full of books. Almost everything else belongs to someone else. Recognisable characters, TV shows, movies, etc belong to their creators (in some cases otherwise known as god), producers, directors, etc.
Where Were You When the World Was Ending?
One.
Ziva.
Lighting Candles.
Ω
11 days into a 14 day team building seminar; at a summer camp about three and a half hours drive from D.C., the world ends.
It goes, not with a bang, but a whimper.
Ω
Their phones had been confiscated on the first day and there are no televisions or newspapers at the camp, but Tony's found a radio. And eleven days of being told how to trust each other is starting to get on everyone's nerves. So instead, they're dancing.
Abby and McGee are mostly making it up as they go along. Gibbs is flirting with a red head from one of the corporate teams. Ziva is practicing her waltz with Ducky. And Tony's watching her, with a look that's promising all sorts of things about the slow dance.
The silence between the beat heavy jazz and the siren is startling. But the looks on their faces as they recognise what the siren is, makes Ziva's heart fall. And while she'll forget the exact words, she won't forget the reactions
Ω
'Virus'
'Highly contagious'
'48 hour incubation period'
'Stay in your homes'
'Stay calm'
'Do not call 911'
'The hotline number is...'
'Schools closed until further notice'
Ω
One of the corporate guys laughs; a quick, nervous flutter of sound, that stops when everyone turns to look at him. Ziva's hand clenches into a fist, just in case he panics. But the moment passes.
And McGee is the first to say what he's thinking.
"...Sarah..."
His sister.
Ω
Gibbs gets his team down one end of the hall, leaving the other for the lawyers, real estate agents and team building instructors. They can't seem to do anything but yell at each other. Gibbs's red head; Finola (spelt F-I-N) Sayer, leans against the wall next to Gibbs. And another woman; Hala Alvares, reminding Ziva of Michelle Lee, hovers in the back ground. She follows Palmer when Ducky; seeing that they need something to do, sends them off to make cups of coffee and tea.
Gibbs lets Tony hum 'It's the end of the world as we know it' for a full minute, before slapping the back of his head. He had waited for the two most likely to really freak out to leave the room.
McGee and Abby commit felonious acts by hacking into the CDC's (mostly) secure mainframe.
And everyone pretends not to notice when McGee leaves numerous messages for his sister.
The virus is like nothing the CDC's seen before. The incubation period is the only time when (1) its not contagious and (2) the anti viral treatments have any chance of working. It starts with the same symptoms as the common cold, but weakens the heart, lungs and kidneys. The survival rate for average healthy people is 35%. For someone with pre-existing heart/lung/kidney conditions it drops down to 14%.
Tony misses the way Abby glances at him.
The military have already set up road blocks, check points and quarantine areas in most major cities.
Its fast, it's lethal and it's worldwide. And they have no way of stopping it.
Gibbs uses his best Gunnery Sergeant voice to send everyone to bed and spends the rest of the night talking to Ducky.
Ω
In the middle of the night Ziva watches the cars; full of lawyers, real estate agents and team building instructors, leave, only a little disappointed that she hadn't thought to siphon any of the fuel. But their leaving increases her chances of surviving.
Ω
Tony decreases those chances by dragging her along on his impromptu road trip and only leaving Gibbs a note to say that they're gone.
There are more people on the roads that Tony expected and he has to drive further a field to find shops that still have the items that they need. Aspirin, alcohol, bread, toilet paper, matches, eggs, tinned fruit and vegetables are all slowly crossed off Tony's hastily written list.
Tony hands Ziva the basket and leaves her standing in front of the Feminine Hygiene Products.
Prices have tripled and Tony maxes out his credit cards in three stops.
The last thing Tony does before heading back to camp is break into a sporting/camping goods store. He pile guns, ammunition, clothes, shoes and whatever else will fit, onto the back seat.
Ziva kisses Tony, when he hands her the gifts he's gotten for her and Abby.
She's always wanted a crossbow.
On their way back they stick to the back roads, avoid the nearest towns and Tony distracts Ziva by telling her what the characters in every world ending/survival/disaster movie he's ever seen, did wrong.
Ω
When they get back, Gibbs glares, Abby fusses and Ducky confines Tony to the kitchen until summer. They can't afford for anyone to get ill and Tony's bout with the plague makes him more susceptible. Ziva puts on her best 'I'm disappointed by your actions' face and scolds him into accepting Ducky's orders.
That night she sneaks into Tony's room, into his bed and wraps her arms around him. She has to get up later to get the blankets from her bed.
His shivering might only be in her nightmares, but she's not taking any chances.
In the morning; when she's leaving Tony's room, Gibbs doesn't say anything and McGee owes Abby two cups of coffee.
Ω
There's enough food; if they're careful, for a couple of months. There had been three more seminars scheduled and the kitchen had been well stocked, but even with the food Tony and Ziva bought back, at some point, they're going to run out. And if McGee's reading the updates on the CDC's mainframe correctly, electricity, heating and running water, will soon be nothing but pleasant memories.
Ducky rambles on about his Grandmother's cottage and the fireplace in the sitting room until Hala asks him what was in her kitchen.
Their first attempt to build a wood fuelled oven burns down half a cabin, the second fills a different cabin with smoke and the third is ready for use two days before the power cuts out.
Ziva finds the process of cooking on one, calming.
The top of the second working oven is full of pots of water. Washing, entirely in cold water is extremely unpleasant.
Ω
The day after they finish rationing the food from the quickly defrosting freezers, Abby and Palmer follow Tony's example.
When they get back, Gibbs has cut enough fire wood to last half the winter and Abby's driving one of those trucks they transport cars on.
Ziva decides that she just doesn't want to know where Abby found the truck or how she knows how to drive one.
There are seven cars on it, each with a full tank of gas and packed with what Abby and Palmer call, the bare necessities. Which includes a car full of toilet paper, the chemistry equipment Palmer got in exchange for stitching up some guy's leg, a year's worth of fruit and vegetable seeds and a half dozen speckled hens.
Gibbs almost forgives them when he finds the woodworking tools.
Abby and Palmer share a bottle of vodka before they talk about what they've seen.
"They made us watch them hang somebody Gibbs."
Bad news travels fast and most of the towns they'd passed had detour signs and rifles to keep strangers out. But, in that town you'd been welcome as long as you stayed on the right side of the law and you weren't sick.
The some body had been caught stealing from a widower with 3 young children and a sheriff for a brother in law; who was keen on making examples of other people's mistakes.
Just as important as the supplies Abby and Palmer had picked up, is the information they'd gathered.
People in the U.S.A. fall into four categories; people who get sick and die (approximately 59%), people who get sick and don't die (20%), those with a natural immunity (1%) and people who manage to manage to not get exposed (20%), which means that the population has gone from nearly 304 million to just over 124.5 million in about 7 ½ weeks.
New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Las Vegas and Chicago are almost ghost towns.
They'd seen the smoke from the crematorium two hours before driving past it.
Other countries had fared differently. An ex army vet; with a radio setup that would make NORAD jealous, had told Palmer about Scotland and Wales closing their borders to keep the English out. People in Western Australia using the Nullarbor Plain as a quarantine zone. And a 1/3 of Paris burning, after a meth head had died with his lab still running.
Cuba's doing well.
Ω
They'd been staying in the camp's main hall, but the smaller cabins (30, including the one they almost burnt down) are slowly being claimed for other uses.
The chickens are in number 11. Abby plays mad scientist; making soaps, candles and what ever else she thinks might be useful in number 13. Number 3's destined to be the pantry, 4-6 will store the increasing amount of fire wood they need and Fin sets up the veggie patches in 7-10.
The rooms in the main hall are always freezing, so it's easy for Ziva to get Tony to move with her into cabin 21. And even easier to convince Ducky and Gibbs that the next oven should be built there.
Fin announces the official end of Rule 12, after she and Gibbs move into cabin 18. Hala and Palmer quickly occupy cabin 2. Ducky claims cabin 27. And Abby and McGee have cabins 15 and 16, right next to each other.
As Abby tells Ziva, they like each other, they just wouldn't be very good at living together.
Winter arrives as a blizzard that keeps everyone indoors for days and has Ziva inventing new and interesting ways of keeping Tony from going crazy.
Ω
December brings refugees; mostly people from cities, who have realised they can't survive on tinned food and chocolate bars and have been turned away else where.
They get quarantined in cabins 29 and 30 for three weeks.
One woman almost cries when Abby, standing well back from the quarantine boundary line, throws her a box of tampons.
Ducky counts 236 people to turn up on their door steps. 57 decide not to stay; Ducky gives them letters of clean health, hoping it will get them into other towns. 141 need to be cremated; it's too cold to dig graves and they can't risk spreading the virus, or any other disease.
23 of those who stay are children.
They all bring tinned food, blankets and more hands to help.
Ω
Palmer; with helpers, is in charge of the younger children. He has the most experience, being; hopefully still, a middle child, with lots of nephews and nieces who had him wrapped around their little fingers. With this lot, he knows better.
Until the one kindergarten and three high school teachers and one engineering lecturer can figure out more formal lessons, the teenagers get shuffled around; learning self defence, gun maintenance, cooking, woodworking, gardening, and whatever else anyone has got time to show them.
Hala; whose four brothers and six cousins took her hunting, to football practice, joy riding and cow tipping, organises two small hunting groups. Gibbs is noticeably silent when they start bringing back more then rabbits, deer and the occasional sheep.
Ziva's not entirely sure what to think when they bring back a pair of milking cows.
Ω
Tony finds 8 candles for Ziva to light for Hanukah.
They celebrate Christmas with home made cards and decoration, badly sung carols and Ducky having to be reminded to stop going off on tangents when telling the kids stories.
Ω
New Years is Abby-made fireworks, the last of the non-medicinal alcohol and more truth in the smiles and laughter than there was at Christmas.
Tony shows Ziva that the dance lessons his stepmother made him take weren't a waste of time and refuses to stop kissing her until long after midnight.
Ω
There's another blizzard in January.
And McGee paints an entire wall in the main hall with blackboard paint.
The camp had plenty of chalk to begin with and Palmer had picked up a few more cartons in exchange for medical advice. A token so that a little old lady could say that she didn't need charity.
One end of the long hall is a calendar. The months and number of days marked out in bright green paint, so that the days of the week can be written in, in chalk and changed as required.
The other end of the wall is filled with lists. Lists of birthdays and holidays. Of Palmer and Ducky's surgery hours, McGee's radio days, hunting day, chore rosters, school results, detentions and groundings and allergies.
Feeding and sheltering 47 adults and 23 children; without everyone getting on each others nerves, requires a large amount of organisation.
Gibbs might be in charge, but it's Tony who makes it all work. And he'd been making it all work long before the job was officially his.
Ω
Abby gets her still working in time for two celebrations. St Patrick's Day and the day they notice that the snow is starting to melt.
Ω
In the middle of April Fin stand in front of the calendar for two hours, doing backwards math and eventually lists the third week in October as her potential due date.
Ziva spends the next four days making sure that an understandably distracted Gibbs doesn't do anything dangerous. Like walking into the lake, one of Hala's traps or in front of archery practice.
The partially burnt cabin; with the oven fixed and all the available netting tacked up, starts being used as a summer kitchen. Around which, at meal times, all the kids gather like moths to candles.
Fin and her gardeners move the vegetable patches outside and start planning ways to improve winter production.
They'd managed to coax the plants through the cold months with heat from the ovens, a solitary sun lamp powered by a few car batteries and sheer will power.
The requests, presented to Tony, for books on preserving and glass jars, is just the start.
The kids need shoes and more clothing. The cooks want flour, onions and a larger range of herbs and spices. And Ducky's run out of bandaids, aspirin and number of things Tony has trouble pronouncing.
Ziva wants a piece of fruit that didn't come from a tin and Fin wants a banana split with gherkin relish.
McGee and No-last-name-Phil; who paid for his engineering degree by first being a plumber, want a few hours to rummage around in electrical supplies and hardware stores. Phil has a few ideas about running water that have all the women; who outnumber the men, dropping not so subtle hints about how much they like those ideas.
Ω
Gibbs, Tony and Ducky spend a week figuring out who should go, where they should go and what they should look for.
They agree on four teams, four directions, a hundred miles and anything they can get their hands on without resorting to actively robbing people.
Ω
The teams are away longer than anyone's comfortable with. But they get back, safe and sound, within days of each other. And bringing enough friends, relatives and neighbours trailing along after them that four cabins are needed to house everyone during the quarantine period.
But Ivy Callahan managed to find a guy, who'd managed to get a mill working over winter and is willing to swap food for flour. And Doug Odell asks for a few weeks to look for one of the groups he's heard is actually growing the wheat needed for milling.
Phil, Abby and McGee drool over the solar panels, whose batteries get connected to the cool room.
At which Palmer and Ducky breathe sighs of relief, as the potential food poisoning disaster is averted.
And several baskets of fruit appear in the kitchen, just in time for the post-quarantine celebrations.
Fin gets her gherkin relish banana split.
Ω
Gibbs and Fin move back into the main hall, to free up cabin space for all the new people. Anyone who makes 'lord of the manor' jokes gets assigned latrine duty.
Tony gets a lot of latrine duty.
Ω
Tony and Ziva leave for Washington D.C. in June.
A trip that originally took a leisurely four hours, on good roads, now takes four days.
Ziva doesn't count the days they spent taking six children back to camp, after the man they'd been with had asked Tony if he'd wanted to spend a little personal time with an eight year old.
None of the kids had flinched when Ziva shot him.
And Gibbs adds a new rule to his list.
Ω
NCIS is, in its own way, still running. As is the rest of the Naval Yard, though it's naval in name only, since there are now as many soldiers, airmen and alphabet agents, as there are sailors and marines.
Tony and Ziva collect the personal items they'd kept in their desks, from the army team now using said desks. The new acting director is a retired air force colonel. And the Navy part of NCIS is slowly being dropped.
Tony gives Ziva a 'what do you think?' look. She shrugs.
They haven't replaced Navy with Military and an independent Criminal Investigation Service sounds like something Gibbs might approve of.
Ω
They find Fornell living on base, with his daughter, another FBI agent, her cousin and his two children.
Fornell's one of the survivors. The tough old bastard didn't even bother going to the doctors or a hospital when he got sick, just had a neighbour leave a box of groceries at his door and said goodbye to his daughter.
He hadn't died, but he hadn't fully recovered either.
Tony sympathises and then changes the topic by inviting Fornell to visit in November.
Fornell gives them the last of his cigars, as a gift for Jethro and tells them to visit again before they leave.
Their homes seem to be a reflection of the city itself.
Tony's apartment doesn't exist any more; all that's left of the building is a black smudge on the ground and a few weeds, growing in spite of their surroundings.
Ziva's townhouse looks as if it was ransacked before winter and had the door left open ever since. Ziva collects the things from her, still intact safes and pointedly ignores the spot where only a few pieces of shiny black wood mark the spot where her piano once stood.
A friend of Abby's, is camping out in her apartment. He invites them in for coffee and explains that he's only there because he needed a place to stay after breaking up with his boyfriend.
And Tony's almost convinced that the guy squatting in Palmer's apartment is an alien.
McGee's apartment is miraculously empty of people and untouched. There's an extra thick layer of dust every thing, but McGee's typewriter and all the other things on the list are exactly where he said they would be.
Ducky's house is well cared for and in pretty much the same condition as when he left it. Ziva makes Tony wait outside while she and the madam…ah…B&B manager, look for the things Ducky wanted.
The eighteen year old; looking after her younger brother and cousins, is happy to let them get the boxes of Gibbs' things from where she's stored them in the basement. The girl doesn't say much, but as they're leaving; after letting her know that she should go to the Naval Yard and ask for Fornell if she needs any help, she has one question.
"How do you get the boat out of the basement?"
Tony has to drag a laughing Ziva back to the car.
Ω
The communities; living in much the same way that they live at the camp, at Georgetown University and the Smithsonian; who have de-grassed every football field and almost every park in the city to fulfil their agricultural requirements, haven't seen Sarah McGee since just before Christmas and one of her friends suggest that they try the White House.
"Who's at the White House?"
Ω
There are three types of people at the White House.
Bureaucrats, Secret Service Agents and Geeks.
More geeks than Tony has every seen in one spot. And he once arrested a suspect at a Star Trek/Buffy the Vampire Slayer convention.
Ziva and Tony spend most of the day answering the bureaucrat's questions. They're doing their best, considering and in spite of the circumstances, to conduct a census.
The geeks and the Secret Service are running the country; what's left of it, and waiting for highest ranking person listed in the line of succession to be found.
Ziva and Tony get to see the official list and the 'Only if everyone on the official list is dead' lists of presidential candidates.
If the preceding one thousand, two hundred and forty nine people can't be found, Gibbs gets to President.
They take photographs of themselves, sitting in the Presidents chair and spend a night in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Sarah McGee spent two days helping to unlock a few of the computers at the start of February. Nobody's seen her since.
Ω
Their last days in D.C. are spent visiting Fornell, getting baby clothes for Fin and finding a rabbi who's willing to travel and does mixed faith marriages.
Tony spent hours sifting through the remains of a jewellery stores to find the right ring. Ziva likes her fake diamonds loud and overly extravagant. The diamond on the ring Tony gives her is exactly how she likes the real ones, square cut and modest.
Ω
The adults at camp;
Ziva has to start remembering to call it home,
get the unabridged cold hard truth version of events.
The way things are; that's how it's going to be, for a very long time. And if they had any sense, they'll count every blessing they have that some people had enough fore thought and enough time to safely shut down the nuclear power stations.
The kids get the nice, humorous, they-won't-remember-in-a-few-years-anyway stories.
Ziva watches Tony tell his enraptured audience about football fields being planted with wheat and corn, the chickens in the White House Rose Garden and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool full of fish and rice plants.
Ω
Children are resilient, adults, less so. But there's too much to do for any one to have full scale 'Nothings ever going to be the same ever again/Everyone I ever knew are probably dead' breakdowns.
There's planting, weeding, swimming lessons and biology lessons. Repairs to existing cabins and new ones to be built. Baby showers, birthday parties, Hen's nights and Buck's parties. Mysteriously appropriated solar panels to fix to rooves, pipes to insulate and plumbing to figure out. More weeding, chasing the chickens out of the gardens, cows to milk and trying to learn how to make cheese from books. Cleaning, doing the laundry, chopping fire wood, pulling up the poison ivy closest to the cabin used as the crèche and moving bee hives to more suitable locations. There are clothes that need mending, boots to polish, bedding to be aired and cats to set to watching mouse holes. Kids to run after and teenagers to get out of bed before noon. Early harvests to pick and preserve, jars that need washing and people to make laugh before they start crying and can't be stopped.
Ω
The first of November is bright and clear. There's an early morning frost, but the cloudless sky promises a warm day.
The rabbi arrived a week ago and; mostly to get a rise out of Father Delaney, has been making threats about staying.
Gibbs is keeping the ring safe and McGee is keeping Tony safe.
The buck's night was held last month, so the traditional hangovers are nicely absent.
Ducky is acting as Father of the Bride and keeping a watchful eye on Fin, who's almost two weeks past her due date.
Ziva's wearing green, carrying white irises and has an antique lace table cloth fixed to her hair. Abby replaces the chain Ziva's Star of David hangs from, with a thin navy blue ribbon.
Tony's vows almost make her cry and he's been kissing the bride for almost too long when they hear a chorus of wolf whistles and laughter.
Only Sarah McGee and Abby's nuns could gatecrash a wedding and be invited to stay for the reception.
The party goes on for hours and only ends when Fin catches the bouquet and promptly goes into labour.
Ziva and Tony postpone their honeymoon long enough for them to each hold and say hello to Lucy Abigail Gibbs.
Ziva stares down at the baby's fuzzy red hair and bright blue eyes and sees a future that isn't so dark anymore.
Finis… "It's better to light a candle than curse to darkness." Author unknown. "We are not here to curse the darkness; we are here to light a candle." John Kennedy, in his acceptance speech to the Democratic Convention in 1960.