Gooey Ashes


It started slow. Not the kind of slow that lets you prepare. No, the kind of slow that went undetected, the kind where everyone was sure they'd have plenty of time. So why not put it off, let the rest of the world deal with it?

The first to close were schools. With too many kids out sick and a high risk of contagion, schools closed for the rest of the foreseeable week, as they'd done with widespread bugs before. Confident the majority of kids would be bright and bubbly once more by the end of the month.

With kids away from a main source of information - away from society - few bothered to look beyond the evening news on biased forecasts full of blue-eyed blondes. Riots in other parts of the world received vague mentions. Vines and YouTube videos spiked in the supernatural and horror genres. Independent reporters on Twitter put out a cry of what was going on, but of course, no one on the internet ever changed the world.


"C'mon, Lud! It's not like anyone's gonna get us in trouble! What's Vati going to do? Ground us?"

"You shouldn't say things like that," Ludwig sighed, getting out of the car to follow his laughing brother. With their father hospitalized, they'd be taking care of themselves until further notice. He sped up when that laugh choked.

"I'm okay! The awesome me will never be defeated!" Gilbert assured him, stumbling and righting himself. He pulled at his jacket, looking down to find what he'd tripped over. "Aha!" he proclaimed, scooping it up to hold it up to silhouette against the sun. "Hammer, you shall pay for tripping the awesome me!"

"Gil, stop waving that around," Ludwig groaned, snatching the tool from his brother's hand, holding it high above where the older couldn't reach. "That's dangerous, you have no idea how balanced or attached the end is-"

Ludwig raised an eyebrow at Gilbert's sudden tensing, watching those red eyes go wide. "What is it?"

Gilbert sucking in a breath, and hissed, "The hammer, Lud. The hammer. There's blood on that thing."

Ludwig dropped the tool as if it had caught fire, trusting his brother too much to risk it.

Gilbert barked another laugh. "You fell for it! You actually believed that! Shit, bloodied hammer - that'd be fucked up!"

Ludwig scowled, shooting a wary check to the rusty tool. His face lit bright red. "I could have dropped it on my foot," he retorted. "That's not funny!"

"Is too!" Gilbert called over his shoulder, already heading across the deserted parking lot. Gum dotted much of the black tar, a few mechanical pencils scattered around, half-finished cigarettes stomped down. He kicked away a tampon applicator, watching it bounce up onto the curb and under the metal fence.

"Gilbert..." Ludwig sighed, shaking his head. A stickler for the rules, his older brother was not. Nevertheless, he went after Gilbert, and followed him over the fence with a grunt. He frowned, watching his brother saunter past the bolted down picnic tables to the doors. "You know those doors don't open from the outside..." He trailed off, Gilbert grinning all too smugly as the doors opened with a simple push. He sighed. "Why do I bother?"

The door closed with little sound behind them, cushioned well on recent costly renovations. Shut inside where the gentle spring breeze couldn't reach them, Ludwig wrinkled his nose, grimacing in disgust. Sure, it was a school-he expected it to smell bad, but it must have been closed long enough for him to forget what it was like.

Sickness clung to the air, thick and heady. He waved a hand in front of his face, fanning away the worst of it, walking after his skipping brother. Hormones, hair spray, and Axe deodorant tinted the walls, collecting in what many students lovingly referred to as eau de ass. Today, and the few short days before schools closed for health safety, sweat, vomit, pus, and digestive distress was the scent of the afternoon. The smell of disease.

From the looks of it, Gilbert wasn't as bothered as Ludwig-or perhaps he just hid it better. Or it was a greater tolerance to those kinds of things. He didn't doubt that his brother had flooded the locker bays with an overdose of Axe more than a few times in their years here. The older brother belonged in a group of tricksters proudly bragging the title of the Bad Touch Trio, while the younger kept to his studies.

"You could've volunteered at the hospital," Gilbert goaded him, his voice carrying like the step of their boots on the linoleum floors. "I thought you wanted to be a pre-med!"

"I don't have any training. I'd get in the way. Besides, who would keep you out of trouble if you're home alone?"

For Ludwig, fun and friends came secondary to schoolwork, responsibilities, and family. He had passing acquaintances with classmates, polite and to the point where no one tried to get very close to him. Kiku, the Japanese classmate who tended to speak soft and flat, he considered a friend. He enjoyed their small exchanges and silent working in the same area. They sat together at lunch, usually in quiet unless another acquaintance decided to join them. Often, this was the Trio.

Ugh, that trio of friends. Ludwig sighed just thinking about them. They made him feel like an old man waving a cane at them yelling to get off his lawn. Individually, they weren't so irksome. Francis had his good points, most pointedly being the most mature of any of them-when he wasn't flipping girls' skirts, anyway. Antonio sometimes popped up for little reason at all, hanging around him and talking like they'd been friends for much longer than with his brother. Aiming to go into medicine, Ludwig viewed the diabetic Spaniard as an invaluable fountain of practical experience.

The third member...well, Gilbert was his brother. Ludwig would be lying if he said he wasn't biased.

Case in point. Ludwig jerked his head in the direction of a series of clangs and bangs. Seeing his brother bashing down a row of lockers with someone's lost phone was little cause for alarm, if a headache. He groaned, and shouted above the din, "Do you have any idea of the damage you're causing?"

"It's a Nokia, Lud!" Gilbert shot him a grin, turning around to continue his way down, just backwards. "These things are like bricks, it's not gonna get a single scratch!"

Ludwig sighed, dragging his hand over his face in exasperation. The clanging stopped. Gilbert stalled in a dark section of the school, sunlight from the copious windows along the walls unable to reach so far.

Ludwig came to stand beside Gilbert, and scoffed. They stood in front of the doors to the band room, metal doors guarding one of the only rooms large enough to accommodate the large class and their instruments. Someone had taken red spray paint to it, and in messy, dripping letters.

DONT OPEN DEAD INSIDE

Ludwig snorted at the graffiti message. Beside him, he heard Gilbert gulp. He glanced at him, raising an eyebrow. "You're scared of this? Really? Isn't this from The Walking Dead, in, what was it, the first episode?"

Gilbert choked a forced laugh. "J-ja, what a throwback. Listen, Lud," he changed his tune, turning away from the door. "We should get going, get dinner started, get working on those packets the teaches gave us-"

Ludwig shook his head, a rare grin coming on his own face at his skittish behavior. "Gil, it's nothing," he interrupted. "It's a joke. Zombies aren't going to jump out and attack us if we open the door."

"You don't know that," Gilbert defended, eyes wide, shooting glances at the door. Ludwig had to keep himself from laughing; he was actually whispering, thinking something would hear them. "We need to get out of here, A-sap."

Ludwig chuckled, even more so as his brother flinched when he took another step forward. The smell of stale sweat was stronger here; no surprise, considering how this was the band room, full of people dressed in heavy uniforms lugging around metal instruments half the time. "There's nothing to be afraid of," he repeated. "I'll show you."

Someone had tied the doors shut with a combination of zipties, duct tape, and a metal bar. Ludwig took off the bar, and Gilbert swiped it from his hands before he could toss it on the ground, holding it like a baseball bat, ready to defend himself from the horrors trapped inside. He stopped himself from rolling his eyes, snapping the ties with a few sharp yanks in just the right way. Then he picked at the duct tape, unraveling it from the door handles.

The doors thumped a few times from his pulling. He could've sworn he heard a music stand fall over inside.


Author's Notes

Merry Christmas, for those reading at the publish date.

Pairings are [mostly] undecided. Planned main characters: Ludwig, Alfred, Gilbert, Antonio, Lovino, Feliciano, Natalya (Belarus).