I.
It starts slowly. Particles of dust blown from across the ocean. The wind envelops all, and the man by the roadside inhales it unknowingly. The next day, he gets a cold and does not go to work, hoping to recuperate. He does not.
On the fifth day, he takes painkillers, hoping to ease the pain in his head and chest. Falling into sleep, he misses the first traces of blood leaking from his nose.
The next morning, he coughs, chokes up blood. They sent him to the hospital. Too late, they tell his weeping wife. Died from abnormal reasons.
Inside the empty surgery room, a nurse cleans the last of the remains, the body long gone for storage. She sniffles as she wipes the last traces of yellow dust on the operating table.
Outside, a little girl clutches her crying mother and coughs.
II.
The numbers rise. Reports of people falling to this mysterious disease sends the world into a frenzy. Complains start coming in, then demonstrations, riots. Scientists can't find the cure.
People start to stay away from one another. Food stockpiles start. Prices rise. Violence is on the high. Panic is clear on their faces, they just think another push off the edge.
In the meeting room, America jokes lightly that the situation was just like the beginning to a zombie apocalypse. Canada shushes him, and the meeting falls into a tense silence.
One more push. They cannot afford another push.
III.
Seven months after the first reported alarm sounded on this international crisis, it happens.
The Americas were the first to fall, hit by a pestilence. So strong that half the population was wiped out under a month.
The rising numbers had been just a warning, a warm up of what was to come. Waves of dust from the Pacific, source still unknown, flew in across the sky. They killed all that breathe. Anything but plant life was gone. Dead in a week or so.
People brought masks, didn't step out of their homes, and for a time being they survived this horrible fate. But the virus adapted. In a few weeks not even one prepared could survive the looming death.
A small group of people were discovered to be resistant to the dust. This, the dust deals in different ways. It became stronger. Infected died in just under three days. The symptoms vary, but blood leaking is the case every time. Any contact with the infected that enables the dust to get into the bloodstream directly yields the same effect, no matter how strong the resistant was.
The world could only watch helplessly as the great continent fell. Quarantines were made, no one was allowed to escape to Europe or Asia. You have sentenced us to death! Survivors cry. You will rue the day you did not show us mercy!
IV.
Four months after the Great Wave in the Americas, Korea was struck by the second wave. The jinheulg, they called it as the dust flew, carried by monsoon winds. In Europe, asylum seekers forced their way through Portugal.
Guns were fired. Knifes used. Man had turned against man. In the midst of running from the feared , blood begin to spill.
The world meetings were cancelled and everyone stayed at home. America and Canada have not been heard from in weeks. One morning Ukraine received a call that the mighty nation was dead. Dead, just like that. A tearful England conveyed. Gone.
Canada had just relayed the news that Cuba was next, having caught the pestilence too. Won't survive the night. He himself was still safe, having being granted immunity as a country. It had been an idiot's move, Ameri-Alfred. Tried to save a girl and got the dust into his system. Dead on the third sunrise with an apologetic smile on his face.
Not one of the nations moved. Shocked, silent. The pestilence was capable to kill even the strongest of them.
Ukraine did not sleep that night.
V.
She decides to run one day. Her people were leaving, countries dissolving in front of her very eyes. Ukraine, Katya, Ukraine, Katya. The name she was once was disappearing. No more Ukraine, no more personification. Her identity was slipping away. She was only Katya now.
She thinks she would cry, if only she had tears left to shed. Australia was dead, France was dead, and there were rumours that Belgium, Denmark and Estonia had all caught the dust. Her sister, her dear sweet Natalya, was dying, spending her last moments alone, refusing to let her sister visit for fear of the dust spreading.
And Vanya, oh her beloved Vanya, gone, left. Disappeared into nothing. Was he dead? In a safe house? Her belly twisted at the idea. She wanted to puke. Her family, her only ties, were at their last seams. One more push, one more day, and she would-might please- lose them all forever.
It had been a long time since she has contacted any of the nations. The last she heard, Italy had turned to prayer, and Turkey had fled for India. The Asians were out of reach, the last phone call from Vietnam weeks ago. Alone, they all were, in this pestilence-reeked world.
Katya took only a bag and her axe, edges full of dust without centuries of use but still gleaming with the past glories of her days, and headed for the border.
To the heart of the dust she would go, to find survivors and head for north. Anywhere where it would not stink of blood and death. Of hopelessness and fear.
VI.
Why an axe?
Even now, traversing through the thick woodlands of what used to be Romania, Katya would not be able to tell you. Maybe it had been a last minute effort to preserve her past legacy, to remind herself she was still strong, a desperate clinch for protection.
At any rate, it was a good thing she brought it along.
One week on the road, the sky turned yellow and the dust begun a second round of purging. Infected no longer died. They turn instead, into creatures with dead minds that thirst for the moving. Monsters of the dust. They took and turned more than what the initial virus did alone.
Anyone could be affected. Animals, people. Katya no longer went into the towns or villages in her way. Larger cities and capitals she bypassed all together.
She trusted only grains and fruit, and at night she slept in the canopy of the pines. Damp, cold. Dread crept on her like a vine, choking her and warning her of what was to be inescapable.
The first time she uses the axe, it is not for wood.
VII.
The days grow colder and the trails steeper. Katya does not glimpse many survivors now. There used to be a whole lot of them. Travelling in groups towards north, east, anywhere they believed the pestilence has not reached yet.
She remembers the leader of one taking one look at her weapon and cursing in terror. There had been no invitation to join any of them at their camps that night. They had given her incredulous looks at her plan to go further into Europe. You must be mad, they had said as they shot another look at her crusted axe. Katya notices the way they fingered their guns restlessly and says nothing.
She leaves at dawn the next day, quietly. No one stops her. No one comes.
VIII.
Food grows scarce and with it, her desperation. When night arrives, she puts on a cloak, pieced together with leather and thread and heads for the outskirts of a city. She enters a warehouse, takes what she can carry and leaves.
She does not get caught. She has seen what happens to those who do.
She is awaken one night by the sound of screams. There is smoke in the air, ash in the wind. In a distance she spots them. Lumbering bony creatures with soulless eyes, except they are not lumbering now.
Her blood turns cold, and she runs. Into the forest, up, up, and away from the smoke. Movement alerts her, and she twists, bringing her axe down on the pursuer. There is a crunch, the sickening smell of blood, then silence.
Katya steps away from the lifeless creature, and hears a whimper. Human. She pushes the bushes behind it aside hesitantly, and instantly muffles a cry. The pained whimpers of a girl filled the clearing. Her torso broken, arm mangled. Eyes wordlessly staring up at her in a silent plea, and blood. So much blood.
Katya breaks, tries to comfort the girl all that she can. She begs for it to be not, but it's too late; the dust had settled. The girl gurgles, her eyes frosting over, and Katya knows, even as her broken body tried to mend itself, that she would never walk again, even as an infected of the dust.
When the axe comes down, her eyes are steady. They only waver once she unearths the string of beads from the girl's pocket.
She is gone in the morning, a ring of pebbles and wild flowers marking the unnaturally curved surface of soil in the clearing.
IX.
She finds a spring one day. A bubbling brook spewing fresh water to form the pool of liquid.
For the first time in a long while, Katya bathes and drinks her fill. When she is done, she fills her water storage, and cleans her axe. The blood comes off in rusty tones of brown and black, and she trembles, hands shaking as her breaths come in spontaneous gasps.
She closes her eyes, and instantly wishes she hadn't, as the red is even more vivid then. Her hands clutch grass as she throws up, nothing but gastric fluid, and she curls into a ball, heaving as she rode out the panic attack.
The tears come at her last shuddering breaths, as she tries not to think of all the people she has killed. Even as infected, they still bare resemblance to the humans they were before. The face of Alfred looms in front of her, eyes shut and smile apologetic, then Natalya, orbs cold and calculative even on her deathbed. She thinks of a younger brother that did not seem to care enough to tell her where he had gone and weeps harder, body too spent to cry properly.
She falls asleep to the sound of falling water and tears streaking her cheeks.
A/N
Hello! This will be updated weekly.
This story was inspired by a rainy and soggy walk home. I was feeling kind of down, and all the dark thoughts came to me. With dark thoughts came this serious AU. Besides Ukraine, there will be three other characters joining the party.
No, they are not who you think they are. Yes, they are the last people you would expect to be alive. Well, not really. But they are under-appreciated characters and I wanted to put them in the spotlight. You can try guessing who they are though. I welcome all suggestions.
This is not a happy story. Characters you know and love will die and not return from the afterlife. You have been warned.