Author's Note: This is my first attempt at writing a Star Trek Adventure/ Apocalyptic story. If you do not stories that discuss certain spiritual themese, please refrain from reading this one. CHARACTER DEATH!!!
Other than that, read, review, and enjoy!
Prologue
"Some say the world will End in Fire, Some Say with Ice…"
Rudy Santino was a simple man. He'd once had aspirations of traveling the stars on a Starship, but those days were long gone. He'd lived a life of non-perilous, non-regrettable, safety. And in the last minutes of his life, Rudy Santino, became the most famous man in the universe.
Rudy Santino has served Starfleet for twenty-fives years, and today Rudy retires. Rudy feels the chills of age settle into his dusty bones, and starts to feel his mind shift back years before he was even in his Starfleet-issued red-shirt. Something about this date, reminds him of his childhood on the Choctaw Reservation. He looks down at his watch, examines the date March 25, 2260, and doesn't speculate where the unease comes from. He shakes his head and bides his time, guarding the same door he's guarded for twenty-five years.
The landscape has changed, he has changed, but the door hasn't changed. It is still Kevlar alloy, gun-metal gray, and solid as a rock. It still guards the scientists that carefully work on the cure to whatever disease has befallen the world. This nondescript and Rudy has guarded the type of genius that cured Cancer and HIV/AIDS in the earlier centuries. Now, it is Aspirion-3, a virus that affects all humanoid species similarly. Aspirion-3 is transferred through the transfer of bodily fluids and takes only a year to complete the process of slowly dehydrating its victims to death, drying up the blood in the veins to dust. Generally, the victim starts to notice symptoms of gradual blood aridity within the first month of contraction, with onset of seizures being the first indication of disease, followed by uncontrollable body movement, loss of motor function indicative with stroke, disorientation, seeping lesions, and aneurism. If the victim is not dead within 6 months, they suffer the worse, more painful fate, of simply drying up. In twenty-five years, the disease has depleted 27% of the universal population, and it seems to be growing systematically every year.
The Starfleet scientists are joined by some from the Vulcan Science Academy, working in tandem to quickly eradicate the disease. The scientists believe that they have found a cure and today's the day that they invite the Vulcan Ambassador down to view their newest findings. Rudy is anticlimactic. In seven more hours he'll be free of Starfleet and on his way to Alpha Centauri 8 for a long awaited vacation and retirement. He only stops reading his PADD when he hears commotion coming from around the corner.
Santino straightens as he sees an entourage of people walk towards him. These are his superiors, affluent people; the people who run the universe. He salutes his superior officer and makes all the necessary movements to open the large door. The door is polarized open, sliding against the floor with a screech, and then sliding closed again. Rudy goes back to reading. He is three paragraphs into an article about the beaches of Centauri 8 when his mind drifts back to the day's date. In his old mind, thoughts about the Nalusa Falaya chill his bones. The strange Choctaw story his mother used to retell about the man with the strange eyes and the pointed ears. The Ambassador resembles this in his mind, but he throws away that fallacy. The Ambassador is Vulcan, not an evil entity.
The sound of the red alert makes Rudy drop his PADD to the ground, waiting for instruction. The sound over the intercom is garbled and strangled and Rudy looks around in confusion. There is another person, a different person over the intercom making pleas and screaming, and then another garbled, strangled gasp, and once again dead air. Rudy panics.
He stares at his monitor, seeing people running towards the other side of the door, many of them not making it, dropping in their steps as they walk towards the door. One of the people is the Vulcan Ambassador, and Rudy scrambles for the door controls. The door is opening slowly, screeching across the floor, leaving more marks as it goes. And Rudy waits with bated breath and a ready phaser to see who appears in front of him. In a moment of sheer curiosity, Rudy leans forward, inching around the heavy door only to see a trail of bodies, Terran and Vulcan, dead.
His eyes widen, his stomach lurches, and he vomits on his shoes. The bodies have the sores of Aspirion-3, the sores that appear when a person is so near death, they would rather be euthanized than die naturally.
Rudy is leaning down, his head between his legs, his hands resting on his thighs, breathing heavily, trying to gain some semblance of what is right. He takes in sopping breaths and wipes his mouth. A hand reaches out and grabs his wet pants leg, the ankle covered in vomit.
Rudy screams and drops his phaser.
"We didn't know," says the voice that belongs to the hand in a whisper so faint.
"Ambassador Sarek?" Rudy recognizes the Vulcan, he has the sores, his voice is hoarse and he seems only moments from death.
"Aspirion-3, we didn't know it could mutate this fast," he takes a breath, "shoot me, please."
Rudy shakes his head in the negative and backs away, feeling his body start to grow heavy, feeling his throat beginning to parch. He rubs his hands over his face, and when he pulls back there is blood and pus there. He feels his own face, and feels leaky lesions. Rudy feels his heart slow and harden and his lungs start to dry up, and ragged coughs start to choke him. He is coughing so hard that he would be tearing, if he had moisture in his eyes, instead, dust emits from his lungs the color of dried blood. The tops of his hands have lesions that are leaking; he knows he doesn't have much time.
"Shoot me, please," Rudy sees Sarek and nods.
Rudy slowly grabs the phasers, sets it to kill, and points it at Sarek and fires, killing the Vulcan instantly. He's never shot anyone before.
Rudy would be crying, but his body is too dry, too dehydrated from the quickly mutating virus. He holds the phaser to his head, waits for the recharge, and pulls the trigger.
The last thing that went through Rudy's head, before the beam of light, was that in the story from his childhood, March 25 was the day the Nalusa Falaya unleashed a deadly plague upon the heavens and the earth.