The Day That Death Died
Death drew a rattling breath, lowering his head to cough into his cupped palm. His skeletal hand shook as he wiped it on his patchy permanent-pressed trousers.
The blood was going to stain. But Death didn't care anymore. He pushed onwards, his feet unsure and stumbling over empty space. He could do this. He could make it.
He muttered this mantra over and over, his forehead clammy and cool warm. His throat tasted of bile, rust and salt.
His brothers were waiting. He was all that remained missing. An unfinished jigsaw puzzle.
Pestilence had arrived first, riding in a white ambulance; disease ravaged the planet that once thrived. Hundreds upon hundreds of thousands perished before the first Horseman of Hell. Illness made millions of the dying race known as humans suffer. Everywhere, mothers buried their children, orphans were abandoned by dearly departed parents and hospitals overflowed with the infectious dying.
Then came War, greedy for blood and gore. The humans had complied with his violent whims almost instantly, as if they had known exactly who the man pulling up in the crimson Mustang was and how those who angered him were caused to languish in the torturous embrace of loss. Bombs flew, alliances were broken and countries turned on each other. War reveled in the rain of pain and destruction.
Famine followed, not to be outdone. He arrived in a black suburban, presenting envy among those who witnessed it. Those that remained of the humans, weak beings as they were, succumbed immediately to those gnawing feelings that they kept deep inside. Cravings of lust, an enormous appetite for foods, hungers for that which is forbidden… all fell before their most secret desires.
It was now Death's turn to reign.
He walked alone, long ago having left his pale hearse to turn to dust, as all things do in their own time.
Somehow, despite their powerful influences, his brothers had not managed to totally eradicate the last few dregs of human life. As the four Horsemen of Hell, they had a prophecy to fulfill. They were to wreak havoc upon the Earth, forcing humanity to its own demise.
But along the way, something changed. Death was dying.
He hadn't planned for it. He was, after all, master of the final breath, king of last words and lord of the everlasting end. How was this even possible? Alas, even the almighty Death did not know. Perhaps it was this very lack of knowledge that was pressing him so close to his own destruction.
Either way, the world was going to end.
And it had to end in exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Thirty-two. Thirty-one.
Death's steady limp grew stilted as he attempted to break into a run; something that he had not done since his childhood many, many, many millennia before this particular moment in time. His breathy rattles rushed out, punctuated by sickly gurgles pouring with fresh burgundy from the back of his throat. His mouth was like parchment in the desert sun. He spat onto the worn pavement of the abandoned shell of what used to be New York. The greatest city of men. Where were their tired, their poor and their huddled masses yearning to breathe free now?
Three minutes, seven seconds. Six seconds. Five seconds.
"You've kept us waiting, brother", Pestilence stated, his voice rasping even more than that of Death's, who was drawing on a strength that he did not possess simply to remain standing. His garb was reminiscent of that worn by a terminal patient in a hospital. He was dressed in a stained hospital gown and a slender cord of plastic led under the skin of his right arm. Through it rippled a shadowy dark mass, held in place by and IV bag and rack. His head was balding, as if he had lost patches of once-thick hair and his cheeks hollow, heavy circles residing under his tired eyes.
"Just because you were first doesn't forcibly make you superior to any of us, Pestilence", hissed War, picking at his nails with in a pointless assault with a Bowie knife. Crusted under aforementioned fingertips were immense amounts of gore, falling in tiny flakes as War ran the point under them in an infinite spiral. His crisp white business suit was spattered with dried and still-drying blood in patterns reminiscent of those drawn by a man by the name of Rorschach once upon a time in Germany of 1921. His cruel mouth was set in a permanent sneer of disdain, causing his already sharp features to become even more disturbing.
"Enough."
Death hacked up yet another mouthful of blood as he intervened. Once again, he gathered saliva into his cheeks and expelled the rusty-red liquid onto the ground. A few wayward flecks landed on his polished shoes. The shoes of a dead man.
"Brother…"
This time, it was Famine who spoke. "Are you passing into the void?"
The third Horseman of Hell was just as symbolic of his title as the others. He was dressed in the simplest of cheap clothing, sized for the average man. Even so, the polyester tee-shirt and canvas pants hung off of his thin frame like a wilted leaf of lettuce speared on a fork. His skin was pulled tight over his bones and was all angles, without the subtly soft curves that are usually present in a man's face. His eye appeared to consume every living thing that came before them.
"Yes", replied Death, raising one shaky hand to rub at the upper-left centre of his chest. Right where his heart would have been. If he'd had one to begin with. "That's right. I'm dying."
One minute, forty-four seconds. Forty-three seconds. Forty-two seconds.
"I suppose that it's time then", muttered War, his voice calm and quiet for once. For the last time. The others nodded in turn. They slowly drew closer together, forming a tight circle.
"Perhaps I'll miss my time on this god-forsaken planet", mused Pestilence. "It was fun."
Ten seconds. Nine seconds. Eight seconds.
"And so", said the final Horseman of Hell, reunited with his brothers at last. "Death dies."