A/N: This was written for a reverse art challenge on Primeval Denial on Live Journal, the gorgeous art prompt was created by munchkinofdoom and can be found on the LJ or the A03 postings of this story - I use the same username on all three sites. A small cropped version has been used as the header. If you have a look at Celeste9's wonderful fic Fracture you'll see a little more of the artwork as we both worked from the same prompt.


A Short History of the End of the World

April

It was supposed to be the cruellest month, but in reality it was sweet and fresh, and held the beginnings of an early Spring. There were bluebells in the park and the weather was mild enough for Jess to relax and walk home, enjoying the feel of the late afternoon sun on her face after being cooped up inside all day.

She smiled at the sheer joy of it, the relatively clear air away from the smog of the city streets.

One day, she thought, it would be over and she could move away from the city, somewhere cleaner and fresher, somewhere that she could settle down and walk her children through a park if she wanted to.

Somewhere else. But not yet, there was still too much to do.

In her pocket her phone bleeped, summoning her back to the ARC. Another anomaly.

Far too much to do.

May

Weddings weren't really Becker's thing, but he'd made an exception for Abby and Connor, largely because he'd been asked to be best man, and the slightly put-out expressions on Matt and Lester's faces - well, on Matt's face mostly - made him a lot keener on the whole thing than he ever would normally be. And there was the dancing afterwards, which also wasn't his thing, but if he had no choice other than to dance with the chief bridesmaid then so be it. He had gone above and beyond the call of duty, really. And if he had still been holding her at the end of the evening then he was just doing the traditional job of best man as well as he possibly could. That was all. And Connor could stop grinning, and Matt could stop smirking, and most of all Lester could stop looking at him in that disapproving way which told him he was going to be sacked if he didn't watch out, and that didn't he know Jess was Lester's favourite?

He pulled her a little closer, glad of the excuse.

June

The anomalies were quieter than usual, and the team actually started to nurture the hope that they might stop altogether. Jess found herself with more time off, and a new man to share it with. She didn't question her luck. They'd done enough over the past few years; it was good to have a break.

Later she would look back on that summer and wonder where it went.

July

The anomalies had stopped.

At first, it just seemed to be a temporary reprieve. To start with there were a few days when they were all on call, but basically free to do as they wished. Then as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into a month, the relief turned into concern. There was only so much funding, only so long that a large workforce could be employed to do nothing.

Lester was waiting for the call from the minister. He wouldn't close the project, not so soon, but they all knew there would be cuts eventually.

Matt and Connor were locked away in one of the labs, trying to work out what had happened. Connor was optimistic, Matt quite the opposite. But then, Lester thought, Matt was never the most cheery of souls.

Lester would be sorry to lose the team, see the ARC disband. But if it meant an end to all the creatures coming through, an end to all the senseless deaths, then he thought he could live with it.

August

Another week passed. Two. Nearly a third of the workforce were on notice. And then the ADD alarm blared.

They weren't back to normal.

It wasn't as bad as convergence, but there were a lot of anomalies. Far too many of them seemed to lead to the future. Everyone knew that. They could tell from what came out of them. They didn't need to look at Matt, to see how his shoulders slumped with each new proof of his failure, to know that.

In the end, there was no Philip Burton to blame, nothing but the anomalies themselves. One opened somewhere in the Brecons, and by the time the team had reached it and closed it there had been an incursion. Future predators, outside in the open.

There wasn't a hope in hell of capturing them, the predators were too fast, had run too far. Perhaps there weren't that many of them, but it was enough.

"We could use a bomb," Matt had suggested to Lester. "Evacuate, then bomb the whole area. They know what's at stake, there's been enough evidence of the things come through now. It's the only way."

There was going to be no covering this up, whatever they did. Why not go for the very worst thing? Stop them in their tracks.

"You're starting to sound like Becker," Lester had replied. But he'd seen enough, knew what the things were capable of and could see the horrible sense in taking such an action. He was on the phone to the minister, his face showing every inch of the strain his recommendation was putting him under. Wales was so very beautiful.

The minister knew enough to consider it. Didn't know enough to approve it. He ordered troops in to hunt the things down, still trying to keep it all secret. And then it was all in the hands of the military, who didn't really know what they were dealing with, and by the time they realised that Matt was right it was far too late and who knew where the predators had gone?

When the news came through that the predators had got away, Becker and Emily stood helplessly outside Matt's office. The door was locked, the blinds were closed. No amount of hammering on the door would persuade him to open it. There was silence on the other side, until at last they heard what sounded like a sob or a whimper, stifled but just audible. He'd failed.

And that was how the end of the world began.

September

The anomalies were no longer a secret.

How could they be, appearing everywhere? How could they be when the news was full of creature sightings, of mobile phone footage of predators tearing their victims apart? Terrifyingly, there were pictures of young. The things had already bred and the babies were growing fast.

Everyone wanted a scapegoat, and there was only ever going to be one person pushed forward in that role. Naturally the minister had almost washed his hands of the ARC, stepping away as soon as it was evident things had failed, trusting that resignation would be enough.

James Lester, never likely to be knighted now, sat in his cell calmly, resigned to his fate. He knew how these things worked. If the powers that be thought you were causing too much trouble then a few trumped-up terrorism charges were an easy way to ensure that nobody was ever going to listen to you again. At least he knew he was relatively safe while he was locked away in there. For now.

He'd sent his family abroad as soon as it started. Not Europe, because there was the bloody Channel Tunnel, and if the things hadn't reached the mainland of the continent by now then they soon would. New Zealand, as far away as possible, supposedly on holiday but they wouldn't be coming back. It was one less thing to worry about, and would probably be the last place on earth to be overrun. Maybe it would even remain safe? He knew he'd never see them again, whatever happened. They couldn't stay behind anyway, not with his name all over the papers and bricks through windows, and worse. It didn't matter that it wasn't true, people wanted someone to blame and if the papers told everyone that he'd set the predators loose as revenge for his own thwarted ambitions then it must be true. They even had footage of him with one, cleverly edited so that it wasn't apparent he was fighting for his life at the time.

Sending your family away was one thing, but apparently the minister had emigrated as well. Rats and sinking ships sprang to mind. In retrospect, perhaps threatening to go public with the fact that most of the other senior MPs were also in the process of fleeing the country wasn't his wisest move.

He stared at the wall, listening to the clanging of doors echoing around the building, the shouts from other inmates. It went on day and night, no respite, thinking they had it so bad. Did they even know what was going on outside?

Somewhere out there his team would be fighting with everything they had to stop the predators.

He wondered if they were even still alive.

October

Another anomaly had opened to the future, and the country was overrun. Too late someone had thought to seal the tunnel instead of leaving insufficient, ineffective guards on both sides, and France had fallen. Islands were small havens, Jersey and Guernsey already packed to capacity and the strain of too many people producing its own kind of predator.

It was frightening, how fast civilisation was falling apart.

The remnants of the ARC team gathered around the ADD. It wasn't going to work forever, already it was struggling on emergency power.

"The country's overrun. It makes the place a threat to the safety of the rest of the world," Becker announced, looking at the feeds Jess was hacking into. "You need to get abroad."

"Or we could all go deep underground," Matt reminded him. "My people were survivors who lived underground. The tunnels under London... There are deep level shelters under some of the tube stations, we should get to one of those. The one at Belsize Park survived, the signs were still there in my time. We could get through whatever they throw at us if we go there. I think..." He paused, looking around at the barely concealed fear on many of their faces. "I think the bombing gets out of hand. There weren't a lot of places left to live in. Perhaps that's why there's such a wasteland out there by my time."

"It's too much of a risk," Becker argued. "You and I could do that and carry on fighting here, but the others should go abroad now, while there's still time."

"It's already too late, even if either of you seriously think we'll leave you. There are riots at the airports," Jess pointed out. "Everyone's had the same thought, and the planes aren't returning once they've gone. You'd have to shoot innocent people to get us through."

Becker looked at her, and all of them. He thought if it came down to it then there was a chance he might do just that.

"We should do as Matt says," Emily agreed. "Then try to go abroad afterwards."

Abby rubbed at her gently swelling stomach. "What about the menagerie? The creatures? We can't leave them trapped here."

"No," Matt agreed. "And we can't let them go, or take them with us. But we can prevent them suffering."

It was a mark of the desperation of their situation that Abby didn't even argue with him.


The guards had long since gone. Some of the prisoners had broken out, but nobody had bothered with the few businessmen locked in there, of no interest to fellow inmates. There were basic facilities in Lester's cell, but the water system had failed overnight. That might just be in the building or it was just as likely to be an indication that there was a more widespread problem out in the world that he didn't know about. It was frustrating, not knowing what was happening. He wondered what would get him first: thirst, hunger or the predators? Probably the former, as the predators had so many easier victims. The tinned food could wait.

It had been several days since he'd seen anyone. He could hear his fellow inmates. The man in the next cell had screamed and shouted until he was hoarse, and then still carried on. It was so undignified. If they'd reached the end then surely they should have earned some peace? He was quieter now, exhausted by the shouting and the lack of food and water. They all were.

Lester spent most of the day lying on his bunk, conserving his energy. He thought of the creatures, locked up in the menagerie in the ARC and wondered if they were meeting a similar fate. If they were then it would have been kinder to let Burton euthanize them after all.

Sometimes he could hear the other inmates crying, quietly. Thirst and hunger hurt as it got worse, and none of these were people who would have ever expected to feel it as strongly as this.

He waited. He had the one thing that none of the rest of them did: hope. He knew that if his team were still alive, they would come to find him. It was only a slim hope because they would have been at the centre of any fighting against the predators, but the loyalty that had always held them all together would only become stronger at a time like this. The others, who had lied and cheated their way into those cells, had nobody who would be so loyal to them.

It was late afternoon when it happened. There was a gunshot, then the sound of a door crashing in somewhere far below them. Becker, he thought, because the soldier would want to be dramatic and make it look like the rescue attempt he hoped it would be.

He could hear the other prisoners moving around, starting to call out. Some of them sounded so very weak. He would just lie there a little longer, until he was sure.

And then there was Matt's distinctive accent, and Becker's cut glass tones arguing with him, and Connor yelling at them both that they'd have to let all the prisoners out. There was blast after blast, the sound of doors swinging open, people calling to them that they should be next, Matt swearing and Becker yelling instructions to their men, telling them to find food and water for the prisoners.

Always dignified, Lester got to his feet, swayed a little, smoothed down his shirt then stepped over to the bars, waiting.

He'd never been so glad to see Connor's face, but he wasn't going to let that show because then they'd really think he was in a bad way. And anyway, Connor was grinning enough for both of them, and had just pulled an energy bar from his pocket.

Circumstances had got to be pretty dire if he was accepting food that had spent time on Connor's person.

November

Connor hated the tunnels.

It reminded him of the ones he'd seen in the future, the future that was being created around him with every passing day.

Certainly they'd brought in all the stocks and supplies that they could, locked them up and holed themselves in, and now it looked just a little bit like the underground shelter Matt had led them to in the future. Better stocked, larger, but it was unmistakeably the start of it.

It had been quiet for the first few days, no sign of the threatened attacks. He'd helped Jess set up the limited comms they'd managed to take with them, and they'd listened in on everything that they thought might tell them something, but there was never anything decisive. Some enterprising soul was broadcasting from the French coast, purposely targeting Britain in case someone was still out there listening. It wasn't much, just a translation of the world news, and they could have got it from other sources. But there was something reassuring about still hearing a British accent on the broadcasts in amongst all the sea of foreign speakers.

There wasn't much warning when the attacks started. Lester had thought one of the calls Jess had intercepted was the order and he was proved right.

It went on for days, the ground above them shaking and echoing in the distance. Matt had been right about the shelter holding, but part of the actual station above them and one of the tunnels further down the line collapsed under the blasts, and then there was more risk that something could get in and find their shelter.

They weren't the only ones in the underground shelters. Once the bombing started, people had gone to the obvious refuges. He'd heard that a water main had burst and flooded the one at Chancery Lane, and that someone had run amok in one of the Clapham ones and started shooting everyone. Just what they needed, a human predator to add to the carnage.

He felt responsible, although the others kept telling him it wasn't his fault and had nothing to do with New Dawn and the work he'd done with Philip. Whoever was responsible, his main concern was that Abby shouldn't have had to go through this. He would have done anything to keep her and the child growing inside her safe. Instead, all they could do was sit and wait, and listen to the explosions far above them, feeling the ground shake as the world tried to eliminate the threat. Matt, he noticed, didn't say anything. He watched Emily and Becker both take turns sitting with him

There weren't that many new people joining them now. In the first few days there had been a steady trickle of refugees, so many that they'd been worried about the chances of survival. The food and water would only last so long, and with every extra mouth to feed it would last that little bit less time. Now it was only one or two people a day, sometimes not even that. Becker and his men went off in search of food, raiding shops and stores that hadn't already been looted. Connor had spent most of his time sitting with Jess, working on the comms.

They'd established contact with plenty of other countries, but it had quickly become apparent that there wasn't going to be any sort of rescue. They were told to stay where they were, that there would be aid packages dropped, and that when things were cleared up and it was safe to land, there would be a rescue. So. As the predator problem would never clear up, it was safe to assume there would never be a rescue either.

Emily, given her past, had made the suggestion that they were all mulling over: go through an anomaly, find a place in the past that they could live in away from people of that time. Effectively, become a second time tribe.

Becker hated the idea. Connor suspected that he still thought he could stay here and shoot things until all the predators had gone. Anything rather than go through an anomaly.

Becker was alone in his opposition though. Everyone, even Matt, supported it. Connor had a suspicion that Matt didn't intend actually going through himself, and that he would be glad to be free of the burden of friendship and loyalty so that he could go off and try to save the world yet again. It was just a feeling. For his part, all Connor really wanted was for Abby to be safe. He'd put her in more danger with the pregnancy and regardless of whether the anomalies were his fault or not, there was no question of his responsibility with regard to Abby.

He followed Becker up to the surface when the explosions stopped, scavenging for food, and prayed they'd find a suitable anomaly soon.

December

One good thing about the tunnels was that they were well insulated.

It protected the refugees from the attacks, and from the elements. Matt recalled how it had been in his time, those tunnels had been deep underground and only the ones near the surface had grown cold in winter. The others had been warm, and rather stuffy all the time. Sometimes the air supply had failed, ventilation shafts had collapsed, people had died. Nasty way to go. Matt thought he might prefer the predators because at least they were quick.

The bombing had stopped, in their area at least. Jess was picking up reports from elsewhere which told them that it had just moved to another part of the country. He knew they'd be back, and all too soon was proved right. But for a week or so at the start of the month the little group could breathe slightly easier.

Then the attacks came back with a vengeance and disaster struck.

The network of tunnels under London had become quite heavily populated. Some areas were better to live in than others, Becker and his men ensured that anyone in their own shelter behaved in a civilised manner. The stories that were starting to come back from some of the other shelters were more horrific, society destroying itself from within. Who needed the creatures?

Jess and Connor were doing a good job of keeping the comms running, finding out what was going on, picking up military communications as well as that from other survivors. It wasn't great, they were constantly having to repair the receiver on the surface, and the signal was poor at best. But it was enough of an early warning that gave them a small window to get away.

There were a lot of tunnels under London. Many of them linked together, which was a risk because if the predators ever found their way down there then it was only a matter of time before they wiped everyone out.

Perhaps one had, and that was what caused things to go wrong? Matt didn't know, and they never found out. All that Jess picked up from the transmission was that a bomb had missed its target and gone into the Thames, right over the Northern line tunnel between Borough and Bank.

At first it didn't seem to be a problem. The tunnel was buried deep, of course it was, built to last. And because it was deep, people were down there, people who sent short, panicked reports to the other tunnel-dwellers that there was water starting to come in. And then nothing.

Water was possibly the most destructive element. It could get through anything, given the chance. And they were in one of the deepest tunnels, albeit some distance from the breach. Their refuge was going to be flooded and they all needed to get out of there. All of them.

There were too many people down there for a quick evacuation. For a moment Matt and Lester were faced with an impossible decision, whether to take their own and run for it, stand some sort of chance, or whether to let everyone know and stand no chance at all because there would be panic and a race for the exits.

But down there everyone was always listening to everything, particularly the comms because there was nothing else to do, a shout went up and the decision was taken out of their hands.

Not everyone stampeded for the obvious ways out. Some of the people who had joined them had already learned to look to Matt for advice on their new underground world and they rushed to him instead. Not many though. From nearly two hundred people, their group was instantly culled to around forty, more than half of them from the ARC.

There was a way out. He'd found it early on, remembered it from his own past where it was a frequently used route in and out of the tunnels. There were plenty of ways in added later, and until he'd seen it in this time he couldn't be sure it was there. The people stumbling over each other on the main entrances would never find it on their own, and there were too many of them. Forty. He thought he might be able to save forty.

"This way," he told them, and was surprised by the lack of argument as they all hurried further up the tunnels, away from the shouting, heaving mass of people who were destroying each other with their own unwillingness to give way. If anyone noticed them leave they didn't follow, because after all it looked as if they were heading further into the tunnels and nobody in their right mind would go there.

"Here!" Matt had found the bolt-hole he was looking for, an escape hatch to a smaller tunnel and a ladder beyond it leading up to the surface. It was labelled as a fire escape, so the safety door would seal them in and hopefully would be watertight. "If we can get in there and lock the door, it should hold long enough for us to get out."

Becker threw his entire weight against the lock wheel, forcing it to turn. Slowly it creaked around and the door swung open. It had probably been sealed for years.

There was no wheel on the other side. There rarely was on those things.

They both looked at it as their small group hurried through. They knew what had to be done.

"You know what's coming. You're better placed to help them survive. No arguments." Becker gave him a shove towards the hatch, making him trip and sprawl forward. "Go!"

Jess turned as the door was closing, saw what was happening and stopped, already opening her mouth to protest. As Matt scrambled to his feet, meaning to stop Becker, there was only a moment left. His eyes were on Jess and there was just one word almost drowned by the cry of distress from behind him:

"Live."

And then the door closed and he was gone, presumably swept away as if he'd never been there at all.

There was no time to grieve, to cry, the water was still heading their way and they all had to climb. Soon they could hear it roaring through the tunnels, past where they had been and there was a pause none of them could help as they knew their friend would be caught in it, lost. Then Matt shouted at them to move, higher, faster as a fine spray started to pulse through tiny cracks, pooling at their feet in the cramped space below. The hatch had survived into the future before, but things might have changed and in his future it might never have had to deal with an underground flood. He wasn't going to waste any time, or let anyone else do so. Jess had frozen on the ladder, looking down at the water, her face a mask of pain. Matt pushed her ahead of him, forcing her up the ladder, shouting at her whenever she hesitated, shoving her roughly:

"If you slow us down, he's done that for nothing! Move!"

Her eyes widened, then narrowed into a grimly resigned expression he'd never seen from her before, and she was moving decisively onwards.

He wasn't going to let Becker's sacrifice be in vain.


Contrary to popular belief, Becker wasn't the self-sacrificial type.

He knew he operated better alone, that other people slowed him down, and that if anyone stood a chance of getting out of that tunnel alive it would be him. With the others sealed away and safe from the immediate threat if nothing else, he turned and ran. There wasn't a hope in hell that he could outrun the water and he knew it, but there was the collapsed tunnel not so very far away that led out to the surface and if he could just reach that in time then he would at least stand some chance of being swept out instead of simply being dashed against the underground walls and either pulverised to death or drowned.

Afterwards, he couldn't remember what had happened.

He knew he had reached the exit after he splashed down the tunnel, water running at him from all directions. He could recall clambering up towards the daylight that was a long, long way above him. There was a vague recollection of hearing a steady roar getting ever closer, and then something hitting him, pushing him forward and upwards. It was all a bit of a blur after that.

His aching, soaked, bruised and freezing body told him that whatever had happened to him was something he was best off not recalling in too much detail. His left arm, most of his left side in fact, hurt as though he'd been slammed into something. He didn't think anything was actually broken, but bruises could hurt badly enough and there were definitely going to be bruises. He winced as he untangled himself from the debris that had wrapped itself around him, flinging it aside with his good arm. He'd lost the EMD whilst he was running, and it would have been useless now anyway. His trusty shotgun was still strapped to his back. Proof, as if he'd ever needed it, that his Mossberg was the better weapon.

The water had subsided quickly, but it had swept through the city and he knew it was going to take time to find his way back to the others. His leg hurt too, from whatever he'd been thrown against by the wave of water, but at least he could stand. He'd been lucky.

There were others not so lucky. As the water receded he could see bodies, though whether they were victims of the bombings, the predators or the water he couldn't tell. There appeared to be no end of things trying to lower the population level.

He was still in the Hampstead area, which was something. He could've been carried miles by the water, never found his way back. But they'd been far enough out that it hadn't been deadly.

The bombers were another matter.

The earth shook beneath his feet, and he realised the engines were getting closer. Perhaps the flooding had been deliberate, to flush the predators out, and now they were moving in for the clean-up. It was a good strategy. After all, the people left were as good as dead anyway.

Becker didn't intend being as good as dead. He ran for shelter, ignoring the pain in his leg, ducking down as the next explosion hit. It was closer than he was comfortable with. Another plane was coming in and he wondered if they'd seen him moving and thought he was a predator. He stood up quickly, waving to them, signalling that he wasn't a threat.

The third blast threw him up to meet the sky, and the smoke-scarred endless blue was the last thing he remembered.