Warnings: guns, gore (Screaming! Explosions! Falling from great heights! Injuries!), dead bodies, eugenics (ableism), gross sounds and smells, implied animal death, some swearing.

Short recap at end. Death toll is at the very bottom, if you want to spoil it for yourself.

Gooey Ashes

Keep Running

They say the world will go out not with a bang, but with a whimper.

The inhabitants of the apartment complex went out with not one, but many bangs.

Screams piled up. Bangs ricocheted across the lot. Fragile items shattered, furniture thumped on the floors, and bodies made a sickening noise that couldn't be erased from memory when they tumbled out of broken glass sliding doors.

Ludwig stared in mounting horror as the atrocities grew just outside his window, until Gilbert pulled him away. He started to tear from his grip, before seeing his brother's grim expression.

"Your eyes reflect light," he explained, voice low. "We have to pretend we're not here. With luck, nothing will come for us. We have to hide out until morning."

Ludwig considered his options, a hard feat with all the chaos. Finally, matching his brother's volume, he whispered, "Okay. We'll wait."

Waiting wasn't as easy as the word implied. The two of them hoisted their backpacks full of supplies, being careful to muffle everything. The room closest to being a tornado shelter became their solace: the bathroom. It had just enough room for Ludwig to sit on the floor of the shower, and Gilbert rest on the toilet lid. Click the lock, then all the noise from them was their beating hearts and breathing. They covered their packs with towels, further muffling any sound. While their hearts thumped in their ears, their breathing kept low in the wake of all the moans, screams, and shooting outside.

A thud reverberated against the wall Ludwig was leaning against, making him flinch. Gilbert looked in the direction of the ruffle of movement, squinting in the darkness. It didn't continue, and reminding himself that it wasn't like any human being could tear through the thin wall, Ludwig relaxed against the wall again. He made no move at the successive thuds, his heart leaping to his throat with each one.

Something scraped against metal. The sound of rushing water started, and suddenly, the wall behind him didn't feel so solid anymore. Ludwig's conclusion tumbled out of his mouth, "They found us."

"What?" Gilbert scrambled to his feet, and opened the door, tumbling out into the thin streams of light coming from outside. It flickered, but then again, the quality of the electricity here was never the best. "What do you mean they found us!"

"They're coming through the wall," Ludwig hurriedly explained, neither of them paying much attention to their own noise as they scrambled to figure out where to run.

Gilbert pulled his brother back from barreling out the hallway. "Not the front door!" Getting a skeptical glare, he elaborated, "Everyone'll go for the hallway! It'll be full of people, and where people are, zombies are!"

It was like a strategy video game tactic. Don't meet the endless spawning enemy head-on if you don't have a ridiculously high level. Go around if possible. No time to insist this wasn't a video game, that this was the real world! Two pairs of eyes went to the sliding balcony doors, artificial and star light illuminating it just enough.

A bang on the front door decided it. A woman screamed, and the bangs turned to scratches. The brothers darted for the balcony, rushing to jiggle free the stuck doors and yank - Stuck. A good kick dislodged it, but Ludwig didn't miss the whimper right in his ear.

The sharp nip of the wind prickled their exposed skin, and they froze like icicles. Ludwig's heart thumped in his ears. This was it. They were really going to do it. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with clouds of cold. Steeling himself, he grabbed the rail of the balcony, and swung himself over -

Eyes closed, air whooshed past, pummeling his lungs to burning in an instant. Impact didn't hurt as much as he'd thought it would, just a shock and a soreness like rope burn against his back. He was aware a grunt escaped him, but in that moment, he wanted nothing in the world to matter, nothing to be going on that had warranted this.

"Lud, Lud!" Someone shook his shoulder, then slapped his face. "C'mon, wake up! We gotta move!"

Ludwig pried his eyes open, blinking up at his brother. "How'd..." Shock still suppressed him. "How'd you get down?"

"Climbing. The drainage pipe that goes down next to our balcony, I climbed down that." He hesitated, and added, awed in horrified amazement, "Gott, Lud, get up, you're covered in blood..."

Blood? Ludwig checked over himself, finding yes, blood, but no cuts or scrapes. A squelching crunching came as he moved to stand. His stomach churned as he glanced behind him, finding he'd landed on an already heavily injured person, no doubt killing them from the force of his body landing on them.

"Gott," he echoed, stepping back and staring at the dark fluid smeared over his hands. "Gott, Gilbert, I killed a man, I-"

"No time," Gilbert cut him off before he could get into the grief, grabbing his arm. "Move, move, move! Car, get to the car!" Ludwig stumbled at first, kicking something against his foot, then righted himself to catch up.

Darting around the cars, trash furniture, bodies - it all filled the lot, and Ludwig barely had the chance to cover his mouth with everything happening so fast. Screams, bangs, tearing of something wet and soft, and the groans, O the groans! Permeated the once lazy and nondescript area, violence ripping at reality.

The world felt fuzzy and out of sorts, Gilbert shoving him in one side of the car. The doors slammed shut. "Stay with me, Lud!" His throat felt hoarse. The key slammed in the engine, one hard boot slammed on the accelerator, the wheel screeched on the road. A bump-bump where there shouldn't have been.

The night road greeted them with sights that served to distress. Crashes and fires littered the sides of the asphalt, where panicked driving had met with unrelenting potholes and steep drops to retention basins*. Bodies, some impossibly clinging to life to wheeze and twitch, some too far gone. Something moved, dragging a legless torso by the remaining hands, gasping for air to scream. A child choked on the fumes of a destroyed car, struggling to free himself from his seat belt.

Ludwig counted his breaths. In for seven, hold for seven, out for seven. He tried not to linger on the acrid smell of gasoline and burning flesh he could just about taste. Didn't want to identify it. At any other time, he'd scoff at the idea of wishing to 'wake up' and everything to be a dream. Right then, he sympathized with the sentiment.

This was the kind of chaos to only happen on TV. On the news, on international channels, where cameras shot pictures and videos of war and the conditions of Syria and Gaza, of the injustices happening in exotic countries of Turkey and Afghanistan. The crimes that happened in Skid Row, Mexico, non-tourist Thailand, poor India. The aftermath of Haiti.

One bored glance at the TV, and you're done. Maybe have a home-cooked dinner while the terrorism blares white noise in the same room. It never clicks that it could happen to you. That is, until it comes knocking down your door.

Lovino stared at the chaos around him, eyes darting at every little thing, unable to figure out which to focus on. "What-"

No one stopped to let him ask his question. They all ran past him, pushing past. A barrel-chested man shoved him to the ground in haste, and before he could get up, yelled out as a heavy boot stepped on his hand. The boot released, running, and Lovino scrambled to sit up and stand.

He plastered himself to the side of a building, breathing labored from the panic in the air. People abandoned their cars, not trusting traffic to move fast enough, scrambling like bugs over each other in a desperate attempt to get ahead in the rush.

Too much screaming. Babies wailed, more than there should have been in this chaos. Streetlamps and stores still did their duty of lighting up the streets, for the help that did. Store managers and employees had abandoned their posts, leaving shops gaping open for people to stuff garbage bags full of food or expensive trinkets, depending on if they looked concerned for their well-being or not.

A window of a nearby pharmacy burst out shards of glass, a brick skidding on the pavement. He barely ducked away in time, feeling the pieces brush by his arm, his reaction leaving much to be desired.

His back bumped against a signpost, and he scurried to press himself against the wall. People weaved around traffic, stumbling over themselves, pushing past anyone faltering. White-haired men and middle-aged women sat in their cars. Watching the passersby with a resigned boredom. Several children sat in their car seats, chewing on their fingers or watching the outside world with glazed eyes, waiting for their parents to come back and drive them home. Various dogs, many of the tiny, yapping variety, scratched at car windows, whining for their owners to let them free. Left out to die, Lovino realized. Die because they knew they couldn't win in whatever race the rest of humanity was holding.

Then, if Lovino wasn't fleeing, would he die? Be killed by this eldritch horror that instilled so much fright? Death would come for him in a twisted sense of natural selection, killed by an unnatural force that gripped the hearts of so many. He was already disabled, with the knowledge that plenty of people out there wanted him dead for that single reason. Looked like those people would get their wish in the close future.

But what of Feliciano? Lovino couldn't just let his brother die, refused to. Damn his horrible luck, but he'd live for Feliciano's sake. He stumbled onto a car, trying to evade the undulating crowd that just kept rushing onward. A dog; doberman, with its sleek black coat and pointed ears, barely seen through all the scratches on the window. Luckily, the car was left unlocked, and the dog dashed out past him as soon as he opened the door. Even with the keys left inside, he'd never be able to get it out of all the traffic. Lovino was like the dog, but he had another passenger to watch out for before he could leave the car. He had the keys, and now had to find an alternate path for his own figurative car. Feliciano would take the keys later.

"Lovi!"

A force barreled into him, and held tight to him, keeping them both upright. "Dios, I thought I lost you," Antonio rushed to say. "We need to get out of here!"

Lovino looked to him for comfort, for reassurance, that everything was going to be fine, but couldn't find a smile anywhere on the Spaniard's face. "What's going on? What happened?"

Taking in the other's quivering lip, Antonio bit his own. "We stopped for a bathroom break," he reminded him. "I think you got confused and ran off. When I turned around, you were gone."

Damn his amnesia. Lovino took that explanation, but was stubborn in getting another. "And all this?" he shouted above the screams and cries, his own tone hysterical, waving his arms to gesture wildly. "Did the world go fucking insane? What the fucking hell's going on!"

Antonio's expression turned to anguish. "It's the flu, Lovino."

He felt his heart skip a beat at the use of his full, chosen name. Not that pet name, not the name he had to write for a signature; his own name. It wasn't love and acceptance he felt, as many would hope. The grave burden of the situation levied down on him. "It mutated, like Mad Cow Disease. They're delirious and attacking anything that moves. It's like a horde of zombies."

Author's Notes

*Retention basin: Inland, along roads you'll see a steep dip at times, and inside those basins you might see an open pipe. When it rains excessively, these fill up, and it's meant so the grass will absorb the water. Keeps roads clear. (At least in the Midwest USA, anyway) They look like ditches you could get your car stuck in if you're not careful, but that's none of my business...

And so we have Antonio's and Lovino's intro. Feliciano is next. Lovino's metaphor with the car is intended to be confusing until a later chapter.

To recap on characters so far:

-Ludwig is a wannabe pre-med.

-Gilbert goes on those redneck survivalist forums. SHTF type stuff.

-Their father is in the hospital.

-Antonio has diabetes, type one.

-Lovino has a disorder involving amnesia.

-Francis is filthy rich.

-Kiku is Ludwig's one friend.

No one notable died this chapter. Many random citizens died, Ludwig might have killed someone.