/011. Red.
(STOP: planet earth)
It was hot. The sun had been growing for the past three days, swelling like an inflamed pimple in the sky. An old, red, red, dying star. Not their own little dwarf but something big and old and hungry.
Gaz sat out with her brother, purportedly occupied with her Game Slave but really discreetly eying Dib. He was crouched on the roof, eye anxiously to the telescope, his silhouette dark against the cyan sky.
"It's so huge," he said out loud to no one in particular. "Gargantuan, even. I swear. It's just getting bigger."
"Are you talking about the sun or your head?" Gaz said, tilting her screen. It didn't help; the color was totally washed out. The light, strong as noon though it was six and well into evening, made the pixels impossible to see.
"Ha ha." Had she looked, she would've seen Dib throw her an irritable look. "Seriously, you should be worried. We're moving closer and closer to this thing and not slowing down."
"Gravity wells will do that." If she turned the screen just right, though, it caught a bit of shade and she could just barely see the outline of her character. Who was now dying horribly. Gaz sighed. "Where's Zim, anyway? Shouldn't he be here to gloat about this?"
"I don't think this is him," Dib shouted breathlessly. "I mean, he wants to use the world, right? Won't be much to use after this." She watched him fold the telescope under his arm and slide down the pipe. He landed on his feet with a thump, and tossed a concerned look in her direction. "You should probably go put some sunscreen on, ya know," he said. "That's strong."
"Whatever," she growled, glaring down. "Not like it's gonna make a difference anyway." Their shadows were as sharp as if they'd been cut from black paper, and they perfectly reflected Dib's truncated, frustrated gesture towards her. After a second he just turned around and went inside.
Gaz closed her eyes (although the casual observer would be hard-pressed to notice) and then opened them again. She glanced down at their wilted lawn and then turned back up towards the sun, huge and swollen and crimson as a stop sign.
Stop: planet earth.
Gaz squinted at the hot light until her eyes filled with tears.
4/1/08.
/014. Green.
(Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair)
The city looked so different now. Zim parked the Voot on top of one of the highest sky scrapers he could find that would support his ship and gazed out across the buildings, where the trees were taking them over. Without cars and people it was almost disturbingly silent here. The only noise was birds chirping and the wind sighing through the trees.
It was long enough now that the colonizing plants were beginning to resemble a forest, spruce trees cracking the asphalt, wildflowers growing in the sidewalk cracks. Bright, bright flowers, and stillness. The wind blew in dust and moss took advantage of the available surface; ivy climbed the building walls, the trees in the park grew scruffy, wild. Deer moved silently through the nascent forest, and wolves. Zim had rappelled down buildings before and walked through a whole new kind of jungle, one he no longer recognized, and he'd stumbled on bones jumbled in moss. Someone had died there, some human, just lied down and exhaled for the last time in that stink of panic and plague and death. Zim supposed that somewhere in the world there was probably another human still loving somewhere somehow, but he hadn't bothered to look.
All of the humans he would have bothered with were down for the count, anyway.
He imagined that Dib's bones were out there somewhere, the flesh having long since been eaten away. Bones flaking to powder, feeding their minerals back into the earth, their essence melting down and returning to its base state. A fitting fate for his enemy, reintegrated back into the planet that he'd served so zealously in life. The planet that had turned on him in the end. All that avaricious life - ! Microorganisms don't care if the body they wither away belongs to a hero or a criminal who never finished his treatment regime. They devour just the same.
The cities, emptied; the planet, quiet. Maybe the humans that had survived would regress, return to the trees, swing on branches, grow prehensile tails. Maybe someday an Irken squad would land here, the scouts ranging out on the deer trails, mapping the terrain, finding themselves surprised by brown hairy native aliens dropping silently from the trees.
That would be a long time. Not so long, though, that those Irkens would have forgotten Zim's name.
He climbed back into the Voot. The backwash of superheated air from its thrusters tore petals from flowers, leaves from trees.
4/4/08.
/024. Family.
(zero hour)
The road is tight and winding; Dib slurps the last of his coffee (so black it hurts) and buckles down to take the curves. Hours of driving, and pain shoots tight fingers in his spine and neck, a migraine headache throbs behind his eyes. At the next pit stop he's gonna pull off and catch a catnap, before driving again - stopping now for too long would be a bad idea. They need to be out of the state before they close the borders, they need to be out of the state fast.
The kid slumps in the seat next to him, breathing deep. A little twitch he is, in waking, all jitter and jump. Kind of a familiar kid, in a way. Little Dib minus the scythe, big-eyed and pale and believing and scared.
A skinny mad-looking man had pushed him into Dib's arms, before he fled the city. Here, you take him - the man had said - you take him out, you take good care of him, I'll find out and fuck you up if you don't. Squeegee, gimme the bear, you don't need him. Give me the fucking bear! You - looking at Dib again, with lancing pale eyes - you, take care of him.
And Dib, he was left on the corner, with the car engine purring and a kid he didn't know bundled panting and scared in his arms.
A cherry slurpee and some half-melted candies had bought Dib facts, but no reasons. My name's Todd, I live on one of the ruined streets, I don't know where my dad is. Or my mom. Please don't hurt me. That man was my neighbor. I don't know why he gave me to you.
Please don't hurt me.
Well, it didn't look so good for them, but Dib wasn't so far gone he'd leave some little kid on the streets to fend for himself, so together they drove for the border. Dib didn't think they'd have problems crossing. He was well-enough known, after all, and the kid - he could pass off the kid, easy.
If they could just get to the goddamn checkpoint in one piece.
Dib fumbled for his cup again, because maybe there were some dregs he'd missed, and nearly had a heart attack when something thudded against the bumper and the whole car shuddered. He pitched forward, Todd pitched forward, and Dib braked sharply. Todd was awake now, eyes huge and nervous, fingers fumbling. "You okay?" Dib said.
"Yeah," Todd replied, tugging nervously at his seatbelt. There was a red mark on his neck where the strap pulled in a little too tight. "What was that?"
"I'll go see." Dib unbuckled himself, slid out of the door. His muscles howled with pent-up agony when he stretched, and Dib popped vertebrae all up and down his spine. Damn, felt good. He turned around and walked towards the back of the car.
There was a dog there. Some anonymous mutt, curled and snarling and shaking, a big smear of blood left where it had rolled. He would see the worms coiling in its fur, the red gleam of madness in its eyes. Dib froze, stared at the busted limbs and the blood that bubbled up from its mouth when it growled at him. "Oh, man," he said. "All the way out here, already? Where the hell did you come from?"
"Dib?" called Todd nervously from the seat. Dib glanced back at him, met the kid's huge and concerned eyes for just a second.
"Hey, don't freak out," he said, yanking a smile from somewhere and pasting it on big. "Some douche just left some boards on the road and that's what we hit. I'll just throw them into the ditch and we'll get going."
Todd blinked at him with frightened, trusting eyes, and then turned back around. His messy hair just barely poked up over the back of his seat.
Dib walked briskly to the dog that wasn't a dog anymore, grabbed it by one fore- and one backleg, and dragged it across the road. It twisted in his hands and made a terrible, gravelly noise, but didn't yelp or bark or try to bite him. Dib dropped it off the side of the road, sweating. Furious red eyes glinted at him from the bottom of the slope; runoff half-submerged its body and he could see the worms in its fur roiling. He shuddered and backed away.
He wiped his palms on his black jeans before he got back in the car, just in case there were any remainders on them somehow. Todd gave him a watery smile when he got back in the car. Feeling horrible, Dib smiled wanly back. You do what you have to, he thought, to take care of your own, and when you can't do anything you find new things to take care of.
Oh, Todd, if I die, I still have to get you to the border. We'll both get to the border. This, I won't fail.
"Let's roll," he said, and started the engine again.
2/20/8.
/052. Fire.
(some say the world will end in fire)
His window open to let the summer air flow, the scent of smoke blew in. A hot, greasy smell, and Dib's brow furrowed in his sleep and his even breaths rasped. He woke up easily, catologued his body: arms, hands, legs, feet, all essentials intact. Why had he woken up?
Lying under a cotton sheet, he breathed in the scent of something destructing. Smoke, a fire. His dark lashes fluttered against his cheeks; Dib dragged himself up out of the mire if dreams and in to nightmarish waking. Out of his window the sky was flared up red with the reflection of flame. He stared in that direction, where normally the clouds glimmered with a hint of lime green. "Zim," he whispered, gazing out at the bloodied clouds.
The night streets were quiet, busy if he knew where to look; no one paid attention to the intent-looking kid in the studded leather jacket, or the bulging satchel he carried slung over one shoulder. Or to the way he was talking to himself, either; at this time of night, all the drunks and junkies came out, and plenty of them talked. One lunatic more or less meant nothing.
"What's he doing this time?" Dib muttered to himself, his gaze trained on a downward angle, avoiding eye contact with anyone. "I didn't think after that gopher fiasco that he'd be plotting again so soon. Fuck, what if it's laser bats again?" The laser bats were a bad memory.
He stopped impatiently on a corner, allowed a fire engine to pass screaming through the red light without contesting it. Another engine followed, and then three more; Dib covered his ears and stared curiously after them. "Fucked your own plan up, space boy," he said. "Not like you've never done that before." But fire engines, that was new. The earth authorities didn't usually get called in.
Dib never got to his rival's house, although he got close enough to see it. The state of the base – what had previously been the base – came as a shock. It was cordoned off a block away. Looked like all Zim's neighbors had been leveled too.
Lots of people lived on this block. He stared around, at the blasted shrubberies and caved-in houses, at the greasy pillars of smoke rising up into the night sky and the fires that still hellishly flared and jumped. "Fucked up your own plan," he whispered. "Fucked it up royally." He wondered if the firemen would find the underground base, and if it would be recognizable as something alien if they did. There wasn't anything here for him to do.
He shifted his carryall to his other shoulder, still staring bleakly. Men and women in heavy suits were hosing down the grounds now, trying to fight down the flames before they spread, but it seemed like the fire wasn't willing to die down that easily. Bright points of flame shrank before the water and then leaped up again. "Oh, shit," said Dib, anxiously backing away. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he bumped into someone.
"Hello, Dib," the other said, and he turned around sharply, disbelieving. Tak had crept up on him, disguised and amused, her darkened eyes bright with malicious humor.
"Tak," he said. "Uh, hi. Do you know what happened here?"
"What happened here?" she repeated. "Oh, little Dib, it was me. I happened here."
He stared at her and felt chills crawl down his neck. She looked so old and so cold. "You destroyed the base?" He could barely believe it. Tak had destroyed the base, for real. "And Zim?"
"I did." She looked pleased, like a cat caught with bloodied feathers stuck around its mouth, and he knew that Zim must have been down in there with his machines blowing and the computer system going crazy, and that she hadn't done this for the good of all mankind.
"Where are you going next?" he said, licking his lips, which suddenly seemed very dry. It was the smoke, that evil smoke, billowing through his hair and choking his lungs.
She regarded him with careless amusement. "Washington, I suppose," she said.
"I'll follow you," he said, knowing that she knew that he would and thought that it wouldn't make a difference in the end. And Tak... Tak was a whole different game from Zim. Maybe it wouldn't.
Pessimism would kill him. Dib squared his shoulders, forced the thought away.
"Of course," she purred, folding her arms, each hand clasping the elbow of the opposite arm. "Of course. But this is only my beginning, Dib. The first step."
4/4/08.
/061. Winter.
(some say in ice)
The sun rose that day on a frozen wasteland. It was very cold but that was nothing new, almost every day for the last three years had been bitter, bitter, freezing cold. Gretchen stoked the wood stove in the morning so it warmed their little cave up, and made breakfast with a little water and cinnamon raisin instant oatmeal packs. She would let Dib sleep a little longer, since he'd ranged so far out yesterday, looking for a new food stock to ferry back to their nest.
She was balancing the steaming pot over the fire and stirring away when she heard a shuffle behind her, Dib emerging from their pile of quilts and blankets and sleepily pulling at his nightshirt. "You could go back to bed," Gretchen said. "We've got enough stock you could take an off day and sleep in for once."
"Too cold in there to sleep without you," Dib said, and Gretchen smiled, blushed. Even in the midst of disaster Dib could make her act like a little girl again. It wasn't cold in their bed, either, even alone; they'd gone deep enough underground that the structure held heat pretty well.
"Besides," Dib said, "we're not that well off on supplies. We need firewood and gas and medicine, and fruit if I can find it. The places around here won't hold out much longer, even though we don't eat much."
She took the pot off the fire and glopped the oatmeal into bowls. The greater portion went to Dib, and Gretchen sat down across the table from him, prodding unenthusiastically at the stuff with her tin spoon. She'd never liked oatmeal much and was thoroughly sick of it, but it kept well and Dib had packed back seventeen cases of the stuff two weeks ago. It was food, too, which was never something to cry about.
Dib scraped moodily at the bowl with his spoon, pale eyes abstract and his mouth tense. "I'll see if I can find some canned peaches," he said. "Pears, pineapple, something like that. Is it Christmas? Did we miss Christmas? It'll be a treat."
"It's all right," she said. "We'll get by without that either way, I think we need fire stuff more, and water filters. Batteries."
"Whatever I run across."
"Yeah."
Ting-ting, ting-ting, went his spoon against the metal bowl. "I hate this," he said without looking at her. "I hate this so fucking much."
She reached out to him, pained. "Dib..."
"No!" he burst out, suddenly wild. "What are we doing out here? What the hell are we really doing out here? This, is this what you imagined doing with your life, Gretchen? Scraping out some miserable existence at the mercy of... of fate, God, if anything's out there at all? Of ripping up encyclopedias to use the pages as firestarters? Is this what you wanted to happen, Gretchen, really?"
Tears prickled at her eyes. The back of her throat stung. "No, it's not," she said. "It's not. But I'm not ready to die yet."
"Ready?" he spat. "You don't have to be ready. Hey, at any second the wind might turn just the wrong way, and outside could be flooded with radioactive dust, and it'd be impossible to go outside, and we'd starve in here. Maybe tomorrow some other human nastier than me will show up and shoot us both because we've got shelter and supplies. Maybe in three months, radiation sickness will get to one or both of us! You think you can be ready for that?"
She was really crying now, tears dripping off the end of her nose and plashing into the bowl. "We still have each other," she whispered. "I don't want to die while I can still live and be happy with you. Who knows, maybe... maybe something will happen, maybe..."
"Yeah, Gretchen." He sounded really tired suddenly. "Maybe something will happen. Maybe God will rescue us, how about that."
She reached out again, and he allowed her to carefully take his hand. For a few minutes they simply sat with their finished breakfasts regarding each other carefully, Gretchen still melting with tears and Dib exhausted, the lines around his mouth and eyes heavily impressed. He looked so old and he wasn't even twenty yet.
"I'd better get ready," he said finally, the sudden fire in his voice abruptly gone. "Had my eye on a few places that looked like the raiders might have missed some things. Maybe we'll eat some peaches tonight, huh?"
Gretchen swiped quickly at her eyes, moved away to clean up the room as Dib pulled on his silk underclothes, wool outer layers, rubber jacket, armored coat, gas mask. She brought him his Geiger counter as he was settling the mask over his face and experienced the usual chill at how suddenly alien it made him look. Her Dib, still dreaming.
He bumped his chin against her forehead in the clumsy parody of a goodbye kiss. When he went out the door she had to hold herself hard and shiver.
Come back to me, she thought, watching him strike out so small, against the snow field.
4/5/08.
END
The destructions, in order: thrown into the sun from Planet Jackers, tuberculosis plague, zombie outbreak, act of Tak, nuclear winter.
The quote at the beginning of Green is from "Ozymandias", by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The quotes at the beginnings of Fire and Winter are both from the poem "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost.
