Buffy immediately called England.
Clark just plain vanished.
Lex and Dawn watched the reports coming in from the other side of the world, horrified.
"Ministry of Health scientists believe the contagion began in the Gobi Desert region of China, early this morning." The screen showed a series of crooked, grainy images, probably taken and sent with cell-phone cameras. They revealed a haze of something reddish falling from the sky, distant car crashes, widely-spaced and unattended house fires in a tightly packed city that Lex recognized as Beijing.
There was a way in which he felt almost, a tiny bit, relieved. When he'd first heard the news, spreading by whispered word-of-mouth across the Fairgrounds as they'd approached the Fordman's display, he'd been certain the plague had started from the Metropolis spaceship. It only made sense that his men or his father's, or the soldiers-of-fortune whom he should have done more to stop, would have set off some alien failsafe or booby trap that had doomed the world.
The more he watched, though, the more he realized that there was absolutely no reason to feel relieved.
"Call me if you find out anything," Buffy said, and snapped shut her cell.
A graphic on the big screen showed concentric red circles marching across a map of Eurasia. The announcer's British tones could no longer be understood as the crowd there with them in Smallville became even more filled with alarm.
Is there going to be a riot here? Lex wondered. Will I end my days crushed beneath the booted feet of Smallville? Or will I live to see death marching across these fields?
They were showing digital pictures again. The crawl indicated the times and cities of origin. "Last image sent from Beijing," one subtitle read, with a time-stamp of half an hour before. The picture was clearer than most. A young woman, dressed to go out, lay sprawled on a late-night city sidewalk. Reddish circles dotted her rose-colored silk sheath, like drops of rain on pavement at the beginning of a thunderstorm.
Lex knew then that this was his fault. It had to be. He'd had this dream a dozen times, even though pinching himself proved he wasn't dreaming now. A rain of blood would come, sweeping across the world, Kansas, Smallville. It would kill everyone. He might survive, alone, as he'd always been really alone, the murderer of his race.
"Bite me," Buffy swore softly beside him. "I know I've seen that blood-rain stuff before. But where?" Suddenly, for no reason that Lex could see, Buffy yelled "Hey!" and took off running. The crowd was no hindrance to her -- she slid around people like water flowing, just as she had in Sunnydale in the spring.
Lex, embarrassing as it was to admit, would have just stood there and let her run away without trying to follow, if Dawn hadn't grabbed him by the hand and yelled, "Come on!"
They ran and fought their way through mobs of frightened people, who were all trying to get either closer to or further from the TV display. Buffy was far ahead of them by the time they got clear, running hard towards the parking area. Not many people seemed to have that idea yet. Lex knew it would probably be a panicked mob scene in cars once the news had time to sink in, once the people of Smallville realized, as he already had, that those circles of plague and death weren't going to stop. They'd come here. Everyone would die. It was all his fault.
"Come on!" Dawn yelled again. She yanked him out into the parking lot. Lex had parked at the farthest edge from the entrance so he could take two spaces without Clark making that face at him. Buffy was standing at his car, fists on her hips, staring around in evident anger.
"What was that all about?" Dawn huffed.
"She was right here," Buffy muttered.
"Who?" Dawn demanded.
"Sineya!" Buffy exploded, frustrated. "The First Slayer, with the cryptic prophecies and the inhabited-by-ancient-demons, and the trying to kill us in our dreams!"
"Let's just go," Lex suggested diffidently. He didn't want to get caught up in the madness that he was sure the roads would soon become. Dying at the mansion, drunk off his ass on fine scotch, that was his best option at this point.
"Wait. What about Clark?" Dawn suddenly balked, as if just now realizing Clark was no longer with them.
Lex had been trying very hard not to notice that himself. Knowing Clark as he did, Lex was certain he'd supersped off to China when he'd vanished.
Clark was most probably already dead.
"Clark will be able to find us," Buffy vaguely reassured her sister. "There's something -- a way through this..."
People began streaming out into the parking area. Soon the roads would become completely undrivable. If he had less than a day until the end of the world, as his calculating mind had deduced from the news reports, Lex didn't want to spend any of it stuck in a traffic jam. He gestured the girls into the car. "Let's hurry."
Suddenly a wail of "Buffy!" rang out, and Cara Kent crashed into their midst like a cannonball. "Buffy! I lost Mama and Daddy, and I can't find 'em anywhere, and people were stepping on me, and I cried, and I dropped my cotton candy, and I can't find them! And then I saw you."
Tears, snot, and pink sugar streaked the little girl's face. Buffy un-self-consciously wiped it clean with her shirt-tail. Lex supposed it wasn't much, compared to blood or demon ichor.
"We'll take you to Lex's house with us," Buffy said decisively. "I'll call your folks and let them know where you are."
Clark didn't even bother to suit up. This was such a terrible thing, and it was all his fault.
He was Superman; he was supposed to protect his adopted planet from alien attackers. While Buffy and Lex and Dawn and Buffy's friends had been fighting that last ship in Metropolis, he should've at least had their backs. He should have made sure than none of the other aliens that they'd all counted on him to take care of, could sneak up on the other side of the planet and KILL THEM ALL! He'd slept and now BILLIONS WERE DEAD!
Clark flew faster.
It wasn't long at all before the Pacific Ocean came into sight. Over the ocean, the sun went down, but it wasn't that it had gotten that late, just that Clark was moving that fast.
Sooner than he would have thought possible (he was moving faster than he'd ever thought he could, although probably not as fast as he'd gone during the Big Space Battle) the coast of Asia came into view.
He went to Japan, intending to physically carry as many people to safety as he could -- he thought Tokyo was the most densely populated city on the planet, so he should be able to save the most people by going there first. He hadn't given any thought at all to the likely response of a Japanese person, confronted by a big flying alien gaijin who wanted them to "Let me carry you to safety." His lack of foresight didn't matter, though.
From the moment he sighted land, everybody he saw was dead. X-ray vision, telescopic vision, landing (completely heedless of his own safety) and tearing buildings open with his hands to look inside for real -- everything revealed that everyone was dead.
All the animals were dead, too.
The roofs and sidewalks and streets, and the clothes of the few corpses he found out of doors, were all marked with red, damp splotches. Superman thought hard, and flew out to sea again, looking for something he remembered rushing past earlier.
There it was -- a thing like a storm front, not very deep, but as wide as he could see to either side. The rain drops were red, and they didn't smell right, and the clouds they fell from were all wrong, too.
He dove into the ocean. At least this crap wasn't killing all the fish, but it would kill every person, every dog and cat and chicken and cow, except him, if something didn't stop it.
He had to stop it. He had no idea how.
None whatsoever.
Dawn and Lex were both uncharacteristically quiet during the drive back to the mansion.
Buffy sat in back with Cara, who'd taken some persuading to get into the car without a booster seat. Martha and Jonathan didn't have cell phones, so she called and left a message at the farmhouse. She considered calling the sheriff's office, in case the Kents looked for Cara there or tried to get some official help with a search, but the line was busy so she gave it up. It didn't seem all that likely they'd go there, and the local police would be really busy anyhow.
She occupied herself with Cara in the back seat, talking and playing little kids' word games, pretty much as she'd kept herself occupied most of the previous week.
They got to Lex's place. He left the car at the front drive, not bothering to put it away in the garage, and strode wordlessly into the house, tossing his keys onto the hall table. He poured himself a scotch, gulped it down and poured another before sitting down.
How Giles-like, Buffy thought. Guess Dawnie's not the only one doing that Oedipal thing.
Dawn herself stood in the stately hallway before Lex's study, head tipped to one side and a distant, thoughtful expression on her face. Cara seemed to catch the uncomfortable atmosphere here as she hadn't in the car, and put her arms up for Buffy to carry her.
Buffy slung the little girl onto her hip automatically and thought, There's a way through this. I know it. Sineya was there for a reason.
A phone rang. Lex finished his drink and took a cell phone out of his pocket. He set it down on the desk without opening it, and moved to the wet bar to get another drink.
"Lex," Buffy said. "Answer it."
His eyes were very blank when he turned them on her, and she didn't know whether he'd do as she asked or not. The phone rang again. He swallowed hard, put down the glass and answered it before the voice-mail kicked in.
"Lex Luthor," he said faintly.
Dawn suddenly muttered, "Yeah!" and rushed away down the stairs.
"Clark!" Lex said, joyfully. Buffy watched the life wash back into his face, and then gradually it was tinted with an expression of deepest concern. "You're... Okay, slow down. Listen. After we're done talking, fold up the phone carefully and put it somewhere safe. I'm not sure how waterproof it is. Then swim as deep as you can back towards us, and when you get to some sort of island, past the place where the blood-rain is falling, get out of the water and go up to an animal. I know, but they're going to die soon anyway, Clark!" Lex breathed deeply for a second, and then went on. "If the animal dies, retrieve the phone and call me back. Otherwise it should be safe for you to come home, okay?" Lex hung up.
"Clark?"
"Everyone in Japan is dead. All the animals, all the people. This stuff doesn't kill him, though. He didn't even think. He. I was sure he was dead."
"Yeah."
Cara was looking at both of them with big eyes. Buffy wished she could reassure her, but she couldn't think of anything to say.
"If he's a carrier of the contagion, he'll be calling again. Otherwise, he's going to come straight back. I don't know whether --"
Lex was cut off by Clark suddenly whooshing into the room. He looked shattered. "What are we going to do?" he asked, lost. Cara squiggled down from Buffy's arms and zipped over to him. He hugged her, looking hopeless, and repeated, "What are we going to do?"
Buffy heard Dawn running back up the stairs from Lex's basement. "Guys! Come down here! I have an idea!"