One shot – RIP, Forks

This was a short I wrote for some contest or other back in maybe 2010? I found it along with a bunch of other half or 3/4 finished fics back last winter. I will post them as I get around to them.

This one is a bit dark. I always wondered what the Volturi would do if an exposure situation got out of hand.

Setting: New Moon, in early June. Alice did not see Bella jump - she saw her atop the cliff, and frantically called Edward, as did Rosalie - but as she did not see the jump, she waited before going to Forks. Later that night, she saw another vision of Bella at home in bed, and so never made the trip to see Bella.

Edward POV

May 2008

It's been almost two years. Two long, lonely years that I've searched for her.

My Bella.

All I'd seen of her since that…fateful day... was a brief vision, seventeen months after 'The Event.'

'The Event.' That's what they were calling it now. Forget the fact that almost three thousand people died that day. No, it's just simply 'The Event.'

If I one day found her...would she ever forgive me? Would she even know me?

I can only pray, and keep looking. I would look forever, if I had to.

2 years prior, June 2006

EPOV

Nine months.

Nine months of living in my own personal hell.

I couldn't take it anymore, and my marble fist crashed into the plaster wall, sending chipped sheetrock flakes flying through the room, leaving a trail of slow falling dust.

Bella. My sweet, clumsy, adorable, loving Bella. The only girl I've ever loved, the only one I ever will.

My will to stay away had finally cracked. I needed to return to Forks, back to my love. I needed to go, right now. The urge had been building slowly, but it suddenly was overwhelming. I could not stay away a moment longer.

Like and old man, I stood slowly on unsteady legs. I'd not risen for many weeks, and it took me a moment to take those first slow steps towards the broken door of my hovel, towards home.

I was vaguely aware of the date; my vampiric memory was too sharp, even in my weakened state to completely block-out the passage of time, and I knew Bella would be graduating from high school any day now. I expected she would leave Forks as soon as she'd been able - she hated Forks - and I had to get back before she left; it felt right, like we should rekindle our love in the place I had foolishly tried to turn my back on it.

I'd been a miserable shell since I got here some months ago, following a false lead laid by Victoria. Did she know I was following her? Did she enjoy leading me further from my love?

I was holed up in an abandoned, rat infested attic in Brazil, ignoring all attempts from my family at reaching me. There had been a flurry of calls back in March, but they soon after stopped trying. I guessed Alice had seen a vision of me returning eventually and had convinced everyone to stop pestering me. After all, I had, deep down, known for some time now that I was going to eventually crack and go back to Bella, begging for forgiveness.

Alice had told me so, many times, and as usual, she was right.

Now, that time for my return had seemingly arrived, and she must have seen it. My phone had not stopped ringing for the past several hours, and I decided, since I was going back home anyway, to answer it; after at least a hundred texts from everyone including Rosalie, I was angry and finally gave up my stubborn resistance in acknowledging them.

"What do you want?" I snapped at whoever was calling. I did not need premature congratulations on my decision to return, which was almost certainly why these calls were coming now; Alice must have seen my decision to go back and was going to pester me about what outfit I should wear when I showed up at Bella's house or some other inane advice that I didn't care to hear.

"Edward! Don't hang up! Please!" It was Esme, her voice desperate. But her fears were ungrounded, I would not hang up on Esme. I loved and respected her far too much to be cruel to her.

In a breathless rush, she spoke at vampire speeds. "Edward, Alice and Jasper are on their way to Forks right now. Rosalie and Emmett are still in London but are on their way back through New York. Carl and I are at the airport, getting on the first flight out to Seattle."

Esme's desperate voice and the information she relayed didn't fully register to me; once the word 'Forks' was spoken, everything else was just a hazy background hum. How long had it been since I hunted? I was not thinking clearly, my mind fuzzy as I grappled with Esme's words.

"Why are they going to Forks?" I croaked, my voice clearly hoarse from disuse and thirst. It had been several months since I last spoke with anyone - probably when I spoke to Alice back around Christmas. Was that the last time I spoke to them on the phone?

Esme's voice interrupted my introspection. "Yes! Forks! Oh Edward, it's horrible! Have you seen the news?" Esme was frantic. Esme was almost never frantic.

Waking to full alertness, I imagined if i was human a shiver would be running down my spine. "Bella?" I whispered. "What's happened, Esme?" Surely this involved Bella. Why else would they be going to Forks?

I heard a choked sob through the tinny speaker, and then Esme began to talk more slowly, seemingly convinced now that I wouldn't hang up the phone prematurely. "Edward, it's bad. Really bad. Alice had a vision very early this morning...at least a dozen, maybe more...newborn vampires descending on Forks; and then just...blackness, like something is blocking her visions!"

For a moment, I didn't react. Newborn vampires? In Forks? The idea seemed absurd.

But almost as quickly, a desperate, choking fear rose in my gut: if it was possible for a vampire to be nauseous, I was experiencing it right now.

I heard Esme speaking again, but I could not understand her words above the roaring in my ears.

I finally found my voice. "I'm on my way there now," I whispered. It was all I could say, and a text from Alice arrived a moment later. "HUNT FIRST!" came through in bold letters, and then another text. "1:19pm flight U3243, United Airlines, Rio to Seattle with a connection in Houston. Emmett is buying your ticket right now, pick it up at the airport. Hurry Edward. It's bad."

As I leapt to the rooftop, jumping and racing towards the small wooded and hilly areas a few miles from the city, my mind was locked down in fear.

After feeding on the first few animals I encountered - a donkey of some sort and a cow, which might have been the most disgusting blood I'd ever tasted - I stole a clean shirt from a laundry line and made my way to the airport, my nerves stretched so tight I wanted to snap the neck of the cab driver who would not shut up.

The first inkling about how bad the situation actually was is when I overheard a few American passengers in the United Airlines terminal, talking about the 'massacre' in a small town in America that was just hitting the international news wires and tv stations. While I was waiting for the plane to board, I watched his memories in mute horror as he recalled watching a local news reporter -speaking in Portuguese on the Brazilian BBC World News channel - giving scant details about how 'many hundreds, perhaps thousands,' of people had been killed, mutilated and burned, in a sleepy little town called Forks, Washington in America.

Scanning other minds now, I picked up a few more details that people had overheard on different channels, or read about on some internet news site: about how the American military had been called in, and how the entire town was now under a strict quarantine, completely blocked off from any and all access. There was even a single snippet about an official - probably speaking unofficially - about people convulsing and screaming in pain with seemingly nothing wrong with them save for a few deep lacerations.

Fears of contagious pathogens. Of mass hysteria. Of some new contagious virus.

With mounting horror, I knew the truth about that last report: it sounded like there were soon to be a lot of new vampires waking up as some of the townspeople underwent the Change.

Bella. I had to get to Bella. That's all that mattered.

Making my last call just before the plane boarded and I lost reception, I got Bella's answering machine, as well as Alice's voice mail.

The plane departed, and my communications were cut, even as the pilot turned the big jet northwest, heading back to Houston, and then a connection to Seattle.

Heading home.

During the flight I was unable to reach anyone, but once I landed, I finally got Alice on the line.

"Edward! I'm just outside of Forks, we have more information. It was Victoria and her army! She created a newborn army because the Quileute Wolves were keeping her away from Bella! The wolves had already destroyed a vampire that sounds like Laurent - long dreadlocked hair - months ago and she couldn't penetrate their defenses..."

If it was possible to keel over and die, I would have at that moment.

I had left Bella to keep her safe? Had I not named her magnet for all things dangerous? What could I possibly have been thinking?

I tried to speak clearly, compartmentalizing as best as I could manage. "Bella...is she..." I could not even form the words - I would not survive the wrong answer, Italy would be my next destination.

There was a long pause on the line, and for a moment I feared the worst. Even as I waited for Alice to pronounce my doom, I contemplated on walking straight back to the counter and just getting on the next plane for Volterra.

Alice's next words would determine my fate.

"We don't know, Edward," she finally said, quietly. "The National Guard is here, along with just about every policeman in Washington State. There are dozens of Government people here, and more keep coming. At first, just police and SWAT. But now...FBI, scientists, men in chemical HAZMAT suits..."

I contemplated the situation, but then she was speaking again. "Edward, there are at least a dozen people who were bitten and are changing, right now! The first one will wake up in 2 days, and...and it's going to be really bad Edward. The Volturi are on their way - they are almost here, I see the Guard in a private jet, they will land in Port Angelas in less than half an hour- but nothing is clear, at all!"

I had never heard Alice so flustered before, she sounded hysterical, and wondered where Jasper was.

I tried to put aside my horror, knowing the Volturi would probably kill everyone who even had a glimpse of someone undergoing the change. How would they cover this up? Would they simply kill everyone as a precaution?

I shook my head, trying to focus. "Please Alice. Please. Where is Bella?" I was begging, my voice as close to a prayer as I had ever spoken before.

I heard her take a deep breath. "Edward, I don't know. I only know what I do by pure luck because we ran into one of the Quileute's as he lay dying. We tried to talk with him, but he was crazy with grief and injury. Even with his legs crushed and burning from bite wounds, he was trying to get up so he could kill us! Before he passed out or died - I don't know if he makes it, I can't see the wolves in my visions - he mumbled that newborn vampires killed most of his pack, feasted on dozens of people and killed and mutilated hundreds more before they burned half the town away! Edward, the things I saw...if I could sleep, I'd have nightmares for years."

I ran a hand over my eyes, shaking, unwilling to contemplate the horror of it.

Alice was speaking again, her voice sounding hollow. "Edward, you can't just come running in here. There must still be a few wolves around, as everything is still mostly blank and they seem to completely block out my visions. They won't listen to you if you say you're a Cullen; the treaty, it won't matter to them. The fires are almost out, but there is so much smoke, and there are bodies everywhere, Edward!"

She paused for a moment, and I heard sirens in the background. When she came back on, it sounded like I was on speaker phone and she was running. "They took away the people who were screaming from the change and put them into a tent of some sort. We considered killing the people in the tent, but it's cordoned off with guards in chemical suits everywhere. There is no way we can get in without killing all the guards, and who knows if they have surveillance equipment sending everything to satellite!"

More noises and a longer pause and then she was speaking again. "We got pretty close to them, up in the trees earlier this morning when it was dark. The army has no idea what is happening, they think its nerve gas or something like that. When we move, we have to hide in the tree line, as there are soldiers everywhere, and I heard a few helicopters land and more soldiers got out a few minutes ago. There must be five hundred troops here by now, and lots of trucks with all sorts of detection equipment."

Edward heard her take a deep breath. "And Edward, the wolves got some of the vampires, but not all of them were burned. The military has the parts! This is bad Edward...I don't know if this is it, if we are exposed to the world after this. I'm not sure the Volturi will be able to contain this Edward, but I do know they are going to kill them all Edward, and then burn Forks to the ground. I've seen it!"

My breath rattled. "I'm on my way, Alice. I will meet you behind our old house." I cut the connection before Alice could say anything else. According to what she said, I was racing against the Volturi. They had a private plane, and were landing in Port Angelas, closer to Forks than me.

But I was faster.

I had a very narrow window to find Bella and get the hell out of there before the Volturi found us and exterminated us.

Bella had to be alive. I would have felt it if she died, right?

I prayed harder.

I left the terminal in Seattle as fast as a human sprinter could go, then once outside I exploded into the fastest sprint I'd run since Phoenix last year, when I had been racing to the ballet studio to save Bella from James. I had no patience for a car, not when I could cross the mountains and make the trip on foot in less time than driving.

As I ran past Tacoma at over two hundred miles per hour, I caught stray scents of at least four or five different vampires, heading west, just like me. The rain made it hard to tell, but the scents were not even a day old. Were they part of Victoria's army? Were they Volturi?

I wasn't sure, but they were heading due west, on the same path I was on, in a straight line to Forks.

I ran faster.

Less than an hour later, hurtling so quickly through the familiar terrain that I barely left footprints in the soil, I was about three miles out from the house when I finally caught the first thoughts of Alice and Jasper.

They were frantic.

"Edward! We need to go, the Volturi are here, they got here a few minutes ago! They are slaughtering everyone! I've seen it, they already killed the last few newborns and the people changing! They are killing the humans now, the soldiers, the scientists, everyone, and they are going to set off some sort of explosive device!"

I'd never seen Alice like this before. Even Jasper couldn't calm her.

She saw my jaw firm, and grabbed my wrist before I could run to Bella's house. I wasn't thinking clearly, because surely Alice would have checked there already. "Edward, the wolves that are not at the reservation must all be dead. My vision is clear now, look! Look at my thoughts!"

Sure enough, I saw black cloaked figures moving at vampire speed, snapping necks of any and all humans they found and launching some sort of accelerant into every building before setting them ablaze.

I watched this macabre vision as it took place in Alice's mind, the sheer ferocity of the Volturi's response shocking me.

They were brutally efficient, racing through town and showing no mercy. I could not see a single human alive, anywhere, on Main Street or the surrounding area, and fires were burning fiercely in just about every building now, in many places combining into one giant fire, almost like a firestorm from World War 2.

Jasper shook his head at the horror-struck expression on my face. "They are probably going to either burn down every building, or maybe they have a nuke. Not sure, but I've no doubt they had prepared for an eventuality like this happening somewhere. No one from town will survive, Edward, including the military. The only people who have a chance to live through this are either already long gone or live well outside of town."

I shook my head to clear it of the terrible images, my hands clenching in frustration. "Where's Bella, Alice, please!" I choked out, my voice desperate, leaning on a tree to prevent myself falling to my knees. Please, Bella, please. I prayed she had gone to see Renee, or was visiting colleges, or was walking on First Beach...anywhere but in Forks!

When the wind shifter, I could smell the smoke on the air, and even while trying to block Alice's thoughts I could see snippets of the violence still being perpetrated in Forks, all to keep our monstrous secret.

I pushed myself, staggering, off the tree. I could deal with the guilt later, the knowledge that I had created this situation - so sure that Victoria would not target Bella for revenge - was a stain on whatever monstrous soul I might have had left in me that would never be erased. Any lingering doubts I had once harbored about possibly following Bella to Heaven one day were now permanently and irrevocably extinguished.

Me, Edward Cullen, had brought death to Forks, Washington.

Alice's voice floated across my consciousness. "I can't find her in my visions, Edward. It's possible she might be alive Edward but I can't find her! When I look for her, I just see grey. Nothing is clear!"

I could see her straining, willing her gift to find Bella's future. I'd never seen her pushing her gift so hard.

Suddenly, another vision floated through Alice's trinocular focus of the future and her expression went blank, and I looked onto her mind.

Black cloaks were moving fast, but several had been pushed back. I immediately recognized Demetri, the famed Volturi tracker that I had met once in Chicago back in the late 1920 during my 'rebellious stage' when I was given a warning to be careful.

Now, in Alice's vision, I saw him leading the Volturi Guard, pointing at several buildings in town, where they carried backpack sized containers into them.

To my horror, one of the buildings included the hospital, which had not yet burned down - presumably it had built-in fire systems - and I could see faces of still living patients coughing as they tried to make their way from the building, only to be dispatched with brutal efficiency by the Volturi.

They dropped their boxes in the church, where several people had gathered to pray, as well as town hall and the post office. They rushed through the tent the military had set up, killing the soldiers and scientists and ripping the heads from the dozen or so people who were undergoing the change.

Then I saw them systematically killing the last few scientists who were eagerly and morbidly examining the twitching parts of one of the dismembered Vampires the the wolves had apparently not burned, their eyes locked on as the fingers tried to crawl around in the metal container it was kept in.

And then there was a long pause in her vision...and then I saw fire...fire, everywhere, burning everything. Thick gas, covering the area. More Volturi arriving, including Aro himself, with several carrying a large container that looked vaguely like a missile warhead. I saw the Volturi perimeter expand, coming in this direction in less than an hour, searching for any survivors, planning on retreating to Seattle to keep an eye on the situation when the inevitable government troops arrived. Prepared to do whatever it took to keep this contained...

And finally, in her vision: Demetri, tracking us. Finding us.

Then blackness.

Alice snapped from her trance. "We need to go. There is nothing we can do here, and if we are not gone soon they will find us."

"No," I said, my jaw firm. "If there is any chance Bella is here, I need to get her out of here before the Volturi destroy her!"

"Edward!" Alice screeched. "You saw the end of that vision! They are going to destroy the whole town! And if they find us, we're dead! We cannot let them know we knew of Victoria and did nothing, or that we left Bella behind with forbidden knowledge! We need to leave!"

"Please," I begged. "Look again."

Alice was scanning ahead again, and I watched, seeing that I would not only be unsuccessful in finding Bella, but that in every scenario Alice looked at, I ran afoul of the Volturi. In most of her visions, the last thing we saw was my head being separated from my body as Alice was dragged away screaming.

I slumped, leaning again on the tree, my breaths coming in short gasps.

There had to be a way. I had to stay, I had to find Bella.

"You can't, Edward, not now," she said, clearly seeing my decision to remain here, searching. "The Volturi are not even stopping to question anyone. They are killing anyone in the area - vampire, human, werewolf. We need to go. If Bella is alive, we aren't going to find her here. Maybe she got out in time, but we need to go, now!"

Before I could even answer, I heard Alice answering her phone, talking quickly to Carlisle. A moment later, their voices were on speakerphone. A frantic conversation followed, and finally I was convinced that if Bella was alive that getting myself killed here today would serve no purpose, and that once the Volturi were gone we would return.

And so we ran, having never even entered the house, the steel shutters over the windows and doors standing in silent witness to our brief visit.

Alice watched the Volturi's decisions even as we raced back to Seattle, and then further on to Vancouver. We did not want to stay in either Port Angelas or Seattle, as Alice reported the Volturi would leave several guards in both places for weeks, just to have a response team on hand if it was needed.

We were about fifty miles from Forks when a large, bright light lit up the sky behind us, saturating the mountain we were crossing with white light like from a flashbulb. Not bothering to stop and look back at the mushroom cloud that certainly was forming even now, we kept running, probably never to return.

Over the next week or two, the 'The Event' - as it had come to be called - was the world's leading news headline. Even after the shock value died down and it got pushed to the back pages of the newspapers, it remained the subject of endless debate, speculation, and guesswork for months, and many websites became devoted to solving the mystery of 'What Happened in Forks?'

Some facts were known: of the town's residents of a little more than three thousand people, less than four hundred remained alive at the end of that tragic day. Of those that did survive, without exception every single one had been well outside about a ten mile radius of the town center, which was now simply a deep, highly radioactive crater in the ground.

While many experts speculated on the how's and the why's, my family and I knew most of the truth. ,

Using Alice's visions of both before and after the explosion, we surmised that the Volturi had only a narrow window of time before more and more government personnel arrived; hence, Jasper surmised, they were trying to be thorough and eliminating anyone who might have been close enough to actually have witnessed anything supernatural.

Carlisle agreed that he was probably right.

The bomb that had been set off was what was classified as a 'dirty bomb.' The explosive yield, the newspapers said, was on the order of thirty or so kilotons, much smaller than modern warheads which typically were 350kt and up. But the radioactive component was much larger, and the radioactive isotopes produced from the fallout had rendered Forks uninhabitable for at least the next decade or two, and the eastward and southward blowing winds had spread the radiation as far south as Olympia, which would invariably cause cancer rates to skyrocket in that area for the forseeable future.

As the weeks went by, unofficial reports - undoubtedly obtained from government agents who were treated to certain perks by their news contacts - began to leak out into the mainstream media and a timeline of events was put together.

Apparently, the police station in Forks began to request assistance from neighboring towns to send SWAT teams immediately; there was apparently a 'gang' that was on a killing spree in town, and that they could not stop them. The tapes of that call were eventually leaked, and were a news sensation as desperate officers in Forks screamed about 'pale demons that bullets couldn't stop' and that their red eyes were filled with their victims blood.'

The distress call ended with loud screams and the sounds of gunshots before it went to static.

The next piece of sensational evidence was the early reports from the military; apparently, they had sent many photos of the slaughtered bodies via satellite to the national guard units. And when they found a dozen people undergoing the change, they began to suspect some sort of chemical agents had contaminated them, and full chemical weapons protocols were put into effect.

Additionally, several carcasses of giant, ten foot long wolf bodies were found, and these pictures too made their way to the news media.

The last tapes released were apparently from just before the explosion that wiped the town from the map; in it, the terrified screams of soldiers and the sounds of automatic weapons fire could be heard, along with calls for 'heavy weapons, bring heavy weapons!' before the voice of the commanding colonel went silent.

By a stroke of luck, an entire infantry regiment was on it's way to Forks from an army base near Seattle but was halted near Port Angelas when the nuke went off. Had they continued on, they would have been caught in the blast. NEST cleanup teams went in a few days later, and reported that radiation levels were still lethal and all further investigation was put on hold.

The 'who' and the 'why' was never answered however, and many terrorist groups claimed responsibility, which no one believed. The mystery of what actually occurred in Forks caused an international sensation that went on for quite some time. And despite the Volturi's scorched earth response, right from the start the theories about 'superhumans', 'mutants', or 'supernatural' creatures like demons or vampires, were being offered as viable theories by reputed experts, though again since no evidence beyond the frantic calls for help and the initial reports by the scientists of 'giant wolves' (no carcasses were left after the bomb went off) or 'zombie hands moving after being detached from a body' (also burned up in the fireball), no hard evidence was ever offered.

Thankfully, the Volturi had been thorough enough that the very limited surveillance equipment in town - such as the camera's outside the police station - was destroyed in the blast, but there was speculation that some of the footage may have been automatically uploaded to servers elsewhere and was now in the hands of the Government - which had declared the entire town and fifteen miles in all directions - as a dead-zone.

Sometime after the incident - ranging from two to ten days, while it was still a red-hot topic on primetime news - a few surviving witnesses that managed to escape before the nuke detonated began to come forward. The first few of these witnesses were spirited off to secret locations by the Government, but several had gone to the press before going to the authorities, not trusting that they wouldn't be 'locked up for their own good' in some sort of secret government facility.

And the stories these few were telling were difficult for anyone to grasp or believe.

One young couple, who had been driving away from town in the pre-dawn hours to go camping, claim that they saw, in the flash of their car's headlights, two giant 'wolves' fighting with a pale skinned man that had glowing red eyes; And while they admitted everything was moving so fast it was sometimes blurry, the girl had the presence of mind, after the fight ended, to take a photo of the pale skinned man. The photo showed a shredded torso, the limbs separated from the body and a thick silvery liquid pouring from the wounds. A second and third photo - of the head turned upwards in the dirt - showed red eyes that still shone with malevolence and a mouth that opened and closed.

This was the only photographic evidence that emerged and was out in public; but many 'experts', trying to build themselves a career from their conspiracy theories about 'The Event' surmised that the government might have many more such photos.

Of course, detractors immediately claimed the photo was faked or photoshopped, but the couple gained immediate fame and notoriety from their story, appearing on talk shows around the nation.

Edward secretly wondered when the Guard would pay them a visit and stage their deaths. Perhaps not too soon, as if they were killed it might lend some credence to their story, but Edward knew they were probably doomed.

In any case, 'The Photo', combined with further testimony from a few other survivors who booked it out of town at the first sign of violence and somehow managed to evade the Newborns, made many people sit back and think.

In the following months, it was quite amusing to some people that the number of 'witnesses' who claimed to have somehow escaped The Event outnumbered the people who lived in the town by a factor of almost five to one. It pissed the Cullen's off that so many people were trying to capitalize on a tragedy.

However, some of the witnesses were genuine. One of the more rational and popular ones was a camper who claimed that, after hearing what sounded like an angry bear fighting a lion just over a small hill, he had climbed up a tree for his safety. From his perch, he said, he had watched in amazement as 'mutant giant wolf' - as he called it - passed just below him, stumbling from its injuries and finally collapsing to the ground. He said that it twitched and moaned for a minute and then, amazingly, changed into a tall naked man with terrible wounds all across his body.

The camper - who was completely unaware that at that very moment the town of Forks was dying - eventually climbed down and offered assistance to the wounded man. As he approached, he could see that there were deep cuts in his skin and that one of his legs was bent back at the wrong angle. The man seemed delirious, but he frantically told the camper to get as far away as Forks as he could, that the 'leeches' were killing everyone, and they could track him by his scent.

"Run, and don't look back!" he said, before falling unconcious or dead.

The camper heeded the warning and headed towards his car, parked near the trailhead. Once he got a cell signal, he tried to call in to the Forks police station to report the location of the wounded wolfman, but the line seemed out of service. At that point, thoroughly distressed and freaked, the camper drove home to Portland, finally hearing about the nuke detonating a few hours later when every radio station began transmitting a warning signal.

Edward thought it extremely lucky for the camper that he had not lived somewhere to the north, else he would have ran into either the Volturi, more newborns, or the army on his way home.

Over the next few months, as more and more theories were espoused to explain what happened and to make sense of the few witness reports that seemed genuine, the words 'vampire' and 'werewolf' began to be heard more and more. And though almost no one took these stories seriously, no one else came up with any reasonable theories either.

Eventually, the prevailing 'opinion' was that a chemical hallucinogenic was leeched into the Forks water supply, causing the town's people to go insane. The nuke was, of course, set off by the US Government in an effort to contain it.

Since nothing better was forthcoming from the officials in DC, this eventually became the most 'reasonable' answer. After all, who really believed in vampires?

Eventually, through more 'unofficial channels' the army and the politicians seemed to be pushing a similar angle: deadly nerve agents and hallucinogens were accidentally leaked by a terrorist organization who planned on setting off a nuclear weapon somewhere in the US. The nerve agents leaked, the terrorists went crazy, and set off the nuke.

Of course, these theories never could account for 'The Photo' - but, nevertheless, it was interesting to see how they tried to debunk it.

After a few months had passed, Jasper was convinced that certain people in the government either knew the truth or some shade of it: after all, how unlikely would it be that, after finding a dozen people undergoing the change and having limbs crawling around in a metal container, that some of those agents had not communicated the findings back to superiors in DC?

What would become of this knowledge? About the authorities knowing about the supernatural? That was a question none of the Cullen's could answer.

A year later, when speculation had dropped to background noise limited to a few websites and chat rooms, no consensus was ever really reached on what happened.

But the facts remained: two thousand six hundred and fourteen souls passed away in the early morning hours of an overcast Tuesday in June of 2006 in a small town that was now simply designated as a restricted area called simply 'Site Z-34'. In later years, as maps and atlases were updated, the town that used to be there was not included, as if it had never been.

However, for the lucky few who had not been close to ground zero when the newborns or Volturi arrived, they remembered. They remembered their loved ones, they remembered the small rainy town that had been their homes, and they remembered that some horror was visited on them, for what reason they never knew.

For Edward and the Cullen family - a tiny, two second vision of a mahogany haired girl, from the back, walking through a forest, before cutting out to static, was the only indication that Bella might possibly have survived that brutal day. But as they searched for their lost Bella with ever decreasing hope as the years went by, they knew that, eventually, they might be the last people on earth to remember that Site Z-34 once had another name.

Forks Washington.

Rest in Peace.

A/N - hope you enjoyed!