I'm going to mix this up and put the author's notes at the beginning instead of the end, and hopefully try to keep any other notes to an absolute minimum to try not to take anyone out of the moment, should they happen to enjoy this story enough for that.

This story is a bit bleak and sad, and possibly triggering, at least if being in the midst of a global pandemic has had a negative impact on your mental health. Who knows, though? Who's to say that this will affect you at all? But, buyer beware and all that.

Now, I've had this idea for a long time. It was a tiny seed of nothing back when I wrote in a different fandom and I never even wrote anything down for it (and, in my defense, I'd been watching a good deal of Walking Dead at that point so the apocalypse was heavy on the brain). A particular song hit the airwaves at that point that really made everything coalesce and even though I never pursued that story, and really mostly forgot about it, that song stuck with me and always brought up…something in me.

Flash forward to 2020 and living through an actual pandemic and my own personal constant level of fear of falling victim to a deadly virus and feeling the need to work through it in some fashion. Cue another song that shuffled through my playlist on the way to work one day (because being an "essential" worker has only added to the joy of it all) that nearly broke me in half with a weird form of agony.

So, at some point, I started writing. It's been a very slow process with this story (it's been more than a year that I've been working on it on and off and have made no significant progress) and I'm nowhere near anything I've hoped to accomplish with it, but I've been sitting on it for so long that maybe it's time to see if anyone has any interest in seeing it through. Either way, I hope to finish it for myself so it'll be a monkey off my back. I hope that it intrigues some of you or helps you work through any lingering issues or helps you escape from your life for a while. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have any thoughts or insights because I can use all the prompts (accidental and otherwise) that I can get. Like I said, I'm going to try to keep any other author's notes to an absolute minimum from here on out.

I'm not really sure how to classify this yet, especially without giving anything away or making assumptions about my own writing, so all of it may change as we go along. The ratings, the classifications, the characters, all of it.

I'll leave you with my usual spiel and that's just to be kind. Be kind in real life, be kind in cyberspace. Not necessarily because you don't know what someone else is going through but because being a dick rarely serves any purpose even to yourself. Stop and think for a few extra moments if what you're going to say adds to the conversation. Take an extra day to react; if something still truly bothers you the next morning, that's the time to take action (obviously, I'm not talking about things like crimes or something extreme, but instead of blasting off at your waiter, just see if you remember the incident the next day, that sort of thing).

You get the idea.

And away we go.


August 16, 2005

Biting my thumbnail, I stare out at the quiet neighborhood from my parents' living room window. Nothing stirs. Everything is still.

I know I can't stay here. It's August; I've been in Madison for five months now. Even though it's still summer, it doesn't take long for the fall weather to turn cold. Without electricity or an ample supply of wood, I'll never make it through the winter. I lived through enough winters growing up here to know how bad they can get. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that without people around, without cars driving around, without anything, this year will be colder than ever. Maybe like a mini ice age. At least if I could find someone with whom I could bunker down, I might have a fighting chance but…

I don't have much choice at this point but to leave and try to make it to somewhere warmer. Growing up here, even though the winters were tough, we always had the comforts of the twentieth century. We had oil in our tank and plenty of wood for fires. I learned how to chop trees when I was a kid, but that was a long time ago, and even then I was never an expert. After graduating high school and eventually moving to DC, I had no need for the skill. Even if, by some miracle, I'd managed to maintain it, I'd never be able to keep up on my own. Whatever we couldn't cut on our own was supplemented by a supplier and there aren't any of those available at this point. Suffice it to say, despite my practicing the skill the last couple of months, I'm not at all confident that I could keep myself from frostbite or death by freezing.

My heart thumps erratically, swarms of butterflies careening around my stomach as I consider the possibility of going somewhere—anywhere—on my own. I take deep breaths and try to let them out slowly, counting to see how long it takes me to run out of air, focusing on my lung capacity instead of anything else around me.

The wind picks up for a moment, rattling the leaves in the trees, and it's only then that I realize that's the first sound I've heard today.

I've grown used to the silence.

I'm not sure where they've gone, but the birds and insects that add to the summer cacophony in Madison are completely absent. That doesn't seem likely, and yet I haven't been able to hear them.

I've been trying to convince myself for weeks now that I need to leave, but I haven't even been able to work up the courage to go into the city to search for supplies. I've hardly left the house since the spring—late April or early May. My parents always kept their house well-stocked with the basics and canned goods, usually in preparation for the long winter and to be able to help any of their neighbors in need, so I didn't need to go anywhere to search for supplies. The last time I left the house was to try to visit my parents at the hospital, only to be turned away before I could reach the parking lot. The hospital was quarantined. I tried calling—I called their room, the main switchboard, and every other department number I could find, but the circuits were always busy.

Less than twenty four hours after I tried to see them, I got a call from the hospital to inform me that my parents had died and that their bodies were going to be incinerated. I wasn't even allowed to protest before they hung up on me, and I was never able to get in touch with anyone at the hospital again. My parents had only been sick for a week before they both felt so terrible that they made me take them in to get help. It was only a matter of days after that before they were gone.

And I never got to say goodbye.

I don't suppose I can feel too sorry for myself since it seems that, at least by that point, a lot of people were in the same boat. It was hard to say for sure since a lot of information about this bug contradicted itself, and every news outlet seemed to have their own take and their own experts. The only common thread was that a lot of people were dying.

Not long after I lost my parents, it felt like the world was starting to disappear. The internet, which had already been spotty for weeks, went out completely. It'd been almost impossible to get a call through on a cell phone for some time before that, but they soon just stopped working. The landline still worked for a while, not that I could get in touch with many people. I constantly got a message telling me all circuits were busy, or, if I got through, the phone would ring endlessly. I usually took that to mean that whomever I was trying to reach on the other end was dead, and anyone in the vicinity that might get pissed off at a phone ringing for an hour straight was dead, too.

The possibility that everyone I've been trying to contact and those people around them are all dead is too huge for me to think about longer than a few seconds at a time.

I haven't been able to get a hold of anyone at the White House, either. I have to hope that they've gone underground somehow.

Within a week or so of losing cell service, the power went out. My parents have a generator, as do most of the houses in the area, but I've been reluctant to run it too much because I don't want to need it and have it give out. I've dealt with power outages before but nothing prepared me for this. It's not absolute blackness but it's darker at night than I could have imagined. Even when camping as a kid, we were never really all that far from civilization and there was always some sort of ambient light, even if it didn't count for much. With normal power outages, there was usually a neighborhood nearby that had power. Even in DC, on the rare occasions the lights would go out…well, it's DC. There was always light coming from somewhere. Now, though, there's nothing. The nights are eerily quiet and dark, leaving me on high alert for noise. I suppose it's a good thing that I haven't been hearing a lot of noise regardless of the time of day, but that doesn't make it any easier to get to sleep at night.

I shake myself out of my thoughts, pulling the curtains closed. I have to make a move. I have to do something. It's terrifying but it's not going to get any easier. I just have no idea what to expect when I get into the city. Will it look like it always has, with people everywhere, going about their lives? While I doubt that, there could be people, though I'm not sure if the possibility of that scares me more than the idea that I'll find no one.

I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not going to find zombies, that I've seen too many apocalypse movies and logically I know better, but that doesn't stop my imagination from running wild.

It's still early in the day—my parents have a wall clock that runs on batteries so at least I can keep track of how much time is passing—and I'd rather try to get to town and back before it gets dark. Before I can talk myself out of it, I grab the car keys and make my way out the back door, locking up the house as I go. It probably doesn't matter because I don't think there's anyone around to be interested but it makes me feel marginally better. The sound of my parents old SUV starting up scares the hell out of me, even though I was expecting it, but at least the car still starts though that's because I've been making sure the battery is still good every few days.

I let the car idle for a few minutes, trying to work up the courage to make the trek. Out of curiosity, I hold my breath as I turn on the radio—nothing but static. I search through all the channels, then switch to the AM stations and come up with nothing. I don't know what I was expecting, but I guess I held out hope for something, anything, to let me know someone else was out there.

With no more excuses, I force myself to put the car into gear and pull out of the driveway. I drive slowly down the street, hoping to see some sign of life, even if it's just a curtain shifting back into place as someone hides from the window, but everything is still.

Back when everything first started to go south, I'd check on my parents' neighbors from time to time, offering what help I could to anyone needed it, and the number of people who'd answer their doors started to dwindle significantly before my parents got sick. I couldn't tell if people were there and hiding from the world, or if they'd already died, or even if some of them had left altogether. Once we lost power, I wanted to keep checking on people—not that there was a lot I could do if they needed help, but at least anyone around would know they weren't alone—but it started to feel too scary. I know I had a lot of paranoia eating at me at that point, and a lot of fear. I didn't want anyone who'd survived to take their own fears out on me. I briefly considered trying to force my way into houses, especially after a month without electricity, to see if anyone was still around, or if there were supplies I might need, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. There were a lot of reasons, but I was mostly terrified I'd find someone bunkered down who'd shoot me on sight, no questions asked. I also didn't want to run the risk of finding the bodies of these people that I'd known for a lot of my life.

That's why I've been trying to keep watch of the neighborhood, to find anyone who might have survived but have been hiding. I guess I had to hope. It's been months, though, and I haven't heard so much as a sneeze from anyone around me.

I know it's impossible for me to be alone in the world, and impossible for me to be alone in Madison, but right now…it sure as hell feels that way.

Madison proper isn't too far away so I keep my pace slow, checking the houses as I drive by in the hopes of finding someone, but also to maybe not draw too much attention to myself.

I suppose what I'm really hoping for is to find the world as it once was, not whatever parallel dimension I'm in right now. The only thing I find, however, as I get closer to the city are more cars, all looking abandoned. It does remind me a bit of a movie, like people were trying to make their way out of town and just stopped, though there are very few cars just sitting in the middle of the road; mostly they're just parked haphazardly against the curbs. The streets aren't as choked as one might imagine, but it's not easy to navigate regardless. What I do notice is that it looks like the earth is already trying to take over again. I guess my parents' neighborhood looks similar but it's even more noticeable in a city, where most of nature is paved over, or at the very least contained.

I pause as I come to an intersection, partly out of habit but also to try to get my bearings. I know exactly where I am, but that doesn't make any of this easier to see. There's no movement in any direction. There's no indication that anyone has been here for weeks, if not months. Some store windows and doors are broken, but most everything looks to be intact.

It's spooky.

I let out a deep breath and slowly start driving again, heading toward Walmart. It seems like as good a place as any to start.