Disclaimer: I do not own Glee, nor the book "Swan Song" by Robert McCammon that this story is pretty much modeled after.
a/n: hey. it's been almost a year. sorry!
"Oh, my God, Mercedes, slow the fuck down!" Quinn Fabray shouts after her roommate, the darker skinned-girl ignoring her pleas. She continues weaving in and out of the crowd, dodging past fellow rushing New Yorkers.
"We're gonna miss the subway, Q!" Mercedes exclaims, reaching back to grab her best friend's hand, pulling her faster down the sidewalk. The eighteen-year-old African American woman continues her fast walk down the street, only pausing when a particularly rude New Yorker steps in her path. Quinn, a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old blonde girl, rolls her eyes and speeds up her steps. They reach the 42nd street subway entrance, lumbering down the steps and through the gates just in time to reach the subway doors as they closed.
"Fuck!" Mercedes yells, earning a few dirty looks from businessmen and moms all around. Quinn sighs, attempting to catch her breath after running almost ten blocks in the sweltering July heat.
"It's alright, we'll just wait for the next one." Quinn reassures Mercedes, and the dark girl smiles.
"Fine. I blame you though." She plops down onto a bench while Quinn goes and checks when the next train comes by to take them where they need to go.
"It comes in about ten minutes." Quinn tells her friend and Mercedes sighs, pulling a book out of her bag and beginning to read. Quinn smiles at her silence and relaxes into the bench, watching as fellow New Yorkers bustle past. Everyone is going somewhere with a purpose. She sees a boy with brown dreadlocks and no shoes playing a guitar in the corner, low voice singing sultrily.
"I'll be right back," She says slowly to Mercedes, who waves her off. She stands from the bench and walks to the boy, not quite a man yet. The blonde girl throws a few dollars into the open guitar case in front the musician. He looks up at her and smiles.
"I'm Joe." He says.
"Quinn." She greets. She's about to ask him to play her a song when the screaming starts.
There's a loud crashing noise, like a train squealing on the tracks. Her head whips around to see the first flash of flames that engulf the underground station. There's a smell like something burning, and screams echo throughout the building. She begins running for the bench Mercedes had been sitting at, forgetting about Joe as he sprints toward the exit, guitar and case left behind. She almost reaches Mercedes.
The last thing she remembers is a flaming pain in her side, the smell of burning flesh, and the sound of her own voice echoing in a shout.
Fourteen-year-old Santana Lopez rolls her eyes at her father, putting her red head phones back into her ears and directing her gaze back out the window. Her mother and father continue arguing while they drive through the middle-of-fucking-nowhere Wyoming. All Santana's dad mentioned to her before pushing her into the car with nothing but one single duffle bag filled with sweatpants and shirts was that they were going somewhere called 'Earth House' and they could be safe now. He could have at least let her pack cute clothes.
She doesn't know what the hell this 'Earth House' thing is, but it sounds really stupid to her. She doesn't want to uproot her entire life just because her dad is a paranoid freak.
"Richard, you could at least tell me why this couldn't have waited until the weekend. I have a house showing tomorrow morning that I cannot afford to miss!" Santana's mother's voice floats above her music, which is quite impressive, since Santana is in her weepy teenager mode, which means her music is at a decibel loud enough to shatter most people's eardrums.
"It isn't safe, Lisa, you know that." Santana's dad reasons, and Santana turns down her music to listen in on the rest of her parents' conversation.
"You could at least tell me how much time we have." Lisa says, and Richard glances back at Santana, so she quickly looks out the window and pretends to be ignoring them.
"The bombs were sent out at about nine o' clock." Lisa sucks a breath into her lungs quickly, shuddering as she exhales.
"Which gives us about…" She trails off, looking at the sky out the window.
"We don't have much time to get there." Richard finishes, turning off the main highway and onto a dirt track that seems to lead to a mountain. Santana glances at her mother, who is clutching her thighs with her hands so hard her knuckles are turning white.
Santana decides to speak up for the first time.
"Then you should fucking drive faster."
Earth House isn't ready yet. There's still chicken wire hanging out from a hole in a wall, there are cracks in the concrete, and the patches that have been used to cover them are flimsy. Workers buzz about, mending holes and filling cracks with whatever they can find.
Sue Sylvester is disgusted.
"You think building a nuclear war shelter on short notice is hard? Try working at a public school! That's hard!" She shouts through her megaphone, earning dirty looks from not only workers and guards, but the mouth-breathers that paid the big bucks to spend a year in this stupid place while the entire world goes to war. Truthfully, it's exactly the type of thing that Sue wishes she could see in person, but that just isn't going to work out. If she's going to be the first person to command a cheerleading squad of nuclear war survivors, she needs to be in tip-top shape. If that means she has to sit underground with a bunch of arrogant rich people for a year, so be it.
"Uhm, ma'am?" A tentative voice stutters from behind her.
"What?" She barks, turning and glaring down at the small blonde girl that had tapped her grubby hands on Sue's shoulder and distracted her from yelling at the incompetent workers.
"I lost my mommy." The small teenager says in a barely audible voice, lower lip trembling and eyes wide.
"That's your own problem." Sue tells the girl, and the girl's blue eyes begin to fill with tears. "Enough with the waterworks." Sue commands, making the girl look even more like a sad puppy. Sue groans.
"Fine." She growls, taking the teenager's hand roughly, pulling her down the corridor at a fast pace.
"What's your name?" The girl asks excitedly, completely forgetting about her previous fear.
"Commander Sylvester. But you can call me Coach." The girl nods, still following Sue down the hall.
"I'm Brittany Susan Pierce. I'm thirteen years old, but my mommy sometimes says I look younger." Sue glances at the girl and sees what her mother means. Her face is round and her eyes are bright. She smiles brightly with white teeth, lighting up her features. Her light blonde hair is pulling back into a ponytail and Sue can't even begin to describe what she's wearing.
"Yes, well, I'm twenty-seven and people say I look younger too. I guess we're just way younger than we look." Sue stops in front of a large door with a sign next to it that says OFFICE in official letters, swiping her identification card over the lock and pulling Brittany through the door. There's a man and a woman on the other side, both tall and blonde. The woman is crying while the man comforts her.
"Mommy!" Brittany calls, rushing forwards as the woman turns to her daughter's voice. Sue's heart clenches for a minute, but she shrugs it off as heartburn. The father is suddenly right next to Sue, and she takes a step back as he beams at her with a familiar smile.
"Thank you so much for bringing Brittany to us." He says, holding his hand out for her to shake. She ignores it, scowling and turning around.
"Bye, Coach!" Brittany calls out as she leaves, and she almost turns around and smiles before thinking better of it. There's no reason to get attached to a small girl who probably won't even survive the first bombing.
"Dude, what are you doing?" Jeff asks, laughter in his voice.
"Changing the CD; what does it look like I'm doing?" Nick replies, taking the mix CD his best friend, Jeff, had made him and replacing it with an old JET CD that has probably seen better days.
"It looks like you're taking your eyes off the road to find some lame old CD that I don't plan on listening to." Jeff shoots back, slapping Nick's hand away as he fiddles with the radio dial.
"I'm about to fall asleep, and JET will make me feel better." Nick says tiredly, hitting his turn signal and turning onto the main street of a small town in Illinois.
"I can drive." Jeff points out, sitting up in his seat straighter and looking to his best friend worriedly.
"I'm good. We're almost home anyway." Nick assures, flicking his eyes to Jeff's before looking back to the street. Nick sees the flash of headlights in the far distance, squinting at the light.
"Wow. Imagine seeing someone else out here at this time of morning." Jeff comments as Last Chance transitions into Are You Gonna Be My Girl.
"Yeah." Nick says back, distracted. The car is driving sporadically, and coming fast. The headlights loom closer and closer, no longer driving on the right side of the road, but right down the middle. Nick begins to slow.
"What is that guy doing?" Jeff questions, blue eyes turning to Nick in worry.
"I'm not sure." Nick has almost slowed to a stop at this point, staying off to the side of the street, not wanting to run into this car.
There's a sudden gust of wind that rolls through the open windows of the old car, hot and stifling. Jeff coughs as his eyes start to water from the dry heat.
"It smells like something's burning." Jeff comments, voice rising in volume.
That's when Nick sees the mushroom cloud in the distance, a stark red against the black sky. It looms over a hill from where the speeding car had just come.
"Holy shit!" Jeff screams as Nick squeals the car to a stop. "Do you see that?" He shouts, pointing. Nick is already turning the car around to drive in the opposite direction when a sudden force from behind runs into them. There's a sound like metal clashing as the burning smell gets heavier and the air gets hotter and drier. Jeff's head whips to see the car from before pushing them forward. Both cars flip and then crash into separate buildings.
Nick wakes some time later, mouth dry. His leg is pinned under part of the shop wall and he can't feel it.
"Jeff!" He shouts, getting a small reply.
"I'm alive." His friend wheezes, and he can see through the small amount of bright red light coming through the hole from their car that Jeff is stumbling towards him. The blonde boy falls to his knees next to Nick, seeing his pinned thigh.
"Shit." Jeff swears under his breath, voice low and raspy.
"I'm alive." Nick assures him, reaching out for Jeff's hand. He pats his friend's limp arm and then hits him softly.
"Help me get this thing off me." He commands and Jeff's eyes flick to his as he nods almost imperceptivity. The blonde moves slowly down by Nick's legs, eyeing the structure of top of them warily. He puts his hands under it and tries to lift it up, getting it almost an inch before a section of it cracks and presses down harder onto the brunette. Nick screams, high pitched and pain-filled, and Jeff almost cries out as he hears his best friend's anguish.
"It's okay, it's gonna be okay." Jeff whispers, tears clogging his throat as Nick throws his head back and bites his lip. He pulls up again, arms shaking with exertion, and almost lifts the bit of siding off of Nick. "Almost done," he says quietly, lifting. He manages to completely slide it off of his friend. Nick is almost completely still, looking incredibly pale.
"Jeff," He whimpers, a few tears sliding down his face.
"You're good, you're okay." Jeff says, moving back upwards to his friend, leaning over and pulling his head onto his own lap. His leg doesn't seem to be bleeding, but Jeff doesn't want to make him move it around since it's probably broken.
"Blaine!" A voice suddenly booms from Jeff and Nick's right side. Both heads weakly turn to look to where it is and both boys see a man stumbling through rubble, lifting pieces of broken wall and furniture as he walks.
"Hello?" Jeff calls out to him, and the tall man looks to them.
"Have you seen my son?" He asks worriedly, overturning rubble and working his way towards the two men.
"No, I'll help you look." Jeff promises, moving Nick off of his lap and standing. He limps over to the man. "His name is Blaine, right?" Jeff asks and the man nods hurriedly. Nick almost smiles at his friend, someone who always will help no matter how hurt he is.
"Blaine!" The man and Jeff both begin to cry and Nick sees a bit of plaster roofing move to his left.
"Jeff, I think he's over here!" Nick yells as the plaster moves slightly again. The man runs over as fast as he can, Jeff limping quickly behind, and lifts the plaster to find a little boy.
"Daddy?" The boy asks quietly, reaching his arms out for the man, who scoops him up and hugs him to his chest. Jeff stumbles his way back to Nick, plopping down and grabbing his friend's hand.
"Thank you so much, boys," The man says, coming over to stand near them, his child sobbing into his chest. "My name is Tom, this is my son, Blaine."
"I'm Jeff and this is Nick." The blonde boy gestures to his pale friend who manages to wave a hand in a half-hearted greeting.
"Did you see what that explosion was?" Tom asks, and both boys shake their heads. "We were driving and we saw it. I tried to outdrive it, but I think it caught up and blew my car into yours. I'm so sorry."
"It's not your fault." Jeff attempts to assure him, but the man has already plopped down on the floor and moved closer to the two teenagers.
There's a muffled voice from the man's chest as Blaine tries to speak.
"What was that, scooter?" Tom asks, holding his son out at arm's length as the kid takes a deep breath and looks at his father with caramel eyes.
"Missiles, daddy." Blaine says, almost nonchalantly, to his father, eyes wide.
"What?" Nick wheezes, turning his head to look at the kid.
"I saw missiles."
"Mommy?" A small, broken voice cries, and Noah 'Puck' Puckerman blearily opens his eyes.
"Calm down, buddy." An older voice chides with the child while Puck rubs the back of his head. He feels a warm, sticky wetness on his hand and has an internal freak-out for a moment when he realizes he can't see anything.
"Oh, my God! Am I blind?" He shouts to no one in particular, panicking.
"It's just the dark." The older voice soothes as Puck feels around him to find out where he is. He doesn't remember much, just a lot of shouting and screaming and heat.
"Where am I?" Puck yells forcefully, crawling towards the man's voice. As he gets closer, he can also hear sniffling and crying from the small voice from before.
"Underground." The older man answers as Puck draws closer. "It's okay, kid," The man soothes, quieter this time. "We're okay."
"How the fuck did we get here?" Puck questions, finally feeling close enough to the man that he doesn't need to yell anymore. His eyes have adjusted a little and he can almost make out the figure of a man and a child huddled deep into the dirt.
"Don't you remember?" The man asks again, and Puck recognizes his voice from the gas station. So that's where he is. He begins to remember things faster now, the heat of an explosion, a father and son, a shop worker in a horrible vest. He remembers grabbing the kid and running down stairs into a basement while fire engulfs the father and mother.
"I do." Puck says quietly now, moving towards where he thinks the child is. He feels around and comes in contact with a clammy knee, but it disappears quickly. "It's okay," He says, reaching out for the kid, "I won't hurt you." Suddenly, he has a lapful of small child, and he hugs the warm body close to him.
"What's your name?" Puck questions.
"Kurt," The small boy answers, hugging his knees to his chest and burrowing back further into Puck's warmth. "Kurt Hummel."
"I'm Noah Puckerman," Puck tells the child softly, "And I promise you, everything is going to be alright."
a/n: hey. i'm so freaking sorry it practically took me a year to write this, but omfg i just re-found the original document and it's like BAM ideas and plots and characters and OMFG I HAVE TO WRITE IT RIGHT NOW!
so here it is. the next chapter should include the first glimpse of answers and storyline, along with some new and old characters! things will get a little easier to understand and follow, I PROMISE!
don't hate me? i love you!
lessthanthree, max.