A/N: Does anyone happen to know where Dana and Alex are from? I can't seem to find that tidbit anywhere (if it even exists).
"What do you think would be the worst cause of the zombie apocalypse?"
That seemed to be the question to start the night amongst the three occupying the bar. Columbia University's brightest new graduates sat together, armed with their drinks and scheming long over the impromptu question. Overhead, the bar lights cast their sultry glow on the scene, creating a very quiet, small town bar scene. The faint murmur of sports enthusiasts rehashing the earlier game rippled like white noise throughout the campus pub.
"You know there's a fungus.." one mentioned lazily. Dr. Clifford sat in the middle, idly rubbing at his short cropped hair as he eyed the television. He was the oldest amongst them, though by only two years, yet it appeared he had aged far beyond them. Already balding, his self-consciousness about it showed through in his repeated gesture of rubbing his balding head.
"Yeah, the one that takes out ant hives," a young woman, Dr. Charter, said. "That would be awful… spores bursting out of people's heads." The sheer absurdity of their bar talk didn't strike any of them as odd, but the bartender looked confused. Dr. Charter brushed her straight blond hair behind an ear, moving it out of her way as she reached to take a sip of her drink. They had both tarried over pathology work as they clamored toward their PhD. Yet the two had not been lined up with a job quite like the other member of their group. He remained silent, having studied genetics. He didn't have a database of pathogens in his head like the other two, and would not have been interested in the hypothetical question to begin with. When Dr. Charter and Dr. Clifford both gazed over at him expectantly, he bided his time behind a long pull on his drink. The rare cigarette that was lit between his fingers had an inch of ash and seemed to exist only to fill the overhead fans with smoke until he finally took a puff on it and offered a shrug.
"Oh come on Alex," Clifford grumbled, shaking his head and looking back to the TV. "You actually got a job. In a lab. Surely you can come up with something."
"Does it really matter?" Dr. Mercer finally said. He couldn't have been bothered, and it showed. He was wasting his time here, he knew. Then again, he'd be wasting his time anywhere else tonight anyway. It was only on that premise that these two had gotten him here.
"I'm trying to recall any films or books that had a bacterial cause," Charter continued, rubbing her chin as she tarried on with the question. She made it clear she could care less about the opinions of non-participants.
"What about rabies?" The bartender finally clambered over the absurdity of their conversation enough to join in, only to be shot down.
"That's a virus," Charter corrected. "I'm thinking bacterial infections."
"But you haven't thought of any," Clifford argued. "Rabies virus is probably the closest we know of in that direction, eh?" He was loathe to disinclude anyone, and the bartender appeared both amused and relieved that the oldest of the three had thought to rescue his seeming faux pas.
There was no power on this block, and the automatic doors were jammed shut. For the virus, getting the hospital doors open wasn't any more difficult than flinging open a screen door. The entryway lobby was in disarray, and dim despite the morning sun shining through the fog and splaying out from behind him to cast a hazy glow. His booted footsteps echoed on the tile, bouncing the sound off the walls of what had once been a very busy lobby. He stopped in the middle, letting the stillness wrap around him. None of these people had been infected. He wasn't abhorred by the sheer waste of life, though he assumed that he should have been. He wasn't alarmed nor was he shocked that it had happened. He was aware that he should feel some kind of remorse as he gazed down at a cross eyed child wearing a bullet in her forehead. It was only a disappointment that settled like heavy sediment at the bottom of his gut. The scene just reminded him of why it was suitable and excusable to dwell in inhumane apathy. That the truth he'd struggled to seek ultimately did not matter. That if a solution was to be found, he could only hear the hollow and empty sound of wind blowing through broken sky scrapers.
He tucked his hands into his jacket pockets, slouching as made his way across the rest of the lobby to seek out a directory. The ICU would probably be his best bet in finding what Ragland had requested. He idly figured that he had someone else's memories to thank for that assumption as he made his way to the stairs. The sound of his footsteps echoing off the walls was poignant as he made his way. Something he could not quite place nagged at the corners of his mind. It was a subtle sensation of familiarity, but easily brushed aside. It wasn't until he pushed through a set of doors that he realized what it had been that called out to him. Like vines crawling across the walls, evidence of Blacklight infestation was everywhere throughout the room. All down the hall its tendrils tarried after a source of sustenance, branching where people had been immobilized one way or another. He was more familiar with this scene in apparent red zones. Brushing a hand across a brittle section confirmed that it had starved itself out days ago. He was about to dismiss it and carry on when a silent thrum bade he listen further. Virions still lay dormant in the dead biomass tendrils. He continued his trek, hand following the curves and structures of the vines, and felt for further signs of infection. The entire floor had been covered. Closing his eyes, he saw the virus stretch out through the surgical and intensive care unit. The whole area had been contaminated. Opening his eyes but looking inward, he was aware of the futility of it all. He was also aware of something else entirely.
Blacklight could remain dormant.
There was a languid blur to everything around her, as though she were trapped in a slowly moving glass bubble. She became aware of this oddity slowly, and the sudden waking to recollection and vague comprehension came to her even more sluggishly. The imagery was a mess of nostalgia that wrapped around her when she stepped onto the Greyhound bus, running her fingers through her freshly short cut hair. A rebellious band of purple rolled through her fingers and then fanned out across her bangs in a perfect line. She couldn't wait to start her new life in New York. She couldn't wait to see her brother again.
Her first view of the Island of Manhattan wasn't grand like it was on the backdrop of the weather channel. There was a stench to the city of exhaust and asphalt and sweat. The overwhelming bustle that flowed like the lifeblood of the city through the streets made her journey here appear and feel like a peaceful walk down the beach. She felt insignificant amongst the goliath skyscrapers, and couldn't help but notice how they made the sky feel just that more out of reach.
Her brother had always been that way. He naturally kept to himself, and spoke little unless he had to. She remembered mostly silent moments with him, and they were still always the best and most soothing memories. Scary movies and video games detailed much of their time together. Though a great gap of years separated them, she felt like he was always someone she could go to. She only knew of his life before her through the tiny bits of information that occasionally dropped from their mother's drunken lips. It had become her first mystery, and one she still had yet to solve. As she got older she began to realize his silence had been learned. His excellent advice had been devised from things he'd read but found no use for. She wondered often, as she got older, if he really had cared as he'd seemed to when he'd held her after her first heartbreak. Now that she'd moved to New York, she thought it the perfect opportunity to reconnect with him. That, though he was extremely busy doing whatever it was he did, that he wouldn't have an excuse to not visit her now.
He never came by. He never called or e-mailed her back. She was baffled by this. Had she done something wrong? Did he disapprove of her move to New York? Was he dead or did she just have the wrong contact information? She found it all difficult to discern, and being an investigative journalist only made it that much more unbearable to not have the answers to these questions.
Then one day her cellphone rang as she was making her way down the block to her favorite coffee shop. She fumbled for her phone when she saw the caller ID. With her heart beating fast she picked up the call and pressed her phone to her ear. She let out what she felt was a tame, though perhaps too excited, too thrilled, hello. The line on the other end immediately went dead. Baffled by this, she removed the phone from her ear and stared at the screen. She hadn't realized that she'd stopped in the middle of a cross walk until a car honked at her. The sound made her jump, and she promptly skirted to the sidewalk, flipping the driver off more from her own frustration than any anger directed at the driver. Once at the sidewalk, she dialed her brother back and waited through several ringtones before the call went to an unpersonalized voicemail. Cursing under her breath she tried several more times, each attempt as successful as the last.
