Title: The Road Not Taken
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Universe: Zombie Cantos
Characters/Pairing: Ensemble - gen
Genre: Horror/Drama
Summary: A lot has changed in two and a half years.
Warnings: Mentions of character death
Author's Note: You might notice the change in scene here. I will go back and fill in what led them to this point, but I thought that it was important to show a change of pace. If you're still reading, please leave a comment to tell me how you're liking this story so far; I have a vague idea for how it's going to end, but I would like to hear your opinions. Sorry in advance.
Zombie Cantos: The Road Not Taken
…
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
The Road not Taken – Robert Frost
.
Things do not change; we change.
Henry David Thoreau
…
Thirty-one months after the zombie apocalypse.
The city looks like some kind of post-apocalyptic hellhole. Which really, is fitting, considering it actually is one. In some ways, it reminds Emily of Chernobyl – she'd toured the exclusion zone with her mother once upon a time – so long ago now. A rusted Ferris wheel, a stark remind of those that had died at Pripyat. Of course, they've seen the effects of time and neglect on other cities – smaller cities. It doesn't compare to seeing dozens of square miles of derelict skyscrapers; some destroyed by fire, some by things much more mundane. Seeing a city once crawling with life so empty, so dead…it makes the end of the world that much more real.
This is worse than Chernobyl. It's not a few dozen dead, with a couple of thousand more to follow in the years afterwards. This is millions – billions – of people, torn apart by the living dead. No matter how many people they can contact over the shortwave radio, they'll never really be able to find out the magnitude of the disaster. Not until the world gets put back together, and really, that might never happen.
They've been standing there for ten minutes, just watching, and the rifle's starting to get a little heavy in her arms. Considering she's been holding the rifle at attention for the last ten miles, it's unsurprising. Satisfied that Reid, at least, has his weapon at the ready, she lets her shoulders drop slightly, letting one hand rub against the ache in her leg. She'd tossed the cane away a long time ago, but they're walking at such a pace that her limp isn't going to hold anyone back unless they need to start running. If the zombies do attack, they'll have plenty of warning – someone's been along this road and cleaned it up, zombies exterminated, and car bodies removed. They might have been taken for parts, or they might have been destroyed, giving the undead one less hiding place.
Cleaning up the world is a long, slow process.
'What do you think?' Kevin asks Reid, who doesn't answer straight away. He's the one that had plotted out their route, taking into account climate and proximity to former major population centers, and so on. They want to stay relatively near civilization, for supply purposes, but not too close, because there still could be pockets of undead lurking, two and a half years on.
There's been no progress on finding a cure, no progress on finding out whether the zombies have some kind of finite lifespan. They just need to keep fighting.
'It's getting dark,' Reid replies, staring at the sun, starting to dip below the horizon. It stains the sky a brilliant orange, and in another place, another time, it might have been beautiful. Maybe it is beautiful, and Emily's just getting cynical.
They get a few fires going, and Kevin and JJ take the first watch. Food and water are passed around, both in scarce supply – they don't exactly have that self-sufficiency thing going anymore. What they do have though, is the tiniest sliver of hope – a haven that is so much more than their tiny town in the middle of nowhere had been.
Maybe it's just a pipe dream, but really, it's all they've got left. It's kinda sad in a way, but then, they haven't really had that much hope in a long time. On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. She'd never been much of a Palahniuk fan, but he's not wrong. They're all going to die, some day. Part of her thinks that maybe she's a little bit dead already. Everyone else has something keeping them going.
It's too early for sleep, so they sit around the fire, not relaxed, because they can never, ever be relaxed anymore.
'Wish we had marshmallows,' Jean comments, a little wistfully, leaning into Reid's chest.
'We can pretend we have marshmallows,' Henry tells her solemnly, and for an eight-year-old kid, he's pretty smart. They've had something of a wandering school going on, Reid telling Jack and Henry about laws of thermodynamics, about the three-domain system of biological classification, about chemical equilibrium. It's not these things, though, that will define their future. It's how well they can shoot, how good they are at finding food, finding water.
Not the greatest childhood memories.
Some days, though, they get stories instead, and that's when everyone chips in. Garcia likes to put in unicorns, and Reid likes to put in intelligent, capable heroes, and everybody has their own contributions, and the end result is always horrible in its complexity, but they have fun creating the fantasy world that's never going to be real.
Of course, three years ago, zombies were never going to be real.
Three years ago, they all had a life, even if it had been mostly work.
Three years ago, they had Hotch, and Rossi, and Morgan.
Three years ago, they had hope.
Maybe some of them still do.
But Emily isn't one of them.