WARNING : Slow plot and angst, a story about apocalypse yet more than just survival.
Inspired by Owari No Seraph, DEAD DAYS, Distant Sky, The Host, Audien's Something Better and many more. . . .
CREDITS :
Iza Seitsunai
Rinfantasy
Guest
fanaticz
ShinseiShinwa
RED EARTH
Episode I : Operation Red Earth
ONE
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"Valkyrie patted Fletcher's arm. "Don't worry," she said. "If the bad man comes, I'll protect you."
"If the bad man comes," Fletcher responded, "I'll bravely give out a high-pitched scream to distract him. I may even bravely faint, to give him a false sense of security. That will be your signal to strike."
"We make a great team."
"Just don't forget to stand in front of me the whole time," he said."
― Derek Landy, Death Bringer
I can never forget the day Red Earth started. It was on the sixth day of summer, when sunshine was supposed to shine the brightest and heat radiated from the sky. Not the wide canvas painted in bloody crimson, not the cold shivers we were getting, not the miserable cries coming from dear Tetsuya. The streets were dead silent but they weren't empty. Civilians affected by whatever mystery accursed upon them had sent them to sleep, one we never guaranteed they'd wake up. But their sleeps weren't a peaceful one. A sight behold as akin as my parents' death; their jaws pulled and eyes hollow and white as plain blanket would have cover them during funerals. Apparently, according to my observation, everyone died like oxygen had been derived out of their lungs. It wasn't a pleasant sight for those whose hearts were weak. When we crossed the eerie streets, volume none, I somehow heard the short grunts and gasps from behind me. Poor blunette was trying his very best to ignore the sight. But what might had been scarring him was perhaps because of the trauma he had been seeing the exact faces of his family bellowing the same fate as well.
Deep inside, my stomach churned an uncomfortable twist. A child did not deserve such destiny. But what could a child do against the fate of the Earth's? All I could do was to give him sympathy. The feeling was baffling. We met in the midst of nothingness, an hour ago, in a shocking dazed state. Yet, he gave me a sense of protectiveness over him already. Is this how life was described by many? We met our fated ones in times we least expected, and he was one. The one with captivating blue in his eyes like none other, and perhaps a perfect blue sky would reflect upon the glossy orbs but our world had already messed up. Was it day or night? We couldn't make out of the skies without sunshine or stars. The only thing we knew it was frightening and cold despite the absence of a breeze. And so, I held his quivering hand close to my chest and attempted a one shoulder embrace. Cowering, and somewhat nervous, the little blunette could only shift as he patted my back in an awkward motion as a return of my comfort. He smiled weakly, although it never reached the beautiful baby blue eyes.
"Thanks, Seijuurou. . . I think I'll be fine. Don't worry."
"You looked like you're about to collapse though."
"Really?" The blunette cocked his head slightly, "I'm sure I'm fine."
I smiled at his best effort to stay alright for me. Perhaps it was my quickened paces that he couldn't quite follow. After all, judging from his face turning blue probably meant that he was originally a sick boy. His gait slow and draggy, in contrary with his short and fast hiccups. I wished there was a drugstore nearby so we could at least pick up the medicine he might need. The least I could do right now was to decrease my speed to mimic his. "You could take my hand," I offered. He accepted it, looking a bit glad.
We walked a bit longer, our tired legs brought us to a direction unbeknownst. Perhaps, we reached another district. We weren't quite sure. All cities looked the same. Similar skyscrapers scratching the skies and widened roads stretched as far as our journey would take us. We just kept on moving and hoping there might be more survivors. But would there be any if all they could see were lifeless bodies scattering the concrete like insects plagued by pesticides. I could sense Tetsuya's speed slowed down once more. I bet he was reaching his limits and to be honest, I was too. What could go on worse than worn out and lost, on top of that young and clueless? We were just two children finding our ways out of the thoroughfare, climbing our ways to survival if it meant that way.
I clutched Tetsuya's wrist and guided him to a store deemed safe by my instincts. It was the place I vaguely remembered that barely had any customers, and if there was, it would always be the teenage boy clad with glasses and paid off nerdy magazines with a hundred yen or a couple of college girls fawning over hot, fictional men. After all, the store was meant for those who infatuated with Japanese 2D kind of things. But this city was once full of the vibrant gangly life and cul-de-sacs overpopulated with gang wars and pointless fights. We did passed through two or three alleyways, and true to my thoughts, the gang members were as if sleeping with limbs in a confusing tangled dance moves. Indeed, they had the same eyes just as everyone. When we entered the shop, a dark square-ish space smelt like antique bric-a-bracs and recycled papers, we noticed the shopkeeper had his head propped against the counter, still dead nevertheless. I sighed, tugging the shivering blunette along the way, pushing our ways past the dead adult. We entered the store room, devoid of other humans and stacked with comics and magazines stocks.
"How about we rest here for a while?" I offered him, after stacking a few newspapers and books and a newly-found unwashed sheets meant to cover boxes into a makeshift bed. Tetsuya looked at me reluctantly, shaking his head with worry.
He still refused after a few coaxes. "I mean, what if something terrible comes after us?"
"Don't worry. I'll be alerted if there is any. I promise you, everything will be alright," I smiled, my fingers caught on the baby blue tufts.
"You promise to protect me?"
"Yeah, even if it would be ten years from now on. Even if the world would end, I'll stay beside you and protect you no matter what happens."
Tetsuya, finding my pledge whimsical yet satiable, let out a rather loud giggle as if to express his gratitude. He laughed his wits to its end until his eyes closed, his mien a perfect sunshine to capture. It was sweet music to my ears, his laughter made my jaw dropped and I found myself hypnotised. A sweep of heat brushed over my cheeks and I lowered my face, grumbling in shame.
"You think it's lame or something?"
He brushed away tears. "Of course not," he held my hand, "You're the first person who ever said that to me. It makes me happy, Seijuurou-kun."
"And you make me happy, Tetsuya. . ." I whispered inaudibly, heaving a dejected sigh.
"What was it?"
"Ah, nothing. . . Now sleep!"
We held hands that night. Sleeping in a woeful store room, above the layers of rubbish and foul-scented stash yet our dreams were the imaginations of a better Earth. We slept away our worries, and invited hopes to come over and brink our spirits to life again. Because that was what eight-year olds needed. Back then, all I ever wanted was to have my naivety back. To see the world revolved around me. But there was no more of euphoria, just a dystopian area – or worst of all; a distinctive deserted battlefield for our war against the Earth itself. . . or whatever the cause might be. Nearby, I heard Tetsuya mumbled a few incoherent words before he tossed to a curling position. He might be the only one who had his virtue left; and that I wanted to treasure.
His whole existence, my treasure.
Somehow, I expected to wake up inside my bedroom still tucked inside a thick quilt and was awake by the gentle voice belonged to Mother. I expected sunshine pouring its heat into my bedroom and the scurrying maids hastily brought my breakfast to bed. But as I peeled my eyes opened, the least thing I expected was to wake up beside a boy I recently met, inside the stockroom of a comic-selling store. This was the first morning was dark, and not a sound of chirps or rushing footsteps was heard. I was wondering if animals were to face sudden deaths just how humans were as well. I shuddered against the thought. Losing our food source? What could be worse again?
"Nnngh. . ." Tetsuya groaned beside me, still sleeping. I left him unattended for a while but not in any intentions of leaving him behind. Slipping out of the cramped space, I was still visioning the same silence and dead bodies everywhere. Humans lying like forsaken dolls coming from an already grown-up teenage girl, they all looked like they were not needed for God to play them anymore.
Still, the silence was beginning to swallow my sanity away. I just couldn't bear the absence of sounds anymore. Vivid city of Tokyo, where had you ran off? A city that never sleeps, perhaps it needed its slumber now. A dark, cold place it became within just one day. I was beginning to feel that they didn't die out of nothing. Something. . . Even a miniscule slip could kill millions.
I looked up at the sky.
Its crimson, as thick as ichor coming from a few corpses I had seen, was beginning to taunt me. As if the menacing shade of cloudless skies, it spoke its voice like thousands of tormented humans and slithering lisps like devil's tongue; the world above grumbled its wake but there wasn't any downpour to wash the cadavers away.
I returned back to meet Tetsuya, who was rather in a paranoid state. Our eyes met a brief glance, a split second of wide-eyed catch and triumphant glee sent flying in his chest; he huffed with his hands placed on his chest.
"I thought you left me."
"Of course, I won't," I smiled softly, "Let's go." I beckoned him to the door, giving a signal meaning that we had to move on. He was still shivering after he slipped off from his cocoon of old, tattered ad hoc shroud, guess the air remained as it was since a couple of hours ago. "Let's find a proper shelter with other people. . . I don't know if there are still any." I scooped my bag pack around my shoulder, testing its weight before sliding my other arm around the strap.
"Silly," he retorted, "If we're still alive, that's mean there're still survivors," he wondered, "Maybe this town still have some other people. . ."
"I'm not sure about it, Tetsuya. . . I mean, what if we're just lucky?" I threw him the question, even my eyes wary and lost their confidence, "You'd seen yesterday. . . We're the only ones. I bet we're going to die as well soon enough. . ."
I shouldn't have said that. In front of me, his baby blue eyes looked dejected and to the point of despair, gossamer tears started to brim around the corners. Groaning, I tried reaching out to him, coaxed him with words even I'm not sure its honesty but he stepped his foot backward, right out of the room. Tetsuya was scared and this was his only hope. Now, I was the one crashing it for him. Brilliant. "No Tetsuya. . . I didn't mean that way!"
It was too late. My words never reached his ears, instead he took a run out of the store. He was foolish. Foolish enough to leave his one and only companion yet the foolishness was my fault as well. I clenched my teeth, my fear of losing him overpowered the ones meaning for survival and so I took my own chase as well. For a small and sickly child I recently met, he sure was fast when he was desperate. And right when I was out of the store, my footsteps came into a halt as I looked over my surroundings. There was nothing but a greyscale of tedious glass-and-concrete buildings pitched over the layers of an angry shade, and the ground was a silent party of slumbering cadavers.
"Tetsuya?!"
Where had he ran off? Again, I was alone. My promise was turning into nothing but white lies. I was losing a companion, a friend. I found myself panicking and my legs glued to the ground, clueless on where to go. Heterochromia eyes searched in every part of the street, the buildings, opened windows and small cracks. And that was when I heard a scream, a child-like one and I knew who that was. Sparing no time for my train of thoughts, neither to clear my brief shock, I sprinted as if death was chasing after me. The sound started to become clearer, and he released another high-pitched one. A run turned into a sprint, the city road narrowed to a hutong and that was where Tetsuya's screams must come from. His name was shouted once again, and he responded with a plea for help, a tone squeaked in an undefeatable, cruel fear.
"Sei – Seijuurou!" He gasped when I was a mere distance away to his aid. Within a mere three seconds, he gazed upon my own eyes with a look of relief, but not when fear crossed his visage again as he turned around. I could see cherub cheeks tainted red from falling and crying, knees scraped with light bruises and worst of all, witnessing not afar from the blunette's distance a stranger striding over their direction, her one eye a structure of sclera but no iris and the other an unfazed glare of fading brown eyes. Her arms were flailing, like her body was burning from invisible, fervent flames licking her ivory skins. We could hear her pain through the sobs and hiccups, she knew she was dying. Before she could reached neither one of us, she started raging a coughing fit – hacking and wheezing until her lungs almost exploded and she screamed an agonising pain, only that there wasn't any blood. Glancing toward Tetsuya, he must have been seeing the exact same thing as I did. The woman's condition feared us no more, but there was more to the fear that embedded right into our feels. Our newly found fear brought us to an undying question of our fates, what if we would be like her in another moment. She was crying, for that we mourned over her as she took her final breathe – a long, harsh gasp as if she suffocated from the absence of oxygen – and dropped to the ground dramatically with her head thudded first. We both realised that we had been holding our breaths for a while, and the two of us moaned heavy exhales.
Pulling Tetsuya until he finally stood, I quickly wrapped my arms around his neck and sobbed my last bit of antipathy away. He was quick to embrace me as well, his body trembling from the traumatised scene he just witnessed. "She suddenly grabbed me, S-Sei. . . I thought she was going to kill me. . . She looked really, really angry but when I listened to her words she was mourning over her husband. A-And then, she started screaming. I took a chance to run away but she chased me."
"Shh, you don't have to talk about it anymore."
"B-Bu –"
"Just don't ran off!" I scolded and he flinched in surprise. He was about to pull away once again, but I firmly snatched his wrists with both of my hands and exclaimed; "I'm scared too. . . But if we do this together, I'm sure we'll live. We won't die like her or – or like anybody else. Okay?"
He nodded firmly.
"Stay in my sight, please. . ."
Because I have a promise to accomplish, and that was protecting you.
TO BE CONTINUED
Mozu : Next chapter coming right up with Alex, Kagami, Aomine and Kise! Aomine will have a oneshot for himself about his past in this story. Eheheh. But that will come after they turned 16 here! This story will have them as 8 year old until about Chapter 5, and then they will grow up. And then, the real plot starts there.
Thanks to Iza Seitsunai and Deepper for helping me with my storyline! They helped a lot by giving me ideas for this story. Because of them, this shit just turned slower and longer! You know how many chapters I'm aiming? 80! Fuckyeah!
X for love, O for hate!
-Mozu The Mochi (2015)
