#i sound so snobby rn | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tazzytypes · 4 years

Text

Apocalypse: Sanctuary - Chapter 1

EDIT (6/10/2020): I know this is unprofessional as hell, but I added more because the ending didn’t sit right with me. Was too excited too hurry up and post and forgot there was a reason I plotted things out in a certain way. Hope you all can forgive me.

Finally! Chapter 1! I hope you guys enjoy it. I loved reading your comments and every kudos made me more excited to keep writing. Also, I apologize for the weird spacing throughout the post. I had to copy it from scrivener to AO3 to here and it just made things messy, but it’s 1AM rn and I’m tired.

Read on AO3 or Fanfiction.net!

click here for: Prologue |

Emily shifted in her seat, head rebelling after spending a week in the dim light of candles which cast everything in an orange hue and made the shadows dance on the walls. Even her large circular glasses did nothing to ease her sight… it was a wonder she wasn’t already legally blind. Either way, she had the mother of all headaches.

The constant fires always left E uncomfortably hot and the layers upon layers they were forced to dress didn’t help. First thing the wardens did when they arrived was strip her down and burn every shred of fabric… her favorite shirt nothing but ash. Clothing standards were non-negotiable. Evening wear on the left side of the armoire. Don’t mistake it for your daily clothes or you won’t receive dinner. Cocktails before-hand at 6:30 sharp. Lucky for Emily, she was always early for everything and had yet to find out what the punishment was for that particular faux-pas. She wished nothing but to grab the t-shirt and shorts she had arrived in just to find some relief.

“Be careful what you wish for,” Her mother had always told her.

At first, she had been relieved when the others arrived. Now she had to wonder if she would have been better off on her own… the supplies she had counted in storage would certainly have lasted longer. Small little cubes with all the nutrients they needed. They probably would have been better with non-perishables, but she doubted the wardens would risk a venture outside to hunt for some… not like they would be able to eat it, anyway.

Another stabbing pain pulsed at her temples, hands going to smooth it out as she listened to the chattering around her that sounded more like white noise than coherent sentences. Waiting out the apocalypse in solidarity would have driven her insane, humans being the social creatures they were. However, she doubted any of them would survive the end of the world with their sanity intact.

Not that one could guess it was the end of the world by the conversations of her fellow residents, most of them rich and most of the snobby. Gallant and Coco were thick as thieves… their personalities almost comically matching that of Regina George from Mean Girls. Evie, Gallant’s washed-up film star of a grandmother was almost repulsively republican — so homophobic and racist that most of the residents hoped she’d have a heart attack and die. The Stevens, a mother and son pair along with the son’s boyfriend, were tolerable. Andre liked to throw shade, but he was balanced by his witty counterpart, Stu.

She couldn’t help but smile to herself as she thought of their earlier conversation.

“It’s like Satan’s Spotify playlist,” Stu had joked in response to Gallants endless complaining, making Andre nearly choke on the water he had been drinking.

“For the amount of times I’ve been told I’m in league with the devil, I’d have expected him to have better taste.” Emily had joked in return.

Stu laughed and Andre only sighed, “don’t even get me started on the clothes.”

“Well at least you don’t have to wear a corset,” Coco had snipped, hand going up to pat at her hair in an attempt to keep it in place.

Emily tugged at her own, something poking her in her stomach, “These are not historically accurate.”

“Let me guess,” Stu said, gesturing to her glasses, “history major?”

“Insomniac.”

The pounding returned to her head and she leaned on the table, pressing at her temples with the hope of some relief. Maybe she could ask a Grey to get her some ice… she doubted Venable had a stash of ibuprofen in the reserves.

It had been 14 days since they had gotten here. 3 of which she had spent on her own, wandering the halls with a candelabra like a damsel from a Victorian novel. She tugged at the high collar of her shirt. Whoever designed this hole in the ground was determined to have them living in a corset-laced wet dream.

“Are you okay?” The girl beside her asked, a gentle hand placed on Emily’s arm. She had just arrived at the outpost, 2 weeks after the bombs dropped, with a boy around the same age. They had barely been able to introduce themselves before Venable cut in, ringing a bell obnoxiously to usher them to dinner.

The few words the pair had said still haunted her.

“It’s all gone,” The brown-haired boy had told them at Gallant’s insistence, lips pressed into a thin line as he tried not the let the emotions that came with those words to overwhelm him.

“Everything,” The girl echoed, voice hollow.

Gallant fell back as if he had been shot, panic threatening to overtake his lungs after it was done squeezing the life out of his heart.

“What…” Emily had stuttered out, trying to calm herself, “What did it look like?”

Andre’s voice had cracked and spat out like venom, “who cares about what it looks like?”

Stu had placed a hand on his lover's shoulder. His brows were furrowed and there was a slight shake that came over his body. Andre curled into him, Stu wrapping his arms around him as if he could somehow shield the man from the world.

Her anxiety spread through her like a wildfire, the attempted facade of strength cracking, “It matters because it could tell us how fucked we are!”

“We’re well past fucked!” Coco had snapped.

The girl with ebony hair focused on Emily, eyes welling with emotion she all too well understood.

“No sun…” She said, forcing the words from her mouth, “just green… smog.”

“Does that mean anything to you?” Stu had asked her, eyes betraying his own fears.

“Hiroshima happened in the… 50s? Chernobyl happened in the 80s,” Emily began to say, too in her thoughts to notice the side-eyed stares of her companions, “and that was still radioactive before it was radioactive… again.”

The comment seemed to stir something in the new girl’s head, “I heard about that… people were able to take trips last year… once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Coco scoffed, “so is dying.”

“Wait, so like… this can go away?” Gallant asked.

The girl looked to Emily, “People were living on Hiroshima before all this.”

“Possibly,” Emily mused, “Then again, we’d have to multiply that incident by… well, a lot.”

“We’d have to find out where and how many bombs were dropped.” The girl added, “as well as the area affected by it.”

Coco frowned, still more focused on her hair than the literal end of the world, “could you stop talking like that? You’re seriously freaking me out.”

“We’re all freaking out,” Dinah snipped.

“Just tired,” Emily reassured the girl, leaning back in her chair. She realized she had yet to ask the girl her name, but the Grey’s entered with their meal before she could — one Grey for each purple at the table. The large black plates were almost amusingly large in comparison to the singular small cube that sat at its center.

A full table-set was spread out before them, silver soup spoons, teaspoons, knives, and a salad fork mocking them every day. They stood out against the dark wood and reminded them that they were doomed to a life of tasteless jello for the rest of their lives. Emily finally understood how her pets felt, fed the same food day in and day out… at least she had bothered to change up the flavor. Her body rebelled against her after the third day, gagging whenever she brought the cube anywhere near her mouth. A few days of starvation quickly rectified the situation and greatly amused her jailer who was all too happy to put the food back from whence it came.

Venable chose the seating arrangements, naturally. Emily was sat beside the two new arrivals, positioned as far from the woman as possible. It was an arrangement neither of them minded. Emily didn’t hold her tongue in moments such as these and she didn’t like placing her wellbeing in the hands of another. Venable expected complete and total control over her residents, enforcing strict standards of order that were almost as tight as her hair, tightly pulled together in a double french twist at the back of her head. Emily was the stray hair that wouldn’t lay flat no matter what she did.

The new arrivals stared at their plates as the Greys placed the cubes before them, sending each other confused glances and waiting to see what the rest of them did. It hardly looked appetizing, brown and having a texture reminiscent of a health-nut’s chia-seed protein bar.

Emily poked at her own food for good measure, feeling her throat clench at the mere thought of eating again. It didn’t listen no matter how many times she tried to reason with it. You’d think the body would behave and finally realize that this was as good as things would get.

Gallant turned towards the girl to his left, “Don’t be too disappointed.”

“Darling,” Evie sighed from the other side of the table, spreading a napkin across her lap, “You don’t know what disappointment is until you’ve slept with Yul Brynner.”

The mere thought of the old woman having sex was enough to make Emily’s lips curl in disgust… maybe she didn’t need to eat after all. For once Dinah was amused by the old crone, chuckling as she cut apart her cube like it was a five-course meal instead of the science project of Elon Musk.

“I want to die,” She could hear Gallant mutter a few seats over, head in his hands as he contemplated his decision to bring his nana along on whatever this adventure was.

Dinah was quick to explain the cubes to the new pair, “The cube on your plate contains every vitamin our body needs…”

Across from Emily, Coco ungracefully shoved the entire cube into her mouth with one fell swoop, cheeks puffing out. Dinah continued to speak, pretending to have not seen Coco, words coming out rushed, “…or so they tell us.”

“Whether or not it aids in our caloric intake is up in the air,” Emily added, following the woman’s lead and gently cutting into the cube.

“The fewer calories the better!” Evie proclaimed from down the table, waving her fork in the air to accentuate her statement.

“Until you become a skeleton.”

Emily had learned from Dinah’s example to take small bites, savor it. She hoped it would fool her body into thinking it was eating more. Either way, her stomach still growled and she was grateful to her handler for taking her to Chick-Fil-A on their way to the Outpost. The mere thought of that last meal made her mouth water.

Coco’s silverware clattered onto her plate as she closed her eyes and whined, “I’m still hungry… I am so tired of the hunger.”

A fist to the table made Emily jump, dropping her own silverware in turn. The girl next to her looked to the other residents as Coco stood up abruptly, letting her chair screech against the floor as it was thrown back. She looked to Emily and all she could do was offer a half-hearted shrug that said, “same shit as usual.”

… God, she missed John Mulaney.

“Fuck! This! Bullshit!” Coco continued, “With all the thought that went into this they don’t have a single bag of Pirate’s Booty in the pantry?”

Evie sat back as if watching a soap opera while the rest of the residents braced themselves for another tantrum. Coco raved on, unaware of the sudden looming figures coming up behind her, “For a hundred million dollars a ticket, I expect goddamn Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen cooking us real food!”

Then she stopped, a tap of a cane on the floor signaling the arrival of Venable, Miss Mead on her heels like an obedient dog. They braced themselves for another, self riotous lecture on appreciating what they had as if none of them mourned for what was. Slowly, head bowed and aware of her impending doom, Coco turned.

The slap rang in everyone’s ears, causing a collective gasp to fill the room. The brown-haired boy beside Coco caught her as she fell back, her hand going instantly to her cheek. As she stood once more she took it away and examined it. Emily could see the barest hint of blood on the blonde’s fingers. A growl threatened to rise in her throat and her lips curled in a disgusted snarl.

It was hard to keep calm as she addressed the woman donned in black, “we’re all adults here. We can use our words… I hope. At least some of us have mastered that much.”

Venable turned to her. The black-haired girl beside her shifted uncomfortably. One could cut the tension between the two women with a knife.

Finally, Venable pulled her eyes away and turned her focus to the spoiled girl before her, her hand resting back on the cane she always carried, “Let me be very clear so there will be no misunderstanding. We have enough nutrition to last for the next 18 months and if our situation doesn’t improve, you can count on less and less.”

Slowly, Coco sat. Shaking hands pulled away from her cheek as she reached for the chair. She was so scared that her movements were stiff. Yes, she had been yelled at before. God knows she was a stubborn woman with a temper, but no one had ever slapped her before.

Venable retreated into the only exit of the room, slithering back into the shadows. Venable’s tone bordered on the overly-theatric, playing the part of a woman burdened by knowledge she dare not speak lest it disrupts the peace.

“You could have told us that from the very beginning.” Emily blurted out.

The woman didn’t even bother to look at her as her lips curled into a mocking smile. When she finally turned to Emily, her tone was thick with condescension, “and cause unnecessary panic?”

“You know what they say about communication and relationships.”

“ Situation ?” Gallant asked, waving a hand to get their attention, “What is our situation ?”

Miss Mead looked to her boss whose face glimmered with uncertainty and surprise, but only for a moment. Venable was debating whether or not to tell the truth or keep them in the constant state of unknowing, easy to control. If she were still in college, Emily could have written an essay on the ways Venable reminded her of the worst sort of people in their history books.

“We had a perimeter alert this morning,” She finally told them, less than pleased with the fact the words were leaving her mouth at all, “Something penetrated the grounds. It was a carrier pigeon delivering a message from our benefactors.”

Coco gasped, “Wait! A pigeon! Can we eat it?”

Emily sighed and leaned on the table, resisting the urge to hand her head in her hands. This place was going to be migraine city the moment she tapered off her medication.

Miss Mead’s tone echoed her feelings, brows scrunching at the pure idiocy of the question.

“It was contaminated by the fallout .”

Her response didn’t phase Evie, who made it abundantly clear she had never made a meal for herself in her entire life, “Can we boil it?”

Venable reached into her pockets and pulled out a small sliver of paper and began to read, “There are no more governments. Only rotting mounds of corpses, too many to bury.”

Emily’s hands fell to her lap and curled into fists until she could feel her fingernails embed themselves into the flesh of her palms. All she could hear were the voice-mails, each and every last plead for life. She could still hear her brother’s voice, cracking in a way she hadn’t heard since their grandmother’s funeral. It was etched into her brain to the last breath. To his last breath, he took his role as an older sibling seriously, trying to soothe her fears instead of his own.

“I don’t want to die. God, I don’t want to—”

Venable continued reading, “Starving people kill for a piece of bread.”

“I love you… I… You were… are a good sister.”

“Three outposts have been overrun.” Venable’s voice droned on, voice cracking ever slightly as she reached the end of the letter, “We are the last vestiges of civilized life on the planet.”

“I… I know you would have made a difference… I wish I could have seen the life you would have created.”

Venable looked to them all as she read the last line, “be vigilant.”

Emily was pulled from her thoughts by a squeeze to her hand, instinctively pulling it back until she realized a hand covering her own. When Emily met the ebony-haired girl’s gaze she offered a reassuring smile, Emily nodded in a small message of thanks before brushing away the single tear which had begun to roll down her cheeks.

“Everything we know is gone,” Mead summarized, eyes blank. It was nice to see that even the Warden and Venable felt fear. Made them feel… human.

“In two weeks ?”, Andre shook his head, staring blankly at his hands, “That’s all it took?”

In a rare show of empathy, Gallant reached out and squeezed the man’s hands. Emily noted the way Stu watched the interaction, eyes watching the hands as if it were a snake slithering in his direction.

“They made you think the system was a rock,” Mead explained, standing at attention with her hands locked together in front of her, “It was a water balloon. One prick of the needle and —”

She made a popping noise, “that’s all it took.”

It wasn’t as if Emily was surprised. One of the first things she learned in a college psychology class was that the only reason the world didn’t fall into chaos was due to people putting faith in a system that would protect them… conventional. The bombs had scattered them, left them weak to the chaos that ensued. It reminded her of the way roaches scattered when sprayed with Raid. Lawlessness was the antithesis of reason, mob mentality was evidence enough of that. It was textbook horror.

“We will only survive if we follow the rules,” Venable emphasized.

Emily scoffed. Some of Venable’s rules she understood while others were a blatant overreaching of power. She could understand the “no sex” rule to a degree. Copulation could result in the creation of new life which they had no means to sustain, but even the Victorians had condoms and you couldn’t walk into a 7-Eleven without finding a rack of Plan B. Not to mention half the residents were gay which made her rules pointless.

“Rules are the basis of order,” Venable said, clearly addressing her despite staring at the wall above them, “unless you find yourself to be above the rules? Too special for them to apply?”

She hadn’t a moment to voice her thoughts, quickly distracted by the army of wardens that quickly began to fill the room. They all watched with bated breath as The Fist bent down to whisper in Mead’s ear, her lip twitching and eyes flitting to the ground as she gave the other woman her full attention.

“There’s a problem.”

Those 3 words were enough to break Venable’s gloating, head snapping to the side like Coco’s had a moment ago. They all watched the pair, unsure of who to keep a better watch on — Venable or Mead.

“We’ve detected a spike in the background radiation, centered in this room,” Mead informed her boss.

Gallant was quick to point fingers to the new pair, whatever empathy he had shown with Andre gone like the wind as he moved from them as if they had the plague, “It’s them! They just came from the outside!”

“No!” The girl exclaimed, shaking her head vigorously and sitting forward in her chair, knuckles white around the wooden arms, “No! We were checked when we got here! We’re clean!”

She looked to Emily for aid, brown eyes wide and pupils dilated. Her eyes glimmered with confusion and panic, searching for an unspoken question. Emily’s brows knitted and she bit her lip, eyes flickering between the girl before her and the wardens preparing a device that looked like a microphone attached to a larger box.

“No,” the boy echoed, “we went through decontamination.”

His eyes also went to Emily as he continued to speak, begging for her to understand, “we were cleared.”

Emily opened her mouth but could find nothing to reassure them. Mead addressed the room before Emily could utter a word. “Place your hands on the table… and don’t. Move .”

Shaking her head at the girl, Emily did as she was told. This hadn’t happened before. She didn’t know what to expect. As the device clicked from her left, she edged her pinky towards her knife. It wasn’t sharp. It didn’t have to be sharp to cut through jello. With enough pressure, it could cut through skin. The rest of the room faded away as she kept her eyes on The Fists' hands, a second device in her hands as well. Emily’s heart hammered with each step closer.

“Radioactive contamination,” Mead spoke, devices crinkling like static as they hovered over each person, “is a grave risk to our entire community.”

The Fist, a giant of a woman with blonde hair pulled back from her face, towered above Emily when she was standing. Sitting down made her feel like a child in the presence of a giant. She held her breath as she felt the device get closer, clicking sounds falling silent as soon as it came above her hand. The Fist repeated the motion a few times more, making Emily’s heart go haywire in her chest, before moving on to the new arrival next to her, the clicking resuming once more.

“The clean rule is there to protect all of us,” Mead continued, now going over the boy who sat stiff as a board, eyes following the woman’s every move, “A single stray gamma particle can cause skin lesions. Your DNA breaks apart, your body disintegrates. You’ll wish you died in the blast.”

The residents weren’t sure what to make of her speech. It wasn’t as if any of them graduated with a degree in radiology. They had learned it in high-school, sure, but that was ages ago… before there was colored TV for some of them.

“But someone here decided,” Mead went on, circling the table for a second round of testing, “that their individual needs were more important.”

Emily tensed once more as the stick was waved around her, Mead pausing momentarily to look down at the box she held in her hand to see if it had somehow turned off. Finding nothing, she continued. “Someone went outside. Touched something dirty .”

The room was holding their breaths. They all knew they were innocent, but didn’t trust their companions as far as they could throw them. Their gaze followed the device, then to the person next to them, then to the person in front of them. They searched for a sign of guilt. It was easier to point fingers when someone looked shifty.

“Makes me sick to think that this person,” Mead spit as she made it to gallant, “to risk contaminating all—”

A wild crackling filled the room. They all jumped in their seats, eyes focusing on the hairdresser. Emily’s heart leapt into her throat, paralyzed as the vultures began circling, donned in leather and stronger than any of them could hope to be.

“No,” The man said after a moment, shaking his finger as he looked to the Wardens, “nononono. That’s a mistake because the only thing I’ve touched is Coco’s hair.”

The Fist stood over Coco and shook her head. Mead gave the final order, voice lacking any pity, “she’s clean. You’re dirty.

The wardens grabbed at Gallant, claws latching onto him as he began to struggle.

“No!” He cried, “this is impossible! That machine is wrong!”

Fingers dug into his shoulder and Gallant cried out in pain, dragged to his feet and across the floor. The warden closest to him placed him in a choke-hold, Gallant letting out a fearful sob as he clawed at the man’s arm. Evie stood, chair screeching across the floor as she reached out towards her grandson with trembling hands.

“This is outrageous! Stop! Please, stop! Bring him back!”

Coco gasped and let out a cry, hands moving to cover her face as her eyes welled with tears. The girl beside Emily looked between herself and the boy in front of her, chest rising and falling rapidly as she began to hyperventilate.

Gallant scream pierced the air, “Evie!”

The crackling filled the room once more. In their panic, they had failed to realize Mead making her way towards Andre and Stu. The couple could only stare at each other, the seconds dragging on like hours.

“No way!” Stu chanted, refusing to look away from Andre, “No! No way!”

“No,” Andre sobbed, reaching out towards the man and trying to pry him from the grasp of the warden pulling him away. He was thrown away with a shove.

“Get your hands off me!” Stu screamed, another warden now going to carry him by his feet.

Mead’s voice rang out from the chaos, followed swiftly by the marching of footsteps.

“Take them to the decontamination room!”

They could hear the groans of their fellow residents echoing down the hall. The sounds resonated long after the steel doors had closed.

Emily reached out for the hand of the girl next to her. Her face was frozen in a gasp, eyes wide with terror. Her hand rested on hers which still sat on the table. She squeezed back and held on for dear life.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

For once the saloon was quiet. Evie had gone to bed. Emily currently sat next to a crying Andre, Dinah opposite her. He hadn’t been able to stop crying since dinner, now unable to do more than hiccup.

“How could he have been contaminated,” He sobbed, a horrible epiphany crossing his mind as he turned to Emily, “do you think they—?

Emily gave him a look, “Did you forget Gallant’s little hand-squeeze during dinner? He was coming on to you, not Stu.”

Andre had a fleeting smile before anxiety overtook him once more.

“What we need to do now,” Dinah said, running a hand up and down her son’s back, “is make sure Stu comes back safe.”

Her words were less than comforting, Andre shoving away her arm and staring at her with an emotion Emily couldn’t quite place… somewhere between distress and anger.

“Why wouldn’t he be safe?” he demanded, looking to the brunette when his mother offered no response. Emily opened her mouth, hoping something would pop into her head, but she was at a loss for words. She couldn’t reassure him of anything. It would be a lie.

The man scoffed, stepping back and shaking his head, “I can’t believe you.”

He turned on his heels, breath hitching once more as another fit of sobs threatened to take over him. Why Stu? Why not them? Of all the residents Stu was the least deserving of—

Emily rose, hand held out to stop him, “Andre—”

A gentle hand was placed on her shoulder. Dinah took a step around her, hand trailing down her purple-clothed arm until she held her hand, the other coming to rest on top of it.

“Let me talk to him,” the woman tried to reassure, the events clearly have shaken her as much as Stu.

Emily pressed her lips together and nodded, pulling back and watching the woman hurry towards her son, heels clicking down the hall. The door clanged shut behind her and silence filled the room.

… but only for a moment.

“What’s going to happen to me if they find out Gallant is —” Coco started to ramble, “I mean I was the only reason he was here in the first place.”

“You were clean,” The brown-haired boy pointed out, face twisting in confusion.

“Well, I know that!” Coco exclaimed, turning on the couch to face him, “but who’s to say there won’t be a second investigation. I mean there had to be a reason they were tainted.”

She went quiet for a moment, hands held out in front of her as if she was having a revelation, “oh my gosh! If they kill Gallant who’s going to do my hair?”

Emily sighed and sat next to the new girl who was wringing her hands and staring into the fire.

“I never did ask your names,” Emily noted, looking to the girl and the boy.

“Timothy,” He said with a nod of his head.

The girl was pulled from her thoughts, turning from the fire and to the people behind her, “Emily.”

Emily chuckled, “You’re joking.”

“What?”

“It’s the end of the world and I can’ escape the fate of having a basic girl name.”

A smile curled at the other Emily’s lips, then a laugh, “really?”

Emily extended a hand, “Hi, Emily. I’m Emily.”

“There’s two of you now?” Coco groaned.

“I was named after my grandmother,” The other Emily said, taking her hand and giving it a shake, “you?”

“My parents looked in a baby book and picked a ‘less common’ girl name. 21 years later and there’s at least three Emily’s in each one of my classes.”

“God, this is going to be confusing,” Coco sighed, pressing her fingers to her nose in a praying motion, “Oh! I know! Emily 1 and Emily 2… no... That’s too wordy.”

“Middle names?” Timothy asked.

“No way in hell,” The two replied.

“I can always go by ‘Em’,” she said, “god knows I’m used to it by now.”

“M?” Coco asked, “that’s original.”

“Well, we can’t all be named after a brand of cereal.”

“I was named after Coco Chanel!” she snapped, turning to Timothy with crocodile tears, “You get it, right?”

“…yeah?” he answered, an eyebrow quirking up in confusion, “The clothing brand.”

He looked to the two Emily’s as he spoke like he was part of some hidden camera show. The two could only laugh and shake their heads as he was quickly rounded into another one of Coco’s monologues.

“My parents named me Coco because they knew I was destined to make it big. So it was only natural that I…”

Timothy looked ready to face nuclear winter. His guilt over the previous dinner altercations made him feel guilty for wanting to run away, but the boy always had a hard time saying, “no.” The Emily’s watched on, sparing him pity-filled glances when he looked to them for help.

“So did you pay your way in here or are you here for your superior genetics?” Emily asked.

“Genetics,” Emily… Em replied, “I was supposed to be on the east coast but someone paid for me to be transported all the way out here.”

“Who?”

She shrugged, “no idea. Some rich snob wanted their dog to go with them… at least that’s what Venable tells me.”

“I’d hardly call her a trustful resource.”

Em laughed, “That we can agree on.”

“How long do you think we’ll be here?”

“More than we have rations for,” Em sighed, reaching for a glass of water, “Fallout could last up to five years and we’ve talked about Chernobyl… but nothing on this scale has ever been recorded.”

Emily stared blankly ahead and nodded, trying to recall all she had learned about the matter in school, “we could be here for 30 years… maybe more.”

“Sorry,” Em offered, “anyone here can tell you — I’m not one to speak to for optimism or reassurance.”

“No,” The other girl shook her head, “I’d rather blatant honestly than pretty lies.”

“If we had anything more than water I’d toast to that.”

Emily laughed and shook her head. She reached for a glass of her own and held it up.

“Let’s toast anyway.”

Em smiled and leaned her glass forward, a dull clinking sound filling the air.

“What were you doing?” Em asked, leaning back and taking a sip of water, “before the bombs hit?”

“Protesting. It sounds minuscule now… climate change, minimum wage.”

“Everything is minuscule in the presence of death.”

“Poetic.”

“I sure hope so,” Em jested, “or all the money I wasted on an English Major was worthless.”

Emily laughed, “Is that what you were doing before the bomb’s dropped?”

“Nah… I was at home… enjoying summer. I was working on our campus’ literary magazine and selling art prints online as a side-hustle.”

Em shook her head, silence sitting for a moment before Emily spoke.

“I don’t know what to do with myself now.”

“I don’t think any of us do, but at least we’re not alone.”

“I wouldn’t call this particularly good company,” Emily admitted.

“It’s not,” Em blatantly admitted, earning a short laugh from her companion, “but you and timothy seem alright.”

“And you?”

“Well…” Em said, side eying Coco who was still avidly speaking without a sign of ever stopping, “I’m no influencer.”

Emily snorted and shook her head, “that may be for the best.”

------------------------------------------------

“All I’m saying is Stu was boring and using up our food, and that lesions won’t work with my complexion.”

Em rolled her eyes and looked to Emily who once again sat beside her as Coco’s tirade went on. The blond-haired woman once again was patting at her hair like she was on the red carpet. They looked to Timothy across from them who just sat looking blankly ahead of him. Em smiled at shook her head, not able to blame the man for pretending he was anywhere else but here. If not for the mandatory cocktail hour and communal meals, Em would have stayed as far away from the others as possible.

Days had passed since Gallant and Stu had been forced into decontamination. Gallant refused to speak of the incident and… well… they knew where it got Stu. One would have liked to have said that Coco had shown some respect for the deceased, but the farthest she got was initial shock followed by contempt towards their fallen comrade.

“Fuck you,” Andre spat, murder in his eyes, “I hope they come for you next.”

“If they don’t,” Em noted, Coco’s eyes glaring into her own, “I will.”

She gaped at her, nose curling as her expression turned into one of disgust, “Is that a threat?”

“A promise.”

Emily gave her a look like a mother trying to get their child to behave among strangers.

It’s not worth it!” She hissed under her breath. Em was far too annoyed to pay her any mind. She could forgive selfishness and vanity, but her complete lack of sympathy for those in pain? It didn’t matter if it was genuine. All she had to do was shut up, give Andre space to grieve.

Lucky for Coco, their jail-keepers arrived at the table before Em could follow out her threat. Venable’s cane sounded like the tik of a clock with each step she took, reminding the brunette of a horror story her friends and herself would tell around Halloween.

“Nobody is coming for anyone,” Mead told them as they both rounded the table to their respective seats at the head of the table, “unless you break the rules.”

She looked to Em, “which includes murder.”

Em paused as she took a sip of water, raising a brow at Coco, “I never said anything about murder.”

The older woman looked into her lap and shook her head, trying to hide the amused smile threatening to show on her face. Coco scoffed.

“This is harassment!”

“This is a difficult time for everyone,” Venable spoke, failing to address Coco’s claims, “as a small consolation, we have a special treat.”

Em could smell the food before she could see it, the salt and the meat, she could taste it in her mouth without even touching it. She felt like a dog, smelling things with such detail she had never been able to notice before. It was incredible what desperation could do to the body. The whole table buzzed with excitement, grins brightening faces and hands going to silverware before the food could be set on the table.

Emily was unable to hide her shock, “no cubes tonight?”

Venable’s lips curled into a smile, the expression doing nothing to ease the woman’s continuously angry expression, “enjoy the bonne bouche.”

Bowls clinked together, the Greys hurrying to place food on the table.

“Don’t get used to it.”

“Yes,” Emily sighed beside her, looking over to Em with an expression of relieved joy.

The brunette didn’t care. If she was being honest, she hadn’t exactly paid much attention to the woman’s words after she saw the soup on the food trolley. It was much like a cat seeing a bird at the window, green eyes widening and pupils dilating as if Em had found her true love. While her companions were much more graceful, at least attempting some decorum, Em quickly dug into the meal.

Her mother used to chide her for this as a child, sitting next to her brother at the dinner table and seeing who could finish first. She couldn't explain to the woman that she had to eat fast or else her brother would steal her dessert. Such things didn’t make sense to an adult, but a child’s reasoning was elaborate and honest. For a life so short, every little detail mattered.

Usually, she wasn’t a fan of stew. Something about the floating meat and murky broth didn’t sit right with her. Now she wondered why she didn’t enjoy the delicacy more often. The meat fell apart like well-buttered bread in her mouth, the broth warmed her from the inside out. She could feel it burning down her throat like a shot of Bourbon, somewhat painful but none the less satisfying.

“You think bribing us with a hot meal’s just gonna’ to make everything okay?” Andre asked, voice sore with grief. A white handkerchief flourished with the wave of his hand. It had been somewhere on his person since Stu was pronounced dead. Em was too caught up in her hunger to realize the weight of his words or the sudden stillness of the girl beside her, an unspoken conversation between herself and Timothy. She would take the bribe happily if it meant being spared from the tasteless cube she had become accustomed to. It wouldn’t win her over, but only a fool refused something readily given with no strings attached.

By the time Emily swatted at Em’s arm the brunette had already finished most of the stew, the bottom of her bowl visible through the broth. She sent Emily an irritated glare, gesturing with her hands as she swallowed her last bite.

“What?” she hissed.

Emily only rose her brows and sent a pointed glance towards Timothy. Turning towards him she was meant with an equally suspicious gaze and a shake of the head. With a sigh, she sat back in her chair, looking between the two and waiting for an explanation.

“I think my mouth just had an orgasm,” Coco moaned with a full mouth, quickly shoving more food into her mouth in fear it would turn out to be a cruel mirage. Em looked at her and embarrassment made her flush a pale pink. Is that what she had looked like?

“Andre,” Venable sighed, settling in her seat and arranging her silverware before she took a single bite, “We’re not trying to bribe anyone, but there is something we all need to understand.”

With a thud of her cane on the floor, the residents turned to her like raccoons being caught in a garbage can. Em prepared herself for a show of saintly-hood the uptight woman so adored.

“There is no ‘us’ and ‘them,’ We are in this together,” Venable proclaimed, “No individual is greater than the group. We did what we had to do. This is, quite simply, a tragedy.”

Em held her tongue for once. While Stu and herself hadn’t been close, she respected him more than she respected most of her fellow purples. The old world may have died, but the power games still presided — a strongman was still a strongman even when draped in fine clothes and laced in a corset.

It wasn’t as if any of them were paying her any mind, too enthralled in the smell of salt and meat like Hansel and Gretal in the witch’s house. Dinah sighed as she took another bite.

“Where have you been hiding the meat?”

Venable’s pause waved over Em like a bucket of cold water, the slight twitch of her lip as she looked down at her plate louder and more illuminating than any sermon she had given them. “We have resources… for special occasions.”

Em could only stare at her as she ate, trying to work at the puzzle which was Miss Venable. There were moments where she swore the woman showed regret or perhaps anxiety, but they were small and fleeting. Everyone had a tell, even the most stoic of society. Em just couldn’t figure it out and it drove her up a wall. It felt like she was staring at a brick wall, waiting for it to crumble.

Gallant pulled something out from his mouth, cringing as his teeth dig into something hard. It was white and square, but he couldn’t tell what it was? Gristle? Bone?

“I’ve never tasted anything like it.” He murmured, examining the object further as he twisted it in the light.

“It’s chicken,” Mead told him a bit too insistently.

“That’s not a chicken bone,” Timothy spoke, looking from his untouched bowl to the object the hairdresser was holding. His lips pressed into a thin line. Venable took a spoonful to her lips, then another, and then another.

Andre spoke from the other end of the table, voice wavering as he stared at yet another hard piece which had made his teeth hurt, “tell me this doesn’t look like a finger.”

Em looked to her plate, stomach twisting as she poked at the remains of her meal. A piece of white glimmered to the surface. Damning polite behavior, she reached in with her hand and pulled it out. Her mind went blank as she stared at it, rectangular with two prongs reaching outward from the body. It was a tooth. There was no doubt. Chicken didn’t have teeth. A frog gathered at the back of her throat, threatening to leap from her mouth.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Andre sputtered out, breath coming out in wheezing gasps as he flew back from the table shrieking, “The stew is Stu!”

The table erupted in panic. Gallant spit out whatever was in his mouth, leaving a dripping dark stain on the tablecloth. Andre wailed and Coco shrieked to a Grey named Mallory to make her throw up. Em could only stare at the near-empty bowl in front of her, the reality not quite sitting with her. Morbid questions filled her mind. It had tasted like… she didn’t know what it tasted like other than meat. Salty, maybe? Sweet?

A firm hand squeezed her own, Emily once again there to pull her from a spiral.

“You didn’t know.”

Amongst the screaming, the gagging, and the retching Venable sat, unmoved by the fires of fear rising around her. She didn’t smile, didn’t frown, didn’t show any reaction at all.

“For heaven’s sake,” she spoke with the same amount of annoyance she always addressed them with, a touch of boredom in her tone “Don’t be ridiculous. There are lines which can never be crossed.”

Something was glinting in Venable’s eyes, something that Em had seen many times before but could never properly place. The woman looked to Mead, “not eating people is off the first rank.”

Em’s voice sounded hollow as it left her, “Yet it is always the first taboo to be broken among the desperate.”

The thought of cannibalism wasn’t what alarmed Em. Cannibalism was deeply ingrained in human history — from burial rituals to a final stand against starvation. No. What frightened her was realizing she would do it again in an instant if it meant her survival. A fire burned in her as she looked to Venable, sitting there with a smug glow of victory. She had hated Venable before, but this made her blood boil at the sight of her. A revelation she did not want had been forced upon her and Venable’s eyes glinted as they met her own.

Her message was clear: Don’t rebel or you’ll be next.

#ahs fanfic #michael langdon #michael langdon x reader #michael langdon x oc

21 notes · View notes