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Title: Miserere Mei Rating: R for violence/language. There's also a great deal of angst Spoilers: Middle of Season 3 Disclaimer: Not mine/ No profit indended Distribution: My Lj, Annie’s Lj, my website, anywhere else please ask. A/N: This was written for Annie’s “Day After Tomorrow” challenge at her Livejournal. The premise being that we use the film’s global apocalypse theme to write some angst of no more than 1000 words. I fulfilled the first part of the requirement, not the second. This is fic is about 6X longer than it should be—sorry. A/N the second: I am changing Lauren’s character slightly—she’s not a double agent or anything, just Vaughn’s wife. | ||
Day 1: “Sydney are you hurt?” Jack’s voice is clipped and peremptory, demanding an answer, denying the possibility of injury. “I’m okay Dad—what was that?” “I’m not sure, I’ll check. Vaughn?” “Yeah—I’m alright. I’ll come with you.” The doors are reluctant to open. The snow is deeper here in the ditch. Vaughn has to lean his shoulder and push to force it open. The chiming of the door ajar warning is an abrupt intrusion—an idiotic song of normality out of place here where skeins of snow spin out of the sky obscuring the outlines of the Virginia countryside that was, as of last week, in the full greening riot of late spring. The cold sucks at Vaughn like a mouth as he struggles through the snow to stand by Jack at the side of the road. Sydney trails after—empty eyes denying the white threatening to veil the world. A only a few spots of green remain, it seems like the only colors left are the occasional green of the leaves, the three dark figures huddled by the road and the shocking red of the blood splashed across the snow. The snow falls in rippling curtains as the wind shifts and the effect is hypnotic and dizzying. Already Sydney can see the snow has begun to accumulate on the body lying in the middle of the road. Vaughn and her father wear dustings of white and she can feel the snow sticking to her eyelashes. She blinks to clear them. “What is it?” She asks. Her father moves closer to see. “Horse—looks like a thoroughbred. Must have escaped from a nearby…” He stops when he sees the saddle on the horse’s back. He turns and looks for the rider when the horse begins screaming. It heaves and jerks trying to get to its feet. Blood has pooled around the smashed back legs and steams in the cold. The heavy body strains and the head slews around as it scrambles madly. Plumes of breath jet from its nostrils and mouth as it squeals in fear and pain. Jack moves closer and kneels by the horse, speaking low to soothe it. Gradually the long chestnut head sags and dips to the ground. He strokes the silky neck as he places his gun against the white blaze on its forehead. The one eye visible blinks once, the horse lies quietly—the report of the shot is muffled amid the thickly falling flakes. Sydney can see the single galvanic shudder as the life leaves the body. Snow begins to collect and melt on the open staring eye. She looks away. “Over here.” Vaughn calls to them from up the road, where he stands beside a stretch of rusting barbed wire fencing. The child was perhaps eleven or twelve. Boy or girl was hard to determine because of the snow that has drifted around the body hiding most of the features; one pale stiffened hand is flung out-stretched overhead as if the small body has tossed and turned in an uneasy sleep. A strand of dark hair, matted with ice, is stuck to the frozen cheek. The vivid purple of the ski jacket is incongruous with the small crumpled form. Vaughn clears the snow from the too white face—a girl’s, two sparkly pink barrettes holding the long hair back—and despite the futility of the gesture checks for a pulse. “Body’s partly frozen—she’s been dead for at least a day or two…neck’s broken.” Grimly Vaughn turns to the other two waiting. “But the horse was fine, I don’t understand…” Numbly Sydney speaks, the wind tears and snatches at her words. Vaughn has to strain to hear them. “The horse didn’t leave. It must’ve been trained to wait by the body—the rider—If they fell or were thrown...Our car must have panicked it.” “She must have been going for help.” Jack kicks free a backpack and lifts it, brushing the snow off of the bright cartoon figures that adorn it. It looks heartbreakingly small in his hands as he examines it to find a name. “Ashley Garrett…RR #4 New Hope, Virginia.” He lets the backpack drop. “Come on, we have to find shelter out of the wind. Let’s go.” He turns and begins walking up the road. “We just can’t leave her here!” Jack spins to face his daughter, “What would you suggest we do? Bring the body with us? There’s nothing we can do, we have to go.” “We should bury her.” Sydney flounders through the deep drifts to the body of the little girl and frantically begins shoveling the snow to one side, exposing the body. Almost as if mocking her efforts, the wind intensifies and whips up more snow to replace the small amount removed. “Sydney…stop. Stop!” Vaughn reaches over and grabs at her flailing arms. She shakes free of his grasp and digs harder, crying openly now. “Sydney…She’s dead. It’s too late. She’s gone—” She slumps to her knees, rocking and weeping. “What’s going on…Vaughn what’s happening? Why is this happening?” He gathers her to him and holds her. “I don’t know. Something’s gone terribly wrong. Maybe it’s something to do with Rambaldi, or a new weapon…” His voice tapers off. Reasons are useless in the howling desolation of the storm, only survival matters. “Come on, get up. We’ll lose your father if we don’t keep moving.” She rubs at her tear-filled eyes, her fingers gone numb in the thin leather gloves—perfect for chilly mornings in Los Angeles—useless for the bone deep cold she now found herself in. She pushes Los Angeles from her mind—the snow was nothing compared to the few brief images they’d seen before the television feed had cut off. Monstrous funnel clouds ripping swaths through the city, like the black fingers of an angry god gouging and slashing his creation. Wearily she gets to her feet and stumbles down the road after the dark figure of her father, Vaughn walks in silence beside her. And all around them the snow keeps falling, blanketing the countryside in suffocating white. Day 8: Jack had been keeping a lid on the ever-simmering suspicions and resentments of Roland Garrett since then. He discerned in Roland the makings of “a disgruntled agitator who may be a person of interest” to use the CIA terminology. Unlike Mrs. Garrett—“Linda to my friends”—Jack never thought of her as anything other than Mrs. Garrett, who was a lean rawboned woman with the dark hair and fine features that she had passed on to Ashley. Years of working outside had creased the skin around her eyes into a network of deep lines and years of living with a man of Roland’s temperament had given her the nervous manner of a hunted animal. Despite being taller than him she somehow managed to shrink into herself whenever Roland was in the room. She had collapsed utterly when Sydney had haltingly told her about finding her daughter’s body—just folded in upon herself in the kitchen of the farmhouse and wailed her loss in the tragic manner of mothers the world over when confronted with the death of a child. Sydney had sat beside her on the floor and held her for nearly an hour before she finally wound down into the stunned dreamy shocked state she had remained in—until this morning when she had walked out into the storm. Mr. Garrett predictably had reacted with anger, “Dammed kid—never did listen a lick any day in her life. Her mother indulged her too much…Ashley had it in her head to hare off up the lane to see to our neighbors, the McCourt’s—never were nothing but a pack of no count lazy Irish Catholics anyhow—and bring them here seeing as we have the wood furnace and I had the dammed foresight to see to my own family’s needs—unlike that shiftless Roy McCourt—and put in the generator two winters ago. The only reason she was all fired to go is that she’s been a friend to the youngest brat—Sarah—since they were small. We woke up two mornings ago just as all this fucking mess started and she was gone, left a note for her mother. And now she’s…” Roland had glared at Jack and Vaughn, clenching his fists in his misery, blaming the messengers. He had changed subjects abruptly. “You’re a long way from Los Angeles—although you might want to count yourselves lucky considering…what are you doing up this way?” “We had a deposition scheduled at Langley. We had just left the airport when the snow started—we had already began receiving reports through various channels about the catastrophic weather incidents elsewhere. The last we heard before the sat-phones failed was that the President had declared a nationwide State of Emergency. He had asked all essential government personnel to report to the nearest FEMA crisis center for reassignment. We were attempting to head south to rendezvous in a non-affected state when our car was run off the road. ” Jack used a combination of directness, oblique hints to larger government forces and outright lies to bolster his position of authority over Roland Garrett. He senses this is a tactic that won’t work for very long on this man. No matter, he only needs to remain here for a few days until he and Sydney can continue their flight south—regardless what Sydney and Vaughn believe Jack has no intentions of remaining in the United States until he has assessed the potential risk of return to be minimal. Loyalty is meaningless when there won’t be much of a country left after this stops—if it ever stops. Now the few remaining survivors in all this arctic wasteland woke up this morning to discover Linda Garrett had gone and left the only source of light and heat for miles around—although their supplies of wood, gas and kerosene were rapidly dwindling—out into the driving blizzard to look for her dead daughter, leaving a brief message stuck to the fridge for her husband to find. Jack assumes she has already died from hypothermia—the thermometer outside the kitchen window shows –20F and it is dropping steadily. Vaughn had to physically restrain Roland from going out in the storm to look for his wife. Now Roland sits in the living room quiet and brooding, drinking shot after shot of whiskey. Jack pulls Vaughn aside and tells him to search the house for any additional firearms and to bring them to him. Roland’s angry silence is worrisome, almost as worrisome as Sydney’s withdrawal has been. “How is she? Did she sleep last night?” Jack is pleased Vaughn has adjusted and no longer cares about the propriety of sleeping with Sydney despite still being married—in all likelihood to a woman killed a week ago when the tornadoes struck L.A—he’s happy there is someone there to watch over his daughter during the long dark hours of the night. “Not much—but she’s stopped crying.” Sydney had cried noiselessly for days after telling Linda about the death of her only child. It had been strange and upsetting, she had moved through the house like a ghost—filling her hands with mindless chores as silent tears dripped down her cheeks. A statue of a saint come to half-life here in a century old farmhouse in Virginia. Now she was pale and remote—almost transparent in her indifference—her eyes watched but she spoke little. She sits with Roland and reads one of Ashley’s books—one of the Chronicles of Narnia—carefully doling out logs to maintain the fire. The wind whoops and wails, digging fingers into cracks, rattling the windows, screaming its rage at the figures trapped inside. The world outside is a mass of shifting white, they haven’t seen the sun for days. Vaughn comes into the room but Sydney barely notices; she is so absorbed in the book. She has fled into the magic land of Narnia with an intensity and determination that is alarming. "Hey—feel like some lunch?” Vaughn addresses the room at large. Roland ignores him, acting as if he hasn’t spoken. Vaughn notes the level on the whiskey bottle has dropped substantially. Sydney drags her gaze from the book, eyes used and worn looking, dark smudges on the delicate skin underneath. “No—I’m not really hungry. Shouldn’t we be rationing our supplies anyway?” Vaughn has to admit she’s right. Mrs. Garrett had kept a well stocked larder—overzealously so but that may have been more Roland’s influence than anything—but there was no telling how long they would be cooped up here before help came. “Still you need to eat something…” He finishes lamely, he had only wanted to have her speak to him, he hadn’t thought really about what he should be saying—beyond the obviously poor choice of, “you all done falling apart so I can have a turn at it?” Roland’s voice is gravelly with the drink and legions of unshed tears, “Got near 100 head of Black Angus in the barn—plus a freezer room full of sides of beef just ready for eating. We aren’t in any danger of running out of food.” With the careful concentration of a long-term drunk, he pours himself another drink and sips it. “Only have another cord and a half of wood in the basement, if this shit keeps up we’ll all freeze to death long before we go hungry…” Vaughn almost punches him for putting that wary hurt look into Sydney’s eyes again, she blinks rapidly as this lovely tidbit sinks in, before curling up and retreating into her book looking like a child that has been cruelly tricked. He sinks wearily onto the sofa beside her and rubs her back; she doesn’t appear to register his presence. He wonders if Jack has had any luck raising anyone on the satellite phone. The quiet is oppressive—the only noise the soft clink of the bottle against the glass and the muted ticking of the clock on the mantle—before Vaughn registers the quality of the silence. “Listen!” Roland and Sydney look at him questioningly, “There’s no more wind. The storm is over.” He gets up and heads to the window. Ragged drifts of cloud still streak the sky but the sun is a pale coin, barely visible. Vaughn goes to the back door and wrestles it open. The cold is a physical thing, reaching down into his lungs and ripping the air out, burning his skin painfully. Outside all is deathly still and quiet—no faraway sound of cars on the highway, no distant drone of planes in the sky, no birds sing. The world is marked by absence of all the familiar things; even smells have been purged leaving only cold nothingness in its stead. “Shut the dammed door!” Roland yells at Sydney and Vaughn from the comfort of his easy chair. They ignore him. “Look…” Sydney points—eerie green curtains shimmer and flux against the washed out backdrop of the sky. “Dad! Dad come and see this!” Even Roland is moved by the urgency in her tone to go and see, “What in the hell is that—radiation?” Roland doesn’t sound upset, only as if this confirms one more aspect of his dire world-view and those responsible for it. Sydney turns to Jack—fear makes her eyes wide. “Is it radiation?” Jack frowns and watches the strangely beautiful display, “No…it’s not radiation, I think it’s an aurora borealis—the Northern Lights—but there’s no way we should be seeing them this far south and at this time of day. It’s impossible." “Unless something…severe has happened to the Earth’s magnetic fields…” Jack voices the thought Vaughn hasn’t wanted to admit. “Well isn’t this a fine fucking mess! You goddammed government bastards and your fucking secret experiments—don’t think we don’t know that’s what you’re doing at the Pentagon and out there in Area 51. Now you’ve gone and wrecked the magnetic field! Fuckers—fuckers the lot of you!” The lid on Roland’s paranoia and resentment has finally blown and he’s bubbling over in rage and fear. He gets in Jack’s face—shaking a finger at him as if scolding him, spittle spraying everywhere. Unamused Jack wonders if this is the moment to finally put Mr. Garrett down because he’s become a vicious unpredictable dog, prone to biting. Jack hadn’t predicted Vaughn’s level of frustration or his own fear and feelings of helplessness, otherwise he might have stepped in and prevented what happened, especially considering the tragic outcome it lead to. “Back off! We had nothing to do with this!” Vaughn roughly grabs
Roland by the shirt and manhandles him to his chair. “We’ve dedicated
our lives to protecting Americans, and that includes your worthless hide,
you ungrateful shithead!” Roland resists, swinging wildly at Vaughn.
Vaughn ducks and punches him hard in the stomach, doubling Roland over and
bringing tears to his eyes. “Now sit there and shut up!” “Look!” Sydney draws their attention back outside. The snow steams, billows of fog roll across the ground. The air is warming rapidly—too rapidly. Hollow bangs and cracks come from the nearby wood as frozen trees, thaw too quickly and limbs break. The sound of water is everywhere, trickles and rivulets of melting snow echo through the foggy air. The sky darkens again and the distant sound of thunder is heard, there is a stutter flash of lightning. “What is going on, weather like this is impossible?” Sydney’s fingers grip the doorframe, knuckles white knots of bone under the thin skin. The wind starts again, tossing her hair about her face. More thunder rolls, closer now and louder. Dark banks of clouds mass in the sky. “Well we can travel in the rain, right? I say we get in Mr. Garrett's car and go.” Vaughn turns to Jack for confirmation. Jack feels rare unease gnaw at his gut—by rights they should take advantage of the break in the weather and go, but the logic of this wars with the base animal instinct to crouch and hide and wait for the storm to pass. “Jack?” Vaughn prompts him. There is a flash of lightning—bright like a bomb exploding, followed by a huge crack of thunder just overhead. The noise is deafening and they all jump involuntarily. “Sydney shut the door.” She has to lean against the wind shoving from the other side to close it. “I think we should all go to the basement.” Jack’s eyes are dark and fathomless in the shadowy gloom as the storm begins to rage overhead. Day 10: “What are you looking at?” “Nothing…much.” The tone is belligerent. They’ve been mostly trapped down here for a day and a half now—the storm cycles up and down like a gunned engine, but it’s hasn’t stopped. They go upstairs during the quieter times to eat and use the bathroom, darting out like small creatures wary of being hunted from above. The generator has run out of gas so they sit in semi-darkness by the light of the furnace and the oil lantern they light at night. Sydney reads or sleeps—in a deep and disquieting way—almost comatose. Jack fiddles with the satellite phones or the radio. There is only the hiss and pop of static, once a high screaming ululation as the unstable magnetic fields play havoc with the frequencies. Vaughn broods or glances through magazines. And Roland drinks. He’s emptied one 40-ounce bottle so far and is working steadily on another. The smell of alcohol and sweat comes off him in waves. “Well cut it out—“ “That’s enough Vaughn!” Jack’s voice is quiet but stern. Roland is beginning to come apart at the seams and Vaughn’s continued antagonism may make the situation more critical than it already is. “Vaughn read to me…please?” Sydney shifts over and offers The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to him, she’s read it once already and has started again. Vaughn takes the book and begins to read aloud, his voice smoothes out and loses the angry edge. Sydney rests her head on his lap and closes her eyes and listens. The adventures of Lucy, Mr. Tumnus and Aslan unfold and cast their spell. Jack rests his head against the wall and dozes. Unnoticed by everyone, tears well in Roland’s eyes and roll down the flushed cheeks, his hands roll over and over in his lap like nervous animals. The moment when he had lost all touch with reality has come and gone; now only blood rage and anger remain. “Stop it! Stop it! You can’t read that no more!” He snatches the book and holds it to him, “It’s Ashley’s, that’s her book and you can’t read it—only I read it to her, only her daddy can…” He hunches over the book and sobs. Sydney scoots over to the broken man, resting a tentative hand on his leg. “I’m sorry, Mr. Garrett. I didn’t mean any disrespect. That story is one of my favorites, my dad read it to me when I was a little girl.” “He did?” Tears still roll and drip off of his chin. “Yes, I did.” Jack’s hand had crept over to his gun when Roland had exploded, “As I recall, you liked the voice I did for the Lion the best.” He kept his hand resting lightly on the grip but didn’t pull it yet. “Yeah. I always hear your voice in my head when I read those parts.” “So why don’t you give the book back Roland so she can read it?” Jack closes his eyes when he hears Vaughn speak. The boy had no sense sometimes, couldn’t he see he was pushing too much? Roland’s eyes narrow and he gets unsteadily to his feet, Jack eases the gun from the holster and holds it down by his leg. “I’m going to take a leak….” He staggers over to the stairs; hand out brushing along the wall to keep his balance, the other keeping the book tightly pressed to his chest. Sydney sighs and leans against Vaughn, “That poor man…” “Poor man? He’s an asshole.” “Vaughn he’s just lost his wife and kid. Have some sympathy.” “We’ve all lost people…” No one says anything for a moment. She buries her face into his shoulder; her voice is muffled. “Does he know?” “Know what?” "That we killed the horse—Ashley’s horse?” “I don’t know…Jack?” “I didn’t think that the Garrett’s needed to be aware of that when we informed them of their daughter’s death—so no. Mr. Garrett is becoming very unstable, he may prove to be a…liability.” “Are you suggesting we leave him behind?” Jack notes that Sydney’s voice only holds a hint of anger but at least it’s there—an improvement from the previous numbness. Jack is very still, the implication is clear. “Dad…no we can’t!” She pushes herself away from Vaughn and faces Jack. “Sydney we may have no choice…” She turns to Vaughn when he says this, “He’s innocent.” “And halfway crazy—we may have no alternative but to…kill him.” Unfortunately the sound of the hammering rain had concealed the noise of Roland Garret as he made his way down the stairs again. Every obsessive suspicion or delusion of persecution he’s ever had gels and takes shape in the form of the CIA agents sitting in his basement, when he hears them discussing the necessity of his death. His trembling hand finds the wooden handle of a small axe he used when he took Ashley camping—he lifts it from its hook on the wall. The attack is so sudden and bizarre they barely have time to react. Roland charges at them, one hand swinging the axe wildly the other brandishing his child’s book like a shield, he is crying fiercely—sobs shaking his burly frame. Vaughn had just enough time to lurch upright and is turning to face him when Roland swings and sinks the axe deep into Vaughn’s shoulder partly severing his arm. He falls to his knees with a grunt and weakly tries to crawl away from Roland, who is bending over him trying to wrench the axe free for another blow. Sydney screams and leaps to her feet, knocking over the lantern, luckily the oil lamp goes out rather than explode into flame. In the sudden dark, the flash and report of the gunshots rival the constant noise of the storm. By the time Jack gets the lantern to light again, Roland is dead—two holes neatly punched into his chest—stopping his heart and its cargo of wild sorrow and anger. He is still holding onto the book. Sydney bends over Vaughn trying to staunch the flow of blood from the wound in his shoulder, the silent tears have begun again as she races to make a tourniquet with her belt. Jack doesn’t even think she’s aware she’s crying. Outside the rain has turned into sleet and the gritty sound of it scouring against the house, fills Jack with dread. Day 19: The dogs had been at the corpse again. The chewed face of Roland Garrett stares accusingly at Jack from the snowbank where he has lain ever since that night in the cellar. They’ve eaten most of the flesh off of his arm, the stripped bones bloody ivory against the pure white of the snow. The dogs—Jack assumes they were once family pets and farm dogs—are starving and have reverted to feral behavior with an abruptness that is startling. Jack smile is full of the bitter knowledge at how thin the veneer of civilization actually was. Jack is coming back from the barn, one hand on the rope Sydney and he had strung—it was entirely too easy to get lost and turned around in the blizzards that whipped up with appalling regularity—when he sees the half eaten corpse. He assumes they’ll come back tonight for the rest, they usually do when there’s no storm. He doesn’t think there will be one, as today is overcast and bitterly cold, but there’s no telling with the weather the way it is. Jack pauses for breath. Ice has sheathed the landscape and formed a thick crust on the snow, sharp enough to cut if you weren’t careful. The trek is exhausting; in places the snow was hip deep. The only reason Jack had made the trip out to the echoing silent barn, with its ranks of dead and frozen cattle ghostly black lumps in the gloom cast by his flashlight, was to check on something. An idea is building in the back of his head, he hasn’t turned his complete attention to it yet—he wasn’t quite ready to acknowledge it, but the strategist in him can’t help planning for all eventualities. Sydney is waiting for him when he comes inside. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, layered in sweaters and wrapped in a blanket. They’ve begun to consciously conserve the wood they have left; the house is chilly, Jack can see her breath. “Vaughn’s dead.” She doesn’t look at him. Her voice is tired and quiet. She’s spent most of the past week awake, sitting up with him fighting a losing battle against the infection that set in shortly after they held a thrashing Vaughn to this same kitchen table, cut off his damaged arm despite his pleas and howls of protest and cauterized the stump with a clothes iron they’d heated in the fire. Her finger traces one of the bloodstains left behind. “He woke up again—he knew who I was this time…” For a period of a day or so Jack’s heart had ached for her when Vaughn in his delirium had mistaken Sydney for Lauren and alternated between abject apologies for leaving her behind in L.A. or raving from the pain and begging her to kill him. “He was pale but he looked better, he really did.” The crushed hope in her voice destroys Jack a little inside and determines his future actions; the idea is beginning to resolve itself, step forward out of the dark. “He asked for a drink of water, and wanted me to read to him for a bit—I did, almost a chapter and a half—then he said he was tired and he thought he might sleep for a while. He told me he loved me, then he closed his eyes and a few minutes later he was dead. He just stopped breathing.” She puts her head down on the table and weeps—her sobs rusty and broken sounding—sounding like they’re damaging things deep inside. She’s saying something but he can barely make it out over the sobbing. “Don’t put him outside Dad, please? I don’t want the dogs…to get at him.” She looks at him, eyes of a hurt child in the weary face of a woman—his daughter, so damaged by all that’s happened. “We won’t sweetheart. I know a place we can put him where he’ll be safe for a long time.” He strokes the dull hair—not shiny now, she hasn’t had a chance to wash for days. He’ll fix that today. “We have a lot to do before then okay? Right now I think you should lie down and rest, take one of Mrs. Garrett’s pills if you have to, I have some things I need to take care of.” She nods and slowly heads upstairs; her automatic acquiescence is another alarming sign. Everyday more of her slips away from him. She’s given up and Jack refuses to watch his daughter become an empty shell. He’ll do what he has to. When he’s completed all his tasks and has heated water and filled the tub, he goes to find her. She is sleeping next to the body of Vaughn, one arm thrown over him, protective of him even now. He wakes her and leads her to the bath—saying nothing—despair makes him mute. By the time she’s dressed again he’s wrapped Vaughn into a makeshift shroud and carried the body downstairs. It waits on a sheet of tarpaulin by the back door. He is dressed to go outside again. “Get your coat, we’re taking Vaughn out to the barn. He’ll be safe there.” His voice is gentle when she goes to get it. He checks his pockets to make sure he has everything he needs. Together they drag the body over the snow, it slides easily on the tarp. The door to the barn slides open grudgingly, the metal squeals and grinds in the cold. Jack forces it open enough to usher Sydney inside then pull the body after him. Sydney stands in the slender bar of light cast through the open door—a bar that narrows and dwindles to nothing as the door rumbles closed again, Jack pushes it until it latches again. They wait until their eyes adjust to the dimness. “You’ll have to help me here Sydney.” He grabs the body and lifts one end; Sydney just looks at him. “We can’t slide him across the concrete…” Reluctantly she takes the other end and they move through the silent barn to the large industrial freezer in back, their breath making clouds around their heads. Jack sees her look away from the sight of a dead cat curled around her frozen kittens—her body an inadequate barrier against the killing cold. She has started crying, her sniffles and gasps soft noises in the cavernous space. “God Dad…I don’t think I can do this…” “Almost there sweetheart, we’re almost done.” He hopes the sound of her tears covers the catch in his own voice. On his first trip to the barn Jack wasn’t interested in the contents of the freezer—Roland was right—with all of the deaths—they wouldn’t starve now. Not before they died from the cold. Help wasn’t coming. Jack suspects that if any humanity survives the next few months, that it would be more than a miracle. God had turned his face away from His thoughtless children at long last and the world of man was over, Jack wishes the inheritors of sad and tired Earth luck because they’d need it. But he wasn’t going to leave his daughter alone—not without a safe place to lay her head. And the freezer had a thick steel door and a heavy latch. Dogs wouldn’t be getting in here for a long time—not until they’d developed opposable thumbs. He yanks hard at the door; the rubber seal is partly frozen and gives way slowly, as if it doesn’t want to admit them. Together he and Sydney bring Vaughn’s body inside, the door swings shut behind them cutting them off from the shadowy light of the barn, it thumps closed and latches with efficient finality. Jack switches on the flashlight he’s brought with him. The rows of frozen beef carcasses hang like sentinels to see them pass. Jack leads Sydney to the very back, away from the racks of hanging meat. They lay Vaughn down and Sydney sits beside the body. He’d brought blankets the first trip out here. She doesn’t question it, only wraps a blanket around her. She pulls back the sheet over Vaughn’s face; already his lips have taken on a bluish cast as the blood has begun to settle, his lashes dark smudges against the whiteness of his skin. Sydney kisses him one last time then draws the sheet over his face again, tenderly smoothing and tucking it securely. Jack sits down beside his daughter and pulls out the book he’d brought with him, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He’s already written an account of all that had happened to them so far. Dry professional prose changing at the end into the loving words of a father for his daughter, his plans for her. He’s placed it in a sealed plastic bag and tucked it close to his heart. If anyone should happen to find them here in this place—after—they would know that Jack Bristow, father of Sydney Bristow, had decided to read one last story to his daughter before the cold lulls them to sleep forever. He draws Sydney close to him, putting his arm around her as he so rarely did in life. He regrets that now. She leans into him, the clean scent of her hair reminds him of other story-times when she was little and fresh from a bath, snuggled into his lap. He hopes the others will understand what his love for her meant. Jack opens the book and begins to read. FIN | ||
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