1st of January | Simon “Ghost” Riley X fem! reader
CHAPTER 1 - Precautionary Measures
CW: Mass panic, a tiny bit of non-detailed gore, panic attacks
I dream something that night. The images don’t stick, but the feeling does. Warm and fuzzy, secure. Until it’s not. A brutal noise drills through the peace, high-pitched and repetitive, boring into my head.
I run, but my body doesn’t move from the spot. Then I stumble and fall. The world flips on its head, and then I wake up.
A shaky gasp breaks from my lips, I swallow a mouthful air. But the noise stays. I curse, the words slurring on my lips and bury my face into my pillow. The alcohol from the night churns in my head.
I pat a hand across my mattress to turn the alarm off, but I only find empty sheets. My brain only half registers that this is not the usual sound that wakes me for university. I pry my eyes open, just a slit.
The scarce light that filters through the curtains is that of street lanterns, not the morning sun. The sky hasn’t lost its black tint yet and when I finally find my phone underneath my pillow, the clock shows 4:02 AM. I let out a tired groan and rub my palm across my eyes. I have slept for just two hours.
Before I even question why my phone is screeching at me at such ungodly times, a banner with a big red warning sign flashes across the screen. My eyes won’t focus at first, little black letters blurry against the grey background. Finally, they string together words, sentences, freeze the blood in my veins.
“Immediate threat of nuclear bombing” - “inhabitants of Manchester are strongly advised to seek shelter in the corresponding bunkers” - “in the next 24 hours-”
It feels like a hit to the head. The fatigue disappears. Leaves wide eyes and a dizzy, panicking spin of thoughts. The blaring alarm is loud enough to stop every productive thought my hungover, sleep-deprived brain can muster. Hot pain pounds behind my temples. Nuclear bombs? Bunkers?
I try to swallow, but my mouth is sandpaper and my throat is too tight. Of course. I was never one to watch the news, but you’d have to live behind the moon to miss what had been going on over the last few months. Discussions, military displays, threats. I had believed them to be empty ones. Who would bomb the UK? That would mean a full-blown war. This has to be a misunderstanding.
Grasping the thought with both hands, I tap the message and wait for the page it leads me to to load. Seconds stretch endlessly. My heart pounds in my throat, beat, beat, beat.
When it opens the site, the screeching alarm stops abruptly. The room falls back into silence. I force my spinning head to focus on the text, let my eyes skim over the letters, too small, too many.
My heartbeat slows a beat when I find the sentence I had been searching for. “This is a precautionary measure. Chances of an actual attack are slim. Please stay calm and seek shelter.” It must seem like a weak excuse, but I desperately want to believe it. Stay calm. Stay calm.
A sigh of relief forces past my lips. It’ll be okay. I refuse to consider the “what ifs” that come with the statement. What if the estimates are incorrect? What if this is a lie to avoid mass panic?
My heart tips, picking up its pace once more. No, I don’t want to think about it. My phone starts screeching again and I almost throw it against the wall. Then I catch the name it flashes. My dad. My fingers are on the Accept call button before I can think.
“Dad?” I sound breathless, panicky. My teeth snag my lip with a bit too much force. Iron spreads on my tongue. “Hello.”, I continue with a more measured tone.
“Are you safe?”, his voice calls through the speakers, loud enough to make me flinch. “We got a nuke warning. They said they would evacuate big cities, Manchester too.” A few words ring in the background and I recognise my mum.
“I’m okay, I’m okay, I just woke up. I…I need to pack.” I glance around the room. My feet carry me to the desk, then I spin around for the wardrobe. Clothes first.
“Yes, you…” His voice fades as he exchanges a few words with my mother in the background. “We want you to drive right out to the bunker. Don’t waste any time. The sooner you are there, the better.”
“Yes.” I stuff a bundle of socks into my backpack. Three shirts? Four? For how long will the evacuation last? I pack four. “Are you and mum safe? Where are you right now?”
My parents sold their house in Sheffield two years ago to move out to the countryside. I’ve only visited them a handful of times since then, too busy with university and my own life. Now I feel guilty. He clears his throat. “Don’t you worry about us. They ain’t going to bomb a small village. But you hurry and get out of there.”
I move on to my desk to fill the last space in my backpack. A charger, a stray pencil, the massive anatomy book for med school. My toothbrush, deodorant. A hair tie. I’m stalling.
“I have to go. I’ll text you.”, I close the conversation. And then, quieter: “I don’t think…something’s gonna happen. They said it’s just a precautionary measure. I’ll probably be back in no time.”
He is quiet for a long moment. “Don’t test your luck. Get going.”
“I love you too. Don’t worry about me.”
Then I’m alone in my silent room again. I check the clock. 1st of January, 4:14am. Time to get moving.
There must be about 800 people on the square, and more keep flooding in. Young adults, elderly, families with children, all lined up and facing the bunker. Waiting to be let in.
The military base is a grim place, maybe just it comes with the implication of all our attendance. Cold floodlights illuminate the crowd, draw hollow shadows over the pale faces. Tall, neutral grey buildings circle the square, empty windows stare down at us, grouped together like cattle being herded to slaughter. Or maybe escaping it. I can’t tell yet.
I’m too anxious to try and sort out my feelings. My shaky fingers check my phone again and again, but there are still no replies. I texted a few friends, asking where they were. Told my parents I was waiting to be let into the bunker.
The bunker - A coldly illuminated hole in the wall that leads into nothingness, protected by a wide metal blast door. It’s still open, grimly welcoming the new inhabitants.
Everything inside me bristles at the thought of going in there. Yet I tap my foot against the concrete, hoping they will let me enter soon. It’s not far now.
I check the clock. 5:57 am. One and a half hours of waiting have brought me to the front of the line.
It’s going slow. The four soldiers framing the blast door check people’s papers, note their names, wave them in. Inefficient. That detail soothes me a bit. If it were serious, they’d move faster, wouldn’t they?
Behind me, a man with a young girl on his arm walks in tight circles. He gnaws his lips, eyes jumping from the soldiers to the bunker to the people still in front of him. One hand rubs circles on the back of his daughter absentmindedly, trying to soothe the wide-eyed child.
A middle-aged woman a little further back in the row forces a string of sentences into a phone, in a language I don’t understand. German, maybe, or Dutch. Her words come out sharp and choppy, filled with barely concealed anxiety.
I blow a milky cloud into the icy air to distract myself from the tense atmosphere. It drifts through the darkness and then dissipates slowly. I shove my hands deeper into my pockets, grit my teeth to keep them from chattering. It’s well below freezing. Longingly, I think back to my bed.
A few minutes later, the line moves. Three men in their late twenties drag their luggage through the doors and down the hallway. One of them turns back and glances outside before he disappears around the corner. He has a sharp face, haggard and pointy, like that of a rat. Intelligent eyes scan over the crowd, then he’s gone. Something about him makes my hair stand with an uncomfortable shiver. I don’t linger on it.
The soldiers move on to a family of five. I pick at my nails. Time passes. The family moves inside. Three people are left in front of me. I check my phone again, turn it off when I see it has only 17% of battery life left.
A movement left of the door distracts me. It’s another soldier, the uniform tells on him. My eyes cling to his broad back, lacking another distraction. He moves with predatory grace, stopping just short of the blast doors. His head dips as he exchanges a few short words with one of the guards. I catch the rumble of his voice from a few meters away, but can’t make out the words. Then he turns to face the crowd. Sharp eyes glide over tense, anxious faces, his own expression unmoving. I duck when his gaze catches mine for a split second.
His face is a skull. An ivory-coloured mask, leaving nothing exposed but those dark, lurking eyes.
Looking at him raises that odd, churning feeling I remember from the time I went hiking with my parents on a holiday in Croatia. I ran ahead and ended up frozen on the side of the path, a brown bear shuffling around in the bushes not five feet away from me.
It stopped and stared, just like me, one ear twitching backwards. Amber eyes bored into mine for a few long seconds, until the panic lost its paralysing grasp on me and I screamed for my parents.
The animal fled into the woods. The memory of how it felt staring a predator right in the eye remained somewhere in the back of my head. Now the same feeling tightens around my throat. I guide my eyes to my sneakers and escape the gaze of the masked soldier.
I don’t look up again until the guy in front of me steps up to the guards. His fingers fiddle with the hem of his jacket, but his voice reflects only calmness. He tells the men his name, and I stare against the back of his red-haired head.
From the corner of my eye, I see Skull-face shift in his stance. Back straight, shoulders carried broadly, a certain tension lingering in his limbs. I stand close now, maybe three or four wide steps part us. The grim frown in his eyes makes my spine tingle nervously.
The man in front of me curses suddenly. He stumbles backwards, points across the square. “I’ll get it, just wait a moment, wait a second!” With that he whips around and takes off, pushing trough the crowd until I lose sight of the blazing red hair. I turn back to face the guards.
“Miss?”, one of them addresses me, beckoning me forward with a wave. My feet clatter hollowly against the asphalt. I move past the masked soldier, feel his dark gaze stick like syrup. I breathe out a shaky sigh and compose myself in front of the military men.
One of the soldiers asks my name. I tell him. He wants to see my ID. I show him. I glance over my shoulder and wonder if that is what the redhead went to retrieve. I try to find the back of his head in the crowd, out of curiosity, while the soldier puts my name down. I find him weaving through the crowd on the very left, towards the bunker, pushing and shoving, his face twisted with nervous tension. He’s halfway across the square. And while he slips past a man sitting on his luggage who snaps an unquestionably rude comment after him, it happens.
The world slows, comes to an abrupt halt. The muted mumble that floated above the crowd silences in a heartbeat when the tone resonates in the icy air. It mounts to a blaring screech, rising to an ear-shattering height before dropping, silencing.
Something in my body freezes over, until my fingers are numb and my lids unable to blink. Deadly quietnesses lies over the crowd. No one dares to move, speak, breathe.
Then the terror grows a voice. A scream rips across the square. No words, only fear. Raw, primal.
A split second later, it drowns in the air raid siren that flares up again and steals all senses.
There’s movement, a violent push towards the massive blast doors. I see ripped open mouths, bulging eyes, clawing hands, but all I hear is the thin hum the siren has left in my ear, and far behind the white noise, the crying horn.
I’m frozen. My body sways, locked in a trance as the flailing wave of people thunders towards me. They’ll rip me to shreds if they reach me, trample me under rushing feet until I’m a clump of mangled flesh and broken bones and then…
A brutal shove against my shoulder knocks me back, time starts to move again. Noise fills my ears, screaming, wailing, begging, the bloody siren. My head snaps to see the man who has pushed me. I recognise him, he still carries the squealing and sobbing girl clasped in his arms. Wild eyes meet mine, then he’s gone, past the blast doors.
I force my numb body forwards. The tip of my sneakers catches onto an uneven piece of asphalt. The floor flies into my face. My hands claw through the air, find nothing to hold onto, until they do. My nails rip a scratch into thick fabric as a hand hauls me up. My throat spasms as if I’m screaming, but I can’t hear myself.
For a split second, I tear at the strong fingers that bury in my shoulder, but they only grip tighter. An arm wraps around my waist, forces the air out of my lungs and tips me forward with a gasp. I’m dragged, feet limply slapping against the concrete as I try to find my footing helplessly.
“Stop fuckin' struggling. I'm trying to help you.", a voice growls somewhere above my ear. I barely hear it. My breath bites in my chest, breaks raggedly from my throat. There’s no air in my lungs.
The world spins, spits me out against frozen linoleum floor. Dark sky and floodlights stop existing. A white ceiling, white walls sting in my blurry eyes. A bright white lamp. Steel doors.
The digging pain in my shoulder is gone. My hands slip over the floor, push my torso up enough that I can turn to the outside. Feet scramble forward. A leg gives in. Shoes break through the falling body. I can’t look away when the red starts to seep.
And then it’s all gone with a slam of silver.
The faint scratching of nails grinding down on the steel outside is the first thing that fills the nothingness that spreads after the door locks in place. The siren wallows in the distance. It’s so quiet.
Until there's no air in my lungs left. My mouth gasps open, but none will come. I choke. Metal fills my mouth, a vague pulse simmers in my lip where I must’ve bitten. My tongue slips over the torn skin, again and again. A gasp clenches my throat, a violent cough, choke.
Oxygen floods, and I curl into a ball and gasp for it. My body rocks against the linoleum. In, air, out, air. The chokes turn to sobs, whipping through my chest. I can’t see. I don’t understand it’s tears until they burn on my lips, salty hot.
“Breathe.” The order vibrates lowly as two gloved hands grasp my shoulders. My fingers snap up, want to push them off but fail miserably when another wave of harsh whimpers racks through my body. My blurry gaze flicks back to the icy steel of the door.
“No, don’t-“ I’m pulled, turned away from it. Dark, almost black eyes peer into mine. I close them and shut him off. “Don’t look there.”, he finishes his sentence quietly.
His grasp on my shoulders lingers, but his fingers soften enough for me to shake them off. I lack the energy to do so. The world falls back into place, bit by tiny bit. The knot in my throat loosens. I gulp for air greedily. Keep my eyes closed. I don’t dare to open them. It’ll all come back.
Long fingers squeeze my shoulder awkwardly before they slip. The place they leave feels cold. I shiver. Hug myself, squeeze my arms. I’m still here. Still here. A new wave of tears comes. It takes a while until they run dry.
But eventually, they stop. They leave a hollow ache in my chest. My heart has stopped pounding, it feels like it has stopped beating altogether. I pry my eyes open a slit.
He’s still there. Watches with black eyes behind the skull mask. We stare numbly at each other.
The distant cry of the sirens halts abruptly. His lids lower, brows drawing low behind the mask, just a hint. The scratching outside the blast door stops. A violent tremble runs through the ground. My nails bury themselves in my palms. My breath is a quiet whimper in the silence. I hold his gaze.
Somewhere far away, dulled by the blast door, hell unleashes. Even in here, the explosion leaves high-pitched ringing in my ears.
The blinding shockwave whips across the square outside, a white hot lightning strike. Thunder follows. The buildings crumble. Then silence sets heavily over the now-empty asphalt.
At 6:27 am, 1st of January, the world ends.
Taglist: @simonghostrileysbalaclava
