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While The Sky Is Falling
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Nine minutes left
"Yes, of course, Mr. Van de Sandt," Kurt rattled off into his headset as he rushed down the corridor toward his boss's office, dodging a few other employees and struggling to keep the latte in his right hand from spilling. "Absolutely. I'll have Ms. Wright send you the finished spread ASAP."
Ending the call, Kurt ducked through Isabel's office door, finding her amidst a chaotic sea of random splashes of color and fabric swatches, her hair slightly disheveled and her forehead deeply knotted.
"Van de Sandt's getting impatient," Kurt said, pressing the warm latte into her hand. "He wants the summer designs by ten o'clock."
Isabel pressed her hand to her forehead, groaning in exasperation. "Well, he won't get them by ten. But I think we can do it by four." She sniffed, taking a long sip from her latte. "Looks like we're in for a long night, Kurt."
Kurt nodded, disappointment settling in the pit of his stomach. He'd been hoping to Skype with Blaine when he got home, but it looked like that wouldn't be happening. "I'll text my roommates and let them know I won't be home."
"Make it quick," Isabel waved him off.
Quickly stepping back out into the hallway, Kurt pulled out his phone and typed a text to Santana and Rachel telling them that just because he wouldn't be home, it didn't mean either of them had permission to touch the slice of cheesecake he'd been saving in the fridge. He then sent a second text to Blaine:
Sorry, I'm stuck at work all night… I'll make it up to you, promise ;)
He didn't wait for a reply before sticking his phone back into his pocket and returning to Isabel's office. He'd check his inbox later.
Six minutes
Blaine smiled at the text from Kurt, sending a simple No problem Xoxo and dropping his phone onto his desk, turning back to his calculus homework. As much as he'd been looking forward to Skyping with Kurt, it was cool that Kurt was living an adult life, where he could get stuck at work all night and have to play their Skype schedule by ear. It was nice to be a little bit unscheduled.
There was a knock at the door and Cooper leaned in, making Blaine look up from his textbook. "Hey, Bee, you want to go get some pizza or something? I'm starving."
Blaine laughed. "Kitchen not full enough for you?"
"Come on, I'm only in town for a couple days," Cooper grinned. "Spend some time with your big bro."
"I have homework to do."
"You're such a nerd. Come on."
Blaine dropped his pencil down, teasingly rolling his eyes. "Alright, fine, I'm coming." He stood up, grabbing his jacket from his closet.
"Well, if it's such a chore—"
Blaine lightly punched his brother in the arm, pushing him out of the way. "Shut up, Cooper. Let's go."
Two minutes
Burt yawned, his fingers gently squeezing Carole's shoulder as she rested against him on their living room couch. They'd settled into a somewhat new tradition of watching old movies after dinner, which Burt enjoyed even though he was mostly sure it was because ever since Finn had passed Carole didn't seem to know what to do with herself in her free time. She was always the one to pick the movies since Burt didn't really care what they watched, and lately she'd been on an Audrey Hepburn kick. Tonight was Charade.
"You falling asleep?" Carole asked softly, her hand on his knee.
"I'm awake." Burt blinked a few times to wake himself up a little more. He wasn't anywhere near old enough to be falling asleep at 7:30.
"Walter Matthau was surprisingly good-looking," Carole mused absentmindedly as onscreen Hamilton questioned Audrey Hepburn's character.
"Yeah? Think I should gel and comb my hair like that?" Burt asked.
"If you had any hair to speak of."
"Hey!" Burt chuckled, nudging her. "I could at least grow the mustache."
Carole snorted. "Yeah, you do that."
On the television, Audrey Hepburn shook her head. "Mr. Bartholomew, if you're trying to frighten me… you're doing a first-rate job!"
Burt jumped as there was a very abrupt clicking noise, and the television suddenly shut off along with every lamp in the room.
Carole groaned. "Ugh, why'd the power have to go out? It's not even storming and we didn't get to the scene with the game of oranges."
Burt sighed, unwinding his arm from around her to stand up. "I'll go check the circuit breakers." Glancing out the window when he reached the kitchen, he saw that every house down the street, and even the streetlamps, had gone dark. "Looks like it wasn't just the circuits, Carole," Burt called over his shoulder, fumbling for the drawer where they kept the flashlights. "I think the whole town's out."
"Burt, my cell phone isn't turning on," Carole replied from the other room.
Finally pulling open the right drawer, Burt picked up a flashlight and clicked the On button, but the flashlight lay dead and useless in his hand. Frowning, Burt reached for the spare, to no effect; even the spare was unusable. Carole stumbled into the room, nearly hitting the kitchen table in the shadows.
"Flashlights are dead," Burt said.
"Is your phone working?"
Burt fished it out of his pocket, pressing a few random buttons. The screen remained dark. "What the hell? I just charged it two hours ago."
Carole made her way carefully to the front door, stepping out onto the porch to peer down the street. Burt followed suit, leaning over the porch railing to see a couple of cars that looked like they'd coasted to a stop in the middle of the road, their drivers standing confusedly next to them.
"Burt," Carole hissed, grabbing his arm. She pointed up towards the empty sky, her eyes wide. Burt followed her gaze, and his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.
"Oh my God…"
A massive airplane was spinning downwards, catapulting through the air and heading straight for downtown Lima.
"Okay, Pizza Hut or Domino's?" Cooper asked as he steered the car towards the center of town.
"Ew to both," Blaine replied. "Can't we have good pizza?"
"Pizza Hut is good— What the hell?"
Cooper was abruptly cut off as every light in the car suddenly vanished, the engine sputtering to a stop. Blaine flinched as the car swerved. Cooper quickly pulled the emergency brake before they could crash into the cars parked by the sidewalk, the vehicle jerking violently to a stop.
"What the hell just happened?" Cooper snapped, twisting the key in the ignition again.
Blaine's eyes widened and he slapped Cooper's shoulder. "Coop. Look."
Through the windshield, the two of them watched in stunned silence as every car on the road ahead of them and behind slowed to a stop, their headlights blinking out as the streetlamps died one after the other. The darkness swept over them and continued to spread, every building in view losing the lights from their windows and signs. People on the sidewalks stopped walking, looking around in confusion or frustratedly punching numbers on their phones.
"Jesus…" Cooper breathed.
Blaine pushed his door open and got out of the car, hoping he'd see a police officer or, at the very least, someone who looked like they knew what was happening.
"Hey, Bee, is your phone working? Mine's not."
Digging his phone out of his pocket, Blaine tapped it a few times to no avail. He squinted at his watch, noticing that the second hand had stopped spinning. "No, and my watch stopped too."
"The hell is going on?" Cooper muttered, jiggling the key in the ignition.
Blaine's head snapped up as a scream echoed down the street from a couple blocks away, quickly followed by another, then another and another. People were beginning to run, all in the same direction – towards Blaine and Cooper. There was an odd whistling roar from above, and Blaine's gaze flew skywards.
An airplane was reeling out of control with a loud metallic groan, its windows dark as it hurtled towards them.
"Cooper!" Blaine yelled, but Cooper had already jumped out of the car and seized Blaine by the arm, dragging him away from where he'd been standing. They bolted in the opposite direction, falling into step with the tide of screaming people rushing away from the falling jet. There was an awful metallic screech, and Blaine glanced over his shoulder as he ran, seeing briefly that one of the plane's wings had torn off halfway.
"Come on!" Cooper shouted, grabbing Blaine's wrist.
The roar of the wind was deafening, and Blaine suddenly felt the earth rock beneath his feet as the plane collided with the ground, crushing buildings and cars and people beneath it. A split second later, the plane's fuel tank exploded, and Blaine was thrown into the air.
Kurt was attempting to help Isabel choose whether teal or cyan was more fitting for July when the lights in the office went out, Isabel's computer whirring softly as it shut down. Isabel bolted upright. "That did not just happen," she said. "We have to get this done in a matter of less than nine hours! We do not have time for this!"
"Isabel," Kurt said softly, staring out the office window at the city spread out beneath them.
Every building was going dark, the lights winking out in a massive tidal wave across Midtown, and then Manhattan, and then the city beyond.
"Whoa," Isabel breathed, standing beside Kurt with her jaw slack.
"Do we have flashlights?" Kurt asked.
"Just my iPhone," Isabel replied, already fiddling with it. "…But it's not working. Are you kidding me?!" she muttered.
Kurt was about to try his own phone, but movement outside caught his eye, and he flinched back away from the window. "Oh my God."
A tourist helicopter was falling out of the sky as if the blades could no longer spin, careening towards the ground so quickly that Kurt could almost hear it whistling. It vanished behind a building a couple of streets away, and half a second later a massive explosion lit up the block. The windows of the office rattled.
Isabel yelped and stepped back. "What is happening?" she shrieked.
Kurt's heartbeat was thudding in his ears, his stomach twisted into knots. "I – I don't know."
When the power went out, Rachel had been in the middle of taking a patron's order, and she along with Santana and Dani had watched in confusion as the traffic outside came to a halt, the street darkening around them.
"This is the weirdest blackout I've ever seen," Dani said after realizing none of their phones would turn on. "Do you think the whole city was shut down?"
"No idea," Santana replied, peering through the glass at the front of the restaurant with her hands cupped around her eyes. "Looks like it, though. I don't see any light coming from anywhere else."
"I'm scared," Rachel admitted, wringing her hands and nervously smoothing her apron.
"Why?" Santana deadpanned, still leaning against the window. "It's just a blackout. New York's had them before."
Rachel shook her head. "Something just doesn't feel right. I don't—"
"GET DOWN!" Santana suddenly screamed, whipping around and running to grab Dani and Rachel. She dove to the ground, yanking the two of them down with her just as there was a huge roar from outside and the windows all shattered in the same instant, bursting inwards as a fireball erupted in the street outside. There was a cacophony of screams, coming from seemingly all directions, and Rachel felt hundreds of tiny shards of glass rain down on them.
Rachel's breath heaved, her hands shaking as she pushed herself back up, carefully avoiding the glass on the floor. "W-Was that a bomb?" She could barely hear herself speak over the ringing in her ears.
Santana shook her head, her eyes wide. "Helicopter."
Blaine coughed, spitting out dirt and pieces of gravel as he grabbed the sidewalk curb he'd landed beside, attempting to pull himself up. His ears felt blocked, a high-pitched whining the only thing he could hear. All he could smell was smoke and fuel and… blood. He could smell blood.
The pavement felt unstable beneath him, and he nearly fell sideways when he tried to stand. He ended up sitting on the curb, hoping the dizziness would subside. There were people still screaming and running around him, but they were all muted beneath the ringing in his ears. Everything seemed like it was moving in slow motion.
Blaine clenched his hands, trying to regain the feeling in his fingertips, and realized his skin was wet a moment before a stinging jolt shot up his arm. Looking down, he saw that nearly all the skin was gone from his right palm, the wound clogged with gravel and bleeding sluggishly. His left forearm down to his elbow was also scraped raw, the skin left with patches missing.
He blinked, trying to clear his head. He must have hit it; he couldn't think clearly.
Cooper.
Where was Cooper?
Swallowing the nausea building in his throat, Blaine pushed himself to his feet, bracing himself against the rear end of the nearest car. His hand left a bloody smear.
Blaine finally tried to actually look at the chaos surrounding him, his eyes searching for his brother's face. There were people running, cars tipped over, and the gargantuan body of the crashed plane – a Boeing 747 commercial jet – lay ruptured and burning two blocks away. The towering flames were the only thing illuminating the town.
And there were bodies in the street.
Blaine doubled over and vomited onto the pavement, clutching the car for support.
"Cooper!" he screamed, his voice sounding muffled in his own head. He gritted his teeth and walked unsteadily into the road. "Cooper, where are you?!"
Staggering through the cars and pieces of debris littering the street, Blaine screamed his brother's name again and again, praying he'd find Cooper and he'd be okay and they could go home as quickly as they could. He refused to look at the handful of unmoving bodies he was forced to pass by.
He screamed until his voice echoed back.