December 31, 2017

New Year's Eve of 2017 will not go down in any history books. People will not look back on it as the day the world ended. Historians may never realize how, as the clock ticked it's way to the new year, the world would cease to exist before it ever began.

It was not the date of the end of the world. It was the date that was the end of the beginning.

The only people left who would be able to tell you that died fairly early on. It's not as though people are in the habit of marking things down anyway; no, history is for later. During a war, it's about survival.

That's the thought of one of the lead scientists as he's frantically trying to escape the labs. He thinks that one day someone might know this date as important. Maybe it will be when the world rights itself again, or, maybe it will be after humanity has hit re-start, archeologists will find something or people can use their minds to just know things. Maybe they'll laugh at this generation of humans the way that we do about the fall of the dinosaurs. Or maybe, he muses last, no one will ever know at all.

It's all useless, he figures, thinking about this. It is; maybe he should have thought about his mother or his brother or his nephew in his last moments. Maybe he should have thought about how he was almost going to call in sick today and take one more day to celebrate the first couple days of 2018. Maybe he should have been thinking about God or religion or the afterlife.

None of it really matters. He's dead before he can use his keypad to unlock the doors.

After that, he's undead.

This is day six.

On day zero- December 31st, 2017- it begins with a mistake. It begins in a lab where it shouldn't have mattered that there was a mistake since they dealt mostly in chemicals to grow better corn. The world would be laughing if they knew about this if everyone one day turned out okay.

One drop of a 'harmless' chemical, mixed with the wrong something in the air and no one knew until it was much, much too late. The man who sneezed and dropped the vial was checked over, but no doctors found anything wrong, and he went home to celebrate New Years with his wife. Within a month, it will have spread through DC. Within two months, it will have started creeping through the USA. By day 131, they will consider the Wildfire Virus to have infected everyone on earth.

But that's getting ahead of everything, for, at this moment, there are celebrations around the entire world.

In a tiny town called Riverdale, on the North Side, Betty Cooper shoves a mask back into her desk drawer. She tells herself that the Black Hood is gone; she and Archie have seen to that. She tells herself this despite how much-in the back of her mind- she just knows it to be untrue.

Her phone vibrates and it's Veronica, reminding her that her presence is forcefully requested for her New Year's Eve party. The message is followed by a bunch of smiley faces and purple hearts, with a promise that it will be an 'intimate event'. To Betty, that means just her and Veronica. To Veronica, it means at least ten people, but no more than twenty-five.

Archie will be there. They kissed, and that was that. They both were not dating others, so it's not as though someone did something wrong. But, now Archie is back together with Veronica and Betty is still broken up with Jughead.

She didn't think that anything would come of the kiss, but she'd be lying if she hadn't thought about that possibility, late into the night. The almost preposterous idea that she and Archie might start something together.

It's preposterous because she knows how much Veronica loves Archie, and that wouldn't be fair to her best friend. However, it's only been three and a half months since she tried to kiss Archie and reveal feelings to him, so some part of Betty still burns quietly for the friend she knows she cannot have.

And she loves Jughead. Despite their distance, she knows she cares for him.

She hates that each day it's getting a little easier to not be with him.

Betty truly does not want to go to Veronica's New Years Party, knowing full well there will be no one to kiss there and she'll be plastered against the wall of Veronica's apartment, sipping on champagne and acting like she's having a good time. However, Veronica will drag her there, so Betty texts her a reply that she promises to show up before midnight and that she has some 'errands' to do first.

Betty has no errands, but she can't be at her house and she can't be at Veronica's either. So, she gets in her car and drives.

In a tiny town called Riverdale, on the South Side, Sweet Pea raids FP's house for some whiskey. FP and Jughead are who knows where, but they're not here. Faintly, Sweet Pea recalls saying something that they'd be out together, doing 'family bonding' but Sweet Pea doesn't care. Is it wrong to be stealing alcohol from FP's trailer?

If you ask Sweet Pea, he won't call it 'stealing'. He'll call it 'borrowing', since he does have every intention of finding the same bottle elsewhere and giving it back. He's just too tired to give that much effort into finding it elsewhere, not when he knows that FP used to drink anything but water, so he must have something somewhere. Plus, FP loves the kid (but Sweet Pea knows he'll never say it out loud).

A car pulls up into the trailer park gravel. It's close enough to FP's house to catch Sweet Pea's attention, but far enough away that it could be here for another house. Sweet Pea pauses his iPod, pulling out one of his earphones to tilt his head to gauge the sounds. It's not a pair of motorcycles, which tells him the old leader and his son aren't back yet, but he still peeks out the blinds. He turns the sound back on, humming, but keeps his eyes peeled. He wouldn't put it past Penny to be snooping back around, even after they took her tattoo. He hopes it is her, in a sense, because he'd have an opportunity to beat her up.

He hasn't loved many of the ideas that Jughead's had, but he liked that one.

It's a nicer car, which Sweet Pea knows isn't anyone here's. He's sure they're lost and they've just pulled into the area to re-orient themselves on their maps and they'll be gone. The car idles, unmoving, for far longer than just a lost person.

In the dim light, past the reflection on the snow, Sweet Pea can see a pale face with a ponytail, slicked back. It's blonde.

He needs only one guess to figure out who it is; Betty Cooper, Jughead's ex-girl.

She's here for Jughead, he's sure. Or, she thinks she might be here because she hasn't made any effort to get out of her car. In fact, she looks surprised she's here at all, and yet she doesn't move.

He doesn't have an occasion to talk to Betty Cooper, and he doesn't have great opinions of her. Scratch that; he's not sure what his opinions of her are.

He heard the name much before he met the girl. He'd associated her with Alice Cooper, ex-serpent (and everyone knows stories of Alice Cooper, back before she got a stick up her ass), first. Then, it's all he heard Jughead talk about for much too long. She always seemed perfectly nice, if not strange for finding Jughead attractive, and that's not what made him dislike her. It's the fact that Jughead never shut the hell up about her and because Sweet Pea thrives on conflict, he had already decided to dislike anything Jughead likes. He's given up burgers at Pop's once he found out how much Jughead liked them, and that's saying how far he's willing to go just to annoy that emo crown kid. So, by extension, he disliked Betty Cooper.

However, Betty Cooper then went and did a serpent dance at the Wyrm, and Sweet Pea wondered if he was perhaps a little too hasty with his assertion to dislike everything that Jughead liked.

And then, Jughead (the ultimate idiot) broke up with her promptly after. Had she been Sweet Pea's girl, he considered for just a second, he would have taken her out of the Wyrm and probably fucked her senseless against a building to show his gratitude. He'd never thought Jughead was smart, so, maybe he shouldn't have been so surprised.

But he didn't think Jughead hated Betty. He defiantly wished Jughead did, because then Sweet Pea would have been obligated by his own rules to like Betty, and he could feel less strange about the way he'd been feeling about her of late. He wasn't freaking in love with her (Sweet Pea didn't do 'love') but she got his blood going in ways that he hadn't thought proper and Northsider Betty Cooper ever would.

This just left Sweet Pea confused about how he should feel for Betty. Respect? Attraction? Mild indifference? All three? None?

At the moment, he's a little annoyed she's showed up here. Jughead is mopey but adamant they 'have' to break up. Betty just seems a little desperate to be here.

He wonders if he should go out and say something. Tell Betty Jughead isn't here. Maybe strike up a conversation, try his luck? Before he can do this, Betty shifts the gear and backs away, the headlights bouncing off the shivering trees and vanishing down the road.

Sweet Pea turns his music up, full blast, and returns his looting. He finds a bottle- mostly empty- and nicks it. He goes to Fang's trailer, knocking three times on the door and holds the bottle of whiskey by the neck, holding it up in triumph. The pair of them climbs onto the roof of Fang's trailer, brushing snow off to sit down.

They pass the bottle between them while Sweet Pea plays his New Year's playlist, a compilation of the best songs to come out in 2017. Fangs sings off key to Despacito, hiccuping already. Fangs has never known how to hold his liquor. Sweet Pea is hardly affected by the amount he's consumed, leaving him just buzzed enough to let his mind detach from his body; from the numbness of his fingers, from the whispering of the wind, from the creaking of the tin underneath him.

Sweet Pea remembers that they say who you're with on New Years is a good indicator about the influence of the rest of the year. Or maybe, it's about who you're thinking about. At any case, as the clock strikes 12, Sweet Pea is thinking of Betty Cooper, sitting in the driveway with her lips pursed and frowning at the house, clearly in a mental argument with herself. He thinks about how Jughead should have never broken up with her and how Betty Cooper is not the girl he thought she was.

At midnight, Betty is thinking of Sweet Pea as well, but she does not know it. She did not mean to go to Jughead's trailer, but it was such a familiar path that she didn't even she was going there until she had parked.

She had seen a light on in the house, but the motorcycles were gone. She'd seen someone lift between the blinds and peek out, but make no motion to come out to her. She wonders if it was FP or Jughead. She is unsure it was either and wracks her brain trying to figure out who it was if it was not them. Choices like Toni or Tall Boy weave in her mind, but she cannot think of a reason either would be present in the house when FP or Jughead isn't.

If you had given Betty 100 choices, she would have never guessed Sweet Pea. She does not, at this point, even truly know who he is, except that the name rings a bell and she thinks he might be a Serpent, or maybe he's a Ghoulie. And, if someone put him in a lineup, Betty could not have pointed him out. She's heard Jughead bitch about him on an occasion or two, which leads her to think it might be a Ghoulie, but since the break-up, Betty has been trying hard to not think about anything having to do with the Southside. Today was the first time she'd even been back in the area and it had hurt a lot. Enough to maker her slam the gas and squeal out of there before she did something really stupid, like go and sit on Jughead's bed and wait for him to return. And, the more she thought about it, the less she even wanted to do that. She thinks, actually, that maybe Jughead should be apologizing to her! Betty tries to enjoy the party, but her mind wanders back to the blinds, and she thinks it can't have been Jughead, for even he would not have been so cruel to ignore her...she hopes.

At midnight, the vial holding the virus has been dropped and as soon as it shattered, there was nothing anyone could have done. Even if Betty and Sweet Pea had known they were thinking about each other- and played into the idea of superstitions (Betty firmly did not, Sweet Pea did, but only when it benefited him) which would mean that they were influential in each other's upcoming year- neither could guess what was to come.

And, all things considering, it's probably better that way.

So all! I've been sitting on this idea for a while now. To be honest, it's just my stupid shipper heart that chooses to love total rarepairs XD And I mean, Sweet Pea is great! But, I really fell for the idea after Sweet Pea looked interested during Betty's dance. If you get the chance, go check out 'forasecondtherewedwon's work; she was the one that really got me obsessed with this couple and I pretty much feel like she is sailing the ship of SS SweetBetts all by herself!

This is a zombie!AU, and I'm going by the rules of The Walking Dead, and tbh, I actually consider it to be in this universe. I don't think we'll ever actually run into anyone from TWD from this, but I just thought I'd throw that out. Funny enough, I had started a 100 zombie!AU that I also considered to be in that universe (and eventually will get around to posting) so I guess they also are here. I have considered that down the line a character or two might pop up, but it would be very non-obvious. It wouldn't be like Sweet Pea running into Bellamy, not in this story at least (but, who knows, later I might be down for doing crossover sequels/one-shots!)

The original title for this story was going to be '(in your head, in your head) they are fighting' from the song 'Zombie', but I wasn't quite happy with that. Then, pop, a better title came along, and here we are! Each title of the piece will be a theoretical song from Sweet Pea's playlist. I don't have each title cemented in yet, so if you have a good song for the apocalypse, lemme know! Technically, in TWD, they've never heard of zombies (the myth just doesn't exist) so this song can't really exist either, but I love it so much (and the new Bad Wolves cover is so great) so I made it the preface track :)

If you want to see the cover I made for this way bigger, and also see an aesthetics board I did for this story, go to my tumblr- youngbloodlex22! I'll be posting art/news and stuff regarding this, and my other stories, there! I hope you all enjoy!