Pestilence Chapter 1, a smallville fanfic

Chapter One (of 4)

Considering the week Clark had just lived through, he had seriously doubted that he could feel any worse. Standing in front of the Luthor mansion, its vines and turrets looming over him like an unbeatable enemy, he truly thought he'd rather die than step inside.

Lana would be there, he thought, and Lex. Their bodies would be, at least; they'd be comfortably entwined and unsuspecting, tucked into bed for the last time. They'd be slumped over their last meal, her hair limp in the spilled wine. Lana would be curled up on the couch, with Lex's body crumpled near the pool table, the cue having rolled from his dead hand.

Shaking his head, Clark purged his mind of those hopeful, jealous thoughts. The illness took at least twenty four hours to take hold. Before anyone died they endured more than a day of suffering as their digestive systems malfunctioned and their lungs filled with fluid. When he entered this house, he would find Lex and Lana, most likely lying flat out in bed, surrounded by a pool of vomit and feces.

It would not be pretty; it would be like every other death he had watched since the virus hit Smallville. He had nearly convinced himself that he had watched every single person die; that he had comforted each pale face and cried with the people left behind.

He thought that he was done; that he had dug the last of hundreds of graves and finished burning hundreds of names into hundreds of stones. He knew, though, that he wasn't. He had one house left to visit.

He didn't know where it had come from. He didn't know if the rest of the world still existed. He only knew that it had changed Smallville into a dead town nearly overnight. He knew that it had no effect on him, that he was immune. He knew of the pain it caused; he knew of death.

And he had saved Lana for last.

Before the phones had stopped working he had called out, only once, to his mother's cell. She had been in Metropolis for the week, and had since relocated to Star City. He had told her not to come, and not to send help. There had been only a few left then, those with stronger immune systems, the people his age. But they, too, were going to die.

"Mom," he had called into the phone.

"My God, Clark," she had replied. "What's happening in there? They've declared it quarantine. They say that everyone is dead."

Clark had held the phone to his ear with both hands, and wondered at how his strength was, now, after thirty hours of hell, failing him.

He stumbled to his knees.

"They're not all dead," he whispered. "But they will be."

"What is it, Clark?" Martha asked. "What's killing them?"

"I don't know." He looked into his living room, where a dozen people, in their early twenties, sat around a fire. "I don't know anything."

Martha stifled a sob. "You can leave, Clark. You can come to Washington and we'll send help."

"Don't bother." His voice sounded dead. His voice sounded stripped of vigour and life, of hope. "They're infected. It's some sort of virus, I guess. They're going to die."

There was a long silence. "Chloe's okay?" Clark asked.

"Yes," his mother said. "Metropolis has been evacuated, but everyone's fine."

"And Lois?"

"She's not here. Chloe doesn't know where she is."

Clark hesitated. Lois wouldn't be in Smallville, she was probably safe, visiting her father or sister. She should have been with Chloe, though. He didn't want to ask about Lana, but he knew that his mother would know about Lex's whereabouts.

"And Lana?" he finally said.

"She—" Martha started. She paused, and Clark could hear her taking short, gasping breaths. "She was with Lex in Smallville, Clark. The quarantine was declared before they could get out. Phone lines are still up, but electricity—"

"I know," Clark said. "Everything is blocked in. Everyone—I heard that they're shooting down helicopters and barricading roads."

"They don't want to chance that the virus could spread."

"That's why I can't leave, mom," he said, his voice husky, the realization that Lana would not have escaped this settling in. "I don't know if it could somehow cling to me; contaminate my clothing, or be in my breath."

There was a long silence. Martha Kent wanted her son back. "So you'll stay, then," she said.

"Until everyone's dead and buried," he replied softly. He didn't want the people near him to hear. He didn't want them to know that he'd given up, though they all had. He didn't want them to know that he knew he'd live through it. "Once everyone's gone, I suppose, you'll have to send scientists after me. Have them, you know, make sure I'm clean."

"They'll want to know how you're still alive," Martha protested.

Clark breathed in deeply; the air arid and thick with the smell of decay, vomit and sweat. "We'll worry about it when it happens."

He remembered how, once he had hung up, he had stayed there, on the floor, for nearly an hour. He had pushed back tears and quietly surrendered the phone when someone; a football player from Smallville High, a few years younger than him and not getting any older; had come to take it from him. They all wanted to say their goodbyes.

So Clark had watched them, as their skin yellowed and their organs rebelled, and they phoned their parents, if they had been out of town, or their friends from Metropolis. Those with no one to call visited graves; they didn't ask questions about how the holes had been dug, or how their loved ones names were engraved sloppily into rocks. At this point, they'd all lost their drive, their will to live, and with it had gone their curiosity.

He had thought of visiting Lana, of racing up to the mansion and saying his goodbyes. He missed her everyday, and now, watching so many people die with regrets, he had started to rethink his decisions.

He started to wonder if maybe, Lana and he could have been happy. He thought of that day, so long ago, the disappeared day, when he had made his voice sound deep and strong and reached out to her and said, "Do you trust me?"

She had died so soon after; their happiness was absolute and short lived, like the life of a rock star, or a butterfly. He hadn't tried again. Though he had done it differently, she still would have died, but he couldn't look past his guilt.

Maybe, he mused, it should have been different. She was dying now, despite his best attempts to protect her. So, sick with regret, he hadn't gone. He knew if he saw her, he would only be able to tell her that he loved her, and that would ruin everything.

He had stayed in the town and comforted people, because no one that he loved had died yet.

Because, if he didn't see her body, then he could pretend that she was still alive.

He had already dug the graves for Lana and Lex. Reluctantly, he had put them side-by-side. Hesitantly, he had burned Lex's birthday into the rock—he didn't want to admit that he still remembered it. If he was honest with himself, he had always believed that he and Lex would reconcile sometime in the distant future—sometime, at least, before he died.

Now he stood, the castle looming before him, wondering if this was what he really, really wanted. He could leave, and let the bodies of his best friend and first love ferment on the rug.

Finally, he pulled the door of the mansion open.

It was predictably silent. The eerie sound of his breathing echoed off the stone walls. He didn't x-ray the place, or speed from room to room. He was terrified and wanted, more than anything, to put off the inevitable. He would find Lex and Lana, and he would cry; he would cry for the friendships he had lost before this hellish week had started, and he would cry for the lives that this virus had taken. He hadn't cried yet, though, not for his own loss.

Lex and Lana: they were his loss. He had loved them, estranged them, and now they were gone.

He walked the familiar path to the study, first. He went to Lex's bedroom, to Lana's bedroom, to the kitchen. He stumbled into the room that had been decked out in baby decorations; another life lost.

Finally, he squinted at the walls, looking through everything, found nothing.

He didn't allow himself to hope.

Hesitantly, he let his eyes drop shut. As the visible world dropped away, he allowed the sounds of a dead town to be amplified. From across the entire town, only his heart beat. In the mansion, there was no sound of ragged, sickly breathing. There were no whispered words. This was a deadly virus; even the rabbits and livestock had died.

Lex, of course, would not have allowed Lana to die. He had gotten out, somehow, snuck past the army or paid them off. The empty house echoed.

The desperate thought, Now what? jumped into his mind. He considered going down into Lex's famed wine cellar and testing the limits of his metabolism. Maybe, after downing fifty or so bottles of red, he would be able to blur out the rest of the world. There also was another form of red that would get him off, for sure, but the castle called to him, prohibiting a speedy escape. At least here, there were walls.

So he wandered the mansion, pulling off doors and peering around corners on the off chance that there was a room made out of lead where Lana and Lex might have stumbled to die.

He wanted to trip and stay down; he wanted to drown in a pool of his own vomit. He wanted to see his mother again.

He let himself slide down a wall, and hated that even now, his strength was enough that it was a conscious decision to fall. He rubbed his eyes with his dirt covered hands. They smelt of death.

Slumping sideways, for the first time since it had gotten really bad, he let himself sleep.

Dead babies danced on the inside of his eyelids. Dreaming, he remembered how it had started with the infants and elderly. Ten newborns died in one day, and shortly after, every retirement home was dealing with so many ill and dead. Some just gave out, their hearts stopping in their sleep. Others suffered through the long list of symptoms that Clark had learned to associate with the illness. They stopped eating. They spent their last hours on the toilet as their bodies rejected food, medication and water.

The babies, though. Clark had seen them. They had just stopped breathing, their tiny lips blue and their fingers always curled into fists. There had been no explanation. A coincidence, they said; the mass outbreak of SIDS and the strange illness afflicting the elderly.

A week later, and everyone was dead.

Clark opened his eyes. It was dark.

At least now, he thought, there were no dead babies. He hadn't even had to bury most of them; there had been parents alive to sob over their bodies and decide where they would rest.

Pushing himself to his feet, he contemplated the mansion again. He had a feeling. Though he couldn't hear or see anyone, he knew that the mansion was not as empty as it appeared. He wondered if somehow, because of the closeness he had had with the people in question, he could sense them.

Perhaps it was the distant, filtered sound of breathing. He had thought it came from Metropolis. It might have been the strange, impossible feeling of life that the walls exuded. He started to walk.

He found himself in the wine cellar. Hesitantly, he pulled a bottle of red from the wall. It was a French Merlot. Carefully, in lieu of a corkscrew, he used his heat vision to melt off the very top of the bottle. He brought it to his lips and waiting, half expecting Lex to jump from the shadows and yell, "Thief!"

No one came.

The wine was too fruity for his tastes. He placed it on the ground.

It was then that he knew. Lana was alive.

From somewhere below him, he had heard her voice.