This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Excerpted from The Hollow Men by T.S. Elliott [1925]

Prologue

Penny Drummond removed her facemask and breathing unit and flopped on her couch. She had spent the day looking for work in an economy that was falling apart. Sure, there was work, but she didn't fancy spending the day going door to door in residential neighborhoods looking for the dead and then hauling them out and throwing their corpses onto a flatbed truck. Not for what the government paid, anyway.

It wasn't like she had anything to really worry about. She'd been tested and found to be smack in the middle of the quartile of the tested population who appeared to be 'immune' to 'The Choker', as the disease was referred to by everyone but the was hungry and there wasn't a damned thing in her apartment to eat. She felt bad about mooching off her neighbors but, hey, a girl had to eat and both Leonard and Sheldon had offered her the 'run of the refrigerator' when the Cheesecake Factory had closed down for lack of business.

She started to walk across the hall but stopped dead at the sight of the biohazard placard and tape that sealed the door of apartment 4A. 'No! Not…' She pounded on the boys' door and waited but there was no response so she went back to her apartment and found the emergency key. She tore the tape from the doorway and unlocked the door. She pushed open the door and cautiously called out, "Leonard? Sheldon? Is anyone here?" 'Is anyone alive?'

LAX

"My friends, I may never see you again and it grieves me to have to leave you in this time of terrible suffering but I need to go home. Priya and my parents…there has been no word since things started breaking down over there. I should have listened to you, Sheldon, and brought them all over here."

Sheldon didn't say anything in response. He'd had his say, been ignored, and now Raj was flying into the unknown to follow a noble path: rescuing his family.

It wasn't that he wasn't sad about Rajesh's departure. Departures were a way of life since…and anyway, he felt sure that he'd see his friend again sometime in the future. When he looked at Raj, a Natural Immune like himself, he thought of Leonard and he felt a tear run down his face.

Howard was shook up over Leonard's death, compounded by his own mother's passing early in the disease's romp through Mankind. He and Bernadette had decided to stay in Pasadena despite the offer from her parents to stay with them at their cabin in the 'wilderness' of the Wisconsin Dells.

The 'Removal Team' had taken Leonard's body earlier that morning after Sheldon discovered his corpse when he had risen and prepared for work. The 'Removal Team" had sealed the apartment pending the expiration of the 24-hour notice.

It didn't matter to them that Sheldon was a Natural Immune, they were drones hired by the government and knew no other way of doing things.

"Raj, I am sure it is nothing more than a breakdown in the power grid just as has occurred in the past. With no power there are no phones or internet. If – if things are as you fear, return and stay with us. The University will persevere in the face of this adversity."

Raj embraced his friends and Sheldon couldn't help but start to cry just as Howard was doing. This triggered Raj's tears and he quickly twisted away from his friends and almost ran down the concourse to the International Departures terminal. There was no more TSA to deal with. In some respects, life had gotten simpler. Raj ran faster to escape his sadness and to catch what was probably one of the last direct flights to India.

Howard dropped Sheldon off in front of the Los Robles apartment building and then sped away in his mother's car. He was returning to his own home where, no doubt, he would continue to mourn the loss of his mother and now Leonard far in excess of the allotted period required in his religion.

Sheldon trudged up the stairs, dreading a return to the apartment he and his Leonard had called 'home' for the past 8 years. It would be lonely and whether he admitted it or not, loneliness would tax his already-teetering mental state. He needed people, at least one, preferably more, around him to provide companionship and to balance out his periods of undiagnosed insanity.

'My mother had me tested. I've never told anyone that the test results indicated incipient insanity. The doctors simply stated, no yet.'

Penny sat on the couch, in his spot, sobbing uncontrollably. Her heart was broken. Leonard, even though their relationships had always blossomed and then withered with time, had been her dear friend but she mostly mourned the loss of her dearest friend, Sheldon Cooper.

'I'll never get to tell him how much he means to me, how precious his friendship is to me, and how much I love him – as a friend.'

She was jolted out of her mourning reverie by the opening and closing of the apartment door. She didn't look up, just ran to the corner of the living room and grabbed the bat Leonard left there.

'Fucking ghoul looters…I'll fucking kill them!'

"Penny, you know it's illegal to be here until the 24-hour period has expired and you were in my spot. You are not a Natural Immune and you risk – UMPH!"

Whatever he was going to say in his pedantic pose as 'lecturer of the obvious' was interrupted by 105 lbs of Penny throwing herself around him and covering his jaw and neck with kisses all the while crying and mumbling bits and pieces of phrases like 'thought I'd lost you' and 'Oh, Moon Pie,' and 'I love - '.

Her lips and body were driving him into a lust-filled state and he was desperate to step away, to center himself, and yet it was like being held in a velvet vise. Her arms around his neck and one of her ankles hooked behind his calf held him despite his best efforts to peel her off him.

"P-Penny, p-please…you're overwrought…Leonard's death…" He was as bad as she was, unable to complete a sentence. He also started to sob and somehow they found themselves on his couch, crying and frantically tearing at each other's clothing.

Afterwards, Sheldon just held her, shocked and amazed at the effects of coitus on him. She never said she loved him but he damn well knew that he felt something for her, even if it wasn't love.

"Shel, this thing…what we did…we can't…I mean…shit, Sheldon, this was just an emotional need for me just as it was for you, sweetie. I'm sorry that your first time wasn't with someone you loved. You deserved better but I just…I was so damned glad to find you alive."

'Of course. She was just upset about Leonard. It was just an emotional release for her…but for me, it was so much more.'

"Penny, I think it's time you moved in here. That apartment is just a drain on you and…since you're already familiar with Leonard's room, well, you can stay there. Did you find work yet?"

In every virology laboratory in the world, scientists worked feverishly on a vaccine to either protect those unaffected without some immunity as well as to boost the 'Probable Immunity' segment of the population's ability to fight off the disease.

However, as any virologist will tell you, the simple structure of a virus enables it to mutate to increase its survival potential.

The 'Choker' was no different. It mutated and became more pathogenic than anything ever seen before. Its victims became deranged, violent and destructive before finally succumbing to the disease. Some lasted days, while some, the lucky ones, only a few hours or minutes. The vicious and violent behavior was the first sign of infection. And it was incredibly infectious. And deadly.

The mortality rate was nearly 90%. The human race was being culled.