The Zodiac Assassins

Chapter 17

The day DdM should have gone off

It's been... I don't even know how long it's been since that day where the bomb went off but basically, there hasn't been any difference from day and night. I guess you could say it caused a Global Winter. A huge cloud spread across the world. It became pitch black everywhere. Electricity stations shut down, solar cells stopped working so no light or heating or any other mode of electricity was available, apart from turbines, but I think we all know that they're going to stop working soon.

We went back to the hotel in dead silence, Aquarius weeping and choking on her sleeve, muttering sorry under her breath again, and again, and again. It wasn't her fault, not exactly. It didn't happen to the other one, so why did it happen to this one? I'm pretty sure that Scorpio was about a minute away from killing himself. He got out a jar of some kind of pale liquid, got it into a syringe and stared at it for ages before moving it slightly towards himself, sighing and then putting it away in his pocket. Apparently, it had nothing to do with us. They'd got creeped out by Leo and Sagittarius and set DdM to go off a few days early. We got there literally two seconds too late and by the time the building blew, it was already starting to activate. The explosion just acted like a catalyst, something to speed up what was inevitably going to happen.

"So" Aries said when we get to the meeting room. "Now what?"

"I don't know" Capricorn muttered, sitting down in one of th front row chairs. "We never really thought about what would happen if it actually blew. What will happen?"

"Well..." Cancer peered out of the window at the already advancing, large, dark cloud. "Judging by the speed at which that thing is going and the darkness under it, it'll cover the Earth in darkness in just a few days, maybe a week. Then, we'll all be trapped in the blackness, unable to see anything. Crops won't be able to grow and so will die out fast. Animals won't be able to eat the crops so will die out and we'll probably die of starvation or something quite soon after."

"I have to eat animals?" Virgo said, staring at her with a mixture of horror and disbelief. "No. I refuse. If we're going to die of starvation, let's not postpone it and just get it over and done with."

Scorpio got out his syringe again.

"Fuck no" Libra slapped it out of his hand and it shattered on the floor. "We all got into this together, we're going to get out of this together. I don't give a fuck that none of us really like each other, but that's what is going to happen. Right?"

"We didn't get into this together" Scorpio snapped, standing up and towering over her. "No, that bitch over there, she got is into it for ourselves."

"I don't give a fuck, I've already said that. That's all you are, a coward" Libra hissed.

"No, I just don't fancy starving to death. You don't know what happens do you?" Scorpio glared at her. "Well, I'll explain it to you and use nice, small words so you understand. The hydrochloric acids in your stomach suddenly find that there isn't anything for them to digest or dissolve, so they look for other things and start to dissolve the inside of your stomach. That's called feeling hungry. These acids slowly start to eat you from the inside out. Now, don't you want to die of starvation too eh?"

Libra went quiet for a second and then stood up. "Well, maybe if you'd have actually tried to come along with us and help us, we wouldn't be in this situation seeing as you seem to know so much about it yourself."

Scorpio swore at her and then left the room, slamming the door behind him.

"Is that really it?" Aquarius whispered. "Is that really how I've condemned everyone? Slowly being eaten inside out by stomach acids?"

"I'm sure he's... making it up" Taurus gave a weak smile, the most that anyone could muster. "And actually, it might not be. That cloud, is made up entirely of carbon soot from fires that have already been burned. Basically, it'll burn the vegetation, lower the temperature to below minus ten, and then start to starve us."

"So we die of the cold?" I asked. "Nice."

"Well, it could've been worse" Pisces shrugged. "We could get eaten inside out by stomach acids and I really don't like the sound of that."

Scorpio vanished.

One of the fires that struck places everywhere hit the town we were staying in and burned it down. We evacuated the building and were lost in the inky blackness of the carbon soot cloud almost the second the fires died.

We tried to stay together, making sure that always, someone was brushing against someone else's shoulder but there were people everywhere, pushing and shoving and just generally running for no reason. It broke our chain. After the people went, we tried calling out to each other, keeping in contact through far away and distant voices. We were all still there, probably, but we didn't know exactly where each other were.

There was another fire. Another one that outlined silhouettes against a raven coloured sky. We called more to each other, trying more to find each other now with a little light, but probably got further and further away from each other.

Then the fire died out completely.

Shortly after, we all lost each other and were left alone to face the darkness, alone.