This Is the Way the World Ends, Part 19

[semaphore27.livejournal.com]

Author: Semaphore
Pairing: Billy/Dom
Rating: PG-13, violence and language
Summary: It's the end of the world as we know it and no one feels fine. The world of Lotrips mingles with Stephen King’s The Stand. Here's some Billy POV of what was happening inside while Dom, Elijah and Max were escaping to outside the mall. Fans of The Dark Tower will recognize what's happening with Billy.
Feedback: longed for and appreciated. So many thanks to all who've commented so far!
Disclaimers: This is entirely fictional. No disrespect intended. The people involved belong to themselves. The Stand was written by Stephen King. The title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men."



This Is the Way the World Ends, Part 19

A voice inside Billy head that sounds more like Dom’s than his own informs him, “This is it, Bills. This is where we die.”

That can’t be right, though, can it? He’s sent Dom away, sent him away with Elijah and wee Max, and though the outdoors can’t exactly be called safe anymore, still, it has to be safer than here, doesn’t it? Anyplace must be safer than this dark, stuffy shop that once sold such a collection of things no one really needed.

Billy raises his gun, telling himself not to panic. The weapon feels comfortingly heavy, the grip warm and slightly ridged, the better to hold on to. Pretend this is a film, Billy commands himself. Only a film, a job, and these are only men in latex, no different from the Orcs in Rings. You’re firing blanks at them, and they’ll drop to the floor in a realistic manner. Take aim carefully, pull the trigger, fire.

The wolves are dropping, dropping fast, no doubt of that. It’s just there are so bloody many of them. It seems the director of this film has made the odds against the heroes surviving unrealistically enormous.

Or perhaps this is one of those films without a happy ending, in which characters the audience has grown to know and love go out in a blaze of glory, leaving many of the viewers weeping uncontrollably.

“Oh, hell’s bells!” Sean exclaims, which strikes Billy as funny. In a way it’s comforting; it sounds very much like Sean as he was in the old days, the stable, dependable family-man.

“What is it?” Billy calls out.

“My gun!” Sean pounds the grip against his palm, panting with effort or fear—or, more likely, a combination of both. “Magazine’s empty. Won’t eject.”

Wolves move toward him in a pack, of course in a pack, what would he expect, really? Billy picks them off one by one, and though his aim is true and he’s hitting all his targets, there’s still a mad safety in their numbers.

Absurdly, a bit of that old Elvis Costello song runs through his head:

Alison, I know this world is killing you
Oh, Alison, my aim is true

A wave of sadness for Ali flows through him. From having been his lover, she’d become his friend, and he and Dom always enjoyed her company. Only she’s dead, she must be dead: everyone else is.

Soon enough, he suspects, he’ll be dead himself, and Billy wishes he hadn’t sent Dom away. What’s worse, to be killed without looking on his lover’s face one last time, or to see his beloved die in front of him? To die protecting Dom, with everything he has in him?

Billy knows he would. There’s no other possible choice.

The wolves keep coming in wave after wave. They seem to have no sense of self-preservation, but perhaps they don’t need to.

Billy wonders when the world went so slow. He, and everything around him, seem to move through treacle.

He remembers his mum’s treacle pudding, his favourite sweet when he was young. Dom, who hates the sticky syrup even worse than he hates bananas, can never believe that.

Dom likes cake, and those little cream-filled buns. He likes his lollies and he likes biscuits of nearly every kind, though he’ll never eat the cinnamon ones when Billy’s around him. Oatmeal Hob Nobs enrobed in chocolate are his favourites, and the way Dom says “enrobed,” in his deep velvety voice is a thing of beauty.

Dom likes to walk about the house naked, singing loudly and performing his odd little dances. He likes his beer warm, but his vodka very cold, turned nearly to ice in the freezer. He usually rings his mum and dad twice a week, talks to Elijah every morning, often quite early, and will ring his brother Matthew every fortnight. Looking at him, one wouldn’t think Dom has any regular habits whatsoever, yet he does. It’s like the way he can only go to sleep on his stomach, and the way he likes Billy to rub that certain spot on his back, just between his shoulderblades. Billy can almost feel it now, his palm and fingers gliding over naked, satiny skin.

Billy realizes he hasn’t rubbed Dom’s back for days now, and that Dom hasn’t said a word about it.

But then, he never does. He’ll complain about every other thing under the sun, but never about the things Billy does or doesn’t do for him.

It’s heartbreaking to think he’ll die without touching Dom’s skin again, die without one more chance to savour the taste of Dom on his tongue.

All this time, lost in thought, Billy realizes he’s been shooting. Aiming, firing, killing wolves. It’s become one of those things he can do without thought, like brushing his teeth, or driving.

An odd phrase drifts through his mind, I remember the face of my father. And it’s true, he does. Much better than he remembers his mum’s face, though he’s fairly certain he loved her equally. But Billy remembers his father’s face perfectly, when he’d have thought time might have dulled the memory, or faded it to something insubstantial, the face his father showed the camera, not his true face at all.

Billy can recall William Senior’s features exactly, in perfect detail.

Time snaps to normal speed again when Billy pulls the trigger on a soft, dry, impotent click. There’s single instant of blind, uncontained panic. He’s defenseless, he’s defenseless and the wolves may now destroy him at will.

There’s a ridiculous moment in which a snippet of another old song pops into Billy’s head.

You better stay away from him
He’ll rip your lungs out, Jim…

Which reminds him a long, long journey by car he took once with Dom, the two of them singing all the ridiculous songs they could think of at (of course, this was Dom, after all) the tops of their lungs. Dom particularly enjoyed the howling bits of “Werewolves of London,” he remembers.

Dom’s forgotten his shoes, Billy realizes. He can see the scuffed white trainers peeping out from beneath the spilled covers of Dom’s bed, with its colourful dinosaur sheets. He hopes the tarmac outside won’t be too hot, or too covered with debris. It isn’t as if Dom will be able to watch where he’s stepping.

“Take this,” a woman’s voice hisses in his ear. Sonja’s, Billy realizes. She’s pressing the hilt of a sword into his hand, and where in hell did she get a sword? This one isn’t well balanced. It’s badly made, as unlike the perfect swords from Rings as possible. The edges are sharp, though, and Billy’s body has a tendency to remember, always, what his conscious mind forgets in the midst of a panic.

Only he’s far from panicking. On the contrary, his mind’s cold, calm, clear, as far from the mind of the Billy who shrieked at an unexpectedly-exploding firework as can possibly be imagined.

His body’s working perfectly. It remembers everything—every stance, every weapons class, every bit of training. Billy swings the blade and blood sprays, black in the darkened air. Sonja’s beside him. They work seamlessly together, as if they’ve been doing this for years. Behind them, Toni’s reloading, sliding fresh magazines into their discarded guns, then the sword’s in one hand, the pistol in the other, and the air’s filling up with the odours of smoke and copper and brimstone, the reek of burning cordite, making Billy cough a little, but not much. Too much would throw off his aim.

Something knocks him to the ground from behind, but Billy rolls, absorbing the blow with a minimum of damage. The stench of old sweat and rot is appalling. Seconds later he’s on his feet, facing a monster in human clothing—wild-haired, red-eyed, setting whole new standards of scruffiness. There’s something wrong in the bones of the face: a heavy jaw, something in the manner of a muzzle for a nose, not the least trace of reason or sanity in the crimson eyes.

This was human once? Billy marvels. This was human?

The sword’s been knocked from his hand. Billy locks both hands round the pistol’s grip. He’s breathing hard, and the wolf is on top of him now, mad-eyed and filthy and slavering. Actually slavering. He’s never expected to see that.

His gun’s in the man’s? wolf’s? thing’s? face. The pressure of his finger on the trigger seems slow, languid, but in truth Billy knows he’s moving faster than he could ever have imagined, it’s the world that’s dropped into this leisurely pace.

Only, then, there’s something. The air ripples, like a sheet having the wrinkles shaken out of it. The wolf on top of him stiffens, black blood moving in trickles from its nose, its eyes, its ears, moving in slow parentheses from the corners of its snaggle-toothed mouth.

Billy’s frightened, suddenly. He knows he hasn’t fired, knows it perfectly, and yet…

And yet, something else in the world has changed. Something—or someone’s—done this, because the wolf is dead. It’s toppling over, away from him, in ridiculous slow motion.

“What the heck?” Sean’s saying, and then his large, firm hands have closed over Billy’s arms, lifting him to his feet. Sean’s studying him anxiously, asking again and again, “Are you okay? Are you all right, Billy?”

“What happened?” Toni asks, her normally firm voice trembling. “What was that?”

Billy finds himself embracing both her and Sean tightly, holding onto them as if for dear life. Sean’s trembling, now, with the aftershock, and Billy’s surprised to find he isn’t doing the same. Toni’s laughing in small, dry hiccoughs.

“I thought we were dead,” she says, wonder in her voice. “I thought we were dead for sure.”

“We should find the boys,” Sonya’s telling them. “God knows what’s happened outside.”

“Yes,” Billy answers. His own voice sounds strange, deeper than usual, and a little hoarse. It comes to him suddenly that every muscle in his body’s aching. He’s not hurt, not hurt in the least, but he’s sore as hell. “Everyone all right?” he asks, quietly,

“Fine,” Sean answers. There’s a big bruise over his left cheekbone, and scratches on his forearm, but he seems unhurt otherwise. Only his face looks chalky. He excuses himself suddenly, politely, hurrying away behind one of the Hobbit-sized beds. Billy can hear him being sick, trying to be quiet about it.

Afterward, Sean will be embarrassed, will pretend nothing’s happened.

Billy’s own stomach turns over and he’s aware, suddenly, of the terrible stench in the darkened showroom, all death and filth and excrement. Toni and Sonya seem to notice in the same moment: Toni’s face twists in disgust; Sonya’s blue eyes go cold and distant.

“Let’s go,” Sonya says abruptly. “Let’s get out of this hell-hole.”

“A-men,” Toni answers fervently, just as Sean reappears. He’s shaking harder now, and Sonya, unexpectedly, wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulling him against her body tightly.

“It’s okay,” she croons. “It’s okay, Sean. We’re fine. You only did what you had to.”

Sean’s arms go round her waist in return, and they hold one another a moment, heads pillowed on one another’s shoulders, before pulling away.

“Elijah,” Sean says, firmly now. “Dom. The little boy.”

“Aye,” Billy answers. He’s terrified of what he’ll find outdoors, more terrified that he won’t find anything, that Dom—and the other two—will have vanished without a trace.

He’s too sore to move without limping, but he moves anyway, forcing himself first to a fast walk, then to an all-out run.

For some reason, he’s expected daylight, but outside night has fallen. Tongues of fire lick against the sky, yellow, scarlet, orange. The red-tinged shapes of bodies lie everywhere.

Not very far away, in a clear patch, lie three he recognizes. They’re terribly still, blood all over their white faces.

“Billy!” Sean calls from behind him. ”Billy!”

Billy’s incapable of stopping. He has to see, has to know. If there are final words, he needs to hear them. If it’s too late for that…

If it’s too late, Billy doesn’t know where he will go. Not Las Vegas, he’s learned his lesson about that. But somewhere. Nowhere. He simply doesn’t know.

He’s down on his knees suddenly, the tarmac rough and littered with gravel. The wee lad, Max, lies atop Dom, still and silent. Billy lifts him carefully, passing him to Toni’s waiting arms. Sean’s moved round to Elijah, raising him from the ground. Billy hears his voice as a distant rumble. He hasn’t eyes or ears, though, for anyone but Dom at the moment.

“Dom,” he murmurs. “M’Dommie. Awake, are you, love?” With his fingers, Billy strokes the blood from Dom’s face. Dom's skin is warm--still warm, Billy’s traitorous brain wants to whisper, the words reverberating inside his head. “Dom, wake up, love. We’re all here, we’re all right. The wolves are dead.”

He realizes, in that instant, that Dom’s eyes are open—almost open, that is. He’s squinting, his face twisted into the oddest of expressions. “Fuck,” he lets out, in a long groan. “What in hell happened, Bills? I’ve the mother of all migraines.” He sits up slowly, pressing his hands to his temples. “Ah, God. Had the weirdest dream.”

Billy’s sitting on the ground, not certain how he even got there, his knees drawn up to his chest.

Dom unsquints one eye, as if looking at him more closely, though of course he can’t see anything. “Bills, you okay? Talk to me, Billy.”

“I…” Billy begins. “I’m…”

Dom finds him by instinct, wrapping his arms round Billy tightly, cuddling him close. “Wasn’t a dream, was it?” he says softly. “Only we’re all right, that’s all that matters. That’s all that matters, really.”

Billy holds him in return, tucking his face into Dom’s shoulder. Dom's shirt smells of blood, smoke, petrol. “Yes, we’re all right, love,” he murmurs in return. “We’re all right, m’Dommie.”