FicWad

a.n Sorry Kelly, Thalia and Sinister, I moved you to Australia! :P haha, enjoy your chapter!

Kelly, Sinister, Thalia and Fionnuala
Australia and Ireland


London Calling to the far away towns, now that war is declared and battle come down. London call…
“mmmmmphhh” mumbled Sinister as she groggily hit the snooze button on her alarm. She would have happily stayed in bed and returned to her dream of being the next Silk Spectre, but unfortunately, the ‘snooze’ function results in the alarm going again in 5 minutes time.
“Fuck off, I’m not in London” a more eloquent utterance passed her lips as she dragged herself into the shower to wake up.
By the time Sinister emerged, she was not by any means bright eyed and bushy tailed, but she was awake. Her dark eyes scanned her wardrobe for a suitable outfit for the scorching Australian summer day that it promised to be. She settled on skinny jeans and her Watchmen Tee-shirt, before adding a lace headband to her dark hair and grabbing her Watchmen messenger bag, muttering a perfunctory goodbye to her parents and escaping her house.

On the walk to school, Sinister met up with her best friend Kelly, and listened to her daily vent about her dad. Sinister nodded and made sounds of agreement where necessary; all the while laughing at how strikingly similar Kelly was to her dad, and the fact that neither of them could accept it.
The tirade against her father only ceased when they reached the gates of Sydney Girls High School and parted ways for their respective classes; Kelly had Latin, Sinister had Maths.
Kelly followed the tide of teenagers making their way to their classrooms, only looking up from her intensive study of how her awesome converse contrasted against the dirty white linoleum of the school to locate and sit down in her seat.

“Salve Discipulae”
“Salvete Magistra”
The class dutifully greeted their teacher, who smiled a yellow grin as though they were truly happy to see her, and not the apathetic teenagers who had to take first year Latin as a compulsory course.
Kelly really couldn’t be bothered with derivatives, nominatives and accusative endings this early in the morning, so occupied herself by staring at a mole on her aging teacher’s cheek. As Mrs Fletter spoke, the grooves and pits in her baggy skin made the mole shift and mutate like Flubber. Kelly bit on her lip to suppress a grin as she imagined Flubber, the little green jelly monster-thing attaching itself to her Latin teacher’s jowls.
“What is so funny, Miss Charles?” Kelly tore her gaze upwards to Mrs Fletter’s eyes; the whites were stained yellow, and the once vivid blue irises had diluted to meek grey. Kelly looked down, not liking the way those eyes pierced right through her.
“Eh, n-nothing, Mrs Flubb-Fletter” Kelly stuttered, still looking at her shoes, this time, to avoid not only the owl-like stare of her now irate teacher, but the sniggers and scornful eyes of her classmates.
Mrs Fletter sucked in her cheeks in annoyance, making the mole stretch and flatten. She exhaled heavily, and turned back to the chalkboard (she believed that whiteboards were the devil of the classroom, so permanently had a fine powder of chalk on her bony shoulders) continuing with her lesson.
“Caeciliius est in Atrio, et Metalla est in Horto. Cerberus est…” the monotonous drone of Mrs Fletter’s nasal voice lulled Kelly into a stupor, her head fell onto her heavily graffiti desk as she slept the rest of the lesson away.

At lunchtime, Kelly and Sinister met up with their older best friend Thalia. Though she was probably the most ostentatious dresser, with pin striped skinnies and a black vest over a white tee with a paint-speckled Avenge Sevenfold tie, not to mention her blue and black hair that fell just short of her waist, Thalia had perfected the art of invisibility, so was completely ignored as she walked across the arid, parched field.
Kelly hailed her with a yell and flopped down against the knarled tree that Thalia had carved their names into. Though they had only known each other for just short of one year, their friendship was so unique and strong, they could sit under the only patch of shade in the field all lunch, without ever saying a word.
They quietly munched their sandwiches, whilst peppering long periods of silence with random comments
“We should learn…”
“A new song on the guitar? Mmm we will”
“Did you guys notice the lack of people in school today?”
“Yeah, lots of people must be sick”
“It’s the middle of summer, how can you be sick now?”
“Dunno….weird”
“Thalia, how’s your…?”
“Brother? He’s ok. He was passed out when I left this morning though.”
“Sucks.”
“Oh fuck there’s the Primary school classes…”
“Don’t worry Kell, we’ll protect you.” A smirk and snigger slipped through Sinister’s lips as she watched the ‘terrifying’ little kids who were playing with sand.
All too soon, the bell rang for class, and the girls separated ways, promising to meet up after school and chill at Thalia’s.

Thalia’s house was a ramshackle old villa on the outskirts of town, all peeling paint, and loose boards.
The girls thundered upstairs, earning a yell of pain from a very hungover Jackson, Thalia’s brother. They lay on Thalia’s queen sized bed, grabbing fluffy red pillows as they switched on the computer.
Doing their traditional scan through the magical site of Youtube, they rewatched “llama’s without hats” before curiously clicking on a recently uploaded link “HELP FROM IRELAND”

“Hello? Is anybody actually listening to this? Oh lord I hope so!
My name is Fionnuala McGill and some weird shit is going down. I know I’m probably just being paranoid, but today they closed the borders and airports to Ireland, with no explanation. People have been getting sick. Badly. I don’t know what’s going on, and no one will tell me except to say Don’t Panic, it’s all under control. But School has just been suspended indefinitely and my sister is upstairs coughing her lungs out.
Is this happening where you are? Have you heard about the state of affairs in Ireland? Please, is anyone out there?”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the other side of the world, Fionnuala stopped her webcam and swept her black hair away from her pale face with a sigh. She cast an anxious eye upwards, to where her sister was staining her sheets with sweat and racked with convulsions.
She snuck upstairs, heedless of her grandmother’s warnings to stay away from her sister, who was most likely contagious, and flitted to her sister’s side. Her blue eyes, magnified by her glasses, were bright with worry as they looked upon Sinead’s pale, sweating form. Thrashing in the covers, her sister flung out an arm that struck Fionnuala in the midriff.
Unlike her face, Sinead’s arm was mottled blue, dark bruising that originated at her fingertips and spread up her shoulder, across her chest and was slowly creeping up her neck.
Fionnuala rubbed at the staining with the edge of her white shirt, and was astonished when it came off onto her clothes.
A sense of dread entered her, as though she had swallowed an ice cube. Fionnuala stripped off her skirt and rushed to the bathroom where she scrubbed at her hands. No stain had seeped through to contact her skin, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

Frantically, she hollered downstairs to where her grandmother was quietly knitting a scarf for her, none of this pink and blue stripy shit, but a black cable knit, shot with silver thread.
Her grandmother looked up from her knitting, clear blue eyes strikingly similar to her granddaughter’s
“Don’t you shout down the stairs at me Fi, come DOWN and talk to me like a civilized person” she yelled right back, an edge of wicked humour to her crackly voice.
A whimper from above made Fi’s gran realize that this was no joking matter, and she swiftly rose from her chair, ignoring the screams of protest her arthritic knees made as she located the source of the sound.
Fionnuala was huddled on the bathroom floor, scrubbing at her raw, red skin in a panic, convinced of the blue mottling. Her grandmother enveloped her in a hug, raising her from the floor with surprising strength in her bony arms.
Fionnuala inhaled sharply as she passed by her sister’s room
“Gran, I think Sinead is in danger. I think…I think she’s going to” Fi’s voice trembled and failed as she couldn’t utter the words that would make this frightening situation real.
“Fi, she’s not going to die, it’s just a fever, it’ll pass” her grandmother murmured quietly, leading her shaking charge into the kitchen and making a strong cup of tea.
Violently, Fionnuala shook her head in protest and uttered the words lodged somewhere in her throat
“No, it’s more serious, I swear. You know Sinead; you know she never gets sick. But all of a sudden, she’s writhing with fever and she’s got a blue rash that’s spreading over her body. It’s seeping out of her pores Gran, this isn’t the normal sickness.
This must be why they closed the borders. Ireland must be in the throes of an epidemic. Why else would all public services and facilities close? Don’t give me that amused, tolerating look, I’m NOT paranoid.”
Her grandmother shook her head and simply gave her granddaughter a hug, stilling the tremors of fear with words of love.