Chapter Text
The world should have ended with a cacophony of sounds. There should have been sirens in the streets, screams echoing around her as the world shifted, like the axis of the planet itself had moved, forcing everything to tilt along with it, and flung every last existence out into nothingness. It could not have been more than a few hours since that was how Zelda would have envisioned the end of the world: with flames rising up to devour everything.
Perhaps it would have been easier that way, everything gone within seconds, leaving nothing behind for her to try to cling to. But, of course, the world did not end with a violent flash. Instead, it ended with the smell of sweat clinging to the air around her and the recorded voice telling her that every line was in use when she yelled for them to send someone, heart sinking even deeper into her chest every time she would end up being disconnected again to instead listen to the hollow sound of ringing that would echo for a moment before she punched in the number again. As much as she fought against the temptation to let her mind wander, the lack of ambulances and the shrill sound of sirens was impossible to miss, and though Zelda tried to force her thoughts to abandon that course, she knew what it meant as she brought the phone to her ear to once again wait for the voice to answer, the tone having the exact same calm lilt as the previous times she had called, and repeat the process all over again. By the sixth time, the voice did not answer, a horrible silence that was only broken by the sound of shallow wheezes filling the room, even that fading away soon after, plunging her into silence. All in a matter of hours.
It should have come to an end right then and there, Zelda standing in the kitchen, clutching the phone so tightly that it would not have surprised her to see lines spread across the screen, a tiny spider’s web being created beneath the pressure. For the first time after the hours of sprinting from the kitchen to the bedroom, carrying water, towels, ice, everything she could think of that possessed even the tiniest chance of taking away the putrid stench of sweat and disease, she could regard her own heartbeat as more than just a reminder to hurry, hurry, hurry, to call the hospital again in between trying to get her father to remain conscious for long enough to finish a glass of water. As she stood there, Zelda knew that it wold have been better to not hear it at all. At least if there had been yells and pleas for someone to help coming from the street outside, she would have known that everything would somehow be normal again, that it was something that could be contained within her own home. Instead, the empty streets and lack of panic combined with the engaged lines to the hospital to form its own conclusion.
She could not stay there, that much was clear in the seconds that followed the curtain of silence that fell over the city. It should have been a worry about the risk of disease and infection that forced her to come alive again, to leave the statue she had become for a moment behind and instead head towards the coat stand to fetch her jacket like nothing was out of the ordinary and she was merely having to head back to school after having forgot about a book, but as Zelda pulled on the jacket, hands fumbling as she buttoned it up, already seeing that it was crooked, all she could think about was the silence around her and the complaints about the warmth that had slowly grown fainter over the past couple of hours before finally disappearing entirely. If she had been infected, there was nothing she could do about that, nothing to be done about any of it other than wait, and if she would die, her home would be as good as the streets outside. In truth, Zelda left because the silence outside would at least be better than knowing exactly why her heartbeat filled her ears with the sound of staccato movements as she paused for a moment in front of the writing bureau, digging through the drawer to find her passport. It fit into the pocket, settling next to the Sheikah Slate she had been unable to look at ever since the message flashing on the screen had confirmed what she already knew to be true.
The door squeaked on its hinges as she pushed it open, making it seem like it had already been years as she stepped out into the sun. Perhaps it had. At least it felt that way as she looked out over the street, taking in the sight of cars in the driveway, curtains thankfully obstructing her view into the neighbours’ houses. Placing one foot in front of another, Zelda made sure to keep her gaze firmly fixed on the flagstones in front of her as she began to make her way along the footpath, not once betraying the fragile hope that there was still a chance that she had misunderstood and jumped to conclusions by looking up.
The city was quiet around her, the sound of cars honking and the constant hum of people chatting with friends failing to appear even as Zelda left the residential area behind to instead walk between shops and block of flats. The distinctive smell of sweat stung in her nose as she recalled all the times her father had talked about making the city safer, calling her to let her know not to bother with heating up dinner for him as he would be staying late, trying his best to figure out a way to achieve just that. If he could have seen the city now, deserted and with the absence of people as well as sounds coming to fill the air around her instead, she would not have been able to tell what he would have said. But he could not, would not see it.
Pulling the jacket closer around her, Zelda quickened her pace, willing the thought to disappear. Anything else, she would think of anything other than that. Compared to the reasons for leaving her home and the last bit of normalcy she could perhaps have created for herself by simply refusing to set foot in that half of the house, every other thought seemed like a welcome distraction, so as the buildings around her changed, the skyscrapers giving way to a park, the city library soon towering up in front of her, Zelda allowed her mind to slip out of the tight confine she had tried to force it to inhabit for the first time since she had realised that she would never be able to bring enough water to her father.
Zelda had only just made it around the corner, already envisioning how she would step into the town hall to find that there was a plan, that there would be adults who would tell her that they knew what had happened and were searching for survivors, recording her name to make it possible for any surviving relatives to find her, when she saw the car.
Having been left in the middle of the street, motor still running, the sound impossibly loud against the backdrop of silence, she would never have been able to miss it, and yet, as Zelda came to a sudden halt, heart racing like she had run for hours on end, it still felt like it could not be real, like she was imagining things. She did not know how long she stood there, staring at the car like it was a mirage that would disappear the next time a gust of wind hit it, but finally, Zelda forced her legs to obey her, carrying her towards the car.
It was small, that much was clear, and even if Zelda had never cared much for any car component that was not directly connected to the motor and inner machinery itself, she could see that it was not a car meant for a large family, not the kind of car that would be used as a makeshift ambulance as a last, desperate effort at getting a loved one to the hospital. Her breathing quickening, Zelda did her best not to get her hopes up, not to imagine that she was saved just yet. For all she knew, it could be a coincidence, a car having been left behind as the same kind of blind panic that had filled her along with the realisation that no one would come to help had convinced its owner to leave it behind. Still, as much as she tried, the way the car was left in the middle of the road with the motor running was not something Zelda could ignore, the idea of it all soon being taken care of growing in her chest as ten metres became five, two, one.
Using her hands to block out the sun that still bathed the world in garish light, Zelda leant in towards the right-hand side window.
There was a person sitting inside. A few hours ago, she would perhaps have thought that they had fallen asleep, might have identified them as a well-off university student or someone having borrowed their parents’ car to study, only for exhaustion to catch up with them. Now, however, Zelda saw the blank, unseeing gaze and stiff position for what it was.
Stumbling backwards, a silent scream already tearing its way up her throat, Zelda pressed a hand to her chest, willing her heart to remember its usual rhythm. Blinking, hoping that the brief darkness would be enough to block out the image of the corpse, Zelda barely noticed how the world tilted around her, the pavement rushing up towards her as she fell. Even the pain of her shoulder colliding with the kerb seemed hollow, like she was not quite present there, her brain merely registering it, as the image of a blank stare once again filled her field of vision. Pressing against the ground, tiny pebbles digging into her hands, Zelda felt the acid tear at her oesophagus as she leant to the side, every last muscle in her body straining as she coughed up what felt like everything she had ever eaten. And still, the sensation of drowning, of something heavy pressing against her throat and chest, continued, now only accompanied by the sickly sweet smell of vomit.
It felt like hours before what she assumed to be her inherent sense of self-preservation forced her to stand, Zelda obeying the instinct to continue, to head towards the town hall, to keep her head down, without seeing, sensing, or hearing, only vaguely aware of the fact that the last part of the journey could not have lasted for more than a couple of minutes.
She followed the orders, reaching out towards the door handle, feeling the cold metal beneath her fingers as she pushed, the door swinging open to let her into the cool hall, did exactly as it said without question as it led her towards the stairs she had once stumbled down when she had been five, the faded scar on her knee still telling the story of how she had cried when her father had finally noticed the commotion, walked down the hallway as if she was trapped in a dream. In front of the metal plaquette with her father’s name written in cursive, followed by the word ‘mayor’, Zelda forced herself to take a deep breath, already feeling how her knees shook below her as she reached out towards the door handle.
It should be locked. With how one of her earliest memories was that of her father instructing his secretary to always remember to check that he had locked the door when he left, Zelda knew that the door in front of her would be locked and had already prepared herself for when she would feel the little piece of metal blocking her entrance. Still, she pushed down.
The door opened.
Something caught in her throat, Zelda having to lean against the door frame to continue breathing. The door had opened. She had access to her father’s office, to the tiny kitchenette where he had once shown her how to heat up her packed lunch when she had been too sick to go to school but he had been unable to find someone to look after her with such short notice, to the couch where she had fallen asleep, waking up to find that her father had thrown her favourite blanket over her, and the door had been unlocked.
Despite her efforts, as she moved forwards, falling into the office more than walking, Zelda could not keep her thoughts from returning to the only possible conclusion to the question of how the door had ended up being unlocked despite the fact that her father had never arrived to work that morning. Already, it felt like part of the world became walled off, Zelda not even daring to stick her head outside the room, the fear of finding the body of someone who had decided to get to work early that day lying in some hallway, abandoned and alone in the middle of the panic that must have gripped everyone, already rising in her chest. Instead, she moved deeper into the room, feeling almost like the seven-year-old who had looked up from her lunch, having given it just a minute too long in the microwave oven, to watch as her father sat in front of his desk, so absorbed by his work that he did not notice it as she slipped down from her chair to head towards the little fridge, armed with the stickers she had got from Urbosa the last time she had visited in search of something to look at.
The fridge was still there, the little heart-shaped sticker her father had not been able to remove still decorating the front of it, a reminder of the fact that she needed a plan, needed to calm down and think things through the way she had been taught to do in case she got lost while outside the school back before her father had decided that the school trips out of the city were too dangerous for her.
As if on cue, her stomach growled, Zelda instinctively pressing a hand to it, the repugnant smell of vomit still clinging to her as she crossed the room to open up the refrigerator door.
A few bottles of water, a bag of rye bread, and some butter was what met her, a cursory glance on the dates of the containers letting her know that it would at least not aggravate the issue of feeling sick. Still, it could have been fresh from the supermarket, and Zelda would still have had to face the fact that, with her last hopes of finding adults inside the town hall having been destroyed within moments of arriving there, she would still have to figure out a way to find more food, to secure a source of water. Casting a glance towards the sink, Zelda counted to herself as two drops of water fell from the faucet, a quiet crash filling the room as they hit the metal sink. For now, there was water in the building, but it would be naïve to think that it would remain that way, much less to think that it would be safe to drink for long. Mentally trying to sum up every resource she was used to having within arm’s reach, Zelda did her best to keep the despair at bay, focusing on one thing at a time.
Food and water, she would be able to get from stores. If not any shops nearby, at least the supermarket close to the park would be sure to have enough food to last her for long enough to allow her to formulate a more permanent plan, Zelda doing her best to ignore the matter of whether or not the stores would have had time to allow customers to enter before the disease took hold of society, whether or not she would have to face the bodies of cashiers and customers to get food. It all depended on the time, on exactly how much time she had wasted with trying to get her father enough water to make up for the cold sweat before she had finally called the hospital, how much time she had spent wandering around while trying to reach the town hall. As long as she could get into the stores, she would find food, and despite Zelda being certain that this was not something Purah, all her eccentricities aside, had ever pictured when forcing them to learn about the finer workings of locks as a part of her lessons, as long as her instructions would be enough to let her open locked doors, it would suffice. Should all else fail, she could resort to the method of a brick through a window.
For the first time since she had been disconnected from the hospital’s answering machine for the last time, Zelda dared to dig out her Sheikah Slate, glancing down at it for only a moment. The image of a nearly depleted battery flashed on the screen before disappearing, the phone remaining dead even as she tried her best to force it to turn on again.
Adding electricity and a way to accurately tell time to the growing list of things she needed to get under control again, Zelda staggered through the room, only barely reaching the couch in time before her legs buckled beneath her, sending her crashing towards the slightly too rough surface if the bolster.
There were countless issues she needed to take care of, possibly corpses within metres of where she was, but as Zelda tried to summon the strength to force herself to move, to get up and get started on what she knew had to be done, she found that no amounts of telling herself that she should be better, that she should be grateful for surviving, was enough for her to push away the heavy sensation that felt like it moved to settle on top of her chest, forcing her to lie down, barely able to breathe as she looked up at the ceiling above her.
From the window, bright rays of sun illuminated the room, every colour seeming like a fake version of itself, like the world had become a seven-year-old’s drawing, bright and cheery in an attempt at covering up everything underneath, and still, not even the brightness was enough to keep her awake as Zelda leant back, her legs still dangling over the edge of the couch, the jacket not doing much to protect her from the coldness that had filled her entire body, and fell into a dreamless sleep.
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The first second after waking up came with the blessing of forgetting. For a few, brief seconds, she could almost believe that she was a child again, having fallen sleep despite having tried for hours to convince her father that she was not tired at all. The relief was shattered by the rough fabric of the couch and the constrictive fit of the jacket around her shoulders. Still, Zelda kept her eyes closed, willing herself to return to the blissful ignorance for a second time. The moment of forgetting never arrived, however, leaving her to lie there for another minute, before having to open her eyes.
Nothing had changed while she had been asleep. It was what she should have expected, and yet, there was something about the way everything had been left exactly as it had been when she had first entered the room that felt deeply wrong.
Pushing herself up into a sitting position, trying to rub the soreness out of her neck, Zelda kicked at the carpet on the floor. Seeing it move from its carefully measured spot, the edge of it pushed up to create a fold her father would have smoothened out within seconds to remove any risk of stumbling over it, felt better than it had any right to do, even as she glanced out of the window and saw the orange fire of sunset painted across the sky.
No one had come to move things within the office or to tell her to get out, nor would anyone come to do that. They never would.
Zelda shook her head, doing her best to keep track of her train of thoughts. She could not allow herself to dwell on that. Already, she could feel the heaviness settle into her bones; if she spent another second thinking about the smell of cold sweat and the glasses she had resorted to carrying on a breadboard to get as much water to her father as quickly as possible, if she allowed herself to return to the moment where she had realised that the car had not merely stopped in the middle of the road as the result of a tired university student being reckless, she would not be able to continue. If she wanted to be able to move forwards, she could not lose momentum for even a moment.
The realisation that the rational thing to do was to look for survivors should perhaps have been a welcome one, given how it would force her to leave the office and the carpet that was already slowly returning to its original state with the help of gravity, but as she sat there, Zelda could already see how it would end. A quiet city and her, walking along the streets she had known for most of her life as she looked for any sign of there being anyone out there who was like her, alone and lost. The truth was that she did not possess the energy to do that, not in that second at least.
Without her phone, Zelda had nothing but the sun’s position in the sky to base her estimate of how much time had passed while she had been asleep on, but even then, she was able to say with a high degree of certainty that it should not have been so easy to slip right back into a comfortable sense of nothingness as it was.
+++
Once, Zelda had wondered how animals evolved to adapt to new situations. Perhaps it had simply been her own preference for stability and predictability that made her wonder what the teacher was talking about, trying her best not to focus on the fact that it seemed like she was the only one in her class pondering just what it felt like to have every habit disappear in an instant, but it had always seemed unlikely to her that anyone would be able to change their usual patterns so quickly. And yet, here she was, standing in front of the sliding doors to Hyrule Market, having crossed the carpark with her jacket wrapped around her to provide her with a bit of comfort, trying to figure out just how she would approach the task in front of her. The key was to divide it into smaller tasks, that much was clear to her already. She was not there to figure out just how she could ensure having enough food, not yet at least, but rather to find a way to enter the supermarket, find the food that would spoil the fastest, and then bring it back to the office in the town hall she had already caught herself thinking of as her home twice while making her way to the supermarket.
At least the first obstacle was solved for her already, an abandoned shopping trolley having kept the sliding doors from being able to close. Climbing over it, Zelda tried her best to keep herself from searching for an answer to the question of whether the person having left it there had been about to leave or enter the supermarket. Those questions would not do anything to help her, leaving her with more pain than answers. What mattered was that it saved her from having to break the glass in the doors herself, allowing her to push down the feeling of being about to commit a crime as she jumped from the trolley, careful not to accidentally kick it away from beneath her. As much as she doubted that the doors would even be able to close on their own, it was not a risk she was willing to accept until it would prove to be absolutely necessary.
It was quiet inside the supermarket. In a way, Zelda supposed that it was the exact same as the rest of the city, possibly the rest of the world, a hollow shell of what it had been before. But as she moved along the shelves, slowly peeking out from behind them every time she would turn around to corner to make sure that she would not be met with the sight of yet another corpse, she could not help but notice the subtle differences.
Outside, her footfalls, while loud to her ears, had sounded sure, Zelda finding a bit of comfort in the fact that the ground beneath her feet had at least remained the same. Inside the supermarket, however, she could hear the slight squeak of her shoes against the linoleum as she made her way towards the fruit and vegetables section, could hear how her breathing echoed along the corridors between the shelves as she passed by row after row of pasta and flour, all packed into neat little containers, most of them having a design that seemed to rely mostly on muted colours.
It was not until she heard the crash that Zelda realised that she had reached out, showing half a shelf’s worth of pasta down onto the floor. Most of the cardboard packaging remained intact, but the few ruined boxes of pasta were also more than enough to cover the floor in tiny spirals and shells that broke beneath her shoes as she tried to make her way out of the mess she had created.
“Hylia!” Zelda hissed under her breath, the sound of her own voice sounding almost strange to her amidst the silence.
Taking in the damage she had created in only a brief moment of anger, Zelda wondered for a second if she should bother to pick up the intact boxes, arriving at the conclusion that it would be a waste of work. Picking them up would not change the fact that she had just reduced her own chances of long-term survival by destroying long-life food.
Still, as she continued walking along the aisles, Zelda made sure to remain more conscious of her own behaviour, careful not to let herself dwell for too long as she paused in front of a stack of picnic baskets, instead only taking one to ease the transport of her food, before turning left to pick up an electric torch as well. There was nothing funny about it, but as she stood there, clutching a yellow flashlight in one hand and a basket in the other, Zelda could not suppress a disbelieving laugh. Had it not been for the fact that she had now woken up twice only to find that the world remained exactly as she had left it, she would have been convinced that this was all nothing but a nightmare that refused to end.
Zelda made sure not to think too much about why she found herself turning away from the direct path to the fruit and vegetables to instead grab a teddy bear from the children’s section, carefully placing it upright in her basket before continuing. She had learnt her lesson—not thinking about things was the easiest way to keep herself from giving in to the same kind of exhaustion that had kept her from rising from the couch for hours after waking up. Grabbing an apple and placing it in the basket, trying her best to recall everything she could remember from the month were their biology classes had been dedicated to nutrition before letting beans and peas join it was simple and easy, almost enough to distract her from the fact that everything had changed in an instant. Trying to come to terms with or even understand the fact that this would be the rest of her life, that there would be no version of the future where she would have to figure out whether she should follow her father’s wishes and attempt to pursue a career in politics or tell him that she wanted something different, was not, so Zelda kept her mind occupied with calculations and attempts at figuring out just how much energy she would have to take into account when figuring out how much she needed to eat to survive.
Through it all, the supermarket remained quiet, leaving her alone with her questions and, finally, the decision to leave the watermelon behind.
Was it stealing as she walked back towards the entrance, holding onto the basket like it was a matter of life or death as she climbed over the shopping trolley once more? In a way, Zelda supposed that it was, even if she now knew better than to dare hope for there still being someone out there who would be able to try to arrest her for shoplifting. As much as she tried to feel guilty about it, the only emotion she could muster was an empty sense of dread as she brought the basket up to her father’s office once again, the frustration as she realised that she would have been able to bring back far more food if she had only thought to use the shopping trolley feeling hollow as she bit into the apple. While she would perhaps have been able to get the trolley through the streets given the almost complete lack of cars, with how she was barely able to keep herself from falling back onto the couch to sleep for years, Zelda knew that she would not have been able to bring all of it with her to the office.
It felt like it took more energy than she would ever have thought herself capable of possessing to even bring herself to get back up after finishing the apple, but she made it, forcing herself to throw the apple core out of the window, towards the little patch of grass that separated the footway outside from the road itself. Hopefully, nature would take care of it from there.
Turning her attention towards the electric torch, Zelda tried her best not to feel like a child as she turned it on, seeing the cone of light fill the room. It was working. It was what she had expected, but still, with how she would never have thought a situation like the one she was currently in to be possible even just a week ago, it was almost more than she had dared to hope for.
With the help of the adhesive tape from her father’s desk, she was able to fasten the torch to the windowsill, pointing it out towards the street outside. Taking a moment to look at her creation, Zelda forced herself to get up, to get herself to walk down the stairs so she could at least try to convince herself that any survivor would be able to spot the homemade beacon. But every last muscle felt like it was about to give out, the knowledge that she was wasting her time by still trying to cling to the lie that she might not be utterly alone only serving as the very last thing to push her back down onto the couch, Zelda soon losing the battle to remain awake.