Chapter Text
There was a lot of confusion on that first day, and Terry slept through most of it.
He slumbered through the Flash itself— the hydrocodone he’d swallowed the day before had left him dead to the world— and when he woke up nearly a full day later and felt disoriented with the world around him, it really wasn’t anything new. He just chalked it up to a post-opioid haze.
He’d find out later that there had been panic, men swarming in the streets, looting. That the haze Terry was feeling had less to do with painkillers and more to do with… well, nobody was sure, but it was probably a side effect of whatever had made all the women disappear.
When he woke up to his window being smashed, he just assumed he was being robbed, grabbed a baseball bat from under his bed, and tried to convince himself that he’d be able to use it.
He wasn’t being robbed and he didn’t have to use it, but he sat in his dark apartment for the next hour just clutching it, tense, wondering why a man would smash a window and then not bother to break in, and trying not to think, as he woke up fully, about why there was so much yelling in the streets below him.
Olathe was destroyed in smatters, some places worse than others. The bizarre weather would come later, but the initial changes were shocking enough— whole blocks blown away, somehow destroying buildings and structures while sparing any men inside. The strange thing, though, was that other areas seemed nearly untouched, aside from the missing women. A few suburban neighborhoods, a handful of industrial buildings, one or two apartment complexes stayed standing.
Terry was lucky, for once in his life. His apartment was left standing, and he didn’t realize that was an oddity until he finally put down his bat, cautiously went to patch up the broken window, and saw that the building across the street had been completely demolished.
Not knowing what else to do, half wondering if he should check the expiration date on his pain killers or see if hallucinations were a side effect he’d forgotten, he weakly fell onto his battered mattress and turned on the tv. Static, static, static, static— every station seemed dead, until he hit the local news. The tv station was a wreck, but seemed to be still standing, and the broadcast had been taken over, for some reason, by the weatherman, instead of the newswoman Terry was used to.
“So please,” the weatherman said, voice hoarse, hands shaking, holding up a picture of a young girl, “if you— if you are a woman or have any— if there’s a woman in your household please, please let us know, please call in, and… I— I know this isn’t— professional but— Christy, her name is Christy, she’s s— six, black hair, brown eyes- she’s s-six, if you’ve seen her— if you have any news on my gr-granddaughter, please, please let me kn-know, I— again if you… if there are any women left in O-Olathe and— Christy, sweetie, if— if you can see this, call Grandpa, your dad-daddy said he gave you an e—emergency phone, please, call G-Grandpa—”
He turned off the tv, more confused than ever, his numbness breaking and turning into a soft panic as he processed what was being said— if there are any women left in Olathe— and he grabbed his phone.
He hadn’t called his family in years, God only knew if this was still their number, and he was fully prepared to be yelled at and told not to call again but he had to know—
“— Where’s Mom?”
Terry wished he had hidden the panic in his voice, wished he understood why the thought that a woman who hadn’t wanted to speak to him in a decade could be gone made him want to cry, but he didn’t have time to think about it before his brother spoke.
“They told you not to call, Rupert,” was the only response, and Terry didn’t know his brother’s voice well enough to tell if he’d been crying, and he didn’t have time to ask before the younger man hung up.
He tried calling again, he tried his other brother, he tried his father, he tried his mother, but either they were dead, or they were ignoring him, even at the end of the world, and he wasn’t sure which idea made him feel sicker. He had no one else to call, nobody else to ask after, and he stood, staring at his phone, stock still, hollow-feeling and numb as he listened to the chaos outside.
He turned on the news again, trying to drown out the sounds coming from outside his apartment, still unable to find any other channels that were getting any signal— nothing being broadcast out of Olathe seemed to be working— and listened to the weatherman call out for his granddaughter until a cameraman none-so-gently dragged him offscreen, asking anyone who had understood what had happened to the town to call in, asking people to stop looting, to stay in their homes, to remain calm, to, he repeated, stay in their homes, and finally asking, “And… I think I’ll take the opportunity that Gary took here, I— if you’ve seen my sister, please, tell her to call me, her name is Jenny—”
Terry turned off the tv, curled up on his mattress, put a pillow over his head to muffle the sound in the streets below, and took the man’s advice.