Title: End Times
Author: Circeniko
Fandom: Lost
Pairing: none
Rating: PG
Summary: Lives aren't the only thing that are being lost. A challenge ficlet for hyperfocused's plague challenge a / . . (this archive doesn't allow the posting of links, so if you want to follow the one above then you'll have to delete the spaces).

It was Eko who realized what was going on first. It wasn't like anyone could miss it when their water supply turned to blood (and thank god for coconuts), but not everyone got it until the frogs came, and even they weren't a bulletproof clue; after all, it was a jungle island, wasn't this the kind of place that frogs would fall, if they were actually going to fall at all?

Then came the lice and wasn't that a miserable experience. It wasn't possible to hide from other people the way that everyone would have if they had been back home. At first some people tried, hiding in the jungle, cursing their lice-ridden existence, but after Libby disappeared and Charlie was attacked by a boar that option wasn't used as much.

Of course, if they'd thought that the lice were bad the flies were pure hell, so many that you couldn't breathe in without getting a fly. The hatch became very popular.

And then Eko was predicting that the cattle and horses would die, and everyone just looked at him blankly. What cattle? What horses?

There was no explanation for the dead horse that Kate found in the jungle, or for the way that she burst into tears at the sight of it.

By the time the boils and blisters came everyone was expecting them, but that didn't make it any easier.

The hail came in huge chunks of ice, like an iceberg was breaking above them. There wasn't time to get to the hatch, although a lot of people were there already. No one was killed, but Eko's church was completely destroyed. Some of them took it as a sign.

Afterwards they carted the melting chunks of ice down the hatch and tried to figure out how many people could be squished into one small space.

The group weathered out the locusts underground, listening to the restless movement of thousands of little creatures above them. They played a lot of loud music.

Nobody ventured out to experience the darkness except Eko, who sat at the mouth of the hatch, in the lgiht of the hatch, which looked like the only light in the world.

He wondered if the world was ending, he wondered if his brother would have still had faith, he wondered which among them aside from him was firstborn.