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Sarah Rogers was a nurse at Brooklyn Central Hospital and had seen the first wave of diseased patients come through. She saw their fevers, brought their blood to the lab to be tested, saw them die, saw them come back. It was just a few people at first but in the beginning, they didn't know what to expect. No one anticipated the violence of the dead. No one had guessed how quickly the disease would spread. A week after they'd admitted the first patient, almost half of the people in the hospital were burning up with fevers and most of the staff had stopped coming in to work. But Sarah still came in for her shift every day.The head physician on Sarah's floor, Abraham Erskine, was trying to figure out what the disease was. They'd sent off samples to the CDC and had gotten the official responses back, urging caution, isolating patients, but by then it was too late. Dr. Erskine had identified the initial symptoms, the method by which it spread, the systems it attacked. Initially he noted that it took two days to reach its final stages but soon he found it could happen as quickly as three hours. He theorized how the disease took over the host body after death, how the dead were able to walk again, their viciousness, the urge to bite. Then he started to notice the signs in himself. He had a fever even before he realized.Sarah hovered by him still holding thermometer that said 103° in her gloved hand.“Go,” he commanded. She looked up in surprise. “Take what you can and run. Get home to your son before it's too late.”“And you, doctor?”He grimaced but said nothing. She silently put down the fatal thermometer and took off her gloves. She gave him a nod of goodbye and left the room.She was halfway down the hall when she heard the gunshot. She rushed back but stopped just inside the doorway. The doctor lay dead with a hole through his head and a pistol on the floor next to him. She gagged at the sight but quickly pulled herself together. She had seen gore before, she had seen worse than this in just the past week.After a moment, she reached forward and took his gun and the small ammo box on his desk. She stopped to grab her bag from the locker room, then headed to the supply cabinet and the hospital's pharmacy. The pharmacist had abandoned his post and the staff had already started to raid his supply. By the time she left the building her bag was overflowing. She'd grabbed an assortment of inhalers for her son, antibiotics, painkillers, a box of epipens, ointments, IV fluid, bandages, and syringes. She took anything she thought could be useful in the coming days, unsure of what that meant exactly.She was almost to the exit when one of them rounded the corner and lunged at her. She screamed as its fingers clawed into her arm but she pushed it off and raised Doctor Erskine's pistol. She watched it fall and clutched her arm to her chest. The skin on her forearm was torn to shreds. She kept pressure on it and glanced around to find a safe space. She scrambled out behind the registration desk and dug into her supply bag. She pulled out gauze and taped it to her arm as tightly as she could. She found an extra shirt at the her bottom of her bag and pulled it on to hide the wound.Normally the streets outside the hospital would be busy but she only passed a handful people and all of them looked wary and nervous. She walked as quickly as she could to the subway entrance. Before the card terminals, guards were placed to check passengers for wounds. Sarah made sure her bandages were completely hidden and stepped toward the man. He scanned her visually and made her turn around in a circle before he cleared her for entry. She hurried onto the train and collapsed into a seat with relief.By the time she reached the Clark St stop, the blood was starting to seep through her sleeve and she was feeling faint. It was only four blocks to her apartment building but by the end her scrubs were covered in blood and she was stumbling. As she reached the gate to her building's courtyard, a short blond man rushed to open it for her. She was already losing focus and it took her a moment to recognize her own son.“Ma,” Steve exclaimed. He reached for her damaged side but she pulled away.“No,” she yelped. He stepped back in surprise as she leaned heavily against the iron gate. “Don't touch the blood. It spreads through bodily fluids. You've got to be careful.”“Oh, ma,” Steve breathed out, tears starting behind his eyes. He moved towards her and gently took her bag from her. Without the weight, she could stand a little easier. He grasped her good elbow, making sure his hand came nowhere near the blood on her shirt.Together they made it up to their second floor apartment and Steve helped Sarah to the couch. She lay curled around her arm and breathed in painful gasps. Steve ran to the bathroom and grabbed a towel to cover the wound, to try to stop the bleeding. When he looked at her fully, her face was flushed and her eyes were glassy. He offered her a glass of water and as she sipped, he felt her forehead. She was burning up.“What do I do?” he whispered but her eyelids were already fluttering closed. He knelt down on the floor next to her and concentrated on his breathing.A few hours later as the sun was setting, Bucky barged through their front door.“My mom told me,” he said, coming over to sit by Steve on the hardwood floor. “How is she?”“In and out. She said she got attacked leaving the hospital. She's got the fever so it's only a matter of time I think.”Bucky didn't say anything but pulled Steve towards him and held him tightly. Steve let his head fall on Bucky's shoulder as tears he had kept at bay slipped slowly down his cheeks. Bucky pressed a kiss to his temple and stroked his back. After a long time, Steve finally pulled away and wiped his nose on his sleeve as Sarah stirred.“Steve?” she croaked, her eyes searching for him.“I'm here.” Steve scrambled back to her side.“The disease, it's going to get bad. There's no treatment, no cure, it's going to keep spreading. It's like rabies, the infected, they get vicious,” Sarah shuddered. “You remember that documentary we watched, the ants?” She looked almost frantic now.“The ants? You mean that crazy fungus?”“Yes, yes! The disease is like that. Rabies and ants. Rabies and ants.” She seemed to wander off for a moment before focusing on Steve again. “The doctors say after death, the people aren't there anymore, no brain activity. Just the stem, the nervous system, overrides it. You've got to damage the brain to stop it, to stop them. When I die, you've got to-”“No!” Steve cried.“Steve,” she said fiercely. “I don't want to be one of them, the walking dead. In my bag… In the head…” She trailed off and lost consciousness again.Steve sat back and held his knees to his chest.“What's she talking about, Steve? Ants? Brains?” Bucky asked, an edge of fear in his voice.“Um,” Steve shook his head, struggling to focus. “Rabies is a virus but it lives in the nervous system not blood. It goes to your brain and it spreads through saliva. Like rabid dogs bite because it's the virus making them. And ants… I think it's a fungus but it goes into the ants and takes over, makes them go crawl upwards then it kills them and releases its spores. They're called zombie ants, I think.”“Shit,” Bucky breathed out. “They, uh, they halted construction on the bridge today. Boss said now we’re going to be working on a security checkpoint, like in the subways, for the people starting to leave the island.”“Yeah, ma’s been telling me about it. Last week, nothing. This week, hospital's near overrun. I didn't want her to go to work today. I told her not to.” Steve swore under his breath. “She says the staff started calling them ‘the walking dead.’ Her boss, Dr. Erskine was working with some guy, Banner I think his name was. They were trying to figure it out but I think it might be too late for that now.”“Shit,” Bucky repeated.Later, he made them both coffee while Steve stayed by Sarah's bedside. He rummaged through the bag Sarah had brought home. He found all the medical supplies and the gun. Five rounds in the chamber and a box with almost fifty bullets in it. He went back into the living room. He handed Steve one of the coffee mugs and placed the gun quietly on the table. Steve glanced at it and scowled but said nothing.Bucky's mother and sisters came down to sit with them a while until eventually it got too late and they went upstairs to bed. Around midnight, Sarah's body spasmed and her breath rattled in her chest. She collapsed back onto the couch, lifeless.Steve gasped out a single sob. Bucky reached out in comfort but Steve shook him off. He breathed out slowly through his nose, clenched his jaw, and continued his vigil.At some point, they dozed off, unable to stay awake. Bucky's head had tilted down at an uncomfortable angle while his body remained sitting up. Steve was sitting on the floor with his head against the arm of the couch holding his mother's limp hand. When the hand in his moved, Steve sprung awake, jostling Bucky in the process.His mother was moaning and her eyes had opened. They were milky, shot through with red and yellows. When she looked up at Steve, her lips curled back in a snarl. It looked like Sarah, it wore her face but it was just a virus, a fungus, a disease, something, taking over her body. His mother wasn't in there anymore.Steve repeated this in his head like a mantra. He closed his hand around the gun next to him and raised it up to point at her head. The body shifted, started to rise off of the couch. Steve took a step back but steeled himself and pulled back the hammer. It growled at them like a rabid animal. Steve aimed for its head, squeezed his eyes shut, and pulled the trigger.The body collapsed immediately and Steve fell to the floor a second later. His breathing was fast and shallow. Bucky knelt down and curled his body around Steve's. After a few minutes, Steve started gasping for air and Bucky dug out the inhaler in Steve's pocket.They both looked up when Bucky's parents opened the door, drawn by the sound of the gunshot. His mother gasped at the gruesome sight and hid her head behind her husband's shoulder. Mr. Barnes pressed his lips into a grim line and looked solemnly at his son. Steve had gone back to crying and Bucky and his father had a silent conversation over his head. Mr. Barnes jerked his head towards Mrs. Rogers and Bucky tilted head slightly down to Steve then jerked his chin towards the body. His father nodded and led his wife back out the door and shut it softly behind them.Eventually Bucky pulled Steve away from the body and walked him to his bedroom. Steve crawled onto the bed and curled into the fetal position. Bucky turned to go but Steve whimpered and reached for him. So Bucky climbed in next to the smaller man and Steve clung to his chest.It was over an hour before Steve stopped shaking and his breathing evened out. Bucky carefully pushed himself off the bed. He shut the door with a quiet click and climbed the stairs to his family's apartment. His father was already at the door by the time Bucky opened it. He held a bucket of supplies and handed Bucky a pair bright yellow rubber gloves and a face mask. They trooped down the stairs and began to clean up. They lifted the body carefully onto a sheet and rolled it up. Then they set to cleaning up the floor and couch as best as they could. They used bleach on everything to reduce whatever risk there was. They did all this in silence until they were nearly done and Mr. Barnes cleared his throat.“What do we do with the body?” he asked uncertainly.Bucky looked back at the lumpy sheet and cringed. “Maybe by the little garden in the back? We could… we could bury her there.”His father nodded, stoic again. Together, they lifted the sheet and carried it carefully down the stairs. When they were finished and outside the Rogers’ door again, Mr. Barnes gripped his son's shoulder tight and Bucky looked up to see his father’s were cloudy with emotion.“I'm sorry,” he said. Bucky nodded, grateful and exhausted. He went back into the apartment and went straight into the shower to scrub away the grime he felt had dug its way under his skin. When he finally came out, he stood in the doorway of the bedroom. Steve was still curled up tightly and though he trembled with each breath, at least he wasn't awake.Bucky pulled open a dresser drawer and grabbed out a pair of pj pants he kept stashed there. He got back into the bed and wrapped himself around Steve's small body, to comfort himself, to protect Steve, to keep him safe. Tears made trails down his cheeks as he finally fell asleep.
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Becca Barnes had known Steve Rogers her whole life. She was the youngest while her brother Bucky was the oldest. Steve and Bucky had been inseparable for years before Becca was even born. He was part of their family as much as her sisters. She had called his mother Aunt Sarah since she was a toddler, along with the rest of her siblings. She felt a pinch in her chest now when she thought of Sarah. After his mother died, Steve came to live with them because he said he couldn't stand to walk by his mother's empty bedroom. For a week or so, the apartment was full. Her parents in one room, her two oldest sisters in the room down the hall, Bucky and Steve across from her, then her corner room with her sister Angie. As the world outside got worse, shelters began to fill up and they went down to volunteer everyday. She felt lucky that they were all still together in the same building they'd always lived in.Becca's sister Margot was the first of their family to go. It had been early in the plague, just a few days before all the schools in the city closed their doors. Margot was in her first year at the Pratt Institute, where Steve had graduated from a few years before. She rode her bike back and forth for classes most of the time. She'd had a bad fever the day before but she insisted on going to classes while she was still able to. The next day, she didn't come home. Her father had gone out searching for her and found her a few blocks away from the school on DeKalb Ave. He didn't say what condition her body was in, just returned that night with dirt on his hands from digging her grave in the yard. They went down the next morning to say their goodbyes.Ellen, her oldest sister, was next. The church at the end of their block had set up a food pantry for the neighborhood. She went with two of the neighbors to bring home supplies for the residents in their building. They returned with torn and bloody clothing. She hadn't made it back with them. Aunt Sarah and her two sisters were dead before she even had time to process it. They had closed up Ellen and Margot's room and avoided looking at the door to the Rogers’ apartment as they went downstairs. It left a hollow feeling in her chest. Most of the people in their area had started leaving. The office buildings were completely empty and most of the storefronts were boarded up. The people who were left stayed inside. She saw them scurrying along the sidewalks sometimes with nervous glances over their shoulders, but mostly she saw the dead.She'd seen clusters of them feeding and the picked over skeletons left behind. They stumbled through the streets aimlessly with rotting faces and limbs dangling loosely from their bodies. It was a small mercy that her sisters weren’t out there wandering the street with the walkers. She believed they were in heaven, protected from this hell. They were buried in the sparse yard behind their building. Sometimes she thought she'd like to be out there with them. It would be peaceful, she thought, like going to sleep forever. As long as she didn't become one of them. She didn't know what happened to the souls of the walkers, but it was clear that they didn't have any.A couple weeks after Ellen died, her father had a heart attack in his sleep. Her mother's scream pierced through the house when she woke up and he didn't. Becca could still hear the sound ringing in her ears hours afterward. Becca and her remaining sister Angie stayed with their mother while Steve and Bucky carried him downstairs to bury him. His death was almost a relief to Becca. At least the manner of it, just a simple heart attack. She had almost forgotten that people could still have normal deaths without some gruesome creature tearing them apart. Steve told her later that they had stopped on the landing and Bucky drove a screwdriver into his father's head, just in case. Becca hated to think about it but this was the world they lived in now so she had to. Bucky had to. He had looked so worn when he returned, like an old man wearing her brother's face.Becca and her remaining sister Angie took turns sitting with their mother. After she'd stopped screaming, she hadn't said a word. Steve would bring in a cup of tea occasionally and she would take a single sip before abandoning the cup on the bedside table. It was evening and Becca was alone with her in the room when her mother turned and finally seemed to see her.“Becca, my baby girl.” She reached up her hand to cup Becca's face.“Mama?”“I'm so sorry you have to live in this horrible world,” she whispered.Becca didn't know what to say to that. Her mother sighed and offered a sad smile in response to her daughter's silence.“It'll be okay. God will keep us safe in the end.” She grasped the small gold crucifix at her neck and turned her eyes upward. She didn't speak again though Becca could see her lips moving occasionally in what seemed like prayer.The next morning just after dawn, a gunshot rang through the building. Becca bolted out of bed as Angie was lifted her head in confusion.'No. Please, no. Please please please, no,' she begged silently as she ran across the hall to her parents’ bedroom. Her mother lay on top of the sheets in her best church clothes. There was blood soaking the pillow from where she had shot herself in the head. In her hand was a small black pistol that Becca hadn't even known existed. Bucky burst into the room as Becca reached the side of the bed and collapsed to her knees by her mother's body. Angie stood in the hall shaking with great sobs. Bucky punched holes in the bedroom wall until Steve pulled him gently into his arms. Becca didn't move. She didn't cry. She just watched the blood spread across the pale linens.Angie refused to go to the graves when they went to bury her with the other four. When they returned, she was scrubbing layers of burnt on grime off the bottom of their pots with single-minded determination. She moved around their small kitchen all day with a frantic sort of energy. Becca had to take a bowl of pasta salad out of her hands and pull her away to their room so that Angie would sleep. Becca moved her blanket and pillow from her bed and laid down next to her sister like when they were little.Since the plague began, their father had made daily rounds to check on their neighbors. His friends below them had left to stay with family in Jersey. A man on the bottom floor never told his family he'd been bitten. When they heard the commotion and realized he'd turned, her father had called the special emergency number but by the time they arrived, the whole family was dead. The men shot each person through the head, even the children, and they hauled away the bodies to be dumped in a mass grave. By the time their parents died, the last tenant left in the building was an elderly woman, Mrs. Flanagan, who lived on the first floor.Angie was down there checking on her when she was attacked. The old woman hadn't left her apartment in weeks but she had died and even without a bite, she had turned like the rest of the dead. The three of them heard Angie’s yell echo through the building. Bucky grabbed their mother’s pistol as he ran out the door and took the stairs two at a time. Steve and Becca came careening into the entryway just after him. The old woman was there, moving towards them. As soon as he saw the blood on Mrs. Flanagan’s face, Bucky lifted the gun and fired a bullet into her forehead without hesitation. She dropped to the floor instantly and didn't move.Becca pushed past him towards the noise she heard coming from the kitchen. Angie was there, bleeding out on the kitchen floor with her throat torn open. She tried to gasp in air but it only made a horrible gurgling sound. Becca crawled over and cradled her sister's head in her lap. Angie looked up at her with terrified eyes. Becca stroked her hair until Angie stopped breathing. She cried loud ugly sobs over her sister's body. She had shared a room with Angie her entire life. They had made up secret codes and created elaborate fantasy worlds as children. When she finally stopped crying, Bucky was holding a large kitchen knife awkwardly in his hands. Becca sat up and gently took it from him. He started to protest but she hushed him.“You have enough blood on your hands, big brother. Now it's my turn,” she spoke softly without lifting her eyes from her sister's face. With Angie's head still cradled in her lap, Becca put the tip of the knife against the soft part of her temple. She gripped the handle until her knuckles turned white and drove it into her sister's brain. When it was done, she pulled the knife back out and dropped it on the floor with a clatter. She scrambled back against the cupboards and drew in great gasping breaths. Bucky knelt beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. When she felt steady again, she looked up to meet Bucky's eyes and found them just as full of tears as her own. Steve and Bucky carried Angie's body out and it seemed almost routine as they dug the grave. When they went back inside, Becca noticed a casserole dish sitting on the kitchen table where Angie must have set it down. Becca felt sick to her stomach as she carried it back upstairs. The three of them sat mutely around their table and choked down their sister's last dinner. Then it was just her, Bucky, and Steve left in the whole building.Her first night alone in her room, their room, she cried for hours. She was so used to hearing the breathing of another person that the silence terrified her. At two in the morning, she finally wrapped herself in her blanket and went to knock on Bucky's door. The two men looked up at her with groggy expressions when she creaked open the door. Then they saw her red-rimmed eyes and Bucky got out of bed. He hugged her tightly through her thick comforter and she felt her heart ease a tiny bit in the cocoon of her older brother's arms. Bucky and Becca had never been close. He was working full-time on DOT construction crews when she was still in middle school. With thirteen years and three siblings between them, they'd never really had a chance to get to know each other. Now the three of them were the only family any of them had left in the world.Steve came over and led them both back to bed. It was only a full size mattress but Steve tucked her in between the two of them. She lay with her head on Bucky's shoulder and listened to his breathing and the steady beat of his heart. Steve stroked her hair as she drifted off. Her last thought before she fell asleep was that they might actually make it out of this hell together.
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When Becca woke up the next day, Bucky and Steve were already in the kitchen, sitting with coffee and toast in front of them. Steve poured her a cup and pushed a piece of toast over as she took the seat across from him.“Okay?” Bucky asked.“No,” she answered, too exhausted by the past weeks to pretend.“Yeah, me either,” he sighed.Steve quietly reached out to place his hand over Becca's. She twisted it around to link her fingers in his. Where Bucky sometimes teased her as the baby in the family, Steve had always been indulgent. But Bucky wasn't teasing now; his eyes looked as hollow as she felt. Eventually Becca ventured back into her room. Two twin beds sat across from each other. Becca's sheets were crumpled messily at the foot of her bed while Angie's were straightened and tucked. She'd only gotten more neurotic as the plague spread. Becca sat on her bed and stared at Angie's pillow. The emptiness of it physically hurt.She got up and pulled out the comforter. She folded it up and did the same with the sheets as neatly as she could knowing Angie would have appreciated it. She stripped the bed and carried everything down the hall to Margot and Ellen's old room. The door squeaked from disuse. She left the pile on one of their beds and went back for the mattress. Steve and Bucky watched as she carried it past the kitchen but they didn't offer to help and she wouldn't have accepted any if they had. She did the same with the box spring and the simple metal frame it had sat on. She didn't bother to set the bed up again, just abandoned it in the abandoned room and shut the door behind her.She stood in doorway of her room and looked at the empty space across from her bed. Seeing Angie's bed missing hurt, but not as much as seeing it empty. She closed that door too and went back to sit with the boys.“We need to learn how to defend ourselves better,” Steve announced in a raw but firm voice. Bucky and Becca both lifted their heads to listen to him.“There's only one gun and we can't rely on just that. We need to be able to fight them off and we need to be able to kill them.” He paused for a breath and his tone changed from fierce to desperate. “We just lost our whole family in less than two months and I absolutely refuse to lose either one of you.” Steve's voice caught at the end and Bucky let out a small choked sound. There was silence for a moment before Becca spoke.“What do we do?” she asked.Steve chewed on his lip a moment. “Well, what are our strengths, physically?”“I'm on the field hockey team. Well, I was on the team up until two months ago when there was still such a thing as high school sports,” she corrected herself. “We'll need to run fast and hit things when we have to go out there for supplies eventually.”“Bucky and I used to go to Goldie’s boxing gym a lot. You know, so I wouldn't get the shit kicked out of me when I picked fights with high school bullies.” The corner of Steve's mouth lifted in a wry almost smile. “We could teach you the basics at least.” Becca nodded in agreement.“I can shoot,” Bucky suggested after a moment's thought. “I could teach you. I've still got my pellet gun to practice with, so we don’t use up the real ammo.”Becca raised an eyebrow. “Where did you learn to shoot a gun?”“Boy scouts, believe it or not. We mostly just did volunteer work around here but we would go upstate to a camp for a couple weeks every summer. I did it for five years. Ma has some of my sharpshooter awards stashed away somewhere.” “Yeah, I remember that,” Steve agreed. “It sounds like we’ve got a decent start.”*Only two days after Angie's death, they went up to the roof of their building to start training.Bucky went over basic gun safety first. The gist of it was don't point the barrel at yourself or anyone else if you don't intend to kill them. And if you intend to kill them, aim for the head. On the low wall that divided their roof from the neighbors, he set up rusty old beer cans they found kicked into a corner. He demonstrated loading, the safety, position, aim. He pulled the trigger. The quick snap noise it made was a little underwhelming compared to the pistol Bucky had fired to put down Mrs. Flanagan. In quick succession, he hit all five cans, each on his first try. Becca couldn't help but clap when he was finished and he blushed a little before putting on his serious face.It was only a pellet gun but he made Becca load it herself. She rested the butt of the gun on her shoulder and lifted the barrel. It wasn't heavy but it took her a moment to find her balance in the unfamiliar position. She lined up the sights on one of the cans and held her breath as she pulled the trigger. Her shot was on the low side and there was a tiny puff of old brick dust.“Good, try again,” Bucky encouraged.Becca went through the same process but pointed slightly higher. There was a satisfying little ping as she hit the first can. With only three misses, she managed to hit all the cans. Steve whooped for her when she hit the last one and she grinned as she handed off the gun to him. He took it with significantly less confidence.“This is not going to go well for me,” he muttered.“That's the spirit, Stevie!” Bucky teased.Sure enough, it took Steve four tries to hit the first can and even then, he only clipped it. Each time he took a little longer to line up his shot. By the last can, he hadn't particularly improved any.“Uh-” Bucky started.“It's my shitty vision. I can't put together all the distances without one of them being blurry. Or at least that's the excuse I'm using,” he said with a self deprecating smile. “We can't all be master assassins like the Barnes siblings.” Next Becca ran them through aerobic and footwork drills. She taught them the grapevine steps and had them half dancing back and forth over the roof. Steve puffed on his inhaler twice. He was slower than Bucky but his footwork was precise whereas Bucky's speed made him clumsy.“This feels like a tortoise and the hare type moment,” Becca laughed.“For such a good dancer, you need to practice your footwork,” Steve laughed with a sideways grin.“Oh yeah, Rogers? You gonna teach me?” Bucky countered as he grabbed Steve by the waist and pulled him against his chest in a ballroom pose.“Barf,” Becca interrupted loudly before their flirting could go any further. Bucky barked out a laugh but didn't let go of Steve.“He's like my brother, and you're actually my brother.”“We're not even kissing, Becks,” Bucky rolled his eyes.“Oh trust me, I know. My room is next to yours. I've heard you two do a lot more than just kiss,” she shot back.“Bullshit,” but he sounded uncertain.“Are you kidding me? I used to hear Steve sneak up the fire escape when I was like eight.”“Really?” Now Bucky looked satisfyingly horrified.“Yeah, I asked Ellen about it because she was the big sister, yah know.” Becca started giggling as she remembered. “I can't even imagine how awkward it must've been for her to explain to an eight year old that her brother is having gay sex.”Steve's cheeks flushed but Bucky burst out laughing. Becca and Bucky were laughing so hard that Steve eventually joined in. It was the first time any of them had really laughed in weeks. It bubbled out of them with a frantic energy. Becca’s giggles rose in pitch and tears pricked in her eyes, both happy and sad. Eventually the three of them were gasping for breath as they calmed down. Steve sat down with his inhaler and the other two followed suit.They stayed down there a moment and Bucky turned to Becca with a solemn sort of expression.“We're going to make it out of this thing alive, Becks. You know that right?”“Yeah?” she said with a surprised little sob of disbelief.“We are. The three of us, just like Steve said,” he responded with a stronger voice.“Okay,” she sniffled.When they finally got back up, Bucky moved towards the door downstairs.“I'm not done yet!” Becca called wiping the dampness from her cheeks. She made a show of stretching her leg against the wall while Steve did a couple a toe touches to get limber again. Bucky sighed and laughed at the same time.“What's next on the list, Sergeant Barnes?”She looked at the low walls that separated the roofs of individual buildings. On older blocks, the roofs connected in a large square with a courtyard in the center, hidden from the streets. Their area had gotten a few office buildings and shops added but their rooftop square was relatively intact. She went to front of the building and looked over to the other side of the street. More rooftops, in every direction. She saw them as above ground roads that they could use without attracting the attention of those below. They'd have to touch ground to get between different blocks but if they found places where the fire escapes matched up, it would only take three minutes max to get up to another roof.“What do you see?” Becca asked the boys as she gestured out at the rooftop view.“I don't know,” Bucky shuffled his feet. “More roofs.”“No one,” Steve said, wonder brightening his face. “Alive or dead. It's clear.”Bucky's grin exploded over his face when he realized what they were saying. “There's no threat from above. That's how we travel. That is how we survive!” He grabbed them both and pressed kisses on their heads. “How many people must there be in New York, in the world, who are still sticking to the ground just like dead? Becca, you're brilliant!”They spent the next hour practicing moving over the roofs of their block back and forth. Becca side vaulted, Bucky was tall enough to jump the walls, Steve boosted himself up and over. They pushed themselves until they felt like falling over before they finally called it a day and went back to the apartment for another meal of canned food from the pantry.*Back during the first week after everything had fallen apart, Becca had felt like she was going to scream. She was used to jogging in all weather and going to practice everyday after school. By the second week cooped up, she was pacing their bedroom so much, Angie kicked her out. Then she was walking the hallway and the stairs. Eventually she found a routine. Up and down the three flights of stairs, stopping to jog the hallway on each level. From her front door on top level to the back door of the building. The same pattern, minimum of three sets, twice a day.At some point Steve had started to make the circuit with her. He walked slowly where she hustled and would only complete one round to her three. After a while, he'd started moving a bit faster and added the second loop. One day when she was especially frustrated and had done five rounds instead of three, she had stopped beside him on a landing. She was dripping sweat and breathing heavily.“Why?” She asked, hands braced on her knees for balance. He’d caught his breath and thought a moment before responding.“I'm not a strong person naturally. I've had pneumonia more than once, my asthma always gets in my way, I've got a weak heart. I was the kid who always get a free pass out of gym class in school. And it wasn't a huge deal. There was medicine, hospitals, sit-down jobs for work. The only fights I got in were my choice and all I needed were a couple boxing lessons from Bucky to make it through.” He paused. “People like me aren't going to survive long in this new world. We either have to adapt to it or hope there's someone to protect us from it. I don't want to be a burden and I don't want to be protected. I want survive this apocalypse and I don't want to be the reason someone else doesn't survive.”At the end of his speech, he had looked at her with probing eyes. She stood up straighter. There were no points to argue. He was right. All his words were true.“Yeah,” was all she had said. He’d jerked a nod of approval and she went inside to wash up while he started down the stairs again.
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“Go!” Becca shouted.Steve watched Bucky spring into motion and move forward with an attack. He kept his feet light as he danced sideways out of reach and forced Bucky to shift his balance. He ducked under Bucky's next swing and pushed himself into the other man's space. Bucky froze as Steve pressed a wooden serving spoon against the underside of his exposed throat. It was over in less than two minutes.“Dammit,” Bucky muttered as their sparring match ended. “Going underneath to the brain, that's clever.”“I'm never going to stronger than them, so I've gotta be smarter and quicker. Gotta kill them before they kill me.”"That how you survived all those back alley fights? Going for the killing blow?” Bucky teased.“That, and trashcan lid shields,” he responded with a playful shrug. “Which is actually not a bad idea…” He mused as Bucky groaned.“I think I'll stick to guns and knives, thanks,” Becca joked. “Although seeing you've ‘killed’ both of us at least five times each, maybe you're onto something there.” Steve had to turn away briefly to cover up his smile.“Don't gloat. Just tell us your secrets,” she demanded.“Look,” Steve said seriously as he paused for water. “You're both used to being the stronger person, but with them, you're not. It's not about landing the heaviest blow, it's about landing the smartest one that'll kill them quickly. Out there, it's not going to be boxing match, it's going to be a dogfight.”Steve took up position again and this time it was Becca in front of him. She didn't hesitate in her attack and every strike pushed Steve back, keeping him on the defensive. She made a grab for his shirt to draw him closer and deliver the final head strike. Steve twisted wildly to escape her grip and struck forward with his sparring spoon, landing a blow to her thigh that was sure to bruise. The two of them were more evenly matched and Becca was taking his advice to heart. She never left herself exposed for a direct hit but eventually Steve found an opening to dart into her space. But as his arm swept forward, her rubber spatula was already against his temple.“Nice one, Beck!” Bucky cheered.Steve took his defeat with grace. He grabbed another drink of water to hide his labored breathing but Bucky noticed.“Time for target practice?” he suggested and Steve groaned. Even though they practiced every morning, he was still the worst of them at shooting.“Fine, fine, let’s get this embarrassment over with,” Steve griped, but secretly was glad for the break from sparring so he slumped off willingly after Bucky.*Contents of the pantry:
a rock hard, dusty box of laundry powder,
a tin of off-brand instant coffee,
a few loose packages of microwave popcorn,
a half empty bag of whole wheat flour,
a couple red onions that were more sprout than onion,
a bag of cornmeal,
a flimsy box of Lipton tea,
The Jar.Steve and Becca stood in the doorway of the small pantry, both staring at the last jar on the shelf. They didn't even know where it'd come from. Neither of them could remember anyone eating that sort of thing. At least not the Barnes. Maybe a grandparent, and seeing as all of those were dead by the time Becca was in middle school, how old was that disgusting jar?“You try it,” Steve encouraged. “It's your apartment.”“No fucking way,” Becca balked.“The last protein we had was four days ago. We can't survive on griddle cakes forever,” he reasoned.“We can damn well try!” Becca spat back. She kept the jar in the corner of her vision like it would attack if she made eye contact or let her guard down. Steve stared at it directly in a sort of fixated horror. They stood at a stalemate until Bucky came around the corner. They startled and he eyed them suspiciously.“What's going on?”Becca just pointed at the jar. It'd been stashed at the back of the lowest shelf and the top of it was covered in caked on grit. The label was faded with age and all that could be clearly made out was a cartoon of a dancing pig.“Ugh,” he grimaced. “Nonna Patrizio's pickled pigs' feet.”“Why are they here?” Becca said a curled lip. She had very few memories of her grandfather's wife but could vaguely remember her mother complaining about the woman.“Ma had to get them for her that year her and Grandad spent Christmas with us. And then she never even opened the jar. Ma was so pissed.”“So,” Steve started slowly, “do we eat it?”“Fuck that, I will eat that only if I'm legitimately on the brink of starvation,” Bucky declared. “I would rather just shoot a pigeon to eat.”“You know rich people eat pigeon? They call it ‘squab.’ I saw it once at the grocery store and it was stupidly expensive,” Steve told them.“I doubt they were from our city garbage birds but I will totally eat pigeon or squab or whatever, as long as you never ask me to eat a filthy subway rat...or the contents of that jar,” Becca said with a shudder.“Agreed,” Bucky replied. “So who wants to go up to the roof and hunt pigeons?”*Once they had shot three birds, they gathered them up and went downstairs. Considering the bird feathers, blood, guts, and their inexperience with all of those things, it took a good hour before they had ready-to-cook meat in front of them. After consulting Mrs. Barnes’ tattered copy of the Joy of Cooking, Steve lit the gas for the broiler and stuck all three birds in there. He cooked them thoroughly to kill any bacteria they might be harboring. When they were ready, Steve put a bird on each plate along with their standard flat corn cakes. Using some wheat flour, finely chopped red onions, and the meager fat drippings, he'd made a thick gravy that he now spooned out in equal quantities onto their plates to cover up the dryness of the meat.“It's like apocalyptic Thanksgiving. All we're missing is a can of cranberry sauce,” Becca said with a slight sarcasm that did nothing to disguise her obvious delight at the meal in front of her.“I would kill for green bean casserole right now,” Bucky groaned as he shoveled food into his mouth.“Considering that all those ingredients can come from cans, we could make that happen.”“Unfortunately we already ate all of the canned vegetables we had and no one in the building had green bean casserole in mind when they were stocking up for the end of the world,” Becca added regretfully.“Speaking of stocking up, we don't have much food left from what we collected in our building,” Bucky commented. “We can't survive off of pigeon and cornmeal forever.”“I’d noticed that,” Steve grimaced. They'd all known their food supply was getting low, but talking about it meant doing something about it. As much as they'd been training and preparing for when they finally had to go out there, no one had felt quite ready. This was the first time they were speaking openly about it.“We should try looking next door,” Becca suggested.“Yeah, we could use your rooftop traveling idea,” Bucky agreed. “We'll still have to deal with any walkers inside but it'll be better than the streets.”“You think we're up for it?” Steve raised an eyebrow.“I think we're as ready as we'll ever be,” Bucky responded firmly.Steve mulled it over. “We'd have to use a crowbar or something if the doors are locked.”“We've got tools in the back closet.”“I mean, in two or three days we'll be out of food, so we kind of have to be ready,” Becca pointed out. “Two buildings down, most of the residents cleared out or went to the refugee center at the airports. There shouldn't be that many walkers left inside for us to take out.”“Okay, if that's the plan, we should do it midmorning. The walkers are really active at night and it seems like they're calmest in the morning,” Steve replied. Bucky and Becca both nodded in agreement.After dinner, they cleaned their plates and Steve pulled out a deck of cards. The edges of them were getting beat up from how often they played. Becca always won at poker, even though the coins on the table were worthless now. With no television or internet, or electricity for that matter, they had to turn to older ways to entertain themselves. Sometimes while he cleaned up after supper, Steve would start humming an old hymn from their church choir days and Bucky would join in with his melodious tenor and it would pass the time. The days were getting longer as spring crept on but even so, they’d gone through most of their box of dusty white emergency candles. Tonight, no one was in the mood for much so after two rounds of rummy, they passed quietly the rest of the night quietly as they are geared up mentally for the next day.*Bucky stood with a crowbar braced against the frame of the rooftop door. It led to the building on their row they calculated to have the fewest dead inside. At least three of the four families had left before the bridges closed. Steve carried empty knapsacks in hope they'd be full of food by the time they walked back out the door.“Ready?” Bucky asked.“Ready.” Becca responded quickly and Steve found himself nodding along with her. He watched Becca shift her knives in her hands while trying keep her face neutral to hide her nervousness from them. Steve adjusted his grip on the metal garbage can lid and pushed his glasses up one more time. He held a hammer in one hand and lifted his makeshift shield up to chest height. He did not feel ready.Bucky strained against the crowbar and wrenched the door open. It made a crack so loud Steve could hear it echo off of the brick walls. He cringed.“Knock knock,” he muttered.The first thing that hit them was the smell. It was like rotten meat that had sat forgotten in the back of the fridge for a month. It was possible that's exactly what it was. Steve moved in first with the shield up but there was nothing waiting for them. He cautiously stepped forward as his eyes adjusted to the gloom in the stairwell. It looked perfectly normal. As they crept inside, Steve kept expecting movement. He was waiting for the hoard to descend upon them. After a full minute of silence, he started down the stairs, Becca behind him and Bucky in the rear. They stopped at the first apartment door they came to. Whoever had lived there had left it unlocked when they evacuated so the three of them were able to walk right in.Once again, they listened for any sounds but heard nothing. They went room by room anyways just to be sure, but it was empty. Unfortunately, so was the pantry. There were a couple loose pieces of stale bread surrounded by mouse droppings and a dented can of sliced beets. Bucky shrugged and grabbed the can before they moved on. No one bothered to check the fridge. The next apartment held only a little more including an almost full box of pasta, a small tin of tomato paste, and a jar of pickled eggs.“Better than pig's feet,” Becca said, stowing the food in her backpack. They were on the first floor before they heard anything and all of them immediately froze. It sounded almost like knocking. Becca traced the sound to a bedroom in the back apartment. When they were outside the door, Becca looked back at Steve with her hand on the doorknob and waited for his nod. As soon as she had the door open, he pushed into the space with his trash can lid shield raised. He hit against a body and threw all his force at it. The creature snarled at him with its jaws snapping and Bucky joined him as Steve struggled to hold it off. Becca dashed in and shoved one of her knives into its temple. The thing fell limply to the ground a second later.Once it was on the floor, they saw it had been a woman. There were two small beds and a rocking chair in the room that was clearly a nursery. The forms of two children were visible on the beds, covered in what appeared to be their own blood and guts. Their mother's arms were colored black with the old blood. Steve heard Becca gasp behind him as they took in the gruesome scene. He grabbed for the doorknob and backed them out of the room. It closed with a click. All three of them were pale. Becca had her hands pressed over her mouth. Bucky slid down the wall with a thump onto the floor.“This is hell,” Bucky choked out with tears starting in his eyes. “We live in hell now.” His voice broke in a sob and then he slumped to cry in earnest.Becca recovered herself a bit and Steve exchanged a worried glance with her.“I'll stay with him,” she whispered. Steve nodded but backed away from Bucky with reluctance.He moved towards the kitchen and checked the cupboards and pantry. Both were almost as full as if the groceries had been bought yesterday. He grabbed everything. When nothing else would fit in their bags, he returned to the other two.Steve knelt down and cupped Bucky’s face between his hands.“Listen to me. They didn't survive, and the way they didn't survive is awful. But we will. It'll be horrifying, but we will survive this.” Steve stood up and Bucky let himself be pulled up as well.Even though they had accomplished their goal for the trip, no one felt successful as they made their way home.
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Bucky kept one eye closed as he focused through the cross hairs. The safety was off and his finger rested next to the trigger but not on it. The bars of the fire escape bit into his knees but the railing made a good brace to steady his rifle. From his perch, he had the best view of the convenience store across the street. The windows would normally be covered in a patchwork of advertisements but most of those had fallen down by now and Bucky had a clear line of sight. Steve and Becca were inside, packing up all the items on their “shopping” list. Band-aids, toilet paper, bottled water, allergy medication, lady items for Becca, soap, baby wipes, canned meat, canned fruit, non-perishable food of any kind. The fruit was on the list because Steve had joked about scurvy, but then they all actually got worried about it.Bucky watched them as they gathered up supplies. He glanced around the store and the street for threats every twenty seconds. There were a few of the dead milling about on the street but none of them had noticed Becca and Steve’s quiet descent from the fire escape or when they darted across the street to the store. While the other two were out there, all he could do was wait anxiously for their return and kill any walker that got in their way. So far they had been successful on all of their missions outside. When necessary, Bucky had taken down any threats with clean and quick shots to the head. There had been a few scrapes and they quickly found out that, as long as she had something sharp in her hand, Becca was downright vicious. Whether it be a kitchen knife, stiletto, cleaver, machete, box cutter, or broken beer bottle, it turned out Becca was good with blades. Bucky wasn't sure if she'd always had that in her or if it was something this world had created in her. He wasn't sure how he felt about it.He saw the scuffle of movement inside just a few seconds before Becca came crashing out the door with Steve on her heels. The noise of it immediately alerted the biters in the area who all began marching towards the sound. Steve fumbled with his pistol and shot wildly at the store door as more walkers started to pour out from inside. Bucky took out the two nearest Steve and one that was closing in on Becca. She kicked another one in the torso to send it flying away from her before stabbing it in the head with the giant carving knife she carried. Steve ran for the fire escape while she held the walkers at bay. Bucky sent the ladder down swiftly and Steve leapt up. He caught the bar on his second try and used his momentum to strain for the second rung. He pulled his legs up as quickly as he could and collapsed on the landing. Bucky breathed slowly and carefully as he took out all of the walkers within a ten foot radius. Once Steve was clear, Becca swung up her heavy bag up to him. She jumped up to grab the lowest rung and scrambled up to them. Steve was still winded and breathing heavily.“Really glad you guys made me do all those pushups,” he gasped.“Can you move?” Bucky said in a clipped voice, shouldering his rifle and Steve’s pack. The walkers were all clamoring beneath them and more were already appearing at either end of the block.“Yeah.” Steve took a deep breath and got to his feet as they started the climb up to the roof. Once there were four stories between them and the ground, Bucky finally stopped.“What the hell happened?” he blurted out.“There were walkers locked in a broom closet. I opened the door thinking it would lead to backroom storage. It very much did not,” Becca explained.“Shit.”“Hey, I've only got one bullet left,” Steve said checking his gun.“Shit.” Bucky counted his own ammo.“You know you say that an awful lot?” Steve replied.“Only when things are shit. Which they are. A lot.” Bucky responded as he tallied up his numbers. “Seven.”“Shit,” Steve confirmed.*The heavy door that led out to their rooftop used to open with a screech of grinding metal but they’d greased the hinges because Bucky worried that the sound would alert someone, or something, to their movement. He’d come out quietly and Steve didn’t notice. Bucky watched him leaning against the ledge on their rooftop. He was hunched over his sketchbook and his small frame stood out against the open sky. Steve looked up when he heard Bucky's heavy steps come up behind him. Bucky wrapped his arms lightly around Steve's waist and placed a delicate kiss on the back of his neck.“I can see you're vigilantly on guard up here,” he teased.Steve looked up from his sketchbook to gaze out over the scene before him. “Yup, working hard as always,” he replied sardonically.“Can I see?” Bucky asked and Steve tilted the sketchpad up for him.On the page Steve had drawn the view from their roof. The buildings closest to them took up only a small corner at the bottom but their lines were crisp and sharp. The picture moved on to the Brooklyn Bridge as it now looked in front of them. It loomed on the page, dark and empty and broken. The bridge had been blown to pieces along with every other bridge in NYC in one last doomed attempt to stop the spread of the disease. Steve captured its jagged remains with a heavy charcoal. The support towers still rose above the East River but the large chunks of the roadway had fallen into the water. A portion on the Manhattan side stuck out at an almost ninety degree angle and the snapped cables hung limply around it. Beyond the bridge, Steve had recreated the Manhattan skyline in soft light edges so that it looked distant and shrouded in smoke as it had been for weeks afterward until the fires there burnt themselves out. The drawing was true to the sight before them but Steve had drawn it in a way that made Bucky feel cold inside. He shuddered and dragged his eyes away from the paper.“Steve,” he breathed out and it sounded like a sob. He hid his face by pressing it into Steve's neck and tried to distract himself by kissing his skin with a sort of desperation. With every touch of his lips and every movement of his hands around Steve's stomach, Bucky tried to erase the horror of their lives.“Come downstairs?” Bucky invited in a quiet voice. Steve made a low noise in his throat and leaned into him.“Okay,” Steve replied. He turned around in Bucky's arms and dragged their mouths together. He pulled Bucky's tongue into his mouth the way he knew Bucky loved. The groan and press of hips were his reward as he moved to nibble along Bucky's jaw. In a quick motion, Bucky lifted Steve up against him and Steve responded by wrapping his legs around Bucky's waist. Their lips stayed together as Bucky walked them towards the roof door. He pressed Steve against the metal and let him feel his growing erection. Steve's kisses became fiercer until they broke with a gasp.“Here?”“I think our bed might be slightly more comfortable,” Steve replied and slid down to stand. Bucky opened the door and made sure it was bolted securely before following Steve.A year ago, before everything, they might've done it on the roof just for fun or because they couldn't keep their hands off each other. Now all of their sex seemed to carry the undercurrent of fear. Fear of the world around them, fearful of tomorrow, the terror losing each other at any time. Their sex was either quick and desperate to keep each other close or long and tender as they tried to fill every movement with all the love they had for each other. But they rarely spoke about any of this. Anytime one of them tried to voice those anxious thoughts, they would both end up crying and holding on as tightly as they could while they still could.*Bucky figured New York was either a great place to be or a horrible place to be during the apocalypse. On one hand, there were tons of resources everywhere. On the other hand, there were also tons of zombies everywhere.Of the 8.5 million people who lived in the five boroughs, Bucky estimated that a quarter might still be left alive, that half were the walking dead, and the rest had left the area. That meant there could be as many as 2 million people still living in those 300 square miles. Based on what they’d heard in the food pantries and refugee camps at the beginning, a lot of the living had taken to the tunnels that were carved beneath the city; old subway lines, sewer pipes, maintenance tunnels. Some went upwards into the skyscrapers and tried their luck there. Bucky assumed many had started spreading out across the river to Jersey, backing up into Long Island, or upstate to the Catskills.Even as the news reports became hysterical and people were looting grocery stores, Bucky had gone to work everyday. He’d worked on road crews for the Department of Transportation since he was nineteen when an uncle got him a summer job on the Triboro. Bucky didn’t love his work but he knew it was a good job with benefits and he was lucky to have it. His last assignment had been on a repair crew for the Brooklyn Bridge. Restoring parts of the Brooklyn Bridge made it feel a little more important but that’s not why he kept showing up every morning.As the plague got worse, it wasn’t long before the New York City government had issued the inevitable travel ban that stopped the subways and city buses, and closed the roadways and bridges to motor traffic. Even before the state of emergency was official, people had been crossing the bridge in growing numbers to get out of Manhattan. On their last day of work, a representative from the military had arrived. The National Guard was coming in to set up checkpoints out of the city. He wanted some of Bucky’s crew to stay on to help them build a barrier across the road. He encouraged them by telling them it would save lives, and it was patriotic, all that “your country needs you” crap. Since everything was technically shut down, the work was strictly on a volunteer basis. Some of the guys hung back or walked out, but Bucky strode right to the front to add his name to the signup sheet.His foreman had looked at him with surprise. “Figured a young guy like you would jump at the chance to miss work.”Bucky shrugged. “My boyfriend’s ma works at the hospital. She says it’s getting real bad, so yeah, I’ll help out.”The officer behind his boss had blinked a little too much when he heard Bucky say the word “boyfriend,” but Bucky was used to much worse reactions than that. The man straightened up a second later and told him in a booming voice so everyone could hear, “You’re a credit to your country, son.” Bucky wanted to roll his eyes at all the ridiculous recruiter style of the man but instead he just gave a curt nod and moved aside for the next person to sign the roster. The next day, he helped the army and national guard set up blockades at the Brooklyn Bridge. At first they had checked everyone individually for symptoms like they had on the subways early on, but by the end of the week, the swarms of escapees from Manhattan couldn’t be held back. One of the men told him that it was a similar situation at the airports. The government had set up refugee camps at JFK and LaGuardia and that’s where all of the evacuees were being directed to once they crossed the bridge. The soldier had heard they were using them as extraction points to bring people upstate to the less populated areas where they stood a better chance, or so they hoped. Bucky thought it sounded like a good way to spread the disease. After all, they said it had gone worldwide because of air travel. He didn’t mention that to the other man though who had seemed hopeful about it.In the outer boroughs, teams of soldiers went around the neighborhoods with silencers and took out the dead as they rose. They herded as many people as they could to the refugee centers. After Sarah had died, his family knew better than to follow the crowds. They stayed and Bucky stayed on the bridge to help as much as he could. Eventually, the walkers began to follow the people. The officers ordered the men to let the people stream through and had set up soldiers to shoot any walkers that appeared. Bucky was helping lay rolls of barbed wire to deter the dead when he had heard a woman scream. At the rear of the crowd that was waiting to cross, bodies started to fall. As panic set in, people scrambled to get to safety and Bucky retreated behind the barrier with the men he was working with.Soldiers began to shoot down the walkers but they’d been taken off guard. A machine gun was mounted on a small turret but there was no one manning it. Bucky hauled himself up there and looked through the scope at the farthest point he could see. He aimed the gun past the fleeing people to the space where it was just walkers. He pulled the trigger and was thrown by the force of the kick back. He braced himself and tried again. This time he could see the bullets spraying out at the dead. Even though he knew he was hitting them, they didn’t fall. The machine gun cut through torsos and took off limbs, but the ravenous dead kept crawling forward. Like the barbed wire, it slowed them down, and thankfully most of the living were able to get through. Eventually, it was only a few stragglers running towards them. Bucky could see a dark cloud of the dead on the other side of the bridge though and he knew the monsters would never truly stop coming. In the days after, there were no more evacuees, no more civilians coming over the bridge. Just the dead. Swarms of them. Crowding, stepping over the ones that fell until the pavement with slick with their rotting corpses.Of course, Manhattan was the first borough to fall. That crowded island had never stood a chance. All the money on Wall Street couldn't protect them from this plague. When the first lines were broken, the soldiers abandoned the blockade Bucky had helped construct. They took up a secondary position along the promenade and the off ramps from the bridge but after a few weeks, it didn’t matter, the whole city was a wasteland. The soldiers disappeared and Bucky knew the island had been abandoned. Bucky and his family watched from their roof in Brooklyn when the fighter planes started to come in. Watching the Twin Towers fall was nothing compared to watching your own military carpet bomb the entire island of Manhattan.That night Bucky had taken a long hot shower, one of the last ones he ever took. The electricity had been browning out for over a month and they’d had a couple blackouts but after the bombing, the power stations that supplied the area finally came to a halt and the electricity disappeared, taking the hot water with it.
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They tallied up their weapons and found them severely lacking after their last venture outside the building. Currently, they only had the Barnes’ 9mm pistol, a fire axe, the rifle they’d found in a neighbor’s home that Bucky used, and every sharp object Becca could stab something with, which was mostly kitchen knives. It was time for a serious supply run. Bucky thought their best chance was to check down by the bridge. The army had built what amounted to a small base down there while they ran the checkpoints. There'd been heavy weaponry on the bridge and they knew that the authorities had begun using silencers when they were doing the neighborhood sweeps. They all hoped they'd find something useful down by the docks.They left the apartment mid-morning and used the rooftops to cross the city blocks, getting as close as they could before dropping to street level. They passed some office buildings and storefronts before they made it to the promenade. The road hung out over the water and ended in a jagged edge of torn cement and twisted metal. The sight of the broken Brooklyn Bridge was so much worse down by the docks. It had been a figure in the background Bucky's whole life and a symbol of pride for the borough. Seeing it in pieces pulled at his heartstrings in a way that the ruined skyline of Manhattan never would. All the on- and off-ramps to the bridge were blocked with walls of sandbags, tall wire fences, and razor wire. The cement barriers he’d helped put in place were still there along with some orange road signs from old construction projects. Bucky recognized some of the abandoned tools from his work site. National Guard humvees and Army tanks lined the roads and the promenade below. When he'd last seen it, the area had been bustling with military personnel and workmen. Now the area was littered with corpses, both civilian and military. One of the dead was stuck in the top of a tank whose lid had closed on his waist. A few others were tangled in the sharp wire spirals that lined the on-ramp. Some walkers were trapped out on the small piece of bridge still left intact. They wandered aimlessly behind the chain link barrier fence. Someone had propped up stakes on the road and a couple of walkers were caught on them, rotting on the ends of the spikes. None of the dead were an obvious threat but Bucky stayed on high alert. “Okay, follow the plan. Guns, ammo, silencers, protection. Stay in earshot,” Steve repeated for the fourth time since they’d woken up.“Yes, Captain Rogers.” Becca gave a silly salute and headed off to their left to search through a couple of abandoned foxholes.Bucky squeezed Steve’s hand and headed towards a few shoddy outposts of corrugated metal. He found a small box of MREs in the first one and shoved them into the bottom of his backpack. In the next he found a cache of weapons. He lay a rifle and two pistols in his duffel. With a bit more searching, he found the containers of ammunition that went with the weapons and packed them up as well. Next to the boxes, he found what he’d been hoping for, three large silencers.“Bingo,” he whispered to himself gleefully.When he turned to leave, he realized he hadn’t closed the door behind him. A walker was lingering right outside and was sniffing the air for his scent. With a sigh, he reached for the knife at his side and stepped forward. He stabbed it through the temple but the weight of his bag threw him off balance and he fell on top of the walker as it hit the ground. A quick glance around told him that two more had noticed him and were closing in. He wrenched his knife from the skull of the fallen walker and turned to face the new ones. The closest was stronger than he anticipated and it launched itself at him. Its jaw snapped as he held it off with his arm but it was a good minute before he was able to kill it. By then, Steve had heard the noise and came running. He rounded the corner as Bucky finished off the one on top of him. Steve was wearing a helmet and carrying a clear riot shield that he'd found. He swung a police baton at the walker that was still standing. Bucky stood quickly and saw another one coming towards them.“Behind you!”Before Steve could react, an arrow pierced through its eye. For a moment, it stood there staring it them but as it took a step forward, it collapsed on the ground with the others, truly dead.Bucky swiveled around trying to find the source of the arrow. He spotted a man standing on the top of a watch tower that had been hastily constructed with the blockade. He held a large crossbow but Bucky couldn't make out his features in the glare of the day.“Thanks,” he called out, a bit wary.The man nodded. “Us live ones gotta watch out for each other,” he responded.“You’re not from around here, huh?” Steve asked. The man’s accent was definitely not local. Not Brooklyn, not even Northeastern.“Naw, not originally, but I guess I am now since there’s no way to get anywhere else.”Bucky couldn’t tell if he was teasing them or not but he didn’t sound hostile. Before he could say anything else, the man climbed up onto the roof of one of the small warehouses and disappeared. Steve turned to him with a raised eyebrow but said nothing. Then they heard Becca.“Bucky!” she shouted from somewhere to their left.Bucky drew one of the loaded guns he’d just scavenged and ran for her. Steve was close behind him as they zeroed in on Becca’s location. They found her standing rigidly with their small pistol pointed at a redheaded woman, who had her own gun pointed right back at Becca. The girl looked barely older than Becca but she held her weapon like it was an extension of her hand and had been there all her life. Her eyes looked deadly. Bucky and Steve screeched to a stop.“Drop your weapons,” the girl demanded with a Russian accent.“Look, we don't mean you any trouble. We're all just trying to survive, right? We can all just walk away,” Steve said in a calm even voice with his hands empty towards her.“He's right.” A older woman spoke in a clipped British accent as she appeared from behind one of the tanks. She wore faded army fatigue pants and a button up shirt that may have once been crisp white but now was a beaten grey. Her hair was streaked with silver. She moved towards them with confidence and gave each one a brisk evaluation.“They're not a threat,” she announced with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Although they could be with some training,” she added as an afterthought to herself.The redheaded girl lowered her weapon when the British woman gave her a nod. Becca put down her own gun with confused hesitance. Bucky held his gun tightly at his side, ready to move if the two became a threat.“My name is Peggy. This is Natasha. Clint is around here somewhere.” The older woman paused and a bird call sounded above them. “Ah, there he is.”The man they had encountered moments before appeared on top of a tank and dropped casually to the ground. His crossbow was slung across his back with a quiver of arrows. He sauntered up to the redhead and gave her a cocky grin. “Seems a shame that you would shoot the girl when I just saved the other two,” he said to her. The redhead, Natasha, rolled her eyes and holstered her gun. “Do you have a camp near here?” Peggy asked in a neutral, almost friendly voice.“Camp?” Steve repeated.“A base?”“We, uh, we live a few blocks from here,” Steve told her when Becca and Bucky stood silent.“Well then, shall we?” was Peggy's only response as she gestured for them to lead the way.Bucky met Steve's flustered glance but didn't have a good response.*Steve and Peggy were bent over a map in the kitchen. The map was their key of where they'd scavenged supplies and where the worst of the hoards were. Peggy was allowed to look it over only because she had promised to share her knowledge outside the bubble of their neighborhood. To Bucky it was like leaking secrets to the enemy and so he continued to scowl at them from his spot on the couch. Steve had given the others the benefit of the doubt after mere minutes of knowing them but Bucky wasn't ready to let his guard down so easily. The guy with the crossbow seemed on the level. The girl seemed dangerous but direct, like she wouldn't stab you in the back but she'd have no qualms about stabbing someone in the chest. He could respect that. But something about Peggy bothered him. He couldn't shake the feeling that she had some sort of hidden agenda.“Jealous?” Becca asked, collapsing onto the couch next to him. She nodded over towards Steve and Peggy. Bucky huffed in response.“She's not one of us. She wouldn't go out on a limb for us. I don't think she's even attached to her people that much.”“Natasha says they only met her two weeks ago. But Natasha's been with Clint since the beginning. They were in some kind of performance group together,” Becca updated him with the details that she learned in conversation on their walk back to the building. Just then Clint returned from the roof with a bundle of dead pigeons in his hands. He nodded to them and settled into a chair to pluck the birds.“You want help with that?” Bucky asked and Clint looked up in surprise. “It’s easier when you dunk them in hot water first.”“You got hot water?” Clint replied skeptically.“We have gas. We can boil water. We have to boil it anyway before we use it.”“Nah,” Clint said shaking his head. “Gotta dump the water afterwards. I’d rather waste time than water.”Becca accepted this with a shrug and they both picked a bird to work on. Clint watched them for a moment to approve their technique before returning to his own bird.“Y’all still got running water?” he asked after a moment.“Sort of,” Becca responded. “Did you know most of New York City’s water flows by gravity? They only have to pump it a little bit. At least that’s what they teach you in school when you have the local history section.”“Huh,” he grunted in response.“It used to be pumped up to the water tanks on the roofs. Obviously that doesn’t happen anymore, but it still comes in the basement apartment. The water pressure is crappy, you can’t take a shower or anything, but we fill up the bathtubs and sinks so we’ve always got clean water to drink and cook and wash,” she explained. “You can use it to clean up a bit. I use just a small bowl and wash cloth but it makes you feel better. Dirt makes me depressed after a while,” she admitted.“The dead are walking around outside, the whole world’s a disaster area, and you’re depressed by the dirt?” Clint said with a raised eyebrow.“I pick my battles,” Becca replied with no shame. Clint barked out a laugh loud enough to drew Natasha’s attention. She came over to help with their dinner preparations.“Can I join the party?” It didn’t sound like a question. Clint glanced at her with an assenting grunt anyway. Bucky watched her small hands pull out the feathers with clean movements that somehow seemed graceful.“What did you all do before all this?” she asked as she settled in. Her Russian accent was much fainter now than it had sounded down on the docks.“Road work.” His voice came out a bit gruff but she just nodded. He searched her face for any sign of disdain for his blue collar labor but her expression remained neutral so he continued. “Steve was an artist, a good one. And Becca was a senior in high school.”“I was going to go to UCONN next year on a field hockey scholarship,” she sighed.“What about you?” he followed.“I was a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. Clint was… Clint.”Now it was Bucky’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Clint merely shrugged in response.“What does that mean?” Becca asked directly.“I used to travel with a group.”“What kind of group?” Becca pushed.“A circus. My uncle owned it, he adopted me and my brother, Barney, so that’s how we grew up.” Now it seemed as if Clint was expecting them to judge him. But Becca’s eyes lit up. “What did you do? Were you one of the trapeze artists?” she said clearly eyeing his large arm muscles. He just shook his head so she kept on guessing. “Juggling?” He cracked a smile. “Ugh, I don’t know, lion tamer?” He outright laughed at that. Even Natasha’s mouth was twitching at the corner. Bucky hadn’t seen her smile yet. Becca paused to think of more circus acts. “Knife throwing?” she tossed out.“You’re getting warmer.” He was obviously enjoying this game and wasn’t going to give in so easily.“What the hell is close to knife throwing?” Becca turned to Bucky in exasperation.“Other weapons?” he offered with a nod to Clint’s crossbow near the couch.“Oh! Sharpshooter? Do they have those?”“Close enough.” He gave in to her and she pumped her fist in the air with triumph. “I was an archer. Trick arrows, flaming arrows, moving targets, the whole shebang.”“With that?” she pointed to the crossbow. His face sagged when he looked over at it.“No,” he sighed. “I had this collapsible recurve bow. It was beautiful. Bought it when I was in the Sydney games.”“Wait, the Sydney Olympics? You were in the Olympics?” Bucky interrupted.“Yeah,” Clint admitted, sheepishly rubbing his neck. “I just did it the one time so the circus could advertise that it included an Olympic medalist. It worked. Turned out to be a pretty big draw for the crowds.”Bucky whistled. “Damn.” Clint merely shrugged so he turned to Natasha. “Were you secretly in the Olympics too or some kind of undercover ballerina assassin?” He joked.Natasha raised a shoulder noncommittally. “You’d be surprised.”“Well, you certainly know how to handle a weapon,” he remarked.“You’d be surprised,” she repeated. At Becca’s expectant look, she added, “Ballet is very competitive in Russia.”“Shit,” Bucky stared at her with wide eyes. She spoke with a matter of fact tone, but her eyes would dark and her expression grim. Becca stopped what she was doing and reached a hand over to grasp Natasha’s. Natasha looked down at Becca’s hand on hers with something like confusion, as if she didn’t understand the gesture of kindness. She gave Becca the briefest of smiles before politely taking her hand back.“Man, you two are a fucking pair of something else.” Bucky shook his head. “What about her?” He asked, jerking his head towards Peggy.Clint shrugged. “Only met her recently. She’s good. Knows what she’s doing. I think she used to be military or something like that. She was wearing BDU’s when we first met her. I think she’s looking for someone.”“Bit old for active duty,” Bucky quipped in a low voice.“You’d be surprised,” Peggy said from directly behind him, mimicking Natasha’s earlier remark. Bucky jumped, not realizing she'd moved from the table. “Everyone has to step up when the world gets taken over by goddamn zombies. Even old ladies,” she teased, not unkindly, although Bucky shrank back from her a little.“Didn’t mean to offend,” Bucky mumbled but the older woman merely shrugged. He cleared his throat. “Um, so who are you looking for?” If they were talking, he might as well try to figure out what she was up to.She frowned. “A scientist and an… engineer,” she paused briefly to choose her words.“That’s pretty specific,” he remarked.“Yes. But they’re very important, to everyone, not just me.”“Care to expand on that?” he quipped.“No,” she replied with a Mona Lisa smile. Bucky’s face darkened but he let the matter drop.*Later, they ate their dinners on the roof. Steve explained their tactics and how they traveled to Peggy, while the others compared their skills. Clint showed Bucky how to use his crossbow and they both did a little target practice. Natasha had a small straight branch that she’d found brushed into a corner of the roof. She was rubbing it against the brick to whittle one end into a sharp point. Becca watched her carefully as she made the stake.“Can you kill a walker with a weapon like that?” she commented.“Maybe,” Natasha responded. “Even if it isn’t much use against the dead, there are other kinds of threats in the world still.”“Have you killed people? Like living people?” Becca asked warily.“I’ve done what I had to do to stay alive. That means fending off attackers, dead or alive.” Natasha’s shoulders were tense. She didn’t sound happy and she didn’t make eye contact with the other girl. Nearby, Clint had shifted his attention to the women’s conversation so Bucky did the same.“Some people have only themselves to rely on. Not everyone has family to protect them. You’re lucky,” she said with a defensive air.“We used to have more family,” Becca said quietly.“So did we all,” Clint responded softly.“At least you’ve got each other, like Bucky and Steve. That’s a kind of family.” Becca smiled sadly, glancing over at Bucky with watery eyes. Clint seemed uncomfortable like he might try to protest Becca’s insinuation that they were together, but it was Natasha who spoke.“Yes. At least we have that.” She met Clint’s eyes and both of them relaxed their postures slightly.*Bucky crawled onto their mattress that night and settled himself next to Steve. Becca was on a bed across the room, snoring gently. Natasha and Clint had laid down mattresses on the floor of their sisters’ old room. Peggy had taken the couch, claiming the small rooms made her feel claustrophobic.“Why do you trust her?” Bucky whispered to Steve.“Natasha?” he asked, turning around to face Bucky.“Peggy. There’s something… off about her. Who are those people she mentioned? Why wouldn’t she tell us anything about them? Why were you telling her everything about us?” His last question turned accusingly to Steve, who bristled.“I didn’t tell her everything,” he protested. “I just wanted to know what was out there, how she’d survived. It only seemed fair to tell how we had survived ourselves.”“And what did she tell you?”“She was Homeland Security. She got separated from her group when things went to shit in Manhattan. She was on her own before she joined with Natasha and Clint. I don’t know, it seems pretty brave to me. I wouldn’t want to be alone out there.” Steve shuddered.“I’d never leave you alone,” Bucky said fiercely.“You might not have a choice someday,” Steve whispered.“There’s always a choice. We’ll protect each other. I would never abandon you.” Bucky pulled Steve closer to him and stared into his eyes with determination.“I know,” Steve breathed, pushing himself tight against Bucky’s body. “I would never leave you either.”“I love you,” Bucky sighed into Steve’s mouth before kissing him with the tinge of desperation that had become so common in their lives. He felt a spot of dampness on his cheek and realized Steve was quietly crying as they wrapped themselves around each other. Bucky kissed him even harder and Steve clung to him.
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Natasha hadn’t been back to Russia in ten years. She hadn’t seen her family in six years. She hadn’t spoken to them in three months. She had no idea if they were still alive and probably would never know. Sometimes the thought made her breathing stutter but she did her best to lock away the emotion.Her parents had sent her to America to continue her ballet studies after an incident back home. She had been the top dancer in her entire school at Vaganova when she was twelve. With a ranking that high, ballet became political. People had been attacked by hitmen over positions in the companies. She was one of the best and she had learned how to protect herself. When she was just thirteen, a lecherous talent scout tried to assault her after an audition. He told her he would give her perfect marks if she cooperated. She ended up with small bruises on her neck from his hand hold and a tear in her tights. He ended up in the hospital for three weeks, though he deserved worse. Her mouth twisted into a mean smile every time she thought of him.After that, her parents sent her to America. There was still corruption, bribery, and spiteful remarks to endure but no violence to fear. Even so, she rarely trusted any of the dancers and avoided socializing with them. She became a soloist for the New York City Ballet company when she was 16. And principal ballerina four years later at the unpresidented age of twenty.It had been the off season for her dance company and she was looking for new challenges, so she set up a few performances with a group of circus acrobats coming through. Two of her other dancers have joined too for the fun of it. The stage here lacked the fine polish of the New York Ballet Company’s theater. There were scuff marks in the wood and the curtain were a bit tattered at the ends. Out of the main area, it smelled of sweat, cigarettes, and fuel oil from their generators. It was a relief to be among things that felt real. Despite the theatrics of the circus, its people were authentic. They drank every night and worked hard and relied on each other. The other two dancers sneered privately at the “quaintness” of the place and were treated as outsiders. But from the first rehearsal, they had accepted Natasha.At the end of her first day practicing her routine with the circus, she stepped outside to clear her head when a man spoke to her. He had a faint drawl to his gruff voice.“I thought you’d be a snob like them.”She looked over and saw a stocky man in a faded purple shirt. He sucked on a cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly through his nose.“How do you know I’m not?” she replied.“You ain’t. You know what’s it’s like to crawl through the mud. Those other two never had a speck of dirt on them their whole lives.”He offered his cigarette over to her and she took it. She drew in a deep breath, feeling the smoke burn her lungs a little, before exhaling and handing it back.“See?” he said, taking another drag from the cigarette before passing it to her again. “You didn’t even hesitate. You’re not afraid of us.”“I’m not afraid of anyone,” she responded resolutely.The man only grunted and looked her over with a curious eye before nodding in agreement. She cocked up an eyebrow.“Was that a test?”“Of sorts,” he shrugged. “You passed,” he said with a cheeky grin. She snorted out a quick laugh.“Natasha,” she said, offering her hand.“Clint,” he responded, gripping her hand in a firm shake.Clint invited her back to one of their trailers. The woman who opened the door looked her over suspiciously but Clint raised her chin to her and she stepped aside. Natasha drank their strong man under the table that night and was cheered by the misfit tribe.Three weeks later, she was hiding out in the Budapest Hotel a block away from her company’s main building. When the plague hit, she had discovered that a dancer’s grace does not translate to the movements of their corpse. She kept hers and was able to escape the crowds before she had to experience the loss personally. She knew how to wield a knife thanks to her solitary walks to and from the dance studio in Russia when she was a child. She'd picked up a gun off a corpse in the street and though she didn't have much practice, it made her feel safer to have it. The hotel was mostly empty of inhabitants, dead or alive, and had been for years since it went bankrupt in the 2008 market crisis. Natasha had made a nest for herself in one of the rooms with the tattered remains of old comforters and misused mattresses.As she prepared to crack open a cold can of soup she'd found, a floorboard creaked in the next room. She already had her handgun out in front of her when a familiar face stepped into the doorway.“You’re alive,” Clint rushed over, completely ignoring the gun she’d been pointing at him. He gathered her into a tight hug though she remained frozen in shock. Just as she was adjusting the sensation of his arms wrapped around her, he stepped away. Brief and surprising though it had been, outside of choreographed moves, it was probably the most significant physical contact Natasha had had in years.“Didn’t know you cared so much,” she tried to joke.“I do,” he told her seriously. And he’d been with her ever since.Before the apocalypse, Natasha hadn’t known there were people like Clint left in the world. People who could be counted on. She hadn’t believed it at first, hadn’t admitted it for even longer. But he grew on her. He didn’t leave, even when he had dozens of opportunities. Every morning she woke up, she expected his sleeping bag to be gone and she’d be alone again. But every morning, he was still there. The first few nights, her paranoia kept her distant but after a month, she'd let him in. Eventually she trusted him and she woke up knowing he’d still be next to her.*Natasha woke up when the morning light hit her sleeping bag. She climbed carefully over Clint and cracked open the door. It’d been almost a week since they found the little family in Brooklyn.Even though the three had clearly gone through their own difficulties in this new world, in the first few days, Natasha couldn’t help but think of them as untested and inexperienced. Surviving a loss is different than surviving a fight, at least in Natasha’s experience. As the days passed, they practiced together on the roof and went on short supply runs to the neighborhood convenience store. Then Natasha could see how the trio had hardened themselves to the world. She still felt they were softer now than she had been before the world collapsed but she knew they were capable of handling themselves without help and that’s what mattered.In the kitchen, she found Peggy already awake and sitting at the table. She gestured to a percolator on the stovetop.“Bit watery, but hot and better than nothing.” Peggy said as Natasha poured a mug for herself and offered to fill the older woman’s. “No, this will have to be enough. I don’t want to be a burden on their supplies. Plus I’ve already had to kick the addiction once this year and I don’t want to experience those withdrawal headaches ever again.”“But it does smell really good,” Natasha responded, wistfully closing her eyes to breathe in the steam.“Mmmm,” Peggy agreed.The others all eventually wandered in until the last cup of almost-coffee was gone. Becca pulled out the tray of muffins she had baked last night from from a little flour, sugar, water, baking soda, and applesauce. Natasha swore the girl could make a full meal from cornmeal and a can of fruit and evaporated milk. She had that old world talent of stretching the larder.“We’ve got half a jar of peanut butter or strawberry basil-lavender jam from the neighbor’s pantry. Pick your poison.”Peggy reached for the jam while Clint stuck with peanut butter. She tasted a little from her spoon and declared, “Lovely! It’s usually with blackberries, either basil or lavender, I’ve never had both.”Personally, Natasha thought it sounded like a disgusting combination. She passed it on to Steve and Clint handed the peanut butter over to her until everyone had something spread on their muffins. They sat in the living room and washed the small breakfast down with the dregs of their lukewarm coffee.As they finished, Peggy cleared her throat. “While I appreciate you letting us stay here so long, I think I should be moving on soon. I need to keep looking.”“Right, to find the guys who can save the world?” Bucky responded, less sarcasm in his voice than when they first arrived but still wary.“If you like,” Peggy answered with a smile like they were sharing an inside joke.Steve frowned. “You’ll need more supplies. You guys were pretty low when you got here.” He glanced over at Natasha and it occurred to her that he assumed she and Clint were leaving as well. The thought didn’t appeal to her but she didn’t show any external reaction, waiting to see how the others responded.“Oh, I did well enough. I’m sure I’ll get by. You’ve pointed out enough storage spots. The only thing I’m missing is a couple of medical supplies I’ve already used up, but I’m sure to find something.” Natasha noticed her singular pronouns but again didn’t comment.“We should take a run to the hospital, then, before you leave. We need to restock on some supplies there ourselves and it’s one of the, um, more difficult places to navigate,” Steve insisted.Natasha didn’t miss the glance that passed between the two siblings over Steve’s head. She raised her eyebrow and Becca’s noticed the small motion.“The sick went there and a lot of them never made it back out,” she explained, although Natasha felt she was leaving out something.“We can get some gear together and go in a couple hours,” Steve barreled ahead.“Thank you,” Peggy responded with a slow nod and Natasha knew she sensed something was going on between the other three as well.*A few hours later, Natasha drove her knife through a corpse’s temple as it shuffled towards them. An arrow silently whipped through the air to lodge itself in the forehead of another. Most of the dead who approached were wearing flimsy hospital gowns. Some were in scrubs and she saw a few in military uniforms. She guarded the hallway with Clint and Bucky while the others gathered up supplies from a medical storage room.“Man, you weren’t kidding about a mob scene here,” Clint quipped, notching another arrow into his bow.“This is nothing. You don’t want to even be in the same building as the ER,” Bucky replied as he swung a fire axe into a skull. “We know our way around this place pretty well thanks to Steve’s mom.”“I was hospitalized enough as a child that I’d be able to find my way around here blindfolded even without my mom,” Steve said, appearing behind them.“Yeah, but if Aunt Sarah had been an ER nurse or in the ICU instead of upstairs in the research labs with Dr. Erskine, we wouldn’t have known about nearly as many of the good supply spots. All the ones on the lowers floors were raided a long time ago,” Becca added, exiting the cramped supply room with a full backpack. Steve conceded the point with a nod of his head.“Doctor Erskine?” Peggy gasped. “Dr. Erskine worked here?”“Yeah, he was the head of the immunology department. My mom was his senior nurse,” Steve responded with confusion evident in his voice.“Can you show me his office?” Peggy asked urgently. Steve hesitated and shuffled his feet before Bucky jumped in.“We haven’t been back there since Sarah died. She said the doctor killed himself in his office. We’ve been avoiding it.”“Please, it could be important.”With a concerned glance at Steve, Bucky reluctantly agreed. They moved down the hall and up to the next floor in a loose formation. Bucky and Clint cleared the way in front while Natasha and Becca took down any stragglers. Knowing she was missing something vital to the situation, she stuck close to Peggy in case the older woman tried anything unpredictable.Outside the office door, Steve hesitated. It was closed over but ajar and through the small gap, Natasha could see a mess of papers on the floor. Taking a deep breath, he pushed it open and took the first step inside. Peggy was instantly through the doorway and moving around him into the office. She immediately started rifling through the files on his desk, ignoring the body at her feet. Beside the desk, the corpse of Dr. Erskine lay rotting on the floor. A large chunk of his head was blown out from where the bullet had exited his skull. Old blood soaked his lab coat. Steve stared at the body but Natasha moved around him and kept close to Peggy.Natasha kept half an eye on Clint as he found a side door that led to an adjacent lab. He opened it and drew up his crossbow to shoot anything that moved in the other room. When nothing stirred, he went inside. He was back quicker than Natasha could blink.“Peg, you need to see this.”The older woman’s head snapped up and she followed him into the lab, Natasha close behind. On a whiteboard at the back of the room, a message was scrawled out in fading green marker.“CARTER.I GOT WHAT WE NEEDED. GOING FOR THE TOWER. MEET AT MIDTOWN FERRY. GRAB A POLICE WALKIE AND LISTEN AT DAWN EVERYDAY.-STARK”Below that was a smaller note.“I’ll race you, Pegs. Good luck.”Becca read the messages out loud while Natasha watched Peggy. Her hands flew up to her mouth at the words. When Becca was finished, the rest of the group turned to Peggy as well.“What is going on, Peggy? What does that mean?” Bucky growled, all his former suspicion returned.“That’s them. They were here,” she cried.“The people you’re looking for?” Steve asked and Peggy nodded.“Okay, but why were they here?” Natasha interjected.“Dr. Erskine. He must have had the missing information. Together, they have all the pieces. That must be why they’re heading back.” Peggy seemed to be talking to herself more than she was answering Natasha’s question.“Back where?” Bucky prodded.“Manhattan, of course,” Peggy said, finally looking away from the board.“Not possible,” Clint responded. “Bridges out, bombed to all hell, completely overrun.”Natasha ignored him. “Missing pieces to what?” she asked. Peggy turned to her with wide eyes.“The cure.”
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“The cure.”Steve stared at Peggy. No one spoke, still processing her words. In the hallway, they heard the moans of the dead. No one had stayed on guard once Clint had called Peggy over. The crunch of broken glass came from the next room. Natasha was the first to react as the walkers began to press through the door.She kicked off the locked doorknob of the second exit in the room. Peggy seemed to still be in shock so Natasha grabbed her by her shoulder and dragged her along. The door opened near a stairwell. Once the two women were through, the rest of them started to react. Clint swore and flicked off a couple arrows into the first walkers as they pushed through the door. Steve swung his nail studded baseball bat as one came close to him. Bucky smashed another’s skull with his fire axe.They all raced down the stairs and spilled out an exit door onto the street. Here Steve finally made it past his initial numbness and took control of himself again. He motioned for the others to stay quiet and everyone stilled to assess their situation. They were in a relatively clear area on Dekalb Avenue. A few walkers were milling around turned vaguely in their direction but the larger crowd was centered at the hospital’s main entrance to their left.Sticking close to the buildings, Steve led them down the sidewalk. Bucky moved to his side and quietly took out any straggler who noticed them. A glance behind him told him that Clint was protecting their open flank. Natasha still had an iron grip on Peggy, who was stumbling along with her. Steve met Natasha’s eyes quickly and she released Peggy but stayed pressed up into the other woman’s space.The buildings here were too tall and spaced too far apart to be useful to them on their return journey. Once they made it beyond the intersection of Dekalb and Fulton, the buildings would begin to shrink down again but they would have to make it through the open Fulton Mall square. The place was chock full of stores and sure enough there was a large swarm near the joining of the streets. They hung back in one of the recessed doorways of the large corner bank while Steve searched the area for a clear path. Luckily, New York City was constantly trying to improve itself.“You see the scaffolding on the corner there?” Steve pointed to the area.“Oh yeah, easy peasy,” Clint quipped sarcastically. Bucky tossed a glare at him but he was right.They were wedged against a colonnade of the bank. They would have to cross the street they were on, hug the left side of the square, dart across two more small streets before they would make it to the scaffolding.“Grow a pair,” Natasha snapped. “He’s right, the crowds are to the right. We just have to be quiet and quick.” Steve flashed her a brief smile of thanks.“We’re going south. I need to go north. I need to-” Peggy spoke for the first time since they’d left Dr. Erskine’s office. She seemed to be coming out of the auto-pilot she’d sunk into, but Natasha stepped in again.“No,” she cut her off. “We go home, we regroup, and you explain what the hell is going on. We stay together.”Peggy fell silent again though with an angry twist to her lip. Steve ignored it and focused on getting them across the square to safety. The group followed his lead and they darted in between openings. They all made a few swings as they cut through but the crowd stayed behind them.Clint swung himself up the steel bars one handed. He planted his feet on the first level board and reached down for the next person. Once Becca was stabilized on the scaffolding, they helped Peggy up. Steve scrambled up next with a slight boost from Bucky. They moved down the platform out of the way as each new person made it up. But the walkers had noticed them by now and were starting to close in. Clint shot a couple with his crossbow. Natasha flitted through the bars like a gymnast as Peggy fired off a round of shots at the nearing crowd. The ones on their feet stumbled over the fallen but it didn’t hold them up for long.Bucky slashed two within arm’s reach and swung himself up. He was only a few feet off the ground and they were starting to grab at his clothes. Steve could barely see what was going on but he reached for Bucky’s arms blindly. Peggy kept up her volley while Clint gave up on the crossbow and pulled out his gun. The shots rang out through the square, drawing more of the swarm, but it was too late to worry about that now. Peggy shot the one who was attached to Bucky’s leg and it hung there for a moment before he shook it free. Without the dead weight, he was able to reach the last rung. Steve grasped his wrist and Natasha caught his elbow, hauling him up onto the platform with them. Steve immediately wrapped his arms around him.“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” he whispered fiercely.“Do that to you?” Bucky echoed with an incredulous edge but he clung to Steve tightly.After everyone had caught their breath, they carefully made their way down the block using the scaffolding with Steve sending back encouragement and warnings as he led. By the time it ended a block later at the street corner, they’d gotten beyond the crowds of dead and were near lower roofs that they could use to travel back to the apartment. As soon as they were moving again, Steve went quiet. The others muttered to each other as necessary, but Steve was too focused on his own thoughts and Peggy’s announcement to join in the light chatter. Peggy for her part was equally silent and though she’d helped Bucky escape the crowd, he was brimming with annoyance that she’d wanted to take off then and there. He could feel Bucky’s attention on him the rest of the return journey but he ignored it.Once they were inside and had barred the door behind them, Steve turned on Peggy.“I think you have some things to explain.”“Yes, it seems so.” Her lips were pressed tightly together as she chose her words.“The truth,” he added with a drop of venom. The corner of her mouth quirked and he knew he’d been right. He dropped his pack and sat down on the couch with an expectant expression. The others settled in around him and Peggy pulled up a chair from behind her in the kitchen.“I didn’t actually work for Homeland Security, at least not directly. I was part of an organization called SHIELD.”“Never heard of it,” Clint said.“No, you wouldn’t have. It was Top Secret, but we’ve been around since World War II. SHIELD was created to deal with extraordinary circumstances.”“Like the zombie apocalypse?” Bucky quipped.“Not quite in that phrasing, but yes, among many other scenarios. Alien invasion, nuclear war, responses to any of Hitler’s more insane inventions, biochemical warfare, escaped science experiments gone wrong. Really anything you can think of, we’ve already planned for it two decades ago.”“So what went wrong?” Natasha waved a hand towards the window.“Everything,” Peggy sighed. Her eyes pinched closed before she spoke again. “The original lab didn’t follow disaster procedures. The CDC ignored the first few reports. By the time SHIELD had enough information to act, we’d lost whatever edge we might have had and were just trying to keep it from getting worse. The government and military began following the disaster plan for the public safety, while we moved on to the Avengers Initiative.”“Which is?” Becca prompted.“Tony Stark, CEO and Chief Engineer of Stark Industries; Dr. Bruce Banner, a biophysicist; Dr. Abraham Erskine, the top immunologist in the country; Dr. Jemma Simmons, an Agent of SHIELD and a biochemical expert, and her husband Agent Leo Fitz, a technology inventor for SHIELD. They were the team directed to find a cure. They were days away from finishing it and beginning production. Dr. Erskine figured out the last problem that was holding them up, but only half of the information reached the others before, well, everything went to hell.” She paused a moment, her voice strained. “General Ross, that goddamn idiot, convinced the president it was time for armageddon actions. They bombed the center of all major cities to give survivors outside the best chance. Including Manhattan, where all of the information for the cure was,” she said through gritted teeth. “We had to evacuate with the rest of the island. But during the chaos, our group got separated. I got trapped behind a blockade and lost track of the remainder of the team.”Steve listened intently but felt like he’d missed something. “If everything for the cure in Manhattan got destroyed, what does it matter if they found the missing information from Dr. Erskine?”“Tony is far too clever to have let them damage the project data. Like most of New York, Stark Tower goes almost as far down as it does up. Once the bombs started to fall, the building went into emergency lockdown so the data is safe but we wouldn’t get it. The lockdown won’t be lifted until the building’s protocols deem it safe but Stark and Fitz figured out how to manually get it back online. Of course before they could try anything, we were forced out by the army. It was a series of unfortunate circumstances.”“Talk about Murphy’s Law. I think you all broke the odds,” Clint shook his head in disbelief.“No kidding,” she said with a weary half-smile.“If those people knew everything, what does it matter if you’re there with them? I mean, I get that you want to see your people again but how are you necessary to the cure? What did you bring to the table?” Steve asked with zero attempt at tact.“Jesus,” Bucky muttered next to him.“I was in charge of our distribution strategy post-production. If I hadn’t been involved, I just be relieved they had the cure and wait it out, but it does no good if it just sits there. It needs to be spread nationally, internationally. We’ve got to contact whoever else is left out there. And that’s where I come in.” She answered openly with no hint of offense.Steve stared her down for almost a full minute while everyone else fidgeted uncomfortably. His brow furrowed before he seemed to make a decision internally.“Okay,” Steve nodded.“Okay?” Natasha echoed, whipping around to face him.“If you need to get there, we’ll help you get there,” he declared.“No, you-” Peggy started.“It’s important. And you can’t make it there alone. You’ll need help.”“Maybe we should discuss this, Steve,” Becca spoke up. He turned to her and blinked in confusion. Then looked around the room to a number of uncomfortable faces and realized that he’d just made a blanket statement for the entire group. He grimaced with a slightly apologetic expression and everyone took a deep breath.*Steve, Bucky, and Becca crammed into the bedroom they used.“Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to take over,” Steve said sheepishly. Becca’s mouth twisted but she accepted this apology.“You guys are against this, huh? I mean, Buck, you hate us leaving the house even just for supply runs.”“Yeah,” he responded slowly, “and I’m going to have a constant panic attack the entire time, but I think you’re right.” He paused. “Even if we don’t make it, Peggy needs to find those people and save the world. We can help do that.”They both looked at Becca who scowled but gave a sharp nod. Steve nodded but was almost hesitant to accept their agreement. “I had so many arguments in my head to convince you that I don’t know what to say now,” he huffed.“First time for everything,” Becca laughed trying to break the tension despite the rigid discomfort apparent in her body language.“Come on, let’s go back,” Bucky suggested, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Becca relaxed into his side and let her big brother reassure her.When he stood, Steve pressed himself into Bucky’s other side.“We’ll be together. We’ll be okay.”*They kept mostly silent while they waited more than a half hour for Clint and Natasha to return from their rooftop conversation. The little family and Peggy looked up when they entered. Both of their faces were grim and marked with worry lines.Natasha only gave a curt nod and Clint added his own a moment later. Natasha sat down on the easy chair while Clint perched himself on the armrest.“So, what now?” she asked.“First of all,” Peggy cleared her throat, “thank you all. I, um, I suppose you’re right, Steve. We should plan a bit and not just take off.”Steve looked out the window while he concentrated for a moment. “We’ll need to pick up more long term supplies to bring; food, weapons, bed rolls. It’s starting getting colder; we should be prepared for that,” Steve said. “How long do you think it’ll take to get there?”“Get where exactly? He said the Midtown Ferry, right? Where the hell is that?” Clint asked.“There’s a ferry terminal at Hunter’s Point, near where the Midtown Tunnel used to be,” Peggy answered.“That’s all the way up in Queens,” Becca exclaimed.“Yes,” Peggy agreed, “Long Island City to be exact.”“That’s over an hour away even before shit hit the fan. It could take us weeks or even longer,” Natasha pointed out.Steve stepped in before Natasha’s agitation could escalate. “Okay, first we’re going to need a good map. Second, we’re going to need to get a police radio like the message said. We’ve got to know where they are. We don’t know how long ago that note was written. They could already be there by now.”“No,” Peggy shook her head with certainty. “It was recent.”“How could you possibly know that?” Natasha said in exasperation. She’d been upset with Peggy since she first froze up in the hospital and it didn’t seem like her feelings were warming up any even with Peggy’s admission.“Gut feeling, I suppose,” Peggy said softly and Natasha snorted but held her tongue when Steve glared daggers at her.“Okay,” Steve stepped in. “Here’s the plan. Bucky, Natasha, you go out and find a map. Check the army outpost, you’ll be quicker with less people. Clint and Becca, you go retrieve a radio. Becks, you know where that group of abandoned cop cars is a couple blocks over?” She nodded and Steve continued. “Peggy and I will start getting stuff together here while you guys are gone.”Steve knew that Natasha would’ve preferred to stay with Clint but he wanted to break up the usual sets and get people used to working together if they were going to be on the road together for the next month or so. And at the moment, he just really want to get Natasha and Peggy separated. It was hours before everyone returned. All of their loot was piled in the middle of the living room. Becca began to organize it all into categories; food, camping gear, weapons. She used a trick she'd learned a long time ago to shrink the sweaters and sweatshirts they would need with them. She folded them lengthwise until they were narrower than an Italian sub. Then she rolled them up as tight as she could and snapped an elastic on both ends to stopit from unraveling. In this way, they took up a third of the space they would've otherwise. She taught them all so they could pack their own bags.Useful items took first priority, then backups, clothing, and finally personal items. Becca took the family pictures out of their frames and slipped them into the small zipper pouch inside her backpack. Steve took his mother's silver beaded rosary. Bucky took a pack of condoms.They were all restless that night but just after dawn, everyone staggered into the main room. They used the map Peggy had drawn their path on and a compass just in case. They all headed to the roof and began the slow process of moving northward.