The Dead

[starkingenuity]

It might seem counterintuitive for the most connected person on the planet to be the last to know something is happening, but when Tony Stark is working, Hell could swallow the world up and he would make an off handed, disinterested remark that he would have to check the AC. Up in his hi-tech Tower, where he had meant to spend the week finishing up boxing the more precious pieces of unfinished projects, Tony had gotten himself caught procrastinating the only way a man like him is capable of procrastinating: by rebuilding hardware to help him finish a gadget rather than packing that gadget away.

FRIDAY had already been installed in the compound Upstate, though she never left his back pocket really. Tony didn’t hear her alerting him, therefore, when people started dying. How could he with the sound of heavy metal playing and the grinder in his hands?

Tony had stayed in his mostly disassembled, partly reassembled lab for thirty-two hours before deciding he was hungry enough to stop making do with granola bars and dried fruit and call in some pizza.

The alerts on his phone are terrifying when he finally sees them. The number of missed calls leave his mouth dry.

Despite everything, Tony’s first thought is to call Steve Rogers of all people, even before he puts the armor back on. He has no idea that Captain America fell with the rest of the country he loved hours ago.

Comments

[endof_theline]

Bucky doesn't want to believe it either. He doesn't want to think of the way Steve looked at him- red eyes instead of ocean blue, face and limbs all distorted. Blood and guts...

He doesn't even try to argue it. Tony will see it soon enough.

And then he realizes, maybe Tony won't make it either and he just gave his location away. It would have been better to go at this alone. It's what he's been doing for two years now, after escaping from HYDRA. Maybe he should leave this place. Tony is coming.

He grabs some more supplies- guns, first aid kit, a single notebook that used to be Steve's, shoving it all in a backpack. Maybe this is the safest place for right now, but he can't stay here.

He heads out quickly and makes his way up to the roof. He figures it's his best bet for right now, whether Tony makes it here or not.

[starkingenuity]

The target is moving. Vertically. Banishing the videos of an uprising fueled by super human dead, all strangely out of sync and shakey from formerly live social media posts, Tony thinks about calling Steve’s phone back to demand Barnes stay still, just in case he decides to actually run.

Bad idea. He doesn’t want Barnes to run. Just in case he’s the only person left in the city.

Everyone is dead—

Rhodey? Pepper? Happy? Parker? He should confirm— But later. One thing at a time.

At least Iron Man would be able to keep up with Barnes if he makes a mad dash across town. The suit is flashy, though. The red zip across the sky gives him away as he appears over the roof.

“Barnes!” Using the vocal amplifier? Not one of his better ideas. The dead can walk. And they can also hear. Hopefully they are too far below as he drops down in front of the Winter Soldier.

[endof_theline]

Will the dead start scaling buildings? Possibly. He doesn't know. He's never seen anything like this before- there's no president for it. Bucky thought he felt alone before, but now... now he really is, with no one but Tony coming to get him.

He can't think about that now.

He's up on that rooftop quick as anything, laying low the way being a soldier had taught him. Not just the Winter Soldier but even before that. He's nervous, but alert, looking out for the flying suit above, not knowing what he'll end up being face to face with.

When he hears his name from above, it's somewhat of a relief, Bucky realizes. Tony is alive. He made it here in one piece, unbitten.

He's careful though, facing Tony with a defensive stance, eyes searching, but it's hard to tell anything when Tony's got his full armor on. "Stark. Are you still you?"

[starkingenuity]

Whatever nonsense Barnes is spewing means so little to Tony that he doesn’t even answer him with a witty quip about being Jesus, come for the Rapture or Santa Claus personally delivering his coal. The videos he’d seen, the encounter he’d had, Tony is desperate to get real news from someone that might know better.

Yanking off the face plate to his helmet, a generally unnecessary sort of thing since it could easily retract, Tony’s brown eyes are wild and confused— But not murderous. His skin is pallid, but that is from exhaustion of spending the last thirty plus hours awake before seeing the city.

“What the hell happened?” Tony gestures to the street below with a large, sweeping arm gesture. “It’s been a fucking day! What kills everyone in the city in a day?”

[endof_theline]

It's Tony. It's really him.

Bucky didn't think he'd ever actually be relieved to see Tony- and yet there's also that dread still settled in his bones. He's sure Tony hates him, and he has every right to, but in this moment they have no other choice but to face each other in this way, hopefully without ripping each other apart.

It seems like on his way over here Tony had finally seen what was going on. He looks horrified, confused, disturbed, same as Bucky does.

What happened? What the hell happened?

"Steve... he got called away- it was urgent. He said it was bad, real bad. Bad enough that all the Avengers had to get together again. He said they called you too." Where was Tony? What happened? In the end it's better he wasn't there, because he might be the only one standing after it all. "And then the city just started to collapse. The newscasts went down. Helicopters, cars crashing. When I went outside there was wreckage- bodies everywhere. But then they all started to rise. Distorted, sickened, as if some sort of virus had ravaged their bodies."

Bucky takes a breath, dragging his fingers through his hair. He looks and feels haggard. He already told Tony it was zombies, but it's still hard for him to believe it as well. He doesn't know how else to explain it.

"I went to find Steve, but by the time I got there, it was too late. They were... they were killing people. Ripping into them. Clint, Natasha, Steve...They were all..."

[starkingenuity]

Bucky’s said maybe six words out loud in his entire life, Tony thinks, and now he won’t shut up. There is almost too much information. His first thought is to sit down, his knees feel ready to buckle, but the suit itself catches him. In a way, he’s grateful for that. No need to look defeated when his armor protects his body, and his dignity.

His mind categorizes what Barnes says into issues. Disease. Of course, that is his main concern. Mass casualties due to vehicles crashing. Broadcasting down. Avengers gone.

No. No they’re not gone are they?

Tony hasn’t listened to any of the voicemails he’d received. He hadn’t checked to see who had called or texted him either. He isn’t sure he can bring himself to do that now. So he skips over Bucky telling him that Rogers’ had asked him for help. That will take time to unpack.

More than Steve ripping people apart now.

It’s so grim.

“Where are they?”

[endof_theline]

Tony asked, and Bucky doesn't know what else to do but give him all the information he can, because it's unreal. Because who the hell else will he ever be able to share this with again?

He still hears sirens in the distance, but he knows soon enough those will die off as well. Would they even be able to rescue people if they wanted to?

When his words trail off he feels exhausted, like that's all he had left to give. He looks up- another helicopter crashing into a building further downtown and people screaming below. He almost doesn't hear Tony's question.

Blinking, he looks at him again. "Midtown- but that was a couple hours ago. Who knows where they are now." Tony's not thinking of trying to find them now, is he? "I tried calling a few more contacts from Steve's phone but no one answered."

He didn't call Tony.

"I thought you were with them. I thought you were dead."

[starkingenuity]

There are no hard feelings that Tony hadn’t been top of the call list for Barnes. He’s too distracted by the sound of something crashing in the distance. He doesn’t have Barnes’ hearing. He doesn’t know what the sound was but it makes his eyes rove across the roof.

He’s just standing here. He’s not helping.

Does it matter that the last people he tried to help had attacked him? Shit. He has people he cares about that need his attention—.

“FRIDAY, get the Legion mobilized,” he says. Twenty minutes ago he’d learned that the city had gone to shit and he hadn’t even started the damned process of humanitarian aid. Where is his head? He finds himself sucking in a breath. “Midtown. All right. Cell Towers might be down.” He’s on his own network. The Veronica satellite in orbit provides him better communication. “FRIDAY, ah, go through the Rolodex. Just try everyone. You connect to someone, put them through.”

The voice in his ear is silent for just a moment. “Sorry Boss. No answers.”

Tony grows more pale.

“I’m going to Midtown.”

[endof_theline]

Bucky hauls his backpack further up on his shoulder as he watches Tony. He's not sure who he's talking to- there's a lot he still doesn't understand about this world, let along Tony's suit. He watches Tony try to connect to anyone, to no avail. It's as bad as Bucky suspects it is.

They can't all be down though, can they?

Tony declaring that he's going downtown has Bucky going rigid. He has a feeling that if they part now, they'll never see each other again. All this time he would've thought that would be best, but now?

"What are you gonna do once you get there? You need a plan. If we wanna help people we need to figure out how." Running into a mess of dead people isn't going to help, so matter how tempting it is to just go forth. "If we're going to find survivors we need of a way of getting them out of harms way, otherwise we'll both be overrun."

[starkingenuity]

Who died and named Barnes Captain America?

The irony of that thought tastes as foul to him as if he’d said it out loud. Tony swallows and his eyes look almost watery. He has a way of working his jaw that melts the age off of him, and one might be forgiven to think he’s still just a kid trying to prove himself when he doesn’t have all of the answers right at his fingertips.

“We? Yeah, uh, I’m not great with the whole team meet up thing.” He immediately regrets saying it. He’s alone right now. Any ally is better than none. He’s learned that many times. “But I won’t say no to a Super Soldier shield. Brace up. I’ll take us down to recon.”

[endof_theline]

Bucky doesn't even realize he says it- we- and he's not great with the whole team up thing either. Worse by a long shot than Tony, he imagines. But here they are, and there's no one else. Maybe eventually there will be, and god he hopes so, but it's looking pretty bleak.

"Neither am I," he mutters, figuring Tony won't listen anyway- he has no reason to- and that he'll just fly off and leave him here. It'll be fine. He'll come up with his own plan. He'll grab as many people as he can and find a place for them to hide.

It's hard to even know where to begin.

But Tony doesn't leave. Bucky doesn't want the other man to take him down either though.

"I'll meet you down there." They still need a plan, regardless. If they're not smart about this, they'll end up dead.

[starkingenuity]

“No.” Why are so many old men from Brooklyn so unreasonable? Tony gives Barnes a withering look. “You won’t make it on the ground. There aren’t enough roof tops to jump.” He gets why someone wouldn’t want to cling to the outside of a suit of flying armor though. Big brown eyes roll all the way around in their sockets. “And until we know what happened— I’m not going to give you cover, got it? I’m not killing people.”

The group that tried to catch him didn’t look like corpses…. Well, they did because they looked like they all had injuries you just don’t get up and walk away from. But they didn’t look like they were decaying either.

Tony finds himself clenching his jaw again.

“Listen. I don’t got a lot of ways to compromise here. The flight is quick and I’ll put you down on a roof closer to the scene.”

[endof_theline]

The scene, Tony says, as if the whole city isn't a scene. Tony just came up on this twenty minutes ago, but Bucky's been fighting through this for a couple hours now. He doesn't know how to argue any of that, though.

He doesn't know what to say to make him realize the truth and gravity of what's going on here.

"I made it from here to midtown and back on my own. I've been out there for hours. Those dead down there are killing people." He gets it. Tony doesn't want to kill them. Bucky doesn't want to either, he feels sick with the thought of it, but these undead- dead- zombies- whatever the hell they are, they're not leaving them much choice.

"There is no scene, Stark. The whole thing is one big scene." He shakes his head, heading back to the entrance of the roof so he can go back down. "I'm gonna find a van and look for survivors and get them off the streets. You do... whatever it is you wanna do Midtown."

He could use an overhead lookout to track people down and direct him to the best locations, but he isn't going to ask for that.

[starkingenuity]

Asshole. Asshole!

Frustrated, Tony strides after the other. “You just said we needed a plan and for some reason, that actually makes sense.” No one is answering. There is one person here who is breathing. Steve Rogers is ripping people apart in Midtown.

If, of course, there is anyone left to rip apart.

“Before you turn into a suicidal Good Samaritan, could you at least let me catch my damn breath? I just found out the New York is fucked twenty minutes ago.”

[endof_theline]

Bucky is descending the stairs- hoping Tony will follow him. He really is, because as much as he prefers to go at this alone... he doesn't really want to, deep down. This is a mess. It's devastating. If they're all that's left, then....

Tony follows and Bucky slows down, glancing back at him.

"Letting you catch your breath isn't flying into a part of the city that fell two hours ago." Because Tony only found out about this twenty minutes ago. "I was there. Believe me. There's nothing left.... no one left."

The most populated part of the city is gone, and now their best bet is to work the outskirts, like this downtown area, if they can. "Wasn't there a wizard? He's got protection spells, right?"

Does he want to hide away from the world, put up a thousand walls and not deal? Yeah. But he can't right now, so he won't. Steve would be so disappointed in him.

[starkingenuity]

“A wizard. Maybe.” There are a lot of characters floating around. Most of them seem to be turned into zombies. How is that even a sentence?

Tony touches the reactor in the heart of the armor and the nanotechnology retracts from around him, minus his helmet. He’d made the conscious choice to keep that whole. He needs it for the projector.

“There are probably hundreds of thousands of people locked in their apartments. But first? FRIDAY has a database of videos. Got a blank wall I can use?” Maybe Bucky can walk him through the visuals.

[endof_theline]

Tony seems to calm down and take a breath- assess the situation for what it really is. Bucky nods, continuing down the stairs.

He leads them back into the safehouse he and Steve have been staying in. locking the door behind them and setting the security back up. Tony can take a little more time to catch his breath while they're here, and then they can head back out.

"Blank wall. Right there." He points to the wall of the room- but they're all blank. There are some of Steve's things in the corner. While Tony sets up the projected videos, Bucky stuffs those things in his bag.

[starkingenuity]

He needs to see the loss of the Avengers for himself. This is only a delaying tactic. Tony is about ready to turn around and change his mind again when he sees the little apartment but going back out there without an understanding of what it is he’s going to find would be foolish.

Tony says nothing as he drops the helmet on an end table and drags it to the center of the room. He’d caught Bucky packing things away, and he can make an educated guess as to what those things are. Still wearing the chest harness with the reactor core, Tony crouches to get the projector from the right eye socket on the helmet to be even on the wall.

He clears his throat.

“FRIDAY, sort by chronological listing. I want the earliest social media posts first.” The helmet hums and a video from a phone camera paints the wall. “Get the lights,” Tony orders Barnes, and then sits back on one heel to watch the succession of thirty to sixty second clips of people standing up and attacking the camera man. It’s not helpful.

[endof_theline]

This is the very last thing Bucky wants to see, but Tony needs to see it.

It would be amazing to him, the way Tony is about to pull video from anywhere to project it, but he hardly cares about the technology of it all right now. He flicks the lights off at Tony's demand, then stands at the back of the apartment, arms crossed, solemn look on his face.

The attacks are so fast that it's hard to get a grip on what's going on. It's easy to see how regular citizens are changing though. The red eyes, the way their skin changes so to something sickly and diseased looking. It's like they're decaying in front of their eyes, all life drained from them as they drag themselves along to attack.

Bucky has to look away.

These are civilians. Gone. He's sure professional news reporters didn't fair any better. Broadcasts went off the air at an alarming rate.

His attention is drawn back to the screen when he hears a familiar voice. It's Steve. His heart stops as he watches. It's hard to see how it all goes down - but Steve swats at something on his neck, and then he starts changing, letting out a horrible sound before his eyes go red.

"Oh god," Bucky chokes out, watching as the rest of the Avengers with him suffer the same fate.

[starkingenuity]

It’s not ought of cruelty that Tony has FRIDAY find other angles of the video. He is far too tapped in, something that Congress had tried to curtain long before now. Is there even a Congress left? Surely, with how quickly this is spreading, there can’t be too many casualties off the island of Manhattan. How could anyone infected get very far when they turn in minutes?

Tony sits fully on the floor. He sets his hands on his knees and he watches Steve turn in a loop of three different angles. That hit to his neck—

He wasn’t scratched like the others. Not that Tony can see at least. And the video quality won’t let him zoom in either to any real effect. The engineer frowns. “I need to get you some armor if we’re going to go back out there.”

omg are notifs finally back?! xD

[endof_theline]

Bucky takes a few steps back to press himself against the wall, looking away from the moving images. It's like a horror movie, almost worse than what he had been put through for decades. He's not sure there's any coming back from this one.

He doesn't need to ask Tony if he believes him now. Bucky knows he does.

He looks over at the other man when he speaks again, then down at his metal arm. At least he's got one less limb for the zombies to gnaw on. "Armor- yeah."

He could use... maybe a shield. His expression crumbles at the thought.

I didn’t get one. I just started checking. ><

[starkingenuity]

“I can’t see what it is,” Tony continues. He’s feeling detached, vaguely curious, but also mostly just trying to keep his focus so he doesn’t really think about what he’s seeing.

What’s the last thing he said to Cap? Laying in the freezing cold, bloody, reactor crushed, he’d looked up into Steve’s face, still panicked, still sure the other man would break his jaw.

It had been so petty. So stupid. ‘You don’t deserve the shield.’ Something like that. He’d spat it at Cap’s back as he was helping Barnes up.

There is that emotional, wet, sad eyes on the older man again as he hits the helmet to shut the feed off. “It’s not airborne. Those things were trying to scratch me. To tug me down. But they’re not killing people. Just infecting them.” He’s rambling. They both know it. Tony stands. “FRIDAY, maybe recall the Legion for now. Standby with them. But we need one of the old suits for Barnes. Good thing you’re about my size.”

Mine are slowly trickling back in. Very slowly lol

[endof_theline]

Bucky can't see what it is either. He doesn't want to. "Maybe it's the Ant-Man," he says anyway, because it makes sense. Something scratched or bit Steve's neck and then he was gone. Dead.

It doesn't matter if it's an infection or not- they're the walking dead.

Bucky knows he should peel himself away from the wall, but he can't seem to do so. Here he is, hunkered down with Tony Stark. He wonders what Steve would think- the two of them working together now. Is that what they're doing?

It has to be.

"It's bloodborne. They're scratching, biting- basically killing the people they attack. I've watched... limbs getting ripped off and eyes being gouged out. It's bloody out there," he says in a monotone voice, detached in the way that Tony feels.

His brows draw together. "One of your Iron Man suits?" Yeah, ok. That's wild.

[starkingenuity]

“Unless one of them figures out how to bite through gold titanium alloy, you should be good,” Tony remarks. He’s always been better at problem solving than focusing too much on his losses. There have been so many of those.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, rubbing a hand over facial hair that is in desperate need of some trimming. He looks down at all of the notifications. The missed calls. The texts.

With a shaking thumb, he finally opens up the list of calls. Pepper. Happy. Peter over a dozen times. Steve. Three missed calls from Steve Rogers.

Tony’s mouth runs dry and his eyebrows furrow. “You know,” he says, jaw clenching again, eyes never leaving the phone even as he gestures with it. “I was cleaning out the Tower. Old projects, half started. I uh… I had this motorcycle engine I was cleaning and retrofitting before everything with the Accords happened. Project got shelved. We moved operations to the compound. Totally forgot about it until yesterday. Day before maybe. I don’t know why I even bothered— I wasn’t going to give it to him, you know. Bastard was dead to me.”

Tony’s lip trembles and he turns, tapping the voice mail from Steve Rogers.

“Tony—“ And then he immediately turns the sound down. He can’t bring himself to listen to it after all.

“He called and I was rebuilding a fucking engine, Barnes.”

[endof_theline]

Bucky doesn't know what to think. Doesn't know what to feel either- or how to feel it- but it's quickly dawning on him, and right now he's struggling not to get dragged down by it. He really didn't need to see what happened to Steve from three different angles.

"I managed fine without a suit." He's being stubborn now, and he knows it. It just feels strange- him of all people in an Iron Man suit. But then- it must feel even more strange for Tony. Probably terrible. "Yeah, fine, ok. I'll wear a suit."

Tony looks at his phone, and Bucky figures he's doing some more techy stuff while he explains to Bucky where he was all this time, and why he didnt' join the Avengers earlier today. And then he hears Steve's voice coming from Tony's phone, and he swallows hard, feeling a deep, horrible ache in his chest that he knows he can't afford to feel right now.

Tony is losing it too. He can tell. The trembling lip, the devastated look on his face- the anger. Maybe they're both going through the five stages of grief here, only they need to do it quickly so they can help people.

"You didn't know. I didn't know either, I should've gone with him." Tony feels guilty. So does Bucky.