The Beginning of the End

It was dark when Kurt and Adam finally made it to the loft. The air was eerily still, and all was silent. Kurt’s heart was in his throat as he turned on the lights, terrified at what he might find when the place was illuminated.

He brought a hand to his face and could feel himself start to shake. Adam placed a steadying hand on his shoulder and squeezed slightly. As predicted, his home was completely trashed. “Rachel,” he whispered.

“Rachel! Rachel, are you still here?! Say something! Anything!” But he knew she was gone. Still, he searched the whole apartment for her, every inch of it, shouting for her.
But under her bed there was so much blood, and Kurt knew that was probably where she had tried to hide…

Kurt’s legs gave out, and he fell to the floor and broke down. She was dead. She was gone. She was probably one of those goddamn things. She was his best friend, and he hadn’t been there, and he hadn’t even had the fucking decency to stay on the phone with her when she’d called, when she had begged him not to leave her all alone. And now, she was gone. That had been their last conversation, and he’d likely never see her again.

He felt Adam’s arms wrap around his body, and Adam gently and wordlessly coaxed him to stand and then guided him away from the nightmarish scene. He led Kurt to Kurt’s mattress on the floor (he had volunteered his bed frame as part of the furniture barricade.) They both lay on it together, held each other tightly, and cried. It was just them now; they were all each other had.

--

At some point in the night when he couldn’t sleep, Kurt got up and rummaged through the dresser that had also been part of the barricade and now lay, damaged but mostly intact on the floor a few feet from the door. He tried to remember which drawer Rachel kept her collection of candles in, which was even harder with all of Santana’s stuff having overtaken so much of the drawers. He remembered the way they’d both fight over that and bit his lip hard.

As he continued his search, he had to deal with quite a few memories like that coming to the surface. He tried not to think about how Santana was probably dead too. How all of his friends kept dying.

His chest was too heavy, too tightly crushed under the weight of all that he was feeling (or trying not to feel.) He couldn’t breathe. He sank to the floor and hugged his knees. For the first time since the whole apocalypse thing had started, it hit him, really hit him, hard. The world was ending. It had ended. Life as he had ever known it was over and gone, and no matter what happened he was never going to get it back. For the first time since this whole apocalypse began, it really felt like the world had ended.

The footsteps behind him barely registered over his own pulse pounding heavily in his ears. “Kurt? Kurt, are you alright?” Adam moved closer, and soon Kurt felt his arms around him once again. “What are you doing, love?”

Kurt took a shuddery breath and tried to explain. “I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I should do a vigil or something, light some candles. Rachel has some, somewhere in here, but it’s all a mess of her stuff and Santana’s stuff.” He must have sounded really hysterical because Adam held him more tightly than before. “And I thought it would be good, y’know? The right thing to do. The sort of thing you do when someone—when they’re—”

“Shhh, shhh, shhhh.” Adam held him close and ran a soothing hand over the back of his head as Kurt buried his face into Adam’s shoulder. “I know, love. I know.” After a moment of this, Adam said, “Here, let me help you, okay? You’re right. We should. C’mon.”

Together they dug through the contents of the dresser until they found a small collection of scented candles. They set them up in the floor in the middle of the apartment and lit all of them. Kurt retrieved some photos of Rachel and a few of Santana as well, and they placed them among the candles.

For a while, they just sat before the arrangement in relative silence, holding each other and crying. Finally, Kurt spoke, “We should, uh, say a few words. Don’t you think?”

Adam nodded. “Yes, we should.”

“Okay.” Kurt took a deep breath. “Rachel Berry was one of my closest friends for many years. She-She wasn’t always the easiest friend or roommate to have, but-but I loved her, and I know—I know she loved me, too.” He had to stop; he looked up at the ceiling and took another deep breath. “She was so, so talented and so, so determined and ambitious and I just know if-if—” He stopped again, but quickly resumed, “She was gonna be one of the brightest stars in this city.”

“Well-said, my love,” Adam said, hugging him and kissing the top of his head, “I don’t think I could possibly add anything to that. You said it all.”

Kurt nodded. “Thank you.” Looking at a photo of Santana, he said, “And here’s hoping Santana’s still out there somewhere...and if she’s not…” He considered saying he hoped she was in a better place, but that was too borderline-churchy, too sappy, too unlike what Santana would want him to say (and anyway as comforting as the thought was, it was hollow, he didn’t believe it, it would be nothing more than a beautiful lie.) So he finally said, “If she’s not, I hope she’s giving the devil a hard time.” He almost smiled. That felt like the right way to memorialize Santana.

--

They left the loft sometime in the morning, taking whatever supplies they could reasonably carry. Kurt stopped as they left, taking one last look at his destroyed home. He took a deep, shuddery breath and turned away, walking purposefully out the door. Adam followed closely behind him.

Last night they had discussed their plan to leave, but they had never really decided where they would go. Sometime in the many hours Kurt could not sleep, he had thought of something. As they made their way out of the building, he told Adam his idea. “I think we need to get out of New York City.”

“Okay,” Adam replied a bit skeptically, “but where will we go? And how do we know we wouldn’t just end up somewhere worse?”

“We don’t, but we know it’s bad here,” Kurt said.

“Fair enough,” Adam conceded, “but you still haven’t answered my first question.”

Kurt hoped he didn’t sound completely irrational. He knew he was about to propose something pretty crazy. Still, it was the plan that felt the most right to his heart at the moment, and maybe he could get his and Adam’s heads on board. He sighed. “I-I wanna go home, Adam.”

“To Lima? In Ohio?”

“Yes,” Kurt continued, “Look, I know that’s… a long way away, especially considering we don't have a car or anything like that, but I-I did a lot of thinking last night, and I’ve been worrying about my dad a lot, and I—I dunno—I could be wrong, but it seems like a small town like Lima would maybe be safer than a big city like this one right now.”

Adam seemed to be considering Kurt’s words. Finally, he shrugged. “Alright. If that’s what you really want to do, then let’s go.”

“Really?” Kurt asked.

“Of course,” Adam said, “Besides, it’s the only plan we’ve got right now, might as well go with it.”

Kurt nodded. “Right. Okay.” He paused. “We’ll need to get a map.”

“I grabbed a city map from your apartment,” Adam informed him.

“Great!” Kurt responded, “Good thinking.”

“Why thank you,” Adam replied, searching his bag for the aforementioned map.

“We could probably stand to pick up something that maps more than just this city though,” Kurt said, “We’ll need to stop by somewhere and grab one.” He paused. “What do you have for weapons?”

“Oh, um.” Adam removed two relatively small knives from his bag. He brandished them sheepishly.

“Seriously?” He was damn lucky he hadn’t gotten himself killed if that was all he had. “Here.” Kurt handed him the baseball bat. “Take this until we can get you something better.”

Adam took the bat. “Why do you have a baseball bat anyway?”

“Self-defense, hilariously enough,” Kurt replied, “Rachel…” Fuck, Rachel was dead. He closed his eyes and tried to push the overwhelming grief aside. “Rachel bought it a while back… Before all this. She said she wanted something in the house she could knock somebody out with, for the times she was home alone or whatever...” Goddamn, this hurt so much. Suddenly, Kurt remembered the sound of the zombie’s skull being cracked open. “I used it to bash a zombie’s head in.”

“That would explain the blood,” Adam said softly. He placed an arm around Kurt’s shoulders. “I’m sorry about Rachel.”

“It’s—” Kurt had no idea how he was going to finish that response. How could he? It wasn’t okay, and it wouldn’t ever be okay. It would maybe someday get less fucked up, and that was the best he could really hope for.

Their thoughts were soon interrupted as they stumbled upon a small group of zombies. They backed up slowly and quietly, wondering if it wasn’t too late to change direction and escape notice.

It was. The zombies turned to look at them and advanced. Adam swore like mad, and Kurt got out his sais. His hands were shaking, and he seriously doubted his ability to kill these things with such a short range weapon.

He heard the bat make contact with flesh and saw Adam swinging it wildly in his peripheral vision. The zombie that had finally tried to lunge at Kurt looked like it had once been a teenage girl; Kurt wondered if he’d ever stop seeing the people these things once were when he saw them up close. She very nearly grabbed him, but he dodged her and put one of the sais through her eye. She flailed about but didn’t go down. He desperately slashed and stabbed at her face with the other sai, hoping something would at least slow her down.

“Kurt, duck!” Adam shouted. Operating on strange instinct, Kurt followed Adam’s instruction without question. He felt air from Adam swinging the bat over his head and into the face of the teenage zombie that had almost gotten him.

The zombie girl went down. The sai blade now driven deep into her brain. Kurt got back up quickly and grabbed one of Adam’s knives. It wasn’t a throwing knife, but it was going to have to try to be one now. Kurt threw it, and it landed in the leg of a male zombie that was fast approaching them. He threw the other knife, and it went through that same zombie’s eye socket (that was mostly empty for some reason) and into his brain.

Kurt retrieved his sai as Adam bludgeoned the final zombie to death. That had been close, way, way too close. He went ahead and retrieved the knives as well. He wiped off all of the bloody blades.

He looked over at Adam and quickly realized that this was the first time Adam had killed one of these things (and quite possibly anything, knowing Adam.) Adam stared at the bodies and shook violently. Kurt walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. Adam took a shaky breath. He looked sick. Sure enough, he turned away quickly and vomited onto the pavement.

“It’s okay,” Kurt said, “It’s okay.” He wasn’t really sure that it was, but he had to try to talk Adam through this. They really needed to move on. “Was that your first time dealing with those things?”

Adam straightened up and nodded. “Yeah,” he replied hoarsely. Kurt handed him some water, and he accepted it gratefully. After drinking, he said, “Those were people once. They were…” He paused and closed his eyes. “I’ve never killed anything bigger than a bug before and I’ve just… bashed someone’s face in.”

“They were already dead when you did it,” Kurt said, gently guiding Adam away from the scene, “They weren’t people anymore.” They began to slowly walk away when Kurt gently urged Adam. “C’mon. Let’s get going.”