I'm not one for long author's notes, but I feel like I should explain myself on this one. It's not my usual style at all, but I wanted to challenge myself and work on something that I wasn't so good at. I managed that, all right. :/ I almost hate this, but I've been working on it for four days now and I'm already planning the sequels, which will be better than this. I can't even decide if this has zero plot or lots of plot.

Anyway, no pairings yet (they might show up later, though), and if you're wondering about the random inclusion of Rock with Iori and Kyo--I didn't know who to use to complete the trio, so I tossed some names in a hat and he's what came out. I wanted a challenge, and that definitely was.

That being said, I hope you enjoy this. Or at least read through the whole thing. I know it sucks, so please be gentle in your criticism. :)

It was almost midnight when the phone rang and Iori almost didn't answer it on principle. He glanced at the display, and that's what changed his mind, because it said it was Kusanagi calling. If Kusanagi was calling him, there had to be a good reason.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you any manners?" he said instead of saying hello. "It's fucking-"

"Shut the fuck up and listen to me, Yagami." Kyo sounded strange, and Iori frowned but didn't get to comment on it. "I-I can't get ahold of anybody else. I think they might be dead."

He almost laughed, but there's something about Kyo's tone of voice that stopped him. "Are you drunk?"

"No, you stupid fuckwit, I'm not drunk. Have you even stepped out of your apartment in the past hour?"

He hadn't. Of course he hadn't. Iori sighed audibly and headed toward the front door, grabbing his keys and letting them jingle so that Kyo knew he was going. "Am I looking for something in particular?"

"You'll know. Just go outside."

Iori didn't make it past his front door. Kyo was right—he knew. There was nothing outside. Usually, there were cars driving by and birds singing, dogs barking and children screaming. Tonight, there was nothing. He didn't see his neighbors, or anyone else for that matter, walking past.

It's like he's the only person on earth. He swallowed and resisted the urge to laugh because in his head, he sees a tumbleweed blowing by. "It's like this everywhere?" he managed to ask, after what seemed like an eternity. His voice was a lot steadier than he thought it would be.

"Everywhere," Kyo echoed. "Eerie, isn't it?"

Iori didn't want to answer. He struggled with it, finally managing to clear his throat as he backed into his apartment and shut the door, locking it because it irrationally made him feel a little better about the situation.

"I'm on my way over," Kyo said after a few minutes of silence. There was a flash of static, and the phone cut out briefly in the middle of his sentence. "-so it might take me a while. Don't leave your apartment. Try to call whoever you can, and get them there, too. There has to be something we can do."

"Yeah, okay." Iori felt strange saying it, knowing that he just agreed for Kyo Kusanagi to peacefully enter his living space. But tonight? He felt like letting the centuries old family rivalry have a day off.

* * *

It was one hour and fourteen minutes exactly before Kyo showed up. Iori had called everyone in his address book five times—not that there were many people. The four other guys in his band. Chizuru Kagura. Alba Meira. He skipped over Kyo's name.

The cell phones were the first to go. He still hadn't managed to get in touch with anyone, and busy signals were becoming more frequent. "Everybody has a cell phone and I still have to hear that fucking noise," he said softly, just to hear himself talk. His voice cut through the silence and echoed strangely, and he decided not to open his mouth again.

Later, the screen flashed to signal no service. Still, he kept the phone on, foolishly hoping that it was just some sort of glitch and it would come back on.

The power went out next. Iori lit candles and grabbed some water and tried to sit on the couch, but he couldn't stop pacing. His mind was racing with possibilities of what could have happened out there, each wilder and more impossible than the last. He remembered that he had a battery-powered radio in the closet somewhere, and decided to go look for it.

His head was in the closet when Kyo pounded on his door, making him jump and curse. "Goddamnit, Iori, let me in now!"

Kyo sounded frantic. Iori fumbled with the lock and then swung the door open, watching Kyo stumble in and catch himself just before he fell, and just managing to get a glimpse at the shadowy hallway and the figure that was heading towards them, just caught a hint of the sickly-sweet smell, heard the godawful, harsh, moaning wail coming from the thing's mouth-

Kyo recovered, and slammed the door shut before Iori's brain could process these things individually, much less put them together. He locked the doorknob and sent the deadbolt sliding home before turning to meet Iori's gaze. He was panting slightly.

"Sorry," he huffed, leaning against the wall. "I had to jog the last three miles, there are cars everywhere. And that son of a bitch heard me and came after me about seven blocks up the street. I would've called, but-" he waved his hand, wordlessly telling Iori that his phone wasn't working either.

Something hit Iori's door and they both jumped, Kyo taking a couple of steps backward on instinct. "I don't think he can get in," he murmured quietly. "They seem... I don't know, they seem pretty stupid, actually. Like..." he trailed off, turning to glance at Iori uncertainly.

Zombies, Iori's mind helpfully supplied. It wasn't the craziest theory he'd come up with, but it wasn't exactly the most plausible, either. He shook his head, headed to the worthless refrigerator and produced a bottle of water for Kyo. On the other side of the door, the thing scratched, sounded like it was trying to walk through the door. Iori watched the doorknob to see if it would turn, trying to tune out the sickening thud of the thing's head hitting the wood, and closed his eyes.

They stood silently in the hallway until the noises stopped. "I think he's leaving," Kyo whispered, taking a few cautious steps forward to peer through Iori's peephole. "Yeah. He's gone."

Iori held up the radio, still clutched in his hand. "Remembered I had this," he said, holding it up. "It's battery-operated and the range isn't spectacular, but it's worth a shot." He hesitated, then turned away and led Kyo further into his apartment, where the candles had burned down more than he'd realized. He had another box somewhere; he'd have to find them after the sun came up.

If the sun came up at all. It hit him that he really didn't know.

"What's going on out there, Kusanagi?" Iori asked. "Why're you here? You have family, and your girlfriend-"

"Yeah, well, I can't go to them," Kyo snapped. He turned away. "You already know I wouldn't just call you to say hi. M-maybe I would've dropped a hint about this just because you're a human being, whether I hate your guts or not. Those are people out there, Yagami, or they were. And they don't deserve this shit. Nobody does."

* * *

The sun did rise, at the same time it always did. They hadn't slept the night before, but they hadn't talked anymore, either.

"I think I found a station!" Kyo called, and a second later, Iori came out, a can of food in each hand. "It's full of static, but they're saying... there are living people out there."

Iori noticed the distinction but didn't mention it. "...scue attempts... appears t—be isol... -family members."

Kyo's eyes met Iori's. "I couldn't get it any clearer," he murmured softly in the middle of the broadcast.

"-oing off the air-"

"Doesn't look like it's doing much good anyway," Iori replied tersely. He held up the food he'd found. "We have enough to last about three days. Twice that, if we only eat once per day." They couldn't trust the stuff he'd been keeping in the refrigerator, water being the exception, and he'd never noticed how little food he kept around until he needed it.

"We'll have to go out eventually, I guess," Kyo replied, sitting back. He looked disappointed.

"At least the radio said it was isolated." I think, Iori added in his head.

"Yeah, well, the radio said that there were rescue attempts, too." Kyo took a deep breath, then glared hard at the table. "So do we have a plan? We're going to have to leave—if this is isolated, then maybe we can get out. Maybe we can meet some living people on the way."

"We can pack up the food and some water. It won't be much to carry, so if we have to run from them, at least we'll be able to do it. And we can always light them on fire if they get too close."

"That doesn't work. I tried it." Kyo met his eyes, leaning forward. "It's like they can't feel that they're getting burned at all. Like a giant ball of flame coming right at you. It's crazy."

Iori resisted the urge to laugh, looked away to compose himself. Inside the apartment, this was all a little surreal. They tried to keep quiet and conserve what they had and it was boring, but really, he could almost pretend that this was normal. "I think I have a box of candles somewhere," he said at last. "I should try to find them while it's still light. And anything else that might help us out."

"D'you have any weapons?" Kyo asked. "I mean like, guns or something. We can't let them get close."

"Do I want to know how you know that?"

Kyo ignored him. "Let's find your candles," he said instead, standing up and keeping his eyes downcast. "We should probably try to get some sleep tonight, wait until tomorrow before we leave. Daylight and all that. And we don't want to go out if we're tired."

Iori nodded. He recognized the dismissal well enough, and he was going to have to know something more before they took to the streets, but for now he'd leave Kyo to wallow in whatever he knew.

* * *

They slept in shifts in Iori's living room, starting as soon as they'd scoured his apartment from top to bottom and gathered everything they could see as being useful. They'd have to go through it before they left to see what was a necessity and what wasn't—they couldn't take everything; it'd weigh them down too much and Iori still didn't know what they were dealing with.

They'd started sleeping right after their evening meal (corn for Kyo, beans for Iori) and because of that, plus all of the tension lately, they found themselves awake before sunrise. They sat side-by-side with their backs to the sofa, waiting silently for enough light to go through their loot.

"We were having a party," Kyo began softly, and Iori knew better than to turn his head and look or he'd break the spell. "My parents, a bunch of friends, me and Y-yuki." He closed his eyes briefly as he tripped over her name, but he managed to get ahold of his emotions and Iori still hadn't interrupted him. "I guess they were attracted to the noise or something, or maybe we smelled like food. I don't know. There were three of them. My dad just thought they were party crashers or something, so when one of them dove at him, he just went to punch it and it bit him. Ripped the skin off of his hand—my dad's a big man. You know, strong. But it was nothing for this guy.

"People started running and it was kind of chaos for a little while, some of the slower ones or the more sympathetic ones going down every time one of the crashers got ahold of somebody. Yuki was with me, and she was trying to get me to leave because she was terrified. Wanted to go home and check on her parents, but I told her to wait. I mean, Dad had just gotten attacked by this guy and I wanted to make sure he was okay. My mother was right next to him, talking to him and trying to stop the blood from flowing. He was dead by the time I could get to him, and I was too busy torching the one that was coming from behind me to notice when he got my mom."

Kyo was crying, silently, but Iori didn't say anything. They might have been rivals and even enemies at one point, but he'd lost everything. Iori could give him a minute to grieve about it. He didn't even think Kyo had noticed it himself.

"Somewhere in the confusion I lost Yuki. I went back for her, of course, but half the fucking party guests had been bitten and they sorta ganged up on me, so I took off and called her. It went to voicemail. I don't know if that means... she could've still been alive."

He realized he was crying and wiped at his face, oddly thankful that Iori could at least give him some dignity. "Anyway, then I started calling people and you're the only one that picked up. I almost didn't call, but we've had each others' backs in a fight before, and I guess that means you could be trusted in an emergency."

In some weird, fucked up way, it made sense that they were sharing this. They'd shared a lot before, in some form or fashion. Iori cleared his throat, oddly thankful that the only family he had left was a drug addicted stepmother somewhere back in Japan. "Biting," he said, to take some of the emotional anguish off of his rival. "This is some big, fucked up cliché, Kusanagi."

"Yeah. But hey, if Hollywood got the biting part right, maybe the wasting zombies with a headshot part will be right, too. It'd probably save our asses," Kyo joked, the corner of his mouth tipping up in a smile. "Not that I really want to shoot anyone, but if it comes down to one of us or one of them-"

Kyo didn't have to finish.

* * *

They left around noon, careful to be as quiet as possible until they got to a place that had guns. Most of the zombies must have moved on. Still, they were careful to keep their voices low and their footsteps as quiet as possible.

"I think I'd feel better if we were being chased," Kyo admitted as they turned down their third empty street. "Do you think they're all dead?"

"Don't know," Iori replied. He adjusted his messenger bag, squinting ahead of them to see if he could identify a gun shop. Somewhere with weapons. "I think there's a pawn shop up there," he said, pointing. "Maybe they'll have some guns."

"At least we're in the seedy part of town. There probably wasn't that many people here to begin with."

"This is Southtown," Iori quipped. "Everywhere is the seedy part of town."

The door to the pawn shop was gone, apparently ripped from its hinges, but it seemed empty. And they had guns. One wall was lined with hunting rifles and shotguns, and Iori went toward them, while Kyo checked out the handguns in the glass case.

"Do you even know anything about guns?" Kyo asked as he examined a solid black handgun. "Because I don't."

"You mean that all I had to do to beat you in a fight was to use a handgun, Kusanagi?"

Kyo made a soft noise of disdain in the back of his throat. "The whole fact that you'd have to stoop that low would mean that I won by default, Yagami." He smiled a little, relieved to be joking around even through a crisis.

"Did you hear that?" Iori asked suddenly, his head whipping toward the left. He had a shotgun in his hands—unloaded, but still possible to use as a club if he had to—and Kyo followed as he edged closer. They could both hear it now—a definite rustle. Iori cursed both of them for failing to secure the store before going to the guns.

"I hope to hell you guys are human," someone said. Kyo jumped, and Iori's hands tensed on the barrel of the gun. "Don't fucking shoot me, okay?"

A lanky blond boy, teenage, edged around the corner with his hands up. "I thought I recognized your voices."

"Rock Howard!" Kyo snapped, sighing. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Same thing you guys are, apparently. You can put that down, Yagami, they haven't bitten me. They got K' and Kula though, and after that I thought I might need some firepower."

Iori lowered the gun. "Have you run across anybody else?"

Rock shook his head. "Not since a few hours ago. Kula said they'd heard about an evacuation on the radio, but I'm willing to bet we've already missed that. I went by my apartment looking for Terry, but I just ran into a bunch of dead guys. Have you-?"

"We haven't seen anybody," Kyo replied softly. "I'm sorry."

Iori cleared his throat. "You should stick with us," he said, turning back to the weapons. "We stand a better chance of surviving if we're not on our own."

* * *

Kyo ended up shooting the first one. Iori ended up watching his back as he puked on the side of the road. By some unspoken agreement, they'd given Rock a gun but decided that he'd only shoot if they didn't have any other option. The kid was seventeen, and he didn't need that kind of memory. If he got out of this alive, anyway.

After the first time, killing became easier. Iori did most of the shooting; Kyo had his back. But Kyo threw up a lot afterward, and not only was that unhealthy, it slowed them down too much. Iori supposed that Kyo just lacked whatever it took to actually end someone's life—or unlife—while Iori had done something like that before, even if he had been possessed and couldn't remember it. And they kept walking.

He didn't know how many days it had been. It couldn't have been long, but their water supply was dwindling, they'd run out of canned food and were relying on swiping granola bars and bags of chips from convenience stores and gas stations on their route. Even the zombies were coming fewer and further between. Iori had been holding his breath, but they hadn't seen anyone they knew. Or used to know, or whatever. He just didn't know how willing he'd be to shoot someone with the face of an acquaintance.

Sleeping was a trick. Most of the time, it was an abandoned, hole-in-the-wall diner that nobody frequented. Thankfully, Rock seemed to be pulling his weight in that respect, always knowing where the lesser known places were located. They slept sitting up, in shifts, if they slept at all. The worst part was that they didn't seem to be getting any closer to the city limits.

They weren't sure what they'd find when they got there.

"I think we only have a couple of miles left," Rock said, while they were stopped on a break. "We could probably make it before dark, if we don't stop, and we don't run into anybody."

"Fuck it," Kyo said suddenly. "Let's go for it. I don't know about you, but I'm tired of this town."

They both turned to look at Iori, who shrugged. "I'm not your boss," he said, glancing between them. "I've been outvoted. I would've said let's go, anyway." They'd probably been more careful than necessary with traveling anyway, but at least they'd kept themselves—and each other—alive.

"Do you think it's really just isolated to Southtown?" Rock asked. "I mean, is it a virus like in the movies? Is it airborne? What if we get there and they won't let us out? What if there isn't anybody there to let us out?"

"We won't think like that," Iori ordered firmly. He stood up, leaving the trash (like it mattered anyway, and they didn't need the added weight) and gathering his weapons. "If they won't let us out then we'll convince them. And there has to be something—there was a radio broadcast." It seemed like a dream by now, but it was all they had. It kept them walking, and for now that was all they could ask for.

Their eyes were just beginning to glaze over when they heard the familiar shuffle-step of the zombie. "Thought they'd all be dead by now," Kyo muttered dully as they assumed a defensive, back-to-back-to-back position.

And then Iori said softly, "Oh, fuck me in church," which was the wrong thing to say because it made both Rock and Kyo turn their heads to see what he was talking about and that was Benimaru Nikaido heading toward them. Kyo made a sick, helpless noise in the back of his throat.

It was to the point that even Iori felt sorry for Kyo, and he was tired, and he made the fatal mistake of turning to tell him that he didn't have to shoot. They had forgotten how quickly the undead moved, and the minute Iori turned his head, Benimaru lunged.

Iori got the shotgun up just in time to catch the zombie's neck, widening his stance on instinct. He skidded backward a couple of inches on impact, but didn't lose his balance. It was the closest any of them had gotten, and Iori knew better, but he couldn't help the fact that he focused on silly details. Benimaru's fetid breath, the sickly-sweet smell of decaying flesh, the way his skin was beginning to peel right off the bone along his hairline.

"Iori!" one of them called behind him.

He didn't have the advantage. "Fuck you, run!" he snapped. He'd been in some pretty fucked up fights before, but never against someone who had literally zero pain reaction. And never against a dead person, either. "Go!" he repeated. "I can't-"

Benimaru, crazed with the smell of all the fresh food, gave another lunge and pushed Iori back another couple of inches. He tripped on a stray something in the road, falling to the ground, still struggling against the zombie. He was alone now, he thought, and he figured that if he had any chance at all of scrambling to his feet and running after he'd been bitten, at least he still had the .357 he'd been carrying and a bullet to shoot himself.

Iori took a deep breath and relaxed his arms.

And Benimaru's head exploded. Iori didn't hear the shot until it had already happened. Instinctively, he pushed the half-headless body off of him, gasping.

"Christ, Kyo," Rock said softly.

Iori scrambled up, turning his head to take in the scene. Rock was staring at Kyo, and Kyo was staring at Iori, handgun raised and his eyes wide. Iori held his hands up in surrender, meeting Kyo's eyes and holding them, careful not to make any sudden moves.

"Did he get you," Kyo asked. It wasn't a question.

"No."

Kyo lowered the gun, then threw it to the side as he turned his back, dropping to his hands and knees as he vomited. Rock went for the gun. Iori cautiously approached Kyo.

"He was going to kill you."

"I know," Iori replied softly. "Thank you."

"You're not allowed to give yourself up for us. That's not allowed."

"Okay."

"I want to get the fuck out of this town. Now. I just killed my best friend and I. Want. Out."

* * *

Iori was sure, when they approached the gates, that something was going to go wrong. That the zombie outbreak hadn't just been contained to Southtown. That they'd be met with some sort of reinforced steel wall that had been built overnight and that they wouldn't be allowed through.

Even when he saw live, breathing humans patrolling, he didn't relax. He was covered in gore; Kyo and Rock were so covered in grime that he could hardly see their skin. There was no way they'd be considered okay.

But the patrol had taken one look at them and shuffled them into quarantine, giving them scalding showers and leading them to an area full of other recent survivors. They were shown to rooms that were blindingly white but that had clean, soft beds and warm food and water, and at last, Iori felt that they were safe.