Disclaimer: I do not own Kyle XY

Warning: This starts off a little dark, will be Kessi based, but end with hope (I hope!)

Jessi walked into the small house, a shack really, after having scouted the area for corpses. Smiles rarely seem to come to her face these days, until she was in Kyle's company. Her smile wasn't very big, and it was most certainly a wry grin if anything, but at least it was a smile. Kyle was writing in that rumpled leather bound book again.

She knew why he wrote at all; it was why she wouldn't interrupt him. It was a matter of survival. Even from across the room, watching him write in light from a large tri-wicked candle, she could tell exactly what words he was writing by examining the pen he held in his fist.

It would have been so much easier to type out his journal entries, but without power over much of North America, and quite possibly the world, that was no longer an option. Mechanical typewriters were also cumbersome to carry cross country and were pretty rare too.

With little effort, she read the regular movements of his pen and deciphered what he was writing. We have reached southern Manitoba, a Canadian prairie province. Every spring the area we are currently in floods heavily and hence it is sparsely populated. We are in a little shack surrounded by many layers of sandbags that reach over twelve feet high. It doesn't look like anyone has lived here in months, maybe even years.

"I'd lean toward years," she said, finally interrupting him.

"Hi Jessi," Kyle said as he turned to her. He gave her his customary grin, a smile that lit his face and warmed her heart.

"So you are writing a novel," she exclaimed as she walked toward him.

He turned to the worn book and frowned. "No I'm not," he said.

She didn't let him continue. "Then why do you have all the exposition, the descriptive first person narration?" She'd noticed it days ago and had wanted to tease him about it, but hadn't had the heart, until now. "The world is practically dead, all around us!" Even flies, she kept to herself gloomily.

He reacted the way she'd known he would. He flipped back a hundred pages and quickly flipped through dozens of pages. "You're right." He flipped to the beginning, and flipped through a dozen pages. "I didn't start that way; it must have just grown on me."

She touched his shoulder and sighed. There was no time for romance, no time for the electricity they'd once generated just by kissing. Not yet anyway; she could be patient. She was with him finally, not fighting for his attention or his company. They even slept next to each other, to keep each other warm and safe. It was late October and it was getting cold at night.

He noticed she was tense again. His lips pursed as he got up from the old wooden chair. "Take a seat for a minute." She didn't argue, only because it felt nice just to have him with her. She wasn't happy about the cost though. He brought his hands to her neck and gave her a light massage, but also a slight electrical current passed through his finger tips into her shoulder muscles. Involuntarily they tightened and loosened repeatedly. When he was done he only stopped the current but continued the old fashioned massage. He was quiet for twelve minutes and thirty-four seconds.

The significance of that time was not lost on her. She'd never liked Amanda but would never have wished her death either. The fact he'd been in a self-induced coma to fight off the disease, like she'd done, was little comfort. She knew that Amanda had watched over the both of them after her mother and their family had died. When a small gang of thugs had broken into the house to loot the place, they'd heard every scuffle, every shout, and every cry.

Dammit Kyle, she thought venomously, now you made me remember it too. A lump formed in her throat as she remembered the condition Amanda had been in when they'd awakened from their comas. At the first sign of trouble they had both done everything they could to get out of their comas, but it had taken more than twelve minutes to undo what had taken maybe two minutes worth of work. He'd found her first, torn and broken on the floor. She'd been alive long enough to smile at him – and her surprisingly – and say goodbye.

The cowards had broken her neck and only her strength of will had kept her alive.

When they had awakened, they had found blood splattered all over their clothes and on their skin. She'd sliced open two of her fingers to make it look like they were hemorrhaging, like all the others who were dead or dying at the time.

It had been a great plan; most other looters would have left at the first sign of the dying, but probably because she'd been there and in remarkable good health, they had fought for her and killed her before fleeing. The fact she'd continued to breathe for another four minutes until they woke did nothing to ease the pain in her heart.

She and Kyle owed Amanda their lives, their very existence. Humanity might yet live on, all because of her. She wanted Kyle to keep the journal, if only because it had an account of her sacrifice and of their plans for the future.

She swallowed, trying to banish the painful memories. The lump in her throat would clear eventually she knew.

He allowed her to get up – it always helped her to do some exercise to manage her stress, even if it was simply pacing back and forth on a few dusty planks of wood. He said, dread clear on his face. "So, what did you see out there?"

Through clenched teeth she muttered her response. Even if Kyle hadn't reminded her of the memory, simply recounting the news of her patrol would have. "Only a couple zombies terrorizing two women and a newborn."

To his credit – or maybe to hers – he didn't ask where they were because he knew they'd be dead. They weren't real zombies of course, only spineless worm-like sub-humans who openly used violence and intimidation as the means of survival in the new post-disease world.

"Good job," he said, a grim smile on his face. He gave her a congratulatory kiss. "How many zombies were there?"

"Four." She couldn't help but smile grimly as well; she only liked the reward.

He gave her three more kisses. If he had found and disposed of them, she would have given him the same reward. It was probably a little obscene as a tribute to a dead rival, but simply remembering her didn't seem to be enough. Amanda certainly would have wanted them to be happy, to live, to restore humanity, or in fact make it better, reinvent it.

There was trash to take out; they would do it because it was necessary. Even with the approximately eight per cent of humanity left still roaming the Earth, at least two people had hope. They were headed north, and were nearly at their destination: the high security government lab. They knew where it was supposed to be because the internet's aerial maps showed everywhere but where it was. The ones for the CDC had been looted by crazed military types who were trying to consolidate their power, their own tyrannical regimes. She and Kyle hoped that the Canadian military wasn't quite as power hungry as their country's had been.

The dark ages had returned but they would fight it with every ounce of energy they had.