Spoilers/Warnings: set after "Exit Wounds"
Beta: bookwormsarah
AN: Written for zombi_fic_ation prompt: "17. Any/Any. Zombies changed the way war was fought."

"Tell me something that's true."

Jack shifts under the threadbare old throw they've been using as a blanket. The sofa isn't comfortable, the lounge isn't warm, but it's been that kind of day. Too wound up and needy to make it into the bedroom, into bed, instead they fell into each other here. Now the clock says the time is well past midnight, the takeaway they picked up on their way home is cold and abandoned on the table, but neither is interested in getting up to reheat their food. Warmth and each other are more important tonight.

Jack looks at the clock again.

"It's quarter till one." He waits.

A moment later, Ianto lets out an exasperated breath. "You always do this."

"I like plums."

It's a small sofa, but not so small Ianto can't roll away from Jack just enough to indicate he's not amused by that response either. Jack could leave it, make a third joke to complete the set, then drag his recalcitrant lover to bed properly, even offer to make up with something fun.

He settles for playing with the soft hair on Ianto's left arm, soothing himself. Ianto doesn't often ask for pieces of him, or of the future, contenting himself with the little Jack feels he can offer. It's a fantastic arrangement as far as Jack is concerned. But he knows he's alone in thinking so. There are only so many times he can face seeing even well-masked disappointment.

The clock ticks closer to one.

"Something true. I could tell you about the zombies."

There's a start, a tremble. He's remembering Owen, is allowing himself to shudder in his grief. Ianto is always closely tuned to his own emotions, hiding them only so well as he can spare the energy, which isn't much. Grief is a normal thing for them both.

"Not like Owen," Jack says as a gesture. "Real, shambling, brain-eating, honest to Bob zombies."

Jack can practically hear Ianto's thoughts stirring between them before he speaks. "Are you about to tell me the Night of the Living Dead films were real?"

"No. Well, they were, but that's another story." The CIA enlisted his help on that case, bodies mysteriously reanimating via alien intervention. Jack had been sure the time had come early, but the incident was contained. "These zombies come later."

"How much later?"

"It's the future for you," says Jack with complete honesty.

"Zombies."

Jack remembers the few surviving reels, the ones he watched half-asleep through another boring lecture at the Academy. "That's what they were called. The infected were practically dead, and no-one recovered from it. Flesh rotted on their walking bones, dropping hunks of skin and congealed blood as they just kept going. The survivors couldn't pause, and couldn't hide. I think a lot of the second wave of death came from exhaustion. Sit down and rest your eyes, wake up to teeth ripping you open."

"If you're trying to make me sick, recall that I handle all the corpses at work." His voice has that tone though, the one where Ianto's putting on a nonchalant face instead of vomiting.

"I'm just saying it was gross, according to the reports. The disease made the zombies crave certain chemicals inside the brain, like acetylcholine and serotonin."

"Did they stop the disease by manufacturing artificial versions?"

Jack smiles and pulls Ianto closer. He's always had a thing for smart guys. "They did, but it took them months to figure that out. Or maybe they lost access to production. I don't know. But yeah. So they stopped the plague, and stopped the zombies from infecting new people."

He allows himself his own shudder. There's a reason the Agency gave a damn about the zombie plague. "It changed everything. It changed how wars were fought. A zombie was the ultimate soldier and weapon, rolled into one decaying body. Everywhere had millions and millions of the infected, just existing. Take away their fake drugs and drop them on a population centre. There's your victory, won in a matter of days, and ended with a new army of zombies loyal to whoever had the chemicals to feed them. Countries disappeared. Warlords controlled vast empires of undead and terrified living. Centuries passed before some scientists finally figured out a way to cure the zombies completely, but the cure relied on contact with an alien species Earth won't meet for a long, long time."

"How did it get started? Will it, I mean?"

Jack thinks back. He's spent a lot of time trying to remember the details. The historians knew where Ground Zero was, but the plague would spread across the Continent within two days, and across the world in less than a week. The details that had survived such a sudden catastrophe were sketchy and contradictory.

"They don't know, even in my time. The survivors agreed it started with two flashes in the sky, like twinned comets or meteors. People swore the plague had to come from space, but the geneticists who studied the disease said it looked manufactured. I always thought it was something made in a lab somewhere that got away from its inventor, but hell, the virus could have come through the Rift, or been a wild mutation."

Jack has kept his eyes peeled and his ear to the ground. He has copies of all the research from Torchwood London, and he has scanned every document until his eyes have crossed. He keeps regular tabs on research, official and unofficial, from all the universities, and from every pharmaceutical and military database Toshiko could hack into for him. He's hoped he might find the moment, find the place, and maybe change the tide. He's been watching the work, and he's been watching the clock.

And he has failed.

Ianto says, "This is why you never tell us anything about the future, isn't it? It's all horrible."

"Not all," Jack says in a soothing voice. "It gets better. And worse. Humans are humans. We do stupid stuff but we go on."

"Mmm." Ianto yawns. "So you like plums, do you?"

"Love 'em."

"I'll pick up some when I go to the shop tomorrow." A few minutes pass, and he's asleep, content and quiet in Jack's arms. This is Jack's favourite part of the night, even more so than the sex, but he'll never admit it. He almost suggested staying in the Hub tonight, not that it would have mattered, but Ianto is happier when they spend the night at his. He deserves one happy night.

When Jack is sure Ianto's completely asleep, Jack kisses his shoulder. "No, you won't." He tilts his head, looking at the clock. It's quarter past one on October tenth, in the year two thousand nine.

Even from outside the closed curtains, Jack can clearly see the sky flash. A moment later, the light blinks again, like a supernatural flashbulb taking the last photographs of the human race as it is.

Jack reclines uneasily in the darkness, and he waits for the screams to begin.

The End

AN: As ever, my three favourite words are, "I liked this!"

Addendum: If you would like to read more about post-apocalyptic Torchwood, please check out "The Day the Dragons Came." If you're more interested in creepy horror/science fiction, take a look at "Tuesday's Dead." And thanks for dropping by!