Title: Count the Days

Pairing: Axel/Roxas

Warnings: zombies, violence, language, sex, things of a disturbing nature, reckless optimism
Rating: M/R
A/N: Primarily inspired by the TV series "The Walking Dead" and the novels World War Z and The Road.

Beta: the lovely theplumtomato
Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, but I do get a kick out of writing for the fandom.

Summary: Roxas counts the days, makes little marks in his notebook to keep track of how long the dead have walked and how long he and Axel have been traveling. In this chapter, a rescue attempt takes a turn for the worse.

Part 2

Once upon a time, Axel and Roxas were in love. Head over heels, ridiculously in love with each other; things were great – brilliant even. Axel had dreams of moving them to the next state over and getting down on one knee at a rest stop and making a glorious scene, because he liked to see Roxas and their prospective forced audience blush. Once upon a time Axel would have done anything for him, would have killed for Roxas, and Roxas would have done the same.

Once upon a time, Roxas worried about shifts in the ER and when he'd get to see Axel again, after his rotation was over; he worried about rent and what sort of shenanigans Axel was getting into while he was trying to placate a man who insisted his stomach upset was evidence that his wife was trying to get back at him for cheating on her. There were graveyard shifts so dull Axel dropped in with some feigned injury or illness and they retreated to one of the supply closets to amuse themselves.

In the days they both counted as happy in their relationship, both Axel and Roxas enjoyed fighting. It was a way for them to release some tension and get their anger out before one of them had to clear a solid surface off to hold on to. Before the fights took on more serious notes, before the words, once empty, actually started to carry their weight, they were happy.

When it all crumbled beneath their feet, Roxas put his hands up in surrender and walked away.

That should have been the end of them – but then the dead started to walk, and zombies don't really give a flying fuck about what 'should have been' in the first place. Axel came back to find his ex-boyfriend; he pulled him into the car, bleeding and scared out of his fucking mind and put the hospital in their rearview mirror.

0o0

At a full sprint, Axel could feel every muscle in his body curl and release, hear his heart pound against his ribcage. He loved, lived for the feeling of flying, soaring over the fallen tree trunks that littered the ground and dodging obstacles all the way. If he closed his eyes Axel probably could have imagined himself back on the university track, surging ahead of the competition at lightning speed. Adrenaline and chemicals flooded into his brain, erasing every other thought aside from Roxas. Roxas was in trouble – again – and nothing, not one deranged dead thing or twenty were going to stand in his way when he could outrun them all.

He saw a few dogs darting in the opposite direction, whining the whole way. They didn't concern him though – they didn't seem to be any danger for the moment. Then he heard someone shouting as he vaulted over a larger trunk – then another quick series of gunshots.

Axel's brain went into overdrive. The gunshot he and Riku had heard before sprinting into the woods was definitely a shotgun.

This was a different gun that sounded more like a thundering pop – it was powerful and loud, and Axel winced. The sound would bring more of the infected to the area; they had to move fast, if Roxas was even in the area.

He didn't want to think about what might happen if Roxas was bolting back towards their camp instead.

As he bounded over and around trees, he began to see the outlines of a couple tents and a camper over the brush. Axel pulled to a stop, ducking behind another tree as he tried to catch his breath. Riku caught up moments later; his eyes widened as he caught something over the bushes Axel hadn't. Someone in the camp was still shouting, but they were quickly cut off with a strangled sound – and then all that was left were the moans of the dead.

When he realized that Riku was still entranced by something, he gave in. "What is it?" Axel whispered agitatedly.

Riku continued to stare, his vision tilted upwards as he mouthed the words 'What the fuck?'

"What is it?" Axel hissed again.

Riku's gaze flickered over to him only briefly before returning to whatever caught his attention. He was frowning now, confused and maybe slightly amused. Another low moan caught their attention; Axel stiffened and Riku pulled his own handgun out, peering over the obstructions at the scene. Riku jerked his head towards the campsite, grimacing and holding up five fingers.

Shit.

Axel darted to crouch beside Riku and looked up at the spot Riku had been staring at quizzically.

"What the actual fuck?" Axel muttered in the general direction of Roxas and the tree he was perched in, high above the carnage of the campsite.

Riku stifled a snort. Roxas, from his perch on the tree's limb, grimaced and mouthed very clearly 'Keep your mouth shut.'

Axel shook his head and pulled his gun from his jeans. Roxas must have heard the same sounds they had, and tried to make it back – but instead got stuck in a tree like an overconfident house cat. For the moment, he was safe. They could deal with him later.

All five infected were huddled around the remains of a body; Axel grimaced, trying to block out the disgusting sounds of ripping flesh and the sounds of their chewing, as well as the already-stripped femur (attached to a still-intact sneaker) tossed to the side. He felt the bile threaten to rise up in his throat, felt himself gag and held the rest down.

Riku shoved Axel to the side and took aim, firing just as one of the infected raised its head. The shot hit its intended target, sending pieces of the skull, brain and blood flying. Slowly, the others began to get up too.

Another anguished moan, this one coming from a different direction, signaled the arrival of more. Roxas, high up in his tree, had the sense to at least look alarmed.

Suddenly, there were too many. Too many coming out of the shadows of the forest, out of the corner of Axel's eye, from the campsite, all clambering for the newest offering of fresh meat and all hell broke loose.

Axel fell into a pattern, something like 'aim shoot dodge, aim shoot dodge' that eventually degenerated into SHOOT ANYTHING THAT MOVES while he still had ammunition to spare. He tried to get some distance between himself and the dead so he could take better shots, finding he was sorely missing a short-range weapon like Roxas' tire iron. At some point he tripped and took a tumble over one of the downed branches and landed hard on something – all he could feel was the sharp, intense pain in his right upper arm for a few moments until he kept moving, bullets shattering skulls and brains and bursting blood everywhere.

Somewhere along the way Roxas must have climbed down from his tree perch and joined the fray, swinging the heavy tire iron in wide arcs and deliberate blows. Riku was elsewhere, Axel could hear his gun going off somewhere nearby.

And somehow, they managed to make it out alive. All the walkers' skulls were smashed in one way or the other, and everything seemed to have quieted down – save for the skull-bashing Roxas was in the process of finishing up. Axel got up, wiping blood off of himself with his shirt, and nodded to Riku, who was rummaging through some of the supplies the dead man had.

"Ammunitions?" he asked, breathing heavily. Riku nodded.

"Shotgun shells, some for .45s, couple others. We'll bring the lot in."

"That's some luck," Axel chuckled. "Hey Rox-"

"Axel," the blond's voice snapped, making Axel frown.

"What?" he responded a little testily, turning to face his ex-boyfriend.

Roxas was staring at him – and not in a way that made him particularly happy. Axel could remember a time when just a look from Roxas – a specific one that usually accompanied some form of undressing with the eyes – could turn him into a pile of goo. It had been a long time since he'd seen that look, and it didn't seem like he'd be getting it again anytime soon. The blond was staring at him with hard eyes now, narrowed and focused.

"What?" Axel grumbled, wiping the blood spatter from his neck.

"You have a lot of blood on you," Roxas responded warily. "All over."

"I do?"

"All over your face," Roxas said, holding his tire iron at his side. "There's a cut on your arm." He was watching him with a dark expression Axel didn't like at all. Not one bit.

"Roxas," he said carefully.

"Did they get you?"

"What the – no!" Axel sputtered. The cut was just a cut. Just a cut, not a scratch, nothing.

"Give me your gun."

"Wha-NO!"

"Give it to me," Roxas hissed, holding his hand out. "NOW."

"What's the problem?" Riku asked.

"Axel's been compromised," Roxas shouted. "Open wound and he's covered in blood."

Riku took aim without even blinking. "What do you want to do?"

"Roxas," Axel pleaded, putting his hands up in a placating gesture. He was covered in blood, sweat and grime; he felt pathetic, trying to reach the person he knew inside Roxas that still understood mercy. That was the man he knew and loved, beautiful and radiant as light itself and just as forgiving – he was the person Axel needed. "Roxas, please," he whispered, leaning down slowly to put his handgun down carefully.

"It'd be stupid to kill him if we didn't need to. The virus – bacteria, contagion, whatever – needs time to mature. If he's infected, the sickness will kill him first. We wait. Axel, the keys," Roxas beckoned urgently.

Axel reached into his pocket and pulled them out, tossing them over to the blond. Then Roxas darted over and grabbed the gun from the ground.

"Let's go." Axel led the way back to the car, with both Roxas and Riku behind him; their weapons were drawn just in case they were ambushed, but just the same Axel's heart was in his throat the whole walk back as he hoped for their mercy.

The campsite was cleaned up immediately on their return. The fire had destroyed what food Axel and Riku had been hoping to eat, so Riku just kicked dirt over the whole thing. "Car's open," he said, checking the perimeter for anything moving.

Roxas nodded at Axel, then towards the car. "Get in." Axel obeyed.

Roxas sat in the back seat with Axel, sitting cross-legged and staring at Axel like he was mapping every pore and line in his skin. The handgun was in his lap, seemingly harmless for a killing instrument but in Roxas' hands . . . Axel knew better. He knew Roxas wasn't afraid to shoot if he had to.

The drive was unbearably tense as Riku maneuvered them out of the forest and back onto open roads; Riku was staring into the rearview mirror more than he was the road, and with Axel too anxious and stressed to really do much aside from sweat profusely Roxas was left to glare and double-triple-quadruple check that his gun was loaded and ready just in case. The lower half of the blond's face was now covered by one of his masks.

The tension started to eat at Axel first. He was sweating sitting in the back seat with no air flow, made even worse by the grim specter of possible death sitting not two feet from him, wearing his ex-boyfriend's face.

"I, uh," Axel cleared his dry and scratchy throat, his gaze darting briefly over to Roxas. "I didn't expect this."

"None of us did," Roxas responded blankly.

"Why am I not dead yet?"

Roxas bristled, fiddling with the gun in his lap. "Because I'd rather not kill when I don't have to."

"You could always put the gun away, you know."

Something came over Roxas in that moment – a shadow, hardening behind his eyes – that gave Axel pause.

"I asked you the same thing, remember?" Axel went cold.

"That was different," he said carefully, feeling himself tread dangerously. "We didn't know – I was fucking scared, Rox. I was scared and didn't know what to do."

"And you sat there in that drivers' seat," Roxas continued in the same cool, hard tone. "You sat there and kept this gun trained on me – just in case."

"I didn't know how to tell if you were sick," Axel pleaded. "I didn't want to kill you. We were all fucking freaked-"

"Don't," Roxas cut him off forcefully. "Don't try to justify yourself. I know you were scared shitless, we all were. Hell, you think I wasn't? I had no idea what was happening. You just showed up, grabbed me, and made me sit and wait until you decided to pull the trigger. I didn't want to sleep, because I was afraid if I snored I'd surprise you and you'd shoot. I thought maybe you'd finally lost it."

Axel's expression hardened slightly. "I wouldn't do that to you."

"You did," Roxas answered simply. "You did, and now you're going to sit there and wait until we see if you've been infected, damn it."

Axel didn't move much after that, his eyes glaring at the menacing piece of metal in Roxas' lap.

0o0

There were a few things about Axel that gave him a distinct advantage in this whole zombie apocalypse mess, Roxas had mused darkly on several occasions – most recently now, as he watched Axel's face and behavior for signs of infection with Axel's own gun sitting in his lap.

The first of these being his long legs. When they were first getting to know each other Axel had told him he'd been a cross-country runner and medal-winning sprinter; Roxas believed this without a single doubt. He'd seen Axel run in a full-blown sprint, his long legs carrying him several feet at a time and allowing him to thoroughly outpace walkers by a long shot. Whether it was an overabundance of adrenaline in his system or PowerThirst in his bloodstream, it didn't really matter. Axel could run, and he had ridiculous levels of stamina to keep that pace. Granted, Axel wasn't a rising track star any more so the actual limits of such stamina hadn't been tested in a while – but it made all the difference.

The second advantage Axel had was something that had been a hindrance for many years – his paranoia. Paranoia had saved his life even; he was the one stockpiling food and gear for the moment the shit hit the fan, long before the government made any official announcements about what was happening. His paranoia, even now, kept him from getting into too many dangerous situations and had probably saved their asses more times than Roxas was prepared to admit.

The third advantage Axel had was that he was fucking crazy. Despite his paranoia Axel had few actual inhibitions, which gave him almost free reign to do as he fucking pleased. Some people hem and haw and question the existence of the zombies until one's chewing on their bicep – some people wail about how God cursed humanity with this plague to punish his wayward children – some people have paralyzing panic attacks just thinking about the dead walking, denying their existence until the very end.

And some people look at a walker – look at an animated, decomposing corpse with gnashing teeth and bloodshot eyes and sallow skin, or see a zombie crouched over the body of their next door neighbor, shoving bloody bits into their rotten mouths – and say, "okay." Some people accept their existence, no questions asked. They accept, they prepare, and they are ready – and they won't go down without a vicious fight.

Axel was a member of the latter, and as far as Roxas was concerned, of the three of them Axel had the largest chances of making it out alive.

He wasn't supposed to go down this road – Axel was supposed to be a survivor. Roxas didn't like this at all, and he certainly didn't like more or less holding Axel hostage in the back seat of his own car, but he felt like there wasn't much of a choice. They couldn't be sure whether his wound had been infected with the amount of blood on him, or whether it was a wound directly from a walker. Either option could lead to dire consequences – and Roxas was not prepared to deal with any mistakes. And even those who were supposed to survive made mistakes.

Roxas, as far as he was concerned, didn't have any advantages. He was small and relatively spry to be sure, but he was no long-distance runner by any stretch and his bloodstream was definitely devoid of PowerThirst. Maybe he was a little reckless and overly analytical, but none of that should have given him a leg up in this fucked up world.

When Roxas thought about all of this he realized it was making him feel slightly ill; analyzing their advantages and disadvantages led Roxas to believe that his greatest advantage in the scheme of things was that he had Axel.

Roxas really hoped he didn't have to shoot him.

0o0

Four hours later, Axel still showed no symptoms indicating his infection.

Six hours later, Roxas climbed up to the passenger seat and curled up to sleep and Axel breathed a sigh of relief, shedding silent tears of joy that he'd been spared. Riku seemed to exhale his own tension, practically deflating in the driver's seat when it seemed like that small ordeal was over.

Riku drove north, skirting the foothills of the Rockies until they came to a small stream, exposed enough that they could keep a pretty clear watch for anything that came to pay them a visit.

"Everybody out," he said gruffly. "Decompress, then we'll keep moving." Riku was out of the driver's seat and slamming the door before the other two.

Axel got out of the car and immediately pulled his bloodstained and torn shirt off; it was destroyed beyond all help, and he honestly didn't care that he was going to run out of clothes eventually if he kept up like this. He made a direct line for the clear, cool stream, kneeling by the water's edge and scrubbing the sweat and dried blood from his skin. Axel rubbed his face with his palms, washing his face vigorously. He didn't even realize someone was behind him until he felt a hand smack him upside the head; Axel twisted around with an outraged shout, glaring up at the snarling face of his ex-boyfriend.

"What the flying fuck, Roxas?" he demanded.

"Don't," Roxas growled. "Do that. Again." Roxas held that stare for a moment, then stalked back to the car.

Axel sat there for another few minutes, quietly fuming and sorting through confused thoughts as he rubbed the spot where Roxas' hand had connected. Roxas had been furious, he could tell that much – but he'd been afraid, too. Axel had known Roxas long enough, and well enough, to tell when he was terrified. That threw him for a loop, made his stomach clench – because even though they'd never spoken about how they managed to keep going on together, he knew Roxas depended on him as much as he depended on Roxas, and maybe Axel's brush with death had scared him more than he was letting on.

Axel rose and walked back to the car, leaving his tattered shirt behind. That was when he saw Roxas talking with Riku; Riku was leaning back against the car and Roxas had his back to Axel, with his arms crossed over his chest. As he got closer, Axel felt the beginnings of anger and residual possessiveness from his time with Roxas rise bitterly in his throat; Roxas and Riku were standing rather close together. Too close for Axel's taste. Roxas wouldn't do that, wouldn't try to make a fuck buddy out of someone they'd picked up, not while Axel was still there – would he? Axel's heart sunk into his stomach. Maybe it's nothing, he told himself.

As he approached, Riku slid away from the car and picked the keys out of his pocket, tossing them to Axel. Roxas, he noticed with a pang of rage, stiffened when Riku said Axel's name and got into the car, refusing to otherwise acknowledge him. The redhead gave their newer passenger a fierce glare as he caught the keys, which Riku shrugged off carelessly. Axel scowled and opened the trunk of the car to pull another shirt out; once it was on he climbed into the driver's seat with a sigh.

They drove on further north, car completely silent as its inhabitants maintained the stony quiet. All of that was fine with Axel, who sang the lyrics to Foreigner's 'Cold as Ice' in his head to keep himself amused. In the seat beside him, Roxas scratched away in his notebook, marking another day gone by in hell.