"Have you heard the kinds of things that people on the street are saying?" His voice was low. Conspiratorial.

I moaned low….a zombie sound. "That's pretty much all their saying these days."

He snorted. "A laugh a fucking minute that's what you are."

"Okay, I'll play," I whispered, trying to sound secretive. "What are they saying?"

"When they aren't moaning and groaning they are saying that Tony Stark is the only one full of himself enough to get laid on a zombie killing mission to stop the end of the world."

"You like to say your own name, don't you?"

"It gives me needs. I'd fuck me."

"Easy, Buffalo Bill," I laughed, then tried to look serious. It was no use. "They are probably right, you know."

"I don't know, I think Clint and Natasha are doing it." Tony swatted me on the ass.

I jumped. "That's hot…I hope they are, I don't want to be the only slutty one."

"Oh no, Pom Pom Queen," Tony grinned. "I got you beat by a fucking mile."

This surreal conversation took place as we again stood on the roof. I tried not to let my eyes wander over the place where Loki had gotten me off, or over the edge of the roof where my mother lay. The never ending night was around us. We knew we still had miles to go (and miles to go before I sleep. Miles to go before I sleep….), to get to Stark Tower. Twists and turns…if only we could go as the goddamn crow flies. Straight ahead. We had actually considered that, but the buildings were old and we couldn't risk one of us falling through a roof somewhere along the way. Or all of us, for that matter.

The zombies had gathered in the alley ways. Oddly enough the main street in front of the building was pretty damn clear. It was odd, but it was also scary. It could mean that they had developed some sort of perceptive abilities…like they knew we were mainly sticking to the alleys. We had discussed this, not dismissing the notion, but just for a moment ignoring it. Possibly it was just Nergaul. He was a god after all, he could see us from his perch in la la land. Maybe he was their brain. A collective mind, and all him. If so, we were pretty much fucked.

"We are going to have to go out the front," Steve said. "It's the only way." His lips were pressed together in a grim straight line. He looked worried as hell.

"Then let's go," growled Natasha. "I'm sick of this. I just want to get to Stark's goddamn tower and get this shit over with. I mean, that fucking thing is more than likely lying to us and has something new and equally painful up his sleeve….I don't care. I just want to get out of this death trap."

I could've sworn I saw her shiver, just a tiny tremor running through her perfect body. She saw me staring at her, bit at her full lips, and then spun and walked back to the stairs.

"Besides," she called back over her shoulder, "if we stay here long enough those two are going to fuck again. I'm starting to get jealous."

"Whoa!" Tony said. "You can join in any time. Hell, bring your boyfriend. Let's make this a real party!"

"Wrong kind of jealous, you pig." Natasha's back was turned but the smile in her voice was evident. She disappeared back into the building.

Tony winked at Clint. "I think we are giving your little lady needs, Legolas."

Her tinkling laughter floated back to us. I looked over the city and sighed. From the roof we could see smoke curling up from the different areas of the city. Sometimes billowing like entire neighborhoods were engulfed, sometimes merely floating on the winds, possibly a camp fire on a roof somewhere. Somewhere that people still lived….like us. Well, like me. No one was like the Avengers.

Our last trek down those creaking iron stairs. Our last moment in front of that bolted door. We took a collective deep breath, and then Steve slid the lock back, and stepped out into the night. The effect was instantaneous.

Maybe we had all been too lost in foolish conversation, or playful bantering to check the front street once again before we left the roof. Maybe the sound of us trooping down the stairs drew them. Maybe they were getting smarter, or Nergaul was bored and decided to play with his toys like a malicious child. Whatever happened, it sucked.

Before we could make it out behind him, a zombie slammed into Steve from the side, it's ragged jaws snapping like a piranha, The grisly skin was falling away from it's skull, leaving an absurd looking mask behind. Soft graying skin still stuck to the cartilage on the nose, the eyeballs mushy and running from the sockets. It sunk it's decaying teeth into his neck, blood spurted in a heated jet, splashing across Bruce's chest. He gasped out, looking down at his front and back up at his compatriot. His eyes began to glow, and he threw himself out the doorway, his skin already greening, body expanding. We poured out behind him, weapons held high. The Hulk roared like King Kong, picking up zombies and slamming then down into the street head first. Blood and brains streaked the concrete. He looked for all the world like someone who was trying to get a pen to work, throwing it out after a moment and getting another.

A strangled cry escaped Steve. I spun around to see Tony scrambling toward him. The zombie's surprise attack had taken him down in the street, but Steve managed to put a knee in it's gut and punch it in the jaw, which splintered on contact. He kicked it off, it's ruined jaws still trying to bite the air between them. The things ripped and dirty suit was a fake, one of the faux suits that is used in a funeral home. Open in the back…the clothing fell away as the thing bounced off a light pole, and rebounded.

Steve had put a hand to his jetting neck…his jugular was bleeding him out all over the sidewalk, and the team gathered around him. I looked from them to the naked zombie. It had regained it's footing and was moving jerkily toward me. It stopped for a moment, like it was scrutinizing me, and then suddenly it put on a very un-zombie like burst of speed and leapt at me. I had just enough time to lift my katana and utter a shriek, before the Hulk scooped it out of the air by it's ankles and slammed it sideways into the building across the street over and over. I quickly ran over to try to help the others…but it was too late for help. Too late for Captain America.

Steve was dying, and I could tell that he knew it. His bright blood was everywhere, contrasting with the nearly black maroon ichor that came out of the zombies. One of his hands was at his ruined throat, the other had come to rest on Tony's arm.

"Stark," he rasped. "You're going to have to shoot me."

Tony looked sick. His skin was very pale. "Let's not talk like that, Cap. We are going to fix this."

Steve clenched onto the other man's arm. "No sugar coating…I'm dying…I don't….don't want to come back like those… things. Promise….me."

Tears were gathering in Clint's eyes, he tried to blink them back. They were freely coursing down Natasha's cheeks, yet her face remained stoic. No emotion.

"Dammit, Spangles….," Tony began.

Steve tried to smile through his grimace, a harsh bark of laughter escaping his lips. "Don't… call… me that…jerk. Take care…of the…team," his voice was growing weaker. His eyes looked glassy, a few more ragged breaths, as his body hitched, and then he was still. He last breath came out in a whisper like a breeze. He was gone.

"FUCK!" Tony screamed. "FUCK! THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!" Steve's hand was still on his arm.

"Pull your gun, Stark," Clint said. His voice was deathly serious. It gave me chills. "Pull your goddamn gun!" he said, louder this time.

"Wha-," Tony began…. and Steve suddenly sat up. "Cap?"

"It's not him!" Natasha exclaimed falling back away from him. She grabbed Clint's arm and pulled him back. "Shoot him, Stark! That's what he wanted, but I will slice his fucking head off, if you don't fucking HURRY!"

Tony tried to wrench his arm away, but the newly reanimated Steve had clamped down hard. He jerkily turned his head toward his teammate, the re-awakened muscles already beginning to stiffen. His eyes were milky, vacant. Steve was strong, a large man and heavily muscled; he began to pull Tony easily toward him. Tony's eyes were locked with the corpses…he looked awed, confused, like he didn't want to believe that Captain America, who had been very much alive only minutes ago, was now a flesh eating zombie…and zeroing in on his face.

He fumbled with the gun tucked into his jeans, not tearing his eyes away from Steve's. Slowly Tony raised the barrel and put it against his temple. "Cap," he whispered. Their faces were inches from each other. "I'm sorry."

I winced as he pulled the trigger, and the tears began to flow down my face. "This nightmare has to end," I whispered to no one in particular.

The blast echoed down the street, and Steve fell back, his hand finally falling away from Tony's arm. He dropped the gun and buried his face in his hands. A mournful howl reminded us that Bruce was still the Hulk, and the green giant leapt over us, jumping from building to building, disappearing down the street, howling the entire way. Soon we could no longer see or hear him.

"We have to go," Natasha said. "There's more coming. All that noise is drawing them like wolves."

Sure enough they were coming out of the alley ways behind us. Their moans raising to the heavens, mournful, angry, hungry…dead. Tony stood up, tucking the gun back into the waist of his jeans, all the time not tearing his eyes away from his fallen comrade.

"We can't just leave him here," he said softly.

Natasha reached out and took his arm. He looked up at her, and his dark eyes looked haunted. I imagined they would probably look like that for quite sometime.

"Listen," she said calmly, "They won't bother him now. And we can come back for him later, I promise. But right now we have to go. We have already seen that some of them are faster then we first thought. If we don't get to your tower, then we can't try to stop this. More people will die, Tony. We can't let that happen, right? It's not what Steve would have wanted."

Tony nodded, took one last look at the body at his feet…and then he reached his hand out to me. Until now I had remained just a bit back away from them, saying nothing. It all just seemed to intimate, too personal for me to be involved. I gladly took his hand, relieved to feel the comfort of his touch, and we began to run down the middle of the street.

The majority of the undead now seemed to be behind us. A few would come rushing or staggering out of an alley as we went past. Tony shot the fast ones, the others we merely kept a good distance away from. They had formed a slow moving mass behind us, a rotting, stinking wall. It had to be what the gates of the kingdom of Hell would've looked like….if I had believed in it.

The way was blessedly easy to find. We just followed the trail of debris left by the Hulk. Occasionally a litter of zombie bodies, all with smashed useless heads, would lay at the base of an apartment building or a sky rise. The stuff once inside their heads smeared down the red brick or glass and concrete, pooled into congealed Jell-O like puddles on the sidewalk. Pretty nasty, yet comforting.

We were out of breath by the time we reached the downtown district. High-rises and sky scrapers loomed above us. This is where the real war zone seemed to be. There were half eaten carcasses strewn about, their skulls cracked open to get to the soft brains inside. Cars were on fire in the streets, smashed and blown out, charred pieces of bodies were everywhere. Many were still inside the vehicles. It sickened me to think that it was very possible that people stayed in their cars to burn up, rather than escaping the fire into the arms of the dead. I wasn't sure which death would be worse…thinking about it made me shudder.

Tony draped a strong arm around my shoulder. "Now's not the time to let the shock set in, Cheerleader. Hold it off for a little longer and then you can fall apart all over the fucking place, okay? We all can."

I nodded. "I'm okay."

He squeezed me. "You are about as okay as I am, babe. And I am not alright-not at all. We are almost there…almost home."

"I don't know where the fuck home is anymore," I murmured. My eyes still scanned the cars, the fires, the bodies. Maybe I was watching for movement…and praying that I wouldn't see any. I glanced over at the man holding me for a moment.

Tony was also scanning the scene, definitely watching for the dead walkers. I could feel it in his tensed up muscles. He was ready for anything. I took a lot of comfort in that.

Quietly he said, "You have a home with me as long as you want it."

I opened my mouth, unsure what to say, he held his hand up. "Now isn't the time. We will have lots of time to talk about that later, once we get through this. And we are going to get through this. Stay behind me."

He began to guide our group through the carnage. He stayed in the safest areas to keep us out of harms way as much as possible. As if he is taking the Captain's place, I thought. Tony took us down one street, and up another. There at the end was the tower…home. I felt a pain in my chest, my throat swelled a little. I'm still not sure if it was fear of the unknown or happiness at being so close to our goal. A little of both I think. After all, out on the streets, we knew what the score was….there were walking dead, and they wanted to eat us. Who knew what kind of nasty fucking surprises were inside that building, waiting on us. Floor after fucking floor of them.

No one said anything as we walked up the street toward Stark Tower. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, nearing the Emerald City, with her rag tag group of friends. One minute skipping happily down the Yellow Brick Road, the next shaking in front of the giant gates of the city…awed by it's glory, yet terrified to go in. A few zombies milled around, fresher ones. Not the kind that had dragged themselves from the slab or the tomb, but ones newly turned. In business suits…Stark employees probably. They looked lost. A long time ago I went to visit my grandmother in the nursing home before she died. She was in a ward full of people with Alzheimer's…and I was reminded of it now. The way the old men and women shuffled around, no particular plan in their minds of where they were going or what they were doing. "Their brains are out to lunch," my mother had said. "They don't even know where they are. It's so sad."

A couple of them turned to the sound of our footsteps, and began to slowly make their way toward us. They would never get to us, we knew that. We picked our way through knocked over trash cans and past a torn apart newspaper stand. Papers and litter were strewn across the street. Further on a knocked over hot dog stand had proved to be too irresistible to the city's sewer rat population. They would slink to the stand, grab meat or bread, even pickles, and then scurry back into what ever hole they had crawled out of.

A stray dog wandered up snuffling the ground around the cart. He practically inhaled a bratwurst and then snapped at a nearby rat. The vermin jumped on his face, biting and clawing. Dominion over a hot dog cart. The dog flicked its head, and the rat flew up in the air, still attached to one floppy brown ear. The ear ripped spraying blood, bringing an angry yelp out of the dog like a curse, and the rat let go. The dog immediately snatched it out of the air and promptly bit it in half. The front half lay on the ground, and after a moment it began biting and clawing again. The dog didn't notice, he was pulling the guts from the back half, gulping them down. He cut his eyes up at us, growled, and then ran off with the half dead rat in his mouth.

Now close enough, we could see that someone sat on the steps of Stark Tower, his head down. He looked up at us as we ascended, and tried to smile. His eyes were red and raw, his hair a tousled brown mess.

"Bruce!" Clint cried. "Thank GOD, Man! You have no idea how scary it is to think that a Hulked out zombie might be waiting for you around every corner!"

"What he is trying to say," Natasha said, smacking Clint in the back of the head, "is that we were all very worried about you. It is good to see you."

"Yeah," Clint grinned, rubbing the back of his head. "That is exactly what I was saying."

Bruce's crooked smile grew a little wider. "I'm glad to see you all too." His eyes clouded over for a moment. "Steve…he's dead isn't he?"

Somberly we all nodded. "I didn't think I dreamed it," he said. "But I was hoping." He stood up. His clothes were different, suit pants and a white button up. He must have seen me looking, because he said. "I got these clothes off a corpse. Better than being half naked, I suppose."

"Depends on who you are," Tony said, half smile playing across his lips. There was some of the old Tony. The one before…

Bruce laughed. "That is true, that is true. So, are we ready for this?" He turned and motioned to the doors of Stark Tower.

It felt like we all took a deep collective breath. "Fuck it," Tony said. "Let's go. It's time to end this."

And with those words, we marched together into Tony Stark's beloved Tower.