Yo.

What's up guys? Here's another unbeta'd chapter for you. I'm glad people are liking Cunningham...I usually avoid OCs like the plague.

Cheers!
Marx

Chapter Nine
Dead or Alive

16 August +00

Kurt cradled the radio in his hands.

After the conversation, it seemed almost unnervingly quiet despite the bird-like screams and other torn sounds from the Infected on the streets, and instinctively Kurt looked down again to double-check if the ladder was clear. When he was reluctantly satisfied to see that the Infected hadn't started making their way to the roof, he tiled his head up to look at the dying sunlight.

"A whole night out here, eh?" he decided to say, because the silence was already starting to creep him out. "Sounds like an adventure. A whole night of breathing fresh air is a nice change."

Cunningham snorted, scooting away just enough to where they were close enough to touch but weren't pressed against each other any longer. "Yeah, if by 'breathing fresh air' you mean 'it smells like shit and rot' then sure, I get what you mean."

Kurt rolled his eyes while simultaneously shaking every muscle in his body at once to get rid of some of the excess tension and shakiness. He holstered his Glock after flicking it to safety before he retorted, "You're a negative person aren't you?"

Cunningham glanced over at him with a half-smile and answered, "Not particularly. I was considered the happiest guy in my shop, actually. Always cracking jokes and making people uncomfortable."

Kurt frowned at that. "What d'you mean, uncomfortable?"

Cunningham laughed at that, eyes gazing towards the darkening sky instead of directly at the sun, seemingly lost in his thoughts. That was dangerous, getting lost in one's thoughts...Kurt didn't want to chance being caught unawares out here. He had already done that once today, and it had landed him on the roof.

"Oh you know, me being black. Not that it's about racism because the majority of people in America are pretty cool with everyone nowadays unless there's a long-standing grudge in the way, but it's a lot of fun to mess with people though sometimes it can be frustrating. You people are constantly walking on eggshells, which might be valid considering how some of us act, and it's a laugh to make you uncomfortable. Y'know, like...when someone makes a comment about me being good at hauling bombs on the flight-line, it's because I'm black and made for hard labour. That freaks people out – they start backtracking, trying to take back what they said or simply apologising over and over again, and all I can do is laugh and tell 'em not to sweat it, that I was just playing anyway. People are so politically correct and don't want to hurt anyone's feelings in case they look bad or get sued, so it's just fun to mess with them I guess. Takes a lot of the pressure off, keeps people from walking on eggshells. They treat me like a person after that, instead of a doll or a stereotypes."

Kurt smiled a bit sadly. "Well, it shouldn't be a thing in the first place. Treating people like dolls or stereotypes will get you killed."

"Well now it will but back in the good old days, it was just how people acted. I know I did it to a lot of people. I'm Jewish born and raised, so I tend to get uncomfortable around Muslims even though I know almost all of them are good people that don't have a problem with me," Cunningham mentioned, shrugging. "It's just human nature and all that jazz. You grow up how your parents raise you."

"I get that," Kurt answered lightly, amused. "I instinctively get uncomfortable around all jocks, I think. Probably always will."

"That's depressing. I guess you're gonna have to be uncomfortable around me for the rest of your life then. I wore a letterman jacket in high school."

Kurt laughed. "You've saved my life though, so you get a free pass."

"Pretty sure the feeling's mutual, kid. Kurt," he amended, when Kurt shot him a glare. The soldier continued, "You're pretty crazy, doing all this shit. Most people would've ran for the hills but you just keep throwing yourself in the thick of things. Everyone's heard what happened at your first safe house, how you went out for that girl with no prior experience. I figure most kids your age are either dead or shitting themselves right now, but you just keep steamrolling into the fight."

"Well, I'm eighteen, so I'm not at kid," Kurt started, intensifying his glare. Cunningham snickered at him, white teeth practically glowing in the dying sunlight. "Besides, I'm immune apparently and I've always been quick. I'm good at this and if it keeps people like my brother from doing runs, then I'll take it. He might be only a few months younger than me, but he's a kid. He would be sitting in the living room eating an entire box of cereal from a mixing bowl, watching Sunday morning cartoons and laughing with his mouth full."

"It's Wednesday," Cunningham said, voice full of mirth.

Kurt promptly threw a pebble at his head.

"Anyway, it keeps him from getting his hands dirty," Kurt said with a sigh. "That's worth it, you know?"

"Maybe," Cunningham answered. "Sheltering anyone is just going to get them killed. He's going to have to get his hands dirty eventually, and better to do it now while the numbers are low than later when we have to move."

Kurt frowned. "Do you think we will have to move? Surely we can just stay here in Ashland City, right?"

Cunningham looked at him with no small amount of exasperation. "What, until the military bails us out? Nah, that flag's gone with the wind, Kurt. Heard that the government is still making a stand near Colorado Springs, and that seems like a safe bet considering the manpower they were moving there before the infection even hit the U.S., but there are still roughly three hundred million people that live in this country, and that's if you don't count people that are here illegally. That's three hundred million dead people that are standing in the way of a full assault to take back America. No military, no matter how large, can neutralise that big of a threat. It'll take years for them to make a stand, decades to be more realistic, and we can't hide in a high school for decades waiting for a resistance. We're going to run out of food and water in this town, and it's not like we can start a farm and milk cows on our days off. We're going to have to move eventually, if only so we don't starve to death here or run out of ammunition. We don't have another option but to leave this place. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon, at least before the winter comes."

Kurt didn't know what to say. He knew that Cunningham was right, that they would eventually have to leave so they could get ammo and food. Hell, Kurt had heard on the news that there were towns that were building walls to keep the Infected out, all over the country, and it would be better to get to a safe haven sooner rather than later, while they were still letting people in. Eventually people would shut their doors, hide in plain sight, and all of the people in Ashland City would be stranded in this country.

Instead of arguing for the sake of arguing, because there were still options in Kurt's opinion, the counter-tenor asked, "Do you really think they're dead?"

Cunningham raised an eyebrow, his features starting to disappear as the sun finally began slipping under the horizon. "What's that supposed to mean? Of course they're dead. They're missing arms and legs and organs and who knows what else. That's the definition of dead."

"Yeah, but it doesn't make any sense," Kurt said, thinking back on all of his musings. He had been wondering about this for a while, but hadn't brought it up lest people start questioning. The last thing their group needed was someone thinking that these things could be rehabilitated because they weren't dead. The Infected were monsters, and wouldn't stop even if their limbs were chopped off. "I mean think about it. Dead things rot, right? Human beings in particular rot in a specific manner. Rigour mortis, bloating, blood sinking because the heart isn't pumping any blood and causing severe bruising, and eventually decomposition. But these things don't do that. They don't get stiff, their blood doesn't congeal or fall to the ground although maybe that can be explained by their constant movement, and there hasn't been any reports of decomposition. I mean, in Europe and Asia they were still trying to clear out town when the TVs went dark, and that was two months after the initial outbreak, which makes sense because the news said they weren't dead. How can they be dead if they don't go through the stages?"

Cunningham's brow furrowed in the increasing darkness. "I've never really thought about it. I mean, we've all played the video games and watched the movies, right? Those things are zombies, period. Maybe they aren't going through the same problems because they still have some function in their brains when they reanimate, but regardless, I can still smell the decay. You can smell it from here. They're definitely decaying."

"I don't think so," Kurt shot back, glancing back down to watch the Infected as they reached for the two of them. "I think the only decay we're smelling is the skin rotting in their teeth. That's why it's not super rank, like, hit-you-in-the-back-of-the-head rank. If this many dead bodies in one location smell more like shit and piss than decay, then they aren't decaying. Their old meals are."

Cunningham looked incredibly disgusted as he asked, "Well if they aren't dead, what do you think? How do you explain their continued movement after being torn apart?"

Kurt shuddered, a bit nauseous about their conversation, but he replied, "I don't know. I've been thinking about this and I really haven't come up with a good answer yet. All I know is that the human brain is essentially just a computer in our skulls that keep our bodies alive. I also know that the rest of the body isn't dependent on blood and organs. I mean, it is but at the same time it's not. Some of them, yeah, but not all of them. We can live with fake hearts and fake limbs and fake organs, but we can't live without the liver or the pancreas or the brain. The liver and the pancreas is just there for filtering out toxins and everything else, extremely important to a working body, but to a brain dead vessel like these things are?"

Kurt took a deep breath and said, "This is going to sound crazy, and I sure as hell don't have a medical degree to back any of this up, but if these people were infected with something like a parasite that took over... It happens all the time, bugs and mammals getting infected by some parasite like toxoplasmosis or something else, and turning into mindless things in order for the parasite to survive and breed. Ants are pretty well known when it comes to this, and I know some larger mammals like rats will intentionally let themselves get eaten to spread their parasites.

"But think about it. The Infected don't have personalities, no brain function other than moving and eating, right? That's brain stem activity, not full brain function, which means they aren't people any more. Say this is a parasite that infects humans. It travels up to the brain and starts latching on or whatever, but destroys all brain function afterwards. The Infected have fevers beforehand, so the immune system is clearly fighting it off. Meanwhile, the body starts building a...barrier or something to keep the blood in the brain before taking complete control, which explains why the blood in the head is all black and congealed and gross when the heads are taken out. A barrier explains why the brain keeps going even after the entire body is destroyed in some cases. If this parasite can control a host and keep a brain working even after the circulatory system fails, then the parasite can live in their for ages even if the host is incapable of moving. Maybe these things eat living creatures because they need to be recharged, supplying fresh blood to the parasites in the brain, making them go longer without dying. It's simple nature, survival of the fittest – viruses and pathogens do the same thing."

Cunningham was quiet for a moment, and then he decided to add, "There would still be decomp though. If there's no blood moving through the body and no oxygen to all of the cells, the cells die, right? That leads to decomp."

"Maybe they will decay," amended Kurt, "but there are still going to be heads that are still going to be biting ankles, and all it takes is one of these things to spread a secondary infection. The situation in Canada is a perfect example of one idiot that lead to the death of two continents."

Cunningham looked at Kurt for a long time, dark eyes searching his face even through the dusk that was settling in. "You just graduated high school, right?" At Kurt's nod, Cunningham asked, "What did you want to do after? Like, I don't know if you were going to college, though I figure you probably were since you're pretty smart and your dad seems to be a providing guy, but what did you want to do for the rest of your life?"

Kurt smiled nostalgically. "Seems pretty stupid now, considering everything that is going on, but I was going to New York to major in musical theatre. I wanted to be on Broadway, sing my heart out on stage every night and pretend to be someone else on a day-to-day basis, even if it was just for a few hours."

"That's not stupid," Cunningham said. "Doing something that makes you happy is nothing to be ashamed of. Well, maybe not the pretend-to-be-someone-else part, but that's not my call."

Kurt wanted to reply with 'Yeah, well you didn't live the life that I lived, with everyone hating you because of who you were as a person' but didn't, because he was stronger than that. He didn't want Cunningham to pity him, or look at him differently, and he wasn't the type of person that actively went out of their way to garner sympathy from everyone they met. Instead, he said only a bit untruthfully, "It's a fanciful idea though, getting to pretend to be other people and getting paid for it at the same time. That's why people always want to be actors and actresses, so they can get paid to live someone else's life."

Cunningham laughed. "No, people just want to be rich and famous no matter the reason. That's the main reason people try to go in that career field, not to escape reality."

Kurt shrugged at that. "Yeah, I suppose that's right but there's nothing wrong with that either. Being famous leads to being rich and loved, and everyone wants to be rich and loved."

"Not me," said Cunningham, his tone genuine. "I mean yeah, I wanted job security and enough money to be comfortable, but I was happy. I had a job that was going to guarantee me a Master's degree, I had a family..." At that, he trailed off, breaking eye contact and looking down into the swarm of Infected below. An expression crossed his face then, something dark and twisted, that made Kurt's eyes narrow in concern.

Instead of inquiring if he was okay, because Kurt knew he wasn't, he tentatively asked, "Do you want to talk about it? I'm a pretty good listener."

Cunningham didn't say anything for the longest time. He simply watched the Infected below as the sun finally slipped completely under the horizon, leaving the town of Ashland City cloaked in darkness. His skin was so dark that Kurt could barely make out his features other than his eyes and the dirty white shirt he was wearing, but in a way it kept Cunningham from being studied to closely. Out of respect, Kurt looked up to the sky, picking out the stars in the sky and trying to recognise constellations, only finding a few. He had never been good at all of the astrology stuff, and he didn't believe in all of that superstitious stuff like signs and fate so he hadn't really gone out of his way to learn.

Eventually though, he said, "Not really."

Kurt paused, not looking away from the night sky, and then replied, "Okay." With a quiet smile, Kurt stood up, hesitating only a moment before placing his hand on Cunningham's shoulder and squeezing lightly, trying to offer some sort of comfort because the solder was clearly distraught even if he tried not to show it. He wasn't sure how to comfort men either, because most men tended to shy away from him because of his obvious 'gayness' and wouldn't allow him to. Kurt was good at arguing heatedly, and defending himself, and being sarcastic, but he didn't know how to comfort a man without it being perceived by the other guy as sexual.

Cunningham didn't seem to care though, maybe because Kurt didn't come off as unapologetically gay with his relatively 'normal' clothes. He didn't have on his tight pants and layers and women's sweaters, instead the dirty baggy jeans, yellow shirt, and trainers. Sure his voice was still high, and he still had a gay face, but it wasn't as glaringly obvious either. Maybe not being as blatant about his sexual preference hadn't scared off his partner yet, though it still could – the man had said that he was Jewish, and while his friends from Glee had been religious and yet accepting, there was no guarantee that Cunningham would be.

Kurt decided not to bring it up just in case. He sincerely doubted that Cunningham would let him die out here just because of something like Kurt's sexuality, since Cunningham seemed like a pretty easy-going guy, but Kurt didn't want to chance it.

He began walking the perimeter himself, listening to the world around him. He could still hear the shrieks and groans of the Infected that were surrounding them on the ground floor, but he could also hear things other than that. The bugs buzzing in the trees and around their faces, the hot breeze whistling through the trees, the creak of the ladder as the Infected banged against it, the hoot of an owl. It was really quite tranquil to be honest, because even with the sounds of the Infected that were commonplace even in the school, at least they didn't have to deal with the echoes of the banging or the whispers of fear. They could listen to the world outside instead, and that counted for something.

He was still terrified but he felt safe at the moment, something that should've been dangerous, but the Infected weren't scaling the side of the building and climbing the ladder so they were okay for now.

They were quiet for a long time, Kurt eventually sitting down with a yawn that he tried to hide in the darkness. He was tired, every muscle in his body aching from their hard day, and he knew that it was only going to get harder. At this time of night, he was either humming softly with Rachel and Finn or getting ready to bed down for the night, and he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to stay awake until dawn. They both needed to get some rest so they weren't completely wiped in the morning, but at the same time they also needed to come up with some sort of solution to their problem. Kurt was incredibly uneasy at the idea that any of his family would come after him. Burt needed to take it easy after his heart attack, Finn was a decent shot at best and certainly not an endurance runner, and Hiram just wasn't mentally there. He would've counted Carole and Rachel as well if he had been even remotely convinced that any of the boys would've let them come.

"I'll take first watch. I'm used to it by now, doing it at the school for as long as we've been there. I'll let you sleep for a few hours, then we'll trade off and I'll get some sleep. We'll reassess the situation at six, just before dawn, and see if anything has changed before we radio in. Sound good?"

Kurt smiled and nodded, knowing that Cunningham would be able to see it in the moonlight. Cunningham nodded back and stood up, stretching in a long, lean line before finally shrugging off his own pack, letting it fall to the ground with a dull thump. Kurt himself pushed his body to the middle of the roof, not wanting to get too close to the ledge just in case one of those things figured out how to get up, and used his own pack as a makeshift pillow. It was lumpy and uncomfortable but it was better than nothing, and he shifted a few times to find the most comfortable position he could.

He figured that it would take forever to get to sleep, because he wasn't used to sleeping outside and the sounds of the Infected were much closer, but it wasn't the case at all. Despite the fact that he was a bit uncomfortable and he was still sticky and dirty, he fell asleep almost immediately.