A/N: I do not own Avengers.
At around the same time, in the laboratory, Steve and Natasha were almost finished creating the cure. "All that's left is to put the vials in the centrifuge and send them for a spin one last time," Natasha said. "Then we'll be all ready to go."
Suddenly, a loud crash came from farther up the tower. "What was that?" Steve said.
F.R.I.D.A.Y. came over the tower's speaker system. "Alert: tower has been breached by an unknown object. Collecting data now…. Data unavailable. Camera system offline."
"Something attacked the tower?" Natasha asked. "We'd better go see what it is."
"No, I'll go," Steve said. He grabbed his shield. "If whatever happened up there has to do with the zombies, Tony and Bruce could be in trouble. If both of us go and something happens to us, there's no one to stay here and finish the cure. Without that, there's no way to stop this."
"Wouldn't surprise me if that was related to the zombies."
"Then if the tower's been breached, sooner or later they'll be making their way down here. Even if I can't stop them, I can buy you the time to finish the cure."
"That makes sense. Be careful, Steve."
He nodded and headed up the stairs to the next level.
After heading up two flights of stairs, Steve saw a gaping hole in the ceiling, and through it, part of a helicopter. That must be what hit the tower. And that's the floor Tony and Bruce were on.
His thought were cut off by a muffled growl from the floor above. Having no doubt what the source of the sound was, Steve crept up the third flight of stairs. Halfway up, though, he could see that the helicopter was blocking the stairs near the top. He stepped closer to it to search for any small opening above or below the helicopter through which he could see what was happening on the far side.
Steve found a gap near the floor, and he knelt down to look through it. But before he could, the helicopter was shoved aside, and its tail came swinging through the wall towards him. He raised his shield at the last second to deflect it. The impact still sent him tumbling partway down the stairs.
He slowly got up. What the heck did that…oh no.
Standing at the top of the stairs were the zombified Hulk and Tony. Half of Tony's armor had been ripped off, and he had bite marks all over him that were too large to have come from anything but the zombie Hulk.
"Oh no," Steve gasped. "What happened to you two?"
Both zombies snarled and charged down the stairs towards Steve. He grabbed his shield, which had fallen next to him, and raised it at the last second to shove back on Tony. But seconds later, Hulk ran into the shield too. Steve was knocked backwards, and all three went sprawling into the living area at the bottom of the stairs.
Hulk roared and leapt at Steve again, but he rolled to the side to dodge the attack. Tony came next and Steve kicked him backwards, then grabbed for his shield again.
But Hulk kicked the shield aside when he attacked again. The shield flew across the room, where it became lodged in the wall near the stairs leading to the next-lowest floor.
Steve got to his feet and ran across the room towards the shield, with the zombies closely following him. He wrenched the shield from the wall and turned around just in time for both zombies to barrel into the shield and pin him to the wall. Their arms reached for him around the sides of the shield, and they tried to stretch their heads over the top of it to bite Steve.
"Bruce, Tony, I don't want to hurt you," he said. "I need you to hang on just a few more minutes. Natasha's downstairs, almost done with making the cure!"
To Steve's surprise, Hulk's attacks waned at the mention of Natasha's name.
But then Tony gave a growl of, "Thraah…tah!"
The damaged Iron Man suit's thrusters suddenly activated, shoving Steve through the wall and onto the stairs. He tumbled down several stairs before hitting the outer curved wall of the stairwell and stopping. The shield, meanwhile, slid down all the stairs and several feet into the room at the bottom of the stairs.
Steve didn't even have a chance to stand up before Tony and Hulk rammed right into him. Without his shield for defense, he had no way of fighting back against the zombies' feral strength.
On the floor below, the centrifuge finished spinning the zombie cure vials. Natasha opened it and took them out. She hurriedly loaded the vials into the special guns they planned to use to launch the vials. The plan was to launch the vials from the Quinjet above New York City, upstate New York, and western New England. Tony and Bruce had calculated that, given the speed of the outbreak's spread, combined with wind currents that would aid the spread of the cure, covering that area would be more than enough to cure everyone who had been infected.
Natasha stuffed all the guns but one into a duffel bag. She slung it over the shoulder, with the spare gun instead placed in her belt, and headed toward the stairs that led up from the lab. Let's hope I'm not walking into a total disaster up here.
But as she reached the top of the stairs, her fears were confirmed. Stumbling down the stairs at the far end of the room were the zombified versions of Steve, Tony, and Hulk. Steve walked forward first, kicked his shield aside, and have an undulating growl.
Natasha sighed. "Alright, boys. Let's do this."
A/N: Please R&R! To be concluded in Chapter 5….