FIVE

"I'm telling you, Kate: when I called her name, Clara totally came over to me!"

"I'm sure."

"She did!" The writer insisted as they made their way down the abandoned neighborhood streets. You had your back turned but she totally did—and the next time we visit them she'll do it again and then you'll really see."

A light laugh escaped her lips and she said, "Whatever you say, Rick."

Rick huffed out a breath, annoyed that she was dampening his excitement with her skepticism. It had taken three weeks of repetition, coaxing, and food rewards but the chickens were absolutely beginning to learn their names and no one could convince him otherwise. "Just birds" was what Kate had continued to call them, but he knew differently.

"You know, I once read this story about a guy who went on vacation with his pet chicken. Yeah—it's real, I read about it." He added at her beyond cynical expression. "He took the chicken with him everywhere and they posed for pictures; it totally happened. He had it with him in taxis, in restaurants… I bet that chicken knew its name."

Surprise evident on her face, she stopped walking and turned to him. "But that doesn't make sense! It would have been pooping everywhere!"

Rick considered this a moment before nodding. "Okay, yes—that's probably true; taking the chicken into the restaurant probably wasn't a great idea, but my point is that chickens can absolutely learn their names. You'll see, Kate; tomorrow you'll see."

She merely shook her head and continued down the street. Letting out a long exhale, Rick followed in her wake.

Finally, after two days of cloudy skies, rain, and general gloom the sun had come out. Rick had never minded rainy days until the end of society. Now, an unpleasant weather day meant either staying outside and suffering through the precipitation, or being closed up in a tight space with limited things to do and preoccupy time. Aside from one trip a day to feed and check on the chickens, Kate and Rick had been doing the latter.

The first morning wasn't bad; Kate read while he dusted. In cleaning up, he found a deck of cards and they'd played poker for the better part of the afternoon. Rick had always considered himself an excellent bluff, but Kate had won over half the hands; he had been very impressed. As evening set in and it became too dark for them to do much of anything, Rick's boredom grew and the next day wasn't much different. Yes, they were extremely pleased with how much water the storm had yielded them, so in that respect the rain had been necessary, but he was very glad to be out and walking around, getting fresh air.

That morning, they had spent two hours collecting and organizing their latest rainwater haul. As the skies still looked a bit cloudy, Kate was afraid to start the boiling and purification process for fear it might rain again, so they'd agreed to set out for the further away cul-de-sac and visit one of the houses they had not yet scavenged through. At least that way if it rained again they would be inside.

Turning into the street leading to their potential treasure, Rick tugged at the collar of his shirt and grumbled at the beads of sweat already beginning to form on his neck. It wasn't yet mid-day and without the beating sun the temperature didn't seem too high, but thanks to the recent rains the humidity must have been near one hundred percent. He'd grabbed the light green polo embroidered with a local country club's logo out of one of the houses thinking a golf shirt might be cooler and help wick the sweat away from his body. Evidently that had been a miscalculation; he should have stuck with the regular t-shirts.

Figuring it would be better than nothing, Rick unbuttoned the two buttons near the shirt's collar. In doing so, he momentarily took his eyes off the road. When he looked back up he was startled to see that Kate had her gun out and trained in front of her, both palms firmly gripping the piece. Immediately, his hand shot to the knife sheath on his belt while his eyes scanned the road in front of them for something groaning and dragging its feet, but there were no zombies in sight.

Just as he was about to ask her what was going on, she announced in a loud, booming voice. "I see you. Behind the red truck. Come out slowly."

Rick's gaze darted directly to the truck she referenced and his palm gripped the handle of his knife. He felt every cell in his body tense and brace for a fight. Save Kate, his recent interactions with humans had only ended in violence or robbery—or both—so he needed to be prepared. If whoever it was could hide themselves entirely behind the truck, there were probably no more than two or three of them, meaning their odds of coming away from the confrontation unscathed seemed in their favor.

Both Rick and Kate stood frozen in the middle of the street for the better part of thirty seconds, but no one emerged from behind the truck. Kate took three steps forward and Rick trailed behind her, looking continuously to his right and left so they would not be ambushed from another angle.

"This is your last warning: come out from behind the truck. I am a police officer and I'm armed."

With her final statement, a petite woman with dark hair and tanned skin popped up from behind the truck with her arms raised above her head in goal post stance. Rick watch Kate tightened her grip on her weapon as the woman approached them. She appeared to be crying and, unfortunately, seemed to be speaking a different language.

"I don't understand Spanish." The writer hissed to his companion.

"I'm sorry; we can't understand you. Do you speak English?" Kate asked, her voice a bit calmer.

The woman shook her head. "No; no English." Then, she continued to chatter on in Spanish. Rick was able to pick up an apology and her plea for something, but he was not able to translate it. It was only once the woman began pointing to her mouth and rocking her arms back and forth like a cradle that he was able to put it together.

"Baby food?" he guessed. "You need food for your baby?"

The woman merely continued to alternate pointing to her mouth and rocking her arms. Rick dropped his hands from his knife and walked around so he could meet Kate's eye. "I never saw any baby food in any of these houses." No baby food, no diapers; nothing that indicated they contained a child younger than school-aged.

"Me neither," she said out of the corner of her mouth. Then, turning to the woman she lowered her weapon, but did not put it away. "I'm sorry; we don't have anything for a baby." She told her. Then, she repeated it in broken, partially incorrect Spanish.

The woman took a step back from them, nodded, and said, "Gracias."

She turned to continue down the road away from their treehouse, when Rick stopped her. He pulled his water bottle out from the pocket of his cargo shorts and held it out to her. She refused, showing him the bottle she carried in a shoulder bag, and continued down the road without ever looking back.

Turning to Kate, Rick saw the she wore an expression that summarized how he felt. "Well shit," he uttered out, not really sure what else to say. Of all the endings to a zombie world human interaction he anticipated, that had not been one of them. He felt very sad for that woman to be on a quest for food for an infant and nothing else. She may have been the mother, aunt or simply a friend, but her mindset was singular to the point that her interaction with another group of humans—something that was presumably a rarity—meant little.

"Yeah…I wish there was something we could do to help her, the baby…"

"You think they have a camp near here?"

She shrugged and continued walking towards the cul-de-sac. "Possibly. She also could have been walking for days. Did you see her shoes? They were caked with mud."

Rick quickly glanced back over his shoulder towards the direction the woman had gone, but she was no longer in sight. He had not noticed the state of her feet, which was atypically unobservant for him. Then again, he had been largely focused on Kate, her gun, and what was happening with the woman whose speech he could not understand. "No, I…I didn't see."

She hummed. "Well they were. Given the storms we had she's either been wandering for a while, or walked through a flooded field—either of which is plausible."

Rick quietly followed Kate for the remainder of their trek. Though he knew there was nothing they could do as they could not provide something they didn't have, his thoughts remained with the woman and the baby she was trying to feed; the father in him couldn't help it. All he saw was a hungry child, and all the ones like it in the new, cruel world.


With a grunt, Kate heaved the storage bin full of dry goods up onto the kitchen counter. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand before reaching for her water bottle. Despite the humidity, the rain had cooled the atmospheric temperature down to unusually low temperatures for that time of year. Over the prior two days, she'd grown accustomed to the cool breeze flowing through the treehouse, which meant the stagnant, stifled, hot interior of the house was particularly unbearable.

All in all, their trip had been worth it. Though they found no water and only a handful of sodas in the fridge, the pantry had yielded plenty of cereals, pasta, and an entire case of protein bars. Better yet, behind the house they'd found two trees full of peaches. The fruit wasn't ripe quite yet, but Kate was already dreaming of biting into a fresh piece of fruit, not one covered in corn syrup and harvested from a can.

While she packed up the pantry, Kate had sent her companion upstairs to search for clothes, medicine, and anything else that might be useful. He had not returned, and she had not heard any movement in quite some time, which had her concerned. With her hand hovering above the butt of her weapon, she ascended the stairs to investigate.

After checking two of the bedrooms to find nothing, she spotted him in an open alcove area the family apparently used as a craft room. A table sat in the middle of the space with a jigsaw puzzle on it half put together. Beside the table were two chairs on a loveseat. Rick sat on one of the chairs, one of the family photographs clutched in his left hand. She watched him for several moments, waiting for him to react to her presence, but when he did not she called out his name softly.

He looked up at her slowly and turned the photo so that she could see. In it a girl with bright red-orange hair grinned; her front two teeth missing. Kate guessed she was around seven or eight in the picture. She wore a lime green one piece bathing suit and appeared to be standing with the water from a lake or ocean pooling around her ankles.

"Alexis had red hair," he said finally. Though he had never spoken her name before, Kate understood who he was talking about; she did not need to use any of her detective skills to deduce that this photograph reminded him of his daughter. "So did my mother…and my first ex-wife." He paused, looked towards the ceiling and then back at her. "I never thought about it before, but there's probably some Oedipus thing going on there that I shouldn't think about too deeply…"

She grimaced and nodded. "Understandable." Stepping around the end of the table, Kat sat down on the couch just a foot from him and asked softly, "What was Alexis like?"

He set the picture down on the table, clasped his hands together and stared off into the hall.
"Amazing…" Then, looking back to Kate, he went into a bit more detail. "She was fourteen. Super smart—crazy, super smart. I honestly don't know where she got it from. She was so grown up for her age, a little adult. We were buds, her and I.

"Her mom left when she was about four—Meredith was never destined to be a parent, that's for sure. I'd been a stay at home dad from the beginning, only writing when she was napping or after she went to bed. I loved it. She was such a fascinating little person; I couldn't get enough. When it all started to fall apart, I knew it was my number one goal to protect her. Them—my mother was living with us at that point. And I…failed."

His final word drove a knife right into her heart. Kate actually winced from how broken he sounded. She'd never heard anyone so convinced in their own failure before. Worse yet, his conclusion was entirely wrong in her opinion. Scooting to the edge of her seat, Kate reached out her hand and placed it delicately on his forearm. "You didn't fail; it was an impossible situation."

A mirthless laugh escaped his lips. "Was it?"

Kate rested her elbows against her thighs and thought about him, what she knew about his life, what she knew about his wealth based on his career. When things started to get bad—really bad—the Manhattan elite who had not already left the city began to buy their way out. By that point, travel on the bridges and in the tunnels was heavily restricted; the subway had been shut down. Helicopters were still running, though, and if you could buy you way on one that was your ticket to freedom. Of course, air traffic was limited and monitored so the cost of a single seat quickly leapt into the five figure range. Given that she knew how successful Richard Castle was as a novelist, this figure did not seem out of his price range.

"Can I…can I ask why you didn't buy your way out of the city?"

He glanced over at her and nodded. "Considered it. Mother wanted me to, but I thought we'd be fine staying where we were. That's the thing I hate myself for—that I'll never forgive myself for. I was…excited." He said the last word like it was poison in his mouth. "I always loved stories about zombies and the end of the world. I'd prepared myself. I was trained in weapons. The apartment was stock with enough canned and dried food for a year. I thought we'd be fine; that we could just wait it out. But…then the electricity went out, and I realized that with all my planning I'd failed to take into account one very important thing: security systems need electricity to work."

Kate cringed. "Ah, yeah, that is pretty critical." Extremely critical, especially as the looting started. There was just too much. The police could barely keep up with the reanimated corpses wreaking havoc on the city. Keeping up with the living hell bent on destruction was all but impossible, sad as it was.

"It's so stupid, insane really. We lived in the penthouse apartment in a secure building, but suddenly we were sitting ducks. I thought about barricading us inside, but then I thought what if there's a fire? We could have all the food and water we needed at our finger tips yet be burned alive, so we decided to leave."

Kate felt the skin at the back of her neck prickle. She remembered those early days with the brown-outs. The electricity was intermittent during the day, but at night when everyone was trying to use it, it was almost nowhere to be found. That's when people really started leaving the city. She'd felt as though her block had been abandoned, but suddenly at night hundreds would be in the streets. Stupid; it was so stupid. Traveling at night was by far the most dangerous and she never quite understood why people didn't realize. She'd wake up the next morning and have to fight her way through hissing and growling reanimated corpses just to get to her precinct. It was incredibly unsettling and she wasn't traveling with her child.

"We, ah, tried We, ah, tried to get out to our house in the Hamptons, figured it would be safer, less population…but there would have been no way. The roads were impassible for cars and the streets were just littered with zombies. I don't even think we would have made it out of Brooklyn alive, let alone all the way to Southampton.

"Instead, we, ah, found a group of four families traveling towards New Jersey and decided to go with them. I thought okay this is good—plenty of people to watch our backs. Yeah, the nights were still rough, but we had enough adults to sleep in shifts and keep the children safe. We used the rail lines and managed to make it to Newark without losing anyone, which given all I've heard is pretty impressive. We wanted to find a place to say, someplace where we wouldn't be fighting fifteen zombies an hour, but damn, did you ever realize how densely populated New Jersey is?"

Kate let out a breathy laugh; she and her partner had similar thoughts as they were making their way through the sea of undead.

"Anyway, um, we found a small group of houses off Route 280 that were reasonably secure and stocked. We holed up there for about a month. It wasn't quite as secure as the treehouse, but it was nice. We felt almost safe and I think…I think that was our problem?" His voice grew raspy and Kate could tell he was coming to the bad part of the story; the part where his family was irrevocably destroyed. "We were too comfortable—ironic given how much we complained about our day-to-day living and the lack of electricity and running water…"

When silence hung in the air for almost a minute Kate asked as generic a question as she could to keep the story flowing. "How many people were you with?"

"Oh, about twenty of us. Ten adults and ten children. Most of them were in the eight to eleven range; Alexis was the oldest. Smallest was around three. Though I'd left my place with a bunch of weapons, they'd been stolen in the night almost right away. Still had a handgun, though; two of the other men did as well. We felt reasonably safe. At that point, our biggest problem was water. And food, though less so at that time. We'd found a school and broken in to their cafeteria pantry. They had tons and tons of canned goods. The kids thought the vats of pudding were hilarious and a big treat; the adults not so much."

They shared a smile before he continued. "But no, water was beginning to become a real problem. The adults all sat down one night and we decided we needed to put together a party to look for supplies. Myself, two men and a woman. I…I didn't want to leave Alexis, but I also thought I could be of help on the road with my stupid apocalyptic training skills, plus my mother was staying with Alexis, not she'd be any real help; I don't think there's any record of anyone dying from watching a play. My mother was an actress," he added to clarification.

"Oh." She commented breathily.

"Anyway, the first run went great. We were gone almost an entire day, but we came back with a few cases of water. A few days later, we went out again…didn't do quite as well, but we found some food so it was still worthwhile. The next run we knew would be longer—overnight possibly. Just like all the other times we'd left two guns behind: one each for the remaining men to guard the children. But…it wasn't like all the other times."

Bracing herself for a heart wrenching tale, she asked cautiously, "Was it a horde?"

"No. Well, yes, ultimately, but no. It was people." His eyes flicked towards her as she breathed in sharply. His gaze dropping towards the floor, he continued. "We found a grocery store that was reasonably stocked. Not a lot of water, but bottled juice, and plenty of canned vegetables. Evenly whomever looted the store hadn't thought green beans were important," he said with a slight smirk.

"We had two shopping carts full, but getting out of the store we had complications. There were a group of about ten zombies blocking our way. Took us a few hours to formulate a plan how to get out safely. Then, one of the grocery cart wheels broke, which slowed us down. Finally, just before dusk, a big horde of zombies—maybe about twenty—moved through and we needed to find a place to hide out. I remember one of the guys being worried because the horde was traveling the direction we were going; towards our camp, but we told him no, it was fine. We were at least ten miles away and the zombies could easily change course direction; they would hardly walk in a straight line forever.

"We decided to stay the night because it was too dark to travel with the shopping carts. I remember lying awake and listening for gunfire. We were too far to hear the camp, I'm sure, but it made me feel better." He looked over at her, his eyes welling with emotion. "You know how people sometimes say they have a sixth sense about things. Like, suddenly, they have a moment where they knew something horrible has happened to a loved one?"

"Yeah." She responded softly.

He shook his head. "I didn't have that. Not at all. We started moving at dawn and I thought, this is great. Only about two or three more hours of walking and we'll be back with all this food. Then…when we got there…" He swallowed hard. "There were wandering around the streets—the children. I thought it was odd, but then I thought maybe they're playing a game. One of the guys ran over to greet his son and started screaming. Oh, god, the way he screamed." Rick covered his face with his hands and Kate felt tears begin to prick his eyes.

He cleared his throat after a few moments and continued. "I was lucky, I guess. 'Lucky,'" he repeated using air quotes and a disgusted tone. "My mother and daughter were shot execution style, so they didn't come back. One of them had chewed off Mother's hand, though. From the best we could guess, a group had come through, shot everyone, stolen the supplies, and moved on. The noise of their gunfire presumably drew in the horde that passed by us that night."

In another life perhaps Kate would not have been able to picture such a horrific seen; unfortunately, she could envision it quite clearly. She had passed many a decimated camp on her way to her treehouse oasis. Passing groups of bodies that appeared to be parents with children was undoubtedly the most difficult. Were it not for her highly compartmentalized cop-brain she surely would have suffered a great deal more anguish.

"Did anyone survive?" Kate asked.

Rick bobbed his head. "The youngest boy—he hid in a storage bin in the garage, but he couldn't tell us what happened. One of the men who was on the supply run with me lost his wife and three daughters. He shot himself the moment he found them." Rick looked up at her as a single tear rolled down his cheek. "I kind of felt like doing the same. My family was gone and in that moment it felt like everything was over."

"Oh Rick." Kate sighed out, her hand squeezing around his forearm a little tighter. She couldn't even begin to comprehend such a soul-crushing emotion. No wonder he hadn't wanted to speak about what happened when they first arrived; she was amazed he was able to talk about it at all.

"It just…it all felt like my fault. If I had been there, then I could have—maybe things wouldn't—and I just felt so…"

"No, don't; don't do that." She insisted. She had seen it so many times over the course of her law enforcement career: survivors' guilt. She knew first-hand how destructive it could be, but in the end it never, ever helped. Hard as it was, acceptance was the only way to navigate a healing path.

"But I…" His voice was lost to the tears streaming from his eyes, and Kate could hold herself back no longer. She dropped to her knees in front of his seat and wrapped her arms around him. He fell willingly against her, one arm looping around her back, his head coming to rest on her shoulder. Kate held him tightly, combing her hands through his hair for the better part of five minutes before the heaving breaths in his chest softened to occasional sniffles.

When his breathing had evened out, Kate slid away from him and cupped his jaw with her hands as she spoke to him softly. "I can't imagine how you must have felt, Rick, and I understand the instinct to blame yourself, but you can't. If you had been there, you would have died, too. That's the one good part of all this—your life didn't end and you can keep going. Don't you think that's what Alexis would want for you? What your mother would want?"

Sniffling, he nodded. "Yes, you're right; you're absolutely right, but I don't think I realized that until I met you."

Smiling softly, Kate couldn't help but lean forward and brush her lips against his forehead before sliding away and returning to her spot on the edge of the couch. Rick sniffed again and reached for a box of tissues on a nearby end table. After mopping under his eyes and beneath his nose, he gazed wistfully down at the photo of the red-headed girl once more. "I just, ah, I wish I had a picture of her. I lost my wallet and everything else I had with me. I'm afraid I'm starting to forget some of the details of her face."

She shook her head reassuringly. "I'm sure you're not. But you still have things at your apartment and your house, right? You'll get back there one day." Her comment did seem unusually hopeful. Even if the government could put stop to everyone turning into zombies—which, at that point, seemed like quite a large "if"—it would still be months if not years before they were able to clear out the existing zombies and make Manhattan inhabitable again. Still, the notion wasn't impossible, even if the possibility was half a decade or more away.

He gave her a very slight smile. "I hope so. Maybe."


"I bet you'll sleep well tonight," Kate said to her companion as he wound up Tux's green ribbon at the end of their play session that night.

Rick placed the ribbon in one of the kitchen drawers before turning to her and asking, "Why do you say that?"

She shrugged. "Generally after I have an emotional breakthrough I sleep pretty well that night."

"Oh," he said, his voice airy. "Maybe. I hope. But, uh, on that subject." He took a few steps towards her and she gazed at him, curious. "About the bed—I was thinking…maybe we should share; its big enough, don't you think?"

Kate pressed her lips together and considered his statement. The bed was a double, so far smaller than she was used to sharing with companions, but certainly not implausible to share with another person, though given Rick's large frame it would be tight. Ever since the night she'd offered it to him to enable to sleep more comfortably with his aching shoulders, she hadn't taken it back. It simply made more sense. She was shorter and therefore she should sleep in the smaller couch. The couch was fine; she didn't mind. In fact, it only became a problem when Tux tried to share too, but she generally just ended up pushing him off.

"I gave you the bed, Rick."

"And I'm offering it back. I mean, what kind of gentleman would I be if I let you take the couch?"

Kate gave him a small smile. Though she insisted that chivalry could die along with the rest of normal civilization, she secretly loved the fact that he was insistent upon being a gentleman no matter the scenario. As he had let it slip that he was raised by a single mother, she suspected this to be the original of his sentiments, at least in part. Still, she was a bit hesitant, because there would be no way for them to share the bed without jumping up the intimacy factor in their relationship. Considering their hug earlier in the day had been the first time they'd really crossed the touch-barrier, she wasn't sure about taking that next step.

Apparently sensing her hesitation, the writer said, "I don't want to make you uncomfortable. If you don't want to share we can come up with some sort of alternating schedule…"

She almost laughed at how silly that arrangement sounded. "No, that's—no. Let's just try it tonight and see how it goes?"

He smiled at her. "Fine by me."

She nodded. Worst case scenario she just wouldn't sleep there the next night, but if it worked it would be nice to sleep with her legs stretched out once more.

They spent the next five minutes in quiet as they took turns getting ready for bed by brushing their teeth in the makeshift bathroom and changing out of sweaty, dirty clothes and into fresh ones to sleep. It was only once they were climbing into bed that Rick spoke tentatively. "Thanks…for this afternoon, I mean. You were so patient with me while I was having a full-scale breakdown."

Kate chuckled as he made it sound like he was screaming, ranting and throwing things. "I don't think I'd call that a breakdown as much as a completely natural reaction to everything going on."

He wavered his head back and forth, considering her statement. "Still...I know we don't know each other that well-"

"Don't we?" She interrupted, almost shocked at such a comment. "We have spent twenty-four hours a day together just the two of us for weeks."

"True, but I meant about our pasts. But anyway: I really appreciate you being there for me."

"Of course." She responded. Then, as she slid beneath the sheet on the bed, she thought more about his statement. He was entirely correct in that they did not know too much about each other's past. Though their situation was clearly different than had the met a year earlier back when the world was, for lack of a better term, normal, for Kate some things never changed. Had she met Castle back in Manhattan and they began dating, she would not have revealed too much about her personal life just three weeks into dating. That was still the vetting period. Hell, they probably wouldn't have even been spending nights together yet!

Clearly, spending twenty-four hours a day with the man changed things. They were forced to mesh their lives together and it had gone surprisingly well, with only minor issues to date. Given that, it only seemed reasonable that she share certain information about herself, particularly when that information related well to his current situation.

"The truth is I…ah, I actually understand how you feel completely, because my mother was murdered when I was nineteen years old."

The bed creaked as Rick sunk down on it with his full weight. His jaw hung slack as he commented in an ill-sounding tone, "Murdered? God..."

"Yeah it was and incredibly difficult time for my family, obviously. We struggled a lot; it changed my life completely and, ultimately, it was the reason I became a cop."

Though she knew the loss of her parent would not compare to his loss of a child, she hoped her story of perseverance would help him see that there was a light at the end of every tunnel, even if it was very far away.

Reaching over, Rick snagged her hand and gave it a squeeze. "I'm very sorry that happened to you."

She offered a small smile. "Thank you." Then, as she slid down under the sheet she sighed out, "Goodnight, Rick."

"'night Kate," he replied just moments before falling into a deep, peaceful slumber.