Thank you, Mari, for your comments. I'm totally writing a zombie fic again, and I would definitely consider doing another version of this fic.
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Chapter 3
Steve parked the van down the street and just sat there in horror.
The entire building was gone. Driving into the city, he had panicked when, from a distance, none of them could see Avengers Tower rising above the other buildings. The pile of rubble was worse than what he had anticipated, however. Nothing could have survived that.
Maybe not even the Stone.
His small flicker of hope began to die out. The worried discussion going on in the back seats was barely audible to him as he fought his watering eyes.
Mankind was doomed, and he would never see Her again.
A zombie slapped its body against the side of the van with a wet, resounding smack. Wanda gave an involuntary shriek at the sight of its shattered, hanging jaw. Steve snapped out of it.
There were far too many zombies ahead. The Avengers had been fortunate, many of the stupid things had drowned themselves, leaving New York with a lot fewer mobile corpses than Steve had expected. The crowd ahead would surely shred them if they tried to get to the rubble, however. He still had to look for the Stone…
"Sam," he said, turing his head but keeping his eyes on the target, "Could you fly above them and draw them away so we can search the wreckage?"
As usual, Sam agreed, if a little unenthusiastically. Captain America needed him. There's not much America left to be captain of, anyway, Steve chuckled to himself grimly. Once the horde was stumbling after his airborne friend, the remaining people piled out of the car and began to overturn the chunks of concrete and metal.
Frantically, Steve dug. Tony was lost, almost certainly, but if he could just find the Stone, maybe they still had a chance.
The Stone, of course, was the sentient force that moved Y/N throughout the multiverse to wherever She was needed. Steve had a personal gripe with said Stone, because he firmly believed that HE needed Her more. Sort of. She was off saving lives, after all... Nevertheless, every time She had to go, it hurt him in a deeply personal way.
The Stone manifested itself as several glowing real stones. The jade green, slightly glowing rock was hard to miss. One existed in every universe, and one extra, smaller Stone was carried around by Y/N everywhere she went. If he could just find the one from this dimension, which was previously stored in the tower, he might be able to contact Her or convince the Stone to open a portal to wherever She was. If he could do that, perhaps She could save the world as She had so many times in the past.
And if not, at least he would have Her back.
He flipped a particularly large slab of concrete, and a green glint caught his eye. It was the stone!
It was… the smaller stone.
The one She carried around in her pocket!
She was HERE!
He scooped up the gently glowing stone and held it to his chest. Wait…
If the stone was in the rubble, She might have been in the building! She could be trapped in this mess!
"Everyone!" he yelled, ignoring the possibility of alerting zombies to their presence with the noise. "I found Y/N's pocket Stone! She might be under this stuff! We have to dig!"
Everyone's faces became frenzied at that announcement, and they began to overturn the large chunks with renewed vigor. Pietro, who had been saved from Ultron by Y/N, zipped around at an alarming rate as he tried to find her in the mess. He owed her his life, if she was trapped under this heavy and mangled pile… he couldn't stand the thought.
Making little progress on the veritable mountain, they toiled into the afternoon.
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If ever Y/N had been confused, this was the day.
Her head hurt so badly, and the babbling small child who was following her around had informed her that this was because a building had fallen on them.
Of course, this kid also wanted them to go find Iron Man, so she felt like his first statement deserved some scrutiny. And anyway, how could a building have fallen on top of them if they were still alive?
Y/N stopped trying to convince the kid that Iron Man was just a movie after he had started crying. They seemed to be in the middle of New York… she wasn't sure how… but that might be why the kid thought Iron Man was real.
And then, there were zombies.
Y/N, raised in a much smaller town, was ill equipped to navigate the alleys to avoid the fowl creatures. She did her best, dragging the boy along. Jackson. Jackson was his name. He held an extreme horror for zombies, and Y/N could guess why.
What she COULDN'T guess why, was WHY WERE THERE ACTUAL ZOMBIES!? There had to be a reason. There had to be a LOGICAL reason, and she would find it.
She hauled Jackson up onto a dumpster so they could climb over a high fence. She felt… weak. Not that she had ever been strong, but now… as she struggled to push the small child over, she felt distinctly like she had become weaker. She knew she hadn't, she had always had this much difficulty in lifting her younger brother.
So many questions…
She had no time to ponder, however, because the zombies were everywhere. Running was all she could do.
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Steve was sprayed with a shower of congealed red slime as he decapitated another zombie with his shield.
"There's too many of them! We have to fall back!" he hollered to his friends. The sun was low in the sky, they needed to escape the angry mob of undead and find shelter before it grew dark.
All afternoon had been wasted on the pile of rubble with no results. Steve was certain now that Y/N was either far away from here, under the rubble at the absolute bottom, or… a zombie.
He shuddered at the last thought.
The rout back to the van was cut off from the Avengers, so as more undead flooded towards them they began to separate.
"Meet up at the Chrysler Building!" he yelled over the cacophony of moaning. Several voices yelled in the affirmative, and then he lost them.
He ran as fast as he could.
Things will be ok, he assured himself. She's here somewhere… it will all work out…
Even so, he could feel his flicker of hope sputtering like a candle in the wind.