Age of Heroes

Part three of a fanfiction by Velkyn Karma

Warnings: Zombie-related gore and violence that does get a little bit graphic. (This is where that M rating comes in I guess)

Disclaimer: I do not own, or pretend to own, Young Justice or any of its subsequent characters, plots or other ideas. That right belongs to DC, Warner Brothers, and associated parties.

"All my heroes have now become ghosts,
Sold their sorrow to the ones who paid the most.
All my heroes are dead and gone,
But down inside of me, they still live on!"
~Heroes, Shinedown

Despite the oddity of the situation, Wally slept like a baby that night.

It was rare for him to get a good night's rest in relative comfort unless he was staying at one of the settlements in between search leads. When he was on the road he usually spent his time sleeping in trees or on upper stories and roofs, and he always had to sleep light, because at the slightest sound of a moan he had to be ready to run. But the Cadmus sub-levels were secure, the couch smelled a bit funny but was still soft and comfortable, and he'd had a good day of successful finds, so it was no surprise to him at all that he slept as well as he did.

He woke at dawn, and he didn't even have to see the sky or find a working timepiece to know it. Before Z-day he'd been a lazy kid, always sleeping in when he could—back then, mornings had been evil, and it took everything he had to force himself out of bed to go to school. The outbreak had changed that, when Wally quickly learned that it was vital to take advantage of every second of daylight one had. Nowadays he was usually up with the sun and already long gone from his chosen campsite before the first hour of the day was out.

Of course, today was a little different. It started when Wally had a momentary heart attack, when he spotted the second empty couch. For a moment he almost thought finding Superboy had been all in his head—maybe he'd been alone for so long he was losing his mind, conjuring companions for himself to keep the stress of surviving the apocalypse at bay. It wouldn't be the weirdest brand of new crazy that had developed since Z-day.

But a quick sweep of the room revealed Superboy standing upright in the farthest corner of the room, sandwiched between one wall and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, eyes closed. Wally felt a flood of relief, and then a moment later puzzlement. "Um...Supey?"

Superboy shifted, and his eyes opened slowly. He blinked once, and then glanced over at Wally, who was staring at him over the back of his couch. "Yes?"

"Oh. So you are awake. Uh, any reason you're imitating the bookcase, there? The couch might've been a little softer than the...um...wall."

Superboy hesitated for a second, and then said slowly, "It...reminded me of my pod. The couch felt...odd."

"Oh." Awkward, much? Wally wasn't exactly sure how one was supposed to respond to that, which meant his mouth defaulted to sarcasm automatically. "Yeah, just so you know, there's sort of a lack of pods, bookcases, and intact walls topside, so you might have to get used to sleeping horizontal like the rest of us normal people."

Superboy gave him a surprisingly dirty look. Wally was impressed; he hadn't even realized Superboy could do that yet, considering his lack of personality so far. The clone slipped free from his enclosed space and said a little coldly, "I'll keep that in mind."

"Yeah, okay, you do that," Wally said, but grinned to show he was just teasing. He yawned, stretched, and rolled off the couch, pawing through his bag until he found more of the smoked meats and dried fruit from last night. He tossed some of it to Superboy and kept some of it for himself, and frowned inwardly at just how little was left. It was going to be a lot harder to feed two people, especially with them going through his rations twice as fast as before. Plus, Superboy was kind of big—he'd probably need more than Wally. And how much food did Kryptonians need, anyway? He'd have to figure something out for that.

"So," Wally outlined, "I figure we'll take an hour to get your stuff together, and then try to break out of D.C. Might go a little slower than it usually does for me though...normally I ride a bike, but I don't think it'll carry you too. Maybe we can find you another one." He mused over that one thoughtfully as he tore off a strip of tough meat with his teeth.

Superboy nodded after a moment. "Sure. You're the expert." He tore into his own meager meal, apparently unconcerned with the fact that breakfast was the same as dinner.

It wasn't too hard to find supplies for Superboy; Wally was able to backtrack easily by following his own footsteps in the dust from yesterday. The hardest part was figuring out what a Kryptonian might need. Wally only vaguely remembered the things Superman could do, but he did remember that he was built much hardier than the average human, and Superboy shared a lot of those qualities for obvious reasons. The glass from the pod hadn't cut him yesterday, which meant he was invulnerable, so he didn't really need a first aid kit or a blanket or warmer clothing. Based on the way he tore off that door yesterday he could rip through almost anything, which meant he wouldn't really need any tools either. Could Superman see in the dark, and didn't he shoot lasers from his eyes? Would Superboy even need flashlights or matches or weaponry?

In the end Wally just loaded up Superboy's backpack with anything else of value he could find. He made sure to scrounge up a water-bottle for the clone, and he'd share his own food with his new friend, but everything else was mostly potential trade-goods for later. Superboy was strong enough to carry some of the heavier things Wally had been forced to leave behind on his first trip through the lab—small but heavy cans of fuel, a gallon-jug of water just in case, a box of ammunition he'd found for some gun or other in one of the guard stations—which was good, at least. If they could find people they had a veritable fortune in their backpacks, now, which would let them buy food or other supplies if they needed it.

Then there was no putting it off: it was time to head back to the surface. Cadmus had almost been a comfort, if it wasn't for the obviously disturbing nature of the experiments and the many dead things below. It was nice to not have to worry for a day, and to find such a big haul. Wally wasn't really sure what he'd find topside—there was always a chance the zeds had caught his scent or something while he was down here—so leaving would be risky and tricky. But he also wanted out. Now that he had Superboy in tow it was imperative he get him to safety as fast as he could, and beyond that, he wouldn't be finding his family at all if he spend all his time messing around down here.

So he led Superboy up the stairwells to sub-level one, giving his new companion a few quick warnings as he did so. "Okay. So. The surface is probably not going to be what you're expecting, but there's a few things you need to know right now before we even get up there. For starters, we need to be as quiet as possible. Far as anybody can tell zombies hunt primarily through sound—if we tip them off and they start moaning it'll just attract more. Nobody wants more zombies, got it? So we stay quiet and we move fast. If we do see any, run like hell in the other direction, and keep your distance from them. They're pretty slow, it's not too hard unless you get bottle-necked somewhere."

Superboy frowned. "I don't like the thought of running away from a fight."

"It's not a fight," Wally told him, with one part practicality and one part exasperation. "It's a massacre. If it makes you feel better, don't think of it as running away—think of it as attacking in the opposite direction."

It didn't look like the thought made Superboy feel any better.

Wally grit his teeth and resolved to keep an eye on his new traveling companion. A very careful eye. He'd clearly been designed as a weapon and his heritage was obviously buried deeply in the age of heroes, but this wasn't that time any more. Heroics were suicide, end of story. Wally wasn't going to let Superboy get killed only a day or two after he'd effectively been born.

They reached sub-level one, and Wally approached the hole he'd expanded on yesterday with crowbar raised, wary. Superboy watched him curiously, but said nothing. But the hole looked untouched, there were no moving bodies, and Wally didn't hear any shuffling from above, so he figured it'd be fine.

He grabbed the rope still hanging down through the ceiling and started to haul himself up; was only mildly surprised when Superboy hesitated, and then reached up to give him a boost and ease his climb. The clone tossed the backpacks and crowbar up after him, and then eyed the hole critically. "I don't think I'm going to fit through that."

"Uh...yeah, I guess I'm a lot skinnier than you are," Wally called down to him softly. Because not all of us can come out of pods absolutely ripped. Some of us have to work for our muscles. "I can try to widen the hole with my crowbar like I did yesterday—"

"Don't bother." Superboy eyed the hole and crouched. Wally realized what he was about to do just in time, and backpedaled away from the hole as the clone smashed through the floor with a resounding crunch, scattering dust and stone shards everywhere. He landed six feet away next to one of the giant pillars in the first level's interior, and smirked, brushing pebbles off his shoulders. "Knew I could do it."

"Did you not hear what I said about being quiet?" Wally hissed at him. "Okay, we're moving, now. If there are any zeds in the area they will be zeroing in on that small earthquake you just made, and we don't want to be here when they find it." He threw his pack on, clenched his crowbar tightly in both hands, and gestured for Superboy to follow. The clone retrieved his own pack easily and did so, not looking particularly concerned, and moved Wally's door-blocks aside with the ease of a kid playing with legos.

His expression changed with remarkable suddenness, though, once Wally levered the door open again and tentatively stepped outside. It only took a few seconds for Wally to scan the area (thankfully clear of the walking dead) and reassure himself that his bike was still intact, but in that short span of time Superboy's face had shifted from bland indifference to the same shellshocked look he'd had when he first came out of his pod last night. The clone took in the sights—the dirty, broken roads, abandoned cars and trucks, crumbling buildings, gray atmosphere, and absolute silence—and rasped softly, "This is...wrong. All of it is wrong!"

Wally winced at the way Superboy's voice rose into something louder at the end. "I agree with you, Supey, but—"

"No," Superboy interrupted him. "No, you don't understand. This is...this is Washington, D.C.?"

"Sure is," Wally told him. "Welcome to the capital. Keep your voice down, the locals are violent."

"But this isn't right," Superboy insisted. "None of this looks right!"

"How do you even know?" Wally asked incredulously. "You said you'd never even been out of that room, let alone up here..."

"I don't know," Superboy said slowly. "There are...images, memories...facts...all in my head. I don't know why. I just know these things. I can see what everything is supposed to look like. Not this. This is wrong." He sounded like he was in denial, and Wally was absolutely certain now that Superboy had refused to believe what little information he'd shared with the clone until he saw it with his own eyes.

Superboy looked around again, looking rather lost, and then said in a small voice, "This is...this is not the world I was made for..."

Wally cringed. He didn't know how right he was. And Wally didn't like that unsure sound in his friend's voice, or that dejected slump in those shoulders that were supposed to be able to handle incredible weights. Despite his urge to leave he couldn't help but pause long enough to sling an arm around Superboy's shoulders comfortingly again, and said, "Look, I know it's kind of shocking, but don't worry about it, okay? So what if you weren't made for it. We'll find you a new place in it. It's not all bad, and I'm gonna prove it to you. Just stick with me and everything'll be okay, alright, Supey? We just gotta hang in there. Cardinal rule of zombie apocalypse survival."

Superboy was clearly shaken, but after a moment he nodded. "I...right. Right. Sorry. It's just..."

"Surprising. Disorienting. I know, dude. I get it too sometimes, still, and I've been watching everything fall apart slowly for four years. I can't imagine what it must be like, to see D.C. all normal and thriving and then to see it like this in under a day. And D.C. isn't even the worst of it, other places got hit way harder. You can't even get into Central anymore—too full of zeds." And he'd tried. Lord knew he'd tried, trying to find his family again.

"But like I said, it's not all bad. Humans are stubborn and we don't like to just roll over and die as easy as that. There's some places where we're still holding out and things are good." He grinned for a moment, but then it turned more serious as he added, "But we've gotta survive long enough to get there, and that means we've got to be careful and go now, okay? We can talk more later. Right now, quiet." He gave Superboy's shoulder a quick squeeze and then gestured over his shoulder with his thumb.

Superboy didn't exactly look happy, but he didn't look completely shell-shocked anymore, so that was a start at least. "Alright," he said, quieter this time. "Where are we—" Then he paused, cocked his head like a listening dog, and asked, "What's that noise?"

"Noise? What noise?" Wally strained his ears, but didn't hear anything. "This isn't a super-hearing thing, is it?"

"It's...I'm not sure. None of the things I know can identify it. Sort of...groaning?"

Wally paled. "What direction?" he asked immediately, gripping Superboy's arm tightly.

Superboy blinked in surprise at the abrupt change in Wally's demeanor, but pointed up the street to their left. "That way."

"Damn," Wally cursed. They were coming from the bridge. "We need to move," he said urgently. "Now." He grabbed for his bike, balancing the crowbar across it. If he had to he'd abandon the bike in favor of running, but it was too valuable a tool to ditch otherwise. "Let's go."

He took six steps before realizing Superboy wasn't behind him again. Glancing behind, he realized the clone was staring down the street in the direction of the noise, eyes narrowed. Frustrated, Wally propped the bike up against the nearest building again, hooked the crowbar on his belt, and darted back to his friend, latching both arms around one of Superboy's and trying to haul him away. He was about as effective as trying to move a mountain single-handedly; Superboy was as rigid as a marble statue and all but impervious to Wally's puny human strength.

"I'm not kidding around here, Supey," he hissed as he kept tugging, the first edges of real concern slipping into his voice. "We have to move, now—if they see us..." Wally could hear the moaning now too, which meant they were close. Too close for comfort.

And then the first of them came around the corner two street intersections away, and Wally felt dread drop into his stomach like a heavy lead weight, felt the first fingers of an icy cold hand gripping his heart.

Back in the day, Wally had actually been a bonafide geek, and like every other geek alive he'd loved zombies. He'd always thought zombie horror flicks and video games were awesome, and marveled at the creative details they would always get into the zombie designs, with the rotting flesh and missing eyeballs and bony protrusions and occasional weird extra mutant abilities.

Real zombies were not like that, which in some cases was a blessing (if zombies were actually that fast, or had super powers, Wally would have given up a long time ago because living would have been impossible). But in some cases it was a lot worse. Unless the animated corpses were particularly old, or distended or burst from consuming too much flesh, or had been damaged somehow in a fight or an accident, they rarely showed such obvious and grotesque signs of decay.

Actually, other than a bloodless pallor, empty expressions, and the disjointed, shuffling movements of bodies that lacked the coordination to move fluidly, zombies typically looked like normal people, which in Wally's opinion was what made them far more frightening. When you were regularly attacked by people that looked like your soccer coach or your best friend the cute girl at the cafe that used to give you refills for free, it started getting harder and harder to stave off growing paranoia of even real human beings. Wally had even heard stories of other survivors who finally just snapped, assuming everyone around them was a zed in disguise, only to break down or—in nastier situations—go postal, killing other innocent survivors in the process. In other cases Wally had heard rarer stories of perfectly normal humans becoming so entrenched in their paranoia and confusion that they started considering themselves zeds, attacking people and wandering out to join the hordes of walking dead, only to be eaten alive by their 'fellows.' It was just too frighteningly easy to connect with these monsters, which was one of the reasons they were so dangerous, on a psychological level more than anything else.

These zombies shuffling around the corner were the same as any others Wally had seen. There were at least ten of them, and any one of them could have sat on the plane next to him four years ago when he flew into D.C., or served them at the restaurants, or taken them on tours through the museums. He could even take a few guesses at the things they'd done before they were turned. The one with the blood-stained black suit might've been secret service, the woman with the badge still miraculously pinned to her shirt had to be a reporter, and the kid with the torn Batman T-shirt—school kid, definitely. That last one made him cringe, because the kid was eternally frozen at maybe twelve years—that could have been Wally if things had gone down differently.

"Supey, come on!" he rasped, more desperate now, and gave another useless tug at the clone's arm. "Before they—"

But it was too late. The zombies had caught on that they were there, somehow—Wally was still not sure if it was sight, sound, smell, movement, or maybe a combination of all four that let them hunt—and the guttural moans increased in volume and regularity as they started to shuffle forward faster.

Crap.

Wally wasn't ashamed to admit he was getting closer to resorting to begging, as he circled around Superboy and tried to forcibly push him back with both hands. Superboy still didn't budge, and his gaze was violently intense as he watched the walking dead shambling closer to them. "We have to go, Supey! Remember what I told you down below!"

Superboy didn't even appear to hear him, and he was obviously not going anywhere. And Wally was ashamed to admit that a very tiny part of him—the primal part that had whipped him into shape and kept him alive for the past four years—had already written Superboy off as a loss, and was insisting now that he run away as fast as he damn well could and preserve himself, at least.

But no. No. He was not going to abandon Superboy now. It had only been a day, but he was still seeing Superboy as family, and he'd never forgive himself if he abandoned his (relatively helpless) little brother to the undead. So he kept trying, while his mind screamed all the while that they were getting closer and he had to get away now or he would never find his real family again.

Superboy did not even remotely appear to be on the same page. Wally could feel a faint vibration under his fingers as he tried to push the clone away, and realized a moment later that Superboy was growling, the sound so low in pitch he could barely hear it and more felt it instead. Then Superboy said his first words since the zombies had appeared: "That is the enemy?"

Wally felt his heart plummet even further. He did not like where this was going. "Doesn't matter, we have to go now—"

"These are the ones you were so scared of?" Superboy looked almost scornful. "Tch. They're nothing!" And to Wally's horror, Superboy brushed him aside like he was nothing too, roared a battle cry, and hurled himself directly into the middle of the moaning pack of zombies.

Wally felt his heart stop for one eternally long second.

Then time sped up so alarmingly fast that if he'd been moving, he was pretty sure he'd have gotten whiplash. Wally watched in horror as Superboy smashed into the pavement, sending three unsteady zombies staggering backwards and toppling over on the ground. With another roar, the clone snatched up the secret service zombie—it moaned and snapped at him, but missed skin by inches—spun, and hurled him at four other approaching zeds. All five crashed to the ground as well, and Superboy yelled wordlessly, an almost feral challenge, as he glared around at the writhing zombies, daring them to get up again.

But he didn't understand. Zombies were not like normal human opponents. They didn't feel fear or pain or pride, you couldn't demoralize them, you couldn't incapacitate them. You couldn't use normal codes of conduct for a fair fight, because a fight against a zombie was never fair. They couldn't be saved—there was no cure, no chance to reverse the turning, no way to make them see sense. They could only be run from, or killed, two things heroes of old would never resort to. The Justice League had stood their ground and tried hard to solve everything, and look where it had gotten them!

Already the zombies were clawing their way forward again, and a few of the cleverer ones had figured out how to clamber slowly to their feet. The moaning increased, and Wally felt ice slither through his veins when he heard the call taken up from other directions all around them now. God, the were surrounded, all the noise had attracted attention—they were in so much trouble—

Superboy still didn't seem to understand the danger, and barked a challenge at the closest dead head, apparently insulted by its inability to recognize him as a dangerous and superior opponent. He didn't even turn around to watch his back, where the eternally-twelve zombie with the Batman shirt—the only one Superboy had ignored, maybe out of some ingrained moral code to not beat on kids—was shuffling forward, arms raised, jaw snapping.

"No no no!" Wally screamed. Panic flooded him, and he threw himself up the street. He didn't even register crossing the distance, it happened too fast—probably something to attribute to adrenaline, rather than suddenly manifesting dormant speed powers—and made it just in time, right as the kid started leaning forward for a bite. With strength born of severe desperation, wild fury, and a great deal of terror for his unexpected family member, Wally wrenched the thing back by one arm and pushed it away. Then he lashed out with the crowbar, smashing it into the kid's head with as much force as he could muster. The first smash dented its head in, and its jaw hung awkwardly, tongue flopping out. The backhanded second smash was enough to split its head open completely, and it dropped to the pavement with a muted gurgle, dripping rancid brownish fluids. It didn't move again.

"What is wrong with you?" Superboy snarled at him, eyes wide and glare full of hatred.

Wally didn't even have time to explain that he was not crazy, thank you very much, and it might look like he had just mercilessly beaten a twelve-year-old to death with a crowbar but actually he had just saved the clone's life. He was in full fight-or-flight mode now, hyperaware of every tiny detail relevant to his own survival, and didn't have time for debates or psychological profiles anyway. All he said was, "They're not alive! Undead! Don't get bitten or you're done for, aim for the head, and run!"

"I'm not running!" Superboy snarled back, and carelessly picked up another zombie to hurl at the approaching pack again. Wally was horrified to realize he wasn't even trying to avoid the snapping jaws, and only sheer dumb luck had saved him so far. "This is my new place—I can fight. These things can't hurt me, they're weak—"

"No!" Wally nearly shrieked at him. He whipped around and smashed in another zombie's head frantically. This one was the reporter; her news badge showed a pretty face, he found himself noting strangely, as he turned the real thing into brown mush. She went down too and didn't get up again. "No, you can't, that's wrong! Superman thought that too and they still killed him, so run, run as fast as you can now!"

Wally had thought this would get through to Superboy, if anything did; he clearly held his predecessor in high regard. Instead it had a more terrifying effect: Superboy froze completely, rigid as a statue once more, and his eyes went wide and staring, as if he were seeing something truly terrifying very, very far away.

"What are you—no!" Wally dodged around his companion and lashed out with the crowbar again. The strokes both missed hitting any heads, but he was able to knock the unstable zombies back for a moment, at least, as he frantically tried to keep them away from his friend. With maybe a second's worth of breathing space Wally glanced over his shoulder and groaned. He'd somehow managed to put the kid he was trying to look out for into shock. He'd known it was going to be tough to explain Superman's end to Superboy, but this was too much at just the wrong time.

"Snap out of it!" he yelled frantically, as he beat back another reaching zed hand. "Supey, wake up, now, wake up and run! You'll die if you don't!" He couldn't hold back the hordes forever, and more were coming; if they didn't move soon...

There was a rattling gasp behind him, reminding Wally of the noise a drowning man might make when he reaches air again. Superboy sidestepped around him a moment later, snatched up another zombie—but this time, Wally noted gratefully, with more care, seizing it behind the neck so it couldn't bite—and hurled it at the others. They fell back again, moaning in agitation, giving the living a little space. Then, before Wally could argue, Superboy wrapped an arm around Wally's back and launched himself into the air.

It was a new and not entirely pleasant experience for Wally. Superboy shot up and forward fast, ridiculously fast, and Wally was hyper aware of his stomach being left behind him with the crowd of zombies. He yelped and hastily dug his fingers into Superboy's shirt, just to make sure he didn't get himself dropped, and focused on keeping a tight hold on his now very gory crowbar with the other hand.

But after a moment all his senses managed to catch up with him, and he looked down in bewilderment. They were flying. Holy crap they were flying! He could see the roofs of some of DC's two- and three-story buildings below them, and the zombies looked more cat or dog-sized now than the much larger and more lethal people-size. They were flying and they were alive and not dead and it was awesome.

Or maybe not, Wally realized, a moment later. His weightlessness seemed to shift, and there was an uncomfortable moment of anticipation, not unlike the exact same feeling he used to get every time he started going down the first hill of a roller coaster. And then suddenly they were going down, not up, and D.C. and the zombies were rushing back up at them with alarming speed.

Superboy's eyes were wide. "I...I'm falling?" he said. Wally noted that he sounded more disappointed or shocked than anything. He might have felt bad for the guy if he wasn't currently occupied by his own outright terror due to the ground rocketing up at them way too fast.

"Landing!" Wally yelped at him. "Focus on landing, landing!"

Superboy blinked, but his expression shifted to determination. He threw out his free hand for balance and managed to come smashing down on a particularly unlucky solo zombie, crushing its head into paste beneath his stolen combat boots. If the situation hadn't been so dire, Wally would have laughed at Superboy's first zombie-kill being Goomba-stomping a zed into non-existence; it had been unconventional but very, very effective.

Wally gingerly tried to catch his balance without getting his shoes too covered in gore, still leaning against Superboy a bit dazedly to recover from the crazy jump. Superboy had already recovered, sturdy as ever, and looked more hurt by his first major discovery about himself than anything else. "Superman can fly. Why can't I fly?" His voice, everything about him, sounded broken.

Geez, this kid was just not having a good day. Or life so far, really. Not that Wally's was going great either, at the moment, but at least his ratio of good days to bad was a little more even than Superboy's mere two days of constant shock and bad news. "Dunno," he said, forcing at least a little bit of cheer into his voice for the sake of his friend, "But it looks like you can still leap tall buildings in a single bound. Still cool." He glanced over his shoulder at the zombie hordes, which were growing larger now and had figured out where their prey was again easy from the crashing noise made on impact. "Think you can keep it up?"

Superboy hesitated, but then nodded. "Yes. Which way?"

Wally pointed. "The bridge. We need to get across and go north. If we can—hey!" His instructions turned into an indignant yelp as Superboy crouched and this time scooped him up like a child. "Do I look like I'm five?"

"Hard to keep a grip the other way when landing, with the backpack," Superboy growled back at him, in a surprisingly no-nonsense tone. "You want to keep your stuff, we go this way." And without waiting further he launched himself into the air once more.

Wally complained foully under his breath. It didn't help much—based on Superboy's smirk, he could hear everything Wally said. Awesome.

But Wally had to admit, Superboy was able to cushion him from the impact a little easier traveling this way—and more importantly, it was fast. In six hops they'd left D.C. behind and had crossed the bridge, and they'd miraculously escaped a veritable swarm of zombies that would have been a death sentence for anybody else. In half an hour they'd covered a few miles, and had made it far enough into relatively safe no-man's-land that Wally could give Superboy the cue to halt. Superboy dutifully set them down in a decaying field that had probably once grown crops but had long since gone dead and stony. It gave them enough of a vantage point of the surrounding area that they'd know for sure the moment something tried to attack them.

"Okay," Wally said, as he tried to shake a little feeling back into his now-asleep legs, "Not gonna lie, that is going to be really useful in a pinch." Better than a bike, at any rate—Superboy could cover way more ground when he was so inclined. Of course, they couldn't use it all the time. Superboy couldn't exactly be subtle with his landings, which meant they were loud and would undoubtedly attract any zeds in the area. Not to mention Wally didn't want to put too much strain on his friend if he could help it—Superboy was panting slightly from the half-hour non-stop jump-run, and Wally didn't want to wear him out or make him sick or anything. He'd never heard any stories about Superman getting injured or worn down, but clearly Superboy was not the same as Superman, and Wally didn't know what other limits the clone might have.

Superboy gave him a weak smile, but then his expression turned stony. "Alright," he said, tone hard, but not quite hard enough to conceal the tight sound of pain hidden in there, "Explain...what happened to Superman. And the others. What's going on?"

Wally winced. He'd known this was coming, but even with half an hour to think about it, he still wasn't really sure how to answer the question. He sighed and settled for wiping his messy crowbar on a few old, dead leaves, trying to organize his thoughts. Superboy watched, eyes narrowed, but waited without interrupting.

Finally Wally sat down on a particularly large rock and said, "Look, Supey. I'm sorry I have to be the one to tell you this. And like this, too. I didn't want to, but..." He grimaced. "Okay. When Z-day happened, well, the Justice League—you know about the League?"

"Yes," Superboy answered promptly. "An organization of super heroes, currently consisting of ten members, with the goal of global defense through unified team work. Members consist of—" He paused in his recitation, and said more slowly, "The roster doesn't matter anymore. Does it."

It was a statement, not a question. Wally swallowed, and said, "No. It doesn't. When...when the outbreaks first started, the League was at the center of everything. They were trying hard to figure out how to reverse it, figure out what caused it...they did everything they could to stop it. And...it got them killed. The ones we don't have witnesses for haven't been seen again and are still presumed dead. This isn't something you can fight. It's not something you can reverse or fix. You just have to keep running, and survive. It got too big for us too fast." He shrugged. His voice felt tight, painful; he didn't want to keep talking.

Superboy looked pained as well, and asked slowly, "And...Superman?"

Wally grit his teeth. "I just saw news stories, heard rumors. I don't know exactly what happened. All I know is, Superman thought the same way as you—figured he was invulnerable, so it made him invincible against zombies. Not true. It took a lot more of them to bring him down, but from what I heard, they just...overran him." And when Superboy looked disbelieving, Wally added dully, "They don't stop, Supey. You saw'em back there. They aren't scared of you or of pain or of dying. They don't feel anything. They just keep coming, forever. But people, and I guess Superman too, they aren't like that. They get scared, or tired, or hurt, or feel pain, or they get afraid of hurting those things, try to save them, try to connect with them, and it wears them down until they just overrun you, and all it takes is one bite..."

He looked up, gave Superboy an apologetic look. "He saved a lot of people, though. A lot of people. He held off a swarm long enough to get half of Metropolis evacuated." Of course, most of them died later, Wally thought to himself, but he wasn't going to share that part.

Superboy was silent for a long time, staring at the ground. Wally began to wonder if he'd gone into shock again, when the clone said slowly, "So then...my purpose is to replace him, like I was created for."

But Wally shook his head firmly. "Haven't you been listening to me, Supey?" he said tiredly. "The age of heroes is over. I'm sorry, but it is."

Superboy looked visibly crushed by this. Wally felt like he'd stabbed him in the heart. He hadn't done much to help Superboy so far—just deconstructed every aspect of the world he thought he understood, broken it into itty bitty pieces and scattered them.

"Sorry," he muttered, and then added, "I understand. It's—"

"How could you possibly understand?" Superboy snarled at him suddenly, looking angry. "You don't understand anything! To learn everything you've been made for, that you look up to, is just gone like that and you never even had a chance to—"

"My uncle was the Flash," Wally blurted out abruptly, cutting him off. Superboy was stunned into silence, and Wally continued, "I didn't want to believe it happened, for a long time. I mean, I'd only just met him. So I always wanted to pretend the League was off somewhere fighting zombies and they all made it through okay and one day they'd be back to save all of us. I still wanted—want—to believe in heroes, because then Uncle Barry would be..."

He didn't have to finish. Superboy got it.

"Surprise," Wally finished lamely. He couldn't quite hide the bitter edge in his voice.

More silence. Superboy looked uncomfortable, like he wasn't quite sure what to do now, but after a moment he said awkwardly, "Sorry. About...yelling." About your uncle.

"S'okay," Wally said. "I'm sorry too. I should've explained better." Sorry you had to learn about your dad dying this way.

The air was too heavy and depressing by now, and Wally was starting to hate the tenseness of it all. He wasn't one to wallow in self-pity and misery; the fact that he was still alive now, four years later, and still optimistically searching for the rest of his family was proof enough of that.

"Look," he said, tentatively at first, "We should be celebrating! We got out of there alive. Most people wouldn't. That's big. And we've still got our original plan in front of us, too! You don't have to be forced into trying to be a replacement, and you still deserve answers, right? Nothing's changed. We just gotta get up to that settlement and talk to my buddy. Hopefully we can figure out all these answers and then you can decide what you want to do with your own life, without anybody telling you or ordering you or creating you for things. Right?"

Superboy fixed him with a dull look, but after a moment the weak smile, a little bitter but at least trying, ghosted onto his face. "Right," he repeated. "Yeah. I'd like that. A choice...my own life."

"There you go," Wally said encouragingly. "Don't worry. We'll get through this. I promise."

And he was going to do his damn best do ensure they did.

Again, a few lines from the characters are transplanted from the original episodes...but with new context!