A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I'm sorry about last chapter's cliffhanger, Amy, but there's no need to worry :)

Joey nearly fell on his face dismounting the bike, he was so shocked.

Laughing a little, Kate pulled him to his feet and handed him back his helmet. "Still the same Joey. Come on, we should get out of here. I haven't seen any zombies in about an hour, but they probably heard your engine. What'd you say you're looking for?"

"Hardware store would be good." He was too shocked to be shocked about remembering to get more spray paint, since he'd been marking the signs with the words 'J wuz here,' for Derek and his group.

Not that any of that mattered, because he was still processing what was going on.

"C'mon," Kate - the first woman Joey Tribbani ever had real feelings for - said, grabbing onto his hand and dragging him away from his bike. He gripped onto his shotgun and helmet with his free hand, remembering his promise to Derek.

They dashed across the street, weaving past crashed cars and practically skipping over large bloodstains on the street. Joey couldn't help but feel giddy, his hand in Kate's, and she led him to a small, abandoned store called DIY Repairs.

She checked the door, then they went through it, panting and still clinging to each other, and when Joey finally managed to get half his wits about him - most of them in a very specific region in his body - Kate was pressing him up against the wall, her wild hair tickling his face.

"This can't just be a coincidence, can it?" she asked, breathless and soft and clean, and somehow even more beautiful than she was the last time Joey saw her. "I mean, of all the places to see you again... Thought I was the only one left alive in this place, after the film crew started eating each other and then swarmed anything with a motor. Was gonna try to make it out on foot before I saw you coming, so I thought I should wait. Best decision I ever made, right?"

For a moment, caught up in the now and with her hands on him, he was ready and willing to forget everything that was going on around him, to get lost in what he did best, and to enjoy himself a little, especially with the woman he'd let go years ago.

"Look, I'm just as surprised as you are, to see you after all this time," Kate said, leaning in close and murmuring against his neck. "But hey, maybe this was supposed to happen. World's ending, you know, and we're here, together again. We can finally finish what we started. I mean, it's not like you've got anywhere else to be, right?"

Joey looked at her.

A moment ticked by, then another.

"Joey?" Kate asked.

May 2004

"Joey?" Rachel called out to him, and he didn't say anything as he joined her out on the balcony.

When she started talking, he turned his head away from her and crossed his arms stubbornly across his chest. Not because he was mad at her, but because that was what he did when people left him. He just hoped she wouldn't cry. He always hated it when she cried.

"Joey," she said slowly, holding out both of her hands and waiting for him to take them. "Sweetie... Come here."

When he did, she drew him close to her. She said a lot of things to him, and once he met her eyes, he just couldn't look away. He was going to miss her so much.

He only managed to tune in right when she put her hands up on his shoulders, and said, "You wanna know something? You were my favorite roommate."

"Really?" he asked, wondering if she'd gotten him mixed up with Monica. It wouldn't be the first time she did, especially whenever he cooked.

"Yeah! I mean, everyone else has been great to live with, and I love them, but I had so much fun with you. All the time."

Joey brought one of his hands up to start stroking her arm.

"You've been so great with me and Emma, and, I guess, well, I always felt like things just worked between us when I was living with you. You know, I hated that apartment when Monica and I had to live there, but with you, it really felt like home."

He nodded, understanding exactly how she felt.

"Thank you for... everything," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I love you so much, and I'm really gonna miss you."

When Joey started to jump off the balcony, he figured that it really wasn't such a bad way to go: thinking about Rachel and knowing that, no matter what had happened between them, he still held a place in her heart.

July 2004

When Joey walked into Central Perk, Ross and Rachel greeted him from their spot on the group's couch. He smiled at them as he made his way to the sofa adjacent to the couch.

"So," Rachel said. "That woman we met last night was nice. How was your date?"

Joey started fidgeting under her curious look. "Oh," he said. "Yeah, it didn't go so well."

"What?" Ross asked. "I ran into her here this morning. She said you had a pretty good time together."

Joey shrugged. "Okay, so it didn't suck."

"So, I take it that you're not gonna do what you've always done and actually call this one back?" Rachel asked as she examined her nails.

"Nah," Joey admitted. "She wasn't... really my type, anyway."

"What, are you kidding?" Ross said. "She was nice, she was funny, and did you get a load of her —"

Rachel cleared her throat as she turned and glared at Ross.

"Totally mature and sophisticated personality, is what I was about to say."

"Yeah, sure, she's nice and hot," Joey said as he shifted in his seat. "It's just... I don't know. I didn't really feel anything between us. But that's okay, 'cause I've got another date lined up for tomorrow night." And the night after that… and the night after that, he added to himself.

"Well," Ross said, crossing his fingers. "Here's hoping she's The One!"

"Yeah," Joey said, offering his friends another small smile. "Or at least The One for More Than A Day, anyway."

"There you go!" Ross said, beaming as Rachel rolled her eyes.

That night, Joey got a call from an agent in Los Angeles.

September 2006

"Oh, good," Joey's agent said when he walked into her office. "You're here. Sit."

He chose to remain standing. "So, is this about a new role, or something? Because you wouldn't have asked me to come over if it wasn't something really important."

"Look, you should really be sitting down for this," she said.

"No way! I got things to see, people to do, and awesome to... be. So make it quick, all right?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "At least you act like you should be in a blockbuster movie."

"Are you kidding? I got a part in one?" Joey said, already bursting with pride before she could get a word in edgewise. "That's great! Too great for me to waste time standing around in some stuffy office, so just tell me where they're shooting, and I'll be all set to —"

"—Your show was cancelled."

Joey sat down right in the chair across from his agent's desk.

"What?" he cried. "How come?"

She pursed her lips, sighing and looking away from him. "Not enough viewers," she said. "I'm sorry." She sure didn't sound like it.

"But we were doing so good last year," he said. "We got a picture in TV Guide and everything."

"Well, you know how fickle television audiences can be." His agent's cell phone rang, and she opened it. "Yeah?" she said, clearly not interested in talking to Joey anymore.

He slumped back in his chair. He'd come out here for the better acting opportunities, not to end up with the same sort of thing that happened to Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E. and Shutterspeed. He thought things would turn out differently for him here.

"This sucks," he grumbled, more to himself than to his agent, who was deep in conversation with the person on the other line. "L.A. sucks."

She turned to him, then put her hand on the mouth's end of the receiver. "You're still here?" she asked. "Go! I'll send you a script if I get one, but I can't make any promises."

"What am I supposed to do now?"

"Well, why don't you go see those sights, be awesome, go get laid. Do whatever or whoever you want, just do them somewhere else!"

Joey sighed, wondering whether to tell her he'd been waiting around all day to be asked to come in the office, and that he had nothing else to do, but she didn't look like she cared, anyway.

He exited the building, hating the whole world. He kicked an empty can in anger, then yelled when it bounced against the far alley wall and hit him in the knee.

It was funny, in a not-so-funny way, how he'd been at the height of his career in one second, then back at the bottom in the next.

Go get laid. That's what his agent had advised him to do.

So he did.

And again, and again, until Joey realized he didn't really want to anymore. Sure, meaningless sex made him feel a little better for a little while, but it wasn't enough to ease his growing sense of loneliness and disappointment, which Joey felt more in himself than L.A.

More than anything, he wanted to see his friends again. They'd all cheer him up in their own little ways: Chandler would make fun of whoever canceled the show, Ross would say something sciency to bore Joey's disappointment away, Monica would make him a pan of lasagna, Phoebe would sing him one of his favorite songs, "Screw You, Hollywood!" and Rachel would tell him, "Oh, sweetie, you'll find something better, I know you will," and hug him until he'd forget why he was so upset.

Joey went home alone for several nights, without any real reason why. He told everyone in New York City about his show getting canceled, feeling both sadder and better when he heard their voices.

And then, Joey started to wonder what he was even doing all the way across the country, anyway.

Two weeks later, Rachel called him, and she was in tears.

October 2006

"Hello? Earth to Joey?" Kate said impatiently. "Look, if you're gonna stare into space for another five minutes, could you let me know?"

Joey looked down at Kate, shaking his head a little as he snapped back to the present. He gently took Kate's hands in his, and put them down.

"What are you doing?" she said, sounding more shocked than how he'd felt when he saw her on the street. "Are you Joey's secret twin, and you don't know who I am?"

"I know who you are," Joey said as he leaned down to pick up his helmet. "I'm going home, Kate. I gotta get to my friends. If you want to come with me, we need to find some spray paint and get you a weapon."

It was Kate's turn to be speechless as Joey searched around in the tiny, dusty store. He grabbed a couple cans of spray paint and tossed them, along with some candy bars and water, into a plastic bag.

Finally, when Kate spoke up, she said, "What, that's it?"

Joey turned to look at her for a moment.

"Yeah, you're right," he said, then shoved a few more candy bars into the bag.

"No!" Kate brushed her hair out of her face. "I meant your total non-reaction back there. You felt something, I know you did."

"Yeah, I did." Joey shook his plastic bag with a little more force than he should have, before he turned to face her and added, "Years ago. But you left, and you never called. We haven't talked in years, Kate. Why is that? And how come it only took a week and a chick for me to get over you so quickly?"

"Wow," Kate scoffed, but she clearly looked hurt. "I knew you were fast, Joey, but not that fast."

A few seconds ticked by until Joey got what she meant. "No, no, no, it wasn't like that, it was a baby chicken."

"Ookay," Kate said as she backed away from him.

"What, no! It wasn't like that, either!" Joey sighed. "All I'm sayin' is, yeah, maybe us running into each other in the middle of all this means something. But don't you think, maybe us never keeping in touch also means something?"

Kate tilted her head to one side, considering what he'd just told her. When she looked back at him, she said, "You're in love with someone else, aren't you?"

Joey squared his jaw and brushed past Kate to look at wrenches that were hanging on the wall. "That doesn't matter anymore," he said before picking a huge wrench and handing it to Kate.

She took it and tested out its weight. "Joey Tribbiani," she said, then looked back at him with a small smile. "If I thought you were ever capable of growing up this much, I probably would have stayed in New York for you."

Joey paused. Almost ten years ago, he would have done anything to hear her say that.

"You really sure that would've been such a good idea?" he asked, and pushed the door open, then waited for her to follow him out the store.

She stood there, then said, "No," before joining him outside. "Getting out of the play scene in New York was the best thing I ever did for myself. I mean, before everything turned into a mess, I was having the time of my —"

"— FREEZE!" Someone yelled at them from the street.

Both Joey and Kate whirled toward the source of the noise, Kate brandishing her wrench, and Joey his plastic bag and helmet, completely forgetting his shotgun.

"DROP YOUR WEAPONS!"

They did.

A small group of soldier were huddled around a Humvee, pointing guns at Kate and Joey. The man who had been shouting at them motioned his gun at them.

"Raise your hands and come over here. Nice and easy, now."

"Joey," Kate said as they raised their hands in the air and began walking toward the soldiers. "Whatever happens, I just wanted you to know... I really did like you."

"Yeah," he said regretfully, "me too."

"But if it's any consolation, I didn't love you."

"Yeah," he said, much less regretfully. "Me too."

Chandler felt like he was right at home in the abandoned house he and Monica had settled in. After he fed the twins and settled them in the master bedroom upstairs, he went down to the living room, where Monica was, of course, inspecting the furniture.

"Jack and Erica are okay," he said. "We should switch off on keeping watch down here, with the rifle." He wanted to crash on the couch as soon as possible, but offered to stay up first and let Monica sleep.

"I'll take the first watch," she said, still occupied with the coffee table in front of the couch. "Get some rest." She slid her index finger along the wooden border of the table, and made a disapproving sound when she looked at her fingertip. "Don't know how you could, though, in this pigsty. Our place is so much cleaner than this."

Chandler looked around the house, which he'd thought, upon arrival, was spotless, but he knew better than to get into an argument about cleanliness with Monica. Instead, he said, "Honey, I'd take a cardboard box right now, I'm that exhausted."

"Oh, man," Monica wailed as a thought had apparently occurred to her. "You know what this means, right? Some people are probably going to break into our house and mess everything up!"

"Yes, in this situation that truly is the worst thing that could ever happen," Chandler said. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pass out."

When he settled himself on the long couch, though, he just couldn't fall asleep. He turned over on the couch, trying to will himself to give into his body's exhaustion, and when he finally started to doze, he thought about what it had been like when he'd first moved into the suburbs. It had been so different, living away from all the street noises, the occasional screaming drunkard, and crazy night drivers honking away. Not to mention that he didn't have to deal with Joey or the others coming in through the front door at all hours, like old times.

He thought he wouldn't miss any of that. He really did. During his first night in the house, he slept like a baby – well, up until two in the morning, when the actual babies in the house woke him up – but after that, the silence of his neighborhood had started to bother him.

The silence.

Chandler's eyes snapped open.

"That's it!" he said, then jumped up off the couch, nearly tripping over his own feet in the process.

He found Monica in the kitchen, her back to him as she scrubbed the floor tiles. He took a second to stop and admire the view, then remembered to focus.

When he called her name, she whirled around on him.

"Chandler, you should know better than to sneak up on me like that! Especially at a time like this. I could've —"

"— Sponged me to death?" he asked. "Okay, I'm sorry, but I wanted to ask you something."

"What's up?"

"Have you heard anything since the sun went down? Or seen any of our... jogging buddies?"

"No." Monica turned back to the tile she'd been cleaning, and Chandler reached out to grip her shoulder.

"Come look out the window," he said. She hesitated for a moment, then went with him, though she didn't take off her gloves.

He pulled the curtain aside when they walked up to the large window in the living room. Monica peered out at the street.

"What am I supposed to be looking at?" she asked.

"That's just it," Chandler said, growing surer of his new theory. "No zombies. Haven't you noticed how quiet it is?"

She cocked her head to one side. "Not really. So, you're saying that..."

"Yeah," Chandler said. "Looks like we're not the only ones who need our beauty sleep."

She smiled at him a little. "Nice work, detective. Ross would be proud."

"I only hope he's figured out the same thing." Chandler leaned against the sill as he held the curtain aside, then froze.

"What is it?"

He pressed his ear to the glass. Sure enough, he did hear something.

"We might have to revoke my badge," he whispered. "Listen."

She followed suit, turning her head to lean her ear next to the window, but not touching it.

"Yeah," she said. "It's far away, but I'm pretty sure it's music."

They pulled their heads away from the window, and Chandler let the curtain swing back over it.

"This whole thing just gets weirder by the minute," Monica muttered. "You really should get some sleep. If those things out there are recharging, one of us should be doing the same."

The Humvee rolled to a stop, and Joey cut the engine on Derek's motorcycle.

Kate jumped out of the back of the Humvee and stopped at Joey's side as he dismounted.

"Look, I know you really care about your friends," she said, "and I'm pretty sure one of them is a big reason why you're gonna risk your life going halfway across the country, but..." She put her hand on his shoulder. "We've got people who can take care of us now. We could start over here, together. Can't you think about this for a minute?"

Joey slid the key in his pocket and adjusted the sling of Derek's shotgun, Bethany, over his shoulder. He leveled his gaze at Kate and said, "Think? Do you not know who you're talking to?"

"Stubborn fool," Kate said as she smacked his chest lightly. "You'll die out there."

"She's got a point," the army major who had threatened to turn them into Swiss cheese said as he approached Joey. He handed Joey his plastic bag, which weighed considerably more than it originally did, since it was full of food and shotgun shells. "Your concern for your friends is admirable, but it's not the best idea to go solo."

Joey took the bag. "Thanks, but with all due respect, I don't plan on singing any songs by myself."

The major looked puzzled for a minute, but recovered quickly. "I run into my two favorite actors and one of them up and leaves on me. Sorry we can't take you any further than this, but we got to head back to base camp. It's a real shame, is what it is. We could use a man with your strength and resolve."

He slapped Joey on the back, and Joey had to suppress a groan of pain as he nearly stumbled over. He replied, "Uh, yeah, I'm just glad you recognized us. And Kate here, she's tough. You'll need someone like her on your side, wherever it is you're going."

"Sir." The man nodded, then, at the sound of a distant gunshot, scanned the darkness around them for any sign of movement. Joey searched too, but found nothing. He shook the major's hand and saluted him with more force than he should have.

"Good luck," Major Tom said, and did an about-face back to the Humvee.

Joey and Kate looked at each other awkwardly, the sound of crickets filling the air.

"I should probably go too," she said, then kissed Joey on the cheek. "Take care of yourself, Joey. I hope you get your happy ending."

"Right back atcha," Joey said and watched her board the Humvee. They waved at each other, and Joey watched her as she disappeared into the night.

As Joey pushed the door open to the darkened interior of the abandoned bookstore - next to the road that would take him back home - he paused, waiting for the sound of snarls and groans. He remembered what the major said about zombies not liking buildings, but it was still good to be cautious.

He moved up and down the aisles, shining a flashlight here and there. The lights didn't work when he tried them, but the store was empty, cozy, and a great place to rest for a while. He knew he should be pushing forward, since the soldiers also filled him in on zombies hiding during the night - whatever these things were, they were weird - but the day's events had worn him out.

When he was confident in the safety of his surroundings, he walked up to the small coffee shop that was nestled in the back of the bookstore.

As he ran the beam of his flashlight along the counter, Joey couldn't help being reminded of Central Perk.

It hit him, once again, how much he missed his friends - how much he missed Rachel - and hoped they were all right.

Joey ate some of the rations the soldiers had given him and found a comfortable place to rest, next to the horror section.

At least, unlike the other two times he'd gone into a bookstore to nap, nobody told him to get up and leave.

While it was still dark outside, Chandler rolled the Porsche to a halt.

"What is it?" Monica asked, sounding like she already knew the problem.

Chandler sighed. He didn't know how to break it to her, but he had to, sooner or later. "I... I don't think she's got anymore juice."

"Well, if it's a problem with the battery, maybe we could replace it with another one. You know how to do that, right?"

Chandler raised his eyebrows. "Sure, just let me get my tools from the shed."

Monica bit her lip, which was quivering as tears slid down her cheeks. "Well," she said. "This is just the icing on top of a cake of crap, isn't it?"

Regretting his joke, Chandler unbuckled his seatbelt to hug her, wiping her tears off of her cheeks with his free hand. She cried silently, clutching onto him, and they held each other for a moment, postponing the inevitable.

After Chandler pulled back from Monica a bit, she said, "It doesn't have to be like this. We could push her all the way to Manhattan."

"As fun as that sounds," he said gently, "I think we've got to start looking for a new ride home."

Monica didn't answer him, and he knew he had to let her grieve for a moment. The Porsche was just as much of a baby to her as the twins were.

As Monica ran her fingers along the dashboard and said her goodbyes, Chandler got out and searched further up the street for abandoned cars. He came back to report that he'd found a station wagon with its driver's door left open, a full tank of gas, and a set of keys still in the ignition.

Monica laughed, but in a dry, humorless way. "I guess we really have crossed over, huh? Now we're just like all those other middle-class, suburban families."

"At least we're one of the living ones," Chandler offered, along with his hand, and Monica grabbed onto it as she got out of the Porsche. She touched her fingers to her lips, then pressed them against the hood before she fell into step behind Chandler.

As they got the twins and their essentials settled into the station wagon, Chandler heard it again: that same low, steady sound which made him curious and uncomfortable at the same time.

"Yeah, that's definitely music," he said.

"It is," Monica agreed as she dried her eyes. "It kinda sounds like..."

"The Spice Girls," both of them said at the same time.

"I can't believe I'm even saying this, but..." Monica paused to furrow her brow. "Do you think they're the ones playing it?"

"If they are," Chandler said as he got into the driver's seat, "then they must be stopped."