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The world doesn't end with a bang, but with a whimper: quietly, step by excruciating step. At first, only a few fall ill. Influenza, they say. An epidemic. Stay inside, take your vitamins, it'll blow over. But it doesn't.
Soon the dead outnumber the living, and that's when everything just cracks. Bodies pile up in the streets, because no one who's still alive wants to go near them for fear of becoming infected. With sixty, seventy, eighty percent of the population gone, there's no way to keep civilized society up and running.
As it turns out, that's not really going to be a long-term problem.
***
It's been a week since Steve saw another living soul. He's not quite ready yet to believe he might be the only one left, but the thought has occurred to him. The power is still running – not everywhere, but downtown, in public places. It's almost June and getting hot, and he spent the last three days in abandoned restaurant with the AC running overtime. More than once debated with himself whether to leave money on the counter for the food he ate, the water he used, even though the rational part of him realizes the owners are most likely dead and money won't hold value anymore.
His cellphone buzzes halfway through making himself pancakes for a late breakfast, and he nearly drops the pan in the middle of flipping over the half-done lump of batter.
The number isn't from his contacts, and he hesitates to pick it up; caution has been trained into him too thoroughly to forget all about it now. But his relief about someone else being alive out there to call him wins out, and he answers the call.
“I'm at you're last known address,” says a voice that's familiar and alien at the same time, matter-of-factly and almost devoid of inflection, save for a tiny note of annoyance. Like they had an appointment and Steve didn't bother to show. “You're not here. Where are you?”
He sets down the pan in slow motion, breathes in deep. Regrets it instantly, because it makes the faint smell of decay that hangs over everything these days more pronounced, and he gags a little. “Wait right there. I'll come get you.”
***
Bucky waits for him sitting on the ground next to Steve’s old apartment. Well, technically it’s still his, but he abandoned it when the power went out in this block and the tap water turned stale. No sense in staying put when there are places out there with functioning stoves and clean water.
He looks his old friend over, finds a disconcerting mix of familiar and unknown. The hair’s at the length it had when they saw each other last, on the helicarrier, though he’s hiding most of it under a baseball cap. He’s wearing the kind of stubble that’s marched out of three-day-territory but isn’t quite a beard yet. His clothes are threadbare, old and worn, but clean. The eyes though, when he looks up and cocks his head, are still the same, and the look of recognition in them nearly knocks the air out of Steve’s lungs. That is his friend. Not a brainwashed human weapon, but the boy he grew up with.
“Didn’t get far, did you?” Bucky asks and nods his head towards the door, lips curving into something that wants to be a smile but doesn’t quite make it all the way there. His voice is still… empty, in a way, like he’s reading lines off a page, but not as mechanic as he sounded on the phone. “Kid went to war, got frozen for seventy years, woke up to a job as a spy, and here you are, still living in Brooklyn.”
“The whole world upped and changed on me,” Steve shoots back. “Least I could do was move back into a neighborhood I know my way around.”
Bucky shrugs. “Fair enough, I guess.” He pushes himself to his feet, wipes his hands on his jeans. “Alright. You ain’t living here anymore, so where to?”
“Wherever the power's still on and food left in the fridge,” Steve says. “When you called, I was in a shop a few blocks east, making myself breakfast. What do you say, feelin’ like pancakes?”
No reply comes, but Bucky walks past him down the hallway and then waits at the corner, eyebrows raised, and Steve decides that’s good enough.
***
“So,” Bucky inquires around a mouthful of pancake, “what about the rest of your merry band of heroes? Anyone still standing?”
“I don't know,” Steve replies, and it's the truth.
When it comes to most of them, he doesn't know. Sam was among the first to go; Steve was with him all the way. Natasha called him, a few days before cell phone reception and internet both died, to inform him Clint was gone. What happened to her, he doesn't know. Thor was in London, most likely still alive, god and all, but he hasn't tried to contact anyone. No one's heard from Bruce – the man wouldn't be immune, the monster might be, and Steve thinks, either way he's lost. Tony and Pepper were in Miami when the epidemic started, but Steve doesn't know whether they made it or not. So, yeah. Steve can only assume. There's no way to be sure.
Looking up from where he's been attacking the pancake with his fork again – Steve would like to blame the programming, but let's be honest, in private Bucky always used to eat like someone might snatch his food right out from other him at any second, probably what happens if you grow up poor and with siblings – Bucky manages a pretty decent sympathetic smile. “I'm sorry.”
And because Steve can’t find anything else to say, doesn't want to keep talking about death, he gets up and sees if he can find them some dessert.
***
For a little while, that’s how it goes: they move from place to place, raid the food supplies that are still edible, sleep out there in the booths and on the benches where people used to have their meals. Bucky’s quiet company, doesn’t talk much unless prompted, but that’s okay. They passed the point where they felt the need to fill each other’s silences sometime in the Thirties.
And then the power goes out. Steve knows that was inevitable, would happen at some point, but it nevertheless makes their lives harder. Getting at food is a bit more difficult without freezers and fridges and working stoves, but there’s canned goods, sure, and with mostly dead bodies crowding the streets it’s all theirs, so that’s not the worst thing.
The worst thing is the smell and the rats and the decay all around them, made worse by the loss of power even in the heart of the city. No hiding away in air-filtered restaurants or stores anymore. Summer is at its peak now, and the stink slowly becomes both inescapable and unbearable.
“We need to get out of the city,” Steve suggests as they raid the convenience section of a large mall, because in here, they’re swimming not only in food but also supplies for the road.
Bucky looks around the aisles, then upstairs, past the elevator, to the sporting goods section one floor up; they’re on the same page. He rolls his shoulders. “Okay.”
They pack as much food as they each can carry, also tents and camping supplies and anything else that catches their eyes as being potentially useful. They hotwire a car down the street, then exchange it for a caravan they find on the outskirts of town, load it up with more food from another store and several canisters of gasoline, and they leave New York behind.
***
Even without a set destination, they drive all day and only stop at night or for supplies. It doesn’t seem to be about going somewhere specific, so much. They’re on the move and they’re together, and for now, that’s enough. The landscape around them changes as they make their way across state lines, but they’re still alone. No other traffic, no one around in any of the towns they drive through, no lights in any house. For some reason it makes the fact that they’re alone even more apparent. There wasn’t another soul around in New York either, but it was easier to nurture the small foolish hope for an isolated incident, or one that had spread faster or further in the densely populated city.
No such luck.
***
“How terrible would it be,” Bucky asks one night, into the dark stillness that is the caravan parked off road, “to admit I’m almost glad there’s no one else left?”
The question shocks Steve, at first, because yes, from his point of view, it does sound like an awful thing to say. He lost everyone he knew and cared for once, just to wake up in a different time, and now he’s lost his new friends and found family all over again.
But he’s not the type of guy brought up to only look at his own side of a story, and so instead of chiding his friend’s lack of empathy, he replies with a question of his own. “Who are you glad isn’t around anymore?”
Silence stretches between them for a long moment, before Bucky heaves a sigh and Steve can hear the sheets rustling as he shifts. “Pretty much everyone I met in the last seventy years.”
And there it is – the other side of this story. No one else alive means there’s no one left to hurt them, and Steve’s heart aches over all the things about Bucky’s existence as the Solider he doesn’t know, and frankly, hopes he won’t ever find out. “Not terrible, Buck. It wouldn’t be terrible at all.”
***
They find the dog roundabout a week later, at a gas station where they stopped to stock up and take a leak. Steve’s coming out of the rest room in time to see Bucky crouch down and extend his normal hand towards what looks like a young border collie. The animal doesn’t seem convinced he’s good news, inches towards him to sniff his hand only to recoil, jump back and forth, and approach him again.
Adopting another mouth to feed is a bad idea. Impractical. A burden they don’t need. But Steve sees the way Bucky grins at the dog, mumbling under his breath to sway its opinion in his favor, and decides there are things more important than reason or practicality. He slips into the caravan to get one of the cans – spaghetti with meat balls – and closes up to Bucky and the dog. He pours a small poodle of the food on the ground, not directly in front of them but within arm’s reach, and waits. It doesn’t take long for the dog to sneak closer again, smell the food, and lick it off the ground. After it’s cleared up what was there, it looks at both of them, tongue lolling. Tentatively, Steve reaches out to pat the dog’s back, and, when it doesn’t try to get away, pours it some more spaghetti.
By the end of the can, they’re sort of friends. Enough so the dog follows them when Steve touches Bucky’s shoulder to make him retreat and then hops into the caravan with them, at least.
***
The dog is a girl, but Bucky insists they name her Cap regardless, which Steve grudgingly accepts. If it gets a laugh out of his friend to imagine calling out Cap and having both of them turn their heads, then Steve doesn’t care if the joke’s at his expense. Within days, Bucky and the dog become inseparable; she sleeps curled at his feet and doesn’t even leave his side whenever they stop and step out of the caravan. Steve doesn’t mind. Bucky needs her more than he does, and he’s actually glad the dog seems to agree.
Besides, he’s always been more of a cat person anyway.
***
The radio is Bucky’s idea. Well, less of an idea and more turning it on for shits and giggles while he’s driving and batting Steve’s hand away when he wants to turn it off, argues all radio stations will most likely be down anyway. And yes, hey, he’s partly right. What blares out of the cheap, tiny speakers in the caravan isn’t music. It takes him a moment longer than he’d like to admit before he figures out exactly what the looping clicking noises are supposed to be: morse code.
They’re both starring at the radio in unison, then turn to each other almost at the same time. It might’ve been funny, if anyone’d been around to see.
“That’s one of yours,” Bucky points out, and yeah, he’s right.
Steve’s morse is a little rusty, but the word Avengers is spelled out, as well as Miami and beach. He thinks it’s an invitation, a beacon meant for anyone who’s still alive and knows what to make of this message.
“Do you want to go?” Bucky asks, his attention back on the road, voice low and more mechanical than it’s been in weeks, almost like when they first reunited in New York.
And Steve gets it, he does; he remembers their conversation and and it’s been weeks since either of them saw any survivors, he can’t even hazard a guess as to how long it’s been since Bucky’s actually talked to anyone before that or how he'd handle it. But these are his friends too, and if at least one of them’s still alive… “If I do, would you be okay with that?”
Bucky’s hands grip the steering wheel harder and he generally looks like he'd rather go skinny-dipping in battery acid, but he nods. “Sure. Of course.”
It's nice to know Bucky's self-sacrificial streak survived the brainwashing, but Steve's not going to leave it at that. “Stop the car.”
Bucky gives him a sideways glance, but he does steer the caravan onto the nearest grassy side stripe and kills the engine.
“You feel safe, like this, right?” Steve asks. “You, me, the dog?”
He gets a frown and embarrassed stare in response, the latter of which he holds and matches. There's a small staring content, and eventually Bucky nods. “Yes.”
“Good,” Steve says, still keeping eye contact; this is important, he wants his message to be received and processed the right way. “Now, do you think I'd be friends with anyone who'd hurt you? Or that I'd let it happen?” The answering head shake is immediate, sure and decisive, and it's a relief to see that, despite everything, Bucky wouldn't question his loyalty. “Okay. So trust me when I promise you that, if any of them is still alive, you'd be just as safe as you are now. You'd just have a little more company.”
Bucky's expression remains doubtful, but he nods again, and Steve decides to let him off the hook for now, gestures back at the road. Neither of them has been paying much attention to the direction they were headed, but there’s a road map in the caravan’s glove department, and at the next road sign, they make sure they’re heading south.
***
From the outside, the beach house looks as lifeless and abandoned as every other place they passed on the way. Maybe they're too late, and the message was from the beginning of the epidemic. Steve doesn't quite want to leave the caravan, have a look around, make sure, but Bucky's already climbing out of the passenger seat he spent the last couple hundred miles in, whistling for the dog to follow him.
They sneak around the property, looking through dusty windows as they go, and it seems to confirm Steve's first thought: the message was old. They're too late. He's about to point out as much when the large TV screen in the room they're peeking into zaps to life, and suddenly he's looking at Natasha's face.
“Look who finally made it,” she says, and Steve notices the whir of a security camera angling itself in his direction. For a moment, he can't do anything else than stare. It must be a recording, she couldn't possibly have survived... or could she? “I know what you're thinking right now, Rogers. Our best guess is that the Red Room inoculations contained something a bit more potent than vitamins and antibiotics. But it's me. And I'm not alone.”
She's turns away to address someone off-screen, wave them closer, and after a bit of a shuffle Stark appears on the screen next to her, and Steve doesn't think he's ever been quite so glad to see that face.
“Extremis,” he explains before Steve has a chance to ask. “Come on down.”