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cjmarloweNew Kradam fic! Written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
apocabigbang! Title from the song by David Usher. And sorry for the tl;dr, I know I usually try to keep these things snappy. :D Thank you so much to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
trinipedia and chosenfire28, who did the mix and the art respectively. They were both so enthusiastic about the project and incredible to work with, and as you can see both the art and the music is stellar. Omigosh! And I almost forgot to thank daemonicangel, who helped me hash out this story and get past all my doubts. :)
Disclaimer: No disrespect intended to any of the persons depicted herein, who I hope are all living happy and fulfilled lives with their partner(s) of choice. This is purely fictional, and not in any way intended as an accurate representation of reality.
Unholy, Dirty and Beautiful
AI RPF/Supernatural fusion. 15,000 words. NC-17. Adam/Kris.
Summary: In September of 2012, a disease later dubbed the Croatoan virus starts hitting major American cities, including Los Angeles. "It's efficient, it's incurable, and it's scary as hell. Turns people into monsters." Most people don't know that it's one front in a war between demons and angels, but Kris Allen does. An angel told him so. Now he's leading a small group of people who've stayed behind in a city ravaged by disease and violence when he gets word that someone from his past might still be alive out there. But ten months after the first outbreak, Kris doesn't know what he's really going to face if he tracks Adam down.
Contains: Violence; implied and stated non-primary character death; religious (Christian) overtones. Generally, the kinds of things you'd expect from the apocalyptic scenario described.
For fans of AI8 only: The only knowledge of Supernatural that you really need is what's contained in the summary: a demonic virus has been unleashed into a world where demons and angels walk the earth, and it's pretty much unstoppable.
For fans of Supernatural only: This is set in the post-apocalyptic future depicted in 5.04: The End, but contains no characters from Supernatural. Without familarity with the contestants of AI8 and their circles it will likely read like a story about what a bunch of OCs are doing while Castiel is having orgies and Dean is trying to kill the devil, which might well be interesting in its own right.
For fans of neither: It's an apocalypse? And (fictional) apocalypses are always awesome.
Art: Master Post bychosenfire28
Mix: Stone Hearts & Hand Grenades bytrinipedia
Katy was loading a shotgun when Kris found her in the sunroom, sitting with her boots up on the scratched table, all of her attention on the task at hand and none of it on the view all around her.
It was beautiful once.
"I heard we lost Carlyle," said Kris, sliding his handgun into his jeans at the small of his back.
"Croatoans got him," said Katy, snapping the shotgun closed and then closing her eyes too, just for a moment. "I shot him myself. I didn't want him to go like that."
Kris just nodded, knowing too well what that decision was like, and how easy it was to make in the moment these days. It was only afterwards, and only if you let it, that it really sank in. Once upon a time he couldn't have imagined her, or himself, or anyone they knew, shooting someone. Now it only merited mention if it was one of theirs.
"He would've thanked you for it," said Kris.
"He did," said Katy, and that was really all there was to say about that. Kris wouldn't ask, and if Katy wanted to share it probably wouldn't be here and now. "We got what we needed. Ammunition, food, drugs. Everything on the list."
"I was worried that area would be cleaned out," said Kris, admitting out loud what he knew they'd all been thinking. Los Angeles would have been a ghost town if not for the fact that some outlying neighborhoods were still patrolled by military, but the Croatoans needed to survive too and they were out there in numbers that Kris knew the government was constantly underestimating.
Not that they got the news very often out here. They didn't get television or radio anymore, and no newspapers made their way anywhere near them. The best they got were military channels once in a while, and information from those was severely limited in scope.
"We can survive for a while on what we got," said Katy, "even when we get more refugees." She didn't say it was worth it, because it was a life lost, but it was more than one life saved and they both knew it.
When the outbreak started, it only took the government a week to write off huge swaths of southern California, the population too dense to keep the virus from spreading faster than they could contain it. Practically the whole city of Los Angeles was a hot zone before they even had a name for it, and the quarantine perimeters they put up doomed anyone left inside to either the people already infected by the Croatoan virus or to summary execution by the military.
The sound of gunfire had been a daily occurrence for a long time now. They could often still hear it from where they were holed up, could practically tell time by it. Tanks and gunfire, must be lunchtime.
"Is the other team back yet?" Kris asked, and Katy shook her head.
"No one's heard anything," he said, "but I wouldn't worry till dark."
Kris worried anyway, but then even after all this time and even after everything they'd been through, he worried every time they went out. He was pragmatic about their mission, and he was pragmatic about their losses, but nothing was ever going to stop him from caring. Nothing was every going to stop him from worrying.
These were his people.
"I'm going to check the inventory," he said a moment later. Katy finally looked up at him, and as much as Kris worried about everyone else, at least he had a couple of people who worried about him, too.
"I'll catch up with you before dinner," said Katy, and Kris knew she meant it. So he nodded and sighed and almost managed a smile before he headed back inside.
:::
When Kris and Katy ran off together to Malibu—which wasn't exactly far but definitely a weekend getaway—the tabloids had a field day. They said that they were reconciling. They said that they had already secretly remarried and were on their honeymoon. They said that Katy was actually married to someone else and having an affair with Kris. They said that Kris was gay and desperately in denial, trying to seduce his ex-wife. They said a whole lot of things.
Those were the last tabloid stories that would ever be run about them.
It was a beachfront rental, sand, rocks and water on one side, gates and privacy walls on the others. Kris didn't worry about the cost because he knew that there would be no one to collect at the end of the week. Over the next forty-eight hours he stocked it with as many supplies as the place could hold and didn't worry about the expense of those either. And he tried to convince as many people as he knew and loved to come visit them, as many as he could without sounding like a crazy person.
At that point even Katy wasn't sure Kris wasn't crazy, but he told her to trust him and she did. He knew she was the one person who would, no matter what.
Kris knew he wasn't crazy, even if he couldn't really explain to anyone why.
He didn't ask his parents to come, knowing that they would be far safer where they were, but he left them a message. He left them a message saying that he loved them and that he was going to be okay and that they needed to be careful and be safe. He didn't know what they made of the message, but he hoped that they listened and understood and passed it on. He hoped they were okay.
He didn't call Daniel. He didn't call Charles. He didn't call Megan. He didn't call Jim. He didn't call Katy's family. He didn't call anyone who was anywhere safer than here. And it killed him a little inside, because he knew when he didn't make those calls that he might never speak to them again.
In the end a lot of people showed up to what was ostensibly a party at Kris's rental place, though not as many as Kris had invited and not everyone he hoped to see. He kept them entertained until the reports started coming in of murders and rage attacks and bombings in the downtown area, and by then none of them were going anywhere.
That was September 5, 2012. Nine months, twenty-one days and about seventeen hours ago.
It took a long time before Kris told anyone other than Katy it was an angel that told him about the coming apocalypse.
:::
What was once the wine cellar—what was still the wine cellar though there was less wine than there had been when they arrived—was now their strategy room. Most people called it their war room, but Kris didn't like to call it that, didn't like to think about it that way.
The angel Kabriel told him all this, this epidemic, this plague, was part of a war that was being fought. He told Kris that there were people out there with the knowledge and the abilities to fight this directly. But if there was a war going on between heaven and hell—and after everything he'd seen Kris didn't doubt that there was—then Kris and his people weren't the ones masterminding it here in this room. They were just struggling to survive, and to make sure as many other people survived as they could.
Kris had a bottle of wine open before Katy and Cale even arrived. It was one of those days, and not the kind when they broke out the bottle in celebration.
"Second team's back," said Cale. "Alli twisted her ankle, but that's it as far as incidents go."
"Alli went out?" said Kris, fingers tightening around his mug just a little too much.
"Everyone goes out," said Katy flatly, and Kris knew that, couldn't argue it, but she was still so young. Or at least he still thought of her that way. No one was really young anymore, not after everything. Not in a world that was literally kill or be killed. "Anything to report?"
"Some movement," said Cale, "but nothing they thought was urgent. We'll review the tapes later. I'll make popcorn. We'll make a night of it."
"If I wanted to make a night of something, it would be a bath and a good book," said Katy, "and I don't think I'm on the schedule for the tub until next week."
"I can still make the popcorn," said Cale, which he probably would, if only because they had kernels in abundance right now. "I'll get Alli to sit through it with me, since it'll keep her mind off her ankle and we're still short on pain pills. She can tell me what it doesn't show."
"She's got a good eye," agreed Kris. And she sat still a lot better than she used to, even without a bum ankle. "She notices things Anoop doesn't."
"He's got his brain on the mission and she's got hers on the city," said Katy.
"And Andrew has his guns," said Cale, with the soft sigh he always used when he said that because something about it never sat right with him. Never would. "We're good for supplies for a long while now. We don't need to go out again unless something happens."
Katy cleared her throat, though. "I've got a couple of people who want out."
"The new ones?"
She nodded. "They want to go forward. I said we'd get them beyond the shoot-on-sight point, but it might not be for a few days. I didn't want to make any promises we couldn't keep."
"The furthest perimeter's further than it used to be," said Kris. Even when you weren't in a designated and patrolled hot zone, everyone was a little trigger happy. "We can't do it in a day anymore."
"I know," said Katy. But they all also knew that they would still do it, because this was what they did. "I don't want to camp, though. We should send a bigger team that can work in shifts. We've got a new map, we can plot the route."
Kris nodded. "We should ask if anyone else wants to go forward," he said. "We haven't done that in a while. I'd rather be making one trip than two or three."
"I don't think anyone's going to want to," said Cale, but Kris was never sure. Of the original group who'd come here all those months ago for Kris's party, very few remained.
Then again, maybe that was guilt talking. He did this because he believed in it, because it was the right thing to do and because God had directed him to this work. But everyone else, everyone else did it because they believed in him, and that was a hell of a burden to carry. Maybe they didn't need an out, but every step of the way Kris wanted to make sure that people were here for the right reasons. He wanted to make sure they all had as many options as they could get.
Not that there were many options to be had. Stay, or go forward. Or give up to the Croatoans, which was what some people did when they got tired of running.
"We'll ask," said Kris firmly It was all they could do. "And if the two of you ever—"
"Are you kidding?" said Katy, at the same time as Cale said, "I'll always have your back."
He appreciated it. But he felt guilty about it all the same, even though he didn't know if life outside the city was much better than life in their little compound on the ocean. Los Angeles wasn't the only city hit, after all, and the virus was still spreading. There was still some kind of government in place, there were still places to go, but he didn't know how long that was going to last.
He just had to have faith. It was all he had some days.
"Okay," he said, and smiled at them, and really did feel their love even past everything else he was feeling. "Okay."
"This is the right thing to do," said Katy, kissing his forehead and pouring herself a glass of wine. A moment later, Cale did the same. "To a successful day."
And despite the loss of a man, it was successful. That was just how it was measured these days.
"To a successful day," said Kris, "and to what I hope will be many more."
:::
The sun was long since down when they left the wine cellar, more of a social meeting today than any kind of strategy session though after a glass of wine they did haul out the new maps, look at where new fences had gone up, at where there were new craters in the city that had once been home. They had their own version of hot zones marked in scarlet, where there were actual infected people inhabiting the littered streets and scorched storefronts.
Kris wasn't the one who started calling them Croats—he didn't even like the nickname—but someone had and it just sort of stuck. Probably heard it off the military channel that was always broadcasting in the dining room. Or what had once been the dining room, but was now used for just about anything but eating.
Two months after it began, two months after their vacation house turned into a compound and bunker, Cale and Kris had been sitting on the deck out back of the house after dark and counting on the fact that the military wasn't tracing body heat signatures during their still-regular flyovers to keep them safe from sniper fire and bombing.
"How did you do it?" Cale had asked over a ration of coffee. "Kris, how did you know that all of this was going to happen? And don't tell me you got lucky. Other people might buy it but I know you better than that. I've stood by you for weeks. I just want to know the truth."
Kris had smiled bitterly into his coffee, the whole thing as much a burden as a blessing. But it was his burden and his blessing and he would carry it through to the end.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Wouldn't I?" Cale had said. "I'd believe just about anything these days. The world hasn't made a whole lot of sense in a long time now."
"An angel told me," Kris had said then. Just blurted it out bluntly like that. "He told me what was going to happen. He told me what I needed to do."
Cale had fallen silent for a long time, and Kris had been convinced Cale'd written him off as a little nuts when he'd finally said, "Okay," and just accepted what Kris was telling him. "Okay."
He'd never pressed Kris for details, and over the next few months it became widely known, to reactions ranging from reverence to scorn, that Kris Allen talked to angels. Or believed he did, anyway.
But tonight, tonight they were out back again, more in the open now that no one ever flew over anymore, and Cale finally asked.
"What's it like, Kris? Does he show up in your dreams?"
"Nope," said Kris, sipping his coffee. "It was just like talking to you, or anyone else. I used to see him...not a lot, but often enough."
"You don't anymore?"
Kris shook his head. "It stopped a couple months ago. He stopped coming. I don't see him anymore."
He thought that would stop hurting in time, and maybe it still would, but it hadn't yet. The angel wasn't like he imagined angels would be. None of it was anything like he imagined it would be. But it still hurt that once Kris had talked with an angel and now he was gone. He clung to his faith fiercely but he still felt abandoned sometimes. In moments of weakness, he felt like they'd all been abandoned by God.
"An angel really showed up in the flesh and told you that this was all going to happen?"
"He wasn't that straightforward," said Kris. "He never told me what, exactly. But he told me something was coming. He told me how and when to get out. He told me what to do." He told Kris about some things that even Katy didn't know. Kris looked over at Cale and smiled a little again, self-deprecating and resigned. "And now you really do think I'm crazy. Or delusional."
"You're the least crazy person I know," said Cale. "If you say you saw an angel then you saw an angel. But how did you know?"
"Faith?" said Kris, but this was one of those times that faith didn't really cover it. You needed more than faith when someone told you he was an angel. "He proved it to me. When you meet an angel, you know it. If he wants you to feel it, you feel it. I didn't have any doubts, Cale. He was an angel. He was my angel, but he never told me why."
"So you guys, what, hung out?"
"He came to me sometimes and we would talk. It wasn't always about what was coming. Sometimes he would just ask me things."
"Like your own personal angelic therapist," said Cale. "That's even better than a pastor."
"It wasn't always comforting," said Kris. It actually made him believe a lot more in the Old Testament angels, or in Revelation; a fierce army of angelic warriors, not little cherubs that watched over him while he slept. He felt more like these angels would kill him in his sleep if they thought it was the right thing to do. "But it was...it gave me an overwhelming sense of purpose. Even before I knew what that purpose was."
"But what was he like?" said Cale. "What did he look like?"
"Like a guy," said Kris with a shrug. "Like any guy you'd see on the street. Dress pants and sweater vest and expensive watch. It was a guy, a real guy's body, and he was just...in it."
"Like he was possessed?"
"Yeah," said Kris, though that felt like a dirty word for it. "But he didn't just take it. It was a gift. He asked, and the guy gave him his body."
"Wow," said Cale. "I don't know if I would have done that."
"I don't know if I would have done that either," admitted Kris, and it felt good to have someone to admit that to, to have someone feel the same way about it. "But I was never asked."
"No, you were asked for something else," said Cale. "You were asked for something harder. And you said yes to that."
"It wasn't exactly a yes or no question," said Kris. "He told me what was going to happen and what to do when it did. My choices were limited to doing that or dying with everyone else."
"Or leaving," said Cale. "You could have left LA for someplace you knew was safe and left everyone behind."
"No, I couldn't," said Kris. "I couldn't do that."
"Exactly," said Cale. "You said yes. You said yes to what he was asking of you, even if the question was never spelled out."
"And then you said yes to what I asked of you," said Kris. "That's not any different from me, Cale. You could have gone forward. Lots of people have."
"No, I couldn't," he said, and Kris felt that camaraderie with him again. That understanding that they were both human, with strengths and weaknesses, but still trying to be what they needed to be. "You're Kris Allen. I'd follow you anywhere."
"Shut up," muttered Kris, but it actually made him laugh. He wished there were more things that did that anymore. It only lasted a moment, but he still felt warm afterwards. He knew in his heart he was doing the right thing, but it was having people like Cale, and Katy and Alli and Anoop and everyone, that really made him okay with it.
"What was his name?"
"His name was Kabriel," said Kris, "and I don't know where he is anymore."
:::
Before the phones went out for good, Kris listened to the message every day, to the point where he could replay it in his mind not only word for word but inflection for inflection.
Hey Kris, I got held up in New York so it looks like I'm not going to get back into LAX in time to make your party. Shit, I was looking forward to seeing you, too. But hey, we're getting together next week, right? I'll call you tomorrow. Not too early, I need some sleep.
Kris was buying up half a Wal-Mart and didn't get the message until a few hours later. He left a message telling Adam he should come by anyway, it was important, but he didn't even know if Adam got the message. All he knew was that Adam's flight did land in LA that night.
That was the last he heard of him. As far as he knew, that was the last anyone heard of Adam Lambert.
:::
The truth was that the resources of the military were stretched thin. Because all of their news was from military channels, Kris knew more about this than he knew about the state of the country, or the rest of the world. Resources were stretched thin and Los Angeles stopped being any kind of priority a long time ago. They just patrolled the outer stretches of the quarantine perimeter and occasionally took out uprisings further in. There used to be flyovers and helicopters too, but those days were long gone.
They practiced combat on the beach now, and no longer worried that some overzealous pilot was going to bomb their compound because he thought he saw a bunch of Croats, like a few others had been bombed over the first couple of months after it all started.
They were on their own.
Andrew was washing dishes when Kris came back inside, and Kris was glad that one thing they still had was a source of clean water. He hadn't chosen this house by chance, after all. It had a generator too, though they only ran that for part of every day.
"How did it go today?" Kris asked him, quietly beginning to help him with the chore even though he wasn't on the roster. He didn't think Andrew was either, but sometimes he needed something like this to wind down after going out.
"Routine," said Andrew without looking up. He'd known Kris was there from the moment he walked in. He was very rarely caught unaware. "We caught movement, not sure how many. They didn't trail us."
"Yeah, Cale told me," said Kris. "He's running footage with Alli right now to see if you picked any of it up. Best guess?"
"Less than a dozen," said Andrew, "but organized. Could be three. Could be ten. Not sure of anything beyond that. It wasn't anywhere near here."
"Unless they start migrating, I think the local area's pretty much cleaned out," said Kris, "and they aren't interested in going anywhere there aren't people."
"We're people," said Andrew.
"We're different," said Kris, though they weren't, not really. They were struggling, just like everyone else. They just had better resources to do it with.
"Different from them, or different from how we once were?" said Andrew. Of course, the answer was both, and they both knew it. "How long do we have to do this?"
"I don't know," said Kris. "Not forever. These things can't last forever."
"But they can last a long time," said Andrew, "and what will even be left when it's over?"
"I don't know that either," said Kris. "But the world isn't ending. Not really."
"Feels like it is sometimes."
Part of Kris wanted to agree, because he knew exactly what that felt like. And part of him wanted to be reassuring, to say that there were still things worth fighting for. In the end he said, "Andrew...are you ready to be done?"
Ready to go forward, he meant, which was better than the alternative when people got tired of fighting. Kris had seen people go both ways.
"No," said Andrew. "No. I'm just tired. I want good news."
"Me too," said Kris. "Believe me, me too. If it weren't for the angels, I would probably find everything even harder."
"This is really apocalyptic, isn't it? In the Biblical sense." Kris just nodded, and wished the answer could have been anything but that. "Are we going to survive?"
Kris nodded again, though he had nothing concrete to back that up. As long as things weren't over, they weren't over.
:::
"Kris, you're going to want to see this," said Cale.
"I just need to finish—"
"You're going to want to see this right now."
That got Kris's attention all right. And the truth was that rechecking the weapons could wait a few minutes. It wasn't busy work, but it was a redundancy that was a comfort more than a necessity.
"Do we have survivors?"
"Maybe you should sit down."
"Why?" said Kris. "I never have before. How many and where?"
"Kris...." Kris had never heard Cale sound quite like that before. He sat. "I finished reviewing the footage with Alli. They definitely caught a chase with the rear cam on the truck. That usually means uninfected. Or at least they were when the camera caught them."
"So when do we go out?"
Cale didn't answer. Instead he slid a photo in front of Kris, and they never printed out anything, they never wasted resources like that, so he sat up and paid attention, pushed his glasses up his nose and looked hard at the grainy, blown-up frame.
"Is this...?"
"Alli thinks it is too," said Cale.
Kris stared some more. And some more. And finally breathed a name.
"Adam."
Part of Kris, a small part buried deep inside, had actually hoped that Adam was dead. Because he couldn't imagine that he'd survived and not been infected, and he didn't want to meet an infected Adam. He never wanted to be the one to have to face that, and he definitely never wanted to be the person to have to deal with it.
Finally he swallowed hard and looked up at Cale. "Was he...?"
"One of the chasees and not one of the chasers," said Cale, and Kris let out his breath all at once.
This one thing Kabriel would never confirm for him, even though Kris had been sure he'd known. He was an angel. They were supposed to know these things. But Kabriel would never tell him what happened to Adam, would never even hint at it. He said that Kris's faith was important, and this was one time when he needed to have faith that whatever happened, it was what was meant to happen.
"So he might have survived," said Kris, and looked at the picture again. It could have been someone else. It might not have been Adam at all. But something was blooming inside Kris, something like hope, and he just knew. He had faith.
And he also had a job to do.
"How many were there?"
"Two, that we saw on film," said Cale. "There might have been more. That was obviously captured at a distance, and right at the edge of the camera's range."
"So he wasn't alone," said Kris. And maybe, maybe, he could have survived if he wasn't doing it alone.
"He didn't look like he was alone," said Cale. "Do you want me to...?
"I need some time. And a map."
"I can get you the map," said Cale, then rested a hand on Kris's shoulder for a moment and left the room, and Kris knew it was to give him what little time alone he could.
It was Adam in that picture. It had to be.
And Kris didn't know if his heart would break more if it wasn't, or if it was.
:::
Kris was kind of drunk. Not falling over drunk, not slurring his words drunk or humping table legs drunk, but drunker than he'd been in a long time.
"I don't know what to do," he confessed to Katy, "and I don't know how to do it."
"You know you have to do this," said Katy. "You have to take this chance."
"I can't be the one to do it," said Kris. "If he's infected, it has to be someone else. I can't."
"I'll do it," said Katy. "I won't let it be a stranger."
"Katy, you don't have to—"
"You've been in love with him for a long time, Kris," she said. "I won't let a stranger shoot him. If it has to be someone, it'll be me. I'll do it. I'll do it for you. I'll do it for both of you. And if he's not infected—"
"I'm not getting my hopes up," said Kris. "For all we know, it might not even be him. It could be anyone. Everyone out there looks the same these days, dirty and ragged."
"You saw the picture, Kris."
"I don't want to get my hopes up," he said, "and I don't want to get my heart broken."
"Either way," said Katy, "you have to do this, because going after him is better than not knowing. They said he was running. Croatoans don't run away. Ever."
"Unless they're trying to lure someone in," said Kris. "It could have been a trap. We have no way of knowing."
"If it was a trap, then there's someone else uninfected in the zone," said Katy, "and that's still what we do. That's why we do this. Even if it's not him, there's someone we need to go in after."
Kris nodded his head, and there'd never really been any doubt that they were going in. That was what they did. That was his mission from God, and he wasn't going to turn his back on it now because he had conflicted feelings about someone he hadn't seen in going on year, someone who might very well be dead. Someone who likely was.
"We'll get a team together tomorrow, in daylight," he said. "I need sleep. I need to sleep for a week."
"Yet you'll only give yourself four hours before you get up to make plans," said Katy, because no matter what they were to one another now—fellow soldiers more than anything else—she knew him better than anyone. "So at least get those four hours. If you're going in yourself, you need to be rested. Are going in yourself?"
Kris looked down at his hands and couldn't deny it. "Probably," he said. "I'll make plans in the morning. I need to look at the latest maps to see what routes are the clearest. Gunfire east of us this morning, I think they've set up a new perimeter. We might have lost the most direct route."
"Probably saw the same thing we did," said Katy, "or some of it anyway. Let me take lead on this, Kris."
"Are you sure?"
"You need me to do this," she said. "I need to do this. This is what we do."
"Okay," said Kris. "Okay." When he closed his eyes his head spun a little, and the room tilted on an unseen axis. "I think I'll take those four hours now."
"Come on," she said, "I'll help you back upstairs."
:::
Before the virus, Kris never would have said he was in love with Adam. Loved him, sure, but not in love with him. That didn't mean he hadn't been, he'd just never let his thoughts linger there for long. They were from two different worlds, intersecting sometimes but never running parallel, and if it was extraordinary circumstances that had brought them together in the first place, it would take something even more extraordinary to let them be together in more ways than they already were.
Things these days were pretty damn extraordinary.
For almost ten months Adam had been absent from his life, and for almost ten months Kris had been realizing every day just how much emptier it was without him. He'd known his parents' love, his family's, his friends'. He'd never hesitated to share it with them right up until the last moment he could. Adam was his one regret, and he just never let go of it, or him.
:::
Alli's twisted ankle made the perfect excuse for Kris to tell her she was staying behind on this one. He didn't fool himself into thinking that it was going to be an easily-won argument, but he had leverage for this one. He had ammunition.
"It's not sprained or broken," she said, "it's just twisted. I wrap it up and it's fine. I can run. I can jump. I can shoot. I can do everything you need me to do."
"We have enough able-bodied people that we don't need you to strain it," said Kris. "I'd only ask that of you if we were desperate, and we're not."
Allison snorted. "We're always desperate," she said. "You really think I'd go through everything I have just to stay behind when we're going after Adam? No way, José."
Most of Allison's family had been with her when she'd come to Kris's party, and they'd been some of the first people to go forward as soon as the first perimeters were put up and the military moved in. Allison was supposed to go with them, but she was slippery and wily and that was a fight she'd won in the end by sheer refusal to leave and a few judicious lies to her family for them to let her stay back.
Kris had known all along that she never planned to join them on the next truck out, but he'd wanted to believe her, and that guilt plagued him for a long time afterwards. At least they got word out with the next batch of refugees going forward that she was all right, that she hadn't been infected or shot or blown up on her way out. That she'd just decided to stay.
"It's going to be a dangerous one. They were at the edge of a scarlet blot, Alli."
"You think I don't know that?" she said. "I'm the one who spotted him in the first place. You have to let me go on this one. You need me. You need my eyes."
That was the one thing Kris could never deny. Every mission could use sharp eyes like Alli's. But that didn't make him like it any more.
"You're going to have to prove to me your ankle can handle it," he said. "You're going to have to prove that before you go out again at all."
"Don't treat me different from everyone else, Kris. Quit it with that shit. I'm the best woman for the job and we both know it."
"Your ankle—"
"And it's Adam," she said. "It has to be you and me, Kris. It has to be you and me."
It was hard to argue with that from an emotional standpoint, but Kris was too many months as a commander of a paramilitary operation to let that make the decision for him. Except that it was Adam, and if there was one person who could skew his judgment, it was Adam.
"Prove to me the ankle's strong enough in the morning," he said. "If it's not, I'm replacing you."
"It'll be fine," said Alli. "I'll be faster than anyone."
And if sheer willpower could make that happen, Kris knew it was the truth.
:::
The last time Kris saw the angel was almost two months ago, on the wide wood-and-stone landing halfway down the stairs to the beach, in the middle of the night. He didn't know it was going to be the last time, and he didn't think Kabriel did either. Or if he did, he gave no sign of it. He told Kris that things weren't going well, he said that Lucifer's power was rising, and in an admission that Kris still wasn't sure he'd heard or understood right, he confessed that he wasn't sure they'd done the right thing.
Kris might not have understood what he meant by that, but it seemed to be something that haunted him, and seeing an angel look that vulnerable shook the very foundations of what Kris believed.
If Kris went down to that landing at dusk and looked to the north, to the rock face of the steep cliff there, he could sometimes still see the shadows of wings imprinted on the rock. A reminder that the memory, and the angel, were both real.
Now, in the thin pre-dawn light, he didn't see anything at all, but he still stood there quietly for a long time, arms folded against the railing, until Katy called down.
"Sun's coming up," she said. "We need to get settled and go."
"I know," he said. "I was just...."
"I know what you were doing," she said. "I don't suppose you got any new revelations, did you?"
"Nothing that anyone else couldn't have gotten by staring at a rock for half an hour," he said.
It wasn't just a spiritual perspective he got, standing here halfway down to the beach. He could see the house, the way they'd changed it to suit their needs, see the beach with its obvious training grounds. They had a garden now, and somehow that was different from stocking up on canned goods; it spoke of a kind of permanence. From where he was standing he could see all the ways in which his world had changed, in concrete, physical terms.
It was after a few moments of thoughtful silence on both their parts that he finally pushed himself away from the railing and started up the stairs.
"He doesn't come anymore."
"But you wish he did," said Katy. "It was easier when he did."
"I don't know if it was easier," he said as he reached her side and they walked back to the house together. "Just different."
"And now you wonder if he was ever there at all?"
Only sometimes.
"I didn't see an angel for the first twenty-seven years of my life either, but that didn't mean I didn't believe they were out there," said Kris. "They've said what they needed to say to me. Now it's up to me to keep believing and carry on."
:::
Kris almost didn't go in the end, not because he chose not to but because Cale pulled him aside before they went out.
"Are you sure you're good for this one?" he said. "You could stay back."
"It's Adam."
"Exactly," said Cale. "It's Adam. Do you really think you can be objective on this one? Can you go out and not let that get in the way?"
Of course he wasn't objective. Were any of them, really? But he could still do what needed to be done. The two things weren't mutually exclusive.
"I've had to shoot people that just hours earlier I was having breakfast with."
"But this might be Adam," said Cale, "and everyone knows how you feel about Adam."
"I don't—"
"Kris," Cale interrupted him, and just shook his head. "It's okay. But what are you going to do if it's him? What are you going to do if it isn't?"
"The same thing we always do," said Kris. "Save everyone we can."
"People are counting on you," said Cale, but that wasn't something Kris needed to be told. "All right, if you don't need me to sub for you then I'm going back downstairs. Be safe and bring 'em home."
Five of them went out: Kris, Katy, Henson, Trugs and Alli, who did prove her fitness for duty in the end and Kris stood by his word. Katy drove this one, an old hand at these streets now, knowing which were usable and which were impassable due either to debris or barricades. Kris rode in the box, armed and ready and aware of everything around him. Trugs sat across from him, holding his gun in his lap and never once cracking a smile. Alli waited and watched and took in everything.
Most of this area was marked in scarlet on their maps, which was why it was still good scavenging grounds for them and why they often avoided it all the same. Whoever they were looking for, whether it was Adam or someone else, likely wouldn't return to the exact same place twice, especially not after being pursued, but the area was too rich to avoid completely and there was another corner store not too far away, just on the edge of the territory before you ran into huge swaths of city that had been razed to the ground. It wasn't the most maneuverable area, but Kris trusted Katy to get them in and out.
They shut down the truck as soon as they could and moved in silently, waiting. It was a stolen—'appropriated' was the term Kris preferred—military vehicle, and its size, reinforcement and ability to intimidate the Croatoans made it the perfect vehicle for their operations. But two things it wasn't were quiet and maneuverable in tight spaces. As long as they were appropriating military vehicles, Allison had been making noises about wanting a tank; it lacked subtlety, but Kris had to admit there were other benefits.
The city didn't smell as much like death as it used to, or maybe they had all just gotten used to it.
They were in place about two hours before they saw movement, or rather before Alli saw moment, because as always she had the sharpest eyes.
"Something's coming up the alley," she said. "It's sticking to the shadows."
"Croats do that sometimes," said Hensen, her lips pressed together tightly and her weapon raised. "If they know we're here."
"No," said Allison. "He's hiding. They're hiding. They're using the shadows."
"How many?"
"Two of them," said Alli. "They're coming in our direction."
"At us, or just in our direction?"
"If they've spotted us, they'd either be running towards us, or away," said Kris. "No, they haven't spotted us yet, and I don't want them to. Everyone hold positions."
And everyone did, hardly even breathing as the unknown persons drew closer, right up until all hell broke loose.
"Heads up, incoming," said Trugs, loud enough for all of them to hear. Loud enough for the people they were tracking to hear, too, but they were immediately caught between a rock and a hard place. In front of them were Kris and his group, but back the way they came a group of Croatoans was approaching.
"Alli, Henson, Trugs, take them out," said Kris. "Katy, you're with me on the capture."
And capture it was. Not rescue. Maybe later they could call it a rescue, when they were certain of what right now they could only extrapolate and suspect. But right now they needed to capture those two people alive, tie them up and take them back to the compound with them. That was what this mission really was. That was what they had to steel themselves to do, no matter what faces they saw.
They all moved into action at once, and the two survivors were wily. They had to be, if they'd been surviving out here that long. As soon as they saw pursuers coming from both sides the split up and made themselves a harder target. He and Katy didn't even have to talk about it, she went after one and he went after the other.
He went after the one who looked like Adam.
There was no doubt in his mind that these were the same people they'd caught on videotape the last time they'd gone out on a supply run. But they still couldn't be certain who they'd found, or what condition they would be in when they caught up with them and brought them in. Adam—and Kris was going to call him Adam in his head even if he didn't actually know—had a good head start on him, but his trajectory was sending them both right into the firefight between his people and the Croatoans who were relentless in spite of the bullets.
Adam swerved and ducked down an alley across the street and Kris's pursuit was almost immediately blocked by his own people. By the time he took the long way around to the other side, Adam was gone.
"Fuck," he said, the word the only one he could come up with to convey the depth of his anger and frustration. But there was no sign of movement, and too many places he could have gone.
"Adam!" he called, but there was no response. "Adam, please!"
All his call did, though, was get the attention of one of the Croatoans who'd only been injured by one of the flying bullets, and Kris was forced to shoot and retreat, back to where he'd left Katy pursuing the other person.
She turned out to have been more successful than he was, and had him trussed up and on the ground while she held her weapon on him.
Kris just stared for a moment. "Tommy?" Tommy stared back at him, unable to speak through the gag, his eyes conveying both terror and anger. "If you're not infected, you have nothing to worry about. We aren't going to hurt you."
But there was very little he could say to convince anyone of that right now, not in the world they all lived in.
"Retreat!" he called out to the rest of them. "We're heading back."
With Katy's help they hauled Tommy into the back of the truck, bound and gagged, chest heaving and still looking wild-eyed. They were on their way again within five minutes, and were only followed for a couple of blocks before Katy outran them, circling around and then back through again so they couldn't tell where they were headed.
Kris hadn't let himself stop to think about it, not until it was all over and he had the luxury of not operating in life-or-death mode, but once he was sitting in the back of the truck staring at Tommy's prone form, all he could think was that if this was Tommy, then it really was Adam they'd just left behind.
[ Part Two ]
apocabigbang! Title from the song by David Usher. And sorry for the tl;dr, I know I usually try to keep these things snappy. :D Thank you so much to trinipedia and chosenfire28, who did the mix and the art respectively. They were both so enthusiastic about the project and incredible to work with, and as you can see both the art and the music is stellar. Omigosh! And I almost forgot to thank daemonicangel, who helped me hash out this story and get past all my doubts. :)Disclaimer: No disrespect intended to any of the persons depicted herein, who I hope are all living happy and fulfilled lives with their partner(s) of choice. This is purely fictional, and not in any way intended as an accurate representation of reality.
Unholy, Dirty and Beautiful
AI RPF/Supernatural fusion. 15,000 words. NC-17. Adam/Kris.
Summary: In September of 2012, a disease later dubbed the Croatoan virus starts hitting major American cities, including Los Angeles. "It's efficient, it's incurable, and it's scary as hell. Turns people into monsters." Most people don't know that it's one front in a war between demons and angels, but Kris Allen does. An angel told him so. Now he's leading a small group of people who've stayed behind in a city ravaged by disease and violence when he gets word that someone from his past might still be alive out there. But ten months after the first outbreak, Kris doesn't know what he's really going to face if he tracks Adam down.
Contains: Violence; implied and stated non-primary character death; religious (Christian) overtones. Generally, the kinds of things you'd expect from the apocalyptic scenario described.
For fans of AI8 only: The only knowledge of Supernatural that you really need is what's contained in the summary: a demonic virus has been unleashed into a world where demons and angels walk the earth, and it's pretty much unstoppable.
For fans of Supernatural only: This is set in the post-apocalyptic future depicted in 5.04: The End, but contains no characters from Supernatural. Without familarity with the contestants of AI8 and their circles it will likely read like a story about what a bunch of OCs are doing while Castiel is having orgies and Dean is trying to kill the devil, which might well be interesting in its own right.
For fans of neither: It's an apocalypse? And (fictional) apocalypses are always awesome.
Art: Master Post by
chosenfire28Mix: Stone Hearts & Hand Grenades by
trinipediaKaty was loading a shotgun when Kris found her in the sunroom, sitting with her boots up on the scratched table, all of her attention on the task at hand and none of it on the view all around her.
It was beautiful once.
"I heard we lost Carlyle," said Kris, sliding his handgun into his jeans at the small of his back.
"Croatoans got him," said Katy, snapping the shotgun closed and then closing her eyes too, just for a moment. "I shot him myself. I didn't want him to go like that."
Kris just nodded, knowing too well what that decision was like, and how easy it was to make in the moment these days. It was only afterwards, and only if you let it, that it really sank in. Once upon a time he couldn't have imagined her, or himself, or anyone they knew, shooting someone. Now it only merited mention if it was one of theirs.
"He would've thanked you for it," said Kris.
"He did," said Katy, and that was really all there was to say about that. Kris wouldn't ask, and if Katy wanted to share it probably wouldn't be here and now. "We got what we needed. Ammunition, food, drugs. Everything on the list."
"I was worried that area would be cleaned out," said Kris, admitting out loud what he knew they'd all been thinking. Los Angeles would have been a ghost town if not for the fact that some outlying neighborhoods were still patrolled by military, but the Croatoans needed to survive too and they were out there in numbers that Kris knew the government was constantly underestimating.
Not that they got the news very often out here. They didn't get television or radio anymore, and no newspapers made their way anywhere near them. The best they got were military channels once in a while, and information from those was severely limited in scope.
"We can survive for a while on what we got," said Katy, "even when we get more refugees." She didn't say it was worth it, because it was a life lost, but it was more than one life saved and they both knew it.
When the outbreak started, it only took the government a week to write off huge swaths of southern California, the population too dense to keep the virus from spreading faster than they could contain it. Practically the whole city of Los Angeles was a hot zone before they even had a name for it, and the quarantine perimeters they put up doomed anyone left inside to either the people already infected by the Croatoan virus or to summary execution by the military.
The sound of gunfire had been a daily occurrence for a long time now. They could often still hear it from where they were holed up, could practically tell time by it. Tanks and gunfire, must be lunchtime.
"Is the other team back yet?" Kris asked, and Katy shook her head.
"No one's heard anything," he said, "but I wouldn't worry till dark."
Kris worried anyway, but then even after all this time and even after everything they'd been through, he worried every time they went out. He was pragmatic about their mission, and he was pragmatic about their losses, but nothing was ever going to stop him from caring. Nothing was every going to stop him from worrying.
These were his people.
"I'm going to check the inventory," he said a moment later. Katy finally looked up at him, and as much as Kris worried about everyone else, at least he had a couple of people who worried about him, too.
"I'll catch up with you before dinner," said Katy, and Kris knew she meant it. So he nodded and sighed and almost managed a smile before he headed back inside.
:::
When Kris and Katy ran off together to Malibu—which wasn't exactly far but definitely a weekend getaway—the tabloids had a field day. They said that they were reconciling. They said that they had already secretly remarried and were on their honeymoon. They said that Katy was actually married to someone else and having an affair with Kris. They said that Kris was gay and desperately in denial, trying to seduce his ex-wife. They said a whole lot of things.
Those were the last tabloid stories that would ever be run about them.
It was a beachfront rental, sand, rocks and water on one side, gates and privacy walls on the others. Kris didn't worry about the cost because he knew that there would be no one to collect at the end of the week. Over the next forty-eight hours he stocked it with as many supplies as the place could hold and didn't worry about the expense of those either. And he tried to convince as many people as he knew and loved to come visit them, as many as he could without sounding like a crazy person.
At that point even Katy wasn't sure Kris wasn't crazy, but he told her to trust him and she did. He knew she was the one person who would, no matter what.
Kris knew he wasn't crazy, even if he couldn't really explain to anyone why.
He didn't ask his parents to come, knowing that they would be far safer where they were, but he left them a message. He left them a message saying that he loved them and that he was going to be okay and that they needed to be careful and be safe. He didn't know what they made of the message, but he hoped that they listened and understood and passed it on. He hoped they were okay.
He didn't call Daniel. He didn't call Charles. He didn't call Megan. He didn't call Jim. He didn't call Katy's family. He didn't call anyone who was anywhere safer than here. And it killed him a little inside, because he knew when he didn't make those calls that he might never speak to them again.
In the end a lot of people showed up to what was ostensibly a party at Kris's rental place, though not as many as Kris had invited and not everyone he hoped to see. He kept them entertained until the reports started coming in of murders and rage attacks and bombings in the downtown area, and by then none of them were going anywhere.
That was September 5, 2012. Nine months, twenty-one days and about seventeen hours ago.
It took a long time before Kris told anyone other than Katy it was an angel that told him about the coming apocalypse.
:::
What was once the wine cellar—what was still the wine cellar though there was less wine than there had been when they arrived—was now their strategy room. Most people called it their war room, but Kris didn't like to call it that, didn't like to think about it that way.
The angel Kabriel told him all this, this epidemic, this plague, was part of a war that was being fought. He told Kris that there were people out there with the knowledge and the abilities to fight this directly. But if there was a war going on between heaven and hell—and after everything he'd seen Kris didn't doubt that there was—then Kris and his people weren't the ones masterminding it here in this room. They were just struggling to survive, and to make sure as many other people survived as they could.
Kris had a bottle of wine open before Katy and Cale even arrived. It was one of those days, and not the kind when they broke out the bottle in celebration.
"Second team's back," said Cale. "Alli twisted her ankle, but that's it as far as incidents go."
"Alli went out?" said Kris, fingers tightening around his mug just a little too much.
"Everyone goes out," said Katy flatly, and Kris knew that, couldn't argue it, but she was still so young. Or at least he still thought of her that way. No one was really young anymore, not after everything. Not in a world that was literally kill or be killed. "Anything to report?"
"Some movement," said Cale, "but nothing they thought was urgent. We'll review the tapes later. I'll make popcorn. We'll make a night of it."
"If I wanted to make a night of something, it would be a bath and a good book," said Katy, "and I don't think I'm on the schedule for the tub until next week."
"I can still make the popcorn," said Cale, which he probably would, if only because they had kernels in abundance right now. "I'll get Alli to sit through it with me, since it'll keep her mind off her ankle and we're still short on pain pills. She can tell me what it doesn't show."
"She's got a good eye," agreed Kris. And she sat still a lot better than she used to, even without a bum ankle. "She notices things Anoop doesn't."
"He's got his brain on the mission and she's got hers on the city," said Katy.
"And Andrew has his guns," said Cale, with the soft sigh he always used when he said that because something about it never sat right with him. Never would. "We're good for supplies for a long while now. We don't need to go out again unless something happens."
Katy cleared her throat, though. "I've got a couple of people who want out."
"The new ones?"
She nodded. "They want to go forward. I said we'd get them beyond the shoot-on-sight point, but it might not be for a few days. I didn't want to make any promises we couldn't keep."
"The furthest perimeter's further than it used to be," said Kris. Even when you weren't in a designated and patrolled hot zone, everyone was a little trigger happy. "We can't do it in a day anymore."
"I know," said Katy. But they all also knew that they would still do it, because this was what they did. "I don't want to camp, though. We should send a bigger team that can work in shifts. We've got a new map, we can plot the route."
Kris nodded. "We should ask if anyone else wants to go forward," he said. "We haven't done that in a while. I'd rather be making one trip than two or three."
"I don't think anyone's going to want to," said Cale, but Kris was never sure. Of the original group who'd come here all those months ago for Kris's party, very few remained.
Then again, maybe that was guilt talking. He did this because he believed in it, because it was the right thing to do and because God had directed him to this work. But everyone else, everyone else did it because they believed in him, and that was a hell of a burden to carry. Maybe they didn't need an out, but every step of the way Kris wanted to make sure that people were here for the right reasons. He wanted to make sure they all had as many options as they could get.
Not that there were many options to be had. Stay, or go forward. Or give up to the Croatoans, which was what some people did when they got tired of running.
"We'll ask," said Kris firmly It was all they could do. "And if the two of you ever—"
"Are you kidding?" said Katy, at the same time as Cale said, "I'll always have your back."
He appreciated it. But he felt guilty about it all the same, even though he didn't know if life outside the city was much better than life in their little compound on the ocean. Los Angeles wasn't the only city hit, after all, and the virus was still spreading. There was still some kind of government in place, there were still places to go, but he didn't know how long that was going to last.
He just had to have faith. It was all he had some days.
"Okay," he said, and smiled at them, and really did feel their love even past everything else he was feeling. "Okay."
"This is the right thing to do," said Katy, kissing his forehead and pouring herself a glass of wine. A moment later, Cale did the same. "To a successful day."
And despite the loss of a man, it was successful. That was just how it was measured these days.
"To a successful day," said Kris, "and to what I hope will be many more."
:::
The sun was long since down when they left the wine cellar, more of a social meeting today than any kind of strategy session though after a glass of wine they did haul out the new maps, look at where new fences had gone up, at where there were new craters in the city that had once been home. They had their own version of hot zones marked in scarlet, where there were actual infected people inhabiting the littered streets and scorched storefronts.
Kris wasn't the one who started calling them Croats—he didn't even like the nickname—but someone had and it just sort of stuck. Probably heard it off the military channel that was always broadcasting in the dining room. Or what had once been the dining room, but was now used for just about anything but eating.
Two months after it began, two months after their vacation house turned into a compound and bunker, Cale and Kris had been sitting on the deck out back of the house after dark and counting on the fact that the military wasn't tracing body heat signatures during their still-regular flyovers to keep them safe from sniper fire and bombing.
"How did you do it?" Cale had asked over a ration of coffee. "Kris, how did you know that all of this was going to happen? And don't tell me you got lucky. Other people might buy it but I know you better than that. I've stood by you for weeks. I just want to know the truth."
Kris had smiled bitterly into his coffee, the whole thing as much a burden as a blessing. But it was his burden and his blessing and he would carry it through to the end.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."
"Wouldn't I?" Cale had said. "I'd believe just about anything these days. The world hasn't made a whole lot of sense in a long time now."
"An angel told me," Kris had said then. Just blurted it out bluntly like that. "He told me what was going to happen. He told me what I needed to do."
Cale had fallen silent for a long time, and Kris had been convinced Cale'd written him off as a little nuts when he'd finally said, "Okay," and just accepted what Kris was telling him. "Okay."
He'd never pressed Kris for details, and over the next few months it became widely known, to reactions ranging from reverence to scorn, that Kris Allen talked to angels. Or believed he did, anyway.
But tonight, tonight they were out back again, more in the open now that no one ever flew over anymore, and Cale finally asked.
"What's it like, Kris? Does he show up in your dreams?"
"Nope," said Kris, sipping his coffee. "It was just like talking to you, or anyone else. I used to see him...not a lot, but often enough."
"You don't anymore?"
Kris shook his head. "It stopped a couple months ago. He stopped coming. I don't see him anymore."
He thought that would stop hurting in time, and maybe it still would, but it hadn't yet. The angel wasn't like he imagined angels would be. None of it was anything like he imagined it would be. But it still hurt that once Kris had talked with an angel and now he was gone. He clung to his faith fiercely but he still felt abandoned sometimes. In moments of weakness, he felt like they'd all been abandoned by God.
"An angel really showed up in the flesh and told you that this was all going to happen?"
"He wasn't that straightforward," said Kris. "He never told me what, exactly. But he told me something was coming. He told me how and when to get out. He told me what to do." He told Kris about some things that even Katy didn't know. Kris looked over at Cale and smiled a little again, self-deprecating and resigned. "And now you really do think I'm crazy. Or delusional."
"You're the least crazy person I know," said Cale. "If you say you saw an angel then you saw an angel. But how did you know?"
"Faith?" said Kris, but this was one of those times that faith didn't really cover it. You needed more than faith when someone told you he was an angel. "He proved it to me. When you meet an angel, you know it. If he wants you to feel it, you feel it. I didn't have any doubts, Cale. He was an angel. He was my angel, but he never told me why."
"So you guys, what, hung out?"
"He came to me sometimes and we would talk. It wasn't always about what was coming. Sometimes he would just ask me things."
"Like your own personal angelic therapist," said Cale. "That's even better than a pastor."
"It wasn't always comforting," said Kris. It actually made him believe a lot more in the Old Testament angels, or in Revelation; a fierce army of angelic warriors, not little cherubs that watched over him while he slept. He felt more like these angels would kill him in his sleep if they thought it was the right thing to do. "But it was...it gave me an overwhelming sense of purpose. Even before I knew what that purpose was."
"But what was he like?" said Cale. "What did he look like?"
"Like a guy," said Kris with a shrug. "Like any guy you'd see on the street. Dress pants and sweater vest and expensive watch. It was a guy, a real guy's body, and he was just...in it."
"Like he was possessed?"
"Yeah," said Kris, though that felt like a dirty word for it. "But he didn't just take it. It was a gift. He asked, and the guy gave him his body."
"Wow," said Cale. "I don't know if I would have done that."
"I don't know if I would have done that either," admitted Kris, and it felt good to have someone to admit that to, to have someone feel the same way about it. "But I was never asked."
"No, you were asked for something else," said Cale. "You were asked for something harder. And you said yes to that."
"It wasn't exactly a yes or no question," said Kris. "He told me what was going to happen and what to do when it did. My choices were limited to doing that or dying with everyone else."
"Or leaving," said Cale. "You could have left LA for someplace you knew was safe and left everyone behind."
"No, I couldn't," said Kris. "I couldn't do that."
"Exactly," said Cale. "You said yes. You said yes to what he was asking of you, even if the question was never spelled out."
"And then you said yes to what I asked of you," said Kris. "That's not any different from me, Cale. You could have gone forward. Lots of people have."
"No, I couldn't," he said, and Kris felt that camaraderie with him again. That understanding that they were both human, with strengths and weaknesses, but still trying to be what they needed to be. "You're Kris Allen. I'd follow you anywhere."
"Shut up," muttered Kris, but it actually made him laugh. He wished there were more things that did that anymore. It only lasted a moment, but he still felt warm afterwards. He knew in his heart he was doing the right thing, but it was having people like Cale, and Katy and Alli and Anoop and everyone, that really made him okay with it.
"What was his name?"
"His name was Kabriel," said Kris, "and I don't know where he is anymore."
:::
Before the phones went out for good, Kris listened to the message every day, to the point where he could replay it in his mind not only word for word but inflection for inflection.
Hey Kris, I got held up in New York so it looks like I'm not going to get back into LAX in time to make your party. Shit, I was looking forward to seeing you, too. But hey, we're getting together next week, right? I'll call you tomorrow. Not too early, I need some sleep.
Kris was buying up half a Wal-Mart and didn't get the message until a few hours later. He left a message telling Adam he should come by anyway, it was important, but he didn't even know if Adam got the message. All he knew was that Adam's flight did land in LA that night.
That was the last he heard of him. As far as he knew, that was the last anyone heard of Adam Lambert.
:::
The truth was that the resources of the military were stretched thin. Because all of their news was from military channels, Kris knew more about this than he knew about the state of the country, or the rest of the world. Resources were stretched thin and Los Angeles stopped being any kind of priority a long time ago. They just patrolled the outer stretches of the quarantine perimeter and occasionally took out uprisings further in. There used to be flyovers and helicopters too, but those days were long gone.
They practiced combat on the beach now, and no longer worried that some overzealous pilot was going to bomb their compound because he thought he saw a bunch of Croats, like a few others had been bombed over the first couple of months after it all started.
They were on their own.
Andrew was washing dishes when Kris came back inside, and Kris was glad that one thing they still had was a source of clean water. He hadn't chosen this house by chance, after all. It had a generator too, though they only ran that for part of every day.
"How did it go today?" Kris asked him, quietly beginning to help him with the chore even though he wasn't on the roster. He didn't think Andrew was either, but sometimes he needed something like this to wind down after going out.
"Routine," said Andrew without looking up. He'd known Kris was there from the moment he walked in. He was very rarely caught unaware. "We caught movement, not sure how many. They didn't trail us."
"Yeah, Cale told me," said Kris. "He's running footage with Alli right now to see if you picked any of it up. Best guess?"
"Less than a dozen," said Andrew, "but organized. Could be three. Could be ten. Not sure of anything beyond that. It wasn't anywhere near here."
"Unless they start migrating, I think the local area's pretty much cleaned out," said Kris, "and they aren't interested in going anywhere there aren't people."
"We're people," said Andrew.
"We're different," said Kris, though they weren't, not really. They were struggling, just like everyone else. They just had better resources to do it with.
"Different from them, or different from how we once were?" said Andrew. Of course, the answer was both, and they both knew it. "How long do we have to do this?"
"I don't know," said Kris. "Not forever. These things can't last forever."
"But they can last a long time," said Andrew, "and what will even be left when it's over?"
"I don't know that either," said Kris. "But the world isn't ending. Not really."
"Feels like it is sometimes."
Part of Kris wanted to agree, because he knew exactly what that felt like. And part of him wanted to be reassuring, to say that there were still things worth fighting for. In the end he said, "Andrew...are you ready to be done?"
Ready to go forward, he meant, which was better than the alternative when people got tired of fighting. Kris had seen people go both ways.
"No," said Andrew. "No. I'm just tired. I want good news."
"Me too," said Kris. "Believe me, me too. If it weren't for the angels, I would probably find everything even harder."
"This is really apocalyptic, isn't it? In the Biblical sense." Kris just nodded, and wished the answer could have been anything but that. "Are we going to survive?"
Kris nodded again, though he had nothing concrete to back that up. As long as things weren't over, they weren't over.
:::
"Kris, you're going to want to see this," said Cale.
"I just need to finish—"
"You're going to want to see this right now."
That got Kris's attention all right. And the truth was that rechecking the weapons could wait a few minutes. It wasn't busy work, but it was a redundancy that was a comfort more than a necessity.
"Do we have survivors?"
"Maybe you should sit down."
"Why?" said Kris. "I never have before. How many and where?"
"Kris...." Kris had never heard Cale sound quite like that before. He sat. "I finished reviewing the footage with Alli. They definitely caught a chase with the rear cam on the truck. That usually means uninfected. Or at least they were when the camera caught them."
"So when do we go out?"
Cale didn't answer. Instead he slid a photo in front of Kris, and they never printed out anything, they never wasted resources like that, so he sat up and paid attention, pushed his glasses up his nose and looked hard at the grainy, blown-up frame.
"Is this...?"
"Alli thinks it is too," said Cale.
Kris stared some more. And some more. And finally breathed a name.
"Adam."
Part of Kris, a small part buried deep inside, had actually hoped that Adam was dead. Because he couldn't imagine that he'd survived and not been infected, and he didn't want to meet an infected Adam. He never wanted to be the one to have to face that, and he definitely never wanted to be the person to have to deal with it.
Finally he swallowed hard and looked up at Cale. "Was he...?"
"One of the chasees and not one of the chasers," said Cale, and Kris let out his breath all at once.
This one thing Kabriel would never confirm for him, even though Kris had been sure he'd known. He was an angel. They were supposed to know these things. But Kabriel would never tell him what happened to Adam, would never even hint at it. He said that Kris's faith was important, and this was one time when he needed to have faith that whatever happened, it was what was meant to happen.
"So he might have survived," said Kris, and looked at the picture again. It could have been someone else. It might not have been Adam at all. But something was blooming inside Kris, something like hope, and he just knew. He had faith.
And he also had a job to do.
"How many were there?"
"Two, that we saw on film," said Cale. "There might have been more. That was obviously captured at a distance, and right at the edge of the camera's range."
"So he wasn't alone," said Kris. And maybe, maybe, he could have survived if he wasn't doing it alone.
"He didn't look like he was alone," said Cale. "Do you want me to...?
"I need some time. And a map."
"I can get you the map," said Cale, then rested a hand on Kris's shoulder for a moment and left the room, and Kris knew it was to give him what little time alone he could.
It was Adam in that picture. It had to be.
And Kris didn't know if his heart would break more if it wasn't, or if it was.
:::
Kris was kind of drunk. Not falling over drunk, not slurring his words drunk or humping table legs drunk, but drunker than he'd been in a long time.
"I don't know what to do," he confessed to Katy, "and I don't know how to do it."
"You know you have to do this," said Katy. "You have to take this chance."
"I can't be the one to do it," said Kris. "If he's infected, it has to be someone else. I can't."
"I'll do it," said Katy. "I won't let it be a stranger."
"Katy, you don't have to—"
"You've been in love with him for a long time, Kris," she said. "I won't let a stranger shoot him. If it has to be someone, it'll be me. I'll do it. I'll do it for you. I'll do it for both of you. And if he's not infected—"
"I'm not getting my hopes up," said Kris. "For all we know, it might not even be him. It could be anyone. Everyone out there looks the same these days, dirty and ragged."
"You saw the picture, Kris."
"I don't want to get my hopes up," he said, "and I don't want to get my heart broken."
"Either way," said Katy, "you have to do this, because going after him is better than not knowing. They said he was running. Croatoans don't run away. Ever."
"Unless they're trying to lure someone in," said Kris. "It could have been a trap. We have no way of knowing."
"If it was a trap, then there's someone else uninfected in the zone," said Katy, "and that's still what we do. That's why we do this. Even if it's not him, there's someone we need to go in after."
Kris nodded his head, and there'd never really been any doubt that they were going in. That was what they did. That was his mission from God, and he wasn't going to turn his back on it now because he had conflicted feelings about someone he hadn't seen in going on year, someone who might very well be dead. Someone who likely was.
"We'll get a team together tomorrow, in daylight," he said. "I need sleep. I need to sleep for a week."
"Yet you'll only give yourself four hours before you get up to make plans," said Katy, because no matter what they were to one another now—fellow soldiers more than anything else—she knew him better than anyone. "So at least get those four hours. If you're going in yourself, you need to be rested. Are going in yourself?"
Kris looked down at his hands and couldn't deny it. "Probably," he said. "I'll make plans in the morning. I need to look at the latest maps to see what routes are the clearest. Gunfire east of us this morning, I think they've set up a new perimeter. We might have lost the most direct route."
"Probably saw the same thing we did," said Katy, "or some of it anyway. Let me take lead on this, Kris."
"Are you sure?"
"You need me to do this," she said. "I need to do this. This is what we do."
"Okay," said Kris. "Okay." When he closed his eyes his head spun a little, and the room tilted on an unseen axis. "I think I'll take those four hours now."
"Come on," she said, "I'll help you back upstairs."
:::
Before the virus, Kris never would have said he was in love with Adam. Loved him, sure, but not in love with him. That didn't mean he hadn't been, he'd just never let his thoughts linger there for long. They were from two different worlds, intersecting sometimes but never running parallel, and if it was extraordinary circumstances that had brought them together in the first place, it would take something even more extraordinary to let them be together in more ways than they already were.
Things these days were pretty damn extraordinary.
For almost ten months Adam had been absent from his life, and for almost ten months Kris had been realizing every day just how much emptier it was without him. He'd known his parents' love, his family's, his friends'. He'd never hesitated to share it with them right up until the last moment he could. Adam was his one regret, and he just never let go of it, or him.
:::
Alli's twisted ankle made the perfect excuse for Kris to tell her she was staying behind on this one. He didn't fool himself into thinking that it was going to be an easily-won argument, but he had leverage for this one. He had ammunition.
"It's not sprained or broken," she said, "it's just twisted. I wrap it up and it's fine. I can run. I can jump. I can shoot. I can do everything you need me to do."
"We have enough able-bodied people that we don't need you to strain it," said Kris. "I'd only ask that of you if we were desperate, and we're not."
Allison snorted. "We're always desperate," she said. "You really think I'd go through everything I have just to stay behind when we're going after Adam? No way, José."
Most of Allison's family had been with her when she'd come to Kris's party, and they'd been some of the first people to go forward as soon as the first perimeters were put up and the military moved in. Allison was supposed to go with them, but she was slippery and wily and that was a fight she'd won in the end by sheer refusal to leave and a few judicious lies to her family for them to let her stay back.
Kris had known all along that she never planned to join them on the next truck out, but he'd wanted to believe her, and that guilt plagued him for a long time afterwards. At least they got word out with the next batch of refugees going forward that she was all right, that she hadn't been infected or shot or blown up on her way out. That she'd just decided to stay.
"It's going to be a dangerous one. They were at the edge of a scarlet blot, Alli."
"You think I don't know that?" she said. "I'm the one who spotted him in the first place. You have to let me go on this one. You need me. You need my eyes."
That was the one thing Kris could never deny. Every mission could use sharp eyes like Alli's. But that didn't make him like it any more.
"You're going to have to prove to me your ankle can handle it," he said. "You're going to have to prove that before you go out again at all."
"Don't treat me different from everyone else, Kris. Quit it with that shit. I'm the best woman for the job and we both know it."
"Your ankle—"
"And it's Adam," she said. "It has to be you and me, Kris. It has to be you and me."
It was hard to argue with that from an emotional standpoint, but Kris was too many months as a commander of a paramilitary operation to let that make the decision for him. Except that it was Adam, and if there was one person who could skew his judgment, it was Adam.
"Prove to me the ankle's strong enough in the morning," he said. "If it's not, I'm replacing you."
"It'll be fine," said Alli. "I'll be faster than anyone."
And if sheer willpower could make that happen, Kris knew it was the truth.
:::
The last time Kris saw the angel was almost two months ago, on the wide wood-and-stone landing halfway down the stairs to the beach, in the middle of the night. He didn't know it was going to be the last time, and he didn't think Kabriel did either. Or if he did, he gave no sign of it. He told Kris that things weren't going well, he said that Lucifer's power was rising, and in an admission that Kris still wasn't sure he'd heard or understood right, he confessed that he wasn't sure they'd done the right thing.
Kris might not have understood what he meant by that, but it seemed to be something that haunted him, and seeing an angel look that vulnerable shook the very foundations of what Kris believed.
If Kris went down to that landing at dusk and looked to the north, to the rock face of the steep cliff there, he could sometimes still see the shadows of wings imprinted on the rock. A reminder that the memory, and the angel, were both real.
Now, in the thin pre-dawn light, he didn't see anything at all, but he still stood there quietly for a long time, arms folded against the railing, until Katy called down.
"Sun's coming up," she said. "We need to get settled and go."
"I know," he said. "I was just...."
"I know what you were doing," she said. "I don't suppose you got any new revelations, did you?"
"Nothing that anyone else couldn't have gotten by staring at a rock for half an hour," he said.
It wasn't just a spiritual perspective he got, standing here halfway down to the beach. He could see the house, the way they'd changed it to suit their needs, see the beach with its obvious training grounds. They had a garden now, and somehow that was different from stocking up on canned goods; it spoke of a kind of permanence. From where he was standing he could see all the ways in which his world had changed, in concrete, physical terms.
It was after a few moments of thoughtful silence on both their parts that he finally pushed himself away from the railing and started up the stairs.
"He doesn't come anymore."
"But you wish he did," said Katy. "It was easier when he did."
"I don't know if it was easier," he said as he reached her side and they walked back to the house together. "Just different."
"And now you wonder if he was ever there at all?"
Only sometimes.
"I didn't see an angel for the first twenty-seven years of my life either, but that didn't mean I didn't believe they were out there," said Kris. "They've said what they needed to say to me. Now it's up to me to keep believing and carry on."
:::
Kris almost didn't go in the end, not because he chose not to but because Cale pulled him aside before they went out.
"Are you sure you're good for this one?" he said. "You could stay back."
"It's Adam."
"Exactly," said Cale. "It's Adam. Do you really think you can be objective on this one? Can you go out and not let that get in the way?"
Of course he wasn't objective. Were any of them, really? But he could still do what needed to be done. The two things weren't mutually exclusive.
"I've had to shoot people that just hours earlier I was having breakfast with."
"But this might be Adam," said Cale, "and everyone knows how you feel about Adam."
"I don't—"
"Kris," Cale interrupted him, and just shook his head. "It's okay. But what are you going to do if it's him? What are you going to do if it isn't?"
"The same thing we always do," said Kris. "Save everyone we can."
"People are counting on you," said Cale, but that wasn't something Kris needed to be told. "All right, if you don't need me to sub for you then I'm going back downstairs. Be safe and bring 'em home."
Five of them went out: Kris, Katy, Henson, Trugs and Alli, who did prove her fitness for duty in the end and Kris stood by his word. Katy drove this one, an old hand at these streets now, knowing which were usable and which were impassable due either to debris or barricades. Kris rode in the box, armed and ready and aware of everything around him. Trugs sat across from him, holding his gun in his lap and never once cracking a smile. Alli waited and watched and took in everything.
Most of this area was marked in scarlet on their maps, which was why it was still good scavenging grounds for them and why they often avoided it all the same. Whoever they were looking for, whether it was Adam or someone else, likely wouldn't return to the exact same place twice, especially not after being pursued, but the area was too rich to avoid completely and there was another corner store not too far away, just on the edge of the territory before you ran into huge swaths of city that had been razed to the ground. It wasn't the most maneuverable area, but Kris trusted Katy to get them in and out.
They shut down the truck as soon as they could and moved in silently, waiting. It was a stolen—'appropriated' was the term Kris preferred—military vehicle, and its size, reinforcement and ability to intimidate the Croatoans made it the perfect vehicle for their operations. But two things it wasn't were quiet and maneuverable in tight spaces. As long as they were appropriating military vehicles, Allison had been making noises about wanting a tank; it lacked subtlety, but Kris had to admit there were other benefits.
The city didn't smell as much like death as it used to, or maybe they had all just gotten used to it.
They were in place about two hours before they saw movement, or rather before Alli saw moment, because as always she had the sharpest eyes.
"Something's coming up the alley," she said. "It's sticking to the shadows."
"Croats do that sometimes," said Hensen, her lips pressed together tightly and her weapon raised. "If they know we're here."
"No," said Allison. "He's hiding. They're hiding. They're using the shadows."
"How many?"
"Two of them," said Alli. "They're coming in our direction."
"At us, or just in our direction?"
"If they've spotted us, they'd either be running towards us, or away," said Kris. "No, they haven't spotted us yet, and I don't want them to. Everyone hold positions."
And everyone did, hardly even breathing as the unknown persons drew closer, right up until all hell broke loose.
"Heads up, incoming," said Trugs, loud enough for all of them to hear. Loud enough for the people they were tracking to hear, too, but they were immediately caught between a rock and a hard place. In front of them were Kris and his group, but back the way they came a group of Croatoans was approaching.
"Alli, Henson, Trugs, take them out," said Kris. "Katy, you're with me on the capture."
And capture it was. Not rescue. Maybe later they could call it a rescue, when they were certain of what right now they could only extrapolate and suspect. But right now they needed to capture those two people alive, tie them up and take them back to the compound with them. That was what this mission really was. That was what they had to steel themselves to do, no matter what faces they saw.
They all moved into action at once, and the two survivors were wily. They had to be, if they'd been surviving out here that long. As soon as they saw pursuers coming from both sides the split up and made themselves a harder target. He and Katy didn't even have to talk about it, she went after one and he went after the other.
He went after the one who looked like Adam.
There was no doubt in his mind that these were the same people they'd caught on videotape the last time they'd gone out on a supply run. But they still couldn't be certain who they'd found, or what condition they would be in when they caught up with them and brought them in. Adam—and Kris was going to call him Adam in his head even if he didn't actually know—had a good head start on him, but his trajectory was sending them both right into the firefight between his people and the Croatoans who were relentless in spite of the bullets.
Adam swerved and ducked down an alley across the street and Kris's pursuit was almost immediately blocked by his own people. By the time he took the long way around to the other side, Adam was gone.
"Fuck," he said, the word the only one he could come up with to convey the depth of his anger and frustration. But there was no sign of movement, and too many places he could have gone.
"Adam!" he called, but there was no response. "Adam, please!"
All his call did, though, was get the attention of one of the Croatoans who'd only been injured by one of the flying bullets, and Kris was forced to shoot and retreat, back to where he'd left Katy pursuing the other person.
She turned out to have been more successful than he was, and had him trussed up and on the ground while she held her weapon on him.
Kris just stared for a moment. "Tommy?" Tommy stared back at him, unable to speak through the gag, his eyes conveying both terror and anger. "If you're not infected, you have nothing to worry about. We aren't going to hurt you."
But there was very little he could say to convince anyone of that right now, not in the world they all lived in.
"Retreat!" he called out to the rest of them. "We're heading back."
With Katy's help they hauled Tommy into the back of the truck, bound and gagged, chest heaving and still looking wild-eyed. They were on their way again within five minutes, and were only followed for a couple of blocks before Katy outran them, circling around and then back through again so they couldn't tell where they were headed.
Kris hadn't let himself stop to think about it, not until it was all over and he had the luxury of not operating in life-or-death mode, but once he was sitting in the back of the truck staring at Tommy's prone form, all he could think was that if this was Tommy, then it really was Adam they'd just left behind.
[ Part Two ]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2010-03-18 10:32 pm (UTC)*does*
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Date: 2010-03-20 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 11:07 pm (UTC)I want to read this now, but-but-but.
ARGHDFJGSBDFNKL
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Date: 2010-03-20 08:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-18 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 08:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-19 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-19 01:43 am (UTC)(damn you and
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Date: 2010-03-20 08:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-19 03:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-19 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-20 08:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-19 09:10 am (UTC)asdfghjkl
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Date: 2010-07-01 10:55 am (UTC)Ok onto the 2nd part I go...