They were on a routine patrol when they found the building. It was a little outside the patrol area, but Puck wanted to check it out.

         "We have an axe, it can't be too bad in there," he reasoned.

         It was a concrete building, about three storeys high. It looked industrial and unwelcoming. Biohazard signs were posted around the outside.

         "What kind of place was this?" Blaine wondered. He turned to Kurt, who just shrugged his shoulders. It was unusual for three people to be on patrol, but Puck was regaining his strength and needed a walk. At first, Blaine had been reluctant for Puck to come along. He wanted to talk to Kurt about the night before, what it meant, where they were going. Kurt had simply taken Blaine's hand and kissed his palm softly, a gesture that meant "later."

         "I heard a rumour," Kurt said. "That they were testing on live Walkers outside of the city, but I didn't think it was true."

         "I heard that too," Puck agreed. "Quinn and I did performance art based on that one time. There were some human rights groups who came forward to talk about it."

         "Why would anyone be concerned with that," Blaine wondered aloud as they neared the building.

         "Because at some point, the Walkers had been human," Puck replied.

         Blaine scoffed. There was nothing human about Walkers. They were monsters, ripped straight from a world of nightmares. As far as Blaine was concerned, once their eyes were green and their flesh was rotting, they deserved the worst.

         When they reached the building, they found the doors unlocked. "That can't be good," Puck joked, and then a Walker grabbed him by the neck.

         Blaine screamed. The Walker looked like it was starving, its skin paler than normal, its rotting flesh falling from its bones. It looked so weak, a fresher Walker would have ripped Puck's neck to ribbons in seconds, but this Walker failed to maintain its grip on Puck, giving Blaine time to swing the axe and chop the Walker clean in half. Puck staggered back clutching his neck.

         "Fuck," Puck gasped.

         "Are you alright?" Kurt asked, inspecting Puck's neck for any open wounds. Blaine stood guard, clutching the axe tightly. He could hear Walkers moaning inside the building.

         "Scared the shit out of me," Puck said.

         "You look OK," Kurt announced. 

         "It was stupid of us to open that door," Blaine whispered. "We have to kill them all now."

         "There can't be that many who are still alive," Kurt reasoned. "That one looked like it was in bad shape."

         Blaine closed her eyes and tried to rationalize the situation. There could be a minimum of twenty Walkers in there, and they had one axe. A feeling of doom settled over her.

         "I think we should shut that door and walk away," she said. "And let Santana and Sam handle this."

         "Look," Kurt told her. "We'll be fine. We can take care of the Walkers in here no problem. Maybe there'll be some supplies we can bring back to Brittany."

         When they had first arrived at the camp, Brittany had shown them a list of what she thought she might need. Each patrol took a copy with them in case they stumbled on something interesting. Something interesting like a large concrete biohazard building teeming with Walkers. Blaine reached in her pocket to inspect the list. In a childish hand, Brittany had scrawled:

         - microscope

         - lab coat

         - gloves

         - test tubes

         - maraviroc

         - enfuvirtide

         - raltegravir

         - bevirimat

         - Vivecon

         The list, Brittany had explained, contained scientific supplies (most of which she already had, but it couldn't hurt to bring in more) and several drugs used for the management of HIV/AIDS. Brittany had done miserably in high school, but in University she had taken a shine to chemistry. "I like mixing potions," she would murmur softly when asked about her passion.

         She was fearless in the lab, not understanding risk and doing whatever she could to find answers. Brittany and Santana were both in graduate school, Brittany working on her thesis in biochemistry and Santana studying law when the virus hit. They had been best friends since high school, often falling in and out of love with each other. At the time of The Change, they were broken up, but they decided to stay together. Their group had started out fairly large - it included Santana's paralegal girlfriend, Sam's roommate Chandler and Brittany's lab partner Dustin. They traveled from the city to the woods, following the medical news as best they could.

         The WHO speculated that the virus acted in a similar way to HIV/AIDS, bonding to T-Cells and morphing human blood to create the blood of the Walkers. It was all so abstract, so unclear. Brittany had explained the science of the virus to all the newcomers to the group, but Blaine could barely grasp it.

         He bit his lip and looked at Kurt. "Okay," Blaine said slowly. "But we stick together. And if we get overwhelmed, we get out."

         Kurt smiled and nodded. "Agreed," Puck said.

         The three of them crept in the dark building. Immediately, Blaine was overcome with the scent of rotting flesh. He gagged.

         "Oh my god," Kurt coughed.

         And then they heard the moans. Hundreds and hundreds of moaning creatures. "The sound is coming from up ahead," Puck deduced, grabbing a fire extinguisher off the wall to use as a weapon.

         Kurt pulled a section of pipe off a bare wall and the group proceeded forward cautiously. They walked through a long corridor and then they stepped out into what looked like a prison.

         Blaine gasped. It was a prison alright, a Walker prison. Instead of inmates occupying the cells, there were thousands of Walkers. He staggered back, gripping his axe tightly, his eyes full of tears. Some of the Walkers were still alive, but weak. Others were feasting on the bodies of their dead companions. The Walkers had caught Blaine, Kurt and Puck's scent and were reaching through the bars of their cells to get a taste.

         "Oh my god," he whispered.

         "What are we going to do?" asked Puck.

         "We have to burn it down," Kurt said.

         Blaine exhaled slowly. He felt like he was in a nightmare, like he had fallen down a rabbit hole to hell.

         And then.

         Kurt, look out!

         It was a female Walker, her hair was falling out in patches. Dirt.

         The smell.

         She.

         Bit.

         Him.

         Kurt.

         Blaine blacked out.

There are things he does not remember about that day, like the way that Kurt looked, or how big the bite on his neck was, or Quinn's face when they walked back to camp, but he does remember the sound.

         It sounded like this:

         Santana: What are you doing? Is that Kurt? What the fuck is going on?

         Sam: What's wrong with him?

         Puck: A Walker bit him.

         Rachel: (screams)

         Santana: Get it together, drama queen.

         Rachel: (crying)

         Quinn is quiet.

         Puck: Blaine said Brittany had an antidote.

         Santana just laughs.

         Brittany: We can try.

         Kurt coughs.

         His body was lying in a van, Blaine keeping a constant vigil at his side. The antidote was administered every two hours, Brittany taking his blood for testing.

         "He's dying," she told Blaine. "His blood isn’t changing, but he's dying."

         Blaine did not want it to end this way; he did not want Kurt to die holding Blaine’s hand, blood still coming from his neck. There was no more time and he just wanted time, time, time.

         It is impossible to describe the grief. You are given a glimmer of hope, and it is taken away. Here is something new to cling to, something beautiful. It becomes ugly. You cannot hold onto it any longer. Here is something very fragile and now it is broken. It leaves an indelible mark on the soul. When you can grieve, death becomes far away and unimportant. At the end of the world, death is all around you. You should get used to it.

         But you don't.

         You cling to life like it's everything and death is not an option no way because you have to prove that you can keep on living. And you have sex in a van under the moon and you're alive and you laugh at God because you've proved him wrong. You have found a way to live when so many others have died, and isn't that just hilarious?

         God doesn't like to be laughed at.

         Maybe there is no God; maybe the death of the boy you love isn't some big, cosmic joke. Maybe it's just fate that he was standing and no one saw or heard the Walker coming. Maybe this is the best way. Maybe this is the only way. Maybe since the day he was born he's been racing to this moment, lying in the back of a van unconscious surrounded by people he never knew until a month before. Maybe this is what he wants.

         There are no answers in death.

         Blaine remembers once he went to church with his family, and he remembered listening to the sermon. The priest had talked about "Our God being a God of questions." That "the more you ask of God the more he will ask of you." And Blaine was holding Kurt’s hand and he just kept asking "Why, why, why, why?" and there was nothing. Silence. "Why won't you answer me?"

         The antidote does not work.

         Well, that's not exactly true. It worked. Kurt did not turn. Once he died, he did not reanimate. They buried him and he did not burst from the earth. But the antidote did not save him. It did not keep him in Blaine’s arms. It did not allow them another night together under the moon. It did not even give them more time. His eyes stayed closed. Blaine did not get to see them again. His last memory of the exploding supernovas would be in an expression of surprise, as a Walker devoured his neck.

         Blaine did not cry, and he thought it was unusual.

         Quinn held his hand when Sam and Puck lowered Kurt’s body into the dirt. Rachel wailed. Blaine just felt the tightness of Quinn's grip. Tight tight squeeze squeeze this is real you are here you cannot jump in the ground with him. Blaine lay down in a van and he did not leave for three days. He did not eat and he still did not cry. He did not know if she wanted to live or die, he only knew what he did want.

         They forgot that Brittany had quietly and brilliantly created an antidote that could save infected victims. He did not remind them, he kept working. Santana did not laugh at her any more, instead finding new ways to help. They all found new ways to help, falling into work to forget that one of their own was gone. Quinn spent a lot of time sitting with Blaine. Blaine liked to think it was purely out of pity, but they both knew it was because Quinn's infection was getting worse.

         Each night, Blaine watched as Quinn and Puck worked to treat the wound, inflamed and leaking pus. Iodine, bleach, boiling water, polysporin. They did what they could. The thought of more death around him was terrifying to Blaine. He had accepted her death long ago, deciding that if she died it would be for the better, that she had fought to stay alive. But fighting without her friends, without the people she had grown to love, felt like a waste of time.

         "I loved you," he whispered to the moon at night. "You were my second chance."

         They did not return to the strange Walker prison, the place where ghosts made a home. Puck wanted to set it on fire.

         "We need to burn it down. The Walkers are going to get out, I can feel it," he said one night in a camp meeting.

         "There's so much we don't understand," Rachel reasoned. "We can't go back there."

         "It's a dangerous place," Sam agreed. "If the government is using it for testing we should stay away."

         "There is no government," Blaine said darkly.

         "We don't know that," Quinn piped up. "If we had a radio, maybe."

         "Can we get a car radio to work?" Puck suggested.

         "We can try," Santana said. "The only person who knew anything about cars is lying in the dirt over there." She gestured to Kurt's grave. The circle froze.

         "Fuck you," Puck said. "I hot wired a fucking car. I know how to make a radio work."        

         Santana barked out a laugh and no one mentioned Kurt again after that.

         Puck hot wired one of the vans in their camp and fiddled with the radio for over an hour. Nothing. The next day, he tried another car. Quinn would sit shotgun while he worked, not talking, just watching. Blaine found ways to be useful around camp, mending ripped seams, rationing what little food they had, sharpening weapons. He thought about Kurt every minute of every day, but he was not sad. It was the same way that she thought of her family. Everything was in their name. All his work, every footstep he took. It meant he was surviving, it meant that he could keep going. He wanted to prove them wrong. I won't die without you. I can do this.

         He had a secret, it was a small secret, but he didn't tell anyone about it. When he died, she had slipped off his braided leather strap and added it to his wrist. That night lying under the moon, Kurt had explained it to Blaine.

         "It was my stepbrother's," he said softly, running his fingers along Blaine’s bare shoulder. "I took it to remind me that once I had a family. That there was life before all this death."

         "That's beautiful," Blaine told him.

         "You're beautiful."

         They kissed and kissed until their lips felt swollen.

         And now it was Blaine’s, and it reminded him of different things. It reminded him of his life, and why it was valuable. It reminded him to keep going. He did those things. He did those things for Kurt, because he would have wanted Blaine to.

***

         One afternoon, Santana sent Puck and Sam off on patrol and she called everyone else together. "I've had this for awhile," she said, pulling a bottle of shampoo from the back of one of the vans. It was a bright orange bottle of Herbal Essences. It had a mango scent. It was the same shampoo Blaine had used before The Change. "And in light of recent events, I think we could all use some clean hair."

         Rachel grinned from ear to ear. "That's a brilliant idea."

         Even Blaine cracked a smile. The luxury of having clean hair was a long forgotten one. The girls oohed and ahhed as they inhaled the smell of the shampoo, eager to work it into their hair.

         They boiled water and washed each other's hair, waxing poetic about the heavenly feeling of clean hair, the way the warm water enveloped their scalps.

         A bizarre thought occurred to Blaine. Before The Change, he wouldn't have been friends with any of these girls. He would have stuck to his own group, ignored the others. But now, here, teetering on the edge of death, he had found some of the best friends he'd ever had. They supported each other and were honest with each other. He was letting them touch his hair.

         "It's nice to see you smile," Quinn said, toweling off Blaine's locks.

         "It's nice to smile," Blaine agreed.

         Puck and Sam came back and laughed at their hair and Santana washed Sam's hair and Quinn washed Puck's and he splashed her with water and she squealed in delight.

         For a moment, they were just kids. And it was the best day.