Young Justice -:- Infection

Summary: Its two days before the end of Gotham City. The amount of Infected far outnumber the few survivors. The risk of the quarantine failing is too high. There is no cure. "In forty-eight hours they're wiping out the city. And I don't want to be here when that MOAB goes off."

Setting/Spoilers: Takes place over three days starting from Xmas Eve 2014 (four years post season one/AU to season two)

Pairings: Post-Spitfire and Traught if you squint (though it's really just Artemis and Dick making the most of a really bad situation) Plus some one-sided DickxBabs and maybe some hinted BabsxJason...? YMMV on that one...

Genre/Rating: Hurt/Comfort/Tragedy/Horror and Angst. Rated T as there is swearing and depressing themes – please let me know if I should up it…

WARNING: This got a lot darker than I was originally intending –there are multiple pre-dead characters and one major character death – Merry Christmas and all that :P

Disclaimer: If I owned Young Justice, the characters wouldn't live for very long… it's probably a good thing that I don't own it actually…

Author's Note(s): MERRY CHRISTMAS PEOPLE! For the lovely people of the YJ Fandom that have been so awesome to me when I was writing Identity (making it my most-favourited fic ever) I have written you a special Christmas ficlet. Usually this time of year gets the fluff rolling, but my muse didn't fancy doing anything cutesy, so instead you get this angsty and miserable apocalyptic number. Your welcome :P

Writing zombie apocalypses are always wicked fun, however what interests me the most is the fallout. I wanted our fave characters to have already seen hell – I wanted to turn the heroes into survivors. As such, this three-shot is set in the final days of Gotham City, so there is quite a bit of exposition in this first chapter. I've tried to spread it out somewhat, but I apologise if it sometimes a little bit stodgy...

I have read the BatFam New 52 titles, and I have taken some of the canon from those comics. I have also read A Killing Joke and A Death in the Family, and have used these back stories for Barbara Gordon and Jason Todd - not really sure if this part of the YJ universe, but its AU of season two anyway...

But pretty please ignore me now and enjoy your Christmas pressie written with lots of love…

DAY ONE

18.00pm – December 24th 2014
Forty-Nine Hours to Detonation

Thou shalt not kill.

That was the very first rule that Batman had taught Robin. Eight years ago when Bruce had helped Dick track down Tony Zucco; when the young boy had looked his parents' killer in the eyes, Bruce had taught him the difference between justice and revenge. Ever since then Dick had always followed that golden rule. Batman and Robin did not kill.

But that was then. Now? Well, now concepts as frivolous as 'justice' and 'revenge' didn't mean a whole lot to anyone.

Now it was about survival.

"Arty!" Dick shouted, knowing that he was making himself a target and not particularly caring. They were surrounded, the alleyway making a choke point and giving them little room to move. Artemis was being overrun, and even as Dick fought off his own horde he watched the blonde disappear under the onslaught. "Arty, NO!"

With a vicious backhand he dropped the man trying to bite his arm and then took out the replacement that popped up with a drop kick, all the time working his way over to where he had last seen Artemis. He could still hear her screaming defiantly, and just as he finally made it to her side of the alley, he found that his assistance was unneeded. The tide of seething bodies was pushed back, Artemis swiping at them with a pair of wicked looking hunting knives. She grinned at him. "Aww, you do care."

Dick rolled his eyes at her. "Don't know what you're talking about," he retorted as he grabbed up a trash can lid and brought it down hard on a snarling woman's head. "I wasn't at all worried."

Artemis smirked at him, though her attention never wavered from the battle raging around them. Their assailants may have been mindless, raging shells of human beings, but they still had enough sense to take advantage of the openings created by lapses in focus.

They tried to avoid the 'Z' word, but essentially that is what the Infected became. They still looked human; two eyes, two arms, two legs, but they were anything but. At first the only physical sign of the change (aside from the obvious behavioural issues) had been the eyes: their pupils were constantly dilated like drug addicts, the iris creating a thin band of red around the outside. But about a month ago, the Infected had suddenly started growing fangs and sprouting claws – all the better to eat people with, Dick guessed. Darwinism at its best.

A heavy weight landed on Dick's back, enough to send the average man to his knees though it did little more than set the acrobat off balance. He staggered, attempting to fend off a deranged man in a police uniform even as the hitch hiker on his back sunk its claws deep into his shoulders. Dick yelled in frustration and pain as he palmed a blade from his swiss-army jacket and retaliated.

With a side swipe he slit the police officer's throat. Then he flipped the hitch hiker over his shoulder and onto the concrete. He dropped to his knees and buried the knife up to the hilt in the hitch hiker's eye.

Thou shalt not kill.

The hitch hiker had been a woman, maybe in her early twenties, with curly blonde hair and fair skin. She had probably been quite pretty once, before the too-long fangs had sliced her lips open and her manicured nails had mutated into hideous talons. With a resigned sigh, Dick pulled the knife out of her eye socket, trying to ignore the sick feeling in his stomach.

It was then that the woman reverted back to normal. The fangs retracted, the claws vanished, and her one remaining red eye faded back to a dull hazel. That was the worst part of the virus. After death it would just disappear without a visible trace; leaving you with a far more human corpse than the monster you had just killed. Making you look like the monster.

Dick committed the young woman's face to memory, as he did with every person whose life he took. He didn't know why he tortured himself like that. Maybe it was because if he felt remorse and guilt then he would know that he wasn't the monster. Maybe it was because it kept him human.

An arrow whizzed past his ear and embedded deep into the throat of the Infected man about to kill him. Dick glanced over at Artemis who was glaring at him disapprovingly. "Get your head in the game, Grayson!"

Dick nodded and did as he was told, launching himself back into the fight.

This nightmare had begun less than a year ago, with Jonathan Crane a.k.a. Scarecrow. He had been both the creator of the virus and its first victim, the ex-Arkham doctor receiving an unhealthy dose of his own medicine. It turned out that the latest and final version of his fear toxin was a whole lot more potent and contagious than he had intended.

The reason that they avoided the 'Z' word was because it wasn't accurate. The Infected were not the walking dead, they weren't reanimated corpses. The virus decimated the intellectual mind. It essentially devolved its victims; regressing them back to their most primal instincts. It destroyed their higher brain function and reduced them down to their mammalian brain. Pure animal instinct.

Within hours of the outbreak half of the city had been infected. The government had ordered a city-wide quarantine to contain the spread - all bridges and tunnels connecting the islands of Gotham to the mainland were destroyed with extreme prejudice. The city was declared off-limits, leaving the few thousand or so uninfected survivors to fend for themselves. Now less than two hundred uninfected remained; surviving only on the monthly aid drops so generously provided by the U.S Government.

Today was Christmas Eve, and someone had decided to give the failing city a gift. A second drop in the same month. It had never happened before - Dick and Artemis hadn't been prepared to protect the remaining sane citizens as they made their desperate runs for the much needed supplies, and the Infected had capitalised.

Generally, the Infected were nocturnal, preferring to hunt at night - packs of them prowling the city like wolves. But they had quickly learned what the bright parachutes falling from the sky meant. They knew that when it rained like that their food source would be out in the open. Easy pickings.

So now the two ex-sidekicks fought tooth and nail to hold back the horde while Gothamites swarmed to the aid box like bees to honey.

The chute had landed on the roof of the cinema, but the building had no roof access from the inside, forcing the survivors to use the fire escape in the alley. Before Dick and Artemis had arrived it had been a blood bath. Half-eaten bodies were strewn among the executed Infected, filling the small space and making it even more difficult to manoeuvre. But the two had stuck at it until only a few stragglers remained to pick the contents of the aid pack clean.

A scream echoed through the alley, and Dick spun to look. A mother and child had descended the rusted ladder, the small girl clinging to her mother's shoulders as she rode on her back. They had just made it back to ground level when an Infected woman had launched at them and sunk her fangs into the little girl's arm. Instantly Dick had a throwing knife in his hand, the blade severing the woman's spinal cord. But the damage had already been done.

The mother gathered her hysterical daughter in her arms and sunk back against the brick wall until she held her in her lap. She hugged the girl close, pressing her small tear-stained face against her shoulder. After a moment, the little girl tried to fight her way free of the hold, but the mother refused. She stared up at the overcast sky, praying to whichever deity she believed in until finally her daughter stilled. She then pressed a kiss to her hair and lay the little girl down on the concrete, before hitching the bag of supplies over her shoulder and running away.

It seemed like a cruel thing to do, but Dick had long since learned that the mother's actions had been a mercy.

One bite was all it took. Then came several hours of agony as slowly the brain began to shut down and the claws and fangs would grow. Then you would no longer know the concept of 'friend' or 'family' – all you would see is food.

Dick kept a gun in the holster inside his jacket just in case he ever got bitten. It was the same one that he had used that day seven months ago. There was just one bullet in the chamber – that was all he would need.

"They're pulling back!" Artemis called at him, and Dick realised that she was right. The remaining Infected scarpered back to the street and vanished to their dens. Now that more of them were dying than eating and most of their easy prey had gone, there was nothing for them to hang around for. Dick took a moment to take stock of his injuries, glancing up when he sensed a shadow on the fire escape above them.

"I guess They knew I was coming," Jason Todd, the ex-second Robin, said cockily as he leaned on the railing and looked down at them. Artemis scowled at him before turning back to the carnage. She began retrieving the arrows that could be reused from the bodies, returning them to her quiver.

Dick looked up at Jason. "What are you doing here?"

Jason showed off his full back pack. "I saw the chutes falling and thought I'd better get in there quick before it was all gone. Figured your little sky-cave could do with restocking since you insist on protecting those parasites instead of saving yourselves."

Dick raised an eyebrow. "Those 'parasites' are all that's left of the city. And since when did you share? You always hoard supplies for your safe houses."

"Yeah, well," Jason shrugged. "Turns out I'm not gonna need them much longer."

Artemis stood up, a blood-stained arrow held loosely in her hand. "And what's that supposed to mean?"

"I've got a contact on the outside – managed to get a message through the blackout," Jason explained vaguely. "The government's cutting its losses in true American style. In forty-eight hours they're wiping Gotham off the map. And I'd rather not be here when that MOAB goes off; figured Dickie-bird here would have a plan like he always does."

Artemis turned on Dick expectantly, making the dark-haired teen sigh. "Did you know that this was coming?"

"Honestly?" Dick replied sardonically. "I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner."

"So there's a plan, right?" Jason asked, trying to sound eager but barely concealing the hint of desperation in his voice.

"Yeah, Jay," Dick muttered. "There's a plan."

21.00pm
Forty-Seven Hours to Detonation

In the beginning, there had been no shortage on offers to help Gotham City in its time of greatest need. The World Health Organisation had been working tirelessly on a cure while countries worldwide were collecting their funds together to send aid. Despite Batman's usual insistence that the city was off-limits to other heroes, he had asked for help from the Justice League.

And that had been where it all went wrong.

The initial spread of the virus was like nothing anyone had ever seen. The Infected were building up there numbers, ignoring their hunger and simply biting everyone they met. By the end of the first day the ratio of Infected to Uninfected greatly favoured the former, leaving the city in a state of uncontrollable panic.

And then Superman had descended from the sky over Gotham River, and every single one of the Infected had gone nuts. They were drawn to the Kryptonian like flies to a bug zapper. They tried to reach for him – to eat or to turn no one really knew. In their desperation they started jumping into the water – hundreds of them drowning in the strong currents.

Superman had watched in horror as his mere presence caused the mass suicide of three-hundred and eighty two people. Then he had flown away and insisted that no other hero, particularly those with the meta-gene, went anywhere near the city.

After that, the desire to help had waned somewhat. The government had insisted that it was still trying to find a cure; that it hadn't given up hope – but then five months in the quarantine zone had had a complete communications blackout. Gotham City was totally cut off from the outside world. If it weren't for the monthly aid drops, it would be as if it had never existed.

The last few heroes of Gotham were on their own.

"So it's true then?" Barbara Gordon asked. She had once been Batgirl, but an encounter with the Joker not long before the outbreak had left her paralysed from the waist down. She had briefly taken up the mantle of Oracle, essentially the Bat family's tech support, but gone were the days of the cape and cowl. Now she was just Barbara. "They're really going to bomb the city?"

On the screen the fuzzy face of Superman looked down at them through the static. Barbara was a tech-whizz after all, she wouldn't let something as trivial as a communications blackout stop her from contacting the League. "Our liaison to the White House has confirmed the strike," Clark Kent replied regretfully. "A squadron of F22s are dropping the bombs at 1900 hours on Boxing Day."

"Hey, at least they gave us Christmas," Dick said sarcastically, earning himself twin glares from both Artemis and Barbara.

"So, are you gonna help us, Boy Scout?" Jason asked, though his tone indicated that he already knew the answer.

Clark looked away, the connection breaking up for a few seconds before he responded. "The President has given the League strict orders not to interfere…"

"What about the team? Isn't that why you formed it in the first place? To do the things that the League can't?" Jason interrupted, getting increasingly louder. Dick placed a hand on his arm to warn him to tone it down, but the younger Robin just shrugged him off. "I know you've gone and replaced us already. I guess you don't really care if we go up with the city, huh?"

"Jason…" Clark tried, but he didn't really have a response that wouldn't make the teenager even angrier.

"Jay," Dick interceded. "We don't need the League's help on this end."

Jason looked up at him confused. "Then why did you tell Babs to contact the League?"

"Because we'll need their help later," Dick explained. "I know a way out of the city; the hard part is going to be crossing the quarantine line…"

"Wait, hold up," Jason grabbed Dick's arm and turned him. "All this time you've known a way out of this hell hole?! Why the fuck are we still here?! We could have blown this shit stand when this disaster started!"

Artemis stepped up and divided the two of them, and then turned on Dick. "I am only ever going to say this once. But the psycho kind of has a point. Why didn't you tell us?"

Jason growled lowly at the psycho comment, but couldn't really deny it. A year after Dick had traded up to Nightwing and Jason had taken over as the second Robin, he had had his own run in with the Joker. Hours of torture with a crowbar and a bomb later, he had become a dead Robin. Thanks to Thalia Al Ghul and her father's Lazarus Pits he had been resurrected; but he had also come back with some slight anger management issues and a whole new perspective on how crime fighting should be done. This had led to some disagreements between him and Bruce, to put it lightly.

"Because the risk was too high," Dick replied, though he wouldn't look any of them in the eye. "If a single one of the Infected got out we could be responsible for turning the rest of the world into this."

"Dick is right," Clark agreed.

"Of course you'd say that, you can't wait for us to burn, can you Supey?" Jason spat. "You can't wait for this whole thing to be over so you don't have to deal with Gotham anymore."

"Would you all just stop, please?" Barbara said forcefully, spinning her wheelchair so that she could glare at all of them, particularly Jason. "It doesn't matter, alright? We can't change what's already happened so stop arguing about it already and focus on what we can change. So, Dick, how do we get out of the city?"

Dick gave Babs a grateful look. "Tunnels are more expensive to rebuild than bridges. Even when they were cutting the city off, the government was thinking of cheaper ways of rebuilding Gotham after. They blew up all the bridges, but Novick Tunnel? They just blew the entrances. If we put some explosives in the right places, we've got ourselves a way out. That's not the problem."

"Do I want to know what is the problem?" Artemis asked cynically.

"Getting out is easy," Dick answered. "Getting in to the rest of New Jersey is going to be the hard part. They've had the Coast Guard patrolling the river to stop people trying to escape by boat, and they've got helicopters overhead maintaining the quarantine. When we blow the tunnel, they're going to have a firing squad waiting for us on the other side."

"That is where you want the League's help," Clark surmised.

"Exactly," Dick confirmed. "There's a couple hundred uninfected left that we know of. When they start pouring out of the tunnel, the cops are going to think Zombies and shoot first and ask questions never…"

"Wait, wait," Jason interrupted again. "You want to take the city with us? Are you insane or is that just your hero complex talking?"

"We've been fighting for these people for years," Babs pointed out, wheeling herself towards the irate Jason. "We chose to become heroes to protect them. We've lost people because we believe that we are doing the right thing. Turning our backs on the city now… it would make their sacrifices pointless."

"Have we not given enough?" Jason demanded. "You lost your legs, your independence, your ability to go to the bathroom unaided. Hell, I fucking died. All because we thought that the hero gig sounded like fun. Why can't we save ourselves just this once?! Why would that be so bad? Why do we have to save everyone but us?!"

Barbara looked down at her useless legs, refusing to let her hurt show on her face. She felt a shadow fall over her as Dick stepped between her and Jason. "Because it's what we do. It's what Bruce would do."

Jason glared at each and every one of them, as if waiting for one of them to see his side. When no one did, he just scoffed disbelievingly. "You are all crazy. This city is going to burn, and you are going down with it, all because you can't let go of the crappy morals that Bruce forced on you. The guy is dead and yet you still follow him blindly! I've already learned that he was wrong. I hope you guys figure it out too before it's too late."

And with that he turned and left, the door slamming shut behind him.

Barbara sighed heavily, and then wheeled herself back to the bank of computers that she had cobbled together with Dick's help. The screen that had once shown Superman's face was now blank, the connection having been lost at some point during the argument. "We lost the feed to the Watch Tower. I might be able to get it back…"

"Don't bother," Dick said despondently, though he tried to force a reassuring smile. It had been so long since she had seen that mischievous grin of his. It always used to fill her with such dread, warning her that some prank of his making was about to blow up at her… but now she'd give anything to see it again. They had all become such empty shells of what they had once been. Sometimes she wondered if they were any better off that the Infected that they fought against. "Clark will be where we need him."

"And if he's not?" Babs asked uncertainly. "What if we fail?"

Dick shrugged. "At least we can say we tried."

00.00am
Forty-Three Hours to Detonation

Wally West was not a resident of Gotham City. He shouldn't have been there when the quarantine was enforced. But he was. He had run all the way from Central City in his rented tux just to take his girlfriend of two years to her senior prom.

Artemis remembered the way that his jaw had dropped when she had opened the door wearing her dress, stunning the talkative speedster into a rare case of speechlessness. She had laughed at him, kissed him, and forcefully led him out of her apartment building and to the taxi she had called – knowing full well that he had run there without thinking about how they would get to the school.

And that was the last good memory she had of him.

But it was never the memory that haunted her dreams.

Soon after the Outbreak, Wally had designated himself the one who would find the cure. He was a scientific genius after all, even if he came across as a complete doofus more often than not. He worked on it all the time, hardly ever leaving Wayne Towers. The two of them had grown apart as his obsession grew – a fact that pained her so much now.

Three months after the Outbreak, Wally managed to create the first version of the cure. They had tested it on an Infected Bruce Wayne. It didn't work.

And so Wally had gone back to the drawing board, losing himself completely in his work. He barely ate, he only slept when he passed out from exhaustion… he was falling apart, and it hurt Artemis to watch it happen. So she had begged Dick to help her. She had convinced him that he should cajole Wally into joining them on patrol one night. But they had underestimated the effect of the meta-gene on the Infected. Tired and weakened, Wally hadn't been fast enough. He had been bitten.

Barbara had taken over work on the cure as Artemis had watched over Wally. There was a panic room in the building that they used as a cell (they had learned from previous mistakes) where they kept him. Artemis had insisted on staying in there with him. Talking to him for hours, trying to stop all of his memories from fading. But there was nothing that she could do.

Wally had looked up at her with those horrible red eyes, baring his teeth and growling. She had backed up against the wall in fear, but she still refused to leave the room. She stared him in the eyes, trying to find any part of her boyfriend that remained. But there wasn't any. All that was left was a monster that wore Wally's face.

When he had leapt at her, she had reacted on instinct. Dick had insisted that she keep her crossbow on her if she was going to stay with Wally. Later, she wasn't sure if she was glad or miserable that he had. All she knew was that she had put an arrow through her boyfriend's eye.

Artemis startled awake, gasping for breath and disorientated. After a moment, she brought her breathing back under control, reassured that she was in her room in Wayne Towers and that she was safe. Relatively.

In the middle of winter the corporate building was freezing, but Artemis could feel the cold sweat on her skin. She was trembling violently, and as she reached for the bottle of water beside her camp bed she accidently knocked it on the floor. She squeezed her eyes tightly closed and tried to force her shivering body to still. When that didn't work, she climbed onto shaky feet, collecting up a cardigan to wrap around her shoulders.

Shell shock. Survivor's guilt. Whatever it was called that kept her awake at night; there was only one thing that she knew that could stop the shakes. Her feet knew the way there automatically, which she was glad for as all her brain seemed capable of doing was replaying that last moment with Wally over and over again.

She pushed open the door to Dick's room, pausing at the threshold as she watched him caught in the horrors of his own nightmares. He thrashed about on his bed, his covers long ago strewn on the carpet, Romani gibberish escaping between low groans of pain. Quietly, she closed the door behind her and made her way over to his bed, perching herself on the thin mattress beside him. Instantly, Dick had the knife that he kept under his pillow in his hand and swinging at her, but she caught his arm.

"Dick, is me…" she whispered as his blue eyes gradually cleared of the haze of restless sleep. He blinked up at her, and then realised what he was doing and let her take the knife off of him.

"Another nightmare, Arty?" Dick muttered, pushing himself upright so that he was leaning against the wall. "You know it wasn't your fault."

Artemis scowled. "Just like what happened to Bruce wasn't your fault?"

Dick looked away. They both had demons that they carried. There was no way not to when trapped in a reality like this one. Without a word, Artemis lay down beside him and rested her head against his shoulder, drawing in his warmth. She imagined what Wally would think if he could see her now, cuddling with his best friend. She didn't think that he'd mind. She and Dick weren't like that – they were friends that had been through hell but hadn't quite found the exit yet.

"In two days, it's really going to be over, isn't it?" Artemis asked, breaking the silence.

She felt Dick sigh beneath her, his hand automatically coming up to play with her hair as he held her. "One way or another," he replied distantly.

"Is it bad that I don't mind which one?"

"No," Dick said after a moment. "It's been tough and we're just exhausted now. We need this to end."

Artemis thought he was understating that just a little bit. After everything the past year had thrown at them, 'tough' nowhere near covered it. They had been put through the wringer, both physically and emotionally. They simply couldn't take anything else. Any ending would be a blessing.

As they lay there together in companionable silence, Artemis' eyes drifted to the digital clock beside the bed. It was already two in the morning. She smiled sadly and nudged Dick.

"Hey Grayson… Merry Christmas."

So… depressing and angsty enough for you? Please remember that it is the season of good will and all and leave me a nice review rather than the declarations of hate I am expecting for killing Wally (Oh… and Batman… and a few others…) Hmmm… maybe I'm being optimistic…

See you tomorrow for a Xmas Update!