A/N: I've seen quite a few stories with Carriers and decided, hey, might as well jump on the bandwagon. Enjoy!

"Are you equipped for Carriers?"

"Affirmative."

She'd had a bad feeling from the moment she'd heard those words. Of course she'd had a bad feeling. She'd seen all the graffiti on the walls, although she wasn't entirely sure how much of it she believed. It all seemed like stuff from a stupid video game or movie, Carriers and Infected. But then again, crying girls with claws, hoodied men who'd rip you apart, bodybuilders who'd bash you into the ground again and again and again until your bones broke and you screamed and sobbed all seemed unreal, too. None of it could be real and yet it all was. That didn't stop her from approaching the idea of Carriers and the government's relation to them with a measured amount of healthy skepticism. But the words of these men had just confirmed that Carriers existed…and it scared her. She was glad Nick hadn't heard it – he'd insist they turn back.

Nick: "Or maybe they'll back us up against a wall and shoot us."

She shivered.

"What's goin' on, little sister?" Coach asked as they ran up behind her.

"There's a chopper at the end of the bridge!" she said, a bit too loudly to drown out the arguments and worries in her head. "We've got ten minutes to reach it. So run like hell!" At the last word she slammed her fist into the button to bring down the bridge and started their trip to either salvation or hell.

And they ran.

All but ignoring the Infected around them, they tore across the bridge frantically, desperate for a chance to live. They only shot when they had to, but explosions from pipe bombs were everywhere. Through their yelling and running Rochelle heard someone (not someone, it was her, she hadn't even been aware she was shouting) scream "throw the bile bomb at the damned TANK!" just seconds before someone did and the rotten monster was ripped apart by its own kind. Rochelle, for once, was grotesquely thankful for the zombies. Between trying not to get pushed off the bridge by a Tank or walked off the bridge by a Jockey, she didn't have time to worry about things like Carriers or graffiti. All the thought her mind had room for was swing the axe swing the axe ..

"I see it!" Ellis cried hopefully, and her head whipped to the right just long enough for her to see it, too. The copter. The heli-fucking-copter! They were saved, they were—they were saved if they could reach it before the zombies killed them. They were saved if they weren't Carriers. They were saved if, if, if, too many ifs. She stopped, dead in her tracks, for the shortest of moments.

Mama: "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

But then Nick was shouting with joy she hadn't known he'd been capable of feeling, and pushing her forward, and she was running purely because that was all she knew how to do anymore. Run and shoot and swing the axe like a fucking madwoman.

Maybe she was mad.

Maybe she was…

.

.

.

.

She kept running.

When all this shit had began and he'd first seen the graffiti, Nick had had a dark premonition. He was a Carrier. He believed it but didn't know it. He just…abruptly thought that he was. At first, he'd hoped he was wrong. He'd hoped that, if anyone had to be a Carrier, had to be executed, it be one of the bastards that were with him. That chatty hick or the fat black guy or that bitch with the horrible sense of humor. But now…now that he knew said hick, black guy, and bitch, he almost preferred it that he be the one who was killed by the government, by anything or anyone at all. His friends…they had lives, chances. They were good people. They deserved life infinitely more than he did.

But he still remembered the premonition.

So when the helicopter picked them up and took them straight to a cruise ship, when he heard that there would be diagnostic tests and experiments, this and that, and that they'd finally find out if they were Carriers or not, he was less than ecstatic. He didn't want to know if he was a Carrier, and he didn't want to know if they were, either. He was scared out of his fucking mind of coming this far only to find out that he would be killed anyway, and that that was best because if he wasn't killed he'd hurt others.

He didn't want to know.

He didn't get a choice.

Coach went first, no sign of fear in his eyes while they waited in a cold, bleached white room. The air tasted sickeningly like Pledge and Windex. Regardless, there was no sign of fear in Coach's eyes, no sign of anything. He just walked right on into the doctor's room and came back fourty-five minutes later with a grin and a pat on the back for all of them and an exclamation of, "I'm clean!"

Ellis went second. There was definitely fear in his eyes, and it made Nick nervous. When a kid as happy and Ellis starts getting scared, it's enough to make anyone jumpy. Ellis looked like a deer about to get mowed over by a semi. It would have been comical if it wasn't so depressing. He walked into the room, and Nick focused on the smell of the disinfectant-flavored air.

Coach had already left to get showered and clean, so it was Rochelle and Nick, alone in the sterile, bleached white silence of the waiting room that left no room for emotions or talk, each waiting to find out if they'd be allowed to live, or if they'd be sentenced to death for a crime they hadn't wanted to commit. She was looking at the walls, at the ceiling, anything. Anything. Anything but him. She looked scared, too.

That made him scared, and abruptly he had a contingency plan. Something he wanted, badly, to do if he was…if he had to die. It would be on his terms, dammit, he'd make sure of it. Even if it was damn selfish to ask.

"Ro?"

"Huh?" Her head snapped to look at him quickly, eyes wide and panicked for a very brief moment, as though she was shocked he'd broken the silence. As though this was somehow more frightening than the zombies. Then she forced her face into a mask of indifference. He wondered why she even bothered. "Yeah?"

"I…how should I ask this…" he wiped his hand along his bottom lip to remove some blood there, thinking about the words he would use. He sighed. No matter what he said, it was gonna offend her, dammit. "You know that…if any of us are Carriers, they'll probably…" he trailed off, unable to finish, not liking the way the captured-rabbit look returned to her eyes.

Then again, his expression probably looked the same.

She gulped. "…Kills us, right?"

"…Yeah," he said, unwillingly, wishing he hadn't brought it up at all. Wishing he'd kept his fat mouth shut. Wishing he wasn't making this harder for both of them. But it was started now and he still wanted to ask, wanted to know, wanted her to do this one single thing. He respected her more than the others; she was the only one who could do this for him.

"Well, I was wondering if you'd do me a favor."

"What?"

"If… I am infected, I'd rather not…I don't want to get shot and killed by some military bastard I don't even know…I'd rather…" he trailed off as her eyes widened, abruptly realizing what it was he wanted in a moment of slow, horrible comprehension. Her expression filtered through shock, resentment, hopelessness and despair before finally settling on rage. She shook her head violently back and forth.

"No. No, no, no, no. No way in hell. No."

"Ro! I don't want to die like some sort of animal at the hands of a butcher, okay?"

"Oh, yeah, and you'd rather die at the hands of your friend? You'd rather, you'd rather ask your friend to put herself through the guilt of knowing she killed you? How selfish are you? How could you even ask—?" her voice cut off abruptly and she slumped back into her chair, suddenly exhausted. "No," she said again with quiet desperation. "No."

Nick glanced away from her, abruptly angry at her, from tiredness and refusal and because he was guilty, and the guilt just pissed him off more. One little favor, that was all he was asking. One. It's not like she'd be any different. If she had to choose between dying at the hands of miscellaneous soldiers or at the hands of her close friend, who would she choose? He knew perfectly well who she'd pick to do the honors; she'd choose him.

She interrupted his thoughts by speaking, and she sounded exhausted. "There's no such thing as a mercy kill, Nick. They don't exist. As long as you can live, keep on living." Her voice cracked. "I'm going to keep you alive as long as possible, and I'm definitely not…not going to kill you."

He stood up to either scream or comfort, guilty to be upsetting her and still angry that she'd refused his request when Ellis walked from the doctor's room. He grinned. "Hey y'all, I'm all clear!" he exclaimed. Rochelle did a fantastic job of making herself appear happy and hiding her distress, her nearness to tears – how many times has she wanted to cry, die, how many times has she been so depressed she felt like she was disappearing and she covered it up with that damn smile– and said to Ellis, "I'm so happy for you, hon!"

"Yea-uh!" Ellis said with a grin, punching the air and giving a small hop. Rochelle laughed. "I'm s'posed to go get showered and cleaned up now, but if you guys want me to, I'll stay here and wait for ya."

"It's alright. You can go, we'll be fine," she said with a wide, close-eyed smile to Ellis. It was so sincere and convincing that Ellis walked away, completely sure he was doing the right thing, and Nick growled in irritation, his anger at her flaring back up.

"Why do you always—"

"Nicolas Conway?" The doctor's voice cut his words short, and Nick and Rochelle both looked towards the doctor in the doorway. He looked like he was a kind man, a bit old, his once brown hair beginning to gray. His smile was friendly and comforting as he looked at them from inside the room, but he also appeared exhausted and tired. Like he'd been doing this for a very long time.

Like he'd sentenced several people to death and already.

"That'd be me," Nick said.

"Well then, come on in, and let's get you all fixed up and checked out," the doctor said sympathetically, looking at his many injuries. Nick's eyes flashed to Rochelle, who slumped tiredly in her chair, hunched over, staring at her knees, no longer bothering with her façade. No longer bothering at all. She was just as scared as he was.

As Nick was led into the room, he remembered his premonition, and both his anger at Rochelle and his guilt for hurting her feelings evaporated in an instant to be replaced by cold, desperate fear.

He glanced back at her just as the door closed long enough to see her staring at him, expression horrified and hopeless all at once.

Rochelle wasn't much a fan of being alone, or of silence. She liked quiet and she didn't care for large crowds, but the extreme opposites offended her, too. Silence reminded her of funerals. Then again, wasn't this, couldn't it be, a funeral? She laughed quietly, halfway hysterically, eager to do anything at all to break the silence.

No, Rochelle didn't like silence at all. She absolutely hated it.

She sat in the waiting room, covered in bruises and cuts, sore and wishing for any sort of sound. Even Nick yelling at her, asking her to kill him, of all things, was preferable to complete silence.

Well, maybe not preferable, but it wasn't any worse.

She sniffled softly, the tears she'd restrained for Ellis flowing down her cheeks like silent suicide marchers. These weren't all for Nick; hell no, she wouldn't cry just because of Nick. These were for her, for all the people she'd killed, for all the times she'd thought she was going to die, for all the time she'd thought Ellis or Nick or Coach were going to die, for all the times she'd thought that maybe, just maybe, there was something familiar in this zombie's face, maybe I knew him before, that was my friend's face – and then having to blow that face to smithereens. She was crying from pure exhaustion, from a million things gone wrong, because she just needed to cry.

Nick asking her to mercy kill him was merely the straw that broke the camel's back.

She sniffled again, more to break the silence than because of her tears.

She glanced at the door again, wishing Nick would come out and tell her that all his worry was unnecessary, that he wasn't a Carrier, so it was all okay, everything was a-o-kay. She didn't know if she'd be able to say no to his morbid request if he was a Carrier in reality. It would break her heart, but it was the kind thing to do, in that case. Could she really call herself a friend if she couldn't even grant his last request?

She sighed again, slumping farther into the chair.

Until now, she'd rarely thought of being a Carrier herself. The thought, horrifying and repulsive, had occurred to her only while reading graffiti or when she heard it mentioned. She'd pushed it away because it would make her hopeless and depressed, the very idea of coming this far and then knowing she'd have to die to protect a hundred, a thousand, a million others would have drained her of the will she needed to fight. And really, if she was a Carrier, would she be any different than Nick? Would she be able to resist asking for him to pretty please, kill me?

Graffiti: "The only good Carrier is a dead Carrier."

She let out another strangled sob and forced herself to think about something, anything else.

Her eyes flicked from the doorway to the floor. This felt like it was taking forever. Longer, even. She and Nick fought frequently, but she still didn't want him or anyone else to be a Carrier, to be killed for it after coming so far. It was horrifying. Horrifying that her friend, her best friend, maybe even more, might be killed for a crime he had never realized he'd committed. Maybe, if he was a Carrier, killing him would be the humane thing. Maybe she should…

She shook her head violently although it made the muscles in her neck hurt. No. After all this, he had to keep pushing to survive, he just had to. They all had to. None of them could take the coward's way out after all they'd been through. She wouldn't let him, dammit!

But would I be any different?

The thought physically hurt, and she cringed. Yes, there was a question worth wondering about, the one she'd been avoiding. She hated to think it, but she needed to. Would she, if she was a Carrier, want to let someone kill her? Would she want it to be Nick? The second one she answered yes to, but she couldn't decide an answer for the first. She liked to believe she'd keep trying to fight, to escape. Somehow. But what she liked to think and what she believed weren't always the same.

If she was a Carrier, she'd have to be killed. So wouldn't it make sense for her to want to be killed by someone she cared about? That would be the best way to go, as horrifically selfish it would be to actually ask that of someone.

Maybe she'd rather just be taken back to one of those God-awful cities or that swamp or something, where at least she could go out fighting, with a bit of dignity, knowing she hadn't asked anyone else to kill her and knowing she hadn't just let herself die. But no, after escaping that hell once, going back would be…

She heard the sound of a door opening, a muttered "Thanks, Doc," and her head whipped to look.

Nick was walking out of the room. She breathed a sigh of relief to have the silence broken at last and to be saved from her thoughts, but then noticed the deep frown on his face. She gasped, horrified, understanding the meaning behind that expression. He was a Carrier, oh God he was a Carrier, they were going to kill him, Oh God—

"I'm immune."

Her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates at his words, and she let out a surprised, choked sob. She glanced at the doctor, standing in the door, and he nodded to confirm Nick's words. Nick smiled.

"Why-why were you frowning?" she asked, forcing her way past the shock and despair, trying not to cry and succeeding only mildly.

"Huh?" He gave a shaky, uncertain, but above all relieved laugh, and she thought he might have been crying, too. "Oh. Doc here confiscated my weapons. It feels…strange, not having them." He laughed again. "How sick is it that not having a gun is what makes me nervous?"

Rochelle didn't reply, merely stared at him uncomprehendingly. She wanted to burst into loud sobs and hug the living daylights out of him, kiss him, even. She felt like collapsing, and let out an uncertain, shaky breath. Her body slumped back in her chair and she moaned. Nick's eyes widened.

"Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

"Nothing!" she said with a hysterical laugh-sob. "I'm just happy you're okay."

"Um, excuse me, Rochelle Goodette?" The doctor was interrupting, perhaps sensing that if she remained near to Nick any longer she'd lose her mind. Rochelle nodded and pushed herself out of the chair, abruptly relieved to get this over with. It was almost over. She tried to convince herself that this story would have a happy ending. Of course she wouldn't be a Carrier – what were the chances? Certainly not high. She practically strolled into the doctor's office with only the slightest stiffness of forced movement, only the slightest hint that she may have been acting. As she entered, she glanced back at Nick, and his expression was just frightened enough to make her a little scared, too.

Nick should have gone and showered up, but he slumped in the same chair Rochelle had used earlier, waiting anxiously for her return. Someone had to; it would suck for her to get out and be alone. Ellis had stopped by earlier with Coach to ask about the progress, and he had told them that he was clean and Ro was getting checked out. Ellis and Coach had offered to stay and wait for her, too, but Nick was tired and short-tempered and had asked to be left alone with words that were only slightly unkind. They had obliged his request.

So he waited, not patiently, but he waited, mulling over his own immunity. His premonition had been wrong. He wasn't a Carrier. He wouldn't have to be killed to keep a million other people safe. He got to live. It was all insane to consider, an impossibly happy ending after a story that hadn't shown any sign of a happy ending being possible.

He was going to live.

After all he'd been through, he could live in peace with his friends. Once the military wiped out the Infection, life could go on. And he'd do his damdest to live a hell of a lot better than he had been before. He'd make his life mean something.

His mind was too tired to focus on one topic for long, so it switched to another.

He felt guilty for worrying Rochelle, for freaking her out so much over something that proved to be irrelevant, unnecessary in the long run. Asking her to kill him had no doubt not improved her already frayed mental state. Hadn't done much for his, either. Undoubtedly she'd have a few choice words for him when her appointment was over.

If she's not a Carrier, that is.

His eyes flickered back to the door, and he wiped his face to get the dirt off. Man, he could not wait for a shower. Maybe he'd invite Ro to join him. He chuckled, then sighed.

Please oh please, do not be a Carrier.

He didn't want her to be a Carrier. He didn't want any of them to be Carriers. He wanted all of them to survive and live happy lives. He'd grown to care a lot about this ragtag group of misfits, even though they were all annoying as hell at the beginning. Actually, they were still annoying as hell. He stared at the door that blocked her from his view, and found himself praying to god he no longer believed in that she'd be okay.

His head lolled to the side, and he found himself exhausted. When this was all over, he was going to sleep for an extremely long time. He'd invite Ro to join him for that, too. Well, maybe not just for that.

She will be fine.

He told himself that a million times but wasn't sure if he believed it.

He fought to keep his eyes open and wait for her, not to sleep when she emerged. He was unsuccessful and found himself trapped in a frightening nightmare where he discovered a crying witch with dark skin and dark hair and beautifully dark, frightened eyes. He approached her slowly while Ellis yelled at him to get away from the damn witch. He ignored him. She needed something. She needed the pain to stop. Maybe he could… She gasped, looked into the barrel of the gun he was pointing at her head, then killed him when he couldn't pull the trigger.

He was woken up, disoriented for a brief second, reaching for a gun he no longer had. It took him a moment to realize it was merely the sound of a door opening that had broken his restless sleep . His eyes flicked to Rochelle's face, anxiously wanting to see her expression. It would give him all the answer he needed, and he knew it.

She was smiling.

He was filled with blinding joy immediately. He felt himself be filled up with warmth at this happy knowledge – they were getting a fairytale ending. Perfect. Everyone living happily ever after. He wanted to kiss her, to walk right up to her and kiss her hard on the lips and hold her tight and make love to her and –

Then he noticed that she had her gun in her right hand, swinging by her hips as she walked to him. He glanced up at her face to ask the reason she had been allowed to keep it just as she reached him, but before he could get a word out she put the gun roughly in his hands and, with a catch in her voice that made him want to cry, said, "I'm about to be a hypocrite, Nick."

And he took the gun but didn't shoot.

"Do it."

"But I—"

"Please."

Click.

"NOW!"

One of them screamed.

Bang.