Grab My Bags And Go

By: Jondy Macmillan

A/N: This right here has been floating around LJ for a loooong time now. The big thing over there is apocalypse!AUs, and I wanted to do one of my own way back when. So this would be it- My Very Lazy Apoca!fic AKA Kendall Is A Pirate And James Is A Princess. The premise is based on the Young Adult book River Rats by Caroline Stevermer. Which- okay, I haven't actually read it in like, three or four years, and I've got a memory like a steel sieve. Bad joke, bad joke. Point being, the only things I know for sure that I directly drew from the novel are the ferry boat and traveling band and the thing about treasure. There might have been river rot in it, but it definitely didn't create zombies, and I can't remember either way. So let's call it a very, very loose interpretation of the book, and guarantee that it won't ruin anything for you if you're planning on reading it and don't want spoilers.

Kendall doesn't remember the day the world began to change. He's barely three at the time. But his mother tells stories, about clean, fresh air and the way the water used to sparkle in the sunlight. She has pictures of her honeymoon with his dad; standing on the white, sandy shores of Greece, a patterned sarong flapping around her legs and a smile that looks joyous and familiar, even though Kendall has never seen his mom wear it.

Privately, he thinks maybe that smile is his earliest memory. That once, before the Change, she smiled at him like that. And maybe he can't remember it exactly, but he wants it to be true.

At first, after everything goes wrong, Kendall's mom does her best to keep the family together. The wasteland of middle America gets deader and more frozen by the second. By the time Kendall's dad dies from the plague, like old time pioneers they've begun a trek towards the coast, towards LA, where the weather is milder, where the destruction isn't supposed to be so bad.

They stick together with the Garcia clan, because Mrs. Knight and Mr. Garcia are old friends from high school and because Carlos has been Kendall's best friend since before he could form real words, and because the thought of making the trip alone is terrifying.

The ramifications of what have happened still aren't clear, and there are too many nights where Kendall remembers snuggling beneath a threadbare blanket with Carlos and Katie and Carlos's brood of siblings like puppies in a pile, his mother and Carlos's father building garbage can fires using the spark plugs from cars and deadened twigs, a revolver clutched in the older man's hand. It's like the Change hasn't only destroyed the world, but people's sanity, and Mr. Garcia is the only one who can save them.

They reach California expecting the streets to be paved with gold, but instead they end up building a home in a graffiti sprayed subway car, wondering if this is all that will be left of their lives.

Kendall spends his adolescence scavenging for whatever he can find. Old cans of food or jewelry or books or metal or wood; anything good for trading. There are entire monopolies on clean water, or, well, clean is probably a misnomer. While his mom and Carlos's dad are busy protecting their home from bandits and raising the kids to be the kind of good, upstanding citizens children were meant to be back in the old days, Kendall and Carlos are ransacking the remains of human civilization.

It's rough going, being kids, being tiny and weak. But their stature gives them an advantage over burly adult treasure hunters. They can reach all the spaces that no one else can. And they learn to be fast. To spot the first signs of danger and run like hell when it comes calling.

Kendall grows up on the barter system. He learns all the key players, from the warlords of Rodeo to the tribunal of Topanga Canyon. And he's good at bargaining.

They survive the best way they know how.

Carlos is crazy. He likes to try to bungee jump off buildings and sling shot himself through the territory of highwaymen for kicks, to see if he's really deathproof.

Kendall usually goes along with it, because what's the point of living if you don't actually live?

Kendall is on a scavenging mission when he runs into the Mitchells, a coincidence that feels like destiny. James Diamond is hiding behind their legs. His parents died in the first wave, and he and Logan were neighbors, best friends, back home.

It's weird, seeing people he knows distantly from their small town in Minnesota on the sunny streets of California, like maybe in another world he might have grown up and become friends with these guys the normal way.

He likes the sentiment.

He likes the guys even better.

Carlos has always been good with his hands, and Kendall has never had a problem venturing into areas that most people don't dare go near. Buildings with faulty foundations and corroded bridges and territory that's gained notoriety for freaky shit, like cannibalism. But Logan makes the whole thing safer with his knowledge of all things science and math and building inspection. He devours every ratty old book they can find, all in the interest of safety. And James is good in his own way too; he has a knack for knowing where people hid their valuables before the fall, and amazing instincts.

Plus he's stealthier than Carlos has ever managed to be, which makes him a great wingman.

James is also the orphan of their group. The only one who doesn't have anyone left.

Maybe its Kendall's big brother instincts kicking in, but even though James is older, tougher, surlier, Kendall makes an effort to make sure he's never lonely. To make sure he knows that he isn't the only person left on the face of the Earth.

Because sometimes it feels like that, even to Kendall, who has his mom and his baby sister, who has people who share his blood. When he walks along streets strewn with overturned buses and broken glass, he feels like maybe he is the only person alive.

When they turn thirteen, James begins to have nightmares. He wakes up screaming at the top of his lungs. The subway car isn't all that big, and Carlos's siblings get tetchy without sleep. At first, Kendall makes James stay up with him, long after the others have retired, telling stories and jokes and trying to keep his mind off of whatever it was that he saw the day his parents died.

It doesn't help, not all that much.

But one night they drift off while talking in front of the fire, the sparks flying up to the sky like even they want to escape this damned land. Kendall wakes up with their legs tangled, his face buried in James's chest and the realization that they slept well past dawn without a single incident.

Kendall starts to keep his bunk next to James's, scooting the blankets closer and closer each night until they're so close together that nobody can tell where Kendall ends and James begins. He sees his mom watching him sometimes, in the mornings, when he begins the process of figuring out which limbs belong to him. Her lips thin and her eyes question, but she never says anything. Everyone is happy to have nights free of screams.

They all have enough of that in their memories.

So yeah, he and the guys become best friends. But sometimes, Kendall doesn't know what to do with all that closeness. He's standing at the end of the world, and sometimes he just can't tolerate the only people he has left. Days like those, he goes off exploring on his own.

When Kendall's close to fourteen, he finds an old guitar in the ruins of an apartment building. He usually doesn't let himself bring home things that hold no worth, but all he can think of is his dad, and the way he used to cradle Kendall in his lap, strumming the chords while he hummed little nonsense songs.

It's another of Kendall's earliest memories, like that smile of his mom's that's haunted him like a ghost.

Kendall takes the battered thing out of the wreckage, and he spends the next two years hunting down an assortment of strings, nylon and metal and whatever he can find. He teaches himself how to play, and he's reasonably sure that what he likes to call music wouldn't have stood up to a strong wind back when America did a booming trade in pop stars and independent rock, rap and house and country strong songs. But now it's all he has, and he finds out quick that the neighbors don't mind a little nightly entertainment either.

And then he finds out that some of them are even willing to pay.

He makes a show out of it. James has a voice like an angel, and Logan's pretty good at counting out beats, and Carlos is an amazing dancer. For a little while, they're their area's premier entertainment. But people can only stand the same show night after night for so long, and there's only so much to trade when nobody ever really leaves their ten block radius.

"Why can't we keep performing for free?" Logan asks, because Logan is naive, and sees the good in all people, and he likes to help without asking anything in return.

None of them even bother to dignify that with a response.

Without trading, how are they supposed to survive?

Kendall knows they have to take the show on the road.

He just isn't sure how.

Carlos is the one who finds the ferry boat, a tourist attraction that's been left to rust on the shores of some private beach. It's a miracle no one has scrapped it for wood yet, or made it into a home. Kendall doesn't fool himself into thinking anyone will be stupid enough to try to sail it, not when the water is a kind of poison in itself.

But Kendall has always been pretty stupid.

When Carlos shows him the ferry, Kendall knows what he has to do. He refuses to leave. He forces one of his friends to stand guard at all times, to watch the old boat through the night. They work on it whenever they have the chance, patching the holes and waterproofing what they can.

Logan spends days explaining how much of an idiot Kendall is, expounding upon how they're all going to die. But eventually he caves, with a pathetic whimper of, "I need new friends."

The problem with Logan is that he doesn't have creative vision. Kendall does. He sees. He knows.

The highways are massive blockades of cars and weeds. Travel on foot takes ages, and there's always the threat of patrols, renegade groups of bandits and vandals and thieves who charge a toll that you have to pay if you like breathing. Most people pay. The bodies of those who don't dangle off the sides of overpasses, warnings for all to see.

It wouldn't be safe, taking a traveling show on the road with the risk of ending up a corpse.

No one ever risks the waterways though. It's genius.

Which is how Kendall becomes a privateer, sailing up and down the coast of California, trading songs for food and clean water and whatever he and his friends can get.

It's one of the more dangerous occupations out there. His mom doesn't really approve.

Kendall doesn't really give her a choice.

See, the rivers and oceans are considered wastelands for a reason. It isn't worth it, becoming a monster. That's what everyone says.

If a person falls in, they became a Shell. A body past its expiration date. People say death is almost immediate, but no one ever gets close enough to a splasher to see when exactly their eyes turn glassy.

Mostly, Shells are harmless. They crawl up out of their primordial soup and wander the streets of Los Angeles in their vague, shambling manner until whatever has sparked their life evaporates.

Then they fall down dead. Like road kill.

After a couple days in the ridiculously hot sun, they rot away; ding dong, just like the wicked witch of the west.

The Wizard of Oz was one of Kendall's favorite movies as a kid. He remembers watching it over and over and over again on the portable TV Mr. Garcia scavenged. Kendall has this thing about rainbows.

Anyway, point is, the whole accelerated rate of decay thing is kind of disgusting, and lord knows no one even thinks of touching the accursed things for fear the disease might spread on contact, but you know; they don't hurt anybody.

River rot is only a danger to those with poor balance or a penchant for splashing. Shells are harmless.

Except for the ones who aren't.

See, some of them are hungry. Vociferously so.

They can tear a man to pieces in seconds.

The best comparison Kendall has ever heard of are zombies, the one time he stayed up with Carlos when they were way too young and watched a pilfered movie about the jerky, horrifying dead until Mr. Garcia woke and threatened to throw the TV against the wall.

He isn't sure if those things are real, but if they are, the river rot is probably from the same viral strain.

So yeah. Everyone avoids the water, until him, and his friends, and their ferry. At least, that's what he thinks at first.

Later, Kendall discovers that actually, he doesn't have a monopoly on courage, and that pirates are willing to sail the high seas, to pillage the ruins of America straightaway to China to keep up with the trade. But it takes him a while to figure that out.

Most days, when it's early still, Kendall sits on the deck of the ferry, as close as he dares to the water's spray, daydreaming about the stars. They're supposed to be beautiful. He's seen pictures, but he has a feeling that some flat, captured image isn't really an accurate representation.

Like the paintings he's seen of the sunset over Los Angeles's toxic bay, Kendall figures the colors will never be as vibrant, as overwhelming as they are in person. Like the one time he heard James's singing captured on one of the bootleg plastic contraptions people pass off as music players, and his voice sounded tinny and small, nothing like real life.

James meets a girl in town when they're sixteen, a nomad traveling through from the outskirts of the city when they've stopped home to make a delivery.

He's the first of them to lose his virginity.

Kendall doesn't know at first, that it's going to happen that way.

He does know that there's a party in a safe zone, far enough from the docks that the risk of running into ravenous Shells is low but also far enough from the main roads that they won't get any gate crashers from any of the warring tribes. Probably.

He knows he watches James dance around her the entire night, and sometimes Kendall sees the way his hand slides possessively across her hips, the way she leans into him, cleavage spilling from her dress and he feels bootleg liquor coming back up his throat. He thinks he must be jealous.

The last time he kissed a girl was two years ago and she told him he was kind of odd looking and maybe a little bit insane, but James draws girls in like flies because he's charming and funny and handsome and strong. He's rough when they're on a job, but at home he's always laughing and smiling like maybe he hasn't realized what a brutal bitch the world is.

Kendall tries to do the same, but the last time he attempted a genuine smile his sister asked him what was wrong with his face.

He doesn't think much more about it, about James and the girl, until the next day when he wakes up, head on James's shoulder and he realizes he doesn't remember James ever coming to bed.

When James wakes up he's glowing, and Kendall sees a bruise on his neck but it's not the kind of bruise that you get from a fight and he somehow just knows.

He gives it up to some girl in Palo Alto a few weeks later, because he feels like he's lost a competition he didn't know they were having.

Sex is this thing that they don't really talk about, not ever.

Carlos and Logan start hooking up on Carlos's seventeenth birthday. At first, it seems to be a comfort thing. God knows, Carlos has propositioned Kendall more than once, and he turned him down because the feel of Carlos's mouth on his is hot and brain numbing but still somehow wrong, the way Kendall imagines kissing Katie would be.

Kendall isn't sure, afterwards, if Carlos approaches James the same way. With a quick grin and short speech about the nights being cold and him having all that Latin fire in his veins.

The thought makes him irritable for an entire week, even after he realizes that Carlos has gone to Logan. It bothers him right up until they have a run in with some Shells outside a storage warehouse, the kind that don't like to play dead, and have very sharp teeth. Logan nearly goes down that day; one of those things tears him a hole in his calf the size of a human mouth, and Kendall still remembers the bright stain of his blood on dirty concrete.

They watch, careful, to see if Logan's caught a contagion, but he never develops any symptoms.

Afterwards, he and Carlos aren't just fucking, not anymore. Kendall's never sure if it's the recognition of his own mortality that makes Logan cave, or if there's something more, something he's missed all those nights Carlos and Logan stood guard outside of apartments and grocery stores, of office buildings and abandoned homes while Kendall and James pillaged the ruins of a once great nation. Kendall isn't privy to a thousand nights of conversation, a thousand days of looks and glances that could have meant more.

He doesn't know, and he's never known how to ask.

But they settle into a routine. The main cabin is officially designated as Kendall's room, and most days, he shares with James. They don't sleep in the same bed anymore, but Kendall is used to the rise and fall of his chest, shaded by moonlight. He's used to the rustle of sheets and the way, sometimes, if he listens really hard, James will murmur something like a name. He's never been able to make it out.

Logan and Carlos get regular sex, so it makes sense that they take up the hammocks in the dining room. Better sated and living like a grifter than hard up and sitting in the lap of luxury. It's a fair trade.

And just to be even fairer, Kendall gives them the room on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

He doesn't mind sleeping in the mess hall, as long as he can still hear James, murmuring nonsense words into the night.

Of course, things never stay simple. The early days of singing and trading and freedom with his friends can't last forever.

It starts with a girl. Carlos finds her, wandering the streets leading out of the city's limits. That's dangerous country, or at least, it's slightly more so than the norm. Everywhere is dangerous now.

Kendall is eighteen, and he barely remembers ever feeling safe.

They've sailed up to Caramel, Monterrey, and even the ruins of San Fran before, but Kendall doesn't think he has the balls to walk the distance. This girl, though, she's gutsy. Carlos brings her straight to Kendall, when he's in the midst of picking through the debris of a car dealership, trying to see if there's anything salvageable in the back offices.

The girl says she's searching for her father.

"And where'd he go?" Kendall asks, watching with calm composure as the girl, Jo, flinches away from him.

He doesn't really blame her. Kendall still remembers the first bandit he ever met, a highwayman who was both kind and cruel, worn and completely terrifying. Kendall had wanted to be nothing like him when he grew up.

But he knew he wouldn't have a choice.

When he looks in the mirror these days, he sees that man's face.

Jo recovers her wits, quick, and she says, "He went searching for Dak Zevon's treasure."

Dak Zevon allegedly is some kind of child star who'd been poised on the cusp of fame when everything went down. The story says that Dak's parents were like, conspiracy nuts, and they'd been preparing for the apocalypse ever since Dak had made his first cent.

Legend tells that he's a wealthy man in the new world; not because of gold or money or diamonds, but because of this mysterious cave stockpiled with food and clean water. Supposedly, there's a spring, fresh and unpolluted.

Of course, they say there's hidden treasure in Gustavo Rocque's mansion, too, at city center, where no one will go because it's a smidge too close to the no man's land, to the place where everything goes dark and dead.

But once Kendall heard Gustavo Rocque had fountains of water, fresh and bubbling on top of the gold and the expensive wiring and the food, he'd gone looking. He and the boys sought it out last year, and all they found was a fridge full of spoiled pudding.

So he doesn't give very much credence to the myth of Dak's wealth.

Kendall says as much, or would've, but Carlos beats him to the punch.

"We looked for Gustavo Rocque's mansion, once."

"Find anything?"

"Nope," Carlos hands her a dirty plastic bottle full of the brownish murk that passes as water. Before the Change it wouldn't have been deemed fit for human consumption, but like Kendall's music or the highway tolls, people make it work.

"Then we went looking for Rocque Records."

"Anything there?"

"Still negatory."

"Why would you want to find some crazy record producer's stash anyway? All he ever churned out were crappy boy bands. You guys look kind of like a crappy boy band, but-" she chews her lip, "-intimidating. So, okay, maybe not so much."

"We do sing," Kendall says amiably, "It's a living."

"Enough small talk," Carlos waves Kendall away, "Do you think your dad found the Zevon's little nest egg?"

"Subtle, Carlos, very subtle."

"Hey, there is a time for subtle, and it is obviously not now."

Jo frowns at both of them. Finally, hesitantly, she says, "I don't know. He's all I have, and it's been- weeks. I need to find him."

"Then we'll take you."

Kendall glares at Carlos, trying to put the full force of his authority behind it, "We'll what?"

"We'll. Take. Her," Carlos enunciates, and he doesn't even have the good sense to look properly scared of Kendall's expression, "She can't just walk up the coast. She'll never make it."

"How are you guys going to make it?" Jo cuts in, more than a bit incredulous.

She thinks they're psychotic when she sees the ferry.

"You want me to get on that- thing? Are you insane?"

"The accusation's been made before," Kendall agrees, shoving her forward.

"No way," Jo says, digging her heels into the dirt of the parking lot, staring at the rotted pier stretched out below the ladder with more than a little trepidation.

"I'm not particularly ecstatic about this either."

Carlos gives Kendall an admonishing look for his trouble, but he doesn't care. Girls are bad luck.

Logan told him once that they didn't let girls on ships back when the world was still new, because they brought down the wrath of the gods. Or distracted the sailors. Whatever.

And Kendall's mom has told him repeatedly how they broke up the best bands.

Jo seems nice, she does, but something about her makes his insides feel tight and the back of his neck prickle. He doesn't want to put his friends in harm's way for some stranger with a pretty mouth.

She does have a very pretty mouth.

Which doesn't stop Kendall from wondering if he'll be able to get away with throwing her overboard.

The crunch of gravel catches his attention, and he realizes it's too late. Logan and James are back.

"Heeey," James sidles up next to Kendall with a grin, "New girl."

Kendall makes a face and whispers, "She's one of Carlos's strays. She's not staying."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean she's not staying."

Before James can say anything else, Logan approaches the dock. His eyes fall upon Jo and he says, "Hey. New Girl."

Jo, of all things, looks to Kendall and says, "I take it you don't get many guests."

Kendall's about to say something kind of rude, but James elbows him in the stomach and Logan brings a foot down hard on his instep. Simultaneously.

So instead he turns and says, "Guys. This is Jo. Jo wants to find her dad."

"We live to serve," James tells her with a considerable amount of uncalled for charm, and Jo smiles.

"You really don't have to."

"But we want to," Logan says.

"And not just for the treasure," Carlos jumps in. Kendall groans.

It takes half an hour to convince her ferry is safe enough to board.

It takes another thirty minutes for her to decide the decaying pier is okay to walk on.

Kendall thinks they could have been halfway to Catalina by now. Whatever.

It's not that he doesn't like Jo. She has beautiful eyes and a kind smile, and it has been a very, very long time.

But Kendall is a creature of habit. And lately, things have been getting out of hand.

Back when they first set sail, when they were performing for groups of straggly haired refugees, the smog filtered sunlight shining off of James's hair as he sang, as they all danced and twirled like whirling dervishes to Carlos's choreography, as Logan counted time with every beat of his fingers, Kendall had thought that maybe life used to be something like this, something good.

Things have changed since Carlos and Logan got together.

He feels like all of that is slipping away. He doesn't know why, and he doesn't know how to stop it.

He doesn't think he can take one more unknown element in their unstable lives.

James confronts Kendall up in the pilot house, squished among the tarnished controllers and Frankensteined electronics that Logan has stripped and rigged as needed.

"You can't kick her out into the world. She'll die."

"I don't see why that's my problem," Kendall says, and he doesn't even have to look at James to know he's staring at him with something akin to horror.

"Really? Not at all? Not even a little bit?"

"No."

Kendall refuses to turn around and let James see how he's gnawing at his lip, biting so hard he drew blood a minute before.

"Okay, this whole ruthless act? It's getting old. Fast. I get that you think a good leader has to be strong and fearless or whatever, but dude, we don't need a leader anymore. We're big boys. We can take care of ourselves. And we need our friend back."

"I'm still your friend."

"Really? Cause it doesn't feel like that. You've been freaked out since we raided Rocque's place last year."

Kendall winces, but he doesn't turn, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles are turning white.

James isn't entirely wrong.

When they'd gone looking for Gustavo's Rocque's mansion, Kendall had been hoping there was a way to break free of the system, to find enough clean water to keep his family safe from the threats and the protection fees and the constant risk of death. Knowing the warlords in control of Los Angeles isn't enough, not anymore. There isn't enough drinkable water to go around, and the fees are skyrocketing, and people are dying in the streets, every day.

They survive because of Kendall's vision, because of the music he makes with his friends. But one day even that won't be enough. One day people will have to choose to be bored and alive or entertained and- well.

"You used to be kind," James says, "A bit morally bankrupt, but kind. You used to give a shit about people."

"I still-"

"People other than us," and oh, Kendall has heard this lecture before, from his mother, the last time they stopped off at home. How he loved things, once, for the sake of being in love.

Kendall doesn't remember what it's like to love things just because. His mom says when he was little, before the change, his heart was wide open. He knows she doesn't mean anything by it; it's just a story about a little boy who wished good will towards men and women and children all things that lived.

A little boy who might've grown up to be good and strong and true.

But every time he hears it, he thinks what she's really saying is that his heart is shut, closed to the world. That he doesn't love anything unless he has a really good reason; blood or money or power.

He didn't like it then and he doesn't like hearing it now any better.

"Thanks, mom. I'll think on it."

"You do that," James rolls his eyes; he can feel it without even looking.

"Why do you even care, anyway?"

"Aside from the fact that I retain my humanity? She's got no one else, Kendall. Not anybody. And I know what that feels like."

"You had me," Kendall says, and he hates knowing it hasn't been enough, not really.

Kids need their parents. The world is a shitty place without them.

"I had you," James agrees, and after a beat adds, "And Logan and Carlos, and the Mitchells, the Garcias, and your mom. Katie. I still have all of you. Jo doesn't."

Kendall frowns.

"There's still time to stage a mutiny, you know."

"Like that would happen."

"You never know," James says, and there's something serious about his tone that makes Kendall shiver.

He feels James press his hand between his shoulder blades, long fingered and firm.

Long after James leaves the pilot house, Kendall can feel his skin burn where he touched it, a gentle admonishment, an itch he can't quite reach.

"You don't like me," Jo announces, later that evening, long after he's caved and decided to make some headway up the coast.

"I don't hate you," Kendall says, "I don't actually feel any which way about you."

Jo, in a startling moment of bravery, leans her forearms against the rail. They're on the top floor of the ferry, where the spray rarely reaches, but most people wouldn't tempt fate. It only takes a drop, after all, just one second of contact, they say.

She has more courage than he's given her credit for, but then, he shouldn't be so surprised. She's willing to walk the overgrown roads out of town, the hills and the valleys and the makeshift deserts to find her father.

Like James said, she has nothing left.

"Feeling's mutual. Is that a rainbow?" Jo asks, squinting, staring out at the far off horizon.

Kendall glances over, for a moment caught by the brilliant prism colors.

"Yeah," he says quietly.

"It's been so long since I've seen one. I heard there's an atmospheric disturbance in Hollywood that keeps them from forming correctly."

"Did Logan tell you that?" Kendall asks, a trace of humor in his voice, because he's had that conversation once or twice or eighty times.

"Gold star," Jo says, and then, "The city looks different from here."

And it does. Pristine. If you squint, you can trick yourself into thinking its still whole.

"So. You like rainbows?"

It takes a week for them to make it up the coast. Kendall makes them stop in every town they can, to perform, to trade. They need supplies. They can't put their entire world on hold for one girl.

Jo is worried, and he can tell. But she watches them sing with light in her eyes, and with her eyes on him, Kendall is on fire.

He waves off James's hug and bounds down to her after their third show.

"You were fantastic," she says, open and earnest. Her hair reflects the bonfires, red and gold shimmering highlights. Shadows play over her face.

She's beautiful.

He blurts, "I play guitar, too."

She smiles.

They can't find the secret Zevon hideaway on the coast. There's a rumor it's down near Baja. Kendall agrees to go South without any argument. Jo looks at him like he's a hero.

Kendall plays the guitar for Jo in the pilot house one afternoon when the sun is bright and the world doesn't look so broken. He hasn't got a huge repertoire of songs, but she doesn't seem to mind. She kisses him there, among all the electronic equipment he barely knows how to use, his fingers still balanced over the sound hole like maybe he can somehow replicate what the affection of a pretty girl feels like, as though he can somehow translate it into a song.

After that, he begins to kick James out of the cabin on Wednesdays, because Jo is beautiful, and she's willing, and it has been so very long.

The first time it happens, James looks at him with something like tired affection and agrees. A little hardship is good for the soul, and all that.

Kendall likes the way Jo folds into him with a sigh, like she's been standing guard all this time, and only in the circle of his arms can she relax.

He can't sleep though, later on, so he gets up, goes walking.

They're out in the deep water, but Kendall doesn't have any way to check how far. They say the water gets clean and safe about fifty miles out, but Kendall has never met anyone who can prove that true. He's brave, but that doesn't mean he's going to volunteer to be a guinea pig.

He's thought about jumping before. He won't. But he's definitely thought it, standing on the edge of the bow and staring down at the inconspicuously blue water. Every once in a while he's tempted. Shells always look so peaceful, so vacant. So carefree.

Then again, they also look dead. Plus, there's no guarantee that Kendall will end up one of the shambling dead. He's terrified of the beasts, the ones who wantwantwant so very much, even after they expire. He wonders sometimes if they carry that desperate hunger into the afterlife. He doesn't need to end up like that. He already knows what it's like to want the whole world, to want every last twinkling light on the horizon.

To want a million things he can't have.

He finds James on the lower deck, away from the ocean's turmoil but still closer than is actually intelligent to the waves. Logan won't even come down this way unless they're dry docked.

James is smoking a cigarette, which is weird, because James has this thing about the health of his vocal chords, and also because cigarettes are rare. Full packs are almost as hard to find as fresh water, and they have a high trade value. Kendall doesn't know when or where James found these, or why he hasn't stuck them in the communal pot. They can keep their family hydrated for a week with the money they'd make, but he doesn't ask.

Instead he says, "Can I have one?"

"Sure," James offers the pack, and Kendall doesn't smoke, hasn't tried it even once, because addiction is one more expensive habit he can't deal with, like drinking and eating and breathing. He's heard stories that some of the smokers turn to street drugs once their sources run dry, to the bastardized mixtures of what passes for narcotics these days, now that heroin and cocaine are hard to come by.

One would think the apocalypse would kill the drug trade, but people always find new ways to get high. Anything is better than being depressed and avoidant and bored, he supposes.

"So," James says, sucking in a breath and holding it there, the way Kendall knows you aren't supposed to, not with cigarettes. He lets out his breath in a fast exhalation, smoke lacing the air, "You and Jo?"

Kendall shrugs, "She's hot. And she likes me."

"That's all it takes?" James laughs, but it sounds off.

"Don't judge."

"I would never."

"You're doing it right now. Where's the harm?" Kendall frowns, "Did you want-"

James shakes his head, vehement.

"As if I need your seconds," he snaps, and then looks immediately guilty about treating Jo like an object. James is too nice.

"Sex is sex," Kendall replies, staring up at the inky black night that rises above the green brown horizon, "I mean, you'd have to ask her."

" You need to stop. Now," James holds up a hand and looks vaguely sick, "If I want to get laid, I'll do it. Alright?"

"Alright. Why're you still up?"

James glances away.

"Carlos- kicked me out."

"Wanted to be alone with Logan?"

"Something like that."

For a second, Kendall watches Carlos work in the sun, his sweat-shiny muscles glistening as he burns a light brown.

"You. Are such a pervert. You couldn't wait one night to get boning?"

"What are you talking about?"

"James said you kicked him out of the hall last night."

Carlos shakes his head, "No. He left."

"What?"

"Woke up screaming. Logan and I tried to get him back to sleep, but he wasn't having any of it."

Kendall might be imagining it, but Carlos's expression seems a bit, well, chastising.

"But- James hasn't had any nightmares for years."

"I know," Carlos says, and he squints up into the sunlight, chocolate eyes wide, "Wonder why?"

He sounds like he already knows.

In Baja, they're told the Zevons moved up North, to San Francisco. Jo is determined. Kendall is worried.

He finds Jo a sundress in the remains of some broken house and he wonders if it's bad form, giving her a present that probably belongs to some dead girl, some teenager who used to have things in her life, who went to school and liked boys and maybe even went to prom, if she was the right age.

Kendall doesn't look at the faded pictures buried in the ruins because he knows better, knows those ghosts will never leave him if he lets himself look.

He still thinks about her later when Jo happily wears the dress and lets him fuck up into her, their hips rocking in time with the sway of the boat, the shuddershuddershiver of the huge rudder in back vibrating through their bodies when they come.

Sometimes he wakes in the middle of the night in a panic, looking for James, for the empty spaces his body usually fills. He clutches the sheets to his chest until Jo's soft breathing soothes him back to sleep, and he wonders if it would have been like this, in the real world.

"Why Carlos?" Kendall asks, finally, one night, when Logan's making them a complicated meal of fifteen year old spaghetti mixed with something chunky that Kendall doesn't want to identify.

"What do you mean?" Logan hums, stirring the pot over his tiny little fire. The stoves in the kitchen work, but they can't always find the kerosene they need to keep them running. Starting a contained fire on deck isn't the smartest idea, but it's Logan's specialty. His being so smart comes in handy, sometimes.

"Remember the night you got bit?"

"Ugh," Logan makes a wide eyed, slack mouthed face, "Shells. Love all my parts, fingers and toes. Love my ears. Love my nose."

"Please tell me you didn't make that rhyme on purpose."

"Not at all," Logan says, hands still hovering protectively over his face, "But it was clever, right?"

"If by clever you mean irritating, then right-o."

"Whatever, they're disgusting. I was so scared my limbs were going to start dropping off."

"Not actually the point. You didn't- you weren't in love with Carlos, before that. Now you think he's your-" Kendall doesn't actually know what to call Carlos, his best friend since before he can remember having a best friend.

"Soulmate?" Logan suggests, without a hint of irony.

Kendall snorts.

Logan does not look impressed by his reaction.

"You shouldn't laugh. All of us, we search the world for our soulmates."

Kendall snorts again, "There's no such thing. If anything, a soulmate is what we call the person we choose when we get tired of searching."

Logan looks away, "When did you get to be so cold?"

"I am not cold. I'm realistic," Kendall announces, trying to lessen his overbearing tone of harsh. Softer he says, "So that's it then? You've given up, for Carlos?"

"I haven't given anything up."

Kendall wrinkles his nose, thinking of girls in ports all along the coastline, girls who think their motley little band is the best thing this damned world has seen in ages and ages. And, okay, so he's barely ever taken advantage of it the way the other guys have, but he still doesn't see why Logan would give that all up for- what, physical comfort and something he thinks might be love?

"But if I was-" Logan says, and Kendall's gaze snaps to his, "If I was giving anything up. Carlos would be worth it."

Oh, he thinks.

They stop off in Los Angeles to check in with the family. Jo heads to wherever it is she called home before; an empty youth hostel or something, Kendall thinks.

He's in the process of unloading the last of their goods with James when pirates strike. Kendall curses. It's his fifth run in with pirates this year. It seems like their numbers are increasing too quickly.

At least the boat's docked. He's only been boarded in open water once, and it'd been…messy. Kendall was below deck at the time, with Logan, working on a new navigation system. Carlos and James had to fend them off. By the end of the fight, there'd been five new Shells in the world, and Kendall had thanked any deity that was listening that he and his friends were still standing.

And quietly, he'd thanked god that he wasn't the one who'd done the killing. Kendall is cold, harsh, whatever. But he's never killed a man. Not yet.

He's glad that Carlos and Logan are already blocks away. The water and the food are all gone, and there's nothing left except some fabric, some wiring, and scrap. He's got an old can of soup in his sweatshirt pocket, for lunch, but that's it.

And the ferry. Kendall feels his heart sink when he realizes that they can take the ferry.

They're outnumbered by a handful, but most of the crew leaves for bigger and better plunder once James and Kendall are under control. They're lead out onto the pier by an old man with a straggly beard and a young deckhand, arms folded behind their heads. Both of their captors have guns.

The two are talking about how they're going to salvage the ship, how much Logan's rigged electronics will trade for. He and James exchange a look that Kendall knows means fight.

Because there's no way they'd let this stand. That stupid boat is old and rundown and a deathtrap, but it's theirs, and it's given Kendall more freedom than he ever thought he could have.

Kendall has long since learned that age doesn't equal wisdom. Usually it just means you get a lot of wrinkles and a sick sense of entitlement over things that aren't actually meant for you. At least, that's what seems to have happened to this man, this pirate who thinks he's going to get away with scrapping Kendall's ferry for parts. He hates him right then.

He doesn't even think about what it means when he grabs for the guy's pistol, accidentally checking him into the water.

It's just the ocean, just sea salt and oxygenated hydrogen and it's only afterwards, when he instinctively steps away from the splash that he realizes he just killed him.

This stupid, entitled old man just died at Kendall's hands, and it doesn't matter that he didn't mean it, or that the pirate would've returned the favor without a hint of shame, because it's too late.

This is what the apocalypse has done; made once good boys into murderers, and he hates this world. He hates it so fucking much.

James is pulling on his shirt like he's scared that Kendall might jump in after the guy, and Kendall doesn't have to look to know that James has already knocked out the cabin boy.

"We'll get the boat back," James says, a promise, and Kendall wonders if he knows how much Kendall doesn't even care about that stupid ferry right now. Five seconds ago it was freedom, it was everything, but now it's like a murder weapon in his hands.

And then things spin out of control, because the man's dead, a splasher, a Shell, but he's not the docile kind.

Of course not, that would be too easy, and Kendall can feel a laugh bubbling up from his lips because the thing is barreling straight for him and he spins the chamber of his stolen gun like this is an old time western, cocks the safety and pulls the trigger.

The man's head doesn't explode like a ripe melon, but the way his still cooling blood paints the deck it looks like it might've.

The cabin boy's waking up, and sure, James knocked him out but he didn't think to take his gun; too worried about Kendall's psyche to remember, and who gives cabin boys guns anyway?

But the kid's pointing it straight at James, shaky handed, eyes glued to the blood pooling near his feat and Kendall doesn't want this, he doesn't want any of it.

Next time his mom says he shouldn't do something he'll listen, he promises, he swears, and he raises the gun and points and-

"Kendall," James says.

His finger's pressing in, the slightest twitch.

"Kendall, stop!" James orders, and something in his voice actually compels him to halt abruptly. Softly, James continues, "He's hungry."

Kendall looks at the kid, gun trembling in his hand. His face is gaunt, and it's a sure bet that beneath that baggy shirt he's all skin and bones. Well.

Out loud he muses, "Aren't we all?"

But he's silently thankful, so thankful, because he's already killed one person today, twice. He's not sure if he can handle another.

Then he takes the dented can of soup from the pocket of his sweatshirt and tosses it, underhand, to the young pirate-in-training.

James looks at him with something akin to pride.

"Find better friends," Kendall advises, the steeliness in his voice making it sound like an order. The fact that he's not trembling all over feels like an accomplishment. He says, "If I find any of you on my boat when we take it back-"

"You won't," the kid promises, and he sounds even younger than he looks.

Kendall doesn't stop to wonder how he's going to get an entire gang of older men to listen.

Just to be safe, he moves the ship two marinas down.

The whole day passes and Kendall keeps it together. He doesn't shake when he talks to his mom, doesn't quiver when he jokes with the Garcias.

It's not until they get back to the ferry that Kendall allows himself to think about any of it, about how close they were to dying. James is packing away a duffel bag of ratty clothes next to him, and Kendall's thinking about the man he just killed. He's thinking about the boy with the shaky hand, the dull barrel of the gun and the sunlight in James's hair, the way his ribs felt like they were squeezing all the air out of his lungs, and before he knows what he's doing he's pulling at James's shirt so hard the seams rip, and James is saying, "Kendall, what the f-"

But Kendall's swallowing his protest, kissing him, hungry and desperate and messy.

He can feel James's teeth scrape over the surface of his tongue and he groans because it hurts, but not nearly as much as the terror he felt when James's life was in danger, the terror he's only letting himself feel now, now that they're safe in the cabin and he's allowed to fall apart.

And James is kissing him back, just as desperate, just as hungry, like maybe he's waited for this his entire life.

It doesn't last.

The door's swinging open and then Jo's there.

She looks at him, and looks at James. She sees the way Kendall's grip is fisted in his shirt, the way their hair is rumpled, the redness of their lips, and Kendall feels like he's been punched because he doesn't want to hurt anybody, not really.

Except then she does something really weird. She smiles.

Later on, Jo is standing outside his cabin and at first he's confused, because it's not a Wednesday. James is already inside the room, and as the door swings open, Jo says, "So."

"Um. I'm sorry."

"Why? Are you guys together now?"

"No. Not at all."

"That's a shame," she tells him. She looks rather pointedly at James and says, "You don't get forever. The world could end tomorrow. I shouldn't have to tell you that. Don't let yourself have regrets."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about."

"I'm sure you don't," Jo says, "But I have complete faith that you'll figure it out."

She kisses Kendall on the cheek.

They find Jo's dad under a collapsed building in San Francisco. He's been trapped for three days, and he's in a bad way.

But when he sees them, his eyes light up.

"Jo?" The man peers up at them through the rubble, "And- you brought the lost boys."

Jo laughs, a pure, joyful sound, "Yeah. I took a trip to Neverland for a little while. Why have you been gone so long?"

The guys get to work digging Jo's dad out while he explains about the route he took, about the borders he crossed that took so much longer by foot, and all about the tolls he had to pay.

He says, "I don't know if there is any treasure, sweetie."

"We'll look together," she promises. And then she tells them, "Thank you."

Kendall shakes his head. James's fingers brush his, lightly, as they work and he feels compelled somehow to say, "No. Thank you."

Kendall doesn't use the guitar much anymore; people seem to like the dancing better than him sitting prone, even if they haven't exactly perfected the a capella thing.

He still breaks it out, sometimes, late at night, when they're docked and Carlos and Logan have gone to get off in new and exciting places.

James leans into his side and they sing different kinds of songs; things Kendall has heard his mom hum under her breath or caught on snatches of records before he traded them away to someone who maybe wouldn't respect them more, but could have useless things in their life.

He thinks sometimes that what they're talking about in the songs; he's never felt it. But then James will huddle closer, their trashcan bonfire little protection against the trade winds. He'll kiss the side of Kendall's neck, and Kendall will think that maybe he has.

A/N: Please review.