Canada doesn't rot, and it's the oddest thing.

Russia is the one who has to come down to the basement to feed him now. America can't cry anymore, but his heart breaks when that stench flows up the stairs into the labs, and it hurts Russia, too, but it's not his brother.

"Matthew, breakfast!" he calls too cheerily, hefting the cooler of reproduced human organs to the floor in front of the glass wall. This used to be an MRI room, structurally sound and built to keep out radiation, but it has been reinforced through the past few weeks with moved machinery and spray foam. (Bending the bars for the new door had hurt America almost as much as their reasons.)

Canada is crouched by the door, a few feet back, the compound fracture of his forearm oozing with pus and infection, eyes hollow and red under matted hair. The monsters are dumb, but he's learned in the weeks he's been caged – here, there, in transport from there. He watches Russia's hands as they open the cooler, pull out a frozen liver and lungs. He creeps forward, and Russia tosses them to his grasping hands, not feeling it as his ulna's white shows a little more. He darts back to his corner and rips into one of the lungs, and the wet snarls follow Russia as he packs up the cooler again and trudges back up the stairs to the hospital proper.

He misses Canada more than he ever expected, his smiles and his glasses and his passive aggression. The stairs stretch out – the elevators don't work, their scavenged backup generators going straight to the fourth floor and the organ regeneration lab.

That was how it had started, after all. Recreating human flesh as individual organs– harmless, innovative, helpful. The practice saved lives, both those of the recipients and those of the donors. It had yet to be an exact science – only some hospitals could support them, it was expensive – but it was no longer a child's dream swirling in the clouds.

And it created a new black market.

The human element of organ trafficking began to bleed into basement science of methamphetamines and cocaine, sterile environments replaced with hunger, desperation, corner-cutting. It was secret, experimental, unknown, dangerous.

One of the labs blew up in a small Ontario city. Drug traces were found on the walls, blood everywhere.

The policemen sent to investigate never came back.

The old movies about zombies came to life, swamping Thunder Bay and exploding across the countryside. There was no time to form a coherent response – the creatures spread too fast, the panic was screaming through the populace.

The CSIS called in their special force.

No one knew anything about these creatures, other than they were terrifying, fast, and hungry. But, the CSIS reasoned, maybe if they turned normal folk into themselves, maybe an immortal would stand a chance?

Canada arrived at the hastily-made barricade encircling the western of Ottawa in heavy bulletproof riot police armor and with his brother at his side. They had just as many ideas on how to deal with the creatures as the humans, but they had to look like they knew what to do. It was the only way.

They came packing heat and spitting fire, feeling the claw of the plague in their fingers and hearts, so, so happy to have a corporeal enemy to fight. The humans breathed easier, just a little, as the sounds of the creatures on the other side of the poured concrete barricade pounded through. (They are fast, but they aren't strong. Not yet.)

The humans stepped back and gave the two nations room, the snipers sitting on top of the barricade climbing down the metal rungs stuck in the wall and huddling back to watch.

Canada and America grinned at each other and climbed.

At the top they perched and swept over the situation. It wasn't not quite a horde – they had seen thicker crowds at Chinatowns, at farmer's markets – but there was dead, hanging flesh off of housewives and farmers and schoolchildren. A huddled cloth pile lay here and there, the snipers' work. (There is a way to 'kill' them - if it even can be called that – by cutting the spinal cord, a bullet in the brain; it seems to paralyze them. In the end, that's all that's necessary.)

America had a machine gun, happily toted across the border, and he set it off first, grinning as he covered the blanket of creatures in bullets and fire. Canada lobbed a collection of grenades down, throwing up dirt and old blood into the air.

There was only dust and smoke for a moment, and America used the moment to look out, around at the area beyond the cleared road, overturned cars and suburban living.

"Matt, you're really pretty, you know that?" he said as he changed out his gun's ammunition belt. Canada smiled at him.

"You've seen better sides of me than this." America shrugged, grinned, and shot straight down to the creatures clawing a few yards below their hanging feet, clearing out the ground and out as Canada unstrapped the rocket launcher from his back.

They sat up there for hours, maybe, the humans cheering them on and resupplying them from one side while the horde thinned and ebbed. The sun was setting, and there was no more for the moment, so the brothers climbed down to the applause and cheers of their humans. They smiled and laughed.

The radios of all of the police scanners sparked at once, turned up high, and everyone fell silent to listen. America went white.

Creatures were walking out of the waters of Lake Superior, attacking his beaches across the border.

The creatures didn't have to breathe.

At least Europe had warning.

The brothers kept their crusade across their countries, teaching those alive how to incapacitate and kill while slaughtering their own in the hundreds. At some point, America stopped laughing. Canada stopped smiling. They lived out of their guns, knives, each other's eyes and their radio. It was the only way they heard any news anymore, clinging to nationalities like a dead parent's hand.

Canada was getting weaker. The infestation had begun in him, so it had hit him the hardest, wiping out a fourth of his population within a month. Sometimes he acted fine, cold eyes and cold steel, but when he and America had found their high point for the night, he'd shiver and curl into his side, coughing and just cold.

America was terrified as he held him close with one arm, the other on his shotgun. He didn't want to know what would happen if he lost his steel nerve during the sunshine.

The radio static sputtered about the sandbags and trip wires being set up on western Europe's shore, Iceland's attempts to alter the flow of their molten land.

And they kept coming.

Just before the new experts predicted the European wave, America and Canada found a fortress of a town in the Colorado mountains with scouts, armories, and electricity.

They wept and asked to use their phone.

They called everyone they could. Wireless waves still worked – even the creatures couldn't touch satellites, radio waves – but their own cell phones had run out of battery ages ago, and they longed for familiar voices.

England was with his brothers, evacuating their young and sick to the eastern towns. He could barely speak for his boys, his boys were doing fine – well, of course they were, but they could barely speak for the relief. France was much the same, blubbering in French that made both of them smile and lean into each other's shoulders more, cradling the phone between their heads.

"You know, I always figured whenever this'd happen - whenever we'd die out in some big bang or another - we'd at least have them with us," America said softly as they had to let France go and help at Normandy. Canada squeezed his thigh and dialed Spain's number.

They spent all night like that, clutching as close as they could for comfort and calling, calling, they can't stop crying. Each new nation made it worse; at least they could contact them all. Everyone was clutching tonight.

It wasn't until Russia that there was talk of a cure.

"I am already on my eastern shores, since there is little for me on the western front," he said. "We have had some of the creatures emerge, but most of them seem to have gone east, and we have managed to keep them contained." A worry the brothers hadn't been considering san k from their shoulders. "We have been inspecting the specimens once they are dead, though, and made significant progress in isolating the causes. It is only a matter of time before we can draw conclusions about our findings and use them for a cure."

Canada and America only had one question.

"Can we help?"

They left the town two days later, stocked up and wished well. The news from Europe was good – Iceland and his people had scraped together and rearranged his lava rivers to flow into the projected horde's path, burying thousands in their great circle underwater. Europe had used their thousands of years of experimental warfare to cut and burn and kill, an invasion they could beat. They were happy – they were going to make it.

It was in a small Oregon harbor, long abandoned, where they stole their boat to get up the coast faster than walking. Canada was getting weaker, barely able to stand for long anymore, but America refused to face what that meant.

The invasion was comprised mostly of Canadians, after all.

They traveled up the coast as fast as they can, docking during the night (for the creatures have no night vision, they hide after sunset) to refill on supplies and fuel. If it weren't for the complete desertion of his West Coast, America could almost pretend life is okay.

It was just another shore, just another night just north of their border, when he jumped out of the boat and tied it up to the edge of a dock. "I'll be right back, okay?" Canada smiled blearily at him, and America sighed. It had been a bad day – he'd been feverish and ill, floating in and out of consciousness.

Maybe this town had some leftover cold medicine. Not that it'd help a nation.

It took him longer than intended to find gas for the boat and food for the next few days, but he found Twinkies in the gas station, and that was sure to make their night brighter. He turned the corner of a building by the piers, whistling.

He'd parked the boat under a dead street lamp he hadn't noticed; some miracle of wiring had flickered it back on. Canada was twitching and asleep on the back seat of the speed boat, and three creatures were sneaking down the dock.

America dropped everything and charged, pulling his shotgun from the sling over his back as he sprinted, but they were so damned fast, they were already at the boat by the time he was at the end of the dock. He aimed as he ran, hitting the neck of one, who fell into the water with a splash. The other two stumbled over to the boat, one slipped and dropped underwater, but it only takes one, it only takes one.

Canada woke up to a dead and rotting old man's face and his teeth. He screamed, and America's body slam was too late.

America broke the creature's neck with a twist and dumped him off the side, kneeling beside his sprawled brother, breathing hard at the sight of the bite on his forearm, thrown up at the last defense. He grasped for a towel, a jacket, anything, and found an old T-shirt, blotting and rubbing at the wounds furiously.

"Matt, Matt, you're going to be okay, you're not going to be one of them, Matt, Matt, listen to me!" America screamed, tears flowing. His brother's eyelids fluttered, sweat beading on his face. He looked up at his brother and smiled.

"Al…"

His breath stopped. America sobbed, rubbing at the bite marks more.

The arm twitched. His heart rose, then sank and he reached over and tore off a piece of the metal handrail from the boat and brought it down just in time to catch his brother's snapping teeth. They broke into pieces, and his eyes were feral and not Matthew.

America's breath hiccupped again as he straddled his brother's chest to pin him down and bent the metal with trembling hands into a muzzle.

By the time he arrived at their and Russia's assigned rendezvous point, he was three days late and had a new boat with bars bent over the hot tub in the back.

Russia was cleaning his gun on the small island's pier as they coasted in, watching the cold Alaska wind whip the waves. It was getting towards winter. He looked up at the one-story yacht, snorting at America's choice before he realized there was only one figure visible on the deck.

He stood, leaving the gun disassembled on the towel, and caught the thrown rope from a stony-faced America, tying it to the pier before hurrying over to the other end to secure it as well. America jumped over as soon as he was close enough, walking towards him.

"America, where is Ca- oof!" His question was cut off by a heavy hug, and America was crying into his shoulder. He blinked, then wrapped his arms around his waist to hold him steady.

"Matt, he- he was so weak, 'Van, and I just left him for a second, but I- oh God." He squeezed Russia, too tight, but Russia was beginning to grasp his weeping babble.

He reached up to stroke his hair. "Alfred, where is Matthew."

A long, shuddering breath. "He's caged into the hot tub."

Oh no. "Then he…" America nodded into his shoulder, unable to stop. Russia clucked at him and clutched him tight, sinking down so they could sit on the salt-beaten wood. "Oh, my dear."

"Please, help me bring him back. Please, I need him, please."

Russia stroked his hair more, turned to kiss his temple comfortingly. "Of course. We'll do everything we can."

Russia opens the door to the organ regeneration lab of the hospital in Providence, Alaska, empty but for one. He sets the empty cooler to the side and washes his hands, watching the blond-topped figure drop chemicals into tubes before sliding them into the DNA separator, working with the few dead specimens Russia had killed while waiting for the brothers to get there. The plan had been for them to go back to Russia's already working scientists and assist in the research, but with Canada and his condition, they couldn't have him around any normal humans. It's just the three of them in an empty hospital.

Russia walks over to America, who has started the machine and turned to the next task. "Anything new?" he asks.

"Maybe," America says, voice too gravelly and raspy. Russia misses America, too – his grin and star eyes and silly ideas. "There's an anomaly in this strain of red blood cells I've never seen before, if I can just isolate it…"

He nods and gets to work, the routine familiar now. The generator in the corner, the radio in the window, and the occasional question or request is the only sound for miles.

Downstairs, Canada licks the tissue off his fingers, dead blood in his veins but the same flesh as always.

"What remains of the North American governments merged today in a display of solidarity and desperation in this troubled times," the radio announcer says.

Downstairs, the little bit of life left in Canada trickles out, and he dies with a final sigh.

He starts to rot.

{A/N: So. If the zombie apocalypse were to happen.

That how I'd think it'd happen.

I wrote this in two hours on a sleep deprivation high last night. I don't know where any of this really came from.}