Fic: White Coral Islands in a Dark Blue Sea (McKay/Sheppard, R)
Title: White Coral Islands in a Dark Blue Sea
Author: rysler
Recipient: bitter_crimson
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: R
Summary: Rodney's nightmares become real.
Notes: Passages in italics are from the Book of the Damned by Charles Fort, in the public domain.
We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.
They'd come from the sea. The unexplored, untouched sea of the new planet. The world outside the shield didn't exist for the Atlantians, not like it had in the past. Too many chances to be spotted by alien probes if they were a metallic blemish on an endless sea.
No chances for growing grain or fruit.
No fish, as far as they had determined.
And yet. Here lie monsters, in the depths of the watery map.
He knew immediately what they were, even though he'd never seen one before in real life.
They couldn't be real. The mechanics of eating other people's brains alone--But anyway, they were zombies.
Rodney knew because he was just that smart.
And yet, despite knowing, he was terrified, running through the corridors of Atlantis, trying to get away from the foul, rotting ugliness of the thing following him. No matter what corner he turned, the zombie was right there. Right there and no one else was--he couldn't reach Sheppard or command on the comm system, and he didn't have a gun.
That's how he knew it was a dream. In real life, he'd at least have a gun.
He woke himself up then, even though it took screaming until he could feel his heart pounding in his chest, too fast, from the breathlessness and the shock. He was soaked with sweat. The room was dark.
"Lights," he said.
The lights came on, showing him his uniform slung over a chair and his books and his computer and the gray, boring walls. The silence--barely even the hum of the systems, and no sound of the ocean at all--filled his ears.
Reality was boring and new and clean.
It didn't help. The zombies could be anywhere.
He was still alone.
Groaning, he got out of bed, tugged on trousers, grabbed his blanket, and padded barefoot into the corridor.
* * *
The inference is that some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels.
"I'm sleeping here," he said, buzzing into John's quarters.
John sat up, looking sleepy and tousled, blinking against the sudden light of the door.
Rodney spread his blanket out on the floor and stretched out on his back.
"Did you let yourself in?" John asked.
"Yes. I didn't want to wake you."
"Isn't that--um." John leaned over so he could peer down between his knees at Rodney.
"I had a bad dream, all right?"
"All right." John went back to bed and pulled his blanket over his shoulder, and then asked, "Are you all right?"
"Fine, now."
"Just because you're on my floor."
"You'll protect me from the zombies," Rodney said. "I have all the confidence in the world."
"Okay, Rodney."
Silence descended. The faint machinery hum, no longer alien, accentuated by John's breathing. Rodney closed his eyes.
Then John said, "You know zombies aren't real, right?"
"Sure, like the Wraith aren't real."
"But they're like, aliens. In another galaxy. I mean, our human conception of zombies-- brain-eating mundania--is really just a metaphor."
"Great," Rodney said. "Pray tell, what metaphor would that be?"
"Maybe you're afraid of getting old."
Rodney snorted.
John shifted and didn't say anything else.
Rodney's heart had stopped racing. The calmness--and the proximity to John's calmness, more physical in nature than his own--languid and lazy and sleepy and slightly sweaty in the cool room--something Rodney could inhale, and let infuse him, let it fill him and the empty spaces where the zombies had been exploring with John's presence.
He had not slept in John's room for at least a month--somehow it had been a month, and Rodney was reasonably sure that neither of them had planned on that. Maybe it was complications. Maybe it was trust. Maybe it was that familiarity bread contempt, or the pretending or the danger or the fact that they were two very different men had killed the buzz.
Still, not completely, his loins insisted. He could just reach up and slide his hand under the blanket, and John would be waiting for him. If John parted his lips to groan when Rodney's fingers found him, then Rodney could kiss him. That might get him an invitation into bed.
Snoring came from John's pillow.
Rodney sighed.
Maybe tomorrow.
He slept fitfully for an hour, dozing, neither dreaming nor slipping into blackness. Then he sat on the floor with a laptop. John slept. Rodney opened the military contingency plan database.
Invasion of Canada. Nope. How to make an airplane with a pocketknife and a pine tree. Nope, though intriguing. There. He clapped his hands. Zombie invasion.
Subcategories: Earth-based threats. Stargate-based threats. Pegasus Galaxy-based threats. He spent the rest of the night memorizing the protocols. Knowledge was power.
Near dawn he shook John's shoulder.
"John. Where your gun?"
"Not a gun," John mumbled. "Just happy to see you."
"What? Oh." Rodney peeked under John's blanket. He sighed. Two more chapters of the emergency manual to read, and then his regular shift would be starting. There was no time for fun.
There never was, it seemed.
* * *
Then the sub-inference is that some later day, back they'll go whence they came.
Jennifer looked pale.
Not Wraith-pale, but kind of grayish. As if she'd been desaturated. And--Rodney didn't want to think it--she smelled. Kind of like rotting food, but not as strong. Like the odor that lingered after the garbage was taken out, or after the disposal had been run.
"You're looking pale," he said, wondering how far away he could stand without being rude.
"Yeah. Ronon came back from PX-4545 with some sort of bug. I think I caught it."
"Isn't that like, the opposite of your job?"
"Ha ha, Rodney. Why are you here?"
"I just, you know--" he rubbed the back of his head--an affectation he'd picked up from John.
"Oh, Rodney." She moved to hug him.
He stepped away. "I was going to ask for a sleeping pill for tonight, in case there were any more zomb--You know what? I think I'm fine."
"Okay," she said. She went back to her desk.
She was probably used to him being like this.
He thought if he could get out the door without suggesting that she shower, he'd win social skills of the year award.
He ran for the door.
* * *
A stab and a laugh and the patiently folded hands of hopeless propriety. The ultra- respectable, but the condemned, anyway.
With all that hair, no one noticed Ronon was as pale as a ghostly full moon until he bit Sergeant Hopper on the shoulder.
Like, really bit. Like, Jennifer's assistant had to graft back on the missing chunk.
Jennifer, looking as bleary-eyed as Ronon, was put into isolation, where she paced unhappily, complaining of thirst.
"Rabies?" Rodney asked.
"Honestly," John said.
"This is a rabies-free galaxy," Radek said. "It could be a virus, but if it's something like that they only have a few hours before we have to induce coma."
"Then they'd really be zombies," Rodney said.
"Rodney!" John folded his arms. "Focus."
Teyla was herded into the isolation room by soldiers. She looked up at the window. "I'm not sick," she said.
"That's true," Rodney said.
"We don't know how it affects her differently."
"Look, they're all human. Either they turn grey and get aggressive, or they don't."
Ronon and Jennifer circled Teyla. She avoided them, looking frustrated.
"Let me out," she called.
"How did they get sick?" John answered.
"I don't know. Everyone at the village was fine. No one looked--like that," Teyla said. She dodged a punch from Ronon. "Or, like anything, really. It was just another pre- industrial, frequently-culled village."
"We should go back," Rodney said.
"In contamination suits, maybe," John said.
Teyla hopped up onto a table and shouted, "I'm fine. Really."
Ronon scratched his neck. "It's getting worse," he said.
"What is?"
"The rash. Where that woman bit me."
Three pairs of eyes looked down at Ronon, and three mouths opened to ask simultaneously, "What woman?"
Ronon looked sheepish. "The one back at the village."
Jennifer and Teyla gave him dirty looks.
Ronon scratched.
"I'll talk to Woolsey," John said.
* * *
There are things that are theorems and things that are rags.
The planet beyond the gate had wooden slats that created a road that led into the forest. The wood was newly polished and springy under Rodney's feet. Rodney guessed that the Wraith Replicator war had reduced the cullings enough that the townspeople could build a road. Maybe that was their downfall. Who knew what came through the Stargate?
"My dream was like this," Rodney said.
"I thought your dream took place on Atlantis."
"Yes, but the--" Rodney rubbed his chin and searched for his words. "The feeling was the same. It was a premonition."
"Great," John said. "Look, we have to find this feisty woman. Did you dream about her?"
"No, but--"
"Then focus."
Rodney exhaled. He followed John into the forest. Teyla lingered behind, her gaze darting around, looking for threat. She said nothing.
The planks gave way to cobblestone, and then the road opened into a clearing. Huts circled a large tent and a grey metal Air Force hanger. They heard no sounds, saw no one.
"Oh, no," Rodney said.
"Where is everyone?" John asked.
Teyla stepped forward. John put his hand on her arm. "Do you smell that?"
Rodney swallowed.
"Death," Teyla said.
"Worse," Rodney said.
The smell brought with it a distant roaring sound, rustling, which grew louder and closer.
Then the villagers came into sight.
Some came from huts, some from the forest, but all were pale and emaciated. Their clothes were torn, their flesh ripped with long, gaping wounds.
"Gross," John said.
"What happened?" Teyla asked. "Could a virus do this? An enemy?"
"Just what is Ronon in to?" John asked.
"This is not the village of before," Teyla said.
The villagers saw them--smelled them--and cautiously crept toward them. Curious. Not yet aggressive. But Teyla had her gun at the ready and was crouching.
"It's so fragile," Rodney said. "You think everything is normal, and then it's--not."
"When is anything ever normal?" John asked.
"Um." Rodney took a step back. The villagers were close enough that he could see the hunger in their expressions. Terrible hunger.
"Should we bag and tag?" John asked.
"I do not see Ronon's woman," Teyla said.
"Fine. We've done our field assessment," John said. "Let's go. Run!"
They took off the way they had come, Rodney leading the way, irrationally afraid he'd end up with an arrow in his ass, and John right behind him. Teyla took their six. She fired warning shots into the air.
John reached the gate control and pounded out the constellations.
"Stop!" Rodney shouted.
"Stop? There are--things behind us," John said.
"The zombie things, yes, I know."
"Zambies?" Teyla asked. "They are called the--"
"It's a common noun, not a proper one," John said. "It means the living dead."
"But Ronon is not dead, and to assume the villagers--"
"It's an archaic term, forget I said anything," Rodney said. "Point is we may have a foothold situation. I mean, look at this place. Three days ago it was a thriving village."
"Rodney's right. What if--" Teyla said, and stopped.
"Fine. We'll ask." John hit the seventh chevron.
From the edges of the forest, along the wooden road that allowed them modern and convenient access, the villagers appeared.
Teyla tensed. "I will have to shoot them," she said.
"Who them? Just as long as we don't barge in there," Rodney said.
"No barging. We'll ask." John sent the IDC through.
"Sheppard, is that you?" came a voice.
John tapped his radio. "We're here. Is…everything okay?"
"All clear, Colonel. I'm to tell you Doctor Keller and Ronon are still in isolation, and there are no new cases. Doctor Zelenka thinks it's bacterial in origin. You'll have to get decontaminated, sir."
"Understood. We're coming through."
Rodney took a deep breath, held it, and stepped into the space beyond space.
* * *
I have gone into the outer darkness of scientific and philosophical transactions and proceedings, ultra-respectable, but covered with the dust of disregard. I have descended into journalism. I have come back with the quasi-souls of lost data.
"So, why didn't Teyla get sick?" John asked, leaning over Radek's shoulder to look at the computer monitor.
Behind them, Woolsey paced.
"Good hygiene?" Radek asked.
Teyla smiled.
Rodney said, "I think--I need to shower."
"Rodney, stay," John said. "They already de-loused you."
"But I feel--"
"I know," John said. "Me too."
"Can we cure them?" Woolsey asked.
"I don't know," Radek said. "We're trying what antibiotics we can. Your field assessment was actually quite helpful. We can see why they were so skeletal and treat that, as well as the underlying cause."
"And the villagers?" Teyla asked.
Radek shrugged and looked away.
"So perhaps they are the living dead," Teyla said.
"We'll do what we can," John said.
"Will we?" Woolsey asked.
Teyla looked at Woolsey, long and hard, but silent, and walked out.
Rodney watched her go and then turned to meet John's eyes. He said, "That could have easily been us."
"We had the proper procedures in place," Woolsey said. "Thanks to you." He clapped Rodney on the back and then went out the way Teyla had.
John sat on the edge of the desk.
Radek put his head on his folded hands. He said, "It must have been very hard, in a village like that, where their threats have been external so long--where they only lived long enough to be eaten by the Wraith--the zombies of their own imagining. Now they could finally have their families and their roads and their trade--to believe that something bad could come from within."
"Yeah? So they were civilized. Why is it so easy for us, then?" John asked.
"Is it?" Radek asked. "Did your heart not break, seeing Ronon like that?"
John looked away.
Rodney said, "I shouldn't have thought Jennifer smelled."
Both men turned to look at him.
"At least I didn't tell her. I get points for that, right?"
John rolled his eyes.
* * *
That nothing ever has been proved -- Because there is nothing to prove.
Jennifer and Ronon recovered enough to be let out of the cage, though Jennifer was pretty pissy and Ronon's hair was growing in grey at the roots.
Still, Rodney had bad dreams.
When he was awake, he'd see the pallor in each face. He'd smell that smell worse than death as they walked past.
Even when he looked in the mirror he'd see the monster. He'd push and prod at his cheeks, worried about the color. He'd scrub himself raw in the shower to assure himself he wasn't rotting.
Not yet.
Late at night, when Rodney was in sweatpants and his uniform undershirt and reading when he was supposed to be sleeping, a chime came at the door.
John stood there, leaning against the bulkhead, looking tousled and sleepy, wearing the same thing as Rodney, but also with slippers.
"Hi," John said.
"What are you doing here?" Rodney asked.
Rodney had been collecting data on his seeing-zombies-everywhere affectation and he had noticed a quantifiable trend. Whenever he looked at John, the nightmare didn't flash in his mind.
He only saw a man.
John, standing so close, smelling sweet and masculine and vibrantly alive. Of course, Rodney could be experiencing subject bias. Better to have an objective third party. He squinted at John.
John shrugged. "I dunno."
"Well, don't just stand there." Rodney stepped aside. "People will talk."
John grinned and slipped past him. Rodney shut the door.
"It's been weird," Rodney said.
"Yeah. I just--I keep expecting to wake up and find out that everyone on the base has--I don't know."
"Changed," Rodney said.
"Yeah."
"Corpsified," Rodney offered.
John made a face. "I suppose. And when I think about it, it's everyone--except you."
Rodney decided that was independent confirmation. Excellent.
He said, "Rodney McKay, not the living dead. That's not what I hear on the Atlantis blogosphere."
"Well, you don't look dead. Ish. Undead. Whatever."
Rodney took a step toward him. "John--"
John stepped back and put up his hand. "Just another ordinary day on Atlantis. We shouldn't make anything of it."
"Look, if we're all going to turn into zombies tomorrow, why hold back? It's stupid."
"Stupid?"
Rodney poked John's chest. "Totally stupid, guns for brains."
"Braaaaaaaains," John said.
Rodney rolled his eyes.
John glanced at the door, and then back at Rodney, and asked, "Can I stay here tonight?"
"My bed is your bed."
"Great." John stripped off his shirt and sprawled onto the bed on his back. He tucked his hands behind his head.
"You may be safer outside with the monsters," Rodney said. He sat on the edge of the bed.
John smirked. His erection was visible against his sweatpants. Rodney's body responded. He'd been nervous at the door, but now he put his hand on John's leg.
"Are you sure you're real?" he asked.
"Come here and find out."
* * *
But that all "things," though only projections, are projections that are striving to break away from the underlying that denies them identity of their own.
Ronon tossed and turned, thrashing, tangling himself up in sheets. He'd wake himself up, but in the dark, and too confused not to slip back into the dream, where he could fight.
He was so afraid--so afraid and so ravenous, he tried to explain that to them, he had the barest sense that they'd understood him once.
But not now.
He waited, hungry. Not hungry--it was something deep inside of him, some biological force. Need. They came slowly toward him, weak and watery. He was stronger. He could tear them apart with his bare hands.
But he couldn't stop them from walking toward him.
Each step, interminable, crowded him. They came from every direction, every corridor, and every lift. They were thousands and he was one.
The last of his kind.
He cried out, but they kept moving.
Coming for him.
END
Author: rysler
Recipient: bitter_crimson
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: R
Summary: Rodney's nightmares become real.
Notes: Passages in italics are from the Book of the Damned by Charles Fort, in the public domain.
We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.
They'd come from the sea. The unexplored, untouched sea of the new planet. The world outside the shield didn't exist for the Atlantians, not like it had in the past. Too many chances to be spotted by alien probes if they were a metallic blemish on an endless sea.
No chances for growing grain or fruit.
No fish, as far as they had determined.
And yet. Here lie monsters, in the depths of the watery map.
He knew immediately what they were, even though he'd never seen one before in real life.
They couldn't be real. The mechanics of eating other people's brains alone--But anyway, they were zombies.
Rodney knew because he was just that smart.
And yet, despite knowing, he was terrified, running through the corridors of Atlantis, trying to get away from the foul, rotting ugliness of the thing following him. No matter what corner he turned, the zombie was right there. Right there and no one else was--he couldn't reach Sheppard or command on the comm system, and he didn't have a gun.
That's how he knew it was a dream. In real life, he'd at least have a gun.
He woke himself up then, even though it took screaming until he could feel his heart pounding in his chest, too fast, from the breathlessness and the shock. He was soaked with sweat. The room was dark.
"Lights," he said.
The lights came on, showing him his uniform slung over a chair and his books and his computer and the gray, boring walls. The silence--barely even the hum of the systems, and no sound of the ocean at all--filled his ears.
Reality was boring and new and clean.
It didn't help. The zombies could be anywhere.
He was still alone.
Groaning, he got out of bed, tugged on trousers, grabbed his blanket, and padded barefoot into the corridor.
* * *
The inference is that some day our accursed tatterdemalions will be sleek angels.
"I'm sleeping here," he said, buzzing into John's quarters.
John sat up, looking sleepy and tousled, blinking against the sudden light of the door.
Rodney spread his blanket out on the floor and stretched out on his back.
"Did you let yourself in?" John asked.
"Yes. I didn't want to wake you."
"Isn't that--um." John leaned over so he could peer down between his knees at Rodney.
"I had a bad dream, all right?"
"All right." John went back to bed and pulled his blanket over his shoulder, and then asked, "Are you all right?"
"Fine, now."
"Just because you're on my floor."
"You'll protect me from the zombies," Rodney said. "I have all the confidence in the world."
"Okay, Rodney."
Silence descended. The faint machinery hum, no longer alien, accentuated by John's breathing. Rodney closed his eyes.
Then John said, "You know zombies aren't real, right?"
"Sure, like the Wraith aren't real."
"But they're like, aliens. In another galaxy. I mean, our human conception of zombies-- brain-eating mundania--is really just a metaphor."
"Great," Rodney said. "Pray tell, what metaphor would that be?"
"Maybe you're afraid of getting old."
Rodney snorted.
John shifted and didn't say anything else.
Rodney's heart had stopped racing. The calmness--and the proximity to John's calmness, more physical in nature than his own--languid and lazy and sleepy and slightly sweaty in the cool room--something Rodney could inhale, and let infuse him, let it fill him and the empty spaces where the zombies had been exploring with John's presence.
He had not slept in John's room for at least a month--somehow it had been a month, and Rodney was reasonably sure that neither of them had planned on that. Maybe it was complications. Maybe it was trust. Maybe it was that familiarity bread contempt, or the pretending or the danger or the fact that they were two very different men had killed the buzz.
Still, not completely, his loins insisted. He could just reach up and slide his hand under the blanket, and John would be waiting for him. If John parted his lips to groan when Rodney's fingers found him, then Rodney could kiss him. That might get him an invitation into bed.
Snoring came from John's pillow.
Rodney sighed.
Maybe tomorrow.
He slept fitfully for an hour, dozing, neither dreaming nor slipping into blackness. Then he sat on the floor with a laptop. John slept. Rodney opened the military contingency plan database.
Invasion of Canada. Nope. How to make an airplane with a pocketknife and a pine tree. Nope, though intriguing. There. He clapped his hands. Zombie invasion.
Subcategories: Earth-based threats. Stargate-based threats. Pegasus Galaxy-based threats. He spent the rest of the night memorizing the protocols. Knowledge was power.
Near dawn he shook John's shoulder.
"John. Where your gun?"
"Not a gun," John mumbled. "Just happy to see you."
"What? Oh." Rodney peeked under John's blanket. He sighed. Two more chapters of the emergency manual to read, and then his regular shift would be starting. There was no time for fun.
There never was, it seemed.
* * *
Then the sub-inference is that some later day, back they'll go whence they came.
Jennifer looked pale.
Not Wraith-pale, but kind of grayish. As if she'd been desaturated. And--Rodney didn't want to think it--she smelled. Kind of like rotting food, but not as strong. Like the odor that lingered after the garbage was taken out, or after the disposal had been run.
"You're looking pale," he said, wondering how far away he could stand without being rude.
"Yeah. Ronon came back from PX-4545 with some sort of bug. I think I caught it."
"Isn't that like, the opposite of your job?"
"Ha ha, Rodney. Why are you here?"
"I just, you know--" he rubbed the back of his head--an affectation he'd picked up from John.
"Oh, Rodney." She moved to hug him.
He stepped away. "I was going to ask for a sleeping pill for tonight, in case there were any more zomb--You know what? I think I'm fine."
"Okay," she said. She went back to her desk.
She was probably used to him being like this.
He thought if he could get out the door without suggesting that she shower, he'd win social skills of the year award.
He ran for the door.
* * *
A stab and a laugh and the patiently folded hands of hopeless propriety. The ultra- respectable, but the condemned, anyway.
With all that hair, no one noticed Ronon was as pale as a ghostly full moon until he bit Sergeant Hopper on the shoulder.
Like, really bit. Like, Jennifer's assistant had to graft back on the missing chunk.
Jennifer, looking as bleary-eyed as Ronon, was put into isolation, where she paced unhappily, complaining of thirst.
"Rabies?" Rodney asked.
"Honestly," John said.
"This is a rabies-free galaxy," Radek said. "It could be a virus, but if it's something like that they only have a few hours before we have to induce coma."
"Then they'd really be zombies," Rodney said.
"Rodney!" John folded his arms. "Focus."
Teyla was herded into the isolation room by soldiers. She looked up at the window. "I'm not sick," she said.
"That's true," Rodney said.
"We don't know how it affects her differently."
"Look, they're all human. Either they turn grey and get aggressive, or they don't."
Ronon and Jennifer circled Teyla. She avoided them, looking frustrated.
"Let me out," she called.
"How did they get sick?" John answered.
"I don't know. Everyone at the village was fine. No one looked--like that," Teyla said. She dodged a punch from Ronon. "Or, like anything, really. It was just another pre- industrial, frequently-culled village."
"We should go back," Rodney said.
"In contamination suits, maybe," John said.
Teyla hopped up onto a table and shouted, "I'm fine. Really."
Ronon scratched his neck. "It's getting worse," he said.
"What is?"
"The rash. Where that woman bit me."
Three pairs of eyes looked down at Ronon, and three mouths opened to ask simultaneously, "What woman?"
Ronon looked sheepish. "The one back at the village."
Jennifer and Teyla gave him dirty looks.
Ronon scratched.
"I'll talk to Woolsey," John said.
* * *
There are things that are theorems and things that are rags.
The planet beyond the gate had wooden slats that created a road that led into the forest. The wood was newly polished and springy under Rodney's feet. Rodney guessed that the Wraith Replicator war had reduced the cullings enough that the townspeople could build a road. Maybe that was their downfall. Who knew what came through the Stargate?
"My dream was like this," Rodney said.
"I thought your dream took place on Atlantis."
"Yes, but the--" Rodney rubbed his chin and searched for his words. "The feeling was the same. It was a premonition."
"Great," John said. "Look, we have to find this feisty woman. Did you dream about her?"
"No, but--"
"Then focus."
Rodney exhaled. He followed John into the forest. Teyla lingered behind, her gaze darting around, looking for threat. She said nothing.
The planks gave way to cobblestone, and then the road opened into a clearing. Huts circled a large tent and a grey metal Air Force hanger. They heard no sounds, saw no one.
"Oh, no," Rodney said.
"Where is everyone?" John asked.
Teyla stepped forward. John put his hand on her arm. "Do you smell that?"
Rodney swallowed.
"Death," Teyla said.
"Worse," Rodney said.
The smell brought with it a distant roaring sound, rustling, which grew louder and closer.
Then the villagers came into sight.
Some came from huts, some from the forest, but all were pale and emaciated. Their clothes were torn, their flesh ripped with long, gaping wounds.
"Gross," John said.
"What happened?" Teyla asked. "Could a virus do this? An enemy?"
"Just what is Ronon in to?" John asked.
"This is not the village of before," Teyla said.
The villagers saw them--smelled them--and cautiously crept toward them. Curious. Not yet aggressive. But Teyla had her gun at the ready and was crouching.
"It's so fragile," Rodney said. "You think everything is normal, and then it's--not."
"When is anything ever normal?" John asked.
"Um." Rodney took a step back. The villagers were close enough that he could see the hunger in their expressions. Terrible hunger.
"Should we bag and tag?" John asked.
"I do not see Ronon's woman," Teyla said.
"Fine. We've done our field assessment," John said. "Let's go. Run!"
They took off the way they had come, Rodney leading the way, irrationally afraid he'd end up with an arrow in his ass, and John right behind him. Teyla took their six. She fired warning shots into the air.
John reached the gate control and pounded out the constellations.
"Stop!" Rodney shouted.
"Stop? There are--things behind us," John said.
"The zombie things, yes, I know."
"Zambies?" Teyla asked. "They are called the--"
"It's a common noun, not a proper one," John said. "It means the living dead."
"But Ronon is not dead, and to assume the villagers--"
"It's an archaic term, forget I said anything," Rodney said. "Point is we may have a foothold situation. I mean, look at this place. Three days ago it was a thriving village."
"Rodney's right. What if--" Teyla said, and stopped.
"Fine. We'll ask." John hit the seventh chevron.
From the edges of the forest, along the wooden road that allowed them modern and convenient access, the villagers appeared.
Teyla tensed. "I will have to shoot them," she said.
"Who them? Just as long as we don't barge in there," Rodney said.
"No barging. We'll ask." John sent the IDC through.
"Sheppard, is that you?" came a voice.
John tapped his radio. "We're here. Is…everything okay?"
"All clear, Colonel. I'm to tell you Doctor Keller and Ronon are still in isolation, and there are no new cases. Doctor Zelenka thinks it's bacterial in origin. You'll have to get decontaminated, sir."
"Understood. We're coming through."
Rodney took a deep breath, held it, and stepped into the space beyond space.
* * *
I have gone into the outer darkness of scientific and philosophical transactions and proceedings, ultra-respectable, but covered with the dust of disregard. I have descended into journalism. I have come back with the quasi-souls of lost data.
"So, why didn't Teyla get sick?" John asked, leaning over Radek's shoulder to look at the computer monitor.
Behind them, Woolsey paced.
"Good hygiene?" Radek asked.
Teyla smiled.
Rodney said, "I think--I need to shower."
"Rodney, stay," John said. "They already de-loused you."
"But I feel--"
"I know," John said. "Me too."
"Can we cure them?" Woolsey asked.
"I don't know," Radek said. "We're trying what antibiotics we can. Your field assessment was actually quite helpful. We can see why they were so skeletal and treat that, as well as the underlying cause."
"And the villagers?" Teyla asked.
Radek shrugged and looked away.
"So perhaps they are the living dead," Teyla said.
"We'll do what we can," John said.
"Will we?" Woolsey asked.
Teyla looked at Woolsey, long and hard, but silent, and walked out.
Rodney watched her go and then turned to meet John's eyes. He said, "That could have easily been us."
"We had the proper procedures in place," Woolsey said. "Thanks to you." He clapped Rodney on the back and then went out the way Teyla had.
John sat on the edge of the desk.
Radek put his head on his folded hands. He said, "It must have been very hard, in a village like that, where their threats have been external so long--where they only lived long enough to be eaten by the Wraith--the zombies of their own imagining. Now they could finally have their families and their roads and their trade--to believe that something bad could come from within."
"Yeah? So they were civilized. Why is it so easy for us, then?" John asked.
"Is it?" Radek asked. "Did your heart not break, seeing Ronon like that?"
John looked away.
Rodney said, "I shouldn't have thought Jennifer smelled."
Both men turned to look at him.
"At least I didn't tell her. I get points for that, right?"
John rolled his eyes.
* * *
That nothing ever has been proved -- Because there is nothing to prove.
Jennifer and Ronon recovered enough to be let out of the cage, though Jennifer was pretty pissy and Ronon's hair was growing in grey at the roots.
Still, Rodney had bad dreams.
When he was awake, he'd see the pallor in each face. He'd smell that smell worse than death as they walked past.
Even when he looked in the mirror he'd see the monster. He'd push and prod at his cheeks, worried about the color. He'd scrub himself raw in the shower to assure himself he wasn't rotting.
Not yet.
Late at night, when Rodney was in sweatpants and his uniform undershirt and reading when he was supposed to be sleeping, a chime came at the door.
John stood there, leaning against the bulkhead, looking tousled and sleepy, wearing the same thing as Rodney, but also with slippers.
"Hi," John said.
"What are you doing here?" Rodney asked.
Rodney had been collecting data on his seeing-zombies-everywhere affectation and he had noticed a quantifiable trend. Whenever he looked at John, the nightmare didn't flash in his mind.
He only saw a man.
John, standing so close, smelling sweet and masculine and vibrantly alive. Of course, Rodney could be experiencing subject bias. Better to have an objective third party. He squinted at John.
John shrugged. "I dunno."
"Well, don't just stand there." Rodney stepped aside. "People will talk."
John grinned and slipped past him. Rodney shut the door.
"It's been weird," Rodney said.
"Yeah. I just--I keep expecting to wake up and find out that everyone on the base has--I don't know."
"Changed," Rodney said.
"Yeah."
"Corpsified," Rodney offered.
John made a face. "I suppose. And when I think about it, it's everyone--except you."
Rodney decided that was independent confirmation. Excellent.
He said, "Rodney McKay, not the living dead. That's not what I hear on the Atlantis blogosphere."
"Well, you don't look dead. Ish. Undead. Whatever."
Rodney took a step toward him. "John--"
John stepped back and put up his hand. "Just another ordinary day on Atlantis. We shouldn't make anything of it."
"Look, if we're all going to turn into zombies tomorrow, why hold back? It's stupid."
"Stupid?"
Rodney poked John's chest. "Totally stupid, guns for brains."
"Braaaaaaaains," John said.
Rodney rolled his eyes.
John glanced at the door, and then back at Rodney, and asked, "Can I stay here tonight?"
"My bed is your bed."
"Great." John stripped off his shirt and sprawled onto the bed on his back. He tucked his hands behind his head.
"You may be safer outside with the monsters," Rodney said. He sat on the edge of the bed.
John smirked. His erection was visible against his sweatpants. Rodney's body responded. He'd been nervous at the door, but now he put his hand on John's leg.
"Are you sure you're real?" he asked.
"Come here and find out."
* * *
But that all "things," though only projections, are projections that are striving to break away from the underlying that denies them identity of their own.
Ronon tossed and turned, thrashing, tangling himself up in sheets. He'd wake himself up, but in the dark, and too confused not to slip back into the dream, where he could fight.
He was so afraid--so afraid and so ravenous, he tried to explain that to them, he had the barest sense that they'd understood him once.
But not now.
He waited, hungry. Not hungry--it was something deep inside of him, some biological force. Need. They came slowly toward him, weak and watery. He was stronger. He could tear them apart with his bare hands.
But he couldn't stop them from walking toward him.
Each step, interminable, crowded him. They came from every direction, every corridor, and every lift. They were thousands and he was one.
The last of his kind.
He cried out, but they kept moving.
Coming for him.
END