what the damn? gen h/w zombie fic. because i'm cool like that.
I got inspired by the fabulous, awesome, amazing, BEST DAMN ZOMBIE BOOK EVER, (World War Z by Max Brooks, for those who haven't read me blabbling it's praises).
And yes. I know it's overdone. I know half the fandom hates it. But fuck it.
Title: Rush Down Darkness (1/3)
Author: starlingthefool
Pairing: House/Wilson
Genre: House MD/World War Z crossover
Rating: R
Warning: Zombies. End of the world, sort of. Spoilers for the book.
Summary:"End of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine."
Disclaimer: I own neither House nor the vast swarms of the undead from Max Brooks' world. Pity.
A/N:For an in depth plot synopsis of World War Z by Max Brooks, who also wrote The Zombie Survival Guide, you can look at Wikipedia's article on it.
Or, if you're impatient, you can just read my own plot synopsis:
Zombies began appearing in China, and the infection quickly spread through refugees fleeing the country. At first, China managed to cover up outbreaks. The first publicized zombie attacks were in South Africa, and the disease became known as African Rabies. In America, somebody successfully marketed a drug called Phalanx, which was supposed to be a vaccine and was, in fact, crap. Zombies showed up in America, first in isolated incidents, and eventually in swarms. The army made a very publicized last stand in Yonkers, New York, and got massacred. What was later called "The Great Panic" set in. The army retreated over the Rocky Mountains, keeping them as a natural barrier between them and a slight majority of the undead. It effectively created a self-contained quarantine in its own country, following the examples of other nations; take the government and a section of the population to a remote and hard to reach place, and quarantine yourself there. Meanwhile, a large amount of Americans east of the Rockies went north, because zombies eventually freeze when the temperature drops below freezing. Bad stuff happened to a lot of those people. Ever hear of the Donner Party? Yeah. That kind of bad stuff. Also, there was a short nuclear exchange between Iran and Pakistan, and the climate has shifted since the war ended.
Also, the book is structured as a series of interviews. Hence...
Montpelier, Vermont.
The house is small, dwarfed by large sugar maples on all sides. The color on the leaves is tinted yellow. Fall comes earlier to New England now.
Dr. Gregory House is one of three doctors working in Montpelier and the surrounding towns. During the War, he lived in Princeton, New Jersey, part of the community that occupied Princeton University during the war and subsequent dark years. We talk on his front porch, which faces the Green Mountains and Winooski river.
I’d like to think I was better informed than most people on what everyone was calling African Rabies. It was interesting. I read everything I could find on it, which was practically nil, but I still found some stuff. A disease that drove people crazy and then made them eat each other? That’s pretty damn cool. At least from an infectious disease point of view.
[His enthusiasm still shows through, though there’s a measure of irony in his statement.]
Anyway, not many of my colleagues knew much about it until Phalanx came out. And then they only knew what was on the pamphlets the pharmaceutical company gave them. If they did any other research on the disease, they might have learned a few things of interest. Oh, like, perhaps… the disease wasn’t actually a form of rabies at all? Or even if it was, that this was a vaccine for an entirely different strain of it? Ten minutes on Google, that’s all it would have taken, but those idiots… They sure as hell didn’t tell the patients, anyway. Most of them just wrote the scrip and got their money.
Doctors are assholes who pander to their moron patients, the drug companies, and whoever is signing their paycheck.
-All of them?
Don’t be an idiot. There’s always that point zero zero zero one percent who are actually trying to do good work. Or who are at least more interested in actually curing a patient than in all the bullshit. That’s me. I’ve only met about… seven doctors in my lifetime who are in the former group. If that.
[He frowns, and shakes his head.]
It doesn't matter. I reserve most of my hatred for the old government, the CDC in particular, with a little left over for the asshole that actually marketed Phalanx.
Anyway. What the hell was I talking about?
Nothing really happens in New Jersey. Nothing epic, I mean. Even the nickname is boring. The Garden State. Aside from being a joke, it gives off that sense of stability and order. Everything is as it should be. A garden is nature with the illusion of control.
I’m stopping before that metaphor gets any deeper. The point is, you don’t really expect anything big to happen in Jersey. Shit hits the fan north or south of us, New York or DC. I wasn’t expecting the plague to come to us. If I wanted to see it, and I still did at that point, I figured I'd have to search it out.
Stupid of me. Stupid of everyone, but I should have known better.
The first cases I saw were before the Panic hit, by about two months. At that point, there were only rumors and misinformation about the virus. Nobody really knew what they were dealing with when it really hit. We had some of the first confirmed outbreaks here. Lucky us.
A kid, maybe fourteen, had been attacked while walking back home from a movie. He’d been with some friends who’d tried to help him, but they got bitten in the process, then ran away. Left their friend to die, but you can’t really blame them. And shit, looked what happened to them.
From their accounts, there was only one zombie. It was probably an illegal refugee. Got bit, came to America hoping that the bullshit about Phalanx was true. They weren’t flooding into here like they were in Western Europe or Southeast Asia, but there were enough of them. You only need one, anyway, and two days later, there'll be an army of ghouls shambling down the street.
If we’d known more about the disease, if the fucking government or CDC had actually decided to share with us doctors what we should have been looking for, what to do in case of an outbreak, than maybe it could have been contained. Maybe not everywhere, but we would have known enough to…
[He trails off angrily. He says nothing for a while, just watches the leaves move in the trees.]
Fourteen people, staff and patients, were infected before we knew what was happening. Thirty-nine before we could get them all quarantined. That’s not even counting those who were killed outright and then reanimated later in the morgue. Thank fuck we had enough body bags on hand.
Despite that, the whole fucking mess was contained enough to be deemed “an isolated incident.” Level One. Minor mishap. Fuckers. I hope every last one of those bastards at the CDC got his brains eaten. Don’t give me that fucking look. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of bureaucrats.
-Did you know any of the people who died that day?
Another stupid question. Of course I did. It was a big hospital, but it was still the same people everyday. Do you mean did I know them well? Play golf with them? Watch the Superbowl while sharing beer and nachos with them? Were any of them my friends? No. They were people I worked with. I didn’t have many friends at that point, and I have less now.
-What did you do during the Great Panic?
Hah. That’s how you know something’s officially become history: it's prefaced with an adjective and given capital letters.
Our hospital had been closed, because of that whole “isolated incident.” Once we were out of quarantine, everyone scattered within the week. A few people got jobs elsewhere in town, at Princeton General or through the National Guard, who had troops stationed here because of the student riots. My boss actually went to Israel, got in just before the voluntary quarantine took effect and the borders closed. I found out last year that she survived. Good for her. I know a few who headed north, because the dead couldn’t move when their limbs were frozen. Of course, neither can the living. Haven’t heard anything from that group. They might have survived though.
I mostly drank. And took pills. End of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine. Or at least numb, which in my book was just as good. I watched a lot old TV episodes on DVD that week, because I could only stand so much of the news. After I watched the army get wiped out by the dead at Yonkers, I knew, just knew in my guts, that it was finished. Nobody was going to survive this. And then the announcement came that the army and government were retreating west of the Rockies. I drank the last of my Scotch, and decided that suicide sounded like a grand plan.
Wilson though, that bastard. He probably knew what I’d do. And he's got the sense of timing of a, a soap opera character.
He basically broke my door down and hauled my ass off the couch. He wanted me to come with him. Actually, demanded is a better word, but I didn't give him a chance to say where we might go. I fought him. We were all going to die, I said. Why not do it my way?
And he sat down, stared at me for a minute, then rolled up his sleeve. He knew I had morphine in the apartment, for-
[He gestures to his leg.]
When the pain got really bad. He said to get it out. He’d inject me, said I was too drunk to know my ass from my elbow, which was probably true. I’d probably inject an air bubble, and those aren’t always fatal. He’d make sure it did the trick, then he’d follow me. His actual words. “I’ll follow you.” I felt like a real bastard, but what other option was there for me? I couldn’t make it up north, not with the gas shortage, and it’s not like walking was an option. And besides, the world was fucked as far as I could tell. Why not check out early?
So I got the morphine out, let him fill up the syringe, rolled up my sleeve, and thanked him before he injected me.
I actually fucking thanked the bastard. I should have known. Everybody lies, some more than most. Wilson better than most.
Hah. The funny thing is, he probably got the idea from me.
[He smiles nostalgically again, then catches my curious look.]
If you think you’re going to hear that story, piss off.
Anyway, when I woke up, he had moved us from my apartment to the Graduate dorms at Princeton University.
-The dorms? Why not the hospital?
It was too new. Too many windows and glass walls. Some of the floors would have been safe, but the others… The University though. Some of those buildings are over two hundred years old. Lots of stone work, narrow windows, towers. The Grad buildings even had a walled in courtyard. Closest thing to a castle we could have had. It was a good idea. Not that I really appreciated it at the time.
[He laughs.]
He’s lucky I was too dizzy to get up, or I would have kicked the shit out of him. I did punch him the next morning. Knocked one of his teeth out, and all that blood pouring out of his mouth… That stopped me. Long enough for him to get in a few words.
He said, “You want to kill yourself, fine. The morphine’s in the third drawer in my desk. Fucking hell, House. I didn’t think you’d just quit like this. I thought you’d fight.”
I laughed in his face, even though I saw how disappointed he was, and it twisted my guts until I remembered that he knew how to push my buttons. “There’s nothing left to fight for.”
“Just our lives,” he said. And… fuck.
[He shakes his head.]
That moron had been fighting for me for years, way before this shit hit the fan. Pretty much everyone else at the hospital had left Princeton. He was the only one who stayed, and it was for me. He could have gone north with the rest of them. Hell, he’s Jewish, he could have gone to Israel. But he stayed because he knew I had to. Knew I wouldn't leave.
I couldn’t fathom it then. I just figured I owed it to him to start fighting for myself.
[He watches the trees in silence a while.]
This seems like a great afternoon for getting drunk. Want a beer?
[He doesn’t wait for an answer before hauling himself out of his chair and going into the kitchen. He comes back with a small box of unlabeled brown bottles and sets it down at his feet.]
I miss whiskey. There’s a couple of families in town who do home brewing, but nobody’s set up a distiller yet. And the trade lines are still shaky here.
[He gives me a bottle, then opens one for himself.]]
-Cheers.
A toast: here's to the world not ending. May I never live to see another goddam apocalypse.
Part 2
And yes. I know it's overdone. I know half the fandom hates it. But fuck it.
Title: Rush Down Darkness (1/3)
Author: starlingthefool
Pairing: House/Wilson
Genre: House MD/World War Z crossover
Rating: R
Warning: Zombies. End of the world, sort of. Spoilers for the book.
Summary:"End of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine."
Disclaimer: I own neither House nor the vast swarms of the undead from Max Brooks' world. Pity.
A/N:For an in depth plot synopsis of World War Z by Max Brooks, who also wrote The Zombie Survival Guide, you can look at Wikipedia's article on it.
Or, if you're impatient, you can just read my own plot synopsis:
Zombies began appearing in China, and the infection quickly spread through refugees fleeing the country. At first, China managed to cover up outbreaks. The first publicized zombie attacks were in South Africa, and the disease became known as African Rabies. In America, somebody successfully marketed a drug called Phalanx, which was supposed to be a vaccine and was, in fact, crap. Zombies showed up in America, first in isolated incidents, and eventually in swarms. The army made a very publicized last stand in Yonkers, New York, and got massacred. What was later called "The Great Panic" set in. The army retreated over the Rocky Mountains, keeping them as a natural barrier between them and a slight majority of the undead. It effectively created a self-contained quarantine in its own country, following the examples of other nations; take the government and a section of the population to a remote and hard to reach place, and quarantine yourself there. Meanwhile, a large amount of Americans east of the Rockies went north, because zombies eventually freeze when the temperature drops below freezing. Bad stuff happened to a lot of those people. Ever hear of the Donner Party? Yeah. That kind of bad stuff. Also, there was a short nuclear exchange between Iran and Pakistan, and the climate has shifted since the war ended.
Also, the book is structured as a series of interviews. Hence...
Montpelier, Vermont.
The house is small, dwarfed by large sugar maples on all sides. The color on the leaves is tinted yellow. Fall comes earlier to New England now.
Dr. Gregory House is one of three doctors working in Montpelier and the surrounding towns. During the War, he lived in Princeton, New Jersey, part of the community that occupied Princeton University during the war and subsequent dark years. We talk on his front porch, which faces the Green Mountains and Winooski river.
I’d like to think I was better informed than most people on what everyone was calling African Rabies. It was interesting. I read everything I could find on it, which was practically nil, but I still found some stuff. A disease that drove people crazy and then made them eat each other? That’s pretty damn cool. At least from an infectious disease point of view.
[His enthusiasm still shows through, though there’s a measure of irony in his statement.]
Anyway, not many of my colleagues knew much about it until Phalanx came out. And then they only knew what was on the pamphlets the pharmaceutical company gave them. If they did any other research on the disease, they might have learned a few things of interest. Oh, like, perhaps… the disease wasn’t actually a form of rabies at all? Or even if it was, that this was a vaccine for an entirely different strain of it? Ten minutes on Google, that’s all it would have taken, but those idiots… They sure as hell didn’t tell the patients, anyway. Most of them just wrote the scrip and got their money.
Doctors are assholes who pander to their moron patients, the drug companies, and whoever is signing their paycheck.
-All of them?
Don’t be an idiot. There’s always that point zero zero zero one percent who are actually trying to do good work. Or who are at least more interested in actually curing a patient than in all the bullshit. That’s me. I’ve only met about… seven doctors in my lifetime who are in the former group. If that.
[He frowns, and shakes his head.]
It doesn't matter. I reserve most of my hatred for the old government, the CDC in particular, with a little left over for the asshole that actually marketed Phalanx.
Anyway. What the hell was I talking about?
Nothing really happens in New Jersey. Nothing epic, I mean. Even the nickname is boring. The Garden State. Aside from being a joke, it gives off that sense of stability and order. Everything is as it should be. A garden is nature with the illusion of control.
I’m stopping before that metaphor gets any deeper. The point is, you don’t really expect anything big to happen in Jersey. Shit hits the fan north or south of us, New York or DC. I wasn’t expecting the plague to come to us. If I wanted to see it, and I still did at that point, I figured I'd have to search it out.
Stupid of me. Stupid of everyone, but I should have known better.
The first cases I saw were before the Panic hit, by about two months. At that point, there were only rumors and misinformation about the virus. Nobody really knew what they were dealing with when it really hit. We had some of the first confirmed outbreaks here. Lucky us.
A kid, maybe fourteen, had been attacked while walking back home from a movie. He’d been with some friends who’d tried to help him, but they got bitten in the process, then ran away. Left their friend to die, but you can’t really blame them. And shit, looked what happened to them.
From their accounts, there was only one zombie. It was probably an illegal refugee. Got bit, came to America hoping that the bullshit about Phalanx was true. They weren’t flooding into here like they were in Western Europe or Southeast Asia, but there were enough of them. You only need one, anyway, and two days later, there'll be an army of ghouls shambling down the street.
If we’d known more about the disease, if the fucking government or CDC had actually decided to share with us doctors what we should have been looking for, what to do in case of an outbreak, than maybe it could have been contained. Maybe not everywhere, but we would have known enough to…
[He trails off angrily. He says nothing for a while, just watches the leaves move in the trees.]
Fourteen people, staff and patients, were infected before we knew what was happening. Thirty-nine before we could get them all quarantined. That’s not even counting those who were killed outright and then reanimated later in the morgue. Thank fuck we had enough body bags on hand.
Despite that, the whole fucking mess was contained enough to be deemed “an isolated incident.” Level One. Minor mishap. Fuckers. I hope every last one of those bastards at the CDC got his brains eaten. Don’t give me that fucking look. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of bureaucrats.
-Did you know any of the people who died that day?
Another stupid question. Of course I did. It was a big hospital, but it was still the same people everyday. Do you mean did I know them well? Play golf with them? Watch the Superbowl while sharing beer and nachos with them? Were any of them my friends? No. They were people I worked with. I didn’t have many friends at that point, and I have less now.
-What did you do during the Great Panic?
Hah. That’s how you know something’s officially become history: it's prefaced with an adjective and given capital letters.
Our hospital had been closed, because of that whole “isolated incident.” Once we were out of quarantine, everyone scattered within the week. A few people got jobs elsewhere in town, at Princeton General or through the National Guard, who had troops stationed here because of the student riots. My boss actually went to Israel, got in just before the voluntary quarantine took effect and the borders closed. I found out last year that she survived. Good for her. I know a few who headed north, because the dead couldn’t move when their limbs were frozen. Of course, neither can the living. Haven’t heard anything from that group. They might have survived though.
I mostly drank. And took pills. End of the world as we knew it, and I felt fine. Or at least numb, which in my book was just as good. I watched a lot old TV episodes on DVD that week, because I could only stand so much of the news. After I watched the army get wiped out by the dead at Yonkers, I knew, just knew in my guts, that it was finished. Nobody was going to survive this. And then the announcement came that the army and government were retreating west of the Rockies. I drank the last of my Scotch, and decided that suicide sounded like a grand plan.
Wilson though, that bastard. He probably knew what I’d do. And he's got the sense of timing of a, a soap opera character.
He basically broke my door down and hauled my ass off the couch. He wanted me to come with him. Actually, demanded is a better word, but I didn't give him a chance to say where we might go. I fought him. We were all going to die, I said. Why not do it my way?
And he sat down, stared at me for a minute, then rolled up his sleeve. He knew I had morphine in the apartment, for-
[He gestures to his leg.]
When the pain got really bad. He said to get it out. He’d inject me, said I was too drunk to know my ass from my elbow, which was probably true. I’d probably inject an air bubble, and those aren’t always fatal. He’d make sure it did the trick, then he’d follow me. His actual words. “I’ll follow you.” I felt like a real bastard, but what other option was there for me? I couldn’t make it up north, not with the gas shortage, and it’s not like walking was an option. And besides, the world was fucked as far as I could tell. Why not check out early?
So I got the morphine out, let him fill up the syringe, rolled up my sleeve, and thanked him before he injected me.
I actually fucking thanked the bastard. I should have known. Everybody lies, some more than most. Wilson better than most.
Hah. The funny thing is, he probably got the idea from me.
[He smiles nostalgically again, then catches my curious look.]
If you think you’re going to hear that story, piss off.
Anyway, when I woke up, he had moved us from my apartment to the Graduate dorms at Princeton University.
-The dorms? Why not the hospital?
It was too new. Too many windows and glass walls. Some of the floors would have been safe, but the others… The University though. Some of those buildings are over two hundred years old. Lots of stone work, narrow windows, towers. The Grad buildings even had a walled in courtyard. Closest thing to a castle we could have had. It was a good idea. Not that I really appreciated it at the time.
[He laughs.]
He’s lucky I was too dizzy to get up, or I would have kicked the shit out of him. I did punch him the next morning. Knocked one of his teeth out, and all that blood pouring out of his mouth… That stopped me. Long enough for him to get in a few words.
He said, “You want to kill yourself, fine. The morphine’s in the third drawer in my desk. Fucking hell, House. I didn’t think you’d just quit like this. I thought you’d fight.”
I laughed in his face, even though I saw how disappointed he was, and it twisted my guts until I remembered that he knew how to push my buttons. “There’s nothing left to fight for.”
“Just our lives,” he said. And… fuck.
[He shakes his head.]
That moron had been fighting for me for years, way before this shit hit the fan. Pretty much everyone else at the hospital had left Princeton. He was the only one who stayed, and it was for me. He could have gone north with the rest of them. Hell, he’s Jewish, he could have gone to Israel. But he stayed because he knew I had to. Knew I wouldn't leave.
I couldn’t fathom it then. I just figured I owed it to him to start fighting for myself.
[He watches the trees in silence a while.]
This seems like a great afternoon for getting drunk. Want a beer?
[He doesn’t wait for an answer before hauling himself out of his chair and going into the kitchen. He comes back with a small box of unlabeled brown bottles and sets it down at his feet.]
I miss whiskey. There’s a couple of families in town who do home brewing, but nobody’s set up a distiller yet. And the trade lines are still shaky here.
[He gives me a bottle, then opens one for himself.]]
-Cheers.
A toast: here's to the world not ending. May I never live to see another goddam apocalypse.
Part 2