Firefly Fic: An End Has a Start (Jayne, Simon, crew, G)
Title: An End Has a Start
Genre: Gen
Characters: Jayne, Simon, Kaylee, crew
Words: About 4800
Summary: There are things Jayne loves about zombies.
Notes: Post-movie. Prompt originally from lyrstzha - thank you! Many thanks to lunabee34 for beta critique and unovis_lj for excellent editing and encouragement. All remaining errors my own. Title snagged from the Editors song.
The thing Jayne loves about zombies is that they're easy. After a few weeks of the same old thing - running from the Feds, getting shot at by some of Mal's so-called friends, nearly getting chomped on by Reavers, and dealing with River's gun-stealing ways - it's always downright relaxing to have to deal with a zombie outbreak. Sure, it'd get boring if they hung around too long - the things are so slow they're like a target for bitty babies holding their very first guns - but sometimes, a man just likes kick back, relax, and shoot holes in a few heads.
"This is more than a few heads," Simon mutters as he fires another shot.
True enough. When Jayne looks out his peephole, it's real clear that he's looking at a few hundred heads, at least. And that ain't counting the ones he's already gone and shot. He shoots a couple more for good measure.
"Yep, relaxin'," he says, stepping away. It's about time for a cigar break.
"And I doubt you'd be so cavalier about the situation if some of these things used to be your family members." Simon waves smoke away, coughing in a way that's so gorram fake it's just sad. Jayne gives him five minutes before he starts bitching about the poor ventilation in their bunker.
"Maybe, but they ain't." Truth is, Jayne's folks likely ain't even heard about zombies yet. Some of the rim worlds are real isolated, and turns out that ain't always such a bad thing. Maybe once they do hear something, they'll finally quit bitching about living in the gorram middle of nowhere. "Anyhow, if they can't keep back a bunch of slow, rottin' zombies, I'm thinkin' they ain't worth much in the way of family." He can almost hear Simon rolling his eyes at that, and it makes him grin.
They're both quiet for a few minutes, enough that the moaning of the zombies starts to get a little grating. And the cigar can only keep the smell of them away for so long. Eventually, Jayne grunts a little, shoves away from the wall, and moves back to his peephole. "If folk offered a bounty on these things, I'd be rich by now." The fact there ain't no bounty is one of them things he hates about zombies.
Still, a man can't complain about easy targets. That'd just be rude.
+ + + + +
The problem with any technological development is that once it exists, it's hard to forget. Projects can be closed down, research directions restricted, and information buried, but ultimately, no line of research is ever fully terminated unless it was entirely unsuccessful.
Even worse, different people can have vastly different ideas about what 'unsuccessful' means. In the scheme of things, the destruction of an entire colony and the unleashing of a ravenous horde of creatures can, by some, be seen as merely an unfortunate, resource-wasting setback.
After all, the reasoning goes, even highly trained, brilliant scientists can make mistakes. Should human error warrant the closing down of an entire project aiming to build a better, more compliant, 'verse?
"Yes," most would say, quietly deleting data, destroying chemical compounds, and resolving never to let this happen again. "Yes."
People, even those in power, can learn from their mistakes. Ministers might not admit those mistakes outside of inner circles and unrecorded meetings, but that doesn't mean they don't learn when it's time to abandon certain avenues of research.
Sometimes, everyone learns - everyone believes that they were truly, deeply, horrifically mistaken.
But for some, the only thing learned is how to compartmentalize, lock down, and keep better secrets from the remaining idealists in positions of power.
+ + + + +
"It's possible it's a virus," Simon had said, back in the early days when reports started coming in. "For one thing, if the reports of transmission via bites are correct, a virus would be very likely."
"Yeah, but how'd it start?" Mal had asked.
Jayne had figured it were a stupid question. Don't ever really matter so much how things start - what matters is what happens next, and how it's going to end. Some guy throws a punch in a bar on U-Day, it don't matter why he threw that punch. It just matters that he did it, and that Jayne's going to get called away from his drink to help deal with the brawl.
Again.
Simon had shrugged. "It's impossible to say. I don't even have solid, verifiable reports of transmission, much less any data on what happens once a body is infected."
It'd been quiet for a space then, until Jayne had said, "Don't matter much. Things still go down with a bullet."
That much had been clear almost from the start. There's something to be said for the first outbreak starting on a nowhere armpit of a moon that just happens to be a favourite merc watering hole. And mercs who survive that kind of thing sure do like to talk about it.
+ + + + +
"How long's it been?" Jayne asks, when shooting starts to move from easy targets to too many targets without enough back-up. He asks, even though he knows the answer.
"Two days," Simon says, firing two shots as he speaks.
Jayne's got to admit, Simon's gun skills got better, real fast. Guess that's what incentive does to a man, though Jayne can't understand why the guns themselves weren't ever incentive enough. Core folk - he'll never understand what they go and teach their kids.
"How long'd Mal say they'd be?" He knows the answer to that one too.
"Twelve hours, maximum. The other group wasn't that far away."
The next logical questions are how much water they got left, and how the ammo's coming. But he don't want to know the answer to the first one, and he's in charge of the ammo, so he knows exactly how much they have. Instead he asks, "So, how're they doin'? Back there?"
There's a longish pause before Simon answers, like maybe he's trying to figure out if Jayne's asking for real, if he really cares about the folk huddled back in the backroom of the bunker, crying and sniffling and wondering if their own relatives and neighbours might end up eating them.
Course, he don't care so much, he's just talking to kill time, but still. No reason for Simon to know that.
"Not bad. No one was bitten. There were a few minor injuries sustained in getting them in here, but nothing serious. The big problem is mental state."
"They're going mental?" That don't ever spell good, not in such a small space. Not that he'd blame them, on account of it being such a gorram small space surrounded by zombies crawling with all kinds of hungry.
Simon sighs, and Jayne figures they've been spending too much time together if he can hear it even above zombie sounds and guns shooting. "No more than you are."
Well, that's okay then.
+ + + + +
How does any unauthorized research program start? Long before the truth of Miranda was publicly revealed, perhaps there was a clandestine meeting between two - or three - who thought that they knew better than their repentant colleagues. Perhaps they were people with convictions that are, at best, describable as broken, twisted, hungry.
Perhaps the conversation had gone something like this:
"We could try again. There are ways to make anything better."
"The underlying principle was sound, naturally."
"Agreed. I can prepare a facility and find appropriate staff."
"Somewhere out of the way, I trust."
This last statement would, of course, garner a small, secret smile. "Absolutely, I know the perfect place. And I know the right person to run the program."
Maybe this conversation takes place in a dark, claustrophobic room, perhaps filled with the scent of power; we can picture our two - or three - ministers sporting sinister moustaches; they have faces that have a tendency towards cruel smiles. There are secret handshakes, perhaps, followed by ominous laughter.
It's much harder to imagine such discussions - brief, and perhaps not as thorough as one might wish, trading in assumptions and the slightest of misunderstandings that led to fundamental misinterpretations - taking place in open parklands filled with the laughter of families. It's harder to imagine our dastardly perpetrators as portly, jolly-faced, and watching over their children with worried smiles even as they plan.
Perhaps, at the end of the conversation, they shake hands, secure in the belief that they will make the 'verse a safer place for their innocent, helpless, happy children.
Which reality - which setting - makes the outcomes more horrific? Or does it matter?
+ + + + +
The first time they got into it started with Mal yelling at everyone to get down to the kitchen yesterday; if that ain't a downright unpleasant way to wake up, Jayne don't know what is.
Then again, he ain't never been woken up from getting gnawed on, so maybe he shouldn't complain.
"Reports of an attack," Mal had said, terse-like. "On Whitefall. Words I'm hearing don't make much sense."
"Reavers?" Zoe had asked.
"No," River had said, face hard, eyes a little wild. It ain't never been a good thing when she gets that look.
"Don't sound like it. Something else - folk dying and coming back." Mal hadn't looked like he believed the words himself, even as he was speaking them. "Distress calls are coming in, and -"
"-and you us want to go in like gorram heroes, saving the day." Ever since Miranda, Jayne'd been worrying about that possibility. Mal ain't no easy person to fathom, never has been, and sometimes, Jayne figures he never did quite lose the taste for fighting for a cause that can't be won.
Mal didn't answer on account of Simon asking, "Did you just say people dying and coming back? What, exactly, does that mean?"
Mal had shrugged, admitting to yet another thing he didn't know about a situation he wanted to stick his nose into. "I mean coming back. Not staying dead when they should."
They'd all thought on that for a while. Didn't make much sense to Jayne.
"No offence, sir, but I seem to recall the words 'Whitefall' and 'never again' and 'I mean it this time, Zoe'. Are you certain this isn't a ploy by Patience to get you down on the planet and handily dead?"
Jayne had always liked Zoe when she asked the smart questions.
"Patience isn't planning anything anymore," River had said in that creepy way she sometimes had.
And that had been that.
+ + + + +
By the second time they were rescuing folk from zombies - back before they even had a name for the things - Jayne figured there was something he almost liked about the whole scenario. Sure, they weren't getting paid, and that is all kinds of irritating, but the truth is, he's been getting used to that being on Mal's crew.
Besides, there was something else - the folk - maybe 15-odd women and kids - had looked at them like they were gorram saviours. He'll never forget dropping into the middle of rutting nowhere, shooting down a bunch of…things that weren't quite right, and then catching glimpse of the look on people's faces as he reloaded.
It ain't normal to see folk look at him like that. Glowing faces, almost. Relief. Expectation. Thankfulness.
He didn't think much about it at the time, on account of how Zoe and Mal were taking their own special time getting into the fray, but later, once the zombies were dead for real and the people were packed into Serenity's hold, he'd thought about it a lot.
"Seen a look like that before," he'd muttered to Kaylee.
"Yeah?"
"Mudders," he'd said.
"Oh."
She'd been real quiet for a while before she'd said, "Maybe you deserve it this time though. Mal didn't make you help them."
Maybe he should ignore the looks they get, these days. But it ain't exactly easy. If he took a break from shooting and went into the back of the bunker right now, he'd get them same looks, and more again, and…he just ain't used to being the man folk believe in for free.
It gives him an uncomfortableness, even if he does feel a thousand feet tall every gorram time.
"I think," Simon says, stepping away from the wall, "that things are getting worse out there."
He's noticed that himself. Bodies keep piling up. At least climbing over them slows the things down. "Think they can smell us or somethin'?"
"It's possible. Maybe there aren't any other pockets of people left alive, and we're getting all of the attention. Or it could be the noise of the guns attracting them."
He don't want to say it, but he says it anyway, "We're getting low on ammo."
"I know."
Course he does. "Still got grenades. Maybe if we let them get close enough we could kill enough to clear a path…"
"And go where?"
Yeah. That's the gorram problem. This is the only defensible place when you're saddled with a bunch of clueless folk. If it were just him and Simon - hell, if it was just him - maybe something else would work. He knows better to try and convince Simon of that, but maybe if he slugged him a good one and carried him out they could -
"You wouldn't make it out of the town centre," Simon says, real calm.
Jayne could play dumb, but it ain't worth the effort. "I could just slug you and leave you behind. Less of a weight around my neck. Bet Mal won't mind so much."
Simon smiles and in the dim light it almost looks real. "I like you too, Jayne."
He grins back and steps back up to the wall. "When I run out of bullets, the grenades are coming out, plan or no plan."
"This isn't exactly a surprise, you know."
+ + + + +
Even in a clandestine project, records will inevitably be kept, if only to ensure objectivity. Debates about the failures of the past help prepare the way for the future.
"The failure was obviously a result of poor testing protocols and -"
"-you can't be serious! The trials were appropriate and how, exactly, can you get a precise cross-section of the entire population that would allow for observation of all potential reactions -"
"Obviously Miranda was the trial, and it was entirely uncontrolled -"
These kinds of debates likely continue into the small, dark hours, when people forget they are discussing other people and get lost in theory. In the light of day, such discussions necessarily get pushed aside in favour of developing something that can be tested.
"A gas," one scientist postulates, "was clearly an inappropriate method with which to attempt to modify behaviour. It is inherently unstable and if the original project managers had listened to me -"
Her colleagues have heard this all before, ad nauseum, but this time, she offers something new.
"-and so I propose that the answer is far more fundamental at its core. Humans are inherently flawed on a genetic level. We are psychologically unstable as a species. If we want peace and control, we must alter the underlying flaws."
"Do you mean -"
She is emphatic. "Yes. We must consider working at the genetic level, rather than attempting to add unstable, unpredictable - and ultimately resource-heavy - compounds to our environments."
Her colleagues immediately begin a loud, fractious debate about the feasibility and possibilities. It is more than she hoped for, and as she leans back, listening and speaking when necessary, it becomes clear to anyone who is watching that she is a believer.
+ + + + +
Jayne can't say exactly when it was, but one night, after yet another distress call from an infested town, the crew gets drunk. Real drunk. Starts off quiet, gets real loud for a while, with Kaylee telling stories that make Simon move to cover River's ears, even while he's maybe trying not to laugh real hard. Then it gets quiet again and the talk moves from dirty stories to thinking. This ain't ever been Jayne's drinking forte, so mostly he stays quiet, listens, and manages to steal more than his fair share of the drink when no one's looking.
"It's the re-animation that I don't understand," Simon says. "What would do that? People dying is one thing - a virus or bacteria could work that fast. But -"
"Waking up hungry for folk," Mal says, knocking back more hooch, "don't make sense."
"Precisely," Simon says, grinning at Mal, and it just figures that the only time them two can really get along is when they're both stinking drunk.
There are a couple more rounds of drink before Simon speaks on it again. "A parasite -"
"I kin think of a couple of parasites -" Jayne says, more out of habit than anything.
"-would make more sense in terms of the body moving again. If it was controlling a dead host and searching for nutrients -"
"Nutrients is a real detached way of putting it, doctor," Zoe says, and Jayne's impressed - she's downed more than he has, and she ain't even slurring a little bit.
Simon don't seem to care. "But a parasite doesn't usually kill so quickly."
Kaylee frowns. "Maybe they're working together. Cooperatin'."
"A virus - or bacteria - in a symbiotic relationship with a parasitic agent?" He sits up a little bit, looking real interested. "It would be unlikely, but it's an intriguing…"
Jayne ain't ever going to understand what some folk find interesting. Ever.
"An autopsy would be one way to begin to answer some of these -"
"No," Mal, Zoe and River say at the same time, real firm.
And that's that. Jayne ain't so sure that Simon's disappointed, no matter how he much he frowns.
+ + + + +
"This ain't gonna be my last stand." From out in the Black, it had looked like another zombie job - same old thing, maybe with some money at the end of it, if folk had been organized enough to think on that before sending out a call for help. He didn't come down here to be abandoned by Zoe and Mal, who maybe forgot they got crew surrounded by things that ain't gonna stop being hungry any time soon. He came down here to shoot things that are easy, to maybe throw some grenades and grin at the mess they make, and to get looked at like he's some kind of big damn hero.
He ain't here to die. This ain't his time.
"Do you have a last stand picked out, then?"
Even now, Jayne can't resist bugging on the doctor. "Sure. You want details or just an overview?"
"Probably neither, but I doubt you're going to take that into consideration. I mean, why would you start now?"
Jayne nods. Exactly. "See, I'm thinking my last stand first involves not wearin' pants -"
"Something that I believe the captain might be able to relate to -"
"-and getting a good workin' over by three whores - maybe some of them back at Nandi's place - and kickin' it while one of them is -"
"Stop," Simon says, pausing from shooting at zombies. "Are you practicing for writing up a story for the Cortex? Perhaps for a delightful 'Death and Sexin' column in Merc Monthly? If so, I'm one, surprised at your 'literary' aspirations, and two, absolutely not writing this out for you, or proofreading it."
"Just sayin', is all, that this ain't my last stand. I got plans."
"Something to live for, then?" Simon asks dryly.
Jayne checks his reloads and ain't too happy with what he sees. "Yeah." It's quiet for a few minutes, and he finds he ain't liking it at all. Maybe there are days when he wishes gorram Simon Tam would shut his mouth, but this ain't shaping up to be one of them. So, when he can't stand it any longer, he asks, "Since when d'you start reading Merc Monthly anyway?"
He's pretty sure that Simon grins a little bit.
+ + + + +
Using an innocuous retrovirus to carry therapeutic genes into the human body is hardly new. Medical science has been treating several genetic diseases like this for at least a century, and the method can be credited for saving untold lives from debilitating illnesses. But the scope has been limited - treating an individual on a one-on-one basis, using well-tested and understood genetic packages.
If anyone dreamed on a bigger scale - mass genetic changes, population-wide alterations - it was a daydream only. There are too many problems - delivery problems, testing difficulties, ethical concerns. Besides that, what would be the point? There has never been one, single genetically-transmitted disease spread across the entire human population that would necessitate mass genetic therapy.
Perhaps, our scientist-believer argues, it has simply been a matter of not recognizing the nature of the true disease - a genetically-encoded tendency towards aggression, disobedience, trouble-making.
+ + + + +
No one wants to talk about it, but the fact is, it's happening more often, and each time it gets worse - more infected, more dead, more folk who ain't ever going to be quite right after seeing what they saw.
Don't mean there ain't regular work to be had - there is. Maybe more than usual, on account of how it seems that folk in their line of business maybe have a tendency to get zombified easier than most. Don't speak much for their sense, Jayne figures. Zombies or no, they probably wouldn't have lasted long anyhow.
In between rescue jobs and being looked at like a rutting hero, Jayne's making real good coin, and it's about damn time.
"Competition's thinnin' out," he says one night, after Kaylee babbles at him about being able to send more money to her folks lately, and how that's making them real happy, and how she's going to stock up on engine parts even on top of the ones Mal is being all kinds of generous in buying. He doesn't mean anything by it, except that it's fact and probably the money will keep flowing in for a space.
Still, maybe he regrets voicing that truth, on account of the way her face crumples up. She walks away, and he thinks maybe he's supposed to go after her or something. It ain't like Simon's doing that nowadays, though no one's asking about why that might be.
He doesn't go after her, though. That ain't who he is. Maybe he finds her holed up in the cargo bay a while later, but he wasn't looking. And maybe he lets her cry about the folk who get eaten and them who get bitten and then know they only got two choices, get shot in the head, or turn into something that's going to be real hungry real soon. But he weren't looking for it. Just happened, kind of like pretty much every bar brawl he's ever been in. Well, every bar brawl he's been in when Mal's around.
Except for a few, of course.
Well, maybe more than a few. Don't matter, though. Point is that he wasn't looking to see how Kaylee - or anyone - reacts to the increasing pressure of what's ugly outside the ship.
And he gorram resents that this kind of ugliness is creeping in.
+ + + + +
They're getting closer. He can't shoot them as fast as they're coming. Neither of them can.
"Gonna have to make a decision soon," he yells, even though there ain't much noise to yell over. "Grenades'll slow 'em down."
"But once we start using them," Simon says, and he's speaking so quiet Jayne can hardly hear, "it's the sign that our backs are to the wall."
Jayne can't argue with that. "Mal and Zoe -"
"Are probably dead, and we both know it."
He don't say that they might even be out there right now, shuffling along. He don't have to. Jayne wants to shrug like maybe it don't matter, but it does, and anyhow, shrugging right now would screw with his aim. They can't afford wasted bullets.
+ + + + +
How does anything get out of control? Is the true root at the ideas stage, or the practical stage? In practice, the possibilities are numerous - sloppy procedures, inaccurate assumptions, an accident, a mutation…
Some make a living from analysing disasters - natural and human-induced - to understand why, how, and what-if scenarios. Others focus on the repercussions - the outcomes, the implications, and the way they'll shape a new human reality.
Ultimately, does it matter why saliva was chosen as the retrovirus vector, why a retrovirus was selected as a test mechanism, or why it entered the population in an uncontrolled, untested way?
The real importance lies not in why something happened, but how we will react. How will humanity meet a new challenge? What skills will people need in order to survive in this new reality? More importantly, what bonds will make the difference between raw survival and thriving, between short-term existence and the long-term maintenance of what it means to be human?
+ + + + +
When Osiris got hit, it weren't pretty. Serenity weren't anywhere near, but they got the reports - them that got sent out before the reporters got dead. Whole parts of the planet are still under quarantine months later, and the stories of what's going on in those areas are ugly and they still probably ain't as bad as the truth.
No one was prepared for it. If you asked Jayne, he figured it'd be the outposts first, or all them poor planets and moons the Feds like to pretend don't exist other than for crime. But it don't happen that way. Sure, it seemed to start on the Rim, but it moved inwards fast, which Simon said shows something interesting about legal - and illegal - migration and movement patterns.
He'd said it kind of detached-like, after they found out about Osiris. Jayne weren't sure if that was more unsettling than Kaylee crying over folk that she'd never even met.
+ + + + +
Jayne's never counted on anything, even after a long string of things going more or less his way. Truth is, it's a gorram cliché the number of times Mal and Zoe, or him and Mal, or hell, even Mal, River and Simon have come in at the last minute, saved the rutting day, and lived to laugh - or at least drink heavily - about it after. Can't always be like that, he's known that for a real long time now. Luck like that's got to run out sometime.
Looks like maybe this is going to be his last stand after all, and he ain't even going into it with a full stomach. Sometimes a man gets the short end of every gorram stick.
"I got maybe 25 rounds left," he says.
"I have 30," Simon replies.
Right. "How many folk back there?"
There's a short pause before Simon says, "Twenty-two."
He nods. "You keep 24 rounds. I'll finish mine off, we'll use up the grenades and then move back to the inner room. If we block the doors and hatch good, I figure we can maybe hold out for a couple hours before they get in."
"Agreed."
Bullets don't last near as long as he'd wish, but the first grenade going off is real satisfying, and truth is, he's been itching to use them. By the third one, he's glad he started carrying extra for these kinds of jobs, because even if each one buys him just another 15 minutes of living, he'll take it.
After the fourth grenade, he sees that the things coming towards them - walking, lurching, crawling if they have to - are lit up, not just because some of them are on fire, but like maybe the sun's rising. Sun'd make shooting easier, but it came too late. Now, sun just means he'll be able to see the things real clear, and he don't want that.
Can't even count on the sun, sometimes.
"It's not the sun," Simon says, and maybe he sounds almost hopeful.
"Huh?"
"Still six hours to sunrise."
Jayne don't even bother thinking about how gorram typical it is that Simon is keeping time. He just moves to the bunker hatch, pushes it open and pulls himself up. Could be a fire, he tells himself as he does. Might just be a fire; maybe one of the grenades sparked something.
But he looks out, and then up, and it ain't no fire. Lights shine down from a silhouette he'd know anywhere, coming closer, and even when the wind brings the scent of rotting and burnt flesh all around him, he can't stop grinning.
End
Genre: Gen
Characters: Jayne, Simon, Kaylee, crew
Words: About 4800
Summary: There are things Jayne loves about zombies.
Notes: Post-movie. Prompt originally from lyrstzha - thank you! Many thanks to lunabee34 for beta critique and unovis_lj for excellent editing and encouragement. All remaining errors my own. Title snagged from the Editors song.
The thing Jayne loves about zombies is that they're easy. After a few weeks of the same old thing - running from the Feds, getting shot at by some of Mal's so-called friends, nearly getting chomped on by Reavers, and dealing with River's gun-stealing ways - it's always downright relaxing to have to deal with a zombie outbreak. Sure, it'd get boring if they hung around too long - the things are so slow they're like a target for bitty babies holding their very first guns - but sometimes, a man just likes kick back, relax, and shoot holes in a few heads.
"This is more than a few heads," Simon mutters as he fires another shot.
True enough. When Jayne looks out his peephole, it's real clear that he's looking at a few hundred heads, at least. And that ain't counting the ones he's already gone and shot. He shoots a couple more for good measure.
"Yep, relaxin'," he says, stepping away. It's about time for a cigar break.
"And I doubt you'd be so cavalier about the situation if some of these things used to be your family members." Simon waves smoke away, coughing in a way that's so gorram fake it's just sad. Jayne gives him five minutes before he starts bitching about the poor ventilation in their bunker.
"Maybe, but they ain't." Truth is, Jayne's folks likely ain't even heard about zombies yet. Some of the rim worlds are real isolated, and turns out that ain't always such a bad thing. Maybe once they do hear something, they'll finally quit bitching about living in the gorram middle of nowhere. "Anyhow, if they can't keep back a bunch of slow, rottin' zombies, I'm thinkin' they ain't worth much in the way of family." He can almost hear Simon rolling his eyes at that, and it makes him grin.
They're both quiet for a few minutes, enough that the moaning of the zombies starts to get a little grating. And the cigar can only keep the smell of them away for so long. Eventually, Jayne grunts a little, shoves away from the wall, and moves back to his peephole. "If folk offered a bounty on these things, I'd be rich by now." The fact there ain't no bounty is one of them things he hates about zombies.
Still, a man can't complain about easy targets. That'd just be rude.
+ + + + +
The problem with any technological development is that once it exists, it's hard to forget. Projects can be closed down, research directions restricted, and information buried, but ultimately, no line of research is ever fully terminated unless it was entirely unsuccessful.
Even worse, different people can have vastly different ideas about what 'unsuccessful' means. In the scheme of things, the destruction of an entire colony and the unleashing of a ravenous horde of creatures can, by some, be seen as merely an unfortunate, resource-wasting setback.
After all, the reasoning goes, even highly trained, brilliant scientists can make mistakes. Should human error warrant the closing down of an entire project aiming to build a better, more compliant, 'verse?
"Yes," most would say, quietly deleting data, destroying chemical compounds, and resolving never to let this happen again. "Yes."
People, even those in power, can learn from their mistakes. Ministers might not admit those mistakes outside of inner circles and unrecorded meetings, but that doesn't mean they don't learn when it's time to abandon certain avenues of research.
Sometimes, everyone learns - everyone believes that they were truly, deeply, horrifically mistaken.
But for some, the only thing learned is how to compartmentalize, lock down, and keep better secrets from the remaining idealists in positions of power.
+ + + + +
"It's possible it's a virus," Simon had said, back in the early days when reports started coming in. "For one thing, if the reports of transmission via bites are correct, a virus would be very likely."
"Yeah, but how'd it start?" Mal had asked.
Jayne had figured it were a stupid question. Don't ever really matter so much how things start - what matters is what happens next, and how it's going to end. Some guy throws a punch in a bar on U-Day, it don't matter why he threw that punch. It just matters that he did it, and that Jayne's going to get called away from his drink to help deal with the brawl.
Again.
Simon had shrugged. "It's impossible to say. I don't even have solid, verifiable reports of transmission, much less any data on what happens once a body is infected."
It'd been quiet for a space then, until Jayne had said, "Don't matter much. Things still go down with a bullet."
That much had been clear almost from the start. There's something to be said for the first outbreak starting on a nowhere armpit of a moon that just happens to be a favourite merc watering hole. And mercs who survive that kind of thing sure do like to talk about it.
+ + + + +
"How long's it been?" Jayne asks, when shooting starts to move from easy targets to too many targets without enough back-up. He asks, even though he knows the answer.
"Two days," Simon says, firing two shots as he speaks.
Jayne's got to admit, Simon's gun skills got better, real fast. Guess that's what incentive does to a man, though Jayne can't understand why the guns themselves weren't ever incentive enough. Core folk - he'll never understand what they go and teach their kids.
"How long'd Mal say they'd be?" He knows the answer to that one too.
"Twelve hours, maximum. The other group wasn't that far away."
The next logical questions are how much water they got left, and how the ammo's coming. But he don't want to know the answer to the first one, and he's in charge of the ammo, so he knows exactly how much they have. Instead he asks, "So, how're they doin'? Back there?"
There's a longish pause before Simon answers, like maybe he's trying to figure out if Jayne's asking for real, if he really cares about the folk huddled back in the backroom of the bunker, crying and sniffling and wondering if their own relatives and neighbours might end up eating them.
Course, he don't care so much, he's just talking to kill time, but still. No reason for Simon to know that.
"Not bad. No one was bitten. There were a few minor injuries sustained in getting them in here, but nothing serious. The big problem is mental state."
"They're going mental?" That don't ever spell good, not in such a small space. Not that he'd blame them, on account of it being such a gorram small space surrounded by zombies crawling with all kinds of hungry.
Simon sighs, and Jayne figures they've been spending too much time together if he can hear it even above zombie sounds and guns shooting. "No more than you are."
Well, that's okay then.
+ + + + +
How does any unauthorized research program start? Long before the truth of Miranda was publicly revealed, perhaps there was a clandestine meeting between two - or three - who thought that they knew better than their repentant colleagues. Perhaps they were people with convictions that are, at best, describable as broken, twisted, hungry.
Perhaps the conversation had gone something like this:
"We could try again. There are ways to make anything better."
"The underlying principle was sound, naturally."
"Agreed. I can prepare a facility and find appropriate staff."
"Somewhere out of the way, I trust."
This last statement would, of course, garner a small, secret smile. "Absolutely, I know the perfect place. And I know the right person to run the program."
Maybe this conversation takes place in a dark, claustrophobic room, perhaps filled with the scent of power; we can picture our two - or three - ministers sporting sinister moustaches; they have faces that have a tendency towards cruel smiles. There are secret handshakes, perhaps, followed by ominous laughter.
It's much harder to imagine such discussions - brief, and perhaps not as thorough as one might wish, trading in assumptions and the slightest of misunderstandings that led to fundamental misinterpretations - taking place in open parklands filled with the laughter of families. It's harder to imagine our dastardly perpetrators as portly, jolly-faced, and watching over their children with worried smiles even as they plan.
Perhaps, at the end of the conversation, they shake hands, secure in the belief that they will make the 'verse a safer place for their innocent, helpless, happy children.
Which reality - which setting - makes the outcomes more horrific? Or does it matter?
+ + + + +
The first time they got into it started with Mal yelling at everyone to get down to the kitchen yesterday; if that ain't a downright unpleasant way to wake up, Jayne don't know what is.
Then again, he ain't never been woken up from getting gnawed on, so maybe he shouldn't complain.
"Reports of an attack," Mal had said, terse-like. "On Whitefall. Words I'm hearing don't make much sense."
"Reavers?" Zoe had asked.
"No," River had said, face hard, eyes a little wild. It ain't never been a good thing when she gets that look.
"Don't sound like it. Something else - folk dying and coming back." Mal hadn't looked like he believed the words himself, even as he was speaking them. "Distress calls are coming in, and -"
"-and you us want to go in like gorram heroes, saving the day." Ever since Miranda, Jayne'd been worrying about that possibility. Mal ain't no easy person to fathom, never has been, and sometimes, Jayne figures he never did quite lose the taste for fighting for a cause that can't be won.
Mal didn't answer on account of Simon asking, "Did you just say people dying and coming back? What, exactly, does that mean?"
Mal had shrugged, admitting to yet another thing he didn't know about a situation he wanted to stick his nose into. "I mean coming back. Not staying dead when they should."
They'd all thought on that for a while. Didn't make much sense to Jayne.
"No offence, sir, but I seem to recall the words 'Whitefall' and 'never again' and 'I mean it this time, Zoe'. Are you certain this isn't a ploy by Patience to get you down on the planet and handily dead?"
Jayne had always liked Zoe when she asked the smart questions.
"Patience isn't planning anything anymore," River had said in that creepy way she sometimes had.
And that had been that.
+ + + + +
By the second time they were rescuing folk from zombies - back before they even had a name for the things - Jayne figured there was something he almost liked about the whole scenario. Sure, they weren't getting paid, and that is all kinds of irritating, but the truth is, he's been getting used to that being on Mal's crew.
Besides, there was something else - the folk - maybe 15-odd women and kids - had looked at them like they were gorram saviours. He'll never forget dropping into the middle of rutting nowhere, shooting down a bunch of…things that weren't quite right, and then catching glimpse of the look on people's faces as he reloaded.
It ain't normal to see folk look at him like that. Glowing faces, almost. Relief. Expectation. Thankfulness.
He didn't think much about it at the time, on account of how Zoe and Mal were taking their own special time getting into the fray, but later, once the zombies were dead for real and the people were packed into Serenity's hold, he'd thought about it a lot.
"Seen a look like that before," he'd muttered to Kaylee.
"Yeah?"
"Mudders," he'd said.
"Oh."
She'd been real quiet for a while before she'd said, "Maybe you deserve it this time though. Mal didn't make you help them."
Maybe he should ignore the looks they get, these days. But it ain't exactly easy. If he took a break from shooting and went into the back of the bunker right now, he'd get them same looks, and more again, and…he just ain't used to being the man folk believe in for free.
It gives him an uncomfortableness, even if he does feel a thousand feet tall every gorram time.
"I think," Simon says, stepping away from the wall, "that things are getting worse out there."
He's noticed that himself. Bodies keep piling up. At least climbing over them slows the things down. "Think they can smell us or somethin'?"
"It's possible. Maybe there aren't any other pockets of people left alive, and we're getting all of the attention. Or it could be the noise of the guns attracting them."
He don't want to say it, but he says it anyway, "We're getting low on ammo."
"I know."
Course he does. "Still got grenades. Maybe if we let them get close enough we could kill enough to clear a path…"
"And go where?"
Yeah. That's the gorram problem. This is the only defensible place when you're saddled with a bunch of clueless folk. If it were just him and Simon - hell, if it was just him - maybe something else would work. He knows better to try and convince Simon of that, but maybe if he slugged him a good one and carried him out they could -
"You wouldn't make it out of the town centre," Simon says, real calm.
Jayne could play dumb, but it ain't worth the effort. "I could just slug you and leave you behind. Less of a weight around my neck. Bet Mal won't mind so much."
Simon smiles and in the dim light it almost looks real. "I like you too, Jayne."
He grins back and steps back up to the wall. "When I run out of bullets, the grenades are coming out, plan or no plan."
"This isn't exactly a surprise, you know."
+ + + + +
Even in a clandestine project, records will inevitably be kept, if only to ensure objectivity. Debates about the failures of the past help prepare the way for the future.
"The failure was obviously a result of poor testing protocols and -"
"-you can't be serious! The trials were appropriate and how, exactly, can you get a precise cross-section of the entire population that would allow for observation of all potential reactions -"
"Obviously Miranda was the trial, and it was entirely uncontrolled -"
These kinds of debates likely continue into the small, dark hours, when people forget they are discussing other people and get lost in theory. In the light of day, such discussions necessarily get pushed aside in favour of developing something that can be tested.
"A gas," one scientist postulates, "was clearly an inappropriate method with which to attempt to modify behaviour. It is inherently unstable and if the original project managers had listened to me -"
Her colleagues have heard this all before, ad nauseum, but this time, she offers something new.
"-and so I propose that the answer is far more fundamental at its core. Humans are inherently flawed on a genetic level. We are psychologically unstable as a species. If we want peace and control, we must alter the underlying flaws."
"Do you mean -"
She is emphatic. "Yes. We must consider working at the genetic level, rather than attempting to add unstable, unpredictable - and ultimately resource-heavy - compounds to our environments."
Her colleagues immediately begin a loud, fractious debate about the feasibility and possibilities. It is more than she hoped for, and as she leans back, listening and speaking when necessary, it becomes clear to anyone who is watching that she is a believer.
+ + + + +
Jayne can't say exactly when it was, but one night, after yet another distress call from an infested town, the crew gets drunk. Real drunk. Starts off quiet, gets real loud for a while, with Kaylee telling stories that make Simon move to cover River's ears, even while he's maybe trying not to laugh real hard. Then it gets quiet again and the talk moves from dirty stories to thinking. This ain't ever been Jayne's drinking forte, so mostly he stays quiet, listens, and manages to steal more than his fair share of the drink when no one's looking.
"It's the re-animation that I don't understand," Simon says. "What would do that? People dying is one thing - a virus or bacteria could work that fast. But -"
"Waking up hungry for folk," Mal says, knocking back more hooch, "don't make sense."
"Precisely," Simon says, grinning at Mal, and it just figures that the only time them two can really get along is when they're both stinking drunk.
There are a couple more rounds of drink before Simon speaks on it again. "A parasite -"
"I kin think of a couple of parasites -" Jayne says, more out of habit than anything.
"-would make more sense in terms of the body moving again. If it was controlling a dead host and searching for nutrients -"
"Nutrients is a real detached way of putting it, doctor," Zoe says, and Jayne's impressed - she's downed more than he has, and she ain't even slurring a little bit.
Simon don't seem to care. "But a parasite doesn't usually kill so quickly."
Kaylee frowns. "Maybe they're working together. Cooperatin'."
"A virus - or bacteria - in a symbiotic relationship with a parasitic agent?" He sits up a little bit, looking real interested. "It would be unlikely, but it's an intriguing…"
Jayne ain't ever going to understand what some folk find interesting. Ever.
"An autopsy would be one way to begin to answer some of these -"
"No," Mal, Zoe and River say at the same time, real firm.
And that's that. Jayne ain't so sure that Simon's disappointed, no matter how he much he frowns.
+ + + + +
"This ain't gonna be my last stand." From out in the Black, it had looked like another zombie job - same old thing, maybe with some money at the end of it, if folk had been organized enough to think on that before sending out a call for help. He didn't come down here to be abandoned by Zoe and Mal, who maybe forgot they got crew surrounded by things that ain't gonna stop being hungry any time soon. He came down here to shoot things that are easy, to maybe throw some grenades and grin at the mess they make, and to get looked at like he's some kind of big damn hero.
He ain't here to die. This ain't his time.
"Do you have a last stand picked out, then?"
Even now, Jayne can't resist bugging on the doctor. "Sure. You want details or just an overview?"
"Probably neither, but I doubt you're going to take that into consideration. I mean, why would you start now?"
Jayne nods. Exactly. "See, I'm thinking my last stand first involves not wearin' pants -"
"Something that I believe the captain might be able to relate to -"
"-and getting a good workin' over by three whores - maybe some of them back at Nandi's place - and kickin' it while one of them is -"
"Stop," Simon says, pausing from shooting at zombies. "Are you practicing for writing up a story for the Cortex? Perhaps for a delightful 'Death and Sexin' column in Merc Monthly? If so, I'm one, surprised at your 'literary' aspirations, and two, absolutely not writing this out for you, or proofreading it."
"Just sayin', is all, that this ain't my last stand. I got plans."
"Something to live for, then?" Simon asks dryly.
Jayne checks his reloads and ain't too happy with what he sees. "Yeah." It's quiet for a few minutes, and he finds he ain't liking it at all. Maybe there are days when he wishes gorram Simon Tam would shut his mouth, but this ain't shaping up to be one of them. So, when he can't stand it any longer, he asks, "Since when d'you start reading Merc Monthly anyway?"
He's pretty sure that Simon grins a little bit.
+ + + + +
Using an innocuous retrovirus to carry therapeutic genes into the human body is hardly new. Medical science has been treating several genetic diseases like this for at least a century, and the method can be credited for saving untold lives from debilitating illnesses. But the scope has been limited - treating an individual on a one-on-one basis, using well-tested and understood genetic packages.
If anyone dreamed on a bigger scale - mass genetic changes, population-wide alterations - it was a daydream only. There are too many problems - delivery problems, testing difficulties, ethical concerns. Besides that, what would be the point? There has never been one, single genetically-transmitted disease spread across the entire human population that would necessitate mass genetic therapy.
Perhaps, our scientist-believer argues, it has simply been a matter of not recognizing the nature of the true disease - a genetically-encoded tendency towards aggression, disobedience, trouble-making.
+ + + + +
No one wants to talk about it, but the fact is, it's happening more often, and each time it gets worse - more infected, more dead, more folk who ain't ever going to be quite right after seeing what they saw.
Don't mean there ain't regular work to be had - there is. Maybe more than usual, on account of how it seems that folk in their line of business maybe have a tendency to get zombified easier than most. Don't speak much for their sense, Jayne figures. Zombies or no, they probably wouldn't have lasted long anyhow.
In between rescue jobs and being looked at like a rutting hero, Jayne's making real good coin, and it's about damn time.
"Competition's thinnin' out," he says one night, after Kaylee babbles at him about being able to send more money to her folks lately, and how that's making them real happy, and how she's going to stock up on engine parts even on top of the ones Mal is being all kinds of generous in buying. He doesn't mean anything by it, except that it's fact and probably the money will keep flowing in for a space.
Still, maybe he regrets voicing that truth, on account of the way her face crumples up. She walks away, and he thinks maybe he's supposed to go after her or something. It ain't like Simon's doing that nowadays, though no one's asking about why that might be.
He doesn't go after her, though. That ain't who he is. Maybe he finds her holed up in the cargo bay a while later, but he wasn't looking. And maybe he lets her cry about the folk who get eaten and them who get bitten and then know they only got two choices, get shot in the head, or turn into something that's going to be real hungry real soon. But he weren't looking for it. Just happened, kind of like pretty much every bar brawl he's ever been in. Well, every bar brawl he's been in when Mal's around.
Except for a few, of course.
Well, maybe more than a few. Don't matter, though. Point is that he wasn't looking to see how Kaylee - or anyone - reacts to the increasing pressure of what's ugly outside the ship.
And he gorram resents that this kind of ugliness is creeping in.
+ + + + +
They're getting closer. He can't shoot them as fast as they're coming. Neither of them can.
"Gonna have to make a decision soon," he yells, even though there ain't much noise to yell over. "Grenades'll slow 'em down."
"But once we start using them," Simon says, and he's speaking so quiet Jayne can hardly hear, "it's the sign that our backs are to the wall."
Jayne can't argue with that. "Mal and Zoe -"
"Are probably dead, and we both know it."
He don't say that they might even be out there right now, shuffling along. He don't have to. Jayne wants to shrug like maybe it don't matter, but it does, and anyhow, shrugging right now would screw with his aim. They can't afford wasted bullets.
+ + + + +
How does anything get out of control? Is the true root at the ideas stage, or the practical stage? In practice, the possibilities are numerous - sloppy procedures, inaccurate assumptions, an accident, a mutation…
Some make a living from analysing disasters - natural and human-induced - to understand why, how, and what-if scenarios. Others focus on the repercussions - the outcomes, the implications, and the way they'll shape a new human reality.
Ultimately, does it matter why saliva was chosen as the retrovirus vector, why a retrovirus was selected as a test mechanism, or why it entered the population in an uncontrolled, untested way?
The real importance lies not in why something happened, but how we will react. How will humanity meet a new challenge? What skills will people need in order to survive in this new reality? More importantly, what bonds will make the difference between raw survival and thriving, between short-term existence and the long-term maintenance of what it means to be human?
+ + + + +
When Osiris got hit, it weren't pretty. Serenity weren't anywhere near, but they got the reports - them that got sent out before the reporters got dead. Whole parts of the planet are still under quarantine months later, and the stories of what's going on in those areas are ugly and they still probably ain't as bad as the truth.
No one was prepared for it. If you asked Jayne, he figured it'd be the outposts first, or all them poor planets and moons the Feds like to pretend don't exist other than for crime. But it don't happen that way. Sure, it seemed to start on the Rim, but it moved inwards fast, which Simon said shows something interesting about legal - and illegal - migration and movement patterns.
He'd said it kind of detached-like, after they found out about Osiris. Jayne weren't sure if that was more unsettling than Kaylee crying over folk that she'd never even met.
+ + + + +
Jayne's never counted on anything, even after a long string of things going more or less his way. Truth is, it's a gorram cliché the number of times Mal and Zoe, or him and Mal, or hell, even Mal, River and Simon have come in at the last minute, saved the rutting day, and lived to laugh - or at least drink heavily - about it after. Can't always be like that, he's known that for a real long time now. Luck like that's got to run out sometime.
Looks like maybe this is going to be his last stand after all, and he ain't even going into it with a full stomach. Sometimes a man gets the short end of every gorram stick.
"I got maybe 25 rounds left," he says.
"I have 30," Simon replies.
Right. "How many folk back there?"
There's a short pause before Simon says, "Twenty-two."
He nods. "You keep 24 rounds. I'll finish mine off, we'll use up the grenades and then move back to the inner room. If we block the doors and hatch good, I figure we can maybe hold out for a couple hours before they get in."
"Agreed."
Bullets don't last near as long as he'd wish, but the first grenade going off is real satisfying, and truth is, he's been itching to use them. By the third one, he's glad he started carrying extra for these kinds of jobs, because even if each one buys him just another 15 minutes of living, he'll take it.
After the fourth grenade, he sees that the things coming towards them - walking, lurching, crawling if they have to - are lit up, not just because some of them are on fire, but like maybe the sun's rising. Sun'd make shooting easier, but it came too late. Now, sun just means he'll be able to see the things real clear, and he don't want that.
Can't even count on the sun, sometimes.
"It's not the sun," Simon says, and maybe he sounds almost hopeful.
"Huh?"
"Still six hours to sunrise."
Jayne don't even bother thinking about how gorram typical it is that Simon is keeping time. He just moves to the bunker hatch, pushes it open and pulls himself up. Could be a fire, he tells himself as he does. Might just be a fire; maybe one of the grenades sparked something.
But he looks out, and then up, and it ain't no fire. Lights shine down from a silhouette he'd know anywhere, coming closer, and even when the wind brings the scent of rotting and burnt flesh all around him, he can't stop grinning.
End