Law & Order: SVU-type Zombies!
Title: Camouflage
Author: croupier
Fandom: Law and Order: SUV
For: faechick, who wanted cleverness from Munch and ass-kicking from Stabler.
Summary: Y'all, it's SVU. Just think of something wack and unintentionally hilarious and you're, like, halfway there.
Word Count: 1890s or thereabouts.
Beta: It's all sharkwithfeet's fault.
Disclaimer: I own sweet f.a.
8:00 A.M.
16TH PRECINCT
DOINK-DOINK
“So let me get this straight. You saw Olivia Benson. And Casey?”
“What can I say, the woman likes ADAs.”
Fin shook his head. “That’s messed up.”
“What’s messed up?” Munch walked over to Stabler’s desk, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand.
“Stabler saw Benson kissin’ Casey Claus.”
Munch spit out a mouthful of black liquid. “Great. Now the image is burned onto my brain and my mouth.”
“Casey was kinda biting her, too.” Stabler seemed dazed.
“Why couldn’t this have happened, oh, five years ago? It would have been hot then.”
“You think so?” Fin wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Alex was too skinny.”
“But Casey is too dumb.”
“Munch has a point. But the whole thing does nothin’ for me.”
“And why is that?” Munch raised an eyebrow. “Is Elliot Stabler not the red-blooded heterosexual we all believe him to be?”
Stabler slapped Munch’s arm aimlessly. “You’re projecting. No, Olivia’s just so-so--orange …”
“Looks green to me.” Fin was frowning at the doorway. A greenish, drooling figure was lurching into the room. Munch took a quick glance and waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, that’s just Ca--”
“No, no, that’s not Casey; that’s Olivia, that’s Olivia--” Stabler, eyes wide, rose to his feet and started towards her. “Olivia? Olivia, are you all right?”
He was answered by a crack somewhere behind him; he fell forwards in a moment of slow motion that tasted first like aluminum and then like the 16th precinct floor before he realized that he was looking at blood and blancmange? on top of the sea-green linoleum, and that someone was lying face down in whatever it is. He was reaching for his gun before he wondered where Olivia had gone and was pointing it at Cragen, whose hands were still clutching the pistol, before he realized that Olivia had been lying in that stuff, and he swung his head back to look at the corpse in front of him.
For a moment, the entire office was still.
The next thing Stabler heard was a thump and a gasp of air; he tore his eyes away from Olivia’s body to see Fin slamming Cragen into the wall. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t Olivia.” Cragen tried to turn his head. “Look at it. It wasn’t her.”
Stabler, still reeling, rubbed his eyes and stared anew at the puddle before him. A puddle that was being lurched through by knee-high black boots beneath a purple miniskirt.
“Brains.”
“Casey.” Stabler heard his voice, but did not know what he said. “That’s--”
“Brains.”
“Yeah. Olivia’s.” Stabler turned his head away from Casey’s boots, trying to ignore the grotesque squelch of her heavy tread. He was vaguely aware of Munch walking past him towards the body.
Munch knelt, puzzled. “Fin?”
“What?”
“Cragen’s right. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Benson, unless her tanning salon changed the setting from ‘Paris Hilton Orange’ to ‘Jolly Green Giant.’”
“It was Olivia,” Stabler said faintly. “Olivia.”
“I’m telling you, I wouldn’t have shot Detective Benson.” Cragen’s voice was regaining some of its command. But that thing . . .”
“Brains,” interjected Casey.
“Cragen’s got ‘em, obviously. Call ESU.” Munch stood up, dusting off his hands.
“And why is that?” Fin stepped back from Cragen. “Sorry, Captain.”
Cragen dismissed Fin’s concern with a tilt of the head. He locked eyes with Munch, who gave a slow, nervous nod. “Munch is right. We have to call ESU.” Cragen felt every eye in the room on him. “We’ve got a zombie infestation on our hands. And we need to find out how far it’s spread before we can stop it.”
Stabler’s voice trembled from his position on the floor. “Sh--shouldn’t we call the, the, um, CDC? Or someone?”
Munch snorted. “Like they know how to deal with zombies.” He turned towards Fin. “We should maybe call that Santero guy on East 106th, but other than that, ESU’s probably our best bet.”
Fin was more skeptical. “I don’t think it’s exactly time to start calling out the troops yet. We don’t know if it’s even spread beyond this office. How come Olivia is the only zombie we’ve seen?”
A voice called out from upstairs. “Because a lot of the city might not have been infected yet.” All heads turned towards Dr. Huang, who was fast approaching them. “Zombie fever affects the--”
“Brains.”
“That’s right, Casey. The head zombie eats someone’s brains and the fever is spread. Whomever they bite gets infected, and on and on and on. And Detective Benson might have been the only zombie you know you’ve seen, but the fever spreads fast. And in this city, who really looks at everyone you pass? I see the bagel guy on the corner each day, but I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.” Huang turned to Cragen. “We have to figure out who the head zombie is and kill them as soon as possible to prevent the fever from spreading.”
Munch looked at him. “Do they teach you that in med school or is it something you have to figure out by yourself?”
“The head.” Stabler was staring at a piece of floor between two larger pieces of Olivia’s brain.
Cragen gave a somber nod. “Decapitate them, blow their brains out, anything that targets the head. If you get the head, you get the zombie.”
“And if you get the head zombie, you get ‘em all.” Fin nodded. “We’ve all seen Day of the Dead. We need to figure out who the head zombie is.”
“And we need to get organized if we’re gonna do that. Munch, call ESU. Huang, take care of Stabler. Fin, let’s get thinking.”
“Brains.”
Fin clapped Casey on the back. “I hope we got ‘em.”
Fin and Cragen stared at the plexiglas map of Manhattan . Cragen took out his dry erase marker. “Olivia lives--” He shook his head. “Lived on the Upper West Side. The one-six is here. She was fine yesterday, and she worked a late night, so we can pretty much assume that anything that happened to her happened after she left the office yesterday. Unless you noticed something amiss before she left work.”
“Stabler said he saw her kissin’ ADA. Novak yesterday. I don’t know if that indicates zombie fever, but I can tell you it ain’t normal behavior.”
“No, it’s not,” Cragen sighed. “It’s not normal for anybody.” He called out to the officers. “Bad news!”
Munch was the first to walk forth. “Worse than zombies taking over Manhattan?”
“They’re taking over Manhattan?”
“ESU projects that New York County will be seized in less than eight hours. That’s my bad news. What’s yours?”
“Detective Benson may have been infected before she left work yesterday.”
“Then it could have started . . .”
Cragen nodded at Stabler. “-Just about anywhere. Where did the two of you go yesterday?”
Stabler shook his head. “Everywhere. Randalls, Clinton, Gramercy, Alphabet City, you name it.”
“Well, we’ll go everywhere again.”
Munch spoke up. “ESU said our best bet was to stay locked up in here until it subsides. Personally, I don’t think the vending machine would be able to handle it, but ESU is in contact with the U.S. military. The idea is, they’ll do all the fighting, we’ll do all the staying in here with the corpse.”
“ESU also said that Manhattan would become a zombie-fest eight hours from now, and that is eight hours we have control over. If we can stop this, or stop any part of it, we have to.”
“I’ll grab my boomstick,” Munch sighed.
“Casey, Dr. Huang, you two stay here in case somebody calls. We’re taking it to the streets.”
10:00 A.M.
16TH PRECINCT
DOINK-DOINK
“I mean, do you ever get the feeling that nobody appreciates you?”
“Brains.”
“Yes! Exactly! Like you’re just this spare brain they have and they take you out when they need it. I’m on loan from the FBI! I could be anywhere, doing anything, but I’m eating peanut butter crackers out of a vending machine in Manhattan while the undead take over the city. Eat your heart out, Clarice Starling.” Huang tipped back in Stabler’s chair, resting his feet on the desk. “Was this what you thought it would be like when you left white-collar crime?”
Casey responded by lurching over to the vending machine and shaking it. “Brains.”
“I guess not.” Huang shook his head.
11:00 A.M.
16TH PRECINCT
DOINK-DOINK
“Uno!”
“Brains.”
12:00 P.M.
16TH PRECINCT
DOINK-DOINK
“Rhiannion” was playing on Stabler’s CD player. Dr. Huang, a roach clip in one hand and a makeup brush in the other, was decorating Casey. “And see, forgoing the ghostly white makeup in favor of a more peachy tone just makes you look more alive. At least, it normally would. This is kind of making you look just sort of … gray. I think this makeup’s expire--”
Huang was interrupted by the door to the 16th precinct slamming back. Stabler stood before him with a rifle. “Get out of the way, Huang!”
For a moment Dr. Huang wondered what he was in the way of. He looked around and saw nothing out of the ordinary. There was the vending machine, minus a pack of peanut butter crackers. There was Olivia’s old desk, with the drawer where she had kept some makeup open. There was Casey, looking vaguely green, dressed in purple, lurching towards the Captain. What on earth was Cragen aiming at? Huang decided the safest route was simply to hit the floor and hope that worked out, but first he wedged his roach clip into Casey’s limp hand (damned if he was getting blamed for smoking pot in the one-six). As soon as he hit the floor, Dr. Huang was rewarded by Casey’s brains and blood splattering all over his back.
“Sorry about that.” Munch strolled over to Dr. Huang and extended a hand. “It turned out the Santero guy on East 106th street did have some helpful information. Stabler went in while the rest of us kept the car moving so the undead wouldn’t Cujo our asses. Do you know how hard it is to keep a car moving on East 106th street?”
Dr. Huang, shaken, accepted Munch’s hand. “So … the Santero guy …”
“-Did all this stuff to find the head zombie. Bits of bone, chicken feathers … he’s kind of a weird guy. Pretty nice, though. Although darting through a sea of walking corpses so I could dive back into the car was no fun.”
“Especially since you landed in my lap.” Fin shook his head. “Man, ’m just glad we got there before the undead masses spread to Queens.”
“Or to Brooklyn.” Munch nodded sagely. “Although, with Brooklynites, it might be hard to tell--”
“Yeah.” Stabler was staring at Casey’s remains.
Dr. Huang shook his head. “How could we have missed it?”
Author: croupier
Fandom: Law and Order: SUV
For: faechick, who wanted cleverness from Munch and ass-kicking from Stabler.
Summary: Y'all, it's SVU. Just think of something wack and unintentionally hilarious and you're, like, halfway there.
Word Count: 1890s or thereabouts.
Beta: It's all sharkwithfeet's fault.
Disclaimer: I own sweet f.a.
8:00 A.M.
16TH PRECINCT
DOINK-DOINK
“So let me get this straight. You saw Olivia Benson. And Casey?”
“What can I say, the woman likes ADAs.”
Fin shook his head. “That’s messed up.”
“What’s messed up?” Munch walked over to Stabler’s desk, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand.
“Stabler saw Benson kissin’ Casey Claus.”
Munch spit out a mouthful of black liquid. “Great. Now the image is burned onto my brain and my mouth.”
“Casey was kinda biting her, too.” Stabler seemed dazed.
“Why couldn’t this have happened, oh, five years ago? It would have been hot then.”
“You think so?” Fin wrinkled his nose in distaste. “Alex was too skinny.”
“But Casey is too dumb.”
“Munch has a point. But the whole thing does nothin’ for me.”
“And why is that?” Munch raised an eyebrow. “Is Elliot Stabler not the red-blooded heterosexual we all believe him to be?”
Stabler slapped Munch’s arm aimlessly. “You’re projecting. No, Olivia’s just so-so--orange …”
“Looks green to me.” Fin was frowning at the doorway. A greenish, drooling figure was lurching into the room. Munch took a quick glance and waved his hand dismissively. “Oh, that’s just Ca--”
“No, no, that’s not Casey; that’s Olivia, that’s Olivia--” Stabler, eyes wide, rose to his feet and started towards her. “Olivia? Olivia, are you all right?”
He was answered by a crack somewhere behind him; he fell forwards in a moment of slow motion that tasted first like aluminum and then like the 16th precinct floor before he realized that he was looking at blood and blancmange? on top of the sea-green linoleum, and that someone was lying face down in whatever it is. He was reaching for his gun before he wondered where Olivia had gone and was pointing it at Cragen, whose hands were still clutching the pistol, before he realized that Olivia had been lying in that stuff, and he swung his head back to look at the corpse in front of him.
For a moment, the entire office was still.
The next thing Stabler heard was a thump and a gasp of air; he tore his eyes away from Olivia’s body to see Fin slamming Cragen into the wall. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t Olivia.” Cragen tried to turn his head. “Look at it. It wasn’t her.”
Stabler, still reeling, rubbed his eyes and stared anew at the puddle before him. A puddle that was being lurched through by knee-high black boots beneath a purple miniskirt.
“Brains.”
“Casey.” Stabler heard his voice, but did not know what he said. “That’s--”
“Brains.”
“Yeah. Olivia’s.” Stabler turned his head away from Casey’s boots, trying to ignore the grotesque squelch of her heavy tread. He was vaguely aware of Munch walking past him towards the body.
Munch knelt, puzzled. “Fin?”
“What?”
“Cragen’s right. Whatever it was, it wasn’t Benson, unless her tanning salon changed the setting from ‘Paris Hilton Orange’ to ‘Jolly Green Giant.’”
“It was Olivia,” Stabler said faintly. “Olivia.”
“I’m telling you, I wouldn’t have shot Detective Benson.” Cragen’s voice was regaining some of its command. But that thing . . .”
“Brains,” interjected Casey.
“Cragen’s got ‘em, obviously. Call ESU.” Munch stood up, dusting off his hands.
“And why is that?” Fin stepped back from Cragen. “Sorry, Captain.”
Cragen dismissed Fin’s concern with a tilt of the head. He locked eyes with Munch, who gave a slow, nervous nod. “Munch is right. We have to call ESU.” Cragen felt every eye in the room on him. “We’ve got a zombie infestation on our hands. And we need to find out how far it’s spread before we can stop it.”
Stabler’s voice trembled from his position on the floor. “Sh--shouldn’t we call the, the, um, CDC? Or someone?”
Munch snorted. “Like they know how to deal with zombies.” He turned towards Fin. “We should maybe call that Santero guy on East 106th, but other than that, ESU’s probably our best bet.”
Fin was more skeptical. “I don’t think it’s exactly time to start calling out the troops yet. We don’t know if it’s even spread beyond this office. How come Olivia is the only zombie we’ve seen?”
A voice called out from upstairs. “Because a lot of the city might not have been infected yet.” All heads turned towards Dr. Huang, who was fast approaching them. “Zombie fever affects the--”
“Brains.”
“That’s right, Casey. The head zombie eats someone’s brains and the fever is spread. Whomever they bite gets infected, and on and on and on. And Detective Benson might have been the only zombie you know you’ve seen, but the fever spreads fast. And in this city, who really looks at everyone you pass? I see the bagel guy on the corner each day, but I couldn’t pick him out of a lineup.” Huang turned to Cragen. “We have to figure out who the head zombie is and kill them as soon as possible to prevent the fever from spreading.”
Munch looked at him. “Do they teach you that in med school or is it something you have to figure out by yourself?”
“The head.” Stabler was staring at a piece of floor between two larger pieces of Olivia’s brain.
Cragen gave a somber nod. “Decapitate them, blow their brains out, anything that targets the head. If you get the head, you get the zombie.”
“And if you get the head zombie, you get ‘em all.” Fin nodded. “We’ve all seen Day of the Dead. We need to figure out who the head zombie is.”
“And we need to get organized if we’re gonna do that. Munch, call ESU. Huang, take care of Stabler. Fin, let’s get thinking.”
“Brains.”
Fin clapped Casey on the back. “I hope we got ‘em.”
Fin and Cragen stared at the plexiglas map of Manhattan . Cragen took out his dry erase marker. “Olivia lives--” He shook his head. “Lived on the Upper West Side. The one-six is here. She was fine yesterday, and she worked a late night, so we can pretty much assume that anything that happened to her happened after she left the office yesterday. Unless you noticed something amiss before she left work.”
“Stabler said he saw her kissin’ ADA. Novak yesterday. I don’t know if that indicates zombie fever, but I can tell you it ain’t normal behavior.”
“No, it’s not,” Cragen sighed. “It’s not normal for anybody.” He called out to the officers. “Bad news!”
Munch was the first to walk forth. “Worse than zombies taking over Manhattan?”
“They’re taking over Manhattan?”
“ESU projects that New York County will be seized in less than eight hours. That’s my bad news. What’s yours?”
“Detective Benson may have been infected before she left work yesterday.”
“Then it could have started . . .”
Cragen nodded at Stabler. “-Just about anywhere. Where did the two of you go yesterday?”
Stabler shook his head. “Everywhere. Randalls, Clinton, Gramercy, Alphabet City, you name it.”
“Well, we’ll go everywhere again.”
Munch spoke up. “ESU said our best bet was to stay locked up in here until it subsides. Personally, I don’t think the vending machine would be able to handle it, but ESU is in contact with the U.S. military. The idea is, they’ll do all the fighting, we’ll do all the staying in here with the corpse.”
“ESU also said that Manhattan would become a zombie-fest eight hours from now, and that is eight hours we have control over. If we can stop this, or stop any part of it, we have to.”
“I’ll grab my boomstick,” Munch sighed.
“Casey, Dr. Huang, you two stay here in case somebody calls. We’re taking it to the streets.”
10:00 A.M.
16TH PRECINCT
DOINK-DOINK
“I mean, do you ever get the feeling that nobody appreciates you?”
“Brains.”
“Yes! Exactly! Like you’re just this spare brain they have and they take you out when they need it. I’m on loan from the FBI! I could be anywhere, doing anything, but I’m eating peanut butter crackers out of a vending machine in Manhattan while the undead take over the city. Eat your heart out, Clarice Starling.” Huang tipped back in Stabler’s chair, resting his feet on the desk. “Was this what you thought it would be like when you left white-collar crime?”
Casey responded by lurching over to the vending machine and shaking it. “Brains.”
“I guess not.” Huang shook his head.
11:00 A.M.
16TH PRECINCT
DOINK-DOINK
“Uno!”
“Brains.”
12:00 P.M.
16TH PRECINCT
DOINK-DOINK
“Rhiannion” was playing on Stabler’s CD player. Dr. Huang, a roach clip in one hand and a makeup brush in the other, was decorating Casey. “And see, forgoing the ghostly white makeup in favor of a more peachy tone just makes you look more alive. At least, it normally would. This is kind of making you look just sort of … gray. I think this makeup’s expire--”
Huang was interrupted by the door to the 16th precinct slamming back. Stabler stood before him with a rifle. “Get out of the way, Huang!”
For a moment Dr. Huang wondered what he was in the way of. He looked around and saw nothing out of the ordinary. There was the vending machine, minus a pack of peanut butter crackers. There was Olivia’s old desk, with the drawer where she had kept some makeup open. There was Casey, looking vaguely green, dressed in purple, lurching towards the Captain. What on earth was Cragen aiming at? Huang decided the safest route was simply to hit the floor and hope that worked out, but first he wedged his roach clip into Casey’s limp hand (damned if he was getting blamed for smoking pot in the one-six). As soon as he hit the floor, Dr. Huang was rewarded by Casey’s brains and blood splattering all over his back.
“Sorry about that.” Munch strolled over to Dr. Huang and extended a hand. “It turned out the Santero guy on East 106th street did have some helpful information. Stabler went in while the rest of us kept the car moving so the undead wouldn’t Cujo our asses. Do you know how hard it is to keep a car moving on East 106th street?”
Dr. Huang, shaken, accepted Munch’s hand. “So … the Santero guy …”
“-Did all this stuff to find the head zombie. Bits of bone, chicken feathers … he’s kind of a weird guy. Pretty nice, though. Although darting through a sea of walking corpses so I could dive back into the car was no fun.”
“Especially since you landed in my lap.” Fin shook his head. “Man, ’m just glad we got there before the undead masses spread to Queens.”
“Or to Brooklyn.” Munch nodded sagely. “Although, with Brooklynites, it might be hard to tell--”
“Yeah.” Stabler was staring at Casey’s remains.
Dr. Huang shook his head. “How could we have missed it?”