Zombie fic! Part Five

[triedunture]

The Rampant Disease (Part 5)
Pairing: H/W
Warnings: violence, horror and gore. And a buttload of angst in this bit.
Summary: Wilson's still Ah-ah-ah-ah stayin' alive in a zombie-infested PPTH.

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“I see you’ve managed to survive the situation well enough,” Tritter continued on the other end of the line. “I suppose we have Dr. House to thank for this. For all of this.”

“What are you talking about?” Wilson ground out, his muscles tensing with every word the detective spoke. He switched the tiny pink cell phone to his other ear, and Whitner tapped his shoulder. He glanced up at her questioning eyes, but didn’t offer any explanation.

“This whole mess,” Tritter growled. “Don’t you think it’s strange that of all the hospitals in America, in the world, that this tragedy would happen on House’s watch? Now I’m in charge of making sure none of those freaks make it out of the hospital and I can’t help but feel that the good doctor had something to do with this.”

Wilson curled his free hand into a fist and concentrated on digging his fingernails into his palm. “Look, these zombies aren’t—”

“Zombies?” the detective interrupted. Wilson heard his heavy sigh over the phone. “So you believe that fairy tale too? I thought you were a man of science.”

“Are you insane?!” Wilson screamed into the phone. “Look through the lobby doors! There are people walking around who are dead, who have been dead, who are infecting—”

Whitner leaned forward in her wheelchair. “What is it?” she whispered. “What’s going on?” Wilson waved her off, but she only leaned closer to listen to the phone call.

“This disease could be many things,” Tritter cut in once more. “It could be skin infections that make patients appear corpse-like. It could be an environmental hazard that’s caused a mass hallucination. It could even be one old, drug-addicted man releasing his own brand of retribution on the world.”

“House didn’t—”

“However!” Tritter shouted over Wilson’s protests. “It cannot possibly be zombies, because there is no such thing as zombies, Dr. Wilson.” He chuckled, a dry rasp in the phone line. “When I sent you into that building, I thought maybe you’d be able to overcome House’s ruse; you did once before. But now I see that you’ll meet your end just like everyone else.”

“You son of a bitch,” Wilson hissed. “These aren’t skin infections. They are the walking dead, and they are going to kill everyone in here if you don’t help us.”

“I have been ordered to seal off the premises,” he answered, “and do whatever is necessary to ensure that this illness, whatever it is, does not spread beyond PPTH. Surely, as a doctor, you understand.”

“For the love of god, there are children in here!” Wilson cried.

“What were you expecting?” Tritter asked. “This isn’t the movies. No helicopter landing on the rooftop, no Marine troopers busting through the windows with guns blazing. No one’s coming to the rescue.” He paused for a moment. “I’m hanging up now. Goodbye, Dr. Wilson.”

“No, no, wait!” Wilson babbled into the receiver. Whitner snarled and grabbed the phone from his hands.

“Who is this?” she barked, holding the cell to her ear. “Because you are speaking to Dr. J. Whitner, head of the Princeton Research Facility, and I can confirm that Dr. House has released a virus inside the building. I have a vaccine that needs to be replicated and distributed ASAP.”

Wilson blinked rapidly, his mouth hanging open. Whitner listened to the reply on the phone and winked back at him.

“Of course your perimeter is secure, Detective,” she snapped once the tinny voice stopped, “but do you really want to take that chance? When this crisis is over, there will be questions, and you will be holding the answer. This sort of thing will never happen again, thanks to you.”

There was another crackly response from Tritter, and Wilson leaned over and whispered, “What the hell are you doing?”

Whitner placed her hand over the receiver. “It’ll light a fire under their asses, get them in the building.”

“But once they see we don’t have a vaccine…” Wilson furrowed his brow.

Whitner rolled her eyes. “We’ll hand over a vial of saline. How the fuck will they know the difference? Once they’re inside, they’ll see the zombies are real and they’ll get us out of here.”

She turned her attention back to the phone. “Yes, sir, I understand. However you see fit.” Whitner flashed Wilson a thumbs-up and a wide grin. “The sooner, the better, Mr. Tritter. The vaccine is very delicate and we don’t have the resources to keep it fresh. Yes—”

A sudden burst of moans cut through the silent hallways, and Wilson froze.

“I’ll have to call you back,” Whitner whispered into the phone. She snapped it shut and tossed it to Wilson, who caught the cell reflexively. “Where’s the weapon I just gave you?” she asked, reaching for her own alongside her wheelchair.

Wilson glanced back at the open clean room. His shovel was leaning there against the glass walls. “I’ll be right back,” he said, dropping the phone into the breast pocket of his scrub shirt. He levered himself onto his feet and hurried back to the room as fast as his swollen ankle would allow.

By the time he grasped his shovel’s smooth wooden handle and turned around, the hall was filling with zombies. They seemed to be coming in droves from the direction of the stairwell. Whitner sat in her chair quite calmly, watching their slow progress down the hallway and engaging the manual brakes on her wheels.

“Is that a good idea?” Wilson asked, rushing back to her side. “What if you need to get away?”

“My legs don’t work,” she pointed out. “I’m not going anywhere.” With a loud battle cry, she swung her shovel up through the soft flesh under the nearest zombie’s chin, driving the point of her sharp pike into its brain. It fell with one last groan, and Whitner pulled her shovel free of the creature’s skull.

“Jump in whenever you like, Dr. Wilson,” she said, her brown eyes sparkling with adrenaline. “There’s plenty to go around.”

Wilson shook himself out of his stupor and got to work, slicing through another zombie’s neck with the flat part of his blade. Another zombie approached, legless, dragging itself across the floor with its fingertips. Wilson danced away from its strike at his ankle and buried the point of his weapon into its occipital lobe. The zombie convulsed once before sprawling limply on the ground like a doll that had been torn apart.

Wilson wiped the sweat from his eyes and looked up at the approaching horde. “I thought you said there weren’t a lot of zombies in these parts,” he grunted, swinging his weapon again to catch an undead nurse under the jaw.

“This is the most I’ve ever seen at one time,” Whitner panted, using the leverage from her locked wheelchair to fling another corpse off her shovel. “We might be in trouble.”

“Getting a speeding ticket is trouble. Being drunk at your own wedding is trouble,” Wilson retorted. “We, however, are screwed.” He could see the undead streaming through the waiting area, past the silent water feature and overturned potted plants. There were about thirty that he could see, with more still in the stairwell, blocking their only chance of escape.

And with Whitner in the wheelchair, Wilson knew even the stairs weren’t a viable option.

He took some of his frustration out on a zombie wearing a black T-shirt that said W: The President. Its dented skull made a satisfying crack against the linoleum floor. But Wilson’s catharsis was short-lived; he ducked to avoid the grasp of an obese zombie in a camouflage baseball cap, and his sprained ankle gave out underneath him.

Wilson hit the floor with a grunt. The cell phone fell from his shirt pocket and skittered across the linoleum.

“Shit!” He reached for it, but the heavy zombie took one more lumbering step forward and crushed the phone beneath its Timberland boot. Wilson stared at the jumble of circuits on the ground with wide, disbelieving eyes.

“Get up before he stomps on you too,” Whitner shouted from her spot against the wall, still spearing zombies with ease. Wilson hauled himself up, gasping at the pain in his leg and side, and smashed his weapon into the zombie’s face.

“There goes our only link to the outside world,” Wilson sighed, hefting his weapon in his hands.

“Any more bright ideas?” Whitner demanded, clicking the brakes off her wheels and pivoting to impale a zombie that had snuck up behind her.

Before Wilson could formulate a soothing lie, they both heard a cheery ding behind them at the other end of the hall. “That’s the maintenance elevator!” he cried. “House must have found us. Come on!”

He dispatched one last zombie before grabbing hold of Whitner’s wheelchair and pushing her down the hallway. The zombies tried to follow them, but the piles of their dead brethren slowed their progress.

Wilson raced past the empty rooms, skidding to a halt outside the elevator. The metal doors opened up, and Betsy the snow shovel nearly took his head off.

“Watch it!” he yelled into the lift. “It’s just me.”

“And me,” Whitner piped up, covering her head as well.

Foreman poked his head out of the elevator. “You two are still alive? Where’s House?”

“He’s not with you?” Wilson asked, eyes wide.

“We can chat about this later,” Whitner cut in. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

She wheeled herself into the elevator, and Wilson glanced over his shoulder at the dozens of zombies behind them. He was about the follow the other doctor into the lift when a flash of polished wood caught his eye.

“Oh no,” he breathed, turning back to face the zombies. The elevator doors nearly closed behind him, but Foreman stuck his hands between them.

“We have to go, Wilson!” he shouted. “Get in!”

Wilson ignored him and rushed forward, beheading two more zombies on his way.

“What the hell are you thinking?” he heard Whitner screech. “Let’s go!”

But Wilson forged on, slamming the handle of his shovel into the face of the zombie that had caught his eye. The stunned creature fell to the ground, giving Wilson a chance to yank the thin shaft of gleaming wood from between its third and fourth ribs. The elegant curve of the handhold was so familiar, so unmistakable.

“House…” he choked, grasping the cane with a white-knuckled grip.

Strong hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back towards the elevator. “You crazy asshole,” Foreman muttered, slapping the door close button once they were safely inside. “Why’d you go running off like that?”

Wilson didn’t answer, only lifted the cane up so the other two doctors could see it.

“That’s…not good,” Foreman said softly. He sighed and placed a hand over his eyes as if in deep thought.

“It, it doesn’t mean…” Whitner began, resting a comforting hand on Wilson’s dangling forearm. “House is a tough son of a bitch. He’ll be—”

“He can’t get far without it,” Wilson said flatly, his gaze still riveted to the cane in his hand. “And without the elevator key, he’d be trapped on the eleventh floor. All alone, with no weapons. And I…I left him there…” His voice wavered, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

“Listen, I’m sorry,” Foreman said, his own clipped tone doing nothing to hide his troubled expression. “Let’s just get back to the others and we’ll—”

The younger man was just about to press the button for the ninth floor when there was a terrible banging on the other side of the elevator doors. The three doctors went completely still, listening for the telltale moans but hearing none. The blows became louder.

“I know you’re there!” a voice called through the layers of metal. “The indicator light is still working.”

“What?” Wilson gasped. The cane and his shovel clattered to the floor of the elevator, and he jabbed at the open door button with his fingertip. Foreman and Whitner didn’t even have time to stop him.

The doors whooshed open to reveal a flushed House, leaning on a broken table leg in his right hand, and a fireman’s ax resting over his shoulder in his left. His blue scrubs were spattered with black ooze, and there was an optimistic, if a bit wild, look in his eyes.

Wilson used his good foot to rise up a bit on his tiptoes. Over House’s shoulder, he could see the horde of zombies was completely annihilated: headless, smashed or otherwise defeated.

“Oh my god,” he whispered.

House’s eyebrows rose in pleasant surprise as he looked to the floor. “Hey, you found my cane. Sweet.” He flung away the table leg and bent to retrieve his proper sidekick.

“How the hell did you do that?” Foreman cried, pointing at the piles of unmoving corpses.

“And how did you make it down the stairs?” Whitner asked, eyeing House suspiciously.

“It’s a long story involving a box of matches, a trash can lid, and some well-placed flammable liquids,” House said, limping his way into the elevator. He faced forward as if this were a normal ride up to his office. “Push nine, please.”

Wilson did so, still gaping at his intact friend. “You motherfu—”

“Foreman, what did the biopsy tell you?” House asked, completely ignoring Wilson’s epitaphs as the elevator rose.

Foreman sighed. “You were right. It looks like a filovirus, very similar in structure to Ebola or the Marburg virus.” He pulled some sheets of paper from the pocket of his tattered lab coat and handed them to House.

House studied the printouts with a furrowed brow. “Fantastic. Now all we have to do is create an antiviral.”

Whitner scoffed. “Are you serious? There’s no vaccine or antiviral for Ebola or Marburg because they’re too goddamned difficult to pin down. How are we supposed to engineer a cure with no support, no equipment, no—”

“You must be new at this,” House said, glancing down at the woman in the chair. “This is the part where I’m sarcastic and pissy. Duh.”

“Well, there has to be some way to kill off the virus without destroying the host,” Wilson muttered, rubbing his temples with his fingertips. It was hard to participate in a differential when House had miraculously escaped Zombie Island alive, but he had to try. “What about exposing an infected person to radiation? Maybe it would kill off the virus just like cancer cells.”

“Cancer boy’s first thought runs to cancer treatment. Novel,” House snorted. “This virus is like a cockroach. That level of radiation would fry the patient’s body before the virus even sneezed.”

Whitner took the papers from House’s hand and studied them through her eyeglasses. “If the virus infects brain cells, maybe removing the infected tissue would be enough,” she suggested.

Foreman shook his head. “All the lobes are affected,” he said. “Even a full frontal lobotomy wouldn’t be enough to stop the virus.”

“Oh, full frontal.” House shivered dramatically. “I love it when you talk dirty.” The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open. “Come on, this is our stop,” he said, leading the way with his newly-recovered cane.

They made their way back to the cafeteria without any more zombie encounters, and one of the surviving nurses let them in. Whitner immediately wheeled her way to the rows of patients, looking for something to help with. Foreman went to check on Chase in the corner, and House made a beeline for the restroom, ditching his ax by the door.

Wilson sighed and followed.

When he pushed the men’s room door open, House was pulling off his stained scrub shirt and shoving it in one of the sinks. He got a handful of soap from the dispenser and turned the tap, soaking the shirt and scratching at the black marks.

“You’re alive,” Wilson said simply.

House looked up and caught Wilson’s reflection in the mirror. “I’m also a Sagittarius. What’s your point?”

Wilson took a few steps closer. “I thought you were dead.”

“Well, you were wrong.” House lifted the wet shirt from the sink and wrung it out, squeezing every last drop from it.

“We’re still not talking about this?” Wilson asked.

The shirtless man grabbed his cane from the edge of the counter and hobbled over to the bathroom stalls, where he draped the shirt over the partition to dry. He turned, but didn’t face Wilson. “Nope.”

Wilson was on him in an instant, grabbing House by the shoulders pinning him against the partition with a growl. “You bastard, I thought you were gone! Do you have any idea how I…”

Wilson trailed off with a small whimper. His fingernails dug into House’s bare shoulders, trying to still the shaking in his limbs. He looked up at House’s glassy blue eyes and couldn’t quite find an answer in them. Wilson leaned forward, his eyes drifting shut, and tried to brush his lips against his friend’s.

House’s hand covered Wilson’s mouth, halting his progress. Wilson blinked his eyes open in shock.

“Not right now, Jimmy,” House murmured, his gaze on the tile floor. He extricated himself from Wilson’s arms and limped slowly toward the exit.

The younger doctor stayed frozen for a moment before lunging forward and grasping House’s wrist. “Wait, what the hell, House?” he sputtered. “Before I left for Maine, you were the one who kissed me. Now I’m here, practically throwing myself at you and you…”

House shook off Wilson’s hold. “I don’t want to talk about it because there’s nothing to talk about,” he mumbled, still not meeting Wilson’s eyes. “I just don’t feel that way about you.”

“No, you’re lying.” Wilson let his arm hang limply at his side, the gears turning in his head. “Yet you know the odds are against us surviving this thing. Why wouldn’t you…?” His eyes widened. “Oh, god.”

House shook his head. “I made a mistake. I kissed you to mess with your head. It didn’t mean anything, I—”

“Stop lying to me!” Wilson shouted. “And show me where you’ve been bitten!”

House closed his eyes and turned with a resigned sigh. He propped his cane against a urinal and lifted his left pant leg. There, on the back on his calf muscle, were two half-moons of teeth marks. The wound was already an angry red with dark bruises covering the surrounding skin.

“The only thing we know for sure,” House said quietly, “is that it’s transmitted through body fluids.” He took hold of his cane once more and double-timed it to the door. “You can’t kiss me,” he whispered as he left.

Wilson stood there in the empty bathroom for a moment, waiting for the earth to stop moving beneath his bare feet. House was infected. House was going to turn into one of those creatures.

He heaved a sigh and dragged his hands through his hair. What the hell did it matter, he thought. They were all dead anyway; it was just a matter of time.

Wilson walked back into the cafeteria, noticing how dim the lights were now. The nurses had probably switched some of them off to help the injured patients get some sleep. Everyone seemed to be sprawled out on the floor, huddled in stolen blankets.

He found House in a corner behind two overturned tables. The man was rubbing carefully at his right leg, which was stretched out in front of him. House glared at his approach.

Wilson gestured to the offending limb. “I can still touch you, right?” he said quietly. “You must be in pain without the pills.”

House swallowed before answering, his voice rough. “Sliding down nine flights of stairs on a trash can lid doesn’t help either.”

With a shrug, Wilson stepped over the makeshift cubicle walls and sat next to House on the cold floor. He batted his friend’s hands away from the mangled thigh and began a cautious massage through the thin scrub pants. His fingertips traced the jagged path of House’s scar, down his thigh to his knee, and back again countless times.

“Better?” he asked.

House nodded. “You should probably get some sleep,” he said. “You haven’t had any rest all day.”

“Yeah,” Wilson said blankly, abandoning his ministrations to grab a pile of blankets nearby. He began spreading one over the tile. “I’ll just share these with you, if you don’t mind. I haven’t had a chance to steal my own bedding.”

House rubbed a hand through the curly hair at the back of his head. “I don’t think that’s such a great—”

“I’m staying,” Wilson cut in, his tone leaving no room for argument.

“Suit yourself,” House said with only a fraction of him usual bravado. “But don’t you dare try to kiss me in my sleep.”

“You wish,” Wilson chuckled, trying to keep to the joke for House’s sake.

House lay down and rolled onto his left side, grabbing a pillow to place under his head. Since it was the only pillow, Wilson moved close to share it, pulling a thin sheet over their bodies. He pressed himself against House’s back and felt his own breath puffing against House’s neck.

He fought the urge to kiss the skin there.

“No licking,” House mumbled, as if reading his mind. “Sweat.”

“House,” he rasped, draping an arm over his friend’s bare waist, “do you honestly think I’ll survive long without you? Just let me—”

“You might not care if you turn into a zombie,” House whispered in the dark, still facing away, “but I do.” He shifted his leg a little as if trying to find a more comfortable position. Without words, Wilson slid a leg between House’s, giving it more support.

“That reminds me,” House said. “I want you to kill me before I turn.”

Wilson pressed his forehead against House’s shoulder and spoke to his spine. “It’s not going to come to that. We’ll figure out a way to beat this.”

“Wilson.” House moved onto his back, allowing Wilson to rest his cheek against his chest, ear over his heart. “We can’t fight this disease. It’s not…” He sighed, lifting a hand to thread into Wilson’s hair. “It’s not something we can cure.”

Wilson nodded against House’s chest, taking deep breaths to calm the buzzing in his ears. He concentrated on memorizing House’s scent, the texture of his skin, the way his heartbeat stuttered along with Wilson’s.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” House whispered to him. They lay there, arms and legs tangled beneath the shared blanket, waiting for night to end.



Continue to Part 6.