NCIS, "Fair Winds and Following Seas," for the apocalyptothon
title: Fair Winds and Following Seas
author: Sabine
fandom: NCIS, gen
rating: D for Death and Destruction
size: 4083 words
recipient: For kirana_44, who requested: It must happens before Kate dies.
notes: runpunkrun is my better half and she holds my hand when I'm alone. I was at sea in a brand-new fandom, so special beta thanks take a village: rossetti, twoweevils, cathexys and palebluebell were the best village ever. And thanks as always to the intrepid trollprincess for wrangling the Apocalyptothon.
This is for fmangel, who said, no, you will love this show, Mark Harmon is adorable, watch how he kisses Abby on the head.
warnings: Contains very specious science manufactured on machinery that also processes peanuts and tree nuts. Feedback is superfantastic and I love you, all four people who read this fandom.
Anchor’s aweigh, my boys, anchor’s aweigh,
Farewell to college joys, we sail at break of day
Through our last night on shore, drink to the foam
Until we meet once more, here’s wishing you a happy voyage home.
Now the sun will both rise and set over water. Now they're miles from shore and the wind kicks right through her jacket and it's been a couple hours since Abby's seen a sea bird, a gull or an albatross, or heard the screech that signaled their predatory dive. Now it's cold and dusky and getting darker and the stars are brilliant through the slate-grey clouds. Tonight Abby will count a hundred billion stars.
The first day went something like this:
Tony's in her lab, breathing on her neck and clicking the top of his ballpoint in full-on ADD mode. "Got a match yet?"
She looks at him. "You can see the AFIS monitor just as well as I can."
He squints. "Why are you drinking coffee instead of a Caf-Pow?"
"It's morning, Tony," she says, and takes a sip.
"I've seen you drink Caf-Pows in the morning," he says.
"I'm unpredictable," she says, and rolls off her chair to go see what the mass spec has to say about those carpet fibers.
Then Palmer comes in, the new kid from the morgue, still in his mask and apron. "Hey, Abby?" he manages.
"Yeah, Palmer?"
"We've got an infective agent in autopsy. The, um, room's sealed. It's just --"
"Spit it out, Gremlin." Tony rolls over on a wheely chair to take position next to Abby.
"It's Doctor Mallard. He's been exposed. We're, um. He quarantined himself in there. But, um. Abby?"
"Yes, still here," Abby growls.
Palmer hands her a blood sample in a pyrex, etched vial that she recognizes instantly. "Dr-- Ducky wants to know if you can check this. Without exposing yourself to it in any way, he was very adamant about that, that you should have absolutely no contact with the blood whatsoever --" Palmer's face is red and his glasses are foggy. "He was hoping you could test it."
"Of course I can," Abby says, and she goes over to her freezer for a leaded case to hold the sample, and she locks the whole thing up and heads up to go see Gibbs, without even waiting for Tony to follow her.
The blood in the pyrex vial etched "Centers for Disease Control" shows evidence of bird flu. It is exactly what Abby feared, H5N1 fit for a Mallard. She spends twenty minutes in the decontamination shower and when she comes out her skin's scrubbed red and raw and her tats bristle under the surface.
Gibbs calls the lab. "How's Ducky?" she asks immediately.
"Not good, Abs. What have you found out?"
"It's the thing we thought," she says, and the lump in her throat's so big and so hard that for a minute she genuinely can't breathe. "From the al-Qaeda e-mail we intercepted last year, Gibbs."
When Gibbs speaks again there's no comfort in his voice. "Okay," he says. "I'll be in MTAC. Nobody leaves the building, you got that?"
"Copy, Gibbs," Abby says, and takes a deep breath, and puts her pants on again.
When, several years ago, Abby first read the abstract from an article in a Hong Kong journal warning about the H5N1 flu strain, she had to jump right into bed afterward and squeeze her eyes shut tight so she could revel in the terror before her rational side talked her out of it. She spent a lot of nights after that fantasizing about the worst flu-related ways to go, and then an encrypted, piggybacked e-mail message intercepted by Ari Haswari came and trumped every single one of Abby's scenarios. Ten-point coordinated attack, aerosolized flu, cripple the entire country inside of a month. Abby didn't fantasize about bird flu after that. Now, the guilt threatens to kill her before the flu does.
The threat plays out exactly as Ari said it would. Reports come in from Houston, Indianapolis, San Francisco, detailing outbreaks of flu-like symptoms that come on fast and kill even faster. By dusk that first day, hospitals in ten key cities reach capacity and close to trauma, causing a backlog at area clinics as symptoms develop and panic rises. Flu vaccine is scarce, and then gone. Martial law is declared, too late -- the infected have already left the cities, spreading through the country's arterial highway network, looking for help and delivering disease. The news shows traffic backed up on the highways, blocked by drivers who dropped dead right there at the wheel.
"What can we do, Gibbs?" Abby asks, back in her lab at NCIS. She squeezes Bert and he makes his reassuring noise.
"Ah, nothing, Abs," Gibbs says. "Wait it out."
"Figures," Tony says. "I'm gonna spend my dying days trapped in the basement of NCIS." He's sitting on the futon, legs sprawled, tossing rubber test tube stoppers into Abby's pink Goodbye Kitty beach pail.
Abby wants, desperately, to tell him about the e-mail, the al-Qaeda threat, the fact that they're all possibly going to die very very soon, but Tony isn't cleared for that information. Hell, Abby isn't cleared for that information, and the only reason she's privy to it is because she's the one who decrypted the e-mail in the first place. She taps her fists together nervously. "I'm scared, Tony," she says.
Tony looks at her. "Don't worry, kiddo," he says, drawling like one of those 50s movie stars. "It'll be all right." He pats her on the head and she leans into his hand and lets herself relax and when she closes her eyes, she doesn't see the prickly shape of the flu virus.
Just before midnight the lawyer from the third floor comes in carrying a plastic tray with a couple of saran wrapped sandwiches and some little foil-topped cups of jello. "There's a curfew now," she says, nervously. "And everything's closed. Not that we could order in, with the lockdown. Do you want a coke or something from the soda machine?" Abby thinks she looks like she's about to cry.
"Man, I wish I'd had a Caf-Pow instead of coffee this morning," Abby says.
"Told you," Tony says.
The lawyer sets the tray down on the stainless steel counter and turns to go, a quick motion that belies the tears in her eyes.
"Are you okay?" Abby asks. The lawyer turns around.
"My kids are home," she says. "I should be grateful for that. That they're not still out there."
"Is there someone with them?" Tony asks, pulling himself to his feet.
"Henry's eight and Jonah's six," the lawyer says, like she didn't hear him. "I told them to lock all the doors and close all the windows and to put wet towels down to block any gaps under the doors, and I told them there's turkey breast in the fridge, and peanut butter, and there's Teddy Grahams in the cupboard..." She sniffles again and wipes her nose on Tony's shoulder. Abby watches him cringe, just for a second, and then go back to stroking the poor woman's mussed-up hair.
"I'm sure you'll get home and see them soon," Tony says.
The lawyer peels away. "None of us are getting out of here," she says, in a voice so low and so broken Abby can feel the vibrations in her heart.
Jimmy Palmer dies before Ducky does, despite being infected hours later. They store his body in a morgue drawer. Ducky, pale, sweating, and trapped in autopsy with two dead flu patients and a medic in hazard gear, reads a eulogy. Gibbs, Abby, Kate, McGee and Tony listen through the intercom. When Kate wakes up sick the next morning, Ducky gets company.
"I'm fine," Kate insists, after Gibbs orders a second marine medic to examine her. Both doctors confirm she is infected, and she takes up residence on bed two, right next to Ducky.
"This sucks," Kate says later, to Tony. "It's cold as hell down here."
"Yeah, and you've got a fever of a hundred and two," Tony says. He sleeps in the morgue that night, dressed in a bio suit, in bed three.
Gibbs spends most of his time in MTAC now, and all his conversations are classified by Homeland Security. The country's in a state of emergency, threat level red, martial law from coast to coast and a six pm curfew. Non-essential work is ceased. By the end of the first week more than half the country is infected and the news, on every station around the clock, shows army camps and tent cities and Wal-Marts converted into health clinics. Médecins Sans Frontières declares the entire 48 contiguous states a quarantine zone and half the aid workers are turned back at the border.
By the end of the second week, some eight million people are dead. The bodies burn round the clock and everywhere, even with the windows closed, Abby can smell them. But by the end of the second week, some people begin to get better. On day thirteen, Abby wakes up in her lab to see Ducky standing over her, dressed head to toe in hazmat gear and smiling.
"Good morning, Abigail," he says, and Abby leaps from the floor to bundle his crumply blue suit in a bear hug.
"Ducky! You're okay!"
Tony is asleep on the futon, McGee is at the computer. Gibbs, as usual, is nowhere around.
"How's Kate?" Abby asks. Ducky looks away.
"Still being fed intravenously, I'm afraid," Ducky says. "And drifting in and out of consciousness."
"I'm'unna go see her," Tony mumbles, and rolls over on the futon. "Kate..."
"Good idea, DiNozzo," says Gibbs, standing in the doorway. Tony snaps to attention and leaps to his feet.
"Morning, Boss!" Tony says.
"Good to see you up and about, Duck," says Gibbs.
"Indeed," agrees Ducky. "I woke up this morning with the most astounding craving for pancakes," he says. "More specifically, Louisa Donnelly's buckwheat flapjacks. I remember one winter in New Bedford..."
"We got Balance bars and MREs," Gibbs says, tossing a box of foil-wrapped rations on the floor. "Abs?"
Abby follows him out the door and into the hall. "What's going on, Gibbs?"
"I want you to take a look at Ducky's blood," Gibbs says. "I want to confirm he's really getting better."
Through the lab window, Abby can see Ducky in his bio suit, leaning over McGee's shoulder and watching the computer monitor. Elf Lord takes a hit to the chest and a couple of Orcs finish him off. Ducky slaps McGee on the back. Abby reads his lips: "Next time you should try coming at them from behind that stone archway, perhaps."
"Why?" Abby asks. "He's okay, right?"
"Looks good to me," says Gibbs, also watching Ducky through the window. "Stella's compiling reports of other patients seemingly in recovery, but we're not prepared to end the state of emergency until we're certain."
"Understood," Abby says.
The marine medic draws Ducky's blood, and Kate's, and Abby takes the vials back to her lab and spins a hematocrit and checks the smears under her microscope. Kate's viral load is ten times Ducky's, but Abby checks three times confirm that live viral cells still swim through Ducky's circulatory system. She finds Gibbs in MTAC and waits outside for twenty minutes for him to come out.
"Ducky's still sick," she says, squaring her shoulders. Gibbs stares back.
"Keep analyzing the virus," he says. "Do what you can."
She wants to tell him there's nothing she can do, she's not a doctor, that even if somehow she did know how to synthesize a cure for bioengineered bird flu she wouldn't have the ingredients or the equipment on which to do it. Instead she says, "Of course, Gibbs," and she wonders if he knows that she knows that he knows she just needs something to do.
The Caf-Pow machine ran out over a week ago. The coffee ran out shortly after that. Gibbs drinks Postum that someone at the Navy brought him, and now he hands her an NCIS mug half full.
"We're rationing," he says. "But we shouldn't have to for much longer."
Abby thinks the Postum tastes like particleboard, and it's the best thing she's had in weeks. She takes a sip and tears stream down her cheeks, and on the catwalk overlooking the NCIS bullpen, Gibbs folds his arms around her and hugs her tight as she cries long heaving breaths and wipes her nose on the shoulder of his shirt.
The death toll continues to slow, but the threat level stays in the red, and the borders stay closed. Foreign news feeds are piped into MTAC and Gibbs brings copies of Al-Jazeera and Le Monde down to Tony, who reads them, scowling. CNN says "Crisis Over?" and the London Times says, "America: Ground Zero for a Global Pandemic?" Local news reports countrywide recovery. Foreign news reports a plague raging out of control.
Abby goes to check on Kate the morning the news announces that a G-7 summit has been called to discuss the threat of the American Plague on the global community. Kate snorts when she hears the news and tries to laugh, her cough spraying blood across the morgue sheets. Ducky comes over to tend to her, and behind the protective glass, Abby covers her eyes, and then is ashamed for it.
"How do you feel?" she asks Kate, through the glass, after Ducky's completed his bed changing.
"Not bad," coughs Kate. Her eyes are sunken and bruised purple and her skin is riddled with burst capillaries. "Can I help you guys with anything?"
"Tony misses you," Abby says.
"You kidding?" Kate says. "Being away from Tony's the best part of being cooped up down here."
Abby tries to laugh now and doesn't do a very convincing job of it. "Yeah," she says.
"He comes every day," Kate says. "He's here for hours, sometimes. He read me the entire Uniform Code of Military Justice." She coughs again, and there's blood on her hands. "God, what a pain in the ass."
"Yeah," says Abby again.
That night when Kate dies, everyone is already awake, as if they'd known, somehow. They huddle outside the morgue and watch as Ducky wraps Kate, lovingly, and slides her body into one of the empty drawers. Gibbs and Tony both try and say a few words, but neither can manage much, and so instead they just stand there. At dinner Gibbs plays "Amazing Grace" on a gray plastic tape deck and everybody pretends they don't notice Tony crying.
The last day goes like this:
They are out of Postum. Abby's synthesized a caffeine drink from Excedrin and glucose that only she and Gibbs can stomach, but they are nearly out of food as well and everyone is hungry and cranky. Abby's challenging McGee to a game of Soul Calibur and Tony's calling the box scores when Gibbs comes in with the news.
"Epidemic's over," he says. "New cases have slowed to a trickle all across the 48. And folks like Ducky seem to be getting bettter."
Tony races for the stairs. "Oh my god, we can leave!" Gibbs throws out an arm and stops Tony by sending him reeling into a shelf full of carpet swatches. They land on the floor in a furry mosaic.
"Not so fast," says Gibbs. "The President's ordered the quarantine for twelve more hours."
"I gotta call Alana," says McGee, and Abby can hear the cartoon sound Tony's head makes as it whips around.
"A-who-na?"
McGee sighs. "Alana. Frink. My girlfriend," he says. "I promised her I'd let her know the minute I heard anything. I can tell her, right, Boss? I mean, it's not classified?"
Gibbs smiles. "Nope. Not classified." Then he turns and disappears back out the door.
"Tell me about this Alana," Tony says. "No, wait, lemme guess. Five foot nothing, two hundred, two and a quarter pounds, receding hairline..."
McGee sighs again. He roots in his pocket for his wallet, flips to a photo and hands it to Tony.
"Hottttt..." sputters Tony.
"Yeah," says McGee, taking back the wallet and shoving it in his pocket.
"I bet that's the photo that came with that wallet," Tony says to Abby. Abby squeezes Bert by way of answer.
Then the alarms go off. First the beep of the quarantine alarm, which had stopped sounding two weeks ago, and then the high wail of the lockdown alarm from MTAC. Abby goes over to the door and shoves at it, but the automatic locks have engaged and the door's sealed shut. She tries Gibbs on the phone.
"Stay where you are!" he growls, before she even manages hello.
"We pretty much have to," she says. "We're locked down."
"Good," says Gibbs.
"What's wrong, Gibbs?" Abby asks, but he's gone.
An hour before the quarantine lifts, Gibbs calls Abby back. "Meet me at Lions Bay Harbor as soon as you leave," he says. "Bring Tony and McGee with you."
"McGee's meeting his girlfriend," Abby says. "Her name is Alana Frink."
"Bring Alana Frink," says Gibbs. "The instant the quarantine's over, you hear me? Pack your stuff, anything you're gonna need, and be ready to hightail it on over here."
"What about Ducky?" Abby asks.
There's a pause. "Not Ducky," says Gibbs. "You got TV?"
Abby tries the remote. CNN comes in clear. "Yeah," she says.
"Be strong, Abs," Gibbs says, and hangs up.
Tony hears it first. "Turn that up!" he shouts, racing past Abby's desk to get closer to the plasma screen.
"...approved use of a microwave pulse to eradicate the threat. In a joint statement, all seven nations declared that the epidemic raging across the United States constituted a threat worthy of these extreme measures. Dr. Xiao Ping of the Shanghai Institute..."
Abby feels her insides seize up, like she's been flash-frozen. "McGee--" she says.
"Microwave pulse, did he say microwave pulse--"
"He did--"
"Oh, god--"
Tony leaps between them and the plasma and waves his arms like a traffic cop. "Tell meeee," he says, pointing to himself as if they might not understand.
"It'll kill all living material. Vaporize it," says McGee.
"I will successfully eradicate the virus, all right," Abby says. "It'll successfully eradicate the entire population of this country."
"I thought the epidemic was over?" McGee muses.
"Maybe they don't know?" Abby says.
Tony's still staring at the news. "They know," he says. "It's an excuse."
McGee goggles. "That's crazy, Tony," he says. "No way are the countries of the world ganging up to wipe us off the planet."
"The countries of the world are ganging up to wipe us off the planet?" Abby says, because all of a sudden, a part of Ari's message she never understood begins to make sense. Al-Qaeda will make sure that the flu kills even the uninfected.
"No," says McGee decisively, but Abby's dialing her phone again.
Pick up pick up pick up, she wills at Gibbs, but she knows he won't, and he doesn't. The newscast loops to the beginning and repeats itself, and Abby hangs up the phone. Forty-five minutes later the alarm stops wailing and the door makes a metallic whooshing sound and unlocks. They load their things into Tony's Mustang, pick up McGee's girlfriend and head for Lions Bay.
From behind a wooden cruiser named Caitlin, Gibbs stands up. He's dressed in Ducky's blue bio suit and his eyes are brilliant, steady and cool as the ocean.
"You have to leave the country," he says. He holds out a watch cap, marine-issue. "She's all yours, DiNozzo."
Abby swallows and her throat is sore. She blinks at tears. "Gibbs--"
"Absolutely not, Boss," says Tony. "We're not leaving without you."
"I'm infected," says Gibbs. "I can't leave."
"You'll be vaporized," McGee says, low and breathless like he didn't really mean to say it out loud. Alana touches his shoulder.
Gibbs stares. "Nah," he says, and Abby knows that this means he has no intentions of living that long. Gibbs smiles behind his plastic mask.
Now Tony speaks. "You want me to sail to England?"
"No, Tony," says Gibbs. "South Carolina. Horse Island. There's a Gullah settlement there, and you'll find a woman named Iona Baba. She--" his eyes gleam. "Owes me a favor."
"You think they'll escape the blast?"
"The Gullah islands are a sovereign nation. If this blast is politically motivated, they'll spare them. If the blast is really intended to eradicate the virus, the closest infected hub is over three hundred miles away in Atlanta." Gibbs looks at Abby, and winks. "You'll be fine."
"You won't," says Abby, and she realizes she's bitter, and angry. "You're abandoning us."
"Abs--" says Tony, but Abby shakes him off.
Gibbs looks at her for a long time. I would never abandon you, he says in sign. I'll always be with you.
She scowls.
He folds his big suit around her in a hug, and he is Gibbs, strong and safe as home. She imagines she can smell him, coffee and wool and sawdust, and she shakes in his arms, clutching him closer and crying, and crying.
"I love you, Abs," he whispers.
"Me too, Gibbs," she manages.
Tony has been scrutinizing the Caitlin and he climbs onto her deck and calls down to them. "Alaskan cedar, right, Boss?"
"Not bad, DiNozzo."
"She's a beauty," Tony says. And she is. Her big sails are tied up, their rigging taut and perfect. The hull is seamless, varnished and unpainted and glowing with the rich red of the cedar. Abby estimates her at twenty seven feet, bigger than she looked in Gibbs' basement all these years. She bobs in the water like a restless puppy.
Tony scrambles down and returns to where they're standing on the dock. Nobody speaks for a while, until Alana says, "I'll start loading our stuff on the boat," and leans over to kiss McGee on the cheek. After she's gone, Tony turns to Gibbs.
"I'll take good care of her, boss," he says.
"I know you will," says Gibbs.
"I saw screw heads," says Tony. "You used power tools."
"I was short on time," says Gibbs, and he almost smiles.
"I'll never forget you, Boss," McGee says.
Gibbs smiles now. "I know," he says. "McGee, you're a hell of a person."
"Thanks," says McGee.
"And your girlfriend's a babe," adds Tony. When Gibbs smacks him on the back of the head with a big blue glove, Abby turns away so he won't see her cry. She doesn't look at him again until they're all on the boat and ready to leave.
Gibbs unties the ship from its mooring and tosses the rope on deck. "Fair winds and following seas," he says.
"Semper fi," Tony calls back.
"Semper fi," says McGee.
In an hour they lose sight of the harbor, and in two hours they lose sight of shore entirely. The sun sets over water, red-orange and spilling across the surface like blood. Tony and McGee tie up the sails for the night, and Alana shows them how to navigate by the stars. Abby doesn't say a word. She just stands on the deck, clutching the rail and staring out at the water, wrapped in Gibbs' NCIS windbreaker. She doesn't go inside that night, not even when the explosions start, way out on the horizon.
//
e-mail me or comment here and let me know what you thought, eh?
author: Sabine
fandom: NCIS, gen
rating: D for Death and Destruction
size: 4083 words
recipient: For kirana_44, who requested: It must happens before Kate dies.
notes: runpunkrun is my better half and she holds my hand when I'm alone. I was at sea in a brand-new fandom, so special beta thanks take a village: rossetti, twoweevils, cathexys and palebluebell were the best village ever. And thanks as always to the intrepid trollprincess for wrangling the Apocalyptothon.
This is for fmangel, who said, no, you will love this show, Mark Harmon is adorable, watch how he kisses Abby on the head.
warnings: Contains very specious science manufactured on machinery that also processes peanuts and tree nuts. Feedback is superfantastic and I love you, all four people who read this fandom.
Anchor’s aweigh, my boys, anchor’s aweigh,
Farewell to college joys, we sail at break of day
Through our last night on shore, drink to the foam
Until we meet once more, here’s wishing you a happy voyage home.
Now the sun will both rise and set over water. Now they're miles from shore and the wind kicks right through her jacket and it's been a couple hours since Abby's seen a sea bird, a gull or an albatross, or heard the screech that signaled their predatory dive. Now it's cold and dusky and getting darker and the stars are brilliant through the slate-grey clouds. Tonight Abby will count a hundred billion stars.
The first day went something like this:
Tony's in her lab, breathing on her neck and clicking the top of his ballpoint in full-on ADD mode. "Got a match yet?"
She looks at him. "You can see the AFIS monitor just as well as I can."
He squints. "Why are you drinking coffee instead of a Caf-Pow?"
"It's morning, Tony," she says, and takes a sip.
"I've seen you drink Caf-Pows in the morning," he says.
"I'm unpredictable," she says, and rolls off her chair to go see what the mass spec has to say about those carpet fibers.
Then Palmer comes in, the new kid from the morgue, still in his mask and apron. "Hey, Abby?" he manages.
"Yeah, Palmer?"
"We've got an infective agent in autopsy. The, um, room's sealed. It's just --"
"Spit it out, Gremlin." Tony rolls over on a wheely chair to take position next to Abby.
"It's Doctor Mallard. He's been exposed. We're, um. He quarantined himself in there. But, um. Abby?"
"Yes, still here," Abby growls.
Palmer hands her a blood sample in a pyrex, etched vial that she recognizes instantly. "Dr-- Ducky wants to know if you can check this. Without exposing yourself to it in any way, he was very adamant about that, that you should have absolutely no contact with the blood whatsoever --" Palmer's face is red and his glasses are foggy. "He was hoping you could test it."
"Of course I can," Abby says, and she goes over to her freezer for a leaded case to hold the sample, and she locks the whole thing up and heads up to go see Gibbs, without even waiting for Tony to follow her.
The blood in the pyrex vial etched "Centers for Disease Control" shows evidence of bird flu. It is exactly what Abby feared, H5N1 fit for a Mallard. She spends twenty minutes in the decontamination shower and when she comes out her skin's scrubbed red and raw and her tats bristle under the surface.
Gibbs calls the lab. "How's Ducky?" she asks immediately.
"Not good, Abs. What have you found out?"
"It's the thing we thought," she says, and the lump in her throat's so big and so hard that for a minute she genuinely can't breathe. "From the al-Qaeda e-mail we intercepted last year, Gibbs."
When Gibbs speaks again there's no comfort in his voice. "Okay," he says. "I'll be in MTAC. Nobody leaves the building, you got that?"
"Copy, Gibbs," Abby says, and takes a deep breath, and puts her pants on again.
When, several years ago, Abby first read the abstract from an article in a Hong Kong journal warning about the H5N1 flu strain, she had to jump right into bed afterward and squeeze her eyes shut tight so she could revel in the terror before her rational side talked her out of it. She spent a lot of nights after that fantasizing about the worst flu-related ways to go, and then an encrypted, piggybacked e-mail message intercepted by Ari Haswari came and trumped every single one of Abby's scenarios. Ten-point coordinated attack, aerosolized flu, cripple the entire country inside of a month. Abby didn't fantasize about bird flu after that. Now, the guilt threatens to kill her before the flu does.
The threat plays out exactly as Ari said it would. Reports come in from Houston, Indianapolis, San Francisco, detailing outbreaks of flu-like symptoms that come on fast and kill even faster. By dusk that first day, hospitals in ten key cities reach capacity and close to trauma, causing a backlog at area clinics as symptoms develop and panic rises. Flu vaccine is scarce, and then gone. Martial law is declared, too late -- the infected have already left the cities, spreading through the country's arterial highway network, looking for help and delivering disease. The news shows traffic backed up on the highways, blocked by drivers who dropped dead right there at the wheel.
"What can we do, Gibbs?" Abby asks, back in her lab at NCIS. She squeezes Bert and he makes his reassuring noise.
"Ah, nothing, Abs," Gibbs says. "Wait it out."
"Figures," Tony says. "I'm gonna spend my dying days trapped in the basement of NCIS." He's sitting on the futon, legs sprawled, tossing rubber test tube stoppers into Abby's pink Goodbye Kitty beach pail.
Abby wants, desperately, to tell him about the e-mail, the al-Qaeda threat, the fact that they're all possibly going to die very very soon, but Tony isn't cleared for that information. Hell, Abby isn't cleared for that information, and the only reason she's privy to it is because she's the one who decrypted the e-mail in the first place. She taps her fists together nervously. "I'm scared, Tony," she says.
Tony looks at her. "Don't worry, kiddo," he says, drawling like one of those 50s movie stars. "It'll be all right." He pats her on the head and she leans into his hand and lets herself relax and when she closes her eyes, she doesn't see the prickly shape of the flu virus.
Just before midnight the lawyer from the third floor comes in carrying a plastic tray with a couple of saran wrapped sandwiches and some little foil-topped cups of jello. "There's a curfew now," she says, nervously. "And everything's closed. Not that we could order in, with the lockdown. Do you want a coke or something from the soda machine?" Abby thinks she looks like she's about to cry.
"Man, I wish I'd had a Caf-Pow instead of coffee this morning," Abby says.
"Told you," Tony says.
The lawyer sets the tray down on the stainless steel counter and turns to go, a quick motion that belies the tears in her eyes.
"Are you okay?" Abby asks. The lawyer turns around.
"My kids are home," she says. "I should be grateful for that. That they're not still out there."
"Is there someone with them?" Tony asks, pulling himself to his feet.
"Henry's eight and Jonah's six," the lawyer says, like she didn't hear him. "I told them to lock all the doors and close all the windows and to put wet towels down to block any gaps under the doors, and I told them there's turkey breast in the fridge, and peanut butter, and there's Teddy Grahams in the cupboard..." She sniffles again and wipes her nose on Tony's shoulder. Abby watches him cringe, just for a second, and then go back to stroking the poor woman's mussed-up hair.
"I'm sure you'll get home and see them soon," Tony says.
The lawyer peels away. "None of us are getting out of here," she says, in a voice so low and so broken Abby can feel the vibrations in her heart.
Jimmy Palmer dies before Ducky does, despite being infected hours later. They store his body in a morgue drawer. Ducky, pale, sweating, and trapped in autopsy with two dead flu patients and a medic in hazard gear, reads a eulogy. Gibbs, Abby, Kate, McGee and Tony listen through the intercom. When Kate wakes up sick the next morning, Ducky gets company.
"I'm fine," Kate insists, after Gibbs orders a second marine medic to examine her. Both doctors confirm she is infected, and she takes up residence on bed two, right next to Ducky.
"This sucks," Kate says later, to Tony. "It's cold as hell down here."
"Yeah, and you've got a fever of a hundred and two," Tony says. He sleeps in the morgue that night, dressed in a bio suit, in bed three.
Gibbs spends most of his time in MTAC now, and all his conversations are classified by Homeland Security. The country's in a state of emergency, threat level red, martial law from coast to coast and a six pm curfew. Non-essential work is ceased. By the end of the first week more than half the country is infected and the news, on every station around the clock, shows army camps and tent cities and Wal-Marts converted into health clinics. Médecins Sans Frontières declares the entire 48 contiguous states a quarantine zone and half the aid workers are turned back at the border.
By the end of the second week, some eight million people are dead. The bodies burn round the clock and everywhere, even with the windows closed, Abby can smell them. But by the end of the second week, some people begin to get better. On day thirteen, Abby wakes up in her lab to see Ducky standing over her, dressed head to toe in hazmat gear and smiling.
"Good morning, Abigail," he says, and Abby leaps from the floor to bundle his crumply blue suit in a bear hug.
"Ducky! You're okay!"
Tony is asleep on the futon, McGee is at the computer. Gibbs, as usual, is nowhere around.
"How's Kate?" Abby asks. Ducky looks away.
"Still being fed intravenously, I'm afraid," Ducky says. "And drifting in and out of consciousness."
"I'm'unna go see her," Tony mumbles, and rolls over on the futon. "Kate..."
"Good idea, DiNozzo," says Gibbs, standing in the doorway. Tony snaps to attention and leaps to his feet.
"Morning, Boss!" Tony says.
"Good to see you up and about, Duck," says Gibbs.
"Indeed," agrees Ducky. "I woke up this morning with the most astounding craving for pancakes," he says. "More specifically, Louisa Donnelly's buckwheat flapjacks. I remember one winter in New Bedford..."
"We got Balance bars and MREs," Gibbs says, tossing a box of foil-wrapped rations on the floor. "Abs?"
Abby follows him out the door and into the hall. "What's going on, Gibbs?"
"I want you to take a look at Ducky's blood," Gibbs says. "I want to confirm he's really getting better."
Through the lab window, Abby can see Ducky in his bio suit, leaning over McGee's shoulder and watching the computer monitor. Elf Lord takes a hit to the chest and a couple of Orcs finish him off. Ducky slaps McGee on the back. Abby reads his lips: "Next time you should try coming at them from behind that stone archway, perhaps."
"Why?" Abby asks. "He's okay, right?"
"Looks good to me," says Gibbs, also watching Ducky through the window. "Stella's compiling reports of other patients seemingly in recovery, but we're not prepared to end the state of emergency until we're certain."
"Understood," Abby says.
The marine medic draws Ducky's blood, and Kate's, and Abby takes the vials back to her lab and spins a hematocrit and checks the smears under her microscope. Kate's viral load is ten times Ducky's, but Abby checks three times confirm that live viral cells still swim through Ducky's circulatory system. She finds Gibbs in MTAC and waits outside for twenty minutes for him to come out.
"Ducky's still sick," she says, squaring her shoulders. Gibbs stares back.
"Keep analyzing the virus," he says. "Do what you can."
She wants to tell him there's nothing she can do, she's not a doctor, that even if somehow she did know how to synthesize a cure for bioengineered bird flu she wouldn't have the ingredients or the equipment on which to do it. Instead she says, "Of course, Gibbs," and she wonders if he knows that she knows that he knows she just needs something to do.
The Caf-Pow machine ran out over a week ago. The coffee ran out shortly after that. Gibbs drinks Postum that someone at the Navy brought him, and now he hands her an NCIS mug half full.
"We're rationing," he says. "But we shouldn't have to for much longer."
Abby thinks the Postum tastes like particleboard, and it's the best thing she's had in weeks. She takes a sip and tears stream down her cheeks, and on the catwalk overlooking the NCIS bullpen, Gibbs folds his arms around her and hugs her tight as she cries long heaving breaths and wipes her nose on the shoulder of his shirt.
The death toll continues to slow, but the threat level stays in the red, and the borders stay closed. Foreign news feeds are piped into MTAC and Gibbs brings copies of Al-Jazeera and Le Monde down to Tony, who reads them, scowling. CNN says "Crisis Over?" and the London Times says, "America: Ground Zero for a Global Pandemic?" Local news reports countrywide recovery. Foreign news reports a plague raging out of control.
Abby goes to check on Kate the morning the news announces that a G-7 summit has been called to discuss the threat of the American Plague on the global community. Kate snorts when she hears the news and tries to laugh, her cough spraying blood across the morgue sheets. Ducky comes over to tend to her, and behind the protective glass, Abby covers her eyes, and then is ashamed for it.
"How do you feel?" she asks Kate, through the glass, after Ducky's completed his bed changing.
"Not bad," coughs Kate. Her eyes are sunken and bruised purple and her skin is riddled with burst capillaries. "Can I help you guys with anything?"
"Tony misses you," Abby says.
"You kidding?" Kate says. "Being away from Tony's the best part of being cooped up down here."
Abby tries to laugh now and doesn't do a very convincing job of it. "Yeah," she says.
"He comes every day," Kate says. "He's here for hours, sometimes. He read me the entire Uniform Code of Military Justice." She coughs again, and there's blood on her hands. "God, what a pain in the ass."
"Yeah," says Abby again.
That night when Kate dies, everyone is already awake, as if they'd known, somehow. They huddle outside the morgue and watch as Ducky wraps Kate, lovingly, and slides her body into one of the empty drawers. Gibbs and Tony both try and say a few words, but neither can manage much, and so instead they just stand there. At dinner Gibbs plays "Amazing Grace" on a gray plastic tape deck and everybody pretends they don't notice Tony crying.
The last day goes like this:
They are out of Postum. Abby's synthesized a caffeine drink from Excedrin and glucose that only she and Gibbs can stomach, but they are nearly out of food as well and everyone is hungry and cranky. Abby's challenging McGee to a game of Soul Calibur and Tony's calling the box scores when Gibbs comes in with the news.
"Epidemic's over," he says. "New cases have slowed to a trickle all across the 48. And folks like Ducky seem to be getting bettter."
Tony races for the stairs. "Oh my god, we can leave!" Gibbs throws out an arm and stops Tony by sending him reeling into a shelf full of carpet swatches. They land on the floor in a furry mosaic.
"Not so fast," says Gibbs. "The President's ordered the quarantine for twelve more hours."
"I gotta call Alana," says McGee, and Abby can hear the cartoon sound Tony's head makes as it whips around.
"A-who-na?"
McGee sighs. "Alana. Frink. My girlfriend," he says. "I promised her I'd let her know the minute I heard anything. I can tell her, right, Boss? I mean, it's not classified?"
Gibbs smiles. "Nope. Not classified." Then he turns and disappears back out the door.
"Tell me about this Alana," Tony says. "No, wait, lemme guess. Five foot nothing, two hundred, two and a quarter pounds, receding hairline..."
McGee sighs again. He roots in his pocket for his wallet, flips to a photo and hands it to Tony.
"Hottttt..." sputters Tony.
"Yeah," says McGee, taking back the wallet and shoving it in his pocket.
"I bet that's the photo that came with that wallet," Tony says to Abby. Abby squeezes Bert by way of answer.
Then the alarms go off. First the beep of the quarantine alarm, which had stopped sounding two weeks ago, and then the high wail of the lockdown alarm from MTAC. Abby goes over to the door and shoves at it, but the automatic locks have engaged and the door's sealed shut. She tries Gibbs on the phone.
"Stay where you are!" he growls, before she even manages hello.
"We pretty much have to," she says. "We're locked down."
"Good," says Gibbs.
"What's wrong, Gibbs?" Abby asks, but he's gone.
An hour before the quarantine lifts, Gibbs calls Abby back. "Meet me at Lions Bay Harbor as soon as you leave," he says. "Bring Tony and McGee with you."
"McGee's meeting his girlfriend," Abby says. "Her name is Alana Frink."
"Bring Alana Frink," says Gibbs. "The instant the quarantine's over, you hear me? Pack your stuff, anything you're gonna need, and be ready to hightail it on over here."
"What about Ducky?" Abby asks.
There's a pause. "Not Ducky," says Gibbs. "You got TV?"
Abby tries the remote. CNN comes in clear. "Yeah," she says.
"Be strong, Abs," Gibbs says, and hangs up.
Tony hears it first. "Turn that up!" he shouts, racing past Abby's desk to get closer to the plasma screen.
"...approved use of a microwave pulse to eradicate the threat. In a joint statement, all seven nations declared that the epidemic raging across the United States constituted a threat worthy of these extreme measures. Dr. Xiao Ping of the Shanghai Institute..."
Abby feels her insides seize up, like she's been flash-frozen. "McGee--" she says.
"Microwave pulse, did he say microwave pulse--"
"He did--"
"Oh, god--"
Tony leaps between them and the plasma and waves his arms like a traffic cop. "Tell meeee," he says, pointing to himself as if they might not understand.
"It'll kill all living material. Vaporize it," says McGee.
"I will successfully eradicate the virus, all right," Abby says. "It'll successfully eradicate the entire population of this country."
"I thought the epidemic was over?" McGee muses.
"Maybe they don't know?" Abby says.
Tony's still staring at the news. "They know," he says. "It's an excuse."
McGee goggles. "That's crazy, Tony," he says. "No way are the countries of the world ganging up to wipe us off the planet."
"The countries of the world are ganging up to wipe us off the planet?" Abby says, because all of a sudden, a part of Ari's message she never understood begins to make sense. Al-Qaeda will make sure that the flu kills even the uninfected.
"No," says McGee decisively, but Abby's dialing her phone again.
Pick up pick up pick up, she wills at Gibbs, but she knows he won't, and he doesn't. The newscast loops to the beginning and repeats itself, and Abby hangs up the phone. Forty-five minutes later the alarm stops wailing and the door makes a metallic whooshing sound and unlocks. They load their things into Tony's Mustang, pick up McGee's girlfriend and head for Lions Bay.
From behind a wooden cruiser named Caitlin, Gibbs stands up. He's dressed in Ducky's blue bio suit and his eyes are brilliant, steady and cool as the ocean.
"You have to leave the country," he says. He holds out a watch cap, marine-issue. "She's all yours, DiNozzo."
Abby swallows and her throat is sore. She blinks at tears. "Gibbs--"
"Absolutely not, Boss," says Tony. "We're not leaving without you."
"I'm infected," says Gibbs. "I can't leave."
"You'll be vaporized," McGee says, low and breathless like he didn't really mean to say it out loud. Alana touches his shoulder.
Gibbs stares. "Nah," he says, and Abby knows that this means he has no intentions of living that long. Gibbs smiles behind his plastic mask.
Now Tony speaks. "You want me to sail to England?"
"No, Tony," says Gibbs. "South Carolina. Horse Island. There's a Gullah settlement there, and you'll find a woman named Iona Baba. She--" his eyes gleam. "Owes me a favor."
"You think they'll escape the blast?"
"The Gullah islands are a sovereign nation. If this blast is politically motivated, they'll spare them. If the blast is really intended to eradicate the virus, the closest infected hub is over three hundred miles away in Atlanta." Gibbs looks at Abby, and winks. "You'll be fine."
"You won't," says Abby, and she realizes she's bitter, and angry. "You're abandoning us."
"Abs--" says Tony, but Abby shakes him off.
Gibbs looks at her for a long time. I would never abandon you, he says in sign. I'll always be with you.
She scowls.
He folds his big suit around her in a hug, and he is Gibbs, strong and safe as home. She imagines she can smell him, coffee and wool and sawdust, and she shakes in his arms, clutching him closer and crying, and crying.
"I love you, Abs," he whispers.
"Me too, Gibbs," she manages.
Tony has been scrutinizing the Caitlin and he climbs onto her deck and calls down to them. "Alaskan cedar, right, Boss?"
"Not bad, DiNozzo."
"She's a beauty," Tony says. And she is. Her big sails are tied up, their rigging taut and perfect. The hull is seamless, varnished and unpainted and glowing with the rich red of the cedar. Abby estimates her at twenty seven feet, bigger than she looked in Gibbs' basement all these years. She bobs in the water like a restless puppy.
Tony scrambles down and returns to where they're standing on the dock. Nobody speaks for a while, until Alana says, "I'll start loading our stuff on the boat," and leans over to kiss McGee on the cheek. After she's gone, Tony turns to Gibbs.
"I'll take good care of her, boss," he says.
"I know you will," says Gibbs.
"I saw screw heads," says Tony. "You used power tools."
"I was short on time," says Gibbs, and he almost smiles.
"I'll never forget you, Boss," McGee says.
Gibbs smiles now. "I know," he says. "McGee, you're a hell of a person."
"Thanks," says McGee.
"And your girlfriend's a babe," adds Tony. When Gibbs smacks him on the back of the head with a big blue glove, Abby turns away so he won't see her cry. She doesn't look at him again until they're all on the boat and ready to leave.
Gibbs unties the ship from its mooring and tosses the rope on deck. "Fair winds and following seas," he says.
"Semper fi," Tony calls back.
"Semper fi," says McGee.
In an hour they lose sight of the harbor, and in two hours they lose sight of shore entirely. The sun sets over water, red-orange and spilling across the surface like blood. Tony and McGee tie up the sails for the night, and Alana shows them how to navigate by the stars. Abby doesn't say a word. She just stands on the deck, clutching the rail and staring out at the water, wrapped in Gibbs' NCIS windbreaker. She doesn't go inside that night, not even when the explosions start, way out on the horizon.
//
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