TEAM PEACE: Tooth and Claw, "This Side of the Mountain"
Title: This Side of the Mountain
Author: wickedwords (Rachael Sabotini) ( interview)
Team: Peace
Prompt: Tooth and Claw
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: Zombie Apocalypse, 10 years later. A fusion with World War Z
A/N: Many thanks to my betas: sherrold and my wonderful team leader, kassrachel
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
Pax University, Pacific Regional Safe Zone
[I find myself at the famous university long after what I'd call dinnertime. Their dining room clearly caters to more than just University students and staff. Contractors from the Boeing facility are prevalent in their brown-and-black coveralls, along with people in the jeans, thick grey cotton shirts, and combat boots preferred by the environmental reclamation staff. There's a steady stream of people through the hot tray lines, along with constant crash of silverware and the clink of ceramic mugs being filled with the latest attempt to replicate pre-war coffee. The sound of goats milling around in their pens is just the faintest buzz in the background, almost hidden under the chatter. It's a large wooden room, filled with warmth and light and people, even though it is nearing midnight.
Pax University is the brainchild of Dr. Rodney McKay, a former member of Stargate Command's science team. He's still a commanding presence, despite the time that has passed. His partner, a former Colonel in the SGC, is similarly charismatic. I meet up with them in the President's Suite, next to the raucous dining hall. The soundproofing is good enough that we don't have to shout to be heard.]
"Living here is a lot like living in Atlantis during our first year there," Dr. McKay says with a glance at his partner. They are sitting side-by-side in wooden ladder-backed chairs across the table from me, the pine probably taken from the forest around the university. "The technology wows people when they see it, but it doesn't take long before they realize how much physical work goes into this place."
Sheppard inclines his head. "The first thing that everyone wants to know is how we can afford to use such high-wattage lights." He nods up at the ceiling, where the lights shine brightly.
"The idiots think they're solar powered, but solar doesn't work any better for us with this nuclear winter cloud cover than it does for anyone else." McKay waves his hand in a circle about his head, as if to encompass the entirety of the sky outside of the building. "They're alien technology, some of the spare parts that John and I had on hand when the world went to hell, and no, they aren't renewable. Nor can we dice and slice them and send them out into the world for other people to use. It's why we put the main foundry up here, rather than putting it down in the Idaho someplace. What we've got left isn't going to pull us out of the dark ages. We're going to have to do that ourselves. It's the reason this university exists. "
"Well, that and you insisted on someplace where you could pass your genius onto the next generation." Sheppard bumps McKay's shoulder good-naturedly, and folds his hands on the tabletop. The calluses on his hands show that he probably built some of the furniture we're using. "He hasn't figured out how to clone himself yet."
"Please. As if I'd want to. You've seen the Asgard. You know how cloning ends - big heads and no dick!"
There's a hint of a grin as they look at each other. It's clear that it's an old joke between them.
"Do you know that there are still conspiracy theorists out there claiming that the z-virus was deliberately released?" McKay huffs out his breath. "It's a crap theory, but we can't disprove it. Even the Gou'ald didn't want to wipe out most of the people on the planet."
What about the theory that the virus originated off-earth?
"Doubtful. The first of the infected came out of China," McKay says, scooting forward in his chair. "If it was associated with the Stargate program, we would have seen them in Colorado or Russia. Or Area 51."
"If the virus came through official channels," Sheppard growls. He rubs his hand over the polished wood of the table.
McKay's mouth twists up into a grimace. "The Trust, a rogue Gou'ald, some rich guy who bought the wrong Native American artifact, a nitwit who decided to go treasure hunting in the wrong place; ...it's possible." His gaze cuts over to Sheppard, and his voice softens. "There's some science behind the idea, though. The SGC had one documented case of a zombie back in Honduras, from a healing device that was on the fritz."
"Bill Lee used to talk about it a lot. It was his one big claim to fame within the SGC." Sheppard's smile slips a little, and his hand tightens around his cup. "He never made it out of the Mountain."
"Not many did." McKay pries Sheppard's hand away from the cup and threads their fingers together. "We were lucky we were already on the outside. See, my sister --" He pauses for breath, turning his face away from us, and Sheppard squeezes his hand.
"Jeannie had talked us into buying a timeshare up in the mountains," Sheppard says, picking up the thread of conversation. "More a set of old A-frames than one of those fancy condos. She sent us email about this great opportunity, a chance to buy this foreclosed resort for our retirement. Great skiing in the winter, a beautiful view in the summer. She thought we could rent it out once we fixed it all up. We bought it together, a couple of years before my...retirement." There's an odd note in his voice, and his lips twitch in a way that indicates it wasn't entirely voluntary.
McKay nods, apparently on even footing again. "You should have seen the place. No running water the first year that we owned it, and the roof leaked on the big cabin. We sent Jeannie and Caleb the money so they could fix the roof on our 'quaint little cottage'." He curls his fingers into quote marks. "So when John opted out, I took a sabbatical, and we headed up to fix up the cabin. My sister and her family said they'd come up in October, for Thanksgiving, before the snow came." He takes a sip of his coffee and shudders slightly. "God, that's awful." He jerks his head at the doorway, like he could see what was happening in the kitchen through sheer force of will. "What imbecile is serving right now? Haven't they ever tasted coffee before?"
"So we were up at the cabin when things went to hell." Sheppard folds his hands together and leans forward intently. "We've been able to piece together enough to know that there wasn't an attack. No Gou'ald, no Ori, no Wraith."
"Atlantis vanished." McKay shakes his head, regret visible in his gaze as he stares into his coffee. "I can't help thinking that somebody locked the place down and took it out into space once Earth became zombie heaven. God knows I would have, if I had the chance."
Sheppard lays his hand on McKay's shoulder and clasps it affectionately. "No you wouldn't. I know you, Rodney. You would have figured something out, and stayed on Earth to fight it. This wasn't your fault." He leaves his hand resting on McKay's arm and looks back at me. "We don't know what happened at the Mountain. and we don't know what happened to Atlantis."
"They had some of the most sophisticated communications equipment in the world, and some of the most dedicated people on this planet." McKay shakes off Sheppard's arm. "The SGC and Homeworld Security would have been here, running the clean up and helping us to get on our feet again. Not a one of them would turn tail and vanish."
"We worked with these guys for years, from General O'Neill on down. It doesn't make sense that they would sit back while the world went to hell. Something has to have happened to them at the mountain."
"We'll know more once we get to Colorado." McKay says, thrusting his chin out defiantly, his blue eyes daring me to comment. "We're leaving in the spring. The area's a green zone now, and there's always the chance that some of them made it to either the Alpha or Beta sites, before whatever happened that made it impossible for them to come back."
"Teyla, Ronon--our old team on Atlantis. They were our family. We want to know what happened to them just as I'm sure as hell that they want to know what happened to us. We don't give up on each other. Any team could be stranded out there, wanting to come home." Sheppard pushes himself back from the table a bit, rocking his chair onto two legs. "Even if they decide to stay wherever they are, they deserve to know what happened here." When he sits back upright, the four legs hit the ground with a resonant thud. He grabs McKay's cup, and strides toward the main cafeteria, a slight hitch in his step.
McKay watches him leave, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. "John was injured off-planet in a hostage situation, and he wasn't going to recover. Because of the budget cuts, the SGC quietly discharged him for medical reasons, and I was so furious, I couldn't see straight. I packed up all of my research--what they'd let me take--and turned in my resignation to be with him," he says quietly, still staring after his partner. "It wasn't accepted, which is how I got listed as 'on sabbatical.' I guess. The cabin was just to give us something to do, to give John time to heal, since I knew he'd worry and fret and push himself too hard if there were people around. It was supposed to be part recreation, part physical therapy. I promised Jennifer, his doctor and a friend of ours, that I'd take care of him, that I'd make sure her work hadn't gone to waste."
"I sometimes wonder what would have happened had she remained on earth when Atlantis took off. Maybe she would have helped end this pandemic before it went too far. She was brilliant, and she knew a lot about crazy retroviruses." McKay turns back to me, his gaze haunted. "We'd been insulated from what was happening here, too busy looking out at other worlds and galaxies to see what was happening at our front door. When we took off, China was threatening to pull their representative from the IOA. Everyone knew it was because a crackdown was planned, but no one gave much credence to it. How could we, when we'd just beaten back three different races that had plotted Earth's destruction? We knew it was just Earth politics."
His fingers start twitching as he talks. "Only it wasn't just politics, was it?" His eyes are a deep, cold blue as he holds my gaze for a moment, then looks down at his hands. "So we headed up to the cabin, just as fall was getting started. We had orders to check in occasionally, which we took to mean popping off an email or two whenever we came into town for supplies. The first one just said "fuck you", and we didn't send any after that. We'd agreed to an emergency contact system that would patch us through to whatever ship was currently in orbit should the Earth be invaded, and my skills required. Again." He shakes his head. "I was the one that was slow about contacting the SGC. It took me a long time to cool off. So we just checked our email every couple of weeks and touched base with some old friends whenever we made it off the mountain, but I didn't push getting the link up and running. I figured if they wanted me, they knew where to find me, but I wasn't going to reach out to them first."
There are footsteps outside of the room, and out of the corner of my eye, I catch Sheppard balancing a carafe and a fresh cup of coffee in his hands. The tension eases from McKay's features, and he turns back in my direction. "Once I got the satellite set up, I couldn't get a connection. The secure satellite link wouldn't respond."
"After he finished freaking out about that," Sheppard says as he slides a fresh cup of coffee in front of McKay, then eases down into the chair beside him. "We packed up, and headed down the mountain."
"We had no idea what had happened. My first thought was alien invasion, followed by nuclear war, plague, and other natural disasters." He shrugged his shoulder and leans protectively over the cup of coffee. "I talked myself out of it, told myself it was just shoddy American workmanship. I hate that I was right."
"We didn't make it too far," Sheppard says. "From the moment we hit pavement, we started seeing people. Big ol' trucks and SUVs, the kind that were parted out years ago, and family cars stuffed to the brim with everything that people could carry with them. Most of the cars looked like they were a mile from breaking down with everything in them."
"It was the Great Panic. The start of it anyway. Everyone thought that if they headed North, they could outrun it, that they'd be safe." McKay shakes his head. "They had no idea how far North they had to go, or what living would be like above the snowline. They didn't have anything warmer than a blue snuggie and a plaid wool blanket with them. People were stupid, grabbing anything they could without thinking about it and running. It was like what happened when the Wraith showed up back in Pegasus. Blind, mindless panic."
"And we were headed the wrong way." Sheppard's grin is painful and humorless. "The Pine Tree Motel was on the old highway about a half-hour from our cabins. Mostly a wide spot in the road that catered to the rock and ice climbers, but it had cellular reception and a wireless connection in the local cafe. That's how we learned what had happened to Atlantis, and about the nukes dropped in the new India-Pakistan war. We also heard about the walking dead too."
You hadn't heard the rumors before then?
"Not a word." Sheppard glances at McKay meaningfully. "We were living the rustic life at the top of a mountain. There weren't a lot of rumors to hear."
McKay swings his head back-and-forth in partial disagreement. "I wasn't exactly keeping up with my email either. I pretty much trashed every official communication I got."
"Not your fault," Sheppard mutters. "They were assholes."
McKay's face twists with emotion. "We couldn't get hold of the SGC, or anyone from the American or Canadian military. We tried every avenue we knew--the front door, the back door, and the side panels, but no one was taking our calls."
"The library did have connectivity, but it was slow and the lines were huge. I camped outside of the building, and hacked into their system. But the information superhighway had slowed to a crawl; I couldn't reach the same sites that I had visited only a few weeks before, and the small amount of information I could find was more frustrating than enlightening. Finally, I sent an email to my sister, letting her know that we were still on the mountain, asking her what the hell was going on, begging her to make it an early Thanksgiving this year and head out our way." McKay swallows and stares at his hands. "I was afraid that the roads would close, or the cities would be locked down, and my mind was constantly replaying images from the Wraith cullings I'd seen. I didn't want my sister and her family--her idiot vegetarian English professor husband included--to die the way the families in Pegasus died."
"Once the letter was sent from the library computer, I figured we'd grab some supplies and a hot meal, then check again for a response."
"The parking lot was packed; in the hour we'd been there it kept getting more crowded. People still believed in the value of money and government, and we hadn't yet degenerated to shotguns and looters. Everyone waited in an orderly fashion, standing in long lines at the store or just hanging out in their cars, trying to get their bearings. The diner had opened up a big outdoor grill, and they were selling hot dogs and beer to the crowd."
"It was like a giant tailgate party, only not as much fun." Sheppard rubs his hand over his face and slides down the chair a little bit more. "When we were stationed in Atlantis, we had to go to a lot of prickly meet-and-greets, and sometimes things kinda went south. I got the same feeling in that parking lot as I had at some of those events, when one of our hosts turned out to be Genii sympathizers in disguise. So I hustled us outta there lickity-split."
McKay sighs wistfully. "I was really looking forward to some ice cream."
"Ten years, and he still talks about the ice cream." Sheppard rolls his eyes and grumbles. "We've got some in the freezer you know."
"Goat's milk ice cream. It's just not the same." McKay shakes his head and looks back at me. "It was like being off-planet, when you weren't sure what would happen if you touched the wrong thing. Everyone seemed to have a gun, too, and even I could see that most of the people carrying them didn't have any idea of what to do with them. John nodded his head toward where we'd left the truck, and I was with him about getting out of there, but I wanted to see if Jeannie had received my email."
Sheppard's face crinkles up unpleasantly. "We had a discussion."
McKay snorts. "Then I went to the library to hack into their system again, and John went for the truck."
"Near the post office, I passed this old Subaru Outback parked under a tree, and there was this weird thumping noise coming from it. I know a thing or two about weird noises, so I leaned against the concrete wall and looked it over carefully, just in case. In this packed little turn-out of a truck stop, where every car crawled down the road and pedestrians outnumbered vehicles on a ten-to-one basis, everyone was making sure to walk on the other side of the thing. No one would get near it. Each time as the thumping started, the people closest to it would rush away. I thought maybe it was a dog locked in the car at first, but there wasn't any barking. I couldn't just let it sit, you know? I'd been burned once too often by something unusual like that." Sheppard arches his eyebrow. "I figured I should check it out."
"Oh, please." McKay rolls his eyes and waves a hand at Sheppard. "There was no figuring. You just have to stick your hand in the light socket."
"Like you don't?"
"If I did, I'd be wearing insulated gloves and have a back up plan just in case."
"Riiight. Anyway, I got up to the door, but the windows had shades drawn around them, the sunscreen kind like you buy to shade the kids in the back seat. Only these were darker and pasted to the windows, and I couldn't see through them." Sheppard shrugs.
McKay rolls his eyes. "Of course you checked. I don't see how you ever survived the military."
"I yelled at the car, asking the guy to roll down his window or say something if he was okay, but there was no answer. So I tried the door." Sheppard mimes flicking the latch. "The damn thing was locked shut. Then this weird chittering started, high pitched and grating, alternating with the low barking. The car started rocking so I jumped back. I thought maybe the guy was having a seizure. So I wrapped up my hand in my jacket to break the window," Sheppard says, going through the motions. "But right before I hit it, I noticed that part of the covering had been scraped away at the back of the wagon. It was a tiny hole, so I went around the car to check, just in case."
"Suicidal," McKay muttered. "Completely suicidal. You always step into the middle of things and try to help, before you have any idea of what might really be going on."
"I scrunched down to look and something lunged for me. I jerked back, and the car was shaking, that chittering noise ratcheted up, a high-pitched drone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up."
"Your hair is always standing up, and that howl carried an insane amount of distance." McKay jumps in, his words running over the top of Sheppard's as they each speak in a rush. "By then, I'd connected at the library. There was no email from Jeannie--no email from anyone. Not even spam. I admit that I had a pretty good filtering system on my accounts, but good enough that not even one piece of annoying email got through? No one is that good." He takes a deep breath. "So I decided to dig into it, going through all the mail I had trashed when I last checked, but never gotten around to deleting."
He shakes his head. "There was spam and job opportunities from a month before, but the numbers dropped off fast. Two weeks before, it had been mail asking about Atlantis. This week, there was practically nothing. I realized that entire backbone sites were going down - the Internet hanging on by a thread, with entire regions, even countries, already cut off."
"That's when I realized how bad it was, and that Jeannie might not have access to email anymore. I felt a bit dazed at the thought, so I decided to dig around a bit, find out what had been happening in the world. I read long enough to think people were crazy, and then that maybe they weren't crazy. So when I heard that noise, I knew it was a zed, and I thought it had to be after John."
"Oh come on--" Sheppard rubbed his hand across his face. "I'm not that bad."
"Yes, you are," McKay snaps out, then looks intently at me. "John's a trouble magnet."
"Takes one to know one, Rodney." Sheppard crosses his arms over his chest.
McKay stabs a finger at me. "I don't run for fun. It hurts my knees, my feet and my ankles. I only run when this guy," he hooks a thumb in Sheppard's direction, "makes me get up and run with him in the mornings, or in those not-so-rare incidents in my life where not-running leads to disaster and death. This had all the earmarks of death and disaster. "
He leaned forward in his chair. "I don't know how many people I bumped into along the way, most of them running or walking in the opposite direction from where the sound was coming from. Cars were getting snarled out on the roadway, and I had to weave around them to go anyplace. A lot of people passed me, and the few headed toward the noise were all carrying guns."
"The zed managed to scrape back the covering, and screamed out at me, its claws scratching at the glass, yellow eyes gleaming. The kid must have been two or three when he died, a sweet little tow-headed kid. He still wore these overalls with yellow ducks on them, and he was buckled into his car seat." Sheppard shakes his head. "No wonder no one wanted to go near the thing. Last time I saw something like that was in a Wraith genetics lab back in Pegasus."
McKay folds his hand over Sheppard's and squeezes. "I guess one of the guys with guns showed up then, as the next thing I heard was the echo of a shotgun blast."
"I went to grab the guy, but two other people tackled me first. The guy that did it said he had two kids of his own, and he couldn't stand to see one of them end up like that. Then he walked away, and the crowd let him." He clenches his hands into fists, and jerks his head to the right, looking far away. "That sort of crap never gets any easier."
"By the time I got there, the crowd was dispersing. No one said a thing, wouldn't even look John in the eyes. It was...creepy."
"Very creepy," Sheppard agrees, his voice completely flat, eyes blank.
"John didn't say anything as we walked and I told him what I'd found out about just how fucked we were. I guess the whole university was born then, when John and I finally got to the truck; we looked at each other and I think we both realized what had to be done. We'd been on our own in a hostile environment before, and we knew we couldn't save the whole damn planet." His voice sounds strained, and it wavers a bit with uncertainty,
"But we knew we could damn well save some." Sheppard cuts a glance at McKay, sounding grim. He threads his fingers through McKay's and holds tight.
"So we joined the ranks of the survivalists. I hung out in secret chat rooms run by conspiracy theorists and white supremacists and people who thought that we'd all get our own planets to rule once the zombie horde was vanquished." He smiles fondly. "That guy reminded me of Daniel Jackson, actually. Except he was completely off his nut. I worked my way through the ranks, connecting up with them on the internet for as long as it held out." McKay sighs heavily, and squeezes Sheppard's hand. "We had some background on what needed to happen from contingency plans we'd made for an Alpha site back on Atlantis, the plans, the concerns about being on our own--it all came back. We knew we needed a secure facility, something that could withstand fifty, a hundred, maybe more attackers - and not just Z's; in the Panic, plenty of normals went off their rockers, too. We weren't ever going to be able to do that with a simple wooden fort." McKay gestures up at the lights. "So the first thing I did was figure out how to use what I had to build what we needed to be safe. The first thing John did was figure out how many other people we could support."
"A shield only got us so far," Sheppard cut in. "We had a well and a septic field sized for a resort, so it was mostly a matter of food and some things that McKay needed to get the shield running. Whenever I had to leave, I tried to talk any other families I saw into joining us, rather than striking farther North, but most people were too scared to stay."
McKay grimaces. "In some cases, just as well; some self-selection was probably a good thing."
Sheppard gives him a quelling look and continues, "I figured out how much we'd need to hold out for at least six months, maybe longer, and there was no way we could get everything together in the month or two before winter set in. So we opened up the greenhouses and planted as much as we could, hoping like hell it would be enough."
Did you have any close calls?
"Didn't everyone?" McKay licks his lips and looks over at Sheppard. "The snow was already a good six inches on the ground, and we hadn't heard any howling in a couple of days. Plus there were a few birds in the area, which seemed like a good sign. So John took a group out to see if they could gather up more rocks and wood to create more shelters, plus maybe pick up some game."
"As we were heading back, I noticed something in one of the bushes that was making it shake. I readied my sling, and tried to walk as quietly as I could toward it, so I wouldn't spook it. I was the one that got spooked as a crawler came sliding out of the underbrush, heading straight for me. Its eyes were white and its lower jaw was crushed along with the legs -- someone had got to it before -- so it couldn't howl. I took a step back, slipped and crashed to the ground; the thing grabbed my leg and I could hear the fabric tear."
"I saw John drop and yelled for help," McKay says proudly, "Then I heaved a few rocks at it."
"Turned it to mush."
"But John was bleeding and I freaked." He takes a deep breath and he stares over at Sheppard. "I thought I'd have to kill you."
"But you didn't." Sheppard reaches over and presses his hand to McKay's cheek, then kisses him. "You didn't Rodney. You didn't."
McKay leans into it, then presses their foreheads together and whispers, "Thank God."
After a few moments, he and Sheppard seem to pull themselves together, and I thank them for their time.
Any news on your sister?
"I'm hoping that she was on Atlantis with her family at the time it vanished," McKay says. "A couple of emails that I saw suggested that she was called in, but there's nothing official that I could find about it.
"We'll know more when we get through to the Mountain," Sheppard adds.
Given that the university is in the middle of the biggest reclaimed area in the world, safe behind your own alien high-tech walls, and--no offense-- neither of you are so young anymore, why not leave the Colorado expedition to someone else?
McKay folds his arms across his chest and glares at me as Sheppard leans forward and says quietly. "Because we don't leave anyone behind."
The End
Poll
Author: wickedwords (Rachael Sabotini) ( interview)
Team: Peace
Prompt: Tooth and Claw
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Summary: Zombie Apocalypse, 10 years later. A fusion with World War Z
A/N: Many thanks to my betas: sherrold and my wonderful team leader, kassrachel
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
Pax University, Pacific Regional Safe Zone
[I find myself at the famous university long after what I'd call dinnertime. Their dining room clearly caters to more than just University students and staff. Contractors from the Boeing facility are prevalent in their brown-and-black coveralls, along with people in the jeans, thick grey cotton shirts, and combat boots preferred by the environmental reclamation staff. There's a steady stream of people through the hot tray lines, along with constant crash of silverware and the clink of ceramic mugs being filled with the latest attempt to replicate pre-war coffee. The sound of goats milling around in their pens is just the faintest buzz in the background, almost hidden under the chatter. It's a large wooden room, filled with warmth and light and people, even though it is nearing midnight.
Pax University is the brainchild of Dr. Rodney McKay, a former member of Stargate Command's science team. He's still a commanding presence, despite the time that has passed. His partner, a former Colonel in the SGC, is similarly charismatic. I meet up with them in the President's Suite, next to the raucous dining hall. The soundproofing is good enough that we don't have to shout to be heard.]
"Living here is a lot like living in Atlantis during our first year there," Dr. McKay says with a glance at his partner. They are sitting side-by-side in wooden ladder-backed chairs across the table from me, the pine probably taken from the forest around the university. "The technology wows people when they see it, but it doesn't take long before they realize how much physical work goes into this place."
Sheppard inclines his head. "The first thing that everyone wants to know is how we can afford to use such high-wattage lights." He nods up at the ceiling, where the lights shine brightly.
"The idiots think they're solar powered, but solar doesn't work any better for us with this nuclear winter cloud cover than it does for anyone else." McKay waves his hand in a circle about his head, as if to encompass the entirety of the sky outside of the building. "They're alien technology, some of the spare parts that John and I had on hand when the world went to hell, and no, they aren't renewable. Nor can we dice and slice them and send them out into the world for other people to use. It's why we put the main foundry up here, rather than putting it down in the Idaho someplace. What we've got left isn't going to pull us out of the dark ages. We're going to have to do that ourselves. It's the reason this university exists. "
"Well, that and you insisted on someplace where you could pass your genius onto the next generation." Sheppard bumps McKay's shoulder good-naturedly, and folds his hands on the tabletop. The calluses on his hands show that he probably built some of the furniture we're using. "He hasn't figured out how to clone himself yet."
"Please. As if I'd want to. You've seen the Asgard. You know how cloning ends - big heads and no dick!"
There's a hint of a grin as they look at each other. It's clear that it's an old joke between them.
"Do you know that there are still conspiracy theorists out there claiming that the z-virus was deliberately released?" McKay huffs out his breath. "It's a crap theory, but we can't disprove it. Even the Gou'ald didn't want to wipe out most of the people on the planet."
What about the theory that the virus originated off-earth?
"Doubtful. The first of the infected came out of China," McKay says, scooting forward in his chair. "If it was associated with the Stargate program, we would have seen them in Colorado or Russia. Or Area 51."
"If the virus came through official channels," Sheppard growls. He rubs his hand over the polished wood of the table.
McKay's mouth twists up into a grimace. "The Trust, a rogue Gou'ald, some rich guy who bought the wrong Native American artifact, a nitwit who decided to go treasure hunting in the wrong place; ...it's possible." His gaze cuts over to Sheppard, and his voice softens. "There's some science behind the idea, though. The SGC had one documented case of a zombie back in Honduras, from a healing device that was on the fritz."
"Bill Lee used to talk about it a lot. It was his one big claim to fame within the SGC." Sheppard's smile slips a little, and his hand tightens around his cup. "He never made it out of the Mountain."
"Not many did." McKay pries Sheppard's hand away from the cup and threads their fingers together. "We were lucky we were already on the outside. See, my sister --" He pauses for breath, turning his face away from us, and Sheppard squeezes his hand.
"Jeannie had talked us into buying a timeshare up in the mountains," Sheppard says, picking up the thread of conversation. "More a set of old A-frames than one of those fancy condos. She sent us email about this great opportunity, a chance to buy this foreclosed resort for our retirement. Great skiing in the winter, a beautiful view in the summer. She thought we could rent it out once we fixed it all up. We bought it together, a couple of years before my...retirement." There's an odd note in his voice, and his lips twitch in a way that indicates it wasn't entirely voluntary.
McKay nods, apparently on even footing again. "You should have seen the place. No running water the first year that we owned it, and the roof leaked on the big cabin. We sent Jeannie and Caleb the money so they could fix the roof on our 'quaint little cottage'." He curls his fingers into quote marks. "So when John opted out, I took a sabbatical, and we headed up to fix up the cabin. My sister and her family said they'd come up in October, for Thanksgiving, before the snow came." He takes a sip of his coffee and shudders slightly. "God, that's awful." He jerks his head at the doorway, like he could see what was happening in the kitchen through sheer force of will. "What imbecile is serving right now? Haven't they ever tasted coffee before?"
"So we were up at the cabin when things went to hell." Sheppard folds his hands together and leans forward intently. "We've been able to piece together enough to know that there wasn't an attack. No Gou'ald, no Ori, no Wraith."
"Atlantis vanished." McKay shakes his head, regret visible in his gaze as he stares into his coffee. "I can't help thinking that somebody locked the place down and took it out into space once Earth became zombie heaven. God knows I would have, if I had the chance."
Sheppard lays his hand on McKay's shoulder and clasps it affectionately. "No you wouldn't. I know you, Rodney. You would have figured something out, and stayed on Earth to fight it. This wasn't your fault." He leaves his hand resting on McKay's arm and looks back at me. "We don't know what happened at the Mountain. and we don't know what happened to Atlantis."
"They had some of the most sophisticated communications equipment in the world, and some of the most dedicated people on this planet." McKay shakes off Sheppard's arm. "The SGC and Homeworld Security would have been here, running the clean up and helping us to get on our feet again. Not a one of them would turn tail and vanish."
"We worked with these guys for years, from General O'Neill on down. It doesn't make sense that they would sit back while the world went to hell. Something has to have happened to them at the mountain."
"We'll know more once we get to Colorado." McKay says, thrusting his chin out defiantly, his blue eyes daring me to comment. "We're leaving in the spring. The area's a green zone now, and there's always the chance that some of them made it to either the Alpha or Beta sites, before whatever happened that made it impossible for them to come back."
"Teyla, Ronon--our old team on Atlantis. They were our family. We want to know what happened to them just as I'm sure as hell that they want to know what happened to us. We don't give up on each other. Any team could be stranded out there, wanting to come home." Sheppard pushes himself back from the table a bit, rocking his chair onto two legs. "Even if they decide to stay wherever they are, they deserve to know what happened here." When he sits back upright, the four legs hit the ground with a resonant thud. He grabs McKay's cup, and strides toward the main cafeteria, a slight hitch in his step.
McKay watches him leave, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. "John was injured off-planet in a hostage situation, and he wasn't going to recover. Because of the budget cuts, the SGC quietly discharged him for medical reasons, and I was so furious, I couldn't see straight. I packed up all of my research--what they'd let me take--and turned in my resignation to be with him," he says quietly, still staring after his partner. "It wasn't accepted, which is how I got listed as 'on sabbatical.' I guess. The cabin was just to give us something to do, to give John time to heal, since I knew he'd worry and fret and push himself too hard if there were people around. It was supposed to be part recreation, part physical therapy. I promised Jennifer, his doctor and a friend of ours, that I'd take care of him, that I'd make sure her work hadn't gone to waste."
"I sometimes wonder what would have happened had she remained on earth when Atlantis took off. Maybe she would have helped end this pandemic before it went too far. She was brilliant, and she knew a lot about crazy retroviruses." McKay turns back to me, his gaze haunted. "We'd been insulated from what was happening here, too busy looking out at other worlds and galaxies to see what was happening at our front door. When we took off, China was threatening to pull their representative from the IOA. Everyone knew it was because a crackdown was planned, but no one gave much credence to it. How could we, when we'd just beaten back three different races that had plotted Earth's destruction? We knew it was just Earth politics."
His fingers start twitching as he talks. "Only it wasn't just politics, was it?" His eyes are a deep, cold blue as he holds my gaze for a moment, then looks down at his hands. "So we headed up to the cabin, just as fall was getting started. We had orders to check in occasionally, which we took to mean popping off an email or two whenever we came into town for supplies. The first one just said "fuck you", and we didn't send any after that. We'd agreed to an emergency contact system that would patch us through to whatever ship was currently in orbit should the Earth be invaded, and my skills required. Again." He shakes his head. "I was the one that was slow about contacting the SGC. It took me a long time to cool off. So we just checked our email every couple of weeks and touched base with some old friends whenever we made it off the mountain, but I didn't push getting the link up and running. I figured if they wanted me, they knew where to find me, but I wasn't going to reach out to them first."
There are footsteps outside of the room, and out of the corner of my eye, I catch Sheppard balancing a carafe and a fresh cup of coffee in his hands. The tension eases from McKay's features, and he turns back in my direction. "Once I got the satellite set up, I couldn't get a connection. The secure satellite link wouldn't respond."
"After he finished freaking out about that," Sheppard says as he slides a fresh cup of coffee in front of McKay, then eases down into the chair beside him. "We packed up, and headed down the mountain."
"We had no idea what had happened. My first thought was alien invasion, followed by nuclear war, plague, and other natural disasters." He shrugged his shoulder and leans protectively over the cup of coffee. "I talked myself out of it, told myself it was just shoddy American workmanship. I hate that I was right."
"We didn't make it too far," Sheppard says. "From the moment we hit pavement, we started seeing people. Big ol' trucks and SUVs, the kind that were parted out years ago, and family cars stuffed to the brim with everything that people could carry with them. Most of the cars looked like they were a mile from breaking down with everything in them."
"It was the Great Panic. The start of it anyway. Everyone thought that if they headed North, they could outrun it, that they'd be safe." McKay shakes his head. "They had no idea how far North they had to go, or what living would be like above the snowline. They didn't have anything warmer than a blue snuggie and a plaid wool blanket with them. People were stupid, grabbing anything they could without thinking about it and running. It was like what happened when the Wraith showed up back in Pegasus. Blind, mindless panic."
"And we were headed the wrong way." Sheppard's grin is painful and humorless. "The Pine Tree Motel was on the old highway about a half-hour from our cabins. Mostly a wide spot in the road that catered to the rock and ice climbers, but it had cellular reception and a wireless connection in the local cafe. That's how we learned what had happened to Atlantis, and about the nukes dropped in the new India-Pakistan war. We also heard about the walking dead too."
You hadn't heard the rumors before then?
"Not a word." Sheppard glances at McKay meaningfully. "We were living the rustic life at the top of a mountain. There weren't a lot of rumors to hear."
McKay swings his head back-and-forth in partial disagreement. "I wasn't exactly keeping up with my email either. I pretty much trashed every official communication I got."
"Not your fault," Sheppard mutters. "They were assholes."
McKay's face twists with emotion. "We couldn't get hold of the SGC, or anyone from the American or Canadian military. We tried every avenue we knew--the front door, the back door, and the side panels, but no one was taking our calls."
"The library did have connectivity, but it was slow and the lines were huge. I camped outside of the building, and hacked into their system. But the information superhighway had slowed to a crawl; I couldn't reach the same sites that I had visited only a few weeks before, and the small amount of information I could find was more frustrating than enlightening. Finally, I sent an email to my sister, letting her know that we were still on the mountain, asking her what the hell was going on, begging her to make it an early Thanksgiving this year and head out our way." McKay swallows and stares at his hands. "I was afraid that the roads would close, or the cities would be locked down, and my mind was constantly replaying images from the Wraith cullings I'd seen. I didn't want my sister and her family--her idiot vegetarian English professor husband included--to die the way the families in Pegasus died."
"Once the letter was sent from the library computer, I figured we'd grab some supplies and a hot meal, then check again for a response."
"The parking lot was packed; in the hour we'd been there it kept getting more crowded. People still believed in the value of money and government, and we hadn't yet degenerated to shotguns and looters. Everyone waited in an orderly fashion, standing in long lines at the store or just hanging out in their cars, trying to get their bearings. The diner had opened up a big outdoor grill, and they were selling hot dogs and beer to the crowd."
"It was like a giant tailgate party, only not as much fun." Sheppard rubs his hand over his face and slides down the chair a little bit more. "When we were stationed in Atlantis, we had to go to a lot of prickly meet-and-greets, and sometimes things kinda went south. I got the same feeling in that parking lot as I had at some of those events, when one of our hosts turned out to be Genii sympathizers in disguise. So I hustled us outta there lickity-split."
McKay sighs wistfully. "I was really looking forward to some ice cream."
"Ten years, and he still talks about the ice cream." Sheppard rolls his eyes and grumbles. "We've got some in the freezer you know."
"Goat's milk ice cream. It's just not the same." McKay shakes his head and looks back at me. "It was like being off-planet, when you weren't sure what would happen if you touched the wrong thing. Everyone seemed to have a gun, too, and even I could see that most of the people carrying them didn't have any idea of what to do with them. John nodded his head toward where we'd left the truck, and I was with him about getting out of there, but I wanted to see if Jeannie had received my email."
Sheppard's face crinkles up unpleasantly. "We had a discussion."
McKay snorts. "Then I went to the library to hack into their system again, and John went for the truck."
"Near the post office, I passed this old Subaru Outback parked under a tree, and there was this weird thumping noise coming from it. I know a thing or two about weird noises, so I leaned against the concrete wall and looked it over carefully, just in case. In this packed little turn-out of a truck stop, where every car crawled down the road and pedestrians outnumbered vehicles on a ten-to-one basis, everyone was making sure to walk on the other side of the thing. No one would get near it. Each time as the thumping started, the people closest to it would rush away. I thought maybe it was a dog locked in the car at first, but there wasn't any barking. I couldn't just let it sit, you know? I'd been burned once too often by something unusual like that." Sheppard arches his eyebrow. "I figured I should check it out."
"Oh, please." McKay rolls his eyes and waves a hand at Sheppard. "There was no figuring. You just have to stick your hand in the light socket."
"Like you don't?"
"If I did, I'd be wearing insulated gloves and have a back up plan just in case."
"Riiight. Anyway, I got up to the door, but the windows had shades drawn around them, the sunscreen kind like you buy to shade the kids in the back seat. Only these were darker and pasted to the windows, and I couldn't see through them." Sheppard shrugs.
McKay rolls his eyes. "Of course you checked. I don't see how you ever survived the military."
"I yelled at the car, asking the guy to roll down his window or say something if he was okay, but there was no answer. So I tried the door." Sheppard mimes flicking the latch. "The damn thing was locked shut. Then this weird chittering started, high pitched and grating, alternating with the low barking. The car started rocking so I jumped back. I thought maybe the guy was having a seizure. So I wrapped up my hand in my jacket to break the window," Sheppard says, going through the motions. "But right before I hit it, I noticed that part of the covering had been scraped away at the back of the wagon. It was a tiny hole, so I went around the car to check, just in case."
"Suicidal," McKay muttered. "Completely suicidal. You always step into the middle of things and try to help, before you have any idea of what might really be going on."
"I scrunched down to look and something lunged for me. I jerked back, and the car was shaking, that chittering noise ratcheted up, a high-pitched drone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up."
"Your hair is always standing up, and that howl carried an insane amount of distance." McKay jumps in, his words running over the top of Sheppard's as they each speak in a rush. "By then, I'd connected at the library. There was no email from Jeannie--no email from anyone. Not even spam. I admit that I had a pretty good filtering system on my accounts, but good enough that not even one piece of annoying email got through? No one is that good." He takes a deep breath. "So I decided to dig into it, going through all the mail I had trashed when I last checked, but never gotten around to deleting."
He shakes his head. "There was spam and job opportunities from a month before, but the numbers dropped off fast. Two weeks before, it had been mail asking about Atlantis. This week, there was practically nothing. I realized that entire backbone sites were going down - the Internet hanging on by a thread, with entire regions, even countries, already cut off."
"That's when I realized how bad it was, and that Jeannie might not have access to email anymore. I felt a bit dazed at the thought, so I decided to dig around a bit, find out what had been happening in the world. I read long enough to think people were crazy, and then that maybe they weren't crazy. So when I heard that noise, I knew it was a zed, and I thought it had to be after John."
"Oh come on--" Sheppard rubbed his hand across his face. "I'm not that bad."
"Yes, you are," McKay snaps out, then looks intently at me. "John's a trouble magnet."
"Takes one to know one, Rodney." Sheppard crosses his arms over his chest.
McKay stabs a finger at me. "I don't run for fun. It hurts my knees, my feet and my ankles. I only run when this guy," he hooks a thumb in Sheppard's direction, "makes me get up and run with him in the mornings, or in those not-so-rare incidents in my life where not-running leads to disaster and death. This had all the earmarks of death and disaster. "
He leaned forward in his chair. "I don't know how many people I bumped into along the way, most of them running or walking in the opposite direction from where the sound was coming from. Cars were getting snarled out on the roadway, and I had to weave around them to go anyplace. A lot of people passed me, and the few headed toward the noise were all carrying guns."
"The zed managed to scrape back the covering, and screamed out at me, its claws scratching at the glass, yellow eyes gleaming. The kid must have been two or three when he died, a sweet little tow-headed kid. He still wore these overalls with yellow ducks on them, and he was buckled into his car seat." Sheppard shakes his head. "No wonder no one wanted to go near the thing. Last time I saw something like that was in a Wraith genetics lab back in Pegasus."
McKay folds his hand over Sheppard's and squeezes. "I guess one of the guys with guns showed up then, as the next thing I heard was the echo of a shotgun blast."
"I went to grab the guy, but two other people tackled me first. The guy that did it said he had two kids of his own, and he couldn't stand to see one of them end up like that. Then he walked away, and the crowd let him." He clenches his hands into fists, and jerks his head to the right, looking far away. "That sort of crap never gets any easier."
"By the time I got there, the crowd was dispersing. No one said a thing, wouldn't even look John in the eyes. It was...creepy."
"Very creepy," Sheppard agrees, his voice completely flat, eyes blank.
"John didn't say anything as we walked and I told him what I'd found out about just how fucked we were. I guess the whole university was born then, when John and I finally got to the truck; we looked at each other and I think we both realized what had to be done. We'd been on our own in a hostile environment before, and we knew we couldn't save the whole damn planet." His voice sounds strained, and it wavers a bit with uncertainty,
"But we knew we could damn well save some." Sheppard cuts a glance at McKay, sounding grim. He threads his fingers through McKay's and holds tight.
"So we joined the ranks of the survivalists. I hung out in secret chat rooms run by conspiracy theorists and white supremacists and people who thought that we'd all get our own planets to rule once the zombie horde was vanquished." He smiles fondly. "That guy reminded me of Daniel Jackson, actually. Except he was completely off his nut. I worked my way through the ranks, connecting up with them on the internet for as long as it held out." McKay sighs heavily, and squeezes Sheppard's hand. "We had some background on what needed to happen from contingency plans we'd made for an Alpha site back on Atlantis, the plans, the concerns about being on our own--it all came back. We knew we needed a secure facility, something that could withstand fifty, a hundred, maybe more attackers - and not just Z's; in the Panic, plenty of normals went off their rockers, too. We weren't ever going to be able to do that with a simple wooden fort." McKay gestures up at the lights. "So the first thing I did was figure out how to use what I had to build what we needed to be safe. The first thing John did was figure out how many other people we could support."
"A shield only got us so far," Sheppard cut in. "We had a well and a septic field sized for a resort, so it was mostly a matter of food and some things that McKay needed to get the shield running. Whenever I had to leave, I tried to talk any other families I saw into joining us, rather than striking farther North, but most people were too scared to stay."
McKay grimaces. "In some cases, just as well; some self-selection was probably a good thing."
Sheppard gives him a quelling look and continues, "I figured out how much we'd need to hold out for at least six months, maybe longer, and there was no way we could get everything together in the month or two before winter set in. So we opened up the greenhouses and planted as much as we could, hoping like hell it would be enough."
Did you have any close calls?
"Didn't everyone?" McKay licks his lips and looks over at Sheppard. "The snow was already a good six inches on the ground, and we hadn't heard any howling in a couple of days. Plus there were a few birds in the area, which seemed like a good sign. So John took a group out to see if they could gather up more rocks and wood to create more shelters, plus maybe pick up some game."
"As we were heading back, I noticed something in one of the bushes that was making it shake. I readied my sling, and tried to walk as quietly as I could toward it, so I wouldn't spook it. I was the one that got spooked as a crawler came sliding out of the underbrush, heading straight for me. Its eyes were white and its lower jaw was crushed along with the legs -- someone had got to it before -- so it couldn't howl. I took a step back, slipped and crashed to the ground; the thing grabbed my leg and I could hear the fabric tear."
"I saw John drop and yelled for help," McKay says proudly, "Then I heaved a few rocks at it."
"Turned it to mush."
"But John was bleeding and I freaked." He takes a deep breath and he stares over at Sheppard. "I thought I'd have to kill you."
"But you didn't." Sheppard reaches over and presses his hand to McKay's cheek, then kisses him. "You didn't Rodney. You didn't."
McKay leans into it, then presses their foreheads together and whispers, "Thank God."
After a few moments, he and Sheppard seem to pull themselves together, and I thank them for their time.
Any news on your sister?
"I'm hoping that she was on Atlantis with her family at the time it vanished," McKay says. "A couple of emails that I saw suggested that she was called in, but there's nothing official that I could find about it.
"We'll know more when we get through to the Mountain," Sheppard adds.
Given that the university is in the middle of the biggest reclaimed area in the world, safe behind your own alien high-tech walls, and--no offense-- neither of you are so young anymore, why not leave the Colorado expedition to someone else?
McKay folds his arms across his chest and glares at me as Sheppard leans forward and says quietly. "Because we don't leave anyone behind."
The End
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