FIC: Third Donut Shop From The Sun (Teal'c) PG
A fic that's been languishing on my hard drive, so I finished it.
I think it might have originally been for apocalypse_kree, but I took a different prompt when I couldn't get it done.
I still like it though. So.
+
Third Donut Shop From the Sun
Teal’c, gen, rated pg, angst, apocafic, hope, zombies, donuts.
++
The arrows were right where the map indicated they’d be. Just off Highway 160 to the south, next to a straight-edged teepee made of painted wood. Each shaft was as tall as a Tel’tak and they jutted at an angle out of the ground, tip down and feathers up, frozen in the act of returning to earth after flight.
Humans were an odd race.
The things they chose to deify and erect in homage… Giant plaster men and big balls of twine. He’d even seen a humungous donut rotating on top of a small bakery. Although, to be sure, Teal’c could kind of understand that last one. Donuts were pretty god-like in their sweet, fluffy, doughy goodness when you got right down to it. He’d miss them…
There was a store next to the display, and he pulled his motorcycle up close to the steps. The lot was deserted, but he sat astride the bike for a long moment after turning the engine off, just listening. The world around him was amazingly quiet except for the low rustle of the wind through weeds and the occasional birdsong.
He didn’t expect trouble this far away from the urban areas of the state. The… affected humans tended to group together in mobs centered in the towns and cities, waiting for the rare surviving Tau’ri to show up and offer themselves up as dinner. Still… since leaving Cheyenne Mountain and the rest of SG-1 behind he’d found the zombies in the most random of places, most wandering in a daze, bodies falling apart as they stumbled and lurched in their broken gaits. It paid to be careful. His Jaffa DNA had shielded him from the initial bio-weapon, but he wasn’t at all sure that a zombie bite wouldn’t infect him the same as it did the Tau’ri.
The Tau’ri. His last hope to free the Jaffa, and now…
He climbed off the bike and eased one of the P-90’s out of its holster over the rear wheel. It was an incredibly effective weapon against the undead, as long as you aimed correctly and hit them in the head. Or else you had to riddle them with bullets until their bodies fell apart, but that seemed a waste of ammunition, and he was low as it was. He had a backpack full of rounds, but P-90 ammo wasn’t readily available on hardware store shelves. When he ran out he’d have to switch to the more common shotguns, and as effective as they were they were also loud and slightly more unwieldy than the snub-nosed P-90’s.
He hefted the rifle in one hand and walked into the store. It was silent and empty and the late afternoon sun came through the dirty windows in thick shafts of swirling dust. The shelves were full of Native American crafts, postcards and other trinkets that the Tau’ri loved to collect so much. He glanced about absently while making his way to a dark, glass-enclosed cooler in the back. He avoided the expired bottled juice and took out a few plastic bottles of water, twisting the cap off of one and chugging it right away. It washed the dryness from his throat from the long, hot ride and brought his hunger back.
If the store were clear of the undead it would be a decent place to bed down for the night. He checked the back rooms and found them empty, outside doors secure. It was good.
He retrieved his pack and the saddlebags from the bike and then sat outside on the store’s plank porch to heat up an MRE and watch the sunset. The buff mesas in the distance were so different than what he was used to on Chulak. Of all the places he thought he’d end up, all the lives he thought he might lead, being the last man standing on an alien world was not one of them.
++
He hadn’t encountered any zombies until ten days after the plague had come, when he’d taken an Air Force jeep and driven into Colorado Springs. The amount of dead traffic blocking the roads on the way into town had convinced him he needed to find an easier way to travel to Area 51, and he’d driven slowly trying to find a motorcycle with attached keys.
Although he’d already outfitted himself in TAC vest, dual P-90’s, two back-up M-9’s, a full kit with extra ammo and MRE’s and tritonnin, he hadn’t been quite prepared for the sudden onslaught as he’d languished at a corner gas station picking out the correct road maps for his journey.
First one man had staggered out from the bar across the street, and Teal’c had tilted his head curiously wondering exactly how drunk this survivor-the first he’d seen-was. The man had turned slow, stilted, uneven circles in the street, and then gradually was joined by more humans.
And as they’d all jolted around in a rather alarming circle in the middle of the street, Teal’c had felt the skin crawl on the back of his neck. Humans did some strange things, especially when under the influence of alcohol, but this was something altogether different.
When he’d stepped out of the station, they had turned en masse and headed straight for him, gurgling cries suddenly rising like a cacophony of crows. They didn’t move smoothly, or well, and he’d walked quickly, easily beating them to the jeep.
But the smaller mob that had been hiding behind the building and hidden from his sight surprised him as he opened the Jeep’s door. They’d grabbed at his clothes and tried to sink breaking fingernails into his skin. He could hear their teeth gnashing and the wet trickle of rotting bodily fluids. It was evil and unnatural and it had sent a cold fear ripping through him in a way few things in the universe could. It wasn’t often that he was confronted with things that wished to use him as a food source. He’d violently shoved them away and taken refuge in the Jeep. He’d had to plow a few over to get out of there.
He avoided humans after that. He’d found a big, fast Harley Davidson motorcycle languishing in a parking ramp, its owner a red smear on the pavement next to it, the keys lying in the center. He knew nothing of the different technical models of such bikes, but both O’Neill and Major Carter had taught him to ride and often took him on long trips into the mountains to see their planet.
He’d siphoned gas from a nearby car to fill the tank, and then he’d set off. To Area 51.
++
From the porch, the garish wooden arrows next to the trading post grew looming in the sunset and then finally faded away into the darkness. The crickets kept up a steady chorus. They’d irritated him at first as he’d wandered through the Tau’ri’s world at night. They were sometimes encountered off-world, but not always, and they were noticeably loud when one wasn’t used to them. The only noise he’d heard beneath Cheyenne Mountain was the steady low hum of machinery. But he’d learned quickly that crickets, like most noisy insects, were an excellent alarm system. When they went silent it was best to have a look around and see why. They’d prevented more than one shuffling zombie from sneaking up on him as he’d sat having his evening meal.
When he finished his packaged beef stew, he locked himself in the store and lit a single candle, sitting cross-legged on the floor. With his symbiote gone Kel’no’reem was no longer as integral to his health, but he still often used the posture and the trappings to bring some semblance of order to his life and his thoughts.
He took a small metal box from his pack and simply held it in his hands, staring down at the faded, dented cover. He rubbed his thumb gently along the sharp angle of the bent metal. The box held his heart, indeed as broken as it was.
He tilted the cover up on its hinges and touched the things inside reverently: two sets of USAF dog tags, still on their chains, one engraved with the name of Carter, the other with O’Neill; and a set of worse-for-wear eye glasses, the lenses cracked but not shattered. He hadn’t been able to leave without taking something.
It was good they had gone together. They’d have been lost without each other. Loss had been his faithful companion for as long as he could remember. He was used to healing his own heart.
It was a long way to come; from a child raised as slave to the commander of Apophis’s army, a million Jaffa strong, to sitting on this dead planet, alone.
When the last vestiges of the sunset had faded from the dusty windows, he was plunged into the stillness and silence of the night, and he felt the pain creeping around the edges of his mind. He kept a firm grasp on his heart and the steady edge of his nerves as the hopelessness probed at his shield, trying to find a way in.
He stretched out on the new sleeping bag he’d picked up in the last town and closed his eyes, trying to strain toward sleep. He imagined he could hear O’Neill’s low, slow snoring; Major Carter’s whispered conversation with Daniel Jackson; and in the dreamy state of almost-consciousness that passed for sleep for him these days, he could almost feel their warmth and their presence surrounding him.
The night passed.
++
It had been ridiculous, of course, to put so much faith in the Tau’ri. For all their good intentions, their planet had not even been capable of drawing together as one whole people.
There had been many races that had showed great bravery and determination in the face of the Goa’uld. Very few of them were left standing. It took more than pure grit to withstand higher technology.
Of course… he couldn’t be sure it was the Goa’uld who were responsible for this. The sense of whimsy the zombie cloud created fit their sense of humor: devolving the humans into brain-eating apes. But there’d been no chance for gloating, for the taking of trophies, and that didn’t sit quite right with Teal’c. The Goa’uld were all about gloating.
He rode due west the next day, the big motorcycle cutting through the dead traffic easily and quickly. He didn’t bother to stop for lunch in the heat of the midday. He ate a package of Twinkies on the go and washed it down with another bottle of water. He’d stood in the trading post that morning staring woefully at the boxes of donuts; all of them shaded green with mold. Pity. A donut would have gone a long way in raising his morale and granting him another small, joyful memory of Earth.
He rode until the late summer sun raced around to sink ahead of him, sending its bright, painful rays directly into his shaded eyes. He came across the occasional lone zombie stumbling along the highway, roaring past them before they’d been able to twist the dead, rotting tendons in their neck and focus their cloudy eyes on him and the bike.
He wondered if they’d all eventually starve to death, or if they’d simply rot away until their bodies were no longer capable of animation. He’d seen more than one body lying still in the road, or in the field, or in the middle of town, so they weren’t infallible.
No matter. He wouldn’t be here much longer…
He camped in Zion National Park, climbing high up above a slanted slide of rocks where his back would be against a mountain of stone, and any zombies would have a hellacious time trying to get to him. He ate two chicken pasta MRE’s and then settled back in the light of a nearly-full moon, holding the small metal box and running his thumb along its bent edge.
This was a beautiful spot on Earth, he could tell even in the dark. Maybe he should bury the box on this ledge and let the last vestiges of SG-1 rest in peace…
His fingers tightened around the box, and his heartbeat rose in anxiety. Maybe it wasn’t quite time to let go…
When he left this place, they would come with him.
++
Las Vegas made his skin crawl. It was still and dark and filled with bodies and crumpled automobiles.
He skirted the center of the city, warned away by rank winds and the far-off gabble of undead humans. The road north was densely packed with cars, and he found himself crawling forward, weaving onto the shoulder and then back into the center of the pavement. The smell was too much, even for him, and he eventually tied a bandana around his nose and mouth, hoping it would block the stench.
Outside of the razor-topped fences of Nellis Airforce base he stopped in a small, dusty town and siphoned gas again. Then he stood and listened to the silence and slipped his hand into his pocket, fingering the worn, folded paper that held Samantha Carter’s last written words. Down the windy, deserted street he saw a familiar sign: Krispy Kreme doughnuts sold here!
He sighed.
++
Area 51 was largely untouched. The buildings all stood, uninjured, and the fences were intact if unsecured. Walking through the halls of deserted research labs was, as Daniel Jackson used to put it, creepy.
The garage doors to the hangar bays were open, and his boots crunched over the dried leaves and grit that had drifted inside. There were still several X-302’s waiting on the floor, but he bypassed them. He needed something long range or else he might as well stay on Earth and take his chances with the zombies.
He’d seen a lot of movies about zombies. Major Carter had found them amusing, and every so often she’d choose one when they all got together for a movie over a long weekend. Daniel Jackson would roll his eyes and spend the movie commenting on the stupidity of the survivors, but that seemed to be the purpose of such movies as Major Carter would often encourage the behavior. In the movies, zombies ate human brains and stumbled around groaning.
And that was pretty much what they did in real life too. Teal’c wondered if the first person to write a zombie movie had actually encountered the beasts before, or if maybe the alien scientists that had designed the zombie bomb had modeled it after Earth’s mythology. Chicken or the egg. Primta or the pouch.
Living or un-dead.
He abandoned the hangar and walked down into the subterranean depths of Area 51. With the power out he had to rely on a flashlight to find his way. He’d been there many times before, but it was different in the dark. It was more difficult to keep track of the twists and turns, and eventually he pulled a knife from his belt and began scoring the walls to mark his passage. Occasionally he heard small scuffling sounds and he’d freeze, listening. The distant echoes made it hard to distinguish a trapped animal from the slow, dragging steps of the undead.
As the darkness closed around him, so did the silence. He felt the weight of the world above him, the stars above that, and the claustrophobia clawed at his throat. It was something he’d never suffered from before, but he wanted nothing more than to rise to the surface of the Earth again and breathe the open air.
His desire to see Ry’ac was greater.
He only had to back up once before finding himself in the correct corridor. A lifetime of navigating the torch-lit hallways of an Al-Kesh had finally come in useful. There was a body stuck in the doorway to the collections room. He stepped carefully over the rotting hulk still in a white lab coat, and then turned his attention to the drawers filled with alien tech. It was a low-security room reserved for any technology that didn’t have weapons capabilities or defensive traits. He remembered standing in the corner, arms crossed, while Major Carter and Daniel Jackson worked carefully with various alien devices.
The Tollan location beacon was in an upper right-hand drawer, and he smoothed a thumb over the small disc, aiming the beam of his flashlight on it. It wasn’t readily apparent how to adjust the device to put in the coordinates for the Asgard homeworld, and he prodded at it with a finger. The symbols on it were strange and he suddenly missed Daniel Jackson with an alarming sharpness. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and in the space between that and the next breath, he heard something.
A creaking, shuffling sound…
He froze, curling his fingers around the Tollan device tightly. When he pointed the light toward the doorway, it showed an empty, dark space. He furrowed his brows and tilted his head, listening again.
Something scraped against his back.
He gave a sharp gasp and jumped forward, whirling around and tripping slightly over a litter of books on the floor. The noise rose into a rattling shriek, and Teal’c whipped the flashlight around, the beam settling on the gaping face of an undead airman. Teal’c shoved the locator beacon in his pocket and jerked his P-90 up instinctively, firing into the zombie’s chest and then moving up toward his head. At the same time he remembered that the walls were made of cement and steel, three feet thick, and he dropped to his heels on the floor. The whine of a ricocheting bullet passed so close that the sound snapped next to his ear. He crouched further, holding the rifle between the zombie and himself.
The zombie made a whine of his own and slowly crumbled to the floor.
Teal’c didn’t stick around to make sure it was dead, he leapt up and headed straight for the door, jumping over the body in the doorway and hurrying back down the hallway toward the stairs and the surface.
He’d attracted a horde while making his way down, and as he went up he had to pass a line of stumbling zombies, all of them dressed in Air Force blue. He tried to run past them and only shoot straight down the hall, but by the time he’d fought his way up to the surface he had several nicks from bullet fragments, and cement chips clung to his shirt and his hair.
Once he was out of the building he ran for all he was worth, leaving the slow zombies far behind. It was only a matter of time, he realized, before he’d trip up and become corpse food. If he ever wanted to see his son, his brothers, again, he had to get off this planet soon.
++
He stopped in the same dusty town outside of Nellis to clean up and study the Tollan device.
He pulled the folded piece of paper from his pocket and stared at Major Carter’s writing. She’d written out several numbers, the coordinates to the Asgard homeworld, but below those were several symbols of unknown origin. When he looked again at the Tollan device, he saw similar symbols engraved along the sides. Relief spread through him.
And then… uncertainty.
Would they come if he called? Would they take him away? The thought of staying here forever, trapped on this world that was not his own… Without his son or his friends.
He swallowed.
He slipped the beacon back into his pocket.
The town was blessedly free of zombies. The sand had moved in already, sloping up the curbs and coating the windows of the storefronts. In the distance he could hear the sharp snap of a tattered flag in the wind, the faint ring of metal on metal.
The gift shops held postcards of Thor-like aliens, bright green and smiling in welcome. He took one with a self-satisfied smirk. Greetings from Planet Earth! it said.
Maybe he could send one to the Tollan. Greetings from Planet Earth! Alien in need of ride. Zombies have taken over, please come soon. Bring donuts.
Irony. O’Neill would have been pleased.
He glanced down the street and rested his eyes on the Krispy Kreme sign. His mouth watered in sympathy.
With the P-90 resting on his hip, he walked down the deserted street toward the donut shop.
++
It took nearly a week after he sent the long beacon of light up into the night sky, Major Carter’s symbols carefully dialed into the device.
He camped in the town’s main intersection, waiting, hoping he’d be heard.
On the seventh night he saw a shooting star. And then it zigged a bit, or zagged, and he calmly folded the new piece of paper in his hands and placed it gently in the metal box before tucking it all into his coat, against his chest.
7 cups sifted flour, 2/3 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons yeast…
The Tau’ri had seeded the galaxy through their time. They were swept away but not lost. Surely in a universe so big he would find the things he needed. He would not let them be buried forever. The best parts of their legend would go with him.
He stood then as the night lit up around him and a smiling face welcomed him aboard.
~end~
I think it might have originally been for apocalypse_kree, but I took a different prompt when I couldn't get it done.
I still like it though. So.
+
Third Donut Shop From the Sun
Teal’c, gen, rated pg, angst, apocafic, hope, zombies, donuts.
++
The arrows were right where the map indicated they’d be. Just off Highway 160 to the south, next to a straight-edged teepee made of painted wood. Each shaft was as tall as a Tel’tak and they jutted at an angle out of the ground, tip down and feathers up, frozen in the act of returning to earth after flight.
Humans were an odd race.
The things they chose to deify and erect in homage… Giant plaster men and big balls of twine. He’d even seen a humungous donut rotating on top of a small bakery. Although, to be sure, Teal’c could kind of understand that last one. Donuts were pretty god-like in their sweet, fluffy, doughy goodness when you got right down to it. He’d miss them…
There was a store next to the display, and he pulled his motorcycle up close to the steps. The lot was deserted, but he sat astride the bike for a long moment after turning the engine off, just listening. The world around him was amazingly quiet except for the low rustle of the wind through weeds and the occasional birdsong.
He didn’t expect trouble this far away from the urban areas of the state. The… affected humans tended to group together in mobs centered in the towns and cities, waiting for the rare surviving Tau’ri to show up and offer themselves up as dinner. Still… since leaving Cheyenne Mountain and the rest of SG-1 behind he’d found the zombies in the most random of places, most wandering in a daze, bodies falling apart as they stumbled and lurched in their broken gaits. It paid to be careful. His Jaffa DNA had shielded him from the initial bio-weapon, but he wasn’t at all sure that a zombie bite wouldn’t infect him the same as it did the Tau’ri.
The Tau’ri. His last hope to free the Jaffa, and now…
He climbed off the bike and eased one of the P-90’s out of its holster over the rear wheel. It was an incredibly effective weapon against the undead, as long as you aimed correctly and hit them in the head. Or else you had to riddle them with bullets until their bodies fell apart, but that seemed a waste of ammunition, and he was low as it was. He had a backpack full of rounds, but P-90 ammo wasn’t readily available on hardware store shelves. When he ran out he’d have to switch to the more common shotguns, and as effective as they were they were also loud and slightly more unwieldy than the snub-nosed P-90’s.
He hefted the rifle in one hand and walked into the store. It was silent and empty and the late afternoon sun came through the dirty windows in thick shafts of swirling dust. The shelves were full of Native American crafts, postcards and other trinkets that the Tau’ri loved to collect so much. He glanced about absently while making his way to a dark, glass-enclosed cooler in the back. He avoided the expired bottled juice and took out a few plastic bottles of water, twisting the cap off of one and chugging it right away. It washed the dryness from his throat from the long, hot ride and brought his hunger back.
If the store were clear of the undead it would be a decent place to bed down for the night. He checked the back rooms and found them empty, outside doors secure. It was good.
He retrieved his pack and the saddlebags from the bike and then sat outside on the store’s plank porch to heat up an MRE and watch the sunset. The buff mesas in the distance were so different than what he was used to on Chulak. Of all the places he thought he’d end up, all the lives he thought he might lead, being the last man standing on an alien world was not one of them.
++
He hadn’t encountered any zombies until ten days after the plague had come, when he’d taken an Air Force jeep and driven into Colorado Springs. The amount of dead traffic blocking the roads on the way into town had convinced him he needed to find an easier way to travel to Area 51, and he’d driven slowly trying to find a motorcycle with attached keys.
Although he’d already outfitted himself in TAC vest, dual P-90’s, two back-up M-9’s, a full kit with extra ammo and MRE’s and tritonnin, he hadn’t been quite prepared for the sudden onslaught as he’d languished at a corner gas station picking out the correct road maps for his journey.
First one man had staggered out from the bar across the street, and Teal’c had tilted his head curiously wondering exactly how drunk this survivor-the first he’d seen-was. The man had turned slow, stilted, uneven circles in the street, and then gradually was joined by more humans.
And as they’d all jolted around in a rather alarming circle in the middle of the street, Teal’c had felt the skin crawl on the back of his neck. Humans did some strange things, especially when under the influence of alcohol, but this was something altogether different.
When he’d stepped out of the station, they had turned en masse and headed straight for him, gurgling cries suddenly rising like a cacophony of crows. They didn’t move smoothly, or well, and he’d walked quickly, easily beating them to the jeep.
But the smaller mob that had been hiding behind the building and hidden from his sight surprised him as he opened the Jeep’s door. They’d grabbed at his clothes and tried to sink breaking fingernails into his skin. He could hear their teeth gnashing and the wet trickle of rotting bodily fluids. It was evil and unnatural and it had sent a cold fear ripping through him in a way few things in the universe could. It wasn’t often that he was confronted with things that wished to use him as a food source. He’d violently shoved them away and taken refuge in the Jeep. He’d had to plow a few over to get out of there.
He avoided humans after that. He’d found a big, fast Harley Davidson motorcycle languishing in a parking ramp, its owner a red smear on the pavement next to it, the keys lying in the center. He knew nothing of the different technical models of such bikes, but both O’Neill and Major Carter had taught him to ride and often took him on long trips into the mountains to see their planet.
He’d siphoned gas from a nearby car to fill the tank, and then he’d set off. To Area 51.
++
From the porch, the garish wooden arrows next to the trading post grew looming in the sunset and then finally faded away into the darkness. The crickets kept up a steady chorus. They’d irritated him at first as he’d wandered through the Tau’ri’s world at night. They were sometimes encountered off-world, but not always, and they were noticeably loud when one wasn’t used to them. The only noise he’d heard beneath Cheyenne Mountain was the steady low hum of machinery. But he’d learned quickly that crickets, like most noisy insects, were an excellent alarm system. When they went silent it was best to have a look around and see why. They’d prevented more than one shuffling zombie from sneaking up on him as he’d sat having his evening meal.
When he finished his packaged beef stew, he locked himself in the store and lit a single candle, sitting cross-legged on the floor. With his symbiote gone Kel’no’reem was no longer as integral to his health, but he still often used the posture and the trappings to bring some semblance of order to his life and his thoughts.
He took a small metal box from his pack and simply held it in his hands, staring down at the faded, dented cover. He rubbed his thumb gently along the sharp angle of the bent metal. The box held his heart, indeed as broken as it was.
He tilted the cover up on its hinges and touched the things inside reverently: two sets of USAF dog tags, still on their chains, one engraved with the name of Carter, the other with O’Neill; and a set of worse-for-wear eye glasses, the lenses cracked but not shattered. He hadn’t been able to leave without taking something.
It was good they had gone together. They’d have been lost without each other. Loss had been his faithful companion for as long as he could remember. He was used to healing his own heart.
It was a long way to come; from a child raised as slave to the commander of Apophis’s army, a million Jaffa strong, to sitting on this dead planet, alone.
When the last vestiges of the sunset had faded from the dusty windows, he was plunged into the stillness and silence of the night, and he felt the pain creeping around the edges of his mind. He kept a firm grasp on his heart and the steady edge of his nerves as the hopelessness probed at his shield, trying to find a way in.
He stretched out on the new sleeping bag he’d picked up in the last town and closed his eyes, trying to strain toward sleep. He imagined he could hear O’Neill’s low, slow snoring; Major Carter’s whispered conversation with Daniel Jackson; and in the dreamy state of almost-consciousness that passed for sleep for him these days, he could almost feel their warmth and their presence surrounding him.
The night passed.
++
It had been ridiculous, of course, to put so much faith in the Tau’ri. For all their good intentions, their planet had not even been capable of drawing together as one whole people.
There had been many races that had showed great bravery and determination in the face of the Goa’uld. Very few of them were left standing. It took more than pure grit to withstand higher technology.
Of course… he couldn’t be sure it was the Goa’uld who were responsible for this. The sense of whimsy the zombie cloud created fit their sense of humor: devolving the humans into brain-eating apes. But there’d been no chance for gloating, for the taking of trophies, and that didn’t sit quite right with Teal’c. The Goa’uld were all about gloating.
He rode due west the next day, the big motorcycle cutting through the dead traffic easily and quickly. He didn’t bother to stop for lunch in the heat of the midday. He ate a package of Twinkies on the go and washed it down with another bottle of water. He’d stood in the trading post that morning staring woefully at the boxes of donuts; all of them shaded green with mold. Pity. A donut would have gone a long way in raising his morale and granting him another small, joyful memory of Earth.
He rode until the late summer sun raced around to sink ahead of him, sending its bright, painful rays directly into his shaded eyes. He came across the occasional lone zombie stumbling along the highway, roaring past them before they’d been able to twist the dead, rotting tendons in their neck and focus their cloudy eyes on him and the bike.
He wondered if they’d all eventually starve to death, or if they’d simply rot away until their bodies were no longer capable of animation. He’d seen more than one body lying still in the road, or in the field, or in the middle of town, so they weren’t infallible.
No matter. He wouldn’t be here much longer…
He camped in Zion National Park, climbing high up above a slanted slide of rocks where his back would be against a mountain of stone, and any zombies would have a hellacious time trying to get to him. He ate two chicken pasta MRE’s and then settled back in the light of a nearly-full moon, holding the small metal box and running his thumb along its bent edge.
This was a beautiful spot on Earth, he could tell even in the dark. Maybe he should bury the box on this ledge and let the last vestiges of SG-1 rest in peace…
His fingers tightened around the box, and his heartbeat rose in anxiety. Maybe it wasn’t quite time to let go…
When he left this place, they would come with him.
++
Las Vegas made his skin crawl. It was still and dark and filled with bodies and crumpled automobiles.
He skirted the center of the city, warned away by rank winds and the far-off gabble of undead humans. The road north was densely packed with cars, and he found himself crawling forward, weaving onto the shoulder and then back into the center of the pavement. The smell was too much, even for him, and he eventually tied a bandana around his nose and mouth, hoping it would block the stench.
Outside of the razor-topped fences of Nellis Airforce base he stopped in a small, dusty town and siphoned gas again. Then he stood and listened to the silence and slipped his hand into his pocket, fingering the worn, folded paper that held Samantha Carter’s last written words. Down the windy, deserted street he saw a familiar sign: Krispy Kreme doughnuts sold here!
He sighed.
++
Area 51 was largely untouched. The buildings all stood, uninjured, and the fences were intact if unsecured. Walking through the halls of deserted research labs was, as Daniel Jackson used to put it, creepy.
The garage doors to the hangar bays were open, and his boots crunched over the dried leaves and grit that had drifted inside. There were still several X-302’s waiting on the floor, but he bypassed them. He needed something long range or else he might as well stay on Earth and take his chances with the zombies.
He’d seen a lot of movies about zombies. Major Carter had found them amusing, and every so often she’d choose one when they all got together for a movie over a long weekend. Daniel Jackson would roll his eyes and spend the movie commenting on the stupidity of the survivors, but that seemed to be the purpose of such movies as Major Carter would often encourage the behavior. In the movies, zombies ate human brains and stumbled around groaning.
And that was pretty much what they did in real life too. Teal’c wondered if the first person to write a zombie movie had actually encountered the beasts before, or if maybe the alien scientists that had designed the zombie bomb had modeled it after Earth’s mythology. Chicken or the egg. Primta or the pouch.
Living or un-dead.
He abandoned the hangar and walked down into the subterranean depths of Area 51. With the power out he had to rely on a flashlight to find his way. He’d been there many times before, but it was different in the dark. It was more difficult to keep track of the twists and turns, and eventually he pulled a knife from his belt and began scoring the walls to mark his passage. Occasionally he heard small scuffling sounds and he’d freeze, listening. The distant echoes made it hard to distinguish a trapped animal from the slow, dragging steps of the undead.
As the darkness closed around him, so did the silence. He felt the weight of the world above him, the stars above that, and the claustrophobia clawed at his throat. It was something he’d never suffered from before, but he wanted nothing more than to rise to the surface of the Earth again and breathe the open air.
His desire to see Ry’ac was greater.
He only had to back up once before finding himself in the correct corridor. A lifetime of navigating the torch-lit hallways of an Al-Kesh had finally come in useful. There was a body stuck in the doorway to the collections room. He stepped carefully over the rotting hulk still in a white lab coat, and then turned his attention to the drawers filled with alien tech. It was a low-security room reserved for any technology that didn’t have weapons capabilities or defensive traits. He remembered standing in the corner, arms crossed, while Major Carter and Daniel Jackson worked carefully with various alien devices.
The Tollan location beacon was in an upper right-hand drawer, and he smoothed a thumb over the small disc, aiming the beam of his flashlight on it. It wasn’t readily apparent how to adjust the device to put in the coordinates for the Asgard homeworld, and he prodded at it with a finger. The symbols on it were strange and he suddenly missed Daniel Jackson with an alarming sharpness. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, and in the space between that and the next breath, he heard something.
A creaking, shuffling sound…
He froze, curling his fingers around the Tollan device tightly. When he pointed the light toward the doorway, it showed an empty, dark space. He furrowed his brows and tilted his head, listening again.
Something scraped against his back.
He gave a sharp gasp and jumped forward, whirling around and tripping slightly over a litter of books on the floor. The noise rose into a rattling shriek, and Teal’c whipped the flashlight around, the beam settling on the gaping face of an undead airman. Teal’c shoved the locator beacon in his pocket and jerked his P-90 up instinctively, firing into the zombie’s chest and then moving up toward his head. At the same time he remembered that the walls were made of cement and steel, three feet thick, and he dropped to his heels on the floor. The whine of a ricocheting bullet passed so close that the sound snapped next to his ear. He crouched further, holding the rifle between the zombie and himself.
The zombie made a whine of his own and slowly crumbled to the floor.
Teal’c didn’t stick around to make sure it was dead, he leapt up and headed straight for the door, jumping over the body in the doorway and hurrying back down the hallway toward the stairs and the surface.
He’d attracted a horde while making his way down, and as he went up he had to pass a line of stumbling zombies, all of them dressed in Air Force blue. He tried to run past them and only shoot straight down the hall, but by the time he’d fought his way up to the surface he had several nicks from bullet fragments, and cement chips clung to his shirt and his hair.
Once he was out of the building he ran for all he was worth, leaving the slow zombies far behind. It was only a matter of time, he realized, before he’d trip up and become corpse food. If he ever wanted to see his son, his brothers, again, he had to get off this planet soon.
++
He stopped in the same dusty town outside of Nellis to clean up and study the Tollan device.
He pulled the folded piece of paper from his pocket and stared at Major Carter’s writing. She’d written out several numbers, the coordinates to the Asgard homeworld, but below those were several symbols of unknown origin. When he looked again at the Tollan device, he saw similar symbols engraved along the sides. Relief spread through him.
And then… uncertainty.
Would they come if he called? Would they take him away? The thought of staying here forever, trapped on this world that was not his own… Without his son or his friends.
He swallowed.
He slipped the beacon back into his pocket.
The town was blessedly free of zombies. The sand had moved in already, sloping up the curbs and coating the windows of the storefronts. In the distance he could hear the sharp snap of a tattered flag in the wind, the faint ring of metal on metal.
The gift shops held postcards of Thor-like aliens, bright green and smiling in welcome. He took one with a self-satisfied smirk. Greetings from Planet Earth! it said.
Maybe he could send one to the Tollan. Greetings from Planet Earth! Alien in need of ride. Zombies have taken over, please come soon. Bring donuts.
Irony. O’Neill would have been pleased.
He glanced down the street and rested his eyes on the Krispy Kreme sign. His mouth watered in sympathy.
With the P-90 resting on his hip, he walked down the deserted street toward the donut shop.
++
It took nearly a week after he sent the long beacon of light up into the night sky, Major Carter’s symbols carefully dialed into the device.
He camped in the town’s main intersection, waiting, hoping he’d be heard.
On the seventh night he saw a shooting star. And then it zigged a bit, or zagged, and he calmly folded the new piece of paper in his hands and placed it gently in the metal box before tucking it all into his coat, against his chest.
7 cups sifted flour, 2/3 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons yeast…
The Tau’ri had seeded the galaxy through their time. They were swept away but not lost. Surely in a universe so big he would find the things he needed. He would not let them be buried forever. The best parts of their legend would go with him.
He stood then as the night lit up around him and a smiling face welcomed him aboard.
~end~