It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. - Charles Darwin
The streets were hollow, void of the life that once moved through them in a rush to a destination that no longer mattered. Light winds moved across the ground, impeded only by the remains of man's favorite technological presence still scattering the landscape. Great cities were no longer the great dividing point between man and nature. Buildings groaned as moss and vines crept into their walls. Occasionally one could even hear them shift as the length in time their abandonment to the soil beneath them grew. There was no one to ensure the industrial control over the aggressive will of mother earth remained present. The earth began to retake what belonged to it.
In the six months since the change these had all become the unmistakable signs that the latest extinction of the dominate species on the planet was at hand. There was no denying the mounting shift in the environment, or the lingering remnants that struggled to survive in hopes of adapting to what came next. It seemed like an impossible situation to go from where humanity once stood to its current state of existence.
Was it a dream? Maybe it was some freakish nightmare just plaguing her nights. The bed could still be warm and comforting. A kitchen stocked with everything a person needed to survive would be waiting for her. After breakfast that job that paid for it all would offer a day of challenges that would end with a triumph over another some patient that showed up dying and left more alive than ever.
No. She was not that lucky. Not anymore.
Rushing wind sent real chills across her covered flesh. Dried blood still stained her shirt. Wild animals scurried along the rooftops before flying off to a better destination. Buildings were decayed structures that offered shelter only to rodents and plant life. Clean sheets, warm beds, rent control; it was all in the past. Maybe even in the past of a different world. The present was still very much a conscious reality and hoping for anything different just made it all that much worse.
Remembering hot showers, cold beer, good company or cable TV was simply an act of punishment. The same went for fresh food, water that did not have to boiled and treated with iodine in it first. Any sense of normalcy was gone. It was better to forget such niceties once existed and go on living simply out of necessity to survive.
The ironic part was that it was little choices that people had made that put the human species on the edge of extinction. It did not take some random meteor, or nuclear war, to push human life to the point of breaking. People chose to create, and move into, overcrowded cities, people chose to turn against the planet without thought for how the planet might react and people brought on the latest epidemic by crossing boundaries nature never intended people to cross.
In the early weeks, plenty of people initially tried peaceful forms of resistance. Many threw their lives away waiting on aid that never arrived. Those that swore not to move from the airports, docks and major roadways until aid came to all equally held out until there was no food, or water, for anyone. Videos of those foolish enough to wait for a solution were a favorite amongst the news channels as their broadcasters encouraged similar courageous acts. That proud support lasted up until those channels lost their ability to maintain broadcasts.
When the blackouts hit that was when people really flooded the safe spots looking for some sort salivation from the spreading epidemic. Mass hysteria lead many to abandon their homes in hopes of occupying one somewhere safer and any place where the government once protected the people became overran with refugees trying to survive. For Remy Hadley being at a hospital had nothing to with a cure that did not exist. For Remy Hadley it was work.
Princeton Plainsboro Hospital had the joy of being under the guise of a working hospital despite being more like the private laboratory for a mad scientist. House was quick to convince Cuddy that doctors from the hospital had to help at a hot zone that sprang up before the airports shut down. It was strictly a volunteer basis as there would be no one to enforce it, but someone needed to step up. Few people ever pick to walk into hot zone after they know what they will be facing. The acts of the willing might have earlier stood on the grounds of being performed out of a sense of a duty, a refusal to leave those that could not leave or a foolish believe that they had been through worse. For Remy Hadley there was simply nowhere else to go. Home was gone, there was no family anywhere to seek out for a happy reunion and if she had to watch people die around her she could at least try to help them.
It was suppose to be a simple shifting of patients flown in from Bellevue to Princeton General on one of the last flights into, or out of, the state and she was one of thirty doctors that had volunteered from the area to try assist those brought in. Most of the doctors from Bellevue and Princeton Plainsboro went back to their respective hospitals, but Remy and handful of others agreed to follow the mobile treatment center back to Princeton General. The odds of a fully staffed hospital actually doing anything to combat the spread were slim and only grew worse as understaffed and overwhelmed became the norm. Yet they all walked into the hot zone anyways. They might save hundreds, maybe thousands, why tens of thousands were dead and tens of thousands more were dying, but it seemed like the right thing to do anyways.
Just as most of the original staff at Bellevue had suffered under the weight of the epidemic, they did not fare much better. Initially there was that great promise of hope. With wiling doctors, calm patients and plenty of supplies the calm tides lasted for a while before the damn broke.
The first crack was when a formerly clean middle-aged man became a new patient and it grew worse when word spread that the man was one of the Neurologists at Princeton General who declined to take any of the medication that might have fought off the virus. Day after that someone shoved their way to the front of the patient line, claiming to be an important human being, whose life was apparently worth more than others waiting to be seen by a doctor.
All that positive change towards returning to civilization became undone the moment the true form of what was beneath that civilization showed up. Suddenly everyone was more important than those around them were and the staff barricaded the entrance from the lobby to the rest of the hospital.
After that, it just became impossible to imagine any of the other relief starting again. The idea of hope ended up in an unmarked grave, followed shortly by an increasingly large number of doctors and patient. Random disappearances, random disappearances that turned out to be suicides, a simple lack of supplies and the disease made its vigorous return. It had been bound to happen, the hospital seemed to be the central headquarters for every imaginable problem someone had and there was only so much that people could do to stave off the inevitable. The only people that the hospital did not seem to attract to it were the damn scavengers, who avoided anywhere large groups congregated.
Unfortunately, it was that group security she was away from now having left the hospital behind in an attempt to regain contact with Princeton Plainsboro. The noise of others approaching her broke through the sound from the afternoon windstorm. It was too abrupt and loud to be people just wondering around. Running would not help; she had been walking for three days without proper food or enough water.
Most of those that were willing to hang around the abandoned neighborhoods were those that had claimed the areas for themselves. Anyone that strayed too far in ran the risk of someone literally slitting their throat for the clothes off their back and they were not picky about if that throat belonged to a doctor or a vagrant wanderer. Freeing a small object from her pocket the woman shifted a large bag until it lay rested at an angle across her upper back. It was not exactly a helmet but the old duffel, stuffed with clothes and rations, beat the back of her being completely exposed.
Two men blocked her path roughly thirty feet in front of her. Circling in from her side were the sounds of the rest of the pack of scavengers, who had suddenly found a walking target. It was hard to know how many of them were involved but it was easy to guess that they had at least another two waiting for her to turn and try to run back in the direction she came from. Some patients claimed the groups were over a dozen strong. Although coming from people that had to run for their lives and were stopping to take a head count how accurate the information was became a subject of debate.
As she stood there, the two men in front of her seemed to be involved in a sudden discussion. They were too far away for Remy to hear but it provided an opportunity to move a few more feet forward. As long as they were distracted, she might just be able to get a hold on one of them first. Unfortunately, her right foot moved at the same time as the round man moved his eyes towards her. There was a sudden outbreak of noise as one of the men ran at her. He was slow but his size could be a problem if he connected. Aiming for an abandoned building that was half way between them, Remy went to run when there was a sudden pull backwards.
Someone had grabbed onto her pack and was attempting to drag it off her. By the time she had struggled free, it was too late. The attacker hit her straight on and knocked the oxygen completely from her lungs. There was no time to get a true look at the man, but he was heavy enough that she was in no real position to get back up.
A pain in her hand reminded her that she had taken one thing from the hospital before she left. It was a tool meant to save people's lives, now though it would have to suffice to save her own. As two hands grabbed her by the shirt collar, before slamming her back down onto the ground, there was no avoiding what was going to happen next. Fortunately, the bag seemed to absorb most of the impact of the initial attacks. The second time she felt her weight pulled upward Remy drove the scalpel into the man's deltoids muscle. The bladed instrument stuck out from where it hit. With the tool causing enough of a distraction, as failed attempts to remove it seemed to cause only further pain, she was able to push him away from her and deliver a quick shot across the jaw.
As Remy bolted past the second man, who had ran past her to check on the bleeding son of a bitch, the sounds of people following behind her were clear. One of the men was shouting something at the others that was not audible over the blood in her head pounding away. Stopping, even as the sounds faded, even as her mind told her that the bastards had given up long ago, was not an option. Running would keep her safe. She would fine as long as she never stopped. There was no thought given to where her feet were taking her, the large duffel hitting her in the back of the head, the numbness rushing up her arm or the burning in her lungs.
Buildings passed by without consideration for what they looked like. The streets felt smoother, housing began to take on a more uniformed look and there was more empty land centered amongst it all than seemed normal for a city. It almost had a suburbia feel to it but offered a familiarity that could not be associated with such a place. The rows of multistory, yet rather narrow houses, gave away to buildings that were more complex and scattered across the miniature city.
Slowly moving away from the black top road, the path ahead was concrete, which, despite its current appearance, would eventually crack under the pressure coming up from beneath. The steps forward were unstable, matching the exhale of carbon dioxide from her lungs, as the wind nipped at the back of her neck. Following a trail towards a destination that had taken three days of wondering through the city, and three nights of sleeping upright, with her eyes open, to get to was the first sign that the trip had been worth the risks.
As the signs showed less than half mile between her and the location the pain in her hand grew worse. All she had to do was get to the hospital; they might still have some supplies. She could explain what happen at Princeton General, assuming she got to PPTH without dying. Though there was the real chance that where she was heading had met the same fate as Princeton General, had no supplies left to scavenge and that if anyone were at the hospital they would do any number of despicable things to her.
Stopping for a moment to get a cotton bandage out of her duffel, hoping the clean cloth, and applied constant pressure, would make up for a lack of aseptic and stitches. Though, the sheer fact that all was wanted to do was lay her head down instead of trying to figure out how to wrap her right hand using her left hand, was not exactly a good sign. Shutting out the world around her it became a matter of trying to focus on just putting the bandage against her hand and taking the steps from there. Recalling years of drunken matches of pin the tail on the donkey, one of many games she had made a point to master why intoxicated, she was able to cause a great deal of pain for herself and put pressure on the wound.
As her vision grew weaker trying to focus on a target and move towards it seemed like a good idea. Picking the tallest structure in sight her eyes followed it into the sky, only for grass beneath her feet to lurch forward and trees to spin without cause. Each tilt of the earth felt as if it would throw her body from the planet as her hands groped at the empty air in search of an anchor. Falling towards the nearest tree, hands grabbed for the lowest limbs and missed.
Failing to stop the plant's movements, or steady her foundation, Remy collapsed next to it. One foot scrapped forward along the wet grass, and then the other followed, until they could hold her weight well enough for her to push her back against the tree. Remembering to breathe in oxygen became the first willful acts after leaning back against the tree. Oxygen was important, oxygen kept people alive, and she did not want to die in the middle of nowhere; alone and completely useless. She owed them more than that.
The world around her took one final spin, a surprisingly nice feeling, before her head touched the cool grass and shadows danced around her.
For those rereading this chapter you probably noticed there has been some major changes. Originally I made to some of the characters in this story just too different from the characters on the show, which made the interaction too strange. Therefore, I set things more in line with the House story line, with the epidemic starting in the later half of Season 6 and these chapters starting up in an altered version of Season 7 as it draws to a end. Obviously, this fic will still be rather AU and feature Camteen as the chapters' progress. It was simply a matter that some details needed changing to work better for the big picture.