a/n: So the US Center for Disease Control has a policy about a Zombie Apocolypse. I think they need a Doctor. Thus, I give you the obligatory zombie apocolypse fic
Disclaimer: Nope don't own a darn thing in the Whoverse
Torchwood Protocol Z-9
Rose raced into the lab she shared with the Doctor. The first thing she saw were his white trainers propped up on the desk. The Doctor was reclining on a chair tapping the sonic against his temple. His glasses were perched on his nose as he stared intently at a spot on the ceiling. He looked up as she burst into the room.
"Protocol Z-9!" she shouted at him, as she franticly raced to the window to look out at the city.
"Protocol Z-9?" he questioned her, as he stood up and walked up to her. She looked at him annoyed and raced over to the desk and pulled out a short sword with a 36 inch blade. She walked over to the door sword in hand and cracked it open to see several Torchwood agents race by.
The Doctor took off his glasses and stood next to Rose looking at the sword nervously. "Rose, what is Protocol Z-9?"
Rose turned to him. "Blimey, I thought you read the Torchwood manual?"
"Well, I did. Sort of. It's a bit dry and bureaucratic. I may have dozed off," he told her, tugging at his ear.
Rose stared at him. "Zombies," she told him and walked over to a cabinet pulling out a bag and started loading things into it.
"Zombies!" he exclaimed, with an excited look in his eyes. "You are kidding me!"
"No. Now, you still good with a sword?" she asked, looking at him intently.
"Well, yes of course I am. Why?"
"Um, bullets don't work on zombies. You sort of have to hack off their legs so they can't run after ya." Rose told him gesturing with the sword.
"Hack of legs. Oh Rose, that's disgusting!"
"Yeah, I know and they smell pretty bad too. Better a dismembered zombie than risking becoming a zombie snack," she lectured him, readying herself to leave.
"There's another sword in the cabinet over there," she told him, pointing to a cabinet in the corner. The Doctor walked over and pulled out the sword. He buckled the scabbard around his waste and pulled out the sword to examine it. He walked over to stand next to Rose who seemed very tense and battle ready. She looked up at him. "Ready?" she asked.
"Always," he answered with a grin on his face.
She opened the door and they quickly made their way down the empty hall to the stairs as the lights flickered. Jake burst through the door from the stairs, a sword dripping with gore in his hand and covered in zombie goo. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it breathing hard.
"Jake, are they in the building?" Rose asked, her eyes darting around looking for any oncoming hoards of zombies. Jake was too winded to talk and just nodded. The Doctor pulled out his sonic and sealed the door. Pete walked up behind them with his own sword drawn. "Well?" he asked.
"The Buggers broke in the front and started coming up the stairs. They took out Mitchell, Hodgins and the rest of the team. There were just so bloody many of them!"
"Right, we need to get to the roof. The elevators are down and the stairs are compromised," Pete told them.
"What about climbing up the elevator shafts," the Doctor suggested.
"I've got some gear in my office we could make do with," Jake suggested.
"Course, that doesn't solve the problem," the Doctor told them. "We need to find out what's turning people into zombies and stop it. It could be an infection and if it is, we need a sample. What do we know about these zombies?"
"What do we know! I'll tell you, there are a lot of them and the like to eat people," Jake shouted at him.
"Right, what else? When and where did they first appear?"
"Cross Bones Cemetery. The dead started to rise from the grave. It was reported a few hours ago but we thought it was a hoax. That is, until a group of them made their way into the business district and attacked a group of bank financiers. The police were called but I think we all know that bullets don't stop a hoard of zombies," Pete told them, pacing back and forth.
They started to hear a thumping noise coming from the door to the stairwell which turned into a banging. Pete's phone rang. "Jackie, I can't talk at the moment. Yes I know. Take Tony and the staff and lock yourselves in the basement. It'll be fine. I've got Rose and the Doctor here with me. Sorry, love, gotta go, zombie apocalypse to solve."
While Pete was comforting Jackie, the Doctor had wandered off near the door to the stairwell. There were fingers poking underneath the door. The Doctor knelt down to examine the putrid green flesh which was almost falling off the bony fingers. He took some readings off his sonic and reached down with a handkerchief to get a sample. Rose walked up to him. "What are you doing!" she shouted at him, startling him. When he looked down instead of a sample, he realized the whole finger broke off and was wiggling in the handkerchief.
"Will you look at that!" he exclaimed in fascination. "It's still trying to eat me! Rose, I have a zombie finger!"
Rose wrinkled up her nose as if she smelled something horrible. "A zombie finger that used to be someone," she reminded him backing away.
"Oh, but don't you get it? It's a sample we can test to find out what's causing this." he took his sample and ran to his lab. Rose followed behind him while the others worked on their plan to climb up the elevator shaft to the roof. The persistent banging on the door to the stairwell continued and Rose was getting worried that the hinges wouldn't hold.
"Whatever you're going to do, hurry up!" Rose shouted to him, backing into the lab. She watched him poke, prod, sonic and do something to a piece of it in a petri dish. She nearly came unglued when he lifted it up to his face just under his nose. "So help me, you are not lickin' it! You know, once one of those things bites, you become one. Don't think I'm gonna become your snack if you get all zombified from lickin' it," Rose told him, ready to yank it away from his face.
He turned and looked at her with a mischievous look in his eyes. "What, you won't stay with me if I turn into a zombie? Rose Tyler, I thought you said forever," he teased.
Rose just glared at him. "Well, did you find out anything?" she asked, while stepping into the hall and watching the door to the stairs rattle from the zombie attack.
"Yep! It's a bit of an alien parasite that forms naturally in decomposition of certain species that are not native of Earth. So, did someone bury an alien in that graveyard?"
"Right, someone buried an alien in the graveyard and that's what caused the zombie apocalypse." Rose shook her head, sighed and pulled out her mobile and gave Pete the update. She turned to the Doctor. "Pete wants to know if you found a way to stop it?"
"Welllll, maybe. The parasite does need certain things to survive, like decaying flesh. You see, the zombie bite itself can kill the victim due to poisonous secretions and bacteria at work in the decomposing organism. The parasite, in it's normal environment, excretes a chemical, hydrasilicat. Unfortunately, in decomposing humans, it's not getting what it needs to survive. It might be a tiny bit effected by the environment here so it may get, well a bit of boost reanimating the organism and causing it to seek out the supplements it needs to live."
"Right, it's hungry and causing zombies to walk around an eat people. So how do we stop it?" Rose summarized.
"Well that's a bit of simple way to explain it," the Doctor pouted.
"Doctor, focus!"
"Right, I think cold weather should do it."
"Cold weather. Doctor, it's August and we're in the middle of a heat wave. How we gonna make it cold?" Rose asked, worried as she thought she heard the stairwell door break.
"Well, we start with Canary Wharf. We need to freeze them out here first and I think there may be something in the basement in artifact storage that can help with the weather."
"You mean there's some alien tech down there that can change the weather?"
"Yep!" he told her, rocking back on his heals looking pleased.
She quickly relayed all this to Pete who gave them permission to proceed with the Doctor's plan provided they didn't blow up London.
"Blow up London! When have I ever done that!" the Doctor exclaimed.
Rose just stared at him with her eyebrows raised. The Doctor pouted and mumbled that Pete sucked the fun out of everything. The building's environmental controls were computerized and the Doctor quickly hacked the program and reduced the building temperature as well as locked it down so none of the zombies could escape. While they waited, the heard the zombies in the stairwell break down the door. Pete and the others raced into the office. Jake took one look down the hall and watched with revulsion as the bloodied and gore covered remains of one of his team limped it's way down the hall along with an old decomposing corpse with bits falling off crawling toward them. Jake slammed and locked the door.
Rose rubbed her hands on her arms as the temperature dropped. The Doctor walked over and wrapped her in his arms. It wasn't long before they were all huddled together listening to the zombies, scratch and thump outside the door. Jake kept the sword in front of him despite the cold temperature. After an hour, Rose was burrowed into the Doctor's side and everyone could see their breath and were shivering from the cold. The noise outside decreased until finally, there was silence.
Jake rose slowly and looked at Pete. "I'll go check outside."
"I'll go with you," the Doctor said and picked up his sword.
"Doctor, I'm going too," Rose told him in a shaky voice, her hands shivering from the cold.
"Rose, you need to stay with Pete and be back up in case this doesn't work," he told her softly, and kissed her. He and Jake slowly opened the door and looked out.
"Zombie popsicles!" Jake exclaimed.
They carefully made their way down to the basement hacking anything that appeared to move. Jake may have been a bit overzealous and left a trail of semi frozen zombie parts as they made their way to the basement. It was a relief when they found a group of Torchwood agents and scientists hiding in the archives as well as the artifact room. The Doctor quickly located the alien technology and they made their way to the roof so he could activate It. They watched in amazement as a vortex of dark clouds formed over them, the wind started to blow and the temperature dropped. Soon, it was so dark they couldn't see the sun and the humidity increased. Within hours it was snowing in London. The Doctor looked over at them with a smug smile.
"You did it!" Rose shouted and threw her arms around him.
Pete was already on the phone coordinating clean up and sending a team over to the cemetery to excavate and find the alien buried there. "Doctor, how long will the weather stay like this?" he asked.
"Oh, about a day and then it should stabilize and go back to normal. Might want to get this thing handled before then as we won't be able to use this little gadget again. It's completely out of juice," the Doctor told him, patting the microwave sized piece of technology.
"Right, can you head over to the cemetery and give them a hand at locating this thing?" Pete asked.
"Be happy to Pete! Come along Rose, let's go dig up the cemetery!"
Rose shook her head in amusement and walked with him toward the stairs.
"Oh, one question?" the Doctor asked.
"What's that Doctor," Rose replied.
"You said "Protocol Z-9 like this had happened before and someone had written up a procedure for it."
"Yeah, that was Mickey and Jake," Rose told him.
The Doctor stared at her. "Um, why exactly. What happened?"
Rose shrugged her shoulders. "It happened before I got here. All I know is that they wrote it up one night over drinks at the pub."
"They wrote up instructions about what to do in case of a zombie apocalypse over drinks at the pub?"
"Yeah."
He smiled. "Never a dull moment on Pete's world. I think I may like it here. Now then, off to the cemetery to dug up a decomposing alien corpse," he said with ghoulish glee, practically dragging Rose down the stairs in his excitement.
