Foreman drove in silence for 50 miles, music turned off, thoughts of the past playing like an old film inside his head: silent movies of House thumping down the busy halls of Princeton-Plainsboro, making quips about Cuddy's breasts. House, being inappropriate and misanthropic. Cameron… still-brunette Cameron, when they were still young and the three of them were a unit. Because those were the years when they were being formed before they started to fall apart. Those were the years that meant something, in retrospect. Cameron before Cameron and Chase became one entity. Cameron with her sad smiles and puppy-dog eyes. Cameron, who was annoying, who Foreman missed. And Wilson and Cuddy. And the patients. All of the patients. So many patients who they saved over the years, and for what? To delay a death that would come only a few short years later? Old men and mothers and brothers and children. Statistically, in all probability, the mothers and fathers and children and all of the friends of almost all of their past patients had probably died not too long before or after said patients. Small mercies. Foreman's life's work… saving lives. All those years spent over medical tomes, all those nights he opted to stay in and study rather than have a good time, all of that mental energy put into learning how to save a life. And for what? All of the medical knowledge of every medical specialist in the world doesn't contain the answer to what's wiped out almost the entire world population. So he can remove a tumor, bind a broken limb. What does healing mean when the best you can hope for in this world is a few more years. A few more years of fear and running. And loss.
Foreman felt a violent burst of fear in his stomach then reached for the remote control lock on the car's key ring, locking the doors of their mobile prison cell, lest anyone- or thing- try to break into the car. It had happened before. It happens all the time now. And less and less road goes by between when it happens the more time that passes.
Foreman looks to his right, to the sleeping body curled up on the seat next to him, oblivious to the world. In an escape not available in waking anymore. The body that is so tense and ever-alert in waking, still and at peace for the first time in two days. Foreman often wonders if it might not be better to just let oneself go that way. To give into death, maybe even by ones own hand, instead of the violent, uncontrollable death that statistics say probably awaits them. To just sleep. To give in. Foreman thinks a lot about the statistics. He's done them himself. Of course he has. Most of the statisticians had died long ago. At least, Foreman thinks so. He's not sure. It's been so long since a newspaper was printed or a news report was aired. It didn't take long at all for those to stop, really. Sometimes he thinks life is death, now.
Foreman looks at the soft breaths, the rising and falling of the body next to him, and he wills them to keep coming. An irrational fear that one day he'll look over and they won't be there anymore. That one day he'll look over and Chase will be dead. It's irrational, he knows. They haven't been exposed. And Chase hasn't shown any symptoms. And why Foreman is so much more afraid of Chase dying than himself, he doesn't know. Maybe the idea of living alone makes him so anxious that he feels the urge to wretch in a way that the idea of dying with another person doesn't. Chase is all he has now, he knows. And is all he's had for a long time. For 9 months, he realizes. And if there are feelings for the blonde little white boy that weren't there before, in their past life together before the world went to hell, it doesn't matter. Foreman doesn't have to acknowledge them because to acknowledge a feeling is to give into it and he can't ever let himself give into feelings that statistics indicate will only end in death and loss. But Chase is all he has. That's not a thought or a feeling that foreman can push down or ignore. And he's all that Chase has. And that keeps him going now. It's kept him going since the day they started to run.
The day had finally come when the hospital walls caved to the ever-present attack. For as long as they had known that this would eventually happen, Foreman wasn't prepared for the mouth-foaming masses pounding down walls, quite literally, biting and sucking on organs and limbs, spraying toxic spit all over everything, contaminating everything, taking everything. Rotting, fetid bodies that had once been human, like them. Foreman freezes in the hallway of the NICU, horrified as he watches through the glass, a zombified woman consuming the remains of one of the newborns as the others gave rattling cries for mothers who would never come. Mothers who were probably dead by now. Or worse. Foreman froze, while everything else sped up around him. And then he felt a hard shove to the side of his arm and he was almost off his feet with his heart in his throat. This was it, he thought. This was the end. But when he looked up it wasn't the blood-soaked, decomposing mass of water and hanging flesh that he had expected, but familiar, bright but terrified blue eyes that stared back at him, only inches from his own terrified face. He hadn't realized that the shove had ended with Chase still clinging tight to his own arm. He must have skidded into Foreman in his panic, but the look in his eyes, an odd mixture of slight relief buried under ample terror was an indication that he had been looking for Foreman.
"Chase, what are you doing down here?" knowing full well that Chase didn't have a shift for another eight hours.
Foreman follows Chase's terrified eyes to the mulled baby behind the glass, the zombies unaware yet of the two doctors standing in the middle of the hallway.
"I- I- had. I stayed to take care of the Brambley baby she— she was premature, sick." And Foreman looked at what Chase was looking at. Saw what chase saw. The Brambley baby's limbs and spilled blood. The baby that was no longer a baby. And still-living wailing babies, one clutched tight in pale gray hands now.
Foreman sees the intent in his coworker's eyes before Chase even starts to move and he's throwing his body in front of the younger man before Chase gets even two feet towards the NICU.
"Chase! It's over. They're gone." He had known the babies were gone before they had even entered this world. He had known their birth would be a tragic one. That they most likely wouldn't live to see their next birthday with how things were going lately, with how fast the disease was spreading. Even then, holed up in the hospital for months, he had been doing the statistics. And stupid Chase, still trying to save people. Still seeing a point in life. Still fighting statistics. Foreman gripped Chase as he struggled against him, eyes wide and body pumped full of adrenaline. "They're gone, Chase! It's better for them this way." Foreman was horrible, he knew. A pathetic excuse for a man. A biological anomaly, maybe. Letting tiny babies suffer and die at the hands of these foul animals instead of at least trying to save them. But it wasn't the babies he needed to save. It wasn't the babies he needed to protect. With one last glance at the tiny thrashing limbs of the Gunther baby and the larger thrashing limbs and gnawing teeth of the gaunt, black-haired rotted woman feasting on the soft, new flesh, Foreman grabbed Chase's shaking arm and yanked it hard until Chase was following him quickly, stumbling down the hall and into an empty patient room, slamming the door behind him, then barricading it with all of the moveable furniture that he could find in the small room.
For a few moments it was silent but for the distant bangs and shrieks down the corridor. For a few seconds Foreman and Chase stood staring at one another, wide-eyed and frozen, Chase's mouth hanging slightly open like some cartoon guppy fish and Foreman pictured all of the hospital in chaos while they stood motionless in their own pocket of stillness. He had seen it. He had seen how many zombies had infiltrated the hospital once they finally breached the back door and he had seen the death and destruction that they had caused in such a short amount of time when he was running through the hospital. He had seen seemingly weak, decomposing zombies with atrophied muscles somehow overtake and consume mouthfuls of flesh of dying doctors twice their size and a million times their health. He had seen pink-tinged saliva spray out of yellowed, foaming mouths convert three doctors and two patients within 20 seconds and he had seen those doctors and patients convert yet more doctors and patients into those horrifying creatures only seconds later. And he kept running. Away from everything, to nothing. Where he was running, he didn't know, but he knew if he stopped he would be lost forever. It wasn't until the wailing babies stopped him in his tracks that his feet froze. The wailing babies and the blood-curdling scream when teeth breached flesh. The babies he had abandoned. Now the sudden safety of the barricaded exam room came as a system shock, didn't feel real.
"Chase." He was suddenly very aware that he wasn't alone. That he was trapped. That outside was death. That even the hospital, where life is given, was now death. But he was not alone. His mind clung to that fact as if his life depended on it. Chase did not move, did not seem to breathe. "Chase, we have to get out of here."
"Maybe they'll leave eventually." Some wicked, false hope Chase offered but they both knew it wasn't true and Foreman answered it only with a look of serious doubt.
A stuttering, heart-hammering attempt at speaking, "But- but H-house. Cameron."
Foreman had to be the bad guy. Had to force his feelings down. Good guys die if no one is the bad guy. "Chase, they're gone already. We have to go. Now." And with that he began working on the exam room window, trying to ignore Chase's hurt look. Foreman was a murderer. Foreman was killing Cameron and House and Cuddy and everyone they had ever known. But Foreman was not going to let Chase die here. House and Cameron and Cuddy were as good as dead, if they weren't already, and both Chase and Foreman knew that death would be a blessing they should wish for their friends at this point. But Chase was alive, standing right here with Foreman. This thought repeated in Foreman's head, on a loop, as he broke the window open and scurried through it, dragging Chase roughly behind him. Then they ran. They ran for blocks and blocks. They ran on empty streets, past long-abandoned shops; the only noise or movement the occasional zombie chasing after them or rustling through some garbage can or empty cars. And they ran. The first real sunlight or sky they had seen in months other than through panes of glass was just now starting to set and Foreman grabbed Chase's wrist and ran faster than he had ever run before. He ran to nothing, leaving everything behind. It wasn't until hours later, hours of running later, that Foreman and Chase could run no more, collapsing on something soft in the dead of night where there was no noise and they slept until the sun lit over them in the sky and birds chirped them awake, and they found themselves in a soft green field, a long expanse of tiny white flowers and one old tree far off in the distance. The day before had seemed a dream, only he he had just woken and the nightmare was still real.
But now Foreman is driving and it's been miles and miles since he's seen a field or slept that deeply. It's been months since Foreman grabbed Chase and started running, and they haven't stopped yet.