A/N: Okay, so I know that technically this is a crossover, but…well frankly, posting in the crossover section would likely not merit a whole lot of viewing, and I've worked too bloody hard on this thing, lmao.

Sooo, for those of you who haven't seen Lost, some of the references will be…har har, lost on you…but I promise, you'll still be able to enjoy this fic. It has nothing to do with the actual plot of Lost, I'm just including some of its characters as if they existed only in the Lie to Me universe.

Anyway, on with the show. I present to you: Zombie!fic 2010!

x x x

Cal Lightman awoke in his hospital bed that afternoon with a very strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. Maybe it was the fact that his scruff was three times longer than usual. Maybe it was the utter lack of noise. Maybe it was the chill in the air. Whatever the reason, Cal felt it. Something was very wrong.

"Ow! Bollocks," Cal groaned as he tried to get up, searing pain in his ribs. His head ached, and he felt a bandage wrapped around it. He lay back down, vaguely remembering the incident that had landed him where he was: the brother of a man he'd helped convict of murder had found him and beaten him into a coma.

The last thing Cal remembered was thinking that he wished he'd told Gillian how he felt about her…then everything had gone black. Now, here he was, god only knew how long it had been, and he was alone. He could barely stand, but he had to try. It was too quiet out there.

"Nurse!" Cal called out several times, but there was no response. Taking a deep breath and mustering what little strength he had in him, he stood up, tore the IVs from his arm, and somehow managed to reach the door. Nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to discover.

The hospital was completely abandoned; a virtual ghost town. Something smelled awful. It was far worse than the normal medicine-y smell of a hospital. It smelled like…death. Raw, decaying death.

As he made his way down the hall and through a set of double doors, the smell intensified. Then he saw it. "Bloody hell!" he shouted, nearly falling over at the sight before him. It was a man…or, rather, what was left of a man. His entire chest and abdomen had been ripped open. Organs appeared to be missing, intestines were strewn about, and his face was half gnawed away.

"What the Christ?" Cal asked, covering his mouth and nose. "Poor sod," he muttered, wondering what in the name of everything holy had happened to this man, whose janitor jumpsuit was embroidered with the name Phil.

Cal soldiered on, his fear building. Where was Emily? Where was Gillian? Who or what had done that to poor old Philly-boy? He had to find answers, and fast. Stumbling out the hospital's double doors and into the light of day, the world did not look at all the way he'd left it. There were body bags lined up along the outside of the hospital. Everything everywhere looked dead or dying. The air was unusually cold for August, and Cal could see more rotting corpses like Phil's lying about on the grass in the distance.

He could have choked on the awful stench that filled his nostrils. Why was there so much death? Emily! Gillian! Where were they? Panic surged through him; the idea of the two loves of his life ending up as a vulture's dinner made him convulse. They had to be alive somewhere, they simply had to be. He looked around, searching for any sign of life, anything at all, but there was nothing. Nothing but death.

He knew where he had to go first. Adrenaline coursing through his veins, Cal made use of an abandoned bicycle and pedaled his way to the Lightman Group.

x x x

"Gill? Gillian? Emily!" Cal called out frantically as he staggered through the hall of his deserted workplace. He burst through the door of Gillian's office. Chairs had been overturned, papers strewn about, pictures missing from her desk and her computer smashed. The place looked as though it had been ransacked. He began to panic even further. The entire building looked the way her office did. His office was a mess, the lab had been trashed, and…there was that smell again.

Following his nose led him to a sight he wished he hadn't come upon. "Ah!" he exclaimed, in horrified surprise. Anna, the receptionist, lay in a pool of her own blood, not looking much better than poor old Phil had. He picked up the phone at the desk, but there was no dial tone. Slamming it down in frustration, he proceeded to try every phone and television he could get his hands on. None worked. "Bollocks!" he shouted, chucking a remote control at the wall.

He slumped down into a chair, tears stinging his eyes. Where was everyone? Were the people he loved safe? Why did he keep coming across half-eaten human remains? He had to get home. Maybe Emily was there. He had no idea what was going on or if he'd ever see anyone again; all he knew was he had to try.

x x x

Cycling home had drained him of most of his energy, but the adrenaline was thankfully enough to keep him going. He saw several more bodies along the way, though he tried not to pay attention to them. It seemed the entire city was dead. How could he be the only living being left?

"Emily?" he shouted as he burst through the door of his home, which, he noticed, had been left unlocked. "Em!" he called after a few moments' silence. Breathing heavily, he began to lose hope that he'd find her alive. Then, there was a noise from upstairs. Someone was coming down. "Emily!" he called excitedly. But it was not his daughter that appeared on the steps.

"Don't move or I'll shoot!" The voice came from a tall blonde woman pointing a rifle directly between his eyes.

"Who the bloody hell are you?" Cal asked incredulously, staring at her in confusion, "And what are you doin' in my house?"

"I said don't move!" she repeated commandingly, as Cal took a step forward.

"Whoa, Blondie, hold up," a male voice with a southern drawl said from the top of the stairs, "You know they don't talk," he said, appearing behind the woman.

"He could be infected," she said softly, turning and looking into his eyes, gun still raised.

"He just said it's his house," the man told her, "Put the gun down, sweetheart. Let's just talk to him and find out, alright?" he requested sweetly, kissing the side of her head.

She nodded once in agreement and slowly lowered her weapon, turning her attention back to Cal. "This really your house?"

"See that picture there, with me in it? Yes, it's my house!" he said sarcastically, "Where's my daughter, what have you done with her, and what the blazes is goin' on around here?" he demanded.

"Your daughter?" the woman asked, brow furrowed, "This place was abandoned when we found it. We've been in this neighborhood a week, no one's come. No one living, anyway," she explained. "Your bandages…did you get bitten?"

"Bitten?" Cal repeated in confusion.

"Yes, bitten. Did anything…how did you get injured?"

"Crazy bastard knocked the hell outta me, but he didn't bite me. Next thing I knew, I was wakin' up in an abandoned hospital and stumblin' upon people with their guts ripped out. Why?" Cal asked, growing more impatient by the second. Emily hadn't been home in over a week? How long had he been out?

"When?" the man asked him, "What was the date when that happened?"

"I, uh, August. The 15th, if I recall," Cal said, "Why, what's the date now?"

The man and woman looked at one another, and he detected realization and pity in their shared glance. "It's November. The 10th," the woman told him softly.

"Three months? I've been gone nearly three months?" Cal exclaimed in disbelief. "What happened? Why did you ask if I'd been bitten? Where's my family?"

"I don't know where your family is, but the world…it isn't the same anymore. There was a virus. We don't know how or why, but it started infecting people. They died, and then came back, and," she sighed, "Well, you saw what started happening. The Walkers…if they bite you, they infect you with the virus, and you eventually die and become one of them. Our friend Daniel can explain it better than we can, but suffice it to say…the world as we know it is over. We have people in the houses down the road. We're here getting food and supplies, and we're taking everything back to our camp outside the city tomorrow morning. The Walkers don't wander out there. You can come with us if you want to," she offered, "It's a lot safer than staying here alone."

"No, no, I have to find my daughter. If she's not here, she's out there somewhere, probably scared out of her mind, and I have to find her."

"Look, with all due respect, Tony Blair, my wife's right. Your best chance is comin' with us."

"Tony Blair? Couldn't come up with anything cleverer than that?" Cal joked, reality not quite sinking in just yet. "Lightman. Cal Lightman."

"I'm Juliet Ford," the woman introduced herself with a soft smile, stepping up to him and extending her hand, "And this is my husband, James."

"Whattaya say we take you over to Dan's? He'll probably confuse the hell outta ya, but he still knows a hell of a lot more than we do," James suggested.

"I think maybe I should get presentable first," Cal replied, looking at himself, realizing he was still wearing a hospital gown.

Juliet nodded, "Take your time. We'll wait."

Cal wandered upstairs, first going into Emily's room. She'd been here, he knew it. Pictures were missing, just like in Gillian's office, and most of her drawers were empty. His girls were still alive and out there somewhere, he had to believe that.

He went into his own room and changed clothes, grabbing a bag and tossing some more articles inside. He grabbed his toothbrush and paste from the bathroom, some soap, a hairbrush, and a picture Loker had taken last Christmas – Cal standing in front of the Lightman Group's tree, one arm around each of his favorite girls. "Don't worry, loves. I'll find you," he promised the faces smiling up at him from the picture frame. He made his way back downstairs with his bag in hand, and found James and Juliet in the living room.

"Ready?" James asked, standing up and taking his wife's hand.

Cal nodded, "As I'll ever be, I suppose," he agreed. And off they went.