When It All Comes Down
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WARNING! It is Extremely important that you read this part so you know what you're getting yourself into!
This story is labeled 'Horror' & 'Tragedy' for a reason. Its about survival and, unfortunately, not everyone will.
This story will be a 'real-world', so to speak, interpretation of a viral outbreak. Chapters will probably be pretty long (there's alot going on) but the total ch. count should be less than 10-ish.
It will be mildly similar to a zombie story and I know what you're thinking... it's been done before... well of course it has... damn near everything has. Why do it? 3 reasons- 1) zombies are f'ing awesome, 2) all the other one's I've read are a little far fetched in terms of 'setup' and emotional devistation and 3) my usual reason... why the hell not?
I'll try to keep it grounded in the 'real world' as much as possible but I'll warn you, parts of this will be difficult to read. It is not intended for the younger readers in this fandom and will quickly move from 'T" to 'M' as things become intense... as a result, *sighs* I don't expect too many people to read it but for those of you who do, feel free to call me on it when things stray too far from 'real' and moves toward 'campy'... with that said...
This story will be Seddie but, don't expect them to pounce each other right off the bat... a 'slow burn' is always better anyway.
It's a bit of an AU in that I'm ignoring iOMG and iLMM and starting 'fresh', so to speak... Also, having never been to Seattle, I'll be taking various liberties with the geography... sorry... Oh, and I'm going to apologize in advance to anyone who lives there for the truly horrible things I'm about to do to your city... now...
Disclaimer: (Will apply through all chapters, 'cause I ain't typing this thing over and over again) Like all the rest... I don't own iCarly, characters, etc, yadda, yadda, yadda... Here we go...
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Chapter 1: Outbreak
Rabies- (pathology) A viral disease that causes acute encephalitis in warm-blooded animals and people, characterised by abnormal behavior such as excitement, aggressiveness, and dementia, followed by paralysis and death...
Mutation- a change in a genomic sequence: the DNA sequence of a cell's genome or the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. It can be defined as sudden and spontaneous changes in the cell. It can also be induced by the organism itself, by cellular processes such as hypermutation...
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Carly and Freddie sat on the couch of the Shay's apartment silently watching the local news when Sam barges in through the front door and carelessly tosses her backpack to the floor. "What goes on, people?" she asks on her way to the kitchen.
Neither responded, their wide eyes still glued to the TV. "Hey, guys!" Sam tried again as she made her way to the couch with the little baggie of 'emergency bacon' she kept hidden in the fridge and flopped down beside Freddie. "Hello? What are you-" she started before being interrupted.
"Shhh!" her best friends hissed together. Sam furrowed her brown in annoyance at them. "Hey, don't shush me."
"Quiet, Sam." they said together again.
Sam scoffed. "Woah, are your periods synced up too?" she asked flatly. Freddie finally tore his gaze away from the TV and gave her a disgusted look while Carly only said, "Ew, Sam. Gross." while keeping her eyes locked on the screen.
Sam narrowed her eyes at Freddie for a moment before turning her attention to the broadcast. "What are y'all watching?"
Freddie sighed and leaned back into the couch, nervously running his hand through his hair. He knew it was pointless to ignore her. He and Carly have been sitting on the couch quietly watching the news for almost an hour before Sam had arrived. In that time, he had been growing more uneasy as the seconds passed and the reports kept coming in. "There's some kind of new virus going around. Apparently, a few dozen people, including some students from Ridgeway, have had to be hospitalized."
"What's the big chizz?" Sam countered. "People get sick all the time."
"It's a big deal, Sam, because they don't know what's causing it."
"Pfft, whatever, nub." She sank back into couch and an odd feeling started to come over her... it wasn't one she felt often, but it happened often enough to be recognizable... concern. "Umm... is it anyone we know?" she asked tentatively.
Carly blinked a few times and turned to look to her best friend who's head was down and looking at her fidgeting fingers, anxiously awaiting an answer. "We don't know. They're not releasing any names. That's why we're watching." Sam only nodded and turned her attention back to the TV.
While she didn't recognize many of the medical words, she was able to pick up on a few of the others. Paranoia. Aggression. Fear. And though she'd never admit it... she was a little afraid. What if one of her other friends was one of the ones infected. What if they didn't make it? From the reports she was hearing, no one has died yet but, as with any unknown contagion, that could change... soon.
The CDC was being called in to investigate this most recent unknown outbreak, but they wouldn't be arriving for a few days. Apparently, this small infection didn't warrant their undivided attention. This news only served to make the three friends even more nervous.
"Freddie," Sam almost whispered, "everything's going to be okay, right?" She just wanted reassurance but didn't want Carly to hear... Sam's best friend didn't do well in high stress situations.
Freddie gave her an incredulous look and shrugged. "I hope so but, how should I know?"
"'Cause, you're the smartest geek I know... nerd."
"Wow... a back hand full of knuckles with that compliment."
Sam rolled her eyes and smacked him on the shoulder. "Just answer the question."
"Well, the CDC is coming soon. I'm sure they'll figure something out." He reached out and reassuringly patted her on the knee. "It'll be fine."
"Nub."
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But things weren't fine. New reports kept coming in about this new virus. More people became infected, more people kept coming to the hospital seeking medical attention and soon they were nearly overwhelmed... But, luckily, this virus seemed to be localized... for the time being.
Three days later, the CDC arrived in Seattle, assessed the situation, and quarantined Seattle Memorial Hospital while their top virologists set to work. They were worried about a new pandemic, given the rate at which it spread, but when no new patients turned up after a week, the CDC and the rest of Seattle breathed a collective sigh of relief... but two weeks later, the first victims started dying.
A new wave of panic struck the metropolitan area when word got out that this virus was fatal. The CDC quickly set up a Biosafety Level 4 facility in the hospital to study the virus with the hope of understanding what it was and how it worked - and, most importantly, how to kill it.
Complete with their white biohazard suits and separate air supplies, the first scientists entered the negatively pressurized room to begin the first of the autopsies...
For a week, they studied the microbe in agonizing detail. They ran genetic tests and mapped its DNA only to discover something that stunned them... The virus underneath their microscopes was rabies...
"Rabies?" Carly asked the CDC spokesman on the TV.
Freddie looked over at her and frowned. "Not exactly."
"What do you mean, 'not exactly?'" Sam shouted from the kitchen.
"My mom..."
"Psycho."
"Sam!" Carly scolded.
Freddie rolled his eyes and continued. "My mom said that she overheard some of the CDC people talking and-"
"Wait. Your mom was at Seattle Memorial when it happened?" Carly inquired as Sam sat on the coffee table in front of them.
"Duh." said Sam, casually muching a Fat-Cake.
Carly was miffed. Freddie told Sam and not her? Her agitation was clearly written across her face and before she could voice her frustration at being kept out of the loop again, Freddie noticed and spoke up. "I didn't want you to worry." he said sheepishly. "You tend to freak out."
Carly flipped her hair back and crossed her arms and let out a huff. "Do not." she defended.
"Sorry, Carls, but, and as much as it kills me to say this, Fredlumps is right." Sam said, patting Carly on the knee. Freddie just smirked and continued.
"Anyway, she said that it's not exactly like rabies. It's like some kind of mutation."
Just then Spencer walked into the living room out of his bedroom with three plastic blue ducks and a stuffed buffalo. "Ooo!" He said excitedly. "You mean like a Ninja Turtle?"
Sam, Carly, and Freddie groaned loudly. "No, Spencer. Like a random genetic mutation. The kind that happens in nature." Freddie said matter-of-factly. "Oh." was Spencer's reply as he headed out the door shouting, "I'm going to Socko's. Don't forget to floss!" over his shoulder as he left. They just ignored him- Spencer will be Spencer.
"So..." Carly started hesitantly. "It's like..." "Evolution." Sam finished for her.
Carly and Freddie looked at Sam in semi-disbelief. "What?" Sam countered. "I know stuff."
They all chuckled together for a moment before Freddie spoke up again. "We know, Sam. And you're right. It's... evolution."
...
Three weeks have passed and no new cases of, what the CDC has dubbed Rabies-SMH, had emerged and Seattle was finally able to let it's guard down a little. Seattle Memorial Hospital remained under strict quarantine while the virus was still being analyzed and Freddie was growing more annoyed everyday that his mother was not at work. Summer was supposed to be relaxing and not a myriad of tick baths and anti-bacterial spray... 'No seventeen year old should be so smothered.' he mused.
Any remaining victims of the virus have passed on, one hundred and sixty four in total, none of whom the iCarly team knew personally, much to their relief. And while Sam and Carly may have relaxed considerably, Freddie was still on edge, although he tried to keep it hidden. Intrigued by his mother's explanation, he looked up the word 'mutation' and the phrase 'sudden and spontaneous' was etched into his mind... a thought he couldn't shake... and he couldn't relax completely but, instead, settled for cautious optimism... turns out, his skepticism was warranted.
He knew that a cure or vaccine was potentially months or even years away - if one was possible at all - and subconsciously he'd began to prepare for the worst. He bought extra bottled water when he and his mother would go shopping, canned foods with long shelf lives and, for reasons unknown to him, he even stocked up on Fat-Cakes.
While out on a routine sweep of the surrounding area looking for the host of this new virus, the CDC stumbled upon a man, long dead and decomposing, and in autopsy they discovered something else... this man was patient zero - the first one infected - a drifter with no place to call 'home' - but what worried them most was that Rabies-SMH was still alive within him... and if they would've had time to do a proper analysis, they would've learned one final thing... nestled among the rotting flesh, the virus had mutated again...
A careless slip of the scalpel was all it took.
The scientist panicked and fled the facility as quickly as he could without drawing attention... He was now the new patient zero for what would later be dubbed, Rabies-SMH-2.
But this new virus was not like the others. Evolution had prompted the rabies virus to do something it had never done before... keep the host alive. While its basic design remained nearly unchanged, the effect it had on those it infected was drastically different.
And as the careless scientist learned, the first of these effects was the speed at which it spread throughout the body... No longer did it take weeks or months to incubate... it had evolved again, mutated, and now, it only took hours...
Within the first twelve hours of exposure he had developed a fever as his immune system fought back but, once the virus had breached the blood-brain barrier, its rate of replication exploded and within the span of four hours it had managed to cause the encephalitis - the swelling of the brain - of its progenitor strain, rendering conscious thought impossible.
And as the next two hours passed, SMH-2 had demonstrated two more traits of its parent strain - the increase in aggression - and most disturbingly, the urge to bite that allowed it to spread.
The scientist went into a rage and attacked his wife and two children, sinking his teeth into their flesh as cries of 'Please, stop!' and 'Daddy, no!' echoed throughout the cramped hotel room... eighteen hours, that was the window... from first contact to full infection... and in that time, it had already caused a devoted husband and father to attack and infect those closest to him... and now there were four.
As they spread from the hotel attacking all they came across - men, women, children, the virus didn't care... it's sole purpose was to spread, to endure - four became eight, eight became sixteen, sixteen became thirty two and, by dawn, over a thousand were infected.
Panic gripped the streets, people fled for their lives as this newly formed 'horde' blindly attacked anyone not fast enough to escape. News reports came in from intrepid reporters foolhardy enough to get close...
"What do you mean the virus is back?" Carly shrieked
"Calm down, kid." Sam tried to sooth.
"Calm down? Calm down?" she screamed again. "How can you tell me to calm down?" Carly stood up and began her frantic pacing. "There's some kind of... of... plague or something out there, and you're telling me to calm down?"
"Carly." Freddie pleaded as he, too, rose from his seat.
"No, Freddie!" she fumed, gesturing to the window. "People are dying out there and the ones who are lucky enough to survive are being turned into freaks!"
But before Freddie could respond, Gibby casually strolled through the door. "Sup, guys."
Sam rolled her eyes and mumbled, just loud enough for everyone to hear, "And speaking of freaks..."
Now it was Freddie's turn to roll his eyes. "Hey, Gib."
"Hi, Gibby." Carly greeted, somewhat less than sweetly, still breathing quickly from her earlier outburt... "Why are you here?"
"Did you guys hear?" Gibby asked excitedly.
Sam saw the anger building behind Carly's eyes again and before her best friend could fly off the handle again, Sam patted her shoulder. "C'mon, it's Gibby..." she said by way of explanation.
"They finally found a way to make a hot dog glow in the dark!"
They all stared at their peculiar friend for a moment, in awe of his cluelessness. "What?"
"Gibby, haven't you been watching the news?" asked Freddie.
Gibby stared at him for a second before he asked, "About the hotdogs?" and started walking toward the island in the kitchen.
"Gibby!"
Carly let out a clearly frustrated huff. "No. There's some kind of... something... going on and people keep attacking each other. Some are getting killed and some are being... transformed into... something." she said, her arms flailing about, trying to make a point to a situation she didn't fully understand.
They all stared at Gibby for a moment waiting for the realization to sink in... "Ooohh." was his reply as he hopped up onto the bar stool. "Like zombies or something?"
Sam, Carly, and Freddie shot each other confirming looks. "Close enough." Freddie added. Unfortnately, Gibby had a follow up. "Like... they eat brains and stuff?"
Freddie's shoulders slumped in defeat. "No. They don't eat brains." He opened his mouth to speak again but quickly closed it. 'What's the use.' he thought to himself with a sigh.
"Oh, Gibby." Sam mocked. "If they did eat brains, at least you wouldn't have anything to worry about." And with a quick pat on the shoulder, she left him to his thoughts.
Suddenly the door slammed open and given the tense nature of the situation outside, everyone in the apartment nearly jumped out of their skin. "Fredward, are you okay? You haven't been home in hours. Where have you been? What are you doing over here? Do you have any idea what's going on outside?" asked Mrs. Benson in a flurry.
"You should really start locking that door." Sam mumbled to Carly who nodded in agreement.
"Mom, I'm fine." Freddie whined as he mother embraced him in a clearly uncomfortable hug. "Oh, my little Freddiebear." she cooed at him while the rest couldn't suppress their giggles, "You weren't bitten were you?"
He managed to tear himself away and shook his head. "No, mom, I'm fine. We were just talking about what's going on."
"And zombies." Gibby chimed in.
Freddie sighed heavily and shook his head. He knew where this was going. "Freddie! What have I told you about zombies?"
"C'mon, mom." He whined again. "Freddie." Marissa said firmly. He closed his eyes and dropped his head and mumbled, "If a zombie tries to eat your head, very soon you'll end up dead."
Sam couldn't suppress the laugh that escaped her lips but quickly clapped a hand over her mouth to lessen the volume.
"That's right, Freddiekins. You stay away from them!"
"I will, mom. Can you just-"
"Mrs. Benson," Carly interrupted, "what is going on out there?" she asked, pointing toward the window.
"I need to talk to my Freddie about this first." Marissa said, grabbing her son by the wrist, "Come on, Freddie.", and leading him to their apartment, before pausing in the Shay's doorway. "I'll let Freddie explain everything to you all later... but until then. Ladies, gent-" she started in a bid goodbye before looking at the chubby kid who had managed to stuff a peanut up his nose, "Gibby." she corrected, and promptly left.
They all stared at the closed door in disappointment. They were so close to getting the answers they wanted, they needed, to know. Sam glanced over to Carly and saw her blinking quickly, a nervous habit that Sam rarely saw... she knew Carly was clearly frightened and that her mind was working at a feverish pace... in an effort to calm her friend, Sam threw an arm around Carly and opened her mouth to speak, but Gibby spoke up first.
"Should I be offended?"
"Yes!" Sam snapped, turning away from his hurt expression to Carly. "I'm sure we'll find out everything tomorrow." she comforted. Carly could only sigh and nod. "Yeah, I guess you're right, Sam. We'll find out tomorrow."
"About the hot dogs?"
"Gibby!"
...
The following day, Carly, Sam, Spencer, and Gibby sat in the Shay's living room anxiously awating Freddie's return. The room was utterly silent, save for the occasional scream heard on the streets below their eighth floor apartment. Carly flinched, Sam remained calm, Spencer was uncharacteristically quiet, while Gibby ate pudding to keep his mind occupied, when the shrieks of terror reverberated through the loft.
After several agonizing minutes that felt like hours, Freddie finally knocked on the door. Once inside, the group noticed on his face a look of unadulterated despair. As they led him inside and to the couch, he was bombarded by questions that were festering on their minds. After a few minutes of unspeaking quiet he finally started talking, ending the frantic questions of his friends.
He laid out all his mother had told him about SMH-2. How it seemed to work, how it was so similar to rabies, but also, how it was so drastically different.
"Do you guys know how many people around the world that rabies affects every year?" he asked, only to be met with blank stares. "About fifty five thousand." he replied in answer to his own question. He nervously ran a hand through his brown hair as he continued. "And since the beginning of recorded medical history, do you know how many people, out of the millions who have been infected, have survived the infection without a vaccine or treatment?"
"I don't know. Like a few thousand?" Spencer offered.
Freddie sighed sadly and looked down at his fidgeting fingers. "No. Just one. One person." Gasps filled the room before falling silent again. "Once rabies reaches its full 'infection' stage, there's nothing you can do." He briefly shook his head, trying to recall what his mother had told him. "Um, there's some kind of experimental treatment... but its not really very effective... only like six or so of them survived... so even with treatment, the total number of people to have survived a full blown rabies infection is still less than ten..."
"But there is a vaccine though, right?" Carly asked. "Almost nobody dies of rabies here in the U.S."
"That's the thing." Freddie continued. "There was a vaccine with the old strain. But this new one..."
He looked around at the disbelief written on the faces of his friends, and though it hurt him to continue, he knew they needed to know... "Nothing seems to be effective... My mom said something about MRSA, or something like that, and how, over time, a virus or bacterium can become resistant to medication..."
"What's mursah?" Sam asked.
"MRSA is basically a staph infection that's evolved to become immune to to the family of penicillins used to treat it. If you really wanna know, Sam, just look it up. It's not that important here." Sam gave him an indignant look but otherwise remained silent.
"So, what then? There's no stopping this thing?" Gibby finally chimed in.
All eyes shot to Freddie, fear gripping them as knots formed in their stomachs. "No." was his only reply, not being able to meet their gazes.
Carly finally broke down in tears, her pent up anxiety and fear of the past couple of weeks finally getting the better of her. "So... we're all going... to... die?" she sobbed.
Spencer went to hold his little sister, whispering calming nothings that he knew were pointless now but, he hoped would ease her mind, silently knowing that they never would...
Sam laid a hand on Freddie's forearm, resisting the urge to breakdown herself, in an effort to keep Freddie from throwing up judging by the look on his face. "So what now?" she asked him.
Freddie sighed and leaned back into the couch and covered her hand with his. "Mom said she found out today that, under recommendation from the CDC, the National Guard has been called in... Seattle has been quarantined."
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coming soon-ish: Chapter 2 - Quarantine...
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a/n: for those of you who care, this story is being written in tandem with another one (i'm sort of on a zombie kick lately) and as a result, won't be updated all that frequently (maybe once a week or so).
this chapter was mainly set up and, as a result, was a little slow, but starting in ch. 2, things start moving along...
also, this is my 1st iCarly story and since i'm not an avid viewer, my characterizations may be a bit off resulting in a little OOC-ness from time to time... best i can figure Carly=prissy, Sam=aggressive and snarky, Freddie=kind hearted nerd, Gibby=insane, and Spencer=spaztic... that should get me about 90% of the way there...
hope you liked it!