Sorry for being a few days late again but this is a very long chapter so it sort of makes up for that. I'm also on holiday so think yourselves lucky you've got one at all with this crappy wifi. (I was going to upload this last night but it died...)
My friend, (who is the one who threatened me about character death) is, ironically, responsible for giving me the idea for the details of the death in this chapter.
I have officially given up on chapter titles.
Sebastian's face stiffened. He'd known Molly would find out about Jim eventually but he'd hoped it would be at least after they'd actually arrived at the house.
"What... What happened to him?" She said nervously, not taking her eyes off Jim.
Sebastian muttered something inaudible.
"Um..."
"He shot himself in the head." He repeated through gritted teeth, just loud enough for her to hear. "Would've thought Holmes would tell you that."
Molly looked out of the window, embarrassed. "He never tells me anything. And I've barely even seen Jim... Rich... Um, whatever his name is... Since we broke up."
"Jim." He said bluntly.
"Did he really kill all those people?" She whispered after a few seconds of tense silence.
"Not alone." Sebastian smirked.
"Oh." Molly said again, shuffling further away from him.
"Chill out, I've got better things to do than kill you. I wasn't messing when I asked if you were a doctor."
"What... What do you want me to do?"
"Look after Jimmy. Don't know if you've noticed but I ain't exactly trained for that shit."
Molly nodded silently. She couldn't exactly run, even if she wanted to. Even if she wasn't locked in a moving ambulance with two killers in the middle of nowhere, she wouldn't want to go back to London. She dreaded what would have happened to Sherlock and John by now, not even entertaining the idea that they could have avoided the... Zombies... That were killing the city.
The ambulance finally crunched to a stop just outside the ancient manor house and Sebastian got out, wandering to the huge doors and unlocking them with an old key.
Molly opened the door of the ambulance slowly and got out, looking at the killer nervously.
"Get inside then. Nothing in there's gonna kill you."
She stared out across the dark moors. "Is something going to kill me out here?"
Sebastian shrugged and grinned at her. "Dunno. Sheep, maybe?"
Molly tried to smile back, if only to be polite, but it came out as more of a grimace.
Sebastian walked back to the ambulance and unlocked the doors, taking the brakes off the hospital bed.
"Just a bit longer, Jimmy." He whispered, obviously not meaning for Molly to hear.
He pushed the bed into the house and Molly followed silently, barely taking her eyes off the comatose crime lord. Sebastian could feel the fear radiating off her and smiled slightly. Three years and Jim still had this effect on at least one person. She seemed more terrified of them than she was of the zombies outside. That was an achievement.
"There's a room upstairs, first on the the left. Y'can sleep there. Drop your stuff up there an' then come and help me set up Jim's stuff."
Molly nodded and walked up the wooden stairs as quietly as she could, glad to be away from the two murderers for a few minutes.
The room was almost as big as her tiny flat back in London and even had what looked like an en suite on one side. The walls were painted white which had turned light yellow from sunlight and dust. The furniture was on the expensive side of 'normal'. It was nice, and fairly far away from where Sebastian had been heading when he told her to come up here.
Molly put her coat and work bag on the bed and wandered out of the room again, not thinking to check her phone. She'd left it on silent after a torturously long meeting what felt like months ago but was just that morning.
That was why she didn't notice yet another message flash up on the screen; 'Are you alive? SH'.
Mycroft sat on the side of the bath watching intently as the unconscious detective-inspector inhaled and exhaled unevenly.
Lestrade was handcuffed to a pipe in the bathroom of 221b. Sherlock had insisted that they put him in there under the pretence that he didn't want to get more bloodstains on the furniture although it seemed mostly for Mrs Hudson's benefit, who was obviously uncomfortable even being in the same room as Lestrade. Not that Mycroft blamed her. He wasn't overly fond of the concept of being within biting distance of a man who could turn into a monster with every desire to eat him either. As it was his idea, however, Mycroft had to admit, internally at least, that it was only fair he was given the first watch.
Occasionally Lestrade's eyelids flickered and Mycroft thought he might be awake but quickly discerned it was just the DI dreaming. It was something particularly vivid, judging by the way his hand kept clenching and unclenching and the way his body twitched every so often.
Mycroft had to pity him. It had been obvious from the few seconds Mycroft had seen Lestrade conscious and the tortured expressions forming on his face since then that whatever he'd seen and done in the past twenty four hours was going to leave significant and probably permanent psychological trauma. It would have been a better idea for John to have let him die.
There was a sharp, panicked breath and a clang as Lestrade tried to pull his arm away from the pipe. His eyes snapped open and immediately turned to Mycroft.
"Fucking typical." He whispered hoarsely, grimacing slightly when he sat up as the cuffs dug into his wrist.
"Lovely to see you awake, DI Lestrade."
"Piss off."
Mycroft had no doubt that if he'd had his hand free, Lestrade would have punched him in the face. Not without good reason, either.
"That's not going to happen, Gregory."
"Oh, bloody perfect. I've been bitten by a fucking zombie, had my arm hacked off with bolt cutters and now, of all the seven billion people in this fucking world, I'm stuck in the apocalypse with you." His head fell back against the wall.
Sherlock stood up and looked around the room. It appeared that he'd been talking to himself again. It was dark outside so he assumed that everyone else must have gone to bed.
But sleep was boring and he had work to do. He had to get to St Bart's. He needed at least a better microscope, not to mention whatever other equipment from the hospital he could fit in the bag he'd 'borrowed' from John, to continue his research. And Molly still wasn't answering her phone. He knew that if she was still alive she'd probably not even have left the morgue for the night, the phone signal was always bad in there. Although there was no disillusioning himself. Probability alone said that she was dead. It had to be worth looking though.
Sherlock pulled on his coat and tied his scarf round his neck, still wearing his bloody clothes from earlier in the day underneath.
John would be sleeping with his gun tonight and it appeared that Mycroft had taken the cutlass and saw with him upstairs, whether that be for self defence or the far more likely option of getting them away from his younger brother remained to be seen. Sherlock wasn't worried. At this point in time he had various kinds of both firearms and guerrilla weaponry hidden in ingenious places.
He wandered down the stairs as quietly as he could, not wanting to wake Mrs Hudson, and searched under the things in the cupboard under the stairs for the gun and silencer he'd wrestled from an assassin several months ago. He'd already started down the street when he heard the door open again.
"Where do you think you're going, Freak?"
Sherlock grimaced. Not quietly enough, apparently.
"Out, Sergeant Donovan. I would think that would be obvious." He said, not turning to face her to give her the smug satisfaction of his irritation.
"It's dark out here."
"Obviously." Sherlock said, starting to walk again. He heard Donovan starting to follow him. Typical.
"Where are you going?"
"St Bart's, if you must know." He raised the gun in front of him as he was about to turn the corner, unsure what would be around the other side. He walked in silence, the only sound was Donovan's loud footsteps and nervous breathing.
"Where the hell did you get the gun, freak?"
He shrugged. "Before you accuse me of something ridiculous, I haven't killed anyone with it."
"But someone has?"
"Obviously. It's a gun."
There were a few cars, mostly cabs, with their doors open from where the drivers had tried to run. It was obvious few had been successful from the patches of bloodstained tarmac and miscellaneous bones stripped clean of whatever muscle and flesh may once have covered them.
Sherlock stepped back into the shadows quickly and Donovan copied him, following where he was looking.
A zombie was staggering through the street, showing no particular destination. It turned and looked straight at them and Donovan stopped breathing. Sherlock didn't seem to care, just kept his eyes towards it and his gun in hand. Somewhere on the other side of the street a cat yowled and ran across the road right in front of it. The zombie leant down, somehow managing to catch it between its sluggish hands. It took a bite from the panicked creature's side, ignoring the claws digging deep into its face.
"Well?" Donovan muttered and Sherlock didn't miss the disgust in her voice.
"Well what?"
"Aren't you going to kill it?"
"Of course not. Then there'll be more of them. Idiot." Sherlock hissed, shaking his head and stalking past the dead man shovelling blood-covered pieces of furry meat between its decaying lips.
"Why the hell are you going to a hospital when you told us to stay away?" Donovan said after another few minutes walking. "They're full of zombies."
"I also told you that I was going to find a cure. That's impossible with only a microscope and a human subject."
"That's Greg you're talking about! Is that all he is to you? A bloody test subject?"
Sherlock turned and stared even more coldly than usual at her.
"Oh god, I'm right, aren't I? He's always trusted you, even when you were dead and you just think he's another corpse for you to microwave!"
Lestrade was one of Sherlock's oldest acquaintances, even if they'd never been friends until John came around. Even before that though, he'd trusted the DI with his life. Donovan wouldn't believe that with her unfeasibly narrow-minded, unshakable and completely wrong opinions of him, so Sherlock wouldn't waste his breath. He walked on ahead of her.
Donovan stepped in front of him before he could get a more than a few steps.
"You don't just get to walk aw..." Donovan froze mid-sentence as Sherlock quickly raised the gun and pulled the trigger. The bullet missed her by millimetres, cutting off several hairs and spraying her with blood from the zombie that had been just behind her, about to attack. Her mouth opened and shut silently in shock.
"Shut up unless you want to get eaten." Sherlock said, creeping towards corner that led to the hospital slowly, gun still raised ahead of him, keeping an eye out for the zombies. There were none visible on this stretch of road but that would change the second he got inside St Bart's. The disease, which he'd found to be some kind of virus, would spread quickly in an area with so many people who were unable to flee.
Donovan was still following him. He'd hoped that almost shooting her would scare her into going back to Baker Street but apparently not.
Sherlock took the keys he'd 'borrowed' from Stamford years ago from his pocket and unlocked the fire door. He wandered through cautiously, gun still raised in front of him. He'd never admit it but he was silently dreading what he might find here. Stamford hadn't answered the texts Sherlock had sent either and Sherlock knew he had been working today. Mike had tolerated him better than everyone at the hospital except Molly, it would be a shame if he was dead.
Sherlock turned. "Go back to Baker Street, Sally."
"No. What if I run into some zombies? I don't have a gun, even if yours is evidence.
Sherlock shrugged and turned, heading for the morgue first. If Molly was here, dead or alive, she'd be there and some of the equipment he'd stolen at various times were hidden in several of the lockers meant for the morgue staff.
It was quiet on this corridor, too quiet. Sherlock observed the various blood spatters on the wall, arterial spray from human victims and the almost-black blood from where someone had tried to damage the zombies but only a couple of semi-decapitated corpses, no sign of the humans who obviously been either bitten or eaten. No-one could possibly still be alive... Sherlock cursed quietly as he realised how he'd been trying to fool himself. If Molly or Stamford were here when the zombies came, they'd be dead, there was no two ways about it.
"What's up?" Donovan said and Sherlock heard her step closer to him.
"Molly is dead." He whispered, surprised at the way his voice nearly cracked as he said it out loud. He blinked hard, trying to delete the deduction but somehow failing.
"What, you can tell from her blood on the walls?" Donovan said and Sherlock could hear the slight mocking edge in her voice.
Sherlock could tell it was just to spite him but his fingers still clenched involuntarily, reflexively squeezing the trigger of the gun hard enough to fire a shot at the door at the other end of the corridor.
The glass in the door shattered and Sherlock cursed at the loud noise. There was no point trying to be discreet now. Half of him wanted to shoot Donovan now and get it over with before she got them both killed but he gritted his teeth, a snarl forming on his face, and stalked towards the door.
He opened the door, not bothering to be quiet now, looking at every single part of the room before stepping in, gun still raised.
The papers from the nurses' station were scattered and there were several up turned wheelchairs and a bed blocking one of the wards. Sherlock peered inside, again seeing a worrying lack of people, alive or otherwise. That meant that someone had known in advance and evacuated or, more likely, the dead were in packs and elsewhere, at least for now. He wandered down a different corridor away from the morgue curiously.
The corridors were fairly dark now they were further into the building. A lot of the fluorescent strip lights had been dragged down and were hanging by their wires from the ceiling in the centre of the corridor.
Sherlock didn't think to check why the doors at the other end were locked. He assumed it was just some kind of regular emergency procedure he'd deleted at some point. He unlocked it with Stamford's keys and the first few zombies fell through, falling to the ground by Sherlock's feet after being leant on the doors for so long. He jumped away, starting to run before Donovan had even noticed what was going on.
"Other way!" He yelled, turning his head for a split second to look at the pack starting to chase after them. Donovan, after being behind him for the rest of the time, was now a few steps in front. The map of the hospital and anywhere safe opened up in his mind. The labs were the closest rooms with locks on the doors and most were near the morgue.
"Left!" Sherlock instructed and Donovan turned the corner.
Sherlock ran towards the lab, Donovan still a few steps ahead of him. He overtook her and rammed the door open with his shoulder.
"Shit." He murmured, unable to hold back his anger at the defeat, staggering back from the lab door.
Donovan stopped and turned into the room before Sherlock could stop her and the dead students lunged for her, one managing to seize the edge of her top. Sherlock grabbed her other arm and tried to pull her away but the others caught up, snatching her legs from under her and biting down hard as they tried to drag her away from the others.
"Help!" Sally managed to scream as Sherlock let go of her arm, falling away.
Blood spurted from her neck as one of the dead students sank his yellowing teeth onto her. The others pulled harder, trying to drag her squirming body away from their competition. Her free arm reached out for Sherlock again but one of the writhing mass of undead caught it before he could even consider going for it.
Her screams were turning into animalistic howls of agony and Sherlock heard something tear. Donovan shot Sherlock one final agonised, terrified look as the zombies pulled her body in half, glistening viscera and blood cascading to the floor into the desperate hands of the weaker zombies who instantly started to shovel the still-attached organs into their bloody mouths.
The detective finally shook himself out of shock, knowing that now they'd killed Donovan, they'd notice him. He stood up and ran, sprinting as fast as he could towards the morgue.
So that happened. My only apology is for the death of an innocent (albeit fictional) cat. Assume what you like about Stamford for now. I haven't decided his fate yet. I'm not sure if I ruined this chapter with the end there but there's more to come...
