Sherlock sat up slowly, his ribs throbbing worse than on the various occasions they'd been broken in the past. He'd poured almost half a bottle of hospital-grade disinfectant, iodine and all the various types of sprays and gels and other miscellaneous liquids that were in the medicine cupboard and the various stashes he had of things stolen from Bart's over the last few years on the wound and taken an assortment of anti-viral tablets and it didn't feel like a single one of them had had any effect whatsoever. That wasn't even slightly surprising. If it was that easy to kill the virus, it wouldn't have spread this far this fast.
Sherlock stood up, painfully stiff, and staggered into the bathroom, wrapped in his sheet. He shut the door and let the sheet fall to the floor then peeled the gauze off the bite, wincing slightly as it pulled at the damaged skin.
He looked in the mirror. The skin around the bite was already turning black with decay and a strange green hue was spreading through the blood vessels visible through his pale skin. He didn't have long left. All this had happened in the space of five hours. He didn't know how long Mike had been wandering around London before Sherlock found him but he guessed it wasn't as long as this. That girl in the supermarket had barely lasted over an hour. He was clinging on for longer but the bite was in a different place to theirs and he knew he was physically stronger than both of them.
He wasn't going to disillusion himself with hopes of immunity, not when the wound had already started to rot away. He knew he should end it now, if not to stop his own suffering from the stabs of barely concealable agony that kept flashing through his ribcage, at least to keep John and Mrs Hudson safe.
Until the point the pain got completely unbearable, until just before he'd turn, he'd work to find the cure. There had to be one, he wouldn't give up. He was unlikely to find it in what little time he had left but he could lie to them, not to mention himself, for that long.
He tried to take a breath but started to cough violently, flecks of dark blood spraying from his mouth into his hands. That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all. Blood meant that the virus had spread to at least one of his lungs. It wouldn't be much longer, now. He had to get to work before it was too late.
Sebastian woke up behind a bar, definitely not for the first time in his life, and waved several flies off his face. The morning sunlight, despite how weak and how many clouds dimmed it, set explosions off in his head. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and he could taste bile in the back of his throat. He sat up slowly and banged his head on one of the beer taps, adding to his already murderous hangover.
Seb leant over and threw up on the bloodstained floor, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. What the fuck had he been drinking?
He stood up slowly, shielding his eyes from the light with his arm and looking over the bar at the carnage on the floor. Corpses carpeting the floor and most of the tables, patches of the walls stained black with red splattered over it from when there's been so many of them he'd had to throw a couple of Molotov cocktails in a pointless waste of good drinks. Thousands of flies buzzed around the bodies.
He must have re-killed half the village. He hadn't killed that many in one night since Jim had taken a disliking to a certain branch of Eastern European mafia when he was first trying to make a name for himself in organised crime. He smirked at the memory and stood up, pulling his sunglasses out of his pocket and putting them on in an attempt to make his headache slightly better.
Although now he had to think. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to stay in this area. Even though there'd never been many people and he'd probably managed to kill most of them by now, he had to wonder if it was safe to keep Jim in the area, totally defenceless against the zombies. The old house in London made more sense tactically but he didn't want to go back there unless he was alone. As far as he could tell from the research he had to do a few years ago, Molly Hooper probably wouldn't have it in her to kill Jim, not yet at least. But she'd probably work up some courage if Sebastian left her with him for long enough.
Probably time to go back to the house then. Sebastian shoved a bottle of scotch in each of the pockets of his baggy jeans and wandered back to his car.
Molly sat up in bed, slightly startled by the unfamiliar surroundings until she remembered the previous day, then feeling even worse. She wasn't at home. She might never go back there again. In the panic of fleeing and finding out who she was fleeing with, Molly had nearly forgotten about everything she had to leave behind.
Her friends were in London and she hadn't even thought about calling them. Maybe it had just been an out-of-character attack of pessimism yesterday but she hadn't even tried to contact anyone to see if they were alive.
She picked up her phone and stared at the black screen for a few seconds. She didn't know if she'd rather have a lot of messages or none. None meant... It meant they were all dead. But a lot meant they were worried about her or dying without knowing what happened to her.
She unlocked it nervously. There were ten texts from Sherlock, all with instructions about coming to Baker Street and the places she should avoid. A few more from John, saying pretty similar things. There was a single voicemail from Sherlock which seemed just to be ten seconds of complete silence.
The most recent text was only from an hour or so ago. That meant that at least he was still alive.
"Are you alive? SH" the text said, like several others before it. If Sherlock was sending that many, he really must be worried.
"Yes. Molly xx" she quickly typed back, feeling guilty about taking so long to reply to such an important message.
Then below all those other texts and voicemails, the ones from her parents. It started with ones from their home number, her mum asking if she was okay with all the strange things going on in the city that day.
Then from her mum's mobile number; "we're going up to the hospital, when we were out shopping earlier there was a young man, he must have been a drug addict, and he bit your dad. Actually bit him. Anyway, it doesn't look serious but he doesn't want to get tetanus or something. Honestly, the whole city's going to the dogs. I'll call you when we're home again, or you can call me when you're out of your meeting."
And finally, the third one. There wasn't much speech on it that she could make out, a lot of it was too quiet or blurred by sobs until right at the end: "We've always been proud of you, love, even if your father never really showed it." There were a few seconds of silence. "I'm sorry..." Was the final whisper.