Author's Note:
Final Author's Note:
Thank you so much for your support throughout this story. You are all super awesome and I wouldn't have finished it without your feedback and enthusiasm!
As a side note, I am now in love with the idea of Mikel and Eliot's baby... :D I hope you are too.
I will be taking a hiatus on writing for a little while...unless I come up with another idea in the near future (ideas welcome!).
Thanks again. Age of the Geek!
Please review the full story!
Epilogue:
"I don't see it anywhere!" Parker fussed ripping open boxes left and right.
Her voice echoed down a row in the cavernous warehouse to where Hardison and Nate were pulling more oversized moving boxes from the higher shelves.
"Be careful!" Sophie called up to Hardison as the metal shelving wobbled slightly.
"I'm fine." Hardison huffed.
"You won't be if we don't find it soon." Sophie's British nagging tone was bubbling to the surface of her worried voice.
"Guys!" Parker yelled again.
"Nothing yet." Nate yelled back as he closed another useless box and shoved it to the side.
"I know, but we have company!" She yelled.
Immediately, Parker darted around the corner toward them. It didn't take long before they heard the grunting and heavy footsteps of zombies headed their way.
"I've got them." Sophie said confidently.
The skinnier zombie hobbled and moaned its way down the aisle toward them followed closely by a zombie the size of a walrus. The pus leaked from every crevice and his shirt was stained in a mucus green color.
Parker ducked as Sophie's gun erupted bursting through the sound barrier skyrocketing toward the slender zombie who was fast approaching.
The tranquilizer dart stuck straight in his neck and as the serum drained into his veins he quickly fell like a limp fish to the ground.
The heavier zombie kept barreling toward them. Sophie gave the group a smirk and sent a dart straight into his chest.
"That was the best you could do?" Hardison chided downward from on top of the shelving unit.
"It hit him, didn't it?" She called back glaring up at him.
"Shoot him again." Nate said.
"Well, you had a lot of space to work with." Hardison returned, waving at the zombie's enormous form and ignoring Nate's caution.
"He's still coming at us!" Parker screeched echoing Nate's comments. She now regretted giving the only tranquilizer bullets they had left to Sophie. She was obviously more preoccupied with bickering than taking care of the immediate threat that charged toward them shaking the ground.
The zombie's face was scrunched up in pain, and it appeared as though he had begun gnawing on his arm in desperation for flesh.
The zombie was closer now and Sophie finally shot him a second time.
"Uhh." Hardison said nervously looking down at the group and back at the elephant that continued to storm down the row toward his friends. The two tranquilizer darts did nothing.
"Again?" Hardison offered weakly.
"It's my last one." Sophie said nervously.
After the cure was found the tranquilizer cures took care of zombie's left and right. On their latest mission they hadn't even bothered bringing other weapons, knowing that they could just cure the zombies rather than kill them. They were all now realizing that that was a big mistake.
"Do it!" Nate yelled, grabbing for the back of Sophie's shirt to pull her back.
The enormous mucus filled creature was now mere feet away and showed no signs of slowing down.
Sophie's eyes went wide and she shot off her last tranquilizer dart. This time it hit him smack in the forehead and drained straight into his skull.
Everyone watched as he slowed and wavered. Parker let out a soft breath of relief until it caught in her throat as the large warehouse worker zombie started forward again.
Parker looked up at Hardison and without warning leapt onto a box and into the air, reaching up for Hardison's hand. He quickly grabbed it, pulling her up onto the shelving unit beside him.
"Get her up." Hardison yelled down to Nate, kneeling to reach for Sophie's arm.
"It's almost here!" Parker screeched as Nate and Sophie backed up, ready to turn and run.
Parker wasn't exaggerating. The mass of puss could have spit and hit them at this range. Parker shuddered at the thought.
The fat zombie was seconds away from lobbing itself at Sophie. It let out a murderous blubbering roar. Mid yell, his voice cut short and green goo splattered onto the floor.
As the zombie fell to the ground with a thud, everyone stared in horror and amusement as Eliot's form became known wielding a wooden beam, with a now unmistakable bloody stain on it.
Everything was silent as they watched him breathing heatedly.
"I think he's turning into the hulk." Hardison whispered into Parker's ear.
Parker kept her focus on Eliot, unsure whether to laugh or be nervous. She had never seen him like this before, ever. Even when things had been at their worst, he had never been more stressed out than he was at this moment.
"I said we needed to leave." Eliot said slowly in the voice that caused mountains to quiver in fear.
Each looked at the other.
"We haven't found it yet." Sophie said cautiously.
"I-DON'T-CARE. I don't fucking have time for this!" He clawed both of his hands through his hair. Parker was sure he would rip it out altogether.
Parker was about to hop down when Hardison let out a whoop of success.
"Found it!" Hardison called, dragging a box from the back of the shelf and easing it down to Nate.
"LET'S GO!" Eliot shrieked, not being able to handle the rest of the team's ability to procrastinate at such a time. He looked frantically back down at his watch and stormed forward.
Sophie figured that they could have shot Eliot with twenty tranquilizer darts and it would have had no effect. He was a man on a mission and nothing and no one would get in his way.
Eliot stormed forward and grabbed Parker by the wrist as she stepped down from the massive shelf and Sophie by the arm pulling them forward with him and dragging them toward the exit.
Nate and Eliot quickly lifted the box, each taking one side and followed the trio in front out of the warehouse.
In the waiting room:
"How do you think it's going?" Sophie asked Nate as she fiddled with the edges of her shirt.
Nate's eyes were shut as he leaned back on his chair, his head resting against the wall.
"For the thousandth time, I don't know." He griped, turning his head to look at her. They had been sitting in the waiting room going on five hours and there was still no news.
Sophie cleared her throat in distaste and decided to change the subject. "So." She said nonchalantly.
"When are we going to talk about having kids of our own?"
Both Parker and Hardison looked up from the floor in awkward surprise. Both relished the opportunity to listen to the answer.
Hardison turned back and began screwing in one of the nails into the new crib that they had retrieved.
"We are not going to talk about this right now." He glanced over at a overly interested Parker. "This is definitely not the right time." Nate responded, glaring at her.
"Well, I feel like it's the perfect time to talk about it." Nate remained silent. Finally, Sophie crossed her arms and turned her head to Parker and Hardison in an annoyed fashion.
"So, almost finished yet?" She asked. She observed the scene. Both Parker and Hardison were sprawled out on the tile floor with different parts of the crib strewn around them. Parker sat with the instructions, looking at it pensively then following to tell Hardison he was building it incorrectly.
"Almost…if Parker will just tell me which screw goes on this side of the crib. I swear we've been doing this for the last three hours."
Nate piped up at this in his usual sarcastic manner. "How many thieves does it take to put together a baby's crib?"
Sophie smacked him.
Without warning something slammed and crashed up against the door to the delivery room.
A murderous scream came from the room and without another beat Chaos came stumbling out of the delivery room with a busted video camera.
"Really, was that necessary?" Sophie scolded looking down from the camera up to Chaos's red face which was currently stricken with fear.
Chaos shrugged and sat down a few chairs away from Nate, picking up a magazine and flipping through it.
"I think it's done!" Parker called in triumph.
Both Parker and Hardison turned the crib up onto its wheels. It was, by all standards the best baby crib that was made before the zombie outbreak. They had to use a variety of hacking sleuthing skills to track down the highest quality baby crib in the United States. This new baby would live in the lap of luxury. Five thieves would make sure that it wanted for nothing.
Everyone spent a few moments admiring the craftsmanship.
Immediately, the door to the delivery room swung open and Eliot all but flew into the room.
"It's coming!" His adrenaline was on high and his face transformed from horror to excitement to a look of nausea and back to horror again. He flew up to Parker and shook her a few times. "THE BABY IS COMING!"
Parker nodded, jumping up and down with him. She was seriously worried for his sanity. She had never seen him act this way before. He was an entirely different person.
As soon as he came, he disappeared back into the delivery room. Everyone went silent looking back and forth in anticipation.
Mikel and Eliot both chose not to know the sex of the baby, so everyone waited impatiently to see their new addition. No one more than Eliot.
Screams and cursing in Hebrew were heard from behind the closed doors. Everyone looked worriedly at the other unsure who would end up making it out of that room alive. Hardison mused at the thought of a screaming female retrieval specialist and felt so much better about being out of the delivery room. He subconsciously took a step back wondering what was about to be thrown out of the delivery room next.
All of a sudden, there was silence then a baby's cry broke through the air. A few minutes went by. The group could barely stand it.
Parker snuck her hand into Hardison's, squeezing it tight. He turned to her with excited eyes and pulled the back of her hand up to his lips and gave it a tender kiss. They only spent a moment gazing into the other's eyes when the delivery room door slowly opened.
Eliot walked out, looking lovingly down at the creature, folded in blankets, in his arms. Parker smiled as she watched him. Within this one moment, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his sadness had passed. His eyes watched the bundle in his arms as he slowly made his way out into the center of the room. He finally looked up.
Sophie raced up to look at the child. Chaos disappeared into the delivery room to check on Mikel. Nate, Parker and Hardison slowly walked up.
They stood in a circle around the child, looking down at it.
"It's a girl." Eliot whispered.
Everyone was silent as the quiet child lay there, encircled by the five thieves, being held by the most protective father she would ever know.
Her skin was as soft and warm as Mikel's.
Everyone watched as the precious gift in Eliot's arms wriggled, and then it happened.
The tiny figure in Eliot's arms opened her eyes. They were magnificent. It was piercing look that Eliot always gave. She didn't cry, she didn't struggle, she just took in the large forms before her in curiosity, ready to face the world without fear.
"She's beautiful." Nate breathed reaching out.
"She's perfect." Eliot added without the slightest hesitation.
The little girl grabbed Nate's index finger in her tiny grasp. "Oh!" He said surprised. "And she had both her parent's strength too."
So they stood there in a circle surrounding this new baby for what seemed like an eternity.
Their new future had arrived.