A/N: Okay, before we get into this, yes this one basically about zombies. Don't judge me. There ARE a shit-ton of "footnotes" in this where things get a little confusing, and that's my fault. IMPORTANT NOTE: THIS WILL BE AN INTERACTIVE, MULTI-PART FICLET! Read all the way through and check the notes at the bottom to see what to do. :D
beginningxofxthexend: I'll agree with you. I have come a long way as a writer. Sometimes I look back at my old fics and wonder what the hell I was thinking when I wrote them, lol. Reid up and leaving was kind of based on what I want to do. I joke with two of my best friends all the time that one day the world is going to wake up and we'll be in another country living it up and they won't know what happened. And I liked the concept of Chase being the good guy in this one because I figured "What the hell? If Reid isn't what everyone thinks he is, why should Chase be any different?"
blo0d StaiNed Rose: I'm glad I surprised you. I didn't want it to be obvious that I was doing a Reid/Chase thing there. :D
julliette: Ta-da! Newly updated!
not dead yet: Well... I'm glad you liked it. :D
Dark Angel's Blue Fire: I'm trying to make things different. I'm practicing different character development strategies as well as different characterizations. But I'm glad you like them.
Highqueen Julietta: I'm glad you like the series so far.
xxFuturistico: Maybe we're sharing a braincell or four. 0.o And I was just feeling like Chase needed to feel the love too. :D
If there's one thing he hated, it's nervousness. There should never be anything to be nervous about. Nothing. There's no fear, just anticipation, and even that should be controlled. It didn't do the image any good. That still didn't explain the way his stomach flip-flopped when he saw him again. How many years had it been since they saw eachother? Five? Six? And now look at him, standing on top of the world while it fell apart and he was just as calm as ever. Never mind the fact that the world was ending, never mind the fact that every message-board lurker's dream had come true and there were, in fact, undead right out side their bunker(!!!!!!), he took control of the situation and handled it as if it were nothing, like it was something he did every day.
Reid had been there at least an hour before he managed to talk to him. An hour since he was drug into the bunker that was stocked with food and water and munitions, pulled from the grasp of the empty, hollow shells that were clawing at him and taken to safety. And what are the odds that he be there too? He sat down to sip at a bottle of water and look over the multitude of computers that were running on back up power and various generators, many of them solar.
"You look stressed." Reid murmured.
"That tends to happen when the world goes to shit and you're trying to keep it together."
"Why are you so pissed off at me?"
"How many years has it been, Reid? How many goddamn years have passed since we last saw each other? Since we last talked?"
Reid was interrupted by a third party before he could answer.
"Uh, sir... We're picking up some heavy activity a few klicks north of here." A nervous young man said quickly.
"More of the shambling dead?" Tyler asked with a sigh.
"Way too fast for that. We're trying to get a good view of it, but we're having difficulties with the camera motors. We can't seem to turn quick enough to get a good view of it." The man said, wringing his hands.
"Fuck it all... Fine. James, go over there and see if the auxilary cameras can get an angle on what we're dealing with. Sampson! Does it look like a caravan of cars, a group of people, what are we dealing with?" Tyler yelled.
"Looks like a small caravan. Possibly passing through." Sampson called.
"Keep an eye on it. Remember the disaster we had with the marauders a few days ago. Keep it tight on lock. Let me know if anything changes or if we get any more blips." Tyler said as he bent over a computer near James. He tapped a few buttons and murmured something to himself.
"We're going to need a team to go out there and check on everything." Tyler sighed.
"S-Sir?" James stammered.
"It has to be fixed. This could pose a big problem for us." Tyler sighed. He chekced his watch and cursed.
"We're too close to sunset to risk it. James, be ready to switch to night vision on all cameras. Make sure this is all recording. I'll watch the monitors while you got let Kent know it's time for his shift." Tyler sighed, rubbing his eyes.
"When do you get a break?" Reid asked.
"Rarely. I'll steal a few hours of sleep here and there. Most of my time is spent being responsible." The emphasis he put on those words had the desired effect of making Reid cringe.
"Look... It's not... I never wanted... Dammit Tyler." Reid sighed, running a hand through his hair.
A girl saved the moment from being more awkward by walking quickly out of one of the back rooms with James following close behind her. Her dark hair was pulled into a loose ponytail that was slowly coming undone and her clothes were rumpled and wrinkled, but her eyes were bright and focused.
"James, that's Kairah. I said to get Kent. Now, I know they're twins, but I'd hope you could tell the difference between the two of them." Tyler sighed.
"Kent's up puking up internal organs, boss. No hope of him being useful. Figured I'd take his shift." Kairah shrugged.
"You up for the work?" Tyler asked.
"Even in my sleep I'm work ready. Besides, I slept twelve hours. I'm good for the rest of the week."
"You start drooping, I'm pulling you out and taking over myself." Tyler warned.
"Chillax, boss. We still got a shit-ton of those energy drinks in the back. I get tired, I'll just have your new blond little friend grab me a few." Kairah said shortly.
She started tapping away at they keys and muttered something about increasing motor output to get the cameras back up on par. Tyler walked away and turned his attention to a monitor not far off.
"Eh, boss! Kent wanted me to tell you to get some sleep sometime tonight, by the way." Kairah called. Tyler rolled his eyes.
"When was the last time you slept?" Reid asked.
Tyler checked the calendar on the computer.
"Almost two days ago."
"Christ, Ty. You need to get some sleep. This isn't healthy." Reid growled.
"Look Reid, as much as I love my team, and as much as I trust their training as much as mine, if it weren't for me, this place would fall to shit. I have to take care of this place." Tyler hissed.
Reid studied Tyler carefully. Reid knew while they were in high school that Tyler had been recruited by the CIA, knew that his best friend was being scouted by every major intelligence organization in the country, and a few in Europe. Tyler had scored nearly perfect on his ASVAB(1), had gotten the attention of everyone. And had decided to join the Air Force, do a few years, and start to work for the CIA. Tyler knew what was happening before anyone else did. He'd known to get to safety, known to get to one of the bunkers in the middle of nowhere, known to stock up on everything they could possibly need, known just how to handle the situation. That was something Reid admired about his younger friend. That, and the new bit of muscle he'd put on... Tyler was no longer the scrawny little whelp he used to be. He was more of a whelp with understated musculature.
"Boss, that Caravan has passed out of range. We're not picking up anything larger than a few morbidly obese zombits(2)." Sampson called.
"Go ahead and get Haven up. Time for him to start his shift. Night's falling." Tyler sat at the desk Sampson had been operating while the replacement was roused from bed.
"Get out of my seat and into bed." Haven ordered, pulling the chair out from the desk. Tyler stood up and glared at the taller boy. With his short blond hair and bright blue eyes, it was easy to tell just how English Haven was.
"You're lucky I like you." Tyler growled, getting out of the chair.
"I'm sure you say that to all of the boys." Haven winked at Reid. Something about that statement and gesture made Reid incredibly angry.
Tyler flitted about the large room for several minutes before he finally sat down behind a large desk covered in maps and papers.
"Psst."
Reid turned to the sound and saw Kairah waving him over. Reid slowly approached her.
"Grab a chair, have a seat. We need to talk." Kairah whispered.
Reid pulled up a rolly-chair and sat near Kaihra, whose eyes remained fixed on her screens, flitting back and forth between them at the slightest hint of movement.
"It's a good thing you showed up when you did." Kairah said.
"Why's that?" Reid asked.
"Before you got here, he was a total wreck. Didn't bat an eye at anything that had a heartbeat. Sure he cared about us, but he only paid attention to the shambling dead out there." Kaihrah murmured.
"What?"Reid asked, clearly dumbfounded. It certainly didn't seem like Tyler was paying him any mind...
"Trust us. Whatever you got going with the boss, you better get it back on track. God only knows how close he is to being completely crazy." Haven agreed. Reid cast a glance over his shoulder and saw Tyler leaning over a map, making small marks and referencing another map and then checking his computer.
"Has it really been two days since he slept last?" Reid asked them.
"Three and a half, really." Kairah shrugged.
"Three and a half days?" Reid asked.
"He's gone longer." Haven pointed out.
"Oh yeah. The last time we had a swarm of the undead head this way, he didn't sleep until they were all decimated. Almost a week suriving on energy drinks and NoDoz pills." Kairah agreed.
"And you just let him?" Reid demanded.
"He outranks us. Outranks anyone that ever passed through this bunker. You don't really boss someone like Simms around. I heard some pretty spooky stories about him." Haven said.
"What kinds of stories?" Reid asked, growing suspicious.
"There was this guy when he did basic training for the Air Force that just wouldn't leave him alone. Apparently Simms was torn up about losing touch with an old friend of his and this guy wouldn't shut up about it. I heard Simms freaked the fuck out and rewired the guy's alarm clock." Kairah murmured.
"So what? It went off a few hours late? Played Italian opera and wouldn't turn off?" Reid rolled his eyes.
"Wired it so it set off a few home-made flashbang grenades.. Guy had to go to the med wing for a month with a ruptured eardrum and facial lacerations. They could never prove it was Simms, but no one else was ballsy enough to pull it off and no one else could make a flashbang from spare parts laying around." Kairah said seriously.
"You expect me to believe Baby Boy knowingly and willingly sent someone to the hospital? No. He's not like that." Reid said in disbelief.
"How long have you known him?" Haven asked, turning his blue eyes away from the screen and focusing on Reid.
"Since we were kids. We go way the fuck back."
"When was the last time you spoke to him?" Haven pressed.
"Three years ago or so. He was still in the Air Force back then."
"Being a Spook changes you. I can count on one hand the number of people who have the same level of security clearance he does. There's no telling how much shit he's seen in the past three years." Kairah huffed.
There was a crash from Tyler's desk and the three of them whipped around to see the C.O (3) of the compound with his head in his hands, staring at the maps and muttering something about the figures not being right, about the topographers having their information wrong. He'd slammed a calculator onto the desk. along with a compass.
"Where are those energy drinks you were talking about?" Reid asked Kairah without looking away.
"See that door over there?" Kairah pointed.
"Yeah."
"Go through there, down the corridor, and open the third door on your right. The code for the keypad is 0-6-0-4. You got all that?" Kairah asked.
"Yeah. Out the door, down the hall, third on the right, 0-6-0-4."
"Good. Bring me one." Kairah smiled.
"Sure."
Reid followed the girl's instructions and was greeted by the sight of rows and rows of refrigerators and boxes of non-perishable foods. He opened the first fridge he came to and was greeted by a glorious sight: the energy drinks. The last thing he wanted to do was go through all of those boxes and refrigerators to find what he was after. He gathered one for him, one for Tyler, and one for Kairah and turned around. He froze. There was an empty shell of a man standing behind him, his black eyes glassy, his face haggard and pale, and his clothes looking like they had certainly seen better days.
"So you're the one they pulled from the fray." The man rasped. Reid felt an inexplicable wave of relief.
"Y-Yeah. Reid. Garwin." Reid said, holding a hand out.
"I'm Kent. If you've spent any amount of time in the tech room within the past few minutes, I'm assuming you've met my sister Kairah." Kent said as he shook Reid's hand.
"Yeah. Yeah, I've met her. You scare the shit out of me, coming out of nowhere like that. And I hate to break it to you, but you kind of look like one of them." Reid said.
"Got a killer case of the flu. Nothing too bad. It'll pass. I'm hoping it jumps to our C.O. God knows he could use some 'sick-leave'."
"I can believe it, from what I've heard." Reid sighed.
"Well, I hope you don't mind my rudeness, but I'm just after some Giner Ale and then it's back to quarters for me. Nice to meet you, kid." Kent patted Reid's shoulder as he shuffled towards the frigde.
Reid retraced his steps and reentered the tech room. He set one of the blue bottles on Kairah's desk and took the other two to Tyler's.
"You look like you could use a pick-me-up." Reid murmured.
Tyler glanced up from one of the charts, popped the lid off the bottle and took a long drink. He set the bottle back down and started looking over the maps again.
"Look, I know you're pissed at me. Falling out of touch was never part of the plan. I really didn't mean it." Reid sighed.
"It wouldn't have made a bit of difference. From the time I left the Air Force up until the outbreak, I didn't speak to a single person outsde of the Agency. We would have lost touch eventually."
"That's not the point, Tyler."
"Then what is the point?" Tyler turned his empty and tired eyes to Reid.
"The point is that I don't even know who you are anymore. What happened to you?"
"I spent three years in the Air Force and three in the CIA. The things that I've seen would blow your mind. There's no humanity left in the world." Tyler returned his attention to the maps.
"What could convince you that there's no humanity?"
Tyler sighed and set the compass down again, sighing, but not looking at Reid. His eyes remained fixed on the contour lines of the map.
"My time at the Air Force was just to pay for my college degree. I never finished. The CIA approached me before I could get my degree. A couple of Spooks in suits cornered me after a lecture and told me they were interested in my talents. They offered more than the Air Force did and more than I would get with my degree. At least for the first decade or so... So they pulled me from the Force and stuck me behind a desk, cracking ciphers, translating anything that came through that I could read..." Tyler paused and took a sip of the drink, still not looking at Reid. He picked up a pencil and made a few marks before he continued, still scanning the map.
"They gave me a clearance that people could only dream of. Beyond Classified, beyond Top Secret, beyond Super Secret... I used to call it 'Uber Secret' Clearance. Officially it was called Kratos Level. The top-brass bastards had a few grandsons and a twisted sense of humor... They decided it was appropriate. They decided that what was contained in these files could very well bring down every society we have today... Kind of like Kratos destroyed an entire way of life by killing a god... My clearance card didn't even have my clearance level on it. It just had a barcode and a blood-colored stripe at the top above my picture... The passwords to access Kratos Level files were thirty characters long and complete gibberish."
"What was in the files? Or will you have to kill me after you tell me?" Reid half-joked. Tyler's eyes scanned the map again and he highlighted a few portions. He took a breath and placed his palms on the table on either side of the map.
"The things I saw in those files... You like to say 'can't be unseen', but you don't know what it means... Damn near every country in the world has violated almost every law set down by the Genevia Convention, by the UN, by human nature... Those news reporters who blame violent movies and video games for violent people? They should turn it around. The Resident Evil franchise was based off of a failed experiment that almost broke free in northern Canada. The X-Men movies, talking about Wolverine being experimented on? Close enough. People with higher-level intelligences are tested like fucking lab rats to try and create psyco-kinetic warriors... And this was going on in our country. All of those people whining about improper treatment of criminals at Guantanamo Bay and right next door there's some poor fool crying himself to sleep because Uncle Sam decided to jam a goddamned microchip in his frontal lobe to record his brainwave activity to see how they could maximize the output." Tyler said bitterly. Reid found himself at a loss for words. If it had been anyone other than Tyler telling him these things, he would have refused to believe them.
"That's what they had you do all those years?" Reid asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"I would sift through the files, I would encode them, send them off to another facility where someone else just like me would crack open the file and pass it on to their higher-ups for review, and then they'd send back an encrypted response and they would just bounce these ideas back and forth...
"We first heard about the infection almost a year ago. It was supposed to be a cure for the AIDS virus that was developed by the World Health Organization. They took it to Africa and decided to test it there in secret. Who would miss a few AIDS-infected villagers from Bum-Fuck Africa anyway? At first, they thought the results were good. The day after the shot, the people started to look healthier, had more energy... They decided that was just the placebo effect, decided that they should run a few more tests... By the end of the second day, they were dead. WHO decided to autopsy the bodies, see what caused them to shut down. Fuckers had a heartattack when their little village guinea pig decided he was going to wake up and try to eat them. We got word of it first. One of the people who decided to OK Operation: Anigrides was over there, had Kratos Clearance... Sent us a satellite-phone call and told us what was going on." Tyler paused and rearraged the maps so he was looking at a different one with the older one nearby for comparison.
"What happened?" Reid asked, his throat dry.
"That little village in the middle of Africa that was bombed supposedly by a neighboring warlord? That was us. It was the fucking Enola Gay(4) all over again... Except this time we kept it quiet. Too bad we didn't realize it jumped the speicies barrier. Think '28 Days Later' in reverse. (5)"
"And it just spread from there." Reid whispered.
"And it just spread from there. So excuse my bitterness if I'm a little pissy about the whole infection and my lack of faith in humanity. I'm sure that somewhere, Mother Teresa is churning in her grave at the atrocities going on."
"Assuming she's still in her grave." Reid smirked.
"Don't be stupid. It's virally based, moron. No hearbeat, no way for the blood to circulate, no way for the infection to spread. Really, Reid. I knew you were slow, but this just tops it." There was a hint of a smile on Tyler's face.
Before Reid could comment, Kairah yelled, "We have motion in the southeast vector, unable to get a clear visual. Appeared to be humanoid in shape and motion."
"Second that. RADAR shows it to be of roughly the size of a human... There are two of them! Three... Three humanoids approaching the bunker." Sampson agreed.
"Kairah, bring up the cameras close to the entrances, see if you can get a good view of what's going on out there." Tyler said, the hint of a smile long gone.
"Nothing showing up on the nightvision..." Kairah said, moving the cameras and looking around.
"Switch to thermal." Tyler ordered.
"Boss..." Kairah started.
"Switch to thermal. If they're still alive, they'll show up." Tyler murmured.
Reid held his breath and hoped for the best...
(1) ASVAB stands for Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. It's pretty much a test to see what sort of positions you can hold within the military, like if you're smart enough to be an nuclear engineer or not. The higher the score, the better job you'll have.
(2) No. This is not a typo. My brother and I call them Zombits. I'm not sure why, but that's what we do. A little bit of humor injected into the situation. :D
(3) Pronounced "See-Oh". Stands for Commanding Officer. Basically the dude/chick in charge of a given group/operation/team.
(4) The Enola Gay was the bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan during the second World War.
(5) If you've never seen "28 Days Later", the film says the "virus" carring "zombie-ism" was transferred to people through a monkey bite. In this instance, I'm saying think of it more like it was transferred to monkeys through a people bite. XD Well, maybe not a bite, and I don't mean there are zombie monkeys... I'm thinking of it more like the monkeys were infected but you don't know 'cos they don't react.
THE INTERACTIVE PORTION OF THIS FIC BEGINS NOW!!! I know you guys are pissed that this was a cliffie, but you're going to determine how the next one starts through your reviews!!!
If the three humanoids on Sampson's RADAR are human survivors, add to the end of your review the word GYPSY.
If the three humanoids are zombies, add the word ZACK at the end of your review.
If the three humanoids are zombies leading up a horde of their peers, add the word MAGE to the end of your review.
If the three humanoids are the rest of the Covenant, add to the end of your review the word ANDROMEDA.
