Part 2
SGA-1 had stepped through the shimmering pool of light and onto the stone apron and into the drizzling, mud-covered, tree-lined world of M3X-808.
Rodney had stepped off the granite stone steps onto the soft soil, which puddled bubbling ground water around his boot. McKay contemplated the dark grey sky, the drizzling rain and the saturated ground.
The "M" in M3X-808 should be for Mud.
He stared at his handheld sensor that read nothing but worldly low level energy found on even the most primitive planets, and felt his ire grow. He was going to catch pneumonia out here---and for what, nothing. McKay turned on his heel to face the Colonel when his meter suddenly flared to life, readings spiked and then completely whited the screen for a brief moment before falling dark.
The tangy smell of ozone waved from the instrument.
McKay's mind jumped track, his focus narrowed in on his instrument and he strode into the forest, not caring if the others followed him or not. There was something powerful out there and it was not some cracker jack, Halloween spook.
After five days of slogging through mud, tripping over endless tree roots and slapping their way through dropping deciduous and pine needled branches, SGA-1 found no ZPM, no viable explanation for the readings.
They did, of course, come across a few sick 'wee babes' that were more in need of adequate warm clothing and less dank and moldy homes than true medical assistance. As Beckett sourly pointed out to Colonel Sheppard with a bit of muffled, frustrated, growl, that carpenters and tradesmen were needed here not just doctors. He didn't have near enough supplies or personnel with him to do a decent job to help these people. They needed education, better food, and healthier living conditions.
His efforts would be no different than putting a finger over the hole at the bottom of a dam.
Sheppard merely patted him on the shoulder in condolence and left him and Teyla to tend the villages while he, Ronon and Rodney searched for the source of the energy readings in the surrounding forest. The sharp walls of towering, jagged stone mountains stretched in the distance surrounding them on all sides.
Beckett sighed and nodded his head as he watched the others disappear into the forest. With a deep breath, he faced the destitute little village and headed toward the first crumbling hut with Teyla at his side.
In the end, he treated the young and old alike in their dark stagnant and ill ventilated homes that burned bricks of dung in their centers. He had coddled whimpering, thin skinned, pot bellied babes to his chest trying to ease their crying as their mothers hacked and coughed, spitting up thick green and blood tinged phlegm into woolen towels that were discarded to the dirt floors to pile and fester. Toddlers and slightly older children ran amok in and out of the dark huts ill clothed and poorly fed.
He medicated whom he could, taught those that had an ear to learn and, with rolled up sleeves and Teyla's help, they fixed leaky roofs and patched crumbling walls.
Beckett had suffered the misfortune of tumbling from one thatched roof and landing flat on his back. Thankfully, the thick mud, his shoulders and the back of his head broke his fall. The aches and pains from his backward slide from the roof, and the uncomfortable, sticky, tenacious clinging of muddied clothing paled in comparison to the ribbing he received that night from McKay, Sheppard and even Ronon.
Each day seemed to start the same. The rising sun was masked behind a thick curtain of low grey clouds and a veil of drizzle that occasionally bordered on solid rain.
Toes and soles of feet seemed forever pruned in damp socks that never quite dried out completely.
The five would slog through the rain, feet eventually becoming chilled from the seeping ground water, and head for another isolated village. Beckett and Teyla would stay and tend the villagers while Sheppard, Ronon and McKay continued to search the surrounding countryside for the elusive energy source.
The villagers were not unkind toward the visiting strangers, but their apathy toward helping themselves and those around them wore on the two off worlders.
Beckett and Teyla spent each day in a different village, which mirrored its neighbors the day before.
Beckett's work kept him within the cramped confines of the dark huts and smoldering discolored smoke of burning waste, while Teyla walked the small outposts, learning what she could of their customs, their way of life and the mythical monster that hunted in the shadows of the woods.
The team worked through the different days much like the day previous to it. For Beckett and Teyla, each village appeared similar in its desolate isolation and sickly populace. Women and children remained within the confines, while the men disappeared into hidden fields. Elderly were not to be found.
For Sheppard, Ronon and McKay, the thick forest, muddied trails and insurmountable wall of granite mountains diverged only in the direction that they traveled. To McKay, one tree looked much like another. Overturned ground smelled much like the overturned soil of the day before. Half worked fields, crumbling stone walls, and the dearth of animals and human alike were both unnerving and unnatural in the sweeping forest. McKay found himself gripping his sensor display tighter with each passing day, finding comfort in the technology that lay within his grip.
Each morning, through the shimmering veil of drizzle, the team headed for a village in the hopes that today would be the day they discovered the source of the energy readings so they could head home, back to the warmth, and comfort of Atlantis and the dubious safety it offered.
The children greeted the travelers each day with sunken eyes but bright smiles.
They circled the visitors, tugging on their strange clothes, patting their legs, arms and hands laughing and talking loudly, hoping for a handout, searching for some kind of praise. They were not much different than the homeless dog like creatures that yapped and scurried between the huts eking out a futile meal.
Each morning, the children shouted, asking, "Did you see the Howler!". With eyes held wide, their yellow irises seemed ghastly strange within the constant drizzle of a grey day. The children jumped and shouted, laughing and dancing about asking if, the Howler had tried to break their bones and eat their flesh. Did it try to strike at them with its poisonous tail and rip their innards out with curled claws?' The children would mimic their questions, gnarl their fingers and snarl their lips, twisting their heads to the side, growling in gross mimicry of what they described. Their giggles and laughter underscored their concern.
Teyla smiled sweetly at the children while giving the doctor a curious and concerned look, and answered the children's questions and eased the doctor's growing concern to the best of her ability.
No, the Howler had not tried to devour them in the night.
The children followed them in awe, milling around them like buffalo gnats on a windless day. They wanted to be close to the magical, tall standing strangers who befuddled the great fearsome Howler.
Through the days, Beckett and Teyla worked on helping who they could and played games with the attentive young ones. They paused only to eat their own rations and share them with the children who flocked to their sides whenever Beckett exited a hut and ventured into the drizzle to meet Teyla who waited patiently outside as if on guard.
It unnerved the doctor. He peered into the forest, trying to see past the grey, sodden trunks and clicking branches into the wood, hoping to see the safe return of the others and the end of their visit here on M3X-808.
In four days times, Beckett had medicated the mothers the best he could, he taught them what he knew and what his own mother had taught him as a child about keeping warm and dry, and fresh air in the lungs. He mingled science with common sense and worked with the little knowledge he held of their myths and local ways in hopes of improving the basic living conditions of those stuck within the small stagnant hovels.
Children dressed in ill equipped clothing darted between mud thatched homes, squealing with hoarse, breathless laughter, shadowed by emaciated half wild dogs nipping at their heels. Both, looking for attention, hoping for a meal, and seeking some place warm and dry to stave off the coming winter chill. They were children. They lived for the moment, unconcerned about the bleakness of their near and limited future.
Water puddled on the ground. Toddlers stomped through it, splashed it into the air as they squatted in the muddy shallow depths. The older children shied away, familiar with the bone numbing chill that came from being wet too late in the day to efficiently dry out.
Heavy grey clouds effectively hid the dying sun and a cool, constant breeze worked its way between fraying seams and chilled skin under damp clothing.
Beckett watched the young ones with a heavy heart, knowing there was little he could truly do to help them.
Perhaps McKay would find the power source and perhaps it would be something they could use to improve the living conditions of those in the villages.
Beckett raised his face to the rain, the muscles of his neck and shoulders burned slightly at the movement a stinging reminder of his tumble from the roof the other day. He let it wash away some of the heat that flushed his cheeks.
The best thing to help these people would be proper nutrition, warm homes and education. Perhaps even a dry day or two with a spot of sun, but apparently that was too much to expect and well beyond even McKay's abilities.
At the end of every day, Colonel Sheppard and his team would melt from the darkening forest, their outer coats and hats drenched, faces pink from the gentle but incessant wind and retrieve Beckett and Teyla. Together the five would disappear back into the forest, away from the drudgery and grey and creeping doom of sickness and impending threat of winter that cloaked the villages.
The children would stand at the edge of their villages and watch the group of strangers disappear into the shadow of the forest and wonder at the extraordinary bravery of the visitors as they once again entered the realm of the Howler.
Sheppard and his team had silently agreed they would risk a dire terrible death at the frightful claws of the dreaded mystical beast than stay within the confines of the small sickly villages. It was a decision McKay as well as Beckett welcomed even though it forced tired muscles and fatigued joints to work a little longer, to carry them a click or two further to the base of the ominous mountains.
The team camped in the relatively dry caves at the base of looming white capped mountains. At night, Rodney would rant about the mysteries of the energy readings. Beckett wished he had brought more medicines and scrubbed at his face wearily fearing for the lives of the wee babes, and Sheppard listened as Teyla recounted the tales of the ferocious beast that allegedly inhabited the forest at night.
None of the inhabitants knew of any energy. Their vocabulary had no word that even suggested they had ever encountered an energy source that was not borne from the very sweat and labor of their backs or nature herself.
Sheppard, Ronon and Teyla shouldered the responsibility of keeping their small camp safe while they all shared the chores of camp life at night.
The continuous repetitive stories, from village to village, of the Howler kept weapons within easy reach.
On the second night, Sheppard woke to the sounds of a hacking cough. He feared it was McKay and worried that the astrophysicist had somehow contracted another mysterious malady. As he lay in his bed roll listening, the colonel realized it was Beckett who was coughing relentlessly and was sleeping through it.
Figures.
He listened to McKay moving around irritably within the confines of his sleeping bag.
The group slept in a ring around the small central fire pit. Socks and assorted clothing lay draped over rocks or picketed on sticks to dry by the fire's edge.
Sheppard's head was at the foot of Beckett's sleeping bag.
Teyla's head was just at the base of Sheppard's bed roll and Ronon stood like a shadow at the mouth of the cave keeping watch, careful to keep his eyes from the light of the fire.
Beckett and McKay slept with the heads of their sleeping bags only a few feet apart, refusing to put their faces anywhere near someone else's feet.
Sheppard shook his head those two were trouble together, no matter what Elizabeth Weir said.
"He got a fever, McKay?" the Colonel asked, rolling onto his side to see Rodney snake his arm back within the warm confines of his sleeping bag.
A dry cough shook Beckett's hidden shoulders within the puffy protection of his sleeping bag.
"No," Rodney answered and then reached out with both hands and shoved Beckett's head. "Carson, shut up."
Beckett mumbled something, rolled deeper into his sleeping bag and quieted down.
McKay beamed at Sheppard as if to say 'this voodoo stuff is easy'.
Sheppard merely rolled over, fixed his sleeping bag, untwisting it and freeing up more space, losing the near claustrophobic feeling when the bag got too disorderly and constrictive, despite the fact he slept with it unzipped. Once settled and with more room for his feet, he began to drift off.
The coughing started again. Sheppard closed his eyes as he listened to McKay shove Beckett and demand him to quiet down.
The colonel dozed off some time later to McKay still rattling the Scot who continued to sleep oblivious.