Summary: The dead live, and Ian Malcolm bears that truth in the form of a grizzly wound on his arm. On the run across the wildlands of Central America, he and the others do their best to survive the beginning of the apocalypse. One-shot. Zombie apocalypse post-JP1 AU.
A/N: My take on Ian's gradual transformation in Untherius's Thanatocene on AO3. Not intended as a fix-it or anything (in fact, it probably lines up with Maze Runner cranks more than their/The Walking Dead zombie lore- needed the angst Lmao), I just could not get this out of my head.
Silence Is A Lonely Country
"Anyone care to remind me why we had to beach the boat if we weren't going to stay there to begin with?" Ian asks, as he trudges up the jungle hillside behind Grant, Sattler, and the kids.
Upon reaching land several hours earlier, they'd spent a good hour of wasted time and energy struggling to pull the rickety old thing up away from the water. Just in case, Ellie had said, despite the poor patch job they'd done on the hull. And then Alan Grant, with all of his knowledge on survival, had pointed out that they'd soon need more resources than what the boat could provide, and they'd set off with what little they have to find a higher vantage point- and that's been a bit of a hike, so far.
Ian Malcolm has never been more exhausted in his life, and the constant throbbing of his arm doesn't do anything to keep his mind off of it. But the hefty gasps that come from Hammond behind him are reassuring enough; the old man isn't getting away completely scot-free from his recreation of dinosaurs. Some things are just meant to stay dead.
He isn't surprised when no one answers his question. "God, I just hope that those things didn't follow us here."
Young Lex Murphy makes a horrified sound at the suggestion, and Ellie glares at him over her shoulder from her position near the front of the group. But she says nothing, and he can see in her eyes that she fears the same.
The creatures had tracked them across the island, there's no reason to believe that they couldn't track them across the ocean and beyond. Until they know otherwise, their little group has to keep moving; their lives depend on it.
Mountains rise tall in the northward distance. Cordillera de Talamanca. They can see them from the top of the hill, mist clouding around their peaks, and there's a unanimous decision that they'll head that direction for the time being. It's the best they can do without a map, with the thick rainforest canopies blocking the direction of the sun.
Ian doesn't hear the stories that Doctors Sattler and Grant tell the kids around the campfire that night, too lost in his own concerns: the pain in his arm has yet to lessen. He wonders how long he has.
"You really need to stop bringing your grandkids on these, uh, misadventures." He tells John.
He lays down hoping that whatever this is doesn't get to his own kids, hoping that the news of- no, don't think like that- hoping that they'll be okay whatever happens. He dreams of them and wakes restlessly long before dawn, to the sound of Ellie singing something for Tim. While the intentions are great, it rubs him the wrong way and the gut feelings of this is the end of the world as we know it sink in.
When he steps away to relieve himself, Ian stumbles upon a worn-down old shack. He calls the others over and they search through it. Only the machete and wood-handled ax are worth anything, and Ian lets the fitter adults claim the prizes. He's not at all surprised when Grant goes for the machete; he'd always figured him to be a knife guy.
They eat a skimpy breakfast from the boat's rations and pack up camp, rubbing at mosquito bites as they set off to resume their course through the rainforests of Costa Rica. The cooler mountain temperature will be a relief when they finally arrive.
Eventually, the trees clear, giving away to tall grasses that stretch toward distant jungles. The humidity is no lower, and the sun is relentless.
Ian starts listening for any signs of a river- their limited water supply is dwindling rapidly, and he'd hate for someone to die of dehydration- but even he never thought that they would be this scarce. This trip has ruined camping forever, and he'd used to enjoy it well enough.
His childhood self would be crushed if he knew the thoughts going through his mind now.
They see the smoke and smell the putrid scent of death and decay long before they see the mob of what their little clan has come to call the Dead. They're on a steep hillside when they spot the gathering near a distant, burning town a few miles off the edge of the jungle at the other end of the clearing. It's not a pretty sight, and they stare at it.
Ian frowns and rubs at his bad arm, ignoring how Tim and Lex huddle closer to Grant.
"Where did they come from?" Ellie whispers.
As if summoned, an ear-piercing screech sounds from overhead, back behind them. There's hardly any time to blink before the dark contour whooshes by, blotting out the sun and casting the world in shadow for the briefest of instants.
The lone pterosaur dives upon the milling undead and snatches one up before it flies away. The Dead don't seem to notice, loud as the beast was.
"Uh, I think I know." Ian says.
"Fuck." Alan slaps the flat of his machete against his leg. "It's worldwide."
Hammond, for once, looks like he truly regrets his rebirthing of dinosaurs, and Ian waits unit they've safely passed the horrifying things to explain it in full:
The disease had started out here.
The birds had caught it, brought it to the island, infected the dinosaurs. The scientists hadn't known, the doctors...They'd assumed that the animals had hurt themselves or each other, that they would heal.
And then, right about when the lot of them arrived, it set in. A few of the staff had gone missing over the past week; they turned up when the injured dinosaurs fell ill and were moved to sick tents. The dinosaurs passed on and arose shortly thereafter, and alas…
"It's just chaos theory." He tells them when they stare at him. "Life finds a way- hey, don't look at me like that, you know I'm right. No one could have predicted this."
A huge part of him wishes that someone had; because he really would have fought harder for custody of the kids if he had known that there'd be an apocalypse. Ian hates that he'll never see them again, that he'll never know if they survive this brewing nightmare. He should have been there, done more. He'd never been a great father.
They stop to rest a couple of hours after they dive back into the trees. No one says anything, and Lex is trembling so hard that even her brother can't ward off her anxieties.
John Hammond isn't a very good grandfather, Ian thinks again, trying to dull the ticking of the time bomb that pulses behind his ears. He's not proud that it makes him feel better.
The food is almost gone, as is the water, and morale has fallen pretty low. But stubborn old Alan Grant still thrusts the end of his machete into the dirt and declares that they need to arm themselves if they want to stand a chance at getting through this.
He sees the ringed tail first, poking out from beneath some shrubbery as the animal it belongs to scrounges around for bugs in the bark of the adjacent tree, jerking a little with each snort that travels through the small body. The barrel of Ian's .44 Magnum bobs in turn as he works to estimate the location of the torso.
It's not looking too good, and, not for the first time, he wishes that Muldoon had survived the first trip to Nublar. That man would have them up to par on firearms within a day. But, alas, he did not, and they've no idea how widespread the Infection is. Guns are too loud to be using, of course, but they really don't have any other options and they really need food. They haven't been eating enough as it is, and they can't survive the apocalypse if they don't jump the gun and take a few risks.
Well, that's how John had put it, anyway. Ian remains skeptical; the fate slowly crawling upon him isn't one he'd wish on anyone else. He's pretty sure that starving would be more pleasant than what's yet to come, and he's already having a hell of a time keeping himself in line. It's hard to keep going when the blood in your veins boils with the heat of fire.
Maybe I should've taken those safety classes after all, he thinks, squinting through the gradually darkening rainforest. He really shouldn't have volunteered to catch dinner tonight, useless as he'd felt back at camp; because this isn't helping his case. It'll be too dark to see, soon. He's been away for a little too long already.
The foliage rustles as the creature takes a pace back and twists around, and Ian catches a pair of eyes looking at him. He curses, squeezes down on the trigger, flinches back with the recoil that vibrates from his arms to his ribs.
Once the ringing fades from his ears, he waves away the small cloud of smoke around his face and returns his eyes to the writhing mass of fur and blood half-hidden beneath the bush. Ian grins and heads over, finishing it off with a sharp club to the head to save himself a bullet he might need later.
He pushes the revolver back into the holster that had come with it- the perks of scavenging- and grabs the dead thing by the tail, holding it just high enough that it doesn't drag through the dirt alongside him; he'd hate to leave a trail right back to the camp, they're only just getting on their feet.
It's a quiet walk back, and Ian wishes that he could enjoy it for once, that the hairs on the back of his neck would settle. Beyond these sturdy trunks, death awaits them. That's one of few things that he knows for sure, and he holds his breath until he can feel the warmth of a young campfire on his skin.
He almost sinks in relief when he counts five heads around the fire, and the anxiety knotting his gut eases. He offers up his catch. "I hope no one wanted the head, because, well..."
Lex looks a little green when she shrinks away; four days into this nightmare and they've not yet fully coaxed her out of her vegetarian ways. Ian doesn't feel bad enough to apologize. Because the way Ellie glares at him is still the same when nothing else is.
"It's a coatimundi. This one,"Alan says when Tim asks, having taken the carcass and begun to skin it,"was an adult male, looking for a mate."
"It looks kinda like a raccoon." The boy remarks, eyes round in open interest.
Ian tilts his head to get a better angle of it as he sits himself beside Alan. "Huh. I thought it looked more like a, uh- a badger."
Eventually, he shrugs and leans back, grabbing his bag of scavenged items from the previous day and pulling it open. Knife in hand, he works to chip away the jagged edges of the flexible branch that will soon be a bow. Ellie coaxes Lex into helping Hammond with his own gear, and this is how they spend their evening, the mountains a day's march away. They don't let the fire burn for too long, and the jungle falls dark.
Coatimundis float around through his dreams.
But even when Kelly brings one home as a pet, the animals smell of death.
And as the putrid odor grows stronger, the creatures begin to morph and rise in great height, shedding their pelts to reveal a familiar texture of brown, opening their jaws to show off teeth nearly as long as-
"Ian." A Tyrannosaurus rex says, and he wakes up just in time to turn his head to the side as the contents of his stomach shoot back up.
Digested coatimundi splatters beside him in the dirt, and he just stares, nearly gagging on account of the foul taste in the air, the one worse than his own sick: it hadn't all been part of his dream. That smell can't be mistaken as anything but what it belongs to.
"Right." Ian blinks and wipes his chin. "The Crazies."
Ellie's beside him, and he has a sneaking suspicion that the T. rex hadn't been the one to call out to him.
"How long do we have?" He asks, voice low.
She doesn't know. None of them do. They don't yet have enough experience dealing with the Dead. But one day…One day, they'll know everything about them. Because that's just what the world's coming down to.
Across the ashpit in the center of camp, Lex and Hammond pack in a tense, hurried silence. Alan rouses Tim, telling him to remain as quiet as possible before he explains the situation. The boy catches the severity of his tone and obeys without a word of protest.
"Rise and shine." Ian grumbles, watching Ellie cross to her own belongings.
He never did put his bow away, he realizes, and cuts the twine of his finest necklace to string it with. His days are already numbered, there's no use in keeping trinkets. He's begun to associate this necklace with his rotten luck anyway- he'd had it on the island with him the first time, and he'd broken his leg.
Ian doesn't have any arrows of his own, but worse comes to worst, his knife will do. Or so he hopes. He counts his bullets, grits his teeth, takes a deep breath. Despite their head start, they never had enough time.
The moans of the Dead start faint, distant. They don't stay that way, though, and the group is rushing to shove the last of their things into their bags, to finish loading their weapons, to get one more mouthful of water down, to utter one last word of empty promise-
The first of the deceased appears through the gray mist of dawn. It's missing an arm.
"Oh. Oh, shit."
A drop of water lands on his arm. Ian watches it roll down his skin and drip into his lap. He thinks about the Park tour, the experiment he'd demonstrated to Ellie to help him explain chaos theory. There's pain in his laughter, and not just the kind that thinking of good times during a bad one would bring; his chest hurts. He's gotten worse.
Even now, the bandages showing through his torn pantleg are stained a shade of red near black with his infected blood. And the shredded flesh of his arm hasn't exactly quit bleeding either, the skin around it having taken on a near-gray death pallor.
He's done his best to remain optimistic for the sake of the kids, but he just doesn't have long left. His voice is gritty when he has the strength to speak, and his impulse control is crumbling with his patience. Not only that, but he now smells like the Dead, too.
Ian can't eat anymore. His body is losing the fight against this horrible disease.
He wishes that Alan had left him behind when he'd asked him to; he's tired of drawing this out- he's going to turn, to die, there's no point.
But here he sits, two days south of where they'd been before, beneath a tree as the sky weeps for all those falling to this fate. He's already cracked a joke about the others dragging his rotting corpse behind them as they look for a beach to bury him on- he hasn't tried to hide how much he's come to detest the rainforests of Central America.
The others don't know what to do with him, how to help him, how to make it all easier. He doesn't know either, but it's clear that he's far past being saved. There's no cure for this. Ian's pretty sure that he has half a week, tops. Then he's Gone.
He doesn't even know if he'll ever feel the warmth of the sun again; this kind of helplessness really is something ugly.
Even so, he calls brave young Lex over to him and presses his revolver into her small hands as steady as he can manage. Because she'll need a weapon of her own soon enough. "Use this on me if you have to."
And then they start off again, a step closer to the Panamanian border, a step further away from the horde that had attacked them two sunrises ago. He hardly bats an eye when a droplet streams into it, and Hammond sounds cross when the same happens to him. Unseen beyond the dripping canopy, the mountains continue to shrink behind them. So much for making it back to the States.
Kelly and the twins, they really never will know what happened to him. His heart almost stops at that thought alone.
Oh, how the rain does reflect his mood.
Time stretches on, and water collects at the tips of their noses. Midday comes and goes, but the sun still doesn't show. The sky stays dark, and they stay quiet. And through it all, the jungle is quiet with them, heavy and sorrowful and-
Ian hates it. All of it.
He can't quite think straight anymore, stumbling thoughtlessly after the others as he's come to do. Things have begun to blur together to the point that he's practically sleepwalking in his waking hours.
It takes a hard hand clapping his shoulder to snap him back to the present as they settle down with the setting sun, and Ian almost trips over himself when he moves to find a place to sit.
Someone says his name and he says,"God, I miss my kids."
"You have kids?" Lex asks, sounding the most alive that any of them have been in days.
"Yeah." Ian murmurs, staring at the budding campfire. "Three."
He has their attention, and so he talks. He talks about Kelly and the twins, all about them, for hours. He goes on and on, some part of him making up for the words that this plague has stolen from him, some part of him wanting to keep his memories alive even after he's dead.
Story after story pours for his mouth. Even after Hammond falls asleep and Alan puts the Murphy siblings to bed before himself, he keeps going. It's...freeing.
Ian doesn't notice when he stops, when his words fade away and he can only see the images, but Ellie is still by his side when he drifts off to sleep some time after the moon has begun its descent.
It hurts to breathe in the morning, and the others wake to the sound of him retching up his own blood.
He's too weak to ask them to kill him, too weak to protest the counterproductivity of their change in direction when Alan turns them to the nearest coast. Ian Malcolm has already said his last words.
Holding herself back to try and ease the minds of the children takes far more effort than Ellie likes. Because Ian is sprawled on his back, choking on the fluid building in his lungs, and Alan and John are on their knees beside him, doing their damn best to keep him in this world.
"Is Doctor Malcolm going to die?" Tim asks, even as Ellie blocks the siblings' sight.
"I don't know, honey." She hushes.
The man in question cries out then, his irregular wheezes giving way to relieved gasps.
Ellie glances over to see inky blood dribbling from the end of a needle embedded in his neck. Above him, Alan's thin-bearded face is slick with sweat, and Hammond's soiled outfit has a new shade of color to it; he's not passed yet, but even she knows that her moment of hesitation is answer enough to the boy's pressing question.
Still, Alan rests a hand on Ian's leg and urges him to hold on. "We're almost there."
While he'd been guiding the chaotician before, he's practically dragging him for the rest of their journey; where he had been hunting game a few evenings before, Ian's strength is all but gone now. He looks like death, doesn't object to any extra fussing, and it doesn't take long to understand that he's not all too present.
The bugs that swarm them are thicker than the days prior, and it finally begins to sink in. That it truly is Ian's last day among them, emergency tracheotomy or not; the Infection has just about run its course.
Time drags on by real slow, the jungle holding its breath as the countdown nears to zero. The question of if they'll reach the coast before nightfall pokes around through Ellie's thoughts, as does the question of Ian holding on that long. Everything is far too quiet for the remainder of the afternoon.
After a couple of hours, they discover a stream. They stop, restock their water, wipe the sweat from their faces. Decide to use it as a guide, follow the water flow. It's pointed in the right direction.
The trees are thinner along the banks, and mud sticks to their shoes in clumps. Alan keeps frowning at their footprints, though periodic glances into the thick of the jungle prove that no one is around to follow them.
Ian continues to deteriorate.
By the time they can finally hear the sound of waves over that of the trickling stream the sun is low, the light golden, the shadows long. And after that, it's only minutes before the trees thin and the soil becomes mixed with sand.
Before they know it, the ocean stretches out before them, the horizon endlessly blue. The tension ebbs in a silent, unperceivable sigh of collective relief: they've made it.
They stand still, watching the waves roll up onto the beach and coat the sand beneath it, unable to take their eyes away from the sight. The change of scenery is soothing to all of them. But the moment breaks nonetheless when Ian makes a choked sound that might've been a laugh just a day ago, and he's set down in the shade of one of the last trees.
At their grandfather's approval, Tim and Lex run down to the shoreline- and, for a moment, they're kids again. It's hard to look away from them, for their cheer not to spread.
Ellie sits herself down beside Ian as the other men set upon making camp. She sees the ghost of a smile beneath his dark stubble, and she finds it birthing one of her own. But it's gone all too soon, and sunset follows not long after.
John and the kids help Alan prep the fire, and they're all tucking in for the night not quite an hour later.
None of them drift off into sleep, and the silence doesn't last.
"I should never have invited you back to the island. Not after the last time." John says, and it's as close to an apology as they're ever going to get.
"This wasn't your fault." Ellie tells him.
"No,"He hums sadly,"but now you will never see your families again. That is my fault."
In the brief quiet that follows, Ian moans. Ellie wonders whether he's thinking about his kids or attempting to lecture them on chaos theory again.
But the sound is followed a moment later by a gurgling cough and the distinct taste of blood in the air. He wasn't trying to speak at all; what the earlier tracheotomy had prevented is catching up with him.
His last day is coming to its end.
Ian starts thrashing before long, and those nearest to him are forced to turn their backs lest they get sand in their eyes. The sounds that he makes are almost unbearable, and Ellie's heart breaks just listening to them. Alan's arm around her grows just a little tighter.
Tim's eyes are blank as Lex covers her ears and curls into a ball beside him. And John Hammond looks like he would rather do nothing but follow her example.
This is how they spend their night: silently bearing the horrible noises of Ian Malcolm's agonizing, drawn-out death.
Close to dawn, he almost abruptly falls silent himself.
And as color bleeds into the sky, a soft snarl can be heard across the fire.