Summary: Reevaluation and scavenging.
Author's Note: This weather man is reporting a shit storm and it's coming your way! No umbrella can save you.
Chapter 8: Ashes, Ashes
Donovan woke at dawn the next day. Sweeping dark matting curls behind her ear, she yawned. The feel of the hard floor brought everything back. She wasn't in her bedroom. She snatched up her gun and checked her clip. Empty. She sighed snapping the clip into place. The floorboard nearby whined and she jumped.
"Easy." Sherlock said. He cracked his back. The floors were killer.
Donovan relaxed and they sat in silence. The birds outside chirped happily, almost mocking them. Donovan looked outside. The sun was warm and waking over the horizon. She yawned again. "How long were we asleep?"
Sherlock scratched his scalp. "A day and a half." He looked around the room. Molly and Lestrade were in the corner asleep. Anderson was spread over the floor like a starfish, his mouth wide. Sherlock rubbed his eye. "You woke up thinking it was another day." he said staring at her.
Donovan rolled her eyes. "Let me guess," she said. "My hair told you? Or was it the way I wrinkled my nose."
Sherlock's face held no emotion. He looked down. "John woke up an hour ago and did the same thing."
Donovan looked away, feeling guilty. She looked out the window. The sick lined the street and spilled into the alleyways. "We need to get out of here soon."
Sherlock nodded. He grabbed his bag and Donovan followed his lead. They woke the others. Neither said a word until everyone was awake and aware that it wasn't all a dream.
o.O.O.o
Molly pushed around her food with her fork. It had been more than a week since the outbreak had settles in London. It had been nearly two days since Molly had seen her mother's throat torn out by the monster below on the streets. It had been nearly two days since they'd lost Dimmock. Their faces popped into her head and nausea came in waves.
Lestrade looked over. He sighed and turned to Sherlock. "SO what's the plan?" he asked.
Sherlock looked out the window toward the sick below them. "Before we can go over the plan we need to know what were up against. So everyone needs to tell me everything they knew about the things outside." Sherlock sat back waiting for them to respond. John pulled out his notepad out of habit.
Lestrade thought to himself. "They like to eat people." he offered.
Sherlock sighed. "Thank you for your contribution. Anything else?"
John looked up. "They're dead." he said writing it down. "They're dead people walking around." Sherlock nodded.
Molly looked up. "There blood is black."
Sherlock looked up. He sat up properly. "How do you know that?"
Molly thought back. "When the outbreak start, all the bodies were brought to the morgue. I cut one open for the usual examination." she shivered. "Every internal organs was corroded and diseased with black blood and pus. I took it upon myself to open his head and found that the brain had deteriorated at an alarming rate."
"Would you say the brain was the first thing to go?" Sherlock asked.
Molly thought to herself. "Yes, the frontal lobe most likely."
"That would explain why the headaches were the first symptoms to be reported." Sherlock mumbled to him. His fingers came together under his chin and he laid on his back.
Molly continued. She thought back to her notes. "The disease then spread downward affecting everything in its path. The arteries clogged, the muscle's weakened. But normal science can't be applied to them."
Sherlock raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"
Molly rubbed the back of her neck. "I checked three different bodies and found they all had the same symptoms but the severity differed from person to person. The first two had been reported to have died of natural causes and the last of a heart attack."
"In your examination, did you see any bite marks?" John said.
Molly nodded. "On the first two. The first case, a woman, had been bitten severely on her arm and leg. The second, a man, was only bitten on his hand. The third case was strange though."
Lestrade leaned forward, listening closely. "How?"
"He was the one that reanimated. He grabbed me from behind while I was checking the woman and tried to bite my neck." She rubbed her neck. "But he hadn't been bitten."
Everyone blinked. "What?" Sherlock said.
"He'd died of a heart attack." Molly said. She played with her fingers. "His muscle deterioration shouldn't have allowed him to get up from the table let alone grab me."
John swallowed. "But he got up anyway." He thought back to the sick who'd attacked Sherlock.
Molly nodded. "He nearly broke my arm when I got away."
John wrote down another note. "So extreme bursts of strength."
Sherlock nodded.
Molly gripped her lab coat. "I fought back and hit him in the head with my surgical scissors. The skull by then had been deteriorating to the softness of a marshmallow and he collapsed. I did the same with the other two before leaving and going to find my mother." Her head hung low. "And then you all found us and…" her words trailed off hanging like an angry storm cloud over their heads.
Sherlock took John's notebook looking over the notes. "The only new information we have is the man with the heart attack. He wasn't bitten." Sherlock laid back again. "SO why did he reanimate?"
Molly pulled her knees against their chest. "How did this happen?" she mumbled to herself. "I saw the military shoot a man in the chest over a dozen times and he just kept coming."
Sherlock looked around at the confused and frightened faces. "Does anyone have anything else?"
Anderson looked outside. "People who are shot in the head before they turn don't come back."
They all were quiet for a second. Sherlock spoke first. "Then the infection but travel from person to person through contact through fluid contact."
John nodded. "That would make sense." he scribbled down a note. "Dimmock was scratched and-" John caught himself as the others stiffened.
Sherlock swallowed. "You're right." he said. "Dimmock was scratched. We all have to be careful."
Everyone nodded. Donovan opened her clip. "How many bullets are left? I don't have any."
John looked in his clip. "I have three."
Anderson looked in his. "Two."
Lestrade didn't open his clip. "I'm out."
Donavan sighed. "We need more ammunition. Scavenging might help."
John looks in his med pack. "We could use some medicine too." they had enough to save one or two people but if they got seriously hurt, they'd be in trouble.
Sherlock tightened his shoes. "Their hearing is incredible so noise attracts them. Don't shoot unless you have to." Sherlock looked out the window. "We should travel north. Toward the country." He tightened the straps of his bag. "We can scavenge on the way."
Lestrade was the first one out the room. "We need to find a weapons too. Does anyone know where we could find any?"
"I don't think were far from a gun shop. I pass it in taxis all the time." Anderson said.
"Could you get us there?" Sherlock said. Anderson nodded.
Everyone picked up their bags. They headed out and John caught up with Sherlock. "Do you think we'll find weapons there?" John asked. It was a stretch. Maybe if they'd gotten to the store in the first few days but now? Would there be anything left?
Sherlock shook his head. "No, but ransackers nearby probably didn't get very far." He hopped out of the window and scurried down the fire escape.
They scurried down the next block keeping to the shadows as they made their way to the shop. The sick populated the streets but they moved silently so none looked their way.
Anderson led the way turning down paths. Sherlock was behind him looking for opening to escape just in case. Anderson pointed down a ways and they headed to the shop. The store had been ransacked. The windows were smashed out and scorch marks form an extinguished first eat at the sides and inside of the building. Sherlock looked around the charred bodies of the fallen people. He kicked one to make sure they were dead. The body didn't move. Sherlock made quick work of rifling through its bags.
He pulled one of the guns from the body's bag. Opening the clip, he found it full. The others pillaged the rest of the shop as quietly as they could.
They stood in the center of the shop together looking over what they'd found. "This should keep us going for a while." he said. "Unless we get attacked by a massive pack, we should be okay." Everyone nodded.
Lestrade took to the backdoor. He looked at the car in the back. A woman's body sat in the back. She wasn't moving but Lestrade didn't take any chances. He ran back inside and took the sharpest object he could find. Donovan watched him as he went back into the back and rammed it through her soft skull. She sagged onto the steering wheel. Lestrade pulled the body out and looked into the back. He froze. Three dead children sat in the back. Bite marks covered their bodies and bullet wounds pierced their foreheads. Lestrade gagged. He grabbed what supplies he could find and left quickly.
"I found food and water." he said. Sherlock nodded. He found a pair of scissors. Making a mental note, he reminded himself to add them to Molly's pipe later. He tucked them into his pocket.
A shot rang out in the back and their heads snapped up. John ran inside pushing his body against a door. "They snuck up on me." he said. Moans from the nearby streets caught their attention. Sherlock grabbed a large bar and slid it through the door handle. John pulled away and they ran.
Lestrade collected Anderson and Molly from the next room and they ran. Sick piled out of the shops doors. Sherlock looked around. They were on the street in the open. They needed higher ground quickly. His eyes spotted a tall office building coming nearby. He motioned to the building and they all ran. Sick came from their hiding spots. They grabbed for them. Molly kicked a crawling sick as it grabbed for her leg.
Donovan screamed as a sick's fingers grabbed her hair. She grabbed its hand trying to free its grip. Sherlock ran back to her. He grabbed his scissors and cut her free before batting the sick off. They ran for the building doors. Climbing the stairs two by two to the next floor.
Molly was the last one inside. She tumbled into the room crashing directly into Donovan. Sherlock ran past them toward the still open doorway. "Close them." he said.
Lestrade was there first, tossing himself against the thick doors and slamming them shut with a heavy rattle. John leveraged himself against them just as the sick masses on the other side attacked. He readjusted his feet quickly trying to stop the creaking doors from giving way. His body shook with every strike against the other side. The sick acted as one unstoppable wall of death against the door.
Lestrade grunted as his feet slide over the slick carpet. "I can't hold it." He pushed harder. But what were two men against the assault of twenty?
Donovan's eyes darted around. She ran for a nearby desk. It was thick and solid probably enough to hold them. If not, then enough to buy them all time. And they were seriously running out of time.
Sherlock was two steps ahead of her, already grabbing another desk form the other side of the room. Molly dragged the other side of Donovan's desk and the two pushed it against the door. The four of them pushed for dear life as they waited for Anderson and Sherlock to bring the other desk along. The desk slide into place next to the other and the six held on tight. The desk held together against the pummeling. Everyone took a step back waiting for any sign of a breach. Groans and moans continued from the other side as strong fists beat against the doors. After several minutes of silent agony, the infected stopped, believing their meal was gone.
John let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. He sink to the ground in the middle of the room. "Fuck." he said holding himself as he tried to regain his composure.
The adrenaline still pumped through everyone's veins but as the seconds turned to minutes, the situation finally dawned on them. Sherlock looked around at the smashed and beaten computers. In all the adrenaline, he hadn't noticed where they'd been running. He cursed himself for letting it pass by without his observation. They were in an open plan office. The discarded coffee pot and overturned desks told him that much. They tried to ignore the scent wafting through the air from the floors and windows. The familiar scent of London had been consumed by the stifling smell of decay. Sherlock began to look around. Passing over the bodies (unmoving much to his relief), he found a clipboard with the debris. "Johnson Brother's Attorney." he read aloud. He looked around at the others.
Molly shook in her blood spattered lab coat. Anderson held the shaking woman. Lestrade looked into the next office searching for something, anything out of the normal.
John looked out the window. "How could this happen?" he said to the streets below.
Sherlock looked out after him. Below them, the sick and infected masses moved mindlessly. "We'll stay here for the night."
Donovan looked around the room. She tugged at her cut hair. "We'll have to secure the doors and sleep in shifts." She looked at the door before shivering.
Lestrade watched her walk into the next room. "We should make sure we're alone."
Everyone nodded and divided into teams of two. After twenty minutes of searching, they all met back in the lobby room. "There was a few in the offices." Lestrade said. John nodded.
"I killed one in the woman's bathroom." Molly said.
"I didn't find any in the board room." Sherlock said checking the door.
They all relaxed a bit. Closing the doors to the other rooms, everyone sat in the middle of the lobby room's floor.
Donovan was the first to speak. "I wonder what the rest of England is like." she said resting her head against the stone wall. She reached up taking a handful of her hair. A large chuck of her hair was gone after Sherlock had cut it. "Thanks by the way." she said. Sherlock nodded. She sighed. "Can I borrow those scissors?" he handed them to her. She took a deep breath. Pulling the rest of her hair in hand, she cut the remaining length off and stared at the mass of curly hair in hand. Everyone stared at her as she finished cutting her hair to a shorter safer length before passing the scissors to Molly. "You might want to cut your hair shorter too." Molly stared at the scissors before taking them and in one swift motion cut off her long brown hair. She barely flinched. Donovan helped her cut it correctly before handing the scissors back to Sherlock. He nodded looking over the two woman. He tucked the scissors away without a word.
"You both look nice with short hair." Anderson offered and Donovan smiled a bit.
Molly touched the pixie cut Donovan had just cut and sighed. "We'll have to wait it out for a few hours." She said looking over the clock behind Sherlock.
Everyone nodded settling in, waiting for the dead below them to pass.