Chapter 11, Alexis's in Wonderland
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: I do not even own a tiny bit of Castle. Rating: M, in places. Time: After Four of a Kind, in our canon near future.
Zombie Apocalypse, Not
Author's note: When I wrote this chapter, I had no idea that I would post it on Halloween. Kind of a spooky coincidence.
Katherine Beckett, AKA, the K-Becks Kid, sat next to Alexis Castle, AKA, La Rojita, in front of Mr. Metford's desk. If Mr. Metford was known as anything but Mr. Metford, no one knew it, although Rick Castle had called him a few things. To the right of the Kid and La Rojita were Rick Castle and Katherine Beckett, AKA, Mrs. Castle. Next to them was Simone Renoir, once known as Kathleen Beckett. To the left of the Kid and La Rojita were Richard Rodgers and Katherine Beckett, AKA, Becks. Metford was busy reviewing a thick file.
Without looking up, he spoke. "Mr. Castle, is it your intention to move people around from one alternate universe to another, just willy nilly?"
"I wouldn't dream of moving anyone around for no purpose, sir." Castle was obviously on his very best behavior.
"You apparently have a friend in high places." Metford said drily.
"You mean Meredith?" Castle looked surprised. "Um, that is, Judge Meredith McDonald?"
"That's of no concern of yours, Mr. Castle. However, your request has been approved. Miss Katherine Beckett, AKA, the K-Becks Kid and Miss Alexis Castle, AKA, La Rojita will be resettled on an Earth similar to the one Miss Castle is from. In Los Angeles, in fact." He smiled coldly at Castle. "This will cost you a great deal of money, Mr. Castle. We'll have some papers for you to sign later."
Castle nodded and smiled.
"Will there be a Richard Castle on this world? Or a Kate Beckett?" The Kid asked.
Metford shook his head. "On the day that this Mr. Castle was conceived on his Earth, Martha Rodgers was in LA, doing a film. The man known to Mr. Castle as Jackson Hunt never met her. She married a director named James Prince. They live in LA with their three daughters. As for Katherine Beckett, she does not exist on your new world. Johanna and Jim Beckett have a son, Kurt, who's a lawyer."
"Is my mom still alive on that Earth?" Mrs. Castle asked.
Metford glared at her. "She is."
"She never took the Pulgatti case?"
"There was no Pulgatti case. Bob Arman and Joe Pulgatti were both shot to death at the same time. The FBI put it down to a hit by a rival family, based mainly on evidence provided by Detective John Raglan. You might also wish to know that a rising ADA named William Bracken was murdered about a month later. The officers first on the scene were Gary McAllister and Roy Montgomery. It was decided that it was a mugging gone wrong. Raglan, McAllister and Montgomery are now all retired and doing quite well financially. Quite well indeed for retired police officers."
"Is there anything else you people would like to take my time up with?" Metford asked sarcastically.
"Yes." Becks said. "These two need clothing. They can't go to LA looking like extras from a Clint Eastwood western."
"Miss Beckett, we are perfectly capable of providing clothing for these two."
Becks snorted. "Bullshit. They need clothing with a woman's touch. And the touch of women from a similar culture. The techs have advised us that there's a shopping mall here on the Moon. We need to take K-Becks and Alexis shopping."
"Shopping on the Moon?" Castle said, brightening. "Do they sell souvenirs? Tee shirts? Moon rocks? I'd love to have a moon rock. Or maybe…" Castle stopped when he saw the look on Metford's face.
"You two can wait in the bar while the ladies shop." Metford said. "And wait only in the bar. Understand?"
Four hours later, Rick and Rodgers were sitting in a bar cut into the wall of a small crater, covering perhaps two hundred acres. The crater itself had been roofed over, holding the air in. The roof was clear and Castle was enjoying a delightful Earth rise. The floor of the crater was covered in an open air market, with shops and stalls sprawling up the crater's walls. The women had disappeared into the shopping mall, leaving the men to wait and drink.
Rick sipped his Scotch slowly. "I wish I could tell my poker buddies about this. Drinking Scotch in a bar on the Moon? Patterson and Connelly would be so…."
"Here they come." Rodgers broke in.
Rick caught sight of two Kates wearing dresses that were identical except for the color. The Kate with the wedding ring wore a blue silk dress that came to just above her knees, showing off her gorgeous legs. The other Kate wore the same dress in red. Behind them were Becks, in a skirt and blouse combination that showed her cleavage nicely. Last was Alexis, in a dress that Rick considered to be too short, too tight, and too low cut. He sighed. She'd wear it anyway.
Rick rose from his chair and put his arms around the Kate in the red dress and kissed her soundly.
"Rick! How did you know it was me?" His wife asked.
"I'm afraid the Kid looks too self-conscious in her new clothes. I doubt that she's ever worn anything so revealing."
The Kid blushed, while taking off the wedding ring and handing it back to Kate. "Do respectable women really wear clothes like this. And do women wear those…"
"Bikinis?" Becks finished for her. "Absolutely. And you'll knock 'em dead where you're going."
"We'll knock 'em dead." Alexis added.
Rick opened his mouth to suggest that Alexis should wear something like a muumuu, or perhaps a burqa. But, seeing Kate's glare, he said nothing.
They walked back to Metford's office and from there went to the red square where the two women would be transferred to their new home. After a brief and tearful farewell, they were gone.
"Now, "Metford said with a smile, "we can get to work. We'll give you your virus to implant the information you'll need for your next Earth, and then you need to see something."
Several hours later they stood in front of three rooms that looked like a cross between an operating theater and a cell. One person was in each room, strapped to a hospital bed. The first was a tall, emaciated, dark haired young woman, nearly naked, whose body was covered with filth, sores and scabs. Her hark hair was matted and unkempt. In the cell next to her was a Hispanic male, equally filthy and covered in injuries, he was beginning to scream and pull against his restraints. His only clothing was what appeared to be badly torn camouflage pants. The last was a blonde woman, tall, filthy and completely naked. She was screaming obscenities.
"A real zombie apocalypse?" Castle said softly.
Metford shook his head. "No, Mr. Castle, these three are very much alive. They are not zombies."
As he always did, Rodgers went over the information they'd gotten from the virus. "Four years ago on their Earth, something went very badly wrong in a medical research lab in Milan, Italy. They were trying to beef up the human immune system, but accidentally created something that turned the infected into paranoid killers. Ninety percent of the human race was infected."
"The population dropped from seven billion to seven hundred million?" Castle said.
"Less than that. The infected killed both the infected and the immunes. Plus when society collapsed, people died from lack of medical care, transportation fell apart, so food couldn't get from farms to the cities, assuming anyone was left to farm. There are probably only a few million immunes on Earth now. And there are still a lot of infecteds. "
Metford broke in. "We hope to change that. Observe."
Two men in bomb disposal suits entered the brunette's cell and sprayed her with something. She collapsed at once. The same thing happened to the other two people.
"When we found out that an Alexis Castle had been taken to this planet, we sent an automated search team in. We found the lab in Italy and discovered what they had done and even found an antidote and a vaccine. The scientists had been murdered before they were able to make enough of it. We've located a group of some thirty survivors holed up in New York City. We believe that Alexis Castle's kidnappers didn't know of the plague. They and Miss Castle may already be infected. So, you will offer the immunes the antidote and vaccine in return for helping to track Alexis down." Metford gestured to the three people now sleeping peacefully in the cells. "We'll show you how they are in twelve hours."
After breakfast the next day, they did go to see the three infecteds, who were now immunes. The brunette was dressed in a hospital gown and was being treated by medical personnel. She was also crying.
"Can you tell these people who you are?" A doctor asked.
The woman looked up at them. "I'm Sarah Black. I am…was a student at Hudson. Student athlete, basketball, soccer and rugby. I don't know why, all of a sudden I was filled with rage….I grabbed fire axe and….I killed a stranger. I don't know why." She began sobbing.
The man was just staring ahead.
"Can you tell us about yourself?" A nurse asked.
"Specialist James Reynoso, Second of the Eighty-Seventh, Tenth Mountain Division, Ft. Drum, New York."
"What was your MOS, soldier?" Rodgers asked.
"Eleven Bravo, sir."
"Don't call me sir, soldier, I work for a living. What happened to you?" In an aside to the rest, "He's an infantryman."
The man shrugged. "We were deployed to New York City. All hell had broken loose there. People were killing each other. I never seen anything like it. We were in full MOPP…"
Rodgers broke in. "Mission oriented protective posture. It means he had on his full protective gear for chemical or biological warfare: Gas mask, protective suit, the works."
"MOPP gear didn't do a fucking thing. All of a sudden, I just hated everybody. I started shooting and…I didn't stop."
The blonde was Helena Carter. "Personal trainer and mixed martial arts wannabe. I was in the gym and all of a sudden this woman goes crazy, starts bashing people with weights. Then another one started. I ran outside, but people were going crazy. I grabbed a gun from a dead cop and ran to my apartment. Then, something happened. I left my apartment and began killing."
A doctor talked to Castle and his friends. "Most of the surviving infected are like these three. Strong, smart and used to violence in some manner. The young, the old, the weak and the stupid are all dead."
"How come they haven't over run the immunes? How could thirty people hold off ten times their number?" Simone asked.
"The infecteds want to kill everyone, immune or infected. They don't, they can't, cooperate."
"How do we keep from getting killed?" Castle asked.
"Let me show you." Metford said.
Rodgers stood and admired the vehicle. "An M2 Bradley fighting vehicle. Outstanding!"
"A tank?" Castle asked.
"Not a tank, an infantry fighting vehicle. It's got a 25mm gun, TOW anti-tank missiles and a coaxial machine gun. And it carries six infantrymen in the back." Then Rodgers noticed the vehicle was pulling an armored trailer. "What's the trailer for?"
"That's carrying the antidote and vaccines." Metford replied. "There wasn't enough room inside for all we're sending."
"When do we leave?"
"When the other three are ready to go back. They want to go back to their Earth and try to save the human race."
"How long?" Becks asked.
"A week or so. They're sick, injured and have lost a lot of weight."
"Could we go to the shopping mall?" Castle asked, hopefully. Metford just glared at him.
A week later they were driving through the streets of Manhattan and Castle was till complaining. "Really? A couple of days at a lousy mall, on the Moon? I mean, according to the techs, it isn't even a very big one."
"Keep an eye out." Rodgers said over the intercom. Rodgers commanded the vehicle with Becks as his gunner and Reynoso as driver. The rest were jammed into the back of the Bradley.
"Oh, shit." Castle said. "Someone's following us." Castle put on his gas mask and grabbed his weapon. "How the hell do I end up with a squirt gun for a weapon?"
"It's not a squirt gun, lover." Kate said, also in her gas mask, but carrying an M 16 rifle. "Stop now, Rodgers."
The Bradley stopped and the rear ramp dropped. An infected ran at them with a fire ax raised over his head, screaming. When he was twenty feet away, Castle fired his "squirt gun". A powerful aerosol of both the antidote and a powerful knock out drug was sprayed into the infected's face. He took two more steps and collapsed.
Castle and Beckett dismounted, disarmed the man and cuffed his hands behind his back. Then they tied him to the top of the vehicle. "After all that, I sure as hell hope no one kills him."
"Not enough room to put him inside." Kate said, quickly hugging he husband. "Besides, it's only a few more blocks, Lexington between 25th and 26th."
They pulled up in some forty yards in front of the 69th Infantry's Armory. It was a solid building that had been used as the National Guard unit's headquarters since the beginning of the twentieth century. Now, it looked more like a fortress, with the window's sand bagged and concertina wire encircling the building.
"I think they have the barbed wire electrified." Rodgers said. He stood up in the turret. "Hey, inside the armory. We're friendlies. We can help you."
After a few minutes, a uniformed man edged out of a barricaded door. "Who are you?"
Kate's ears pricked up. "I know that voice!" She stuck her head out of the rear hatch. "Royce, it's me Kate Beckett and Richard Castle."
The man walked out a little bit. "Come on out where I can see you."
Rick and Kate exchanged looks. "Let's go." They said together. Rodgers dropped the ramp and they walked towards Royce.
Royce stared at the two of them. "This is impossible. Castle…You're dead. And, Kid, you're inside."
Kate smiled. "There are more of me." She turned back to the vehicle. "Hey, Becks, come out and see our old training officer."
If Kate was a surprise, Becks was a shock. They quickly explained about the alternate universes and their mission.
Royce shook his head. "Alternate universes? If I didn't see two Kates standing here, I'd never believe it."
"Hey, Mike. Where'd we get the company from?" Said a familiar voice.
"Kate?" Rick said.
Another Kate stopped, looked at Rick in shock, then turned and ran away. Rick looked at Mike Royce, who just nodded. Rick ran after her. He found her collapsed and sobbing just inside the armory. He knelt down and put his arms around her.
"You're dead." She moaned. "I saw you. You died in my arms. You're dead."
As best as he could, he explained everything to this Kate. "What happened here, Kate?"
She sat up and looked at him. "Everything went crazy. People were killing each other. LT started shooting in the precinct. We had to shoot him. Espo took me to our loft. He got in a firefight outside, so I went upstairs. Martha was dead. Stabbed to death." Kate began sobbing again. "Rick, it was Alexis. She killed our little girl. Our little Johanna. Stabbed her. And she stabbed you. You wouldn't fight her and she just kept stabbing you. I shot my other daughter. They're both dead, Rick, and you bled out and I lost you. I lost everyone."
Royce knelt down and stroked her hair.
"How did she get here?" Castle asked Royce.
"Esposito dropped her off. He knew a guy in the National Guard. He went off with Ryan looking for Jenny. We never saw them again. It was pretty crazy here for a while. We'd let people in and they'd seem okay, then they'd start to kill. But it's been almost a year and a half since anyone inside has gone crazy."
"How do you survive? How do you eat? Get ammo? Everything?"
"We raided National Guard armories for weapons, ammo and other equipment. There was a ship in the harbor carrying Humanitarian Daily Rations, food a lot like military MREs, to Africa. We have a couple of million rations now. Gasoline, diesel, water, anything else, we loot or trade for. In a city set up for a population of eight million, there's plenty for a few hundred people. And the infecteds are so crazy they can hardly manage a can opener. A lot of them died of starvation."
"Thanks for taking care of Beckett." Castle said, standing up.
"She's not Beckett anymore. She's Mrs. Royce."
Kate stood up and stood by her husband. Castle nodded. "And I'm married to my Kate. But no kids yet."
"So why did you bring an infected to us?" Royce asked.
"We brought him so we could disinfect him. Do you have someplace we can keep him?"
Royce and Kate exchanged glances. "Let me show you." Royce said, leading Castle and his friends deeper into the armory.
"We built some cells here. We'd put new people in to quarantine them. That way, if they turned, they wouldn't kill anyone."
Suddenly there was a scream and an arm shot out of a cell and grabbed at Rick, missing him by inches.
"I couldn't let them kill her. She's all there is of Kate's old life. She's about all she has."
Rick looked at the thing struggling to get at him. "Lanie? That's Lanie."
Royce nodded. "What's left of her."
"I can fix that." Rick fired his aerosol gun into Lanie's face. She collapsed.
By the next day, they had two new immunes in the 69th's armory. In addition to Lanie, they had Jerry Lowndes, a FDNY firefighter from the Fireboat 343. His story was much like others. One minute he was fine, the next he was a killer. And now he was normal.
Using the Bradley, they searched for Alexis, capturing and immunizing over a dozen people. Only one, an outlaw biker, decided not to stay. He left one night with an M16, a Glock, and all the ammo he could carry.
There were other immunes dug in around Manhattan. There was a Coast Guard enclave based on a Sentinel Class cutter whose twenty two man crew had somehow all been immunes. There was a hospital that had been taken over by a street gang, and a group of students that held parts of Hudson University. There were other holdouts in the other boroughs, but Royce's group had had little contact with them. The total number of immunes on Manhattan was only about a hundred.
"We do trade with the puddle pirates and Hudson U." Royce said.
"What do you trade for and with?" Becks asked.
"The Coast Guard is sitting on a huge stock of diesel fuel, gasoline and lubricants. The students have the Hudson U. Medical Center and two actual doctors. We have food."
"What about the gang in the hospital?" Kate asked.
"We've tried to contact them, but they just shoot at us. They're not big on any kind of authority but their own, I guess."
"We need to give them some of the antidotes and vaccines we have." Becks spoke up. "We brought nearly ten thousand doses of each, but there probably aren't that many infecteds left in New York."
Royce contacted the Coasties and the University by radio and told them a Bradley would be coming and explaining why. Rodgers insisted on trying to contact the hospital, but the Bradley got shot at when they approached.
In a week, nearly two dozen infected were turned into immunes. Not all went well. An infected who had come to New York with his wife on their honeymoon remembered that she had been his first victim. He killed himself. Another was found trying to rape another immune. Royce had him shot.
Then, on a trip to the Coast Guard in the Bradley, they got lucky.
"There's one coming up behind us." Castle called out, readying his aerosol gun.
"Hang on." Sarah Black said.
"She's not an infected and I'll bet she isn't from around here."
The Bradley came to a stop and the ramp dropped. Castle, Becks, Kate and Lowndes jumped out. "Stop and put down your weapons." Castle yelled.
"I'm not one of the crazies." She had stopped but hadn't put down her weapon.
"That doesn't mean you won't try to kill us to get our weapons and gear. Now drop your weapons or we leave you here."
The woman dropped an assault rifle, two pistols and a knife. Kate searched her and cuffed her, then they hustled her back to the armory.
They gathered around the woman. "Who are you?" Royce asked.
"I'm Katarina Hoff, a German tourist." She spoke English with just a slight accent.
Royce laughed sarcastically. "There haven't been any tourists here in years, but you still have nail polish on. You also have a protective vest with your name inside of it, a brand new AK-107, the newest version of the AK-47, a new Heckler and Koch 9mm and a beat up Glock, also 9mm. If I were you, I'd stop lying because we have no use for liars here. We'll just send you back out there. Without any weapons, of course."
"They'll kill me!" She protested.
Royce nodded. "Or you'll become one of them."
"You'd never believe me."
"Let me guess. "Castle said. "You come from another Earth. You and some others came here with a redheaded girl called Alexis Castle or maybe Rodgers. How am I doing?"
Katrina nodded. "Correct. This place is nothing like we were told. We were supposed to land in a building all set up for us to hold the girl. But the supplies weren't there. There was…something. He shot one of my partners before we could kill it. We tried to find the people who were supposed to meet us, but all we found were other crazies. Then Konrad started shooting. He killed Ernst before I killed him."
"What happened to the girl?" Castle demanded.
Katarina shrugged. "I don't know. She ran away."
"Do you know where you were?"
"Yes. I can take you there. But, please, let me stay with you."
Royce looked at Castle, Kate, Becks, Rodgers and Simone. They nodded.
"Okay, as long as you stay loyal to us, you stay. Try anything, and you go outside, unarmed."
She nodded. "I will be loyal."
"Okay, we'll vaccinate you so you won't become infected. Then you can show us on a map where Alexis was."
Once vaccinated, Katrina showed them where she had last seen Alexis. "Here. We were walking up the stairs at about the twentieth floor."
"Shit!" Royce said. "The Bank of America Tower? It's fifty-five stories tall, and it has at least one basement as I remember. Twelve hundred feet tall and covers a damned block. Even if Alexis is still in there, she could hide forever."
"If she hears her father, she won't hide and if she's infected, she'll come for me." Castle said.
"Shit." Royce, Kate and Mrs. Royce said together.
The next morning, the Bradley, jammed full with a total of eleven people, pulled up in front of the tower.
Eight left the vehicle, leaving the three person crew. Royce took charge. "We'll string concertina wire at all exits, then we'll go in looking for her." He looked at Castle and Rodgers. "You ready to do this?"
They nodded.
Once inside, Castle and Rodgers went to stairwells at the opposite ends of the building. Rick's team included Kate, Simone and a former Columbia football player. Then he turned on the bullhorn. "Alexis, honey, it's Daddy. It's me, Rick. Where are you?"
Getting no response, they went to the next floor and tried again.
On the fifteenth floor, they got a response, but not one they wanted. Hearing a noise, Castle and Kate went to an office in the middle of the building. "Alexis? Is that you?"
A man erupted out of the office, swinging a baseball bat. The blow glanced off Rick's helmet as Rick shot him with the aerosol gun. Both men went down.
"Castle! Are you okay?"
He nodded and got up. "What the hell do we do with him?"
"Antidote him and drag him to the stairwell. We'll pick him up on the way down."
Two floors later, they made another discovery.
"Someone's here." Kate whispered. "Be careful, Castle. I'm not going to lose you."
Castle looked around. The floor they were on was mostly partitioned into cubicles with offices around the periphery. "There it is again." Castle tried to find something to stand on to see into the cubicles.
"Look out!" Kate screamed. A dog ran past the four of them and was gone.
"Damn." Castle muttered as he looked into the cubicle the dog had been in. "Oh, shit."
"What is it, lover?"
"Bones. From the clothing, they were women. Five or six of them. Probably trying to hide here while their co-workers went insane. Then they were murdered. And then the dog…" He didn't go on.
They were on the thirty-sixth floor when they found something. "Castle!" Simone called. "The soda machine has been broken into. This was done recently, there's still some soda in the bottom of the can."
The crack of a bullet sent them to the floor.
"Alexis?" Castle yelled, but only got more gunfire in response.
Then there was a high pitched scream and Alexis rushed at them, wielding an assault rifle like a club. Castle fired his aerosol gun at her and somehow managed to miss. Alexis jumped onto him, knocking him down and battering him with the weapon.
Kate sprayed her with the antidote and Alexis collapsed.