Title: Through the Night
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Criminal Minds
Universe: Zombie Cantos
Characters/Pairing: Team - Gen
Genre: Horror/Drama
Summary: They might be alive, but the battle has just begun.
Author's Note: Why do I keep doing Reid POV?
Zombie Cantos: Through the Night
* * *
Music of whispering trees
Hushed by a broad-winged breeze
Where shaken water gleams;
And evening radiance falling
With reedy bird-notes calling.
O bear me safe through dark, you low-voiced streams.
I have no need to pray
That fear may pass away;
I scorn the growl and rumble of the fight
That summons me from cool
Silence of marsh and pool
And yellow lilies is landed in light
O river of stars and shadows, lead me through the night.
Before the Battle – Siegfried Sassoon
*
You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometimes fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
Robert Louis Stevenson
* * *
It's nearing sunset on the first day of the rest of their lives.
Though he's used to seven different flavors of horror, Spencer Reid has never experienced something like this. He's shaking. His hand is gripped tightly around his gun, and he's shaking, so damn hard.
Today, he's fired more bullets than in his entire FBI career. Hell – in his life.
In simpler times, talking about what to do in case of zombie apocalypse had been a hobby. A joke. He'd join Garcia in her lair, and sometimes Kevin would join them, and, on a rare occasion, Emily, and they'd toss around ideas about defences, and long-term survival, and the best ways to kill a zombie at close range. They'd laugh about it, when Kevin professed his plan to go to town with a machine gun, because the guy's never handled a machine gun in his life. They'd laugh about it when Garcia argues the merits of going to sea, because as far as pop culture tells them, zombies can't swim (except for that one movie, but he usually discounts that when forming his own strategies).
They're not laughing now.
'Hey.' Morgan waves a hand in front of his face, drawing his attention back to the present. 'We need to get back to the station before sun-down. There's no way we can hunt these things at night.' Morgan's shaking too, even if there's no way he's going to admit to any feelings of fear.
Because really, it's terrifying.
The end of the world is upon them, and there's nothing he can do about it. There are no statistics, no weird bits of trivia that will help undo what's been done today.
And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army.
What he's seen today is beyond anything he could have ever possibly imagined. Their flesh rots, even though it hasn't even been a day since infection. Their eyes turn a milky white. They shriek, and moan, and groan – sounds that no human could possibly make, and yet they had been human once. They had all been human.
He thinks about the people he's killed today. About the fathers and the mothers and the sons and the daughters.
His hand shakes.
Morgan pulls him to his feet, and they're both running, the path clear. He can see the light in the distance – the fire that had been lit to burn the corpses. It seems to be working equally well to repel the creatures though, which is a relief, because as terrifying as it is killing zombies during daylight hours, he imagines that it would be a million times worse at night.
He's vaguely aware of Hotch hurrying them inside before the door slams shut. His hands are at his knees, and now his whole body is shaking. He would give anything in the world right now for a tiny vial of Dilaudid. In the short term, it'll calm the shakes, but they'll come back even worse. But that's not his only reason for saying no.
'How'd you go?' Hotch asks them.
Morgan shakes his head. 'Couldn't find any survivors on the last run-through. I'll bet people are locked inside their houses, either dead or dead-scared.'
Hotch nods. 'We've been making some calls. It's not an isolated incident, but it's not a full-blown epidemic, either.'
'These things have their own momentum,' Reid says, sitting down at a nearby desk. 'At the rate this is spreading, It's going to be a full-blown epidemic pretty soon.'
'So what do we do?' Morgan asks. They're looking to Hotch for answers, even though there's really only one answer – it just becomes more real if Hotch is the one giving the orders.
'We stay,' he says. 'We stay and we fight.' There's a pause. 'And once we've done that...we survive.' It's what the whole day's been gearing up to so far. While Reid and Morgan have been out killing zombies, other people have been doing other things. The station's a lot fuller now than it had been twelve hours ago. There are scared people taking up every bit of space they have available. It's even harder to breathe now.
'How many injured do we have?'
Hotch deflects the question towards Doctor Holloway, who's busy stitching up a head wound on an older looking man. She had insisted on going out to help with the killing, relenting only when Reid reminded her that they already had eight people with weapons qualifications, and that she is the only person so far with medical qualifications, and that's far, far more important right now.
'Half a dozen or so,' Jean says, not taking her eyes off the old man. 'People panicking, hitting their head on doors while trying to run from zombies...They aren't used to this.'
'None of us are,' says Reid, and there's a moment where they all reflect on how true that statement really is.
Without any verbal agreement, it is decided that the subject should be changed, and then Morgan's handing over the containers that they'd managed to pick up while outside. Hotch takes them to the sink in the station kitchenette, and starts filling them with water. They don't know how much longer the utilities will be in working order, and water is something they definitely do not want to be going without, especially in a climate like this one.
'Hotch...' The Unit Chief's head jerks up at the sound of JJ's voice across the room. She, JJ and Hotch have been trying on and off all day to get through to D.C., but there have been problems with the phone-line. Apparently a connection's been made now, but whether Garcia had finally gotten through, or whether it had been Will or Kevin that made the call, Reid isn't sure.
Either way, Hotch looks almost exasperated before the phone is passed to him, and there's a brief conversation between Will and Hotch, whereby Hotch tells the other man to do whatever it takes to get out of town. The city is not a safe place to be right now.
And then...
'Jack?' Hotch's voice is almost a sob, his veneer cracking at the events of the day. 'I need you to be strong for me, okay Jack?...I'll see you soon, Jack. I love you, don't forget that.'
He hangs up with a choked cry and hands the phone back to JJ, who isn't even bothering to suppress her own tears. They all know how low the chances are of seeing their family make it out alive. If nothing else, the phone call prompts Morgan to slip away to "get some air". Reid stares at his own phone for several minutes before making a decision.
He dials the number from memory, and even though he rarely calls it anymore, it's not particularly surprising. He remembers the number of a pizza place he hasn't been to in three years.
'Bennington Sanitarium.'
He clears his throat. 'I'd like to speak to a patient, please.'
'I'm sorry; you'll have to call back during-'
He cuts the voice off. 'My name is Doctor Spencer Reid. I'm with the FBI. I need to talk to my mother.'
There's a slight crackle on the line, the only sound that punctuates an otherwise awkward silence.
'Dr. Reid, of course,' the voice says eventually. 'Unfortunately, your mother isn't in particularly healthy state of mind at this time. She had an episode.'
Part of him knows that if the secretary knows offhand about his mother's condition without looking up a single file, then it must be bad. He's about to enquire further when the phone goes dead, and he stares at in disbelief for a few seconds before jumping at the sound of Morgan's voice.
'I think the cell towers are down,' he says. 'I got cut off too.' There's a certain sadness in his voice, as though he doesn't think he's ever going to see his family again. Chicago to Arizona is no easy trip, but then, neither is D.C. to Arizona. The best Morgan can hope for is that his mother and sisters find some other small-town fortress.
There's a brief knock at the door, and Morgan's the closest, so he opens it to let Rossi and Sheriff Pegg inside. The sun has just slipped under the horizon, and there's still one team out there; Prentiss and Harrison.
'Did you see anything?' Hotch asks Rossi, and Dave shakes his head, but that really doesn't mean anything. They've been hearing screams and gunshots and a wide variety of other noises all day; it's almost ambient now – a soundtrack to their waking nightmare.
Then there are shouts, and the gunshots are going closer, and they all seem to draw their weapon as one while Hotch pulls the door open. Emily almost runs straight into him, she's too busy looking back. Harrison's inside just seconds later, and the door slams shut. The zombies won't go near the fire, but Hotch grabs a rifle anyway, and goes up the stairs that lead to the roof. Rossi follows him.
'You okay?' Morgan asks Prentiss, who seems a little dazed. A quick onceover of all the teams confirms that no-one has been bitten, so they all breathe just the slightest bit easier, even though the police station is at the point of turn into a claustrophobe's nightmare.
'Is there any booze in this station?' Emily says eventually, which elicits a half-hearted laugh from Morgan.
'I think most of it's being used as wound disinfectant,' provides Harrison.
'Kid obviously hasn't been on the job long enough,' says the Sheriff in an amused tone. 'You think he'd know by now what I keep in the bottom drawer of my desk.'
No-one comments about the unprofessionalism of drinking on the job, because if there's a time to take the edge off, it's now, because chances are, they're all going to be ripped to shreds tomorrow.
'It's the end of the world,' Morgan says in a glum tone. 'Why shouldn't we get drunk?'
'Save some for Hotch,' Garcia says, downing a shot of whiskey like it's cordial.
They don't drink much in the end, because if something does go down tonight, then blind stinking drunk isn't the condition they want to be in.
It's not particularly late, but it feels like it, because there's nothing much they can really do aside from sitting around, waiting for morning to come.
Hotch and Rossi are already up on the roof, so they take the first night watch while the rest of them try and sort out sleeping arrangements for themselves, and for the two dozen refugees that are there with them.
'We spent all day running around town,' Emily says in a frustrated voice. 'And we didn't even think to pick up a damn pillow.' She shrugs, and pulls a shirt from her go bag, stuffing it with other articles of clothing. It's unnecessary really, considering none of them are going to be sleeping anyway. They're all fired up with adrenaline, and the intermittent gunshots from the roof don't exactly help.
It's four a.m, and he's doing his sentry duties with JJ. He's fired six bullets, and she's fired three, which tells him that the ammunition supply is going to run out very, very soon. He's surprised that it had lasted this long.
The sun rises, and they do the same thing as yesterday, sweeping the town for zombies, and redirecting any survivors to the police station. It's not just the police station that's used as a fortress now though – thanks to yesterday's efforts, most of the surrounding buildings are clean too, and they spread out the base. Any non-injured non-combatants spend the day preparing for the rest of their lives.
Reid almost envies them.
He fires another bullet. Kills another zombie. He hasn't killed a human in the beginning stages of infection yet, and he really, really doesn't want to. It would just drive home the fact these people had been human once. That maybe there's something still human inside of them.
He pulls the trigger again, and his hands shake.
He hadn't signed on to kill people; he'd signed on to save them.
There are a lot of different ways of saving people, he tells himself.
Talking to yourself Spencer? You'll go insane yet, another part of him says.
He ignores the second voice.