First things first. A/N a bit longer here, as I have to talk through some rationalization. Luckily, I see a way around the problems I've inherited. When I began this I had no idea that so much glaring medical error had been the producers' intent. It IS IMPOSSIBLE TO TAKE WHAT WE SAW IN THE PILOT TO MEAN WHAT THE PRODUCERS INDICATE AND LEAVE IT AT FACE VALUE IF THE BELIEVABILITY 'LEVEL' OF HOUSE IS TO BE MAINTAINED. Let's start with the timeline they've given for Rick's awakening. His wife's pregnancy, his facial hair and wilted flowers, and empty I.V. bag and missing hospital staff, flickering lights, and Rick's been alone with no nutrition or hydration for 45 days? As House would put it, "You're lying." People have speculated about Georgia heat speeding the wilting of flowers and maybe a phantom nurse taking care of Rick and leaving no sign. Then there's the completely irrational idea that somehow a sheriff, barring media non-disclosure and timing, would have not been informed that a pandemic was beginning? "Watch for out-of-state visitors? Call the CDC if you see the following?" For Rick to have come to and been able to walk with no appreciable muscle atrophy and not passing out trying to walk out of his own room, means he likely WASN'T comatose for longer than forty-eight hours after the last I.V. fluid dripped into his veins. If we allow that Rick was in the hospital for three weeks' time BEFORE Shane came for him, which seems too long for how well he walked, that's still unlikely he could stand up without help. No medical shaving pattern or markers leads us away from an extra surgery which WOULD make his recovery more feasible. Data from the spin-off, FTWD, is available, but I can't even stay awake to watch it. It's horrible what happens to a production when there are characters in search of a story, or at least a single author. Most of the fanfiction I've read, even the awful stuff, was more riveting at least.
I'm sticking to Rick being in for a hair over two weeks before (dialogue) and two days after (hydration) Shane's final visit with my solution 'clouding' the timeline afterwards. It's on the edge of medical possibility, which is a theme for Rick, with the following explanations.
The best evidence for my solution is the military. They weren't acting like deployment had happened long enough ago that they could be organized and prepared, which should have been the case, based on the timeline on TWD's website. I propose the following:
Someone put something in the ventilation system in the confusion slightly before the military began leaving the hospital. Something psychoactive but not very psychedelic for Rick. Something that might work a little bit like Haldol. It caused hallucinations in those allergic to it, and removed temporarily the capacity to deny reality even a little for everyone else. Under ridiculous stress and super-sharp perception of grim reality, military discipline goes out the window. Add to that a few of them are shooting at shadows of things that aren't even there. That would explain easily the actions we saw, including shooting living innocents. This ONE thing could have caused everything else . . .
At some point before Shane's final visit, those drugs affected a military doctor in the hospital. He performed an extra surgery on Rick without proper prep (shaving) to clean up prior efforts. He injected Rick with a massive dose of nutrients and immune system boosters, maybe injecting them directly into Rick's I.V. system without proper labeling or charting. I picture him muttering to himself, "We NEED a new sheriff in town," while he played God and luckily didn't kill Rick. Vitamins in forms unfamiliar to the individual promote rapid facial hair growth or fingernail growth or both.
The airborne drug combo was breathed in in slight amounts around Rick's cannula during and after his 'super-I.V.' To this day, he sometimes has hallucinations as bits of the drug work into his system during stressful times, as it is embedded in his fatty tissue reserve. He would be allergic to its effect on his brain. This explains Rick resuming mental health without psychiatric care or sufficient time for a nutritional change to 'jump-start' him.
That same combo did not noticeably affect Shane, as Shane happened to be the person in the hospital mostly immune to the drug, and it had been unevenly, but mostly, dispersed already.
Additionally, the drug happens to disagree with the preservatives sprayed on the flowers in Rick's room, causing premature wilting.
Rick was temporarily unable to wake during Shane's visit because the injected nutrients were at an end.
Rick, for the first time in his life, was experiencing a massive blood sugar crash because the injection was wearing off. He would essentially lose a year of his life, be comatose for several hours, and then sleep it off for a day or two.
His memory would be impaired in multiple ways, he would walk when maybe he shouldn't. He would come sharply awake, adrenaline pumping, probably have digestive distress and forget it.
This would mean time might have no meaning for him as his brain adjusted to the initial drug haze and nutritional loss. Then he could wander out of the hospital within a three-to-five-day period before reserve generator power appropriate for a trauma center or temporary military installation would run out, reeling from crisis to crisis, eating where he saw food.
At some point he would come to himself and have faulty, incomplete memories of what had happened. He could have lost ten days between each major memorable event during this walkabout.
This, while it clouds the timeline completely, seems reasonable to me. It clears up the worst timeline issues and medical impossibilities. Additionally, if the military had been instructed to mobilize at first as if it were drilling for disaster planning, it is at least somewhat more likely that Rick's town would have been uninformed a bit longer than others. Other issues will be dealt with in story. I really believe that this is the only elegant solution to the timeline issues anyway. What's even better, a well-meaning psychologist might have had a fallacious but understandable reason to have done it: Everyone must have been battling a psychedelic that had been dispersed the same way, since he was seeing that he and everyone else believed the impossible—that the dead were walking! So I'm taking my explanation as 'sub-canon,' or gunpowder, making the canons WORK, and running with it.
House Says Not A Germ, No Lies
Wilson was sitting at a desk with a charred PDR, a worn anatomy textbook, a pencil, a legal pad, and a frown. The masked man walked in, looked up at the clock, and spoke. "It's after five. You should go to dinner. I could smell what Ann is cooking from the hallway. It smells good."
Wilson looked up. "This is harder than I thought. I might be willing to put in some extra time. Obviously this is important. I've never really had a student like you. You're more of a teacher. I feel like I've learned more about what I was doing than when I did it. —But this is a lot harder."
"You haven't thought about it this way before."
"Never! Sensible, though. A doctor's apprenticeship refurbishment is the sort of thing that needed to be a part of disaster planning. I've made notes on some more things I'll need to check on in the lab. I hope there are other doctors trying to do the same thing. There are going to be things I can't remember. It's a pity that library burned. I could've used a thesaurus at least."
The masked man handed Wilson another partially burned book. "Neighboring house had this. This is a bit more than 'T' to 'Z.' I may be able to scout a bit more tomorrow."
Wilson nodded. "Thanks. You might try to convince Ann to scavenge with you as a lookout. She does very well, actually, and she doesn't wish to be caught by Negan's men. House said they would most likely pass her around and not be—um, considerate?"
The masked man nodded. "I'll visit her and ask. Did you hear anything about an hour ago?"
Wilson shook his head. "Did you have to kill any of them?"
"No, they were fooled. They left without even going past the lobby and the fake drug display. They're more foolish than I thought. They're headed west into some major trouble. All of the larger, unmanaged herds are that way."
"How did you fake the dust?"
"Blower motor aimed at the ceiling for a few seconds at a time. All the dust I left up there came down."
"What did you need all those ceiling tiles FOR, anyway?"
"Soundproofing. It took two floors' worth just for him, but no one can hear House from outside, as far as I can tell. I haven't told him that."
Wilson nodded. "The less he knows, the better. Except what I'm doing. He might understand that. Do you really think you can build a good enough lab for him to find the animation germ?"
The masked man nodded. "Yes, I can do that."
"No, I can't do that!" House was shaking his head, looking at the masked man in the recliner. "I'd love to tell you that I'm smart enough to outdo the old CDC's, but it wouldn't matter if I COULD. I'm sorry. I can't help you with this. I'm making headway on the decoding, though, Mr. Churchill."
"Yes, I looked at that. Your newest program should have the decryption done in a mere what, decade?"
"Hey, this level of encoding wasn't allowed outside the United States. In theory, I could be arrested by expats, right? You're lucky I'm not a staunch loyalist, Mr. Washington."
"You're telling me you won't even TRY to work in the lab?"
"On other things, maybe. But I don't want to lie to you—I really believe you might hurt my friends. The dead aren't rising because they caught something, or they're infected with something, Captain Picard."
"Why, then?"
House looked at the masked man funny. "I could try to prove to you that there ISN'T some bug responsible. But I'd need some incentive, since it's a waste of our time and resources."
"What about a serum to prevent turning if you're bitten?"
"That would require that it BE a bug, for a serum to work. Do you have trouble understanding that? That's the reason the CDC failed! That's the reason WHO failed. Not the British band 'the Who;' they didn't fail. The World Health Organization."
The masked man paused. "Okay, prove it can't be a bug."
"Will you tell me who you are, Mr. Jagger?"
"No. I might give you some hints. Small ones."
"Like?"
"I knew who you were before, though we'd never met."
"BEFORE before?" House leaned forward a bit, breath catching.
"Yes."
"How? You own a few hospitals? Build a few? You're the least lazy guy I've ever met."
"What will you need to do what I've asked?"
"Gene splicer, electron microscope, mass spec, sterilizing agent in bulk, general medical lab supplies, and three human volunteers we don't want to live, Mr. Mengele."
"No living humans. And you'll have to make do with regular optics for now."
"REGULAR optics?"
"The equipment I'm assembling barely tops four hundred times magnification. I do have some old-fashioned microtomy supplies. Eventually I'll get some immersion oil and get us to a thousand-ex and better."
"Candle wax?"
"Paraffin. A few homemade kits."
House shook his head. "Well, we ARE in the Dark Ages again. You have a dry erase board? Markers? Medical mannequins?"
"Yes."
House frowned deeply. "Then I'll see what I can put together."
"Starting with the mass spec. It's still in the shipping crates." The masked man fastened the timer to House's right-hand zip tie, and House swung his head to the left violently. A small baggie threaded to House's hair lifted out of his collar on his right side and burst. The fumes sprayed out on the masked man's face. The masked man smiled noticeably and stepped back, allowing most of the fumes to dissipate. He walked to the door, exited, and held the door slightly ajar.
House shook his head, blinking. "What do you—work for the government? You didn't inhale, Mr. Clinton?"
"I've built up an immunity to a number of toxins and drugs. If you ACTUALLY behave from now on, instead of plotting, I may let you work in the lab as soon as tomorrow, as well as visit with Wilson a bit. Please continue your work. There's a plate of venison from Ann in the kitchenette. I removed the lockpick from it, so it should be safe to eat now. Oh, and remember, you're not just helping me. You may be saving the human race, including Wilson and Ann and yourself. Wouldn't it be nice to be a hero instead of a misunderstood and hated genius?" He locked up as the timer cut House's zip tie and drew a curtain across the new glass door.
The masked man has shown a lot of patience. At some point, everyone changes tactics at least a little . . .
Wilma Peters Opens Eyes
"House? . . . House?" Wilson was tapping on a glass. House's eyes popped open. He wasn't bound to the chair he was in. Wilson and the masked man were sitting across a glass wall from him. House got up, picking up the cane, limped the perimeter of the cell he was in, noting the white board with markers and eraser, and examined each wall in turn. Nodding to himself, he returned to the chair and noted that it was bolted to the floor. "Okay, I'm here. What?"
Wilson blinked. "I'm glad you're all right? Our host wants us to speak on the topic of the animation—phenomenon."
House nodded. "Thank you for not calling it a germ, Wilson. Why don't you tell Agent Starling there about what we've already been through?" He limped to a corner and stared at it for a moment.
Wilson squinted, then smiled faintly and nodded. "We were camping in Pennsylvania near a diner when we first heard about it. Odd sicknesses were being reported. Anything unknown with a fever was to be reported to the CDC. Then it was any dead bodies to be treated as infectious and burned. We heard the instructions change twice in one special news bulletin while House was complaining about a wet t-shirt contest."
"They'd rousted us earlier just for listening to the news. We bought coffee. And we missed that contest completely." House turned a medical mannequin's back to Wilson and the masked man. He waved as if scolding the masked man, "No peeking at him! He's shy."
"A dead woman staggered out of the woods and tried to eat me." Wilson frowned at the memory.
"And not in the good way, either."
"House!"
The masked man shook his head. "How did she present?"
House beamed. "She presented with a red raincoat!" He grabbed a marker and wrote backwards for himself on the glass so the others could read, 'red raincoat,' at eye level. He underlined it.
". . . He's—telling the truth. Wilma Peters had been missing for a week. That had been on the news too. Last seen wearing a red raincoat. A boyfriend who worked as a bouncer in a bar a half mile from where we were camped had reported her missing."
"Boyfriend the prime suspect?" House perked up, watching the masked man speak.
Wilson shrugged. "One of them, probably. The bouncer boyfriend and a former boyfriend were both claiming she'd chosen them over the other one. She was last seen leaving the bar, bouncer inside, her ex at the bar across town."
The masked man nodded. "So you recognized her from the news."
House cleared his throat, writing backwards on the glass. "A week's worth of decomposition in a shallow grave. Local mud in her hair. Small indent in the skull up at the coronal joint. I wasn't interested in her torn clothing or missing shoes. I immediately wanted to know how she was walking around, Mr. Poirot." He had written 'week's rot, local mud, minor head trauma c.o.d.,' and 'walking while dead' under 'symptoms.'
Wilson grimaced. "He said 'Go buy a meat thermometer' and sat on her, staring, fascinated. The owner told me the cheap ones they used in the diner's kitchen wouldn't register below a hundred and forty. The gas station had some thermometers as accessories for the car but they had no probes attached. They wouldn't have been very accurate. I bought the high-end first-aid kit, and hurried back to him. He had her tied up with my clothes by then. He'd cut them up."
"Needed to restrain her. We didn't need to be hors d'oeuvres, Mr. Ramsey. You never wore those dress shirts ANYWAY, Wilson. The body just kept straining at the bonds, never stopping." He wrote, 'inhuman stamina, no pain response.' He stared annoyed, at having written the 'h' forwards for himself.
"What did you tie her to?"
"A broken pallet that was lying out back of the truck parking lot—at first. When she began to break that, I tied all four of the edge boards to a tree. I took the bodies' temp and found it to be about seventy degrees Fahrenheit, give or take. Absurd. Wilson wanted to call the CDC right away, but I was a fugitive. He let me use some gloves after I washed up and sent him for more tools, Mr. Goodwrench." He wrote, 'temperature of friction of movement' as an explanation next to 'abt 70 deg. F.'
"Tools?" The masked man approached the glass.
"Handyman kit and garbage bags, Lysol and hand wipes, and some scented candles," said Wilson, "And I bought a case of beer to trade to a trucker for his toolkit. I didn't understand why he didn't just buy the beer."
House rolled his eyes. "Truckers CAN be underage drinkers. Or banned from places that sell. It didn't occur to you, having grown up with the drinking age being younger. You probably broke the law, and I'm glad. I'd still be waiting for those tools." He gestured expansively.
"What did you do?"
"Verified her liver temp. Same as ambient air. No pumping in the heart when I cut it out. I'd never seen a heart with blood gelled from the cold in it. I was figuring out my next move when we were rudely interrupted." He added, 'dead a week' to the glass, still ignoring the board. He capped the marker.
"By who?"
"A well-meaning Amish woman. So you weren't in the medical field before. How did you know me, Howdy Doody?"
"I had reason to believe that a certain someone would poison a certain water supply. I needed people I could contact or abduct to identify and counter the toxins at speed with minimum of patient loss. I obtained your criminal record and copies of a Detective Tritter's professional documentation of your exploits. Case notes, submitted reports, original notebook entries. He wrote that if you could be nice to people he'd be able to admire you. That you were the most brilliant person he'd ever tried to catch."
House's eyes were wide. "NSA, CIA, Secret Agent Man?"
"Not important. Would this Amish woman have been 'Ann,' your group's butcher?"
House and Wilson traded a look. "You DID find Pete," said Wilson, "Is he alive? I'd like to wish him well and good luck not getting killed by Negan."
The masked man sat down again. "Fine; you tell me about Ann, Wilson, and I'll tell you both what I know about Pete."
In case any of you are wondering, I don't think House would give up baiting the masked man by giving him random contextual names. I also don't think the masked man would give anything up yet. Please read and review. Please also include anything I may have left out in my believability solution. Just out of curiosity, who likes my new term 'gunpowder' working off the pun 'making canon work?'