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Residency Evil by akire [Reviews - 16] 
Title: Residency Evil Author: akire Rating: PG. Spoilers: General knowledge for House up to mid season two. Disclaimers: Not mine. Pity. Summary: Zombie hordes have invaded PPTH. Paging Doctor House! For: the Zombie Ficathon. Written for Poisontaster, who requested House M.D., and no Stacy/House or Cameron/House. The diagnostician's viewpoint on the phenomenon colloquially known as zombies. Bonus points for Cuddy with a shotgun. A/N: Thanks to The Pouncer for the awesomely fast beta. All remaining mistakes are mine (And they’ll eat your brrraaaiiinns!) Residency Evil ~#~ Prologue House was watching Shaun of the Dead on the oncology lounge TV again when a crowd of patients shuffled past the door, the morgue tags on their toes making a clicking sound against the linoleum. House blinked, shrugged, and opened another container of blue jello. They were up, walking, and therefore not his problem. Instead, he fast-forwarded to his favourite scene in the movie and settled in for the afternoon. Chapter One: How do you treat a zombie when they don’t have any vitals to measure? Chase screamed, his arms flailing, as he bolted past the glass walls of House’s office and tore into the diagnostics lounge, where he promptly began barricading himself behind the little desk. Wilson raised one eyebrow. “What was that all about?” House shrugged and fiddled some more with the antenna on his portable TV. “Dunno. Maybe somebody said ‘koala’ at him in a really bad accent.” All that earned him was an eye-roll. “Chase doesn’t scream. It’s one of his few redeeming qualities,” Wilson said as he rose and headed into the other office. House fiddled with the volume settings as the sound of Chase and Wilson talking loudly filtered through the open door. Finally, he snatched up his cane and stormed into the other room. “What’s his problem?” House growled at Wilson. Wilson looked up from where he had perched himself on the edge of Chases’ slowly growing make-shift barricade. “It seems,” he began slowly, “that the hospital has been overrun by zombies.” “Zombies,” House said flatly. “Zombies!” Chase leapt up from behind his ad-hoc fortification. “Flesh-eating, brain hunting zombies!” House and Wilson leaned back as one when Chase’s flailing arms came too close. “They’ve already got Cameron, but they’re not gonna eat me!” House looked to Wilson. “I thought zombies ate brains.” Wilson buried his hands in his lab coat pocket and gave a sheepish shrug. “So the movies would have us believe.” “Then why did they eat Cameron?” Chase stared at him. “They didn’t eat Cameron.” “You said…” Chase shook his head and pointed. House and Wilson turned and watched in silence as a distinctly dead-looking Cameron shambled past the office, groaning. House tilted his head, craning to follow until she was out of sight. “See!” Chase’s voice was high-pitched and his eyes were wide. “Zombie Cameron! And she tried to eat me!” House opened his mouth. “Don’t,” Wilson waved a warning finger at him. “You’re right. It’s too easy.” House walked over to the whiteboard and stared at it for a moment. He nodded once to himself and began scrubbing it clear. “Okay. Let’s see.” In large messy capital letters, he wrote at the top of the board ZOMBIES. Chase’s jaw dropped. Wilson studied the young doctor, then turned to House. “Better than a slap.” “But nowhere near as much fun,” House noted. Chase finally pulled himself together, the shock of the zombie-craziness fading under the pressure of the more normal ‘I work for Dr House’ variety of weird. “You want us to do a differential diagnosis of zombiism? Now?” House paused, and recapped the marker pen. “You’re right, where’s Foreman?” He took in the two blank faces staring back at him. “Let’s go find him then.” He tossed the pen back on the shelf and headed for the door. “Come on …no, not you.” Chase shrank back. “I want you to research all means of making and killing zombies. I want to know everything about their symptomology by the time we get back.” “Symptom…” Chase shook his head in disbelief. “They’re zombies! How can they have symptoms, they don’t even have a pulse!” House pulled open the glass door and looked up and down the corridor. “There you go. First characteristic.” Chapter 2: No, this is why God created nurses… House’s cane made a hollow ‘thump’ as it cracked the zombie across the temple. Wilson twisted slightly to watch the zombie stagger backwards and out of sight before the doors sealed between them. “Well, that seems to work,” Wilson said bluntly. “Usually does. Pity Cuddy doesn’t let me do it more often.” Wilson sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You know, maybe we should try to find Cuddy first?” House shook his head and leaned forward on his cane. “No, we need both Foreman and Chase.” He looked sideways at his friend. “Human shields. Chase couldn’t bodily protect both of us. He’s far too skinny.” “Oh, of course. How silly of me.” The ding of the elevator was his only reply. House stuck his head out through the opening doors. “Coast’s clear. Let’s go, Boy Wilson.” Wilson followed House out of the elevator. “Call me that again and I’ll feed you to the zombies myself.” He shook his head and sighed. “And what does it say about my life that I can accept hordes of zombies as just another day at the office?” House leaned on his cane, twisting his body around to bat his eyelashes in what he probably thought was a fair approximation of cute. “That your life is interesting and exciting?” “And I promised my mother I’d stick to dull and well-paid, and not be swayed by the bad boys who smoked cigarettes after class.” “Ahh, but think of it this way. A cool scar and a battle story to go with it? Guaranteed chick magnet.” Wilson made it as far as “well” before they turned the corner and stopped dead at the tableau that greeted them. The large ring of the nurses’ station was designed to give its usual occupants a sweeping view of the entire floor and easy access into the various rooms and suites surrounding it. It was not designed to be defended against an invasion of zombies, though the nurses of the neurology department were giving it everything they had. Wilson and House stared as a pretty young blonde in a white assistant’s blouse deployed a bedpan in a manner its manufacturers never intended. With a swing worthy of the World Series, she decapitated a zombie that was trying to climb over the main desk. House waggled his eyebrows at Wilson. “I like her. Think I could get her transferred to diagnostics?” “You don’t have any staff nurses. They blacklisted you. I hear they draw straws to see who has work your cases.” House grinned. “They’re also trying to get me off the clinic roster. It’s all part of my grand plan.” Wilson crossed his arms. “It’s further proof that you’re jerk, is what it is.” Instead of responding, House stepped closer to the fray and put two fingers to his lips. Everyone froze in position when his deafening wolf whistle pierced the melee. “Sorry, boys, girls and the undead. Dr Foreman needs to come home now, his supper’s ready.” With a primal shout of ‘rah,’ one of the zombies on his left lunged forward. Not missing a beat, House twirled his cane in one hand and brought it around in an underhand arc. Wilson winced, automatically trying to cross his legs as the metal head of the cane made contact with an agonizingly squishy thump. With a noise of choked pain, the zombie dropped to his knees as House reversed the swing and brought the cane down with a resounding crack across the back of the zombie’s skull. Wilson looked up from the sprawled body just in time to catch House wink at him. “And Cuddy said practicing stuff like this was a waste of my time.” Wilson put his hands on his hips, oblivious to the stares of the staff and the undead. “Well, why don’t we find her and you can show her what you learned today?” House grinned goofily at him and nodded. “Can he come too, mom, can he?” He pointed at Foreman, who rolled his eyes as he climbed over the impromptu barricade. “What about the nurses. We can’t leave them here with them.” Foreman gestured at the zombies, who seemed to have decided to ignore the three doctors in favour of the tasty brains lurking in the skulls of the other staff members. “They’ve got plenty of bedpans, they’ll be fine.” As if to reinforce this opinion, two nurses chose that moment to enter, screaming, through the double doors, one pushing the other on a surgical trolley loaded down with supplies. “See, they even know where their towels are, they’ll be fine. Come on.” Turning, he thumped back down the corridor towards the elevators. Chapter 3: But all they want is someone to love them…and feed them braiiins! The elevator doors opened and disgorged three doctors who walked in single file up the eerily quiet corridor towards Diagnostics. Every few paces, Foreman turned back and looked longingly at the elevator doors, only to be poked by Wilson into moving forward again. “What’s his problem?” House demanded as he banged through the doors and back into the lounge. “The bedpans were only going to hold them off for so long. I shouldn’t have left them.” Foreman sounded tortured even as he followed his boss into the office. “Bedpans?” Chase asked from behind his own private barricade constructed out of bundled stacks of medical journals. The latest edition was strapped onto his head with a bandage, acting as a make-shift helmet. House ripped it off as he passed. “I haven’t read this one yet.” Chase unwound the bandage, eyes flitting back and forth between House and Foreman. “You were killing them with bedpans?” he repeated. He looked almost impressed. House leaned against the counter as he flicked briefly through the journal before tossing it onto the counter. “Unless you’ve found a better way, you may want to go stock up before all the good ones are taken.” “Well, actually…” Chase glanced down at his notes, looking sheepish. “Bedpans are just as good as anything, really. The key is you have to destroy the brain. That’s the only thing that kills them.” “De-animates them.” The statement was made with a calm certainty. “What?” All eyes turned to look at Wilson. He shrugged, hands buried in his lab coat pocket. “They’re animated corpses. So technically they’re already dead. So —” he made a vague gesture with one hand at head height. “De-animate.” House waved his own hand dismissively. “Let’s get back to the brain damaging.” Everyone studiously avoided each others’ faces. House looked around the room, sighed, and pushed himself off the edge of the bench and over to the whiteboard. Snatching up the market, he wrote ‘Brain Damage = Good.’ “Anything else?” Chase picked up his notepad and began to read as he nervously twirled a pencil between his fingers. “Zombies crave human flesh, and will often ‘hunt’ for it in places they were familiar with from before their zombification.” He paused and looked up. “Is that even a word?” “Is now,” House said as he wrote. “Keep going.” “Ah, they retain all the knowledge of their past lives, and the longer they are…umm, animated, the stronger they are.” Chases’ expression made it clear he still couldn’t believe what they were discussing. “So we’d best de-animate them sooner rather than later,” House replied, drawing out the word as he looked over at Wilson. “We should find Cuddy, first,” Wilson insisted. “We have no idea what’s happening in the rest of the hospital, let alone outside.” House moved over to the window. “Sun is shining, birds are singing, the undead don’t seem to be walking the earth…” he stopped when he saw Wilson staring at him, hands on hips. “Fine. We’ll go find Cuddy. You two, find some baseball bats or something. We’re going to need them.” Foreman rolled his eyes. “Where are we going to find baseball bats in a hospital?” House shrugged and span his cane around in a smooth arc. “I don’t know. Improvise!” Chapter 4: The Doc They Call Cuddy The elevator doors opened to reveal an echoing, empty lobby. Chase stumbled out as if he had been pushed. Rubbing his backside, he looked reproachfully at those who exited more cautiously behind him. “There’s nobody here. Where have all the people gone?” The sound of shattering glass snatched their attention. “I’m gonna take a wild guess here and say the clinic,” House told the younger doctor. “Come on, let’s go.” The waiting room of the clinic was a mess. Unlike their colleagues upstairs, the nurses here had taken one look at the undead and fled, leaving the horde of zombies to tear the place up undisturbed. The four doctors shuffled through the doorway and stood, shoulder to shoulder, surveying the damage. “You know,” Chase said at last. “I think we’re going to need more bedpans.” Wilson grabbed House’s wrist and nudged Foreman with his elbow. “Consult room. Now,” he hissed without moving his lips. Using an odd sideways shuffle, the four men edged around the group of zombies, trying to sneak unobtrusively into one of the empty, quiet, and above all lockable consulting rooms. They were almost there when House’s cane betrayed them with an almost inaudible squeak as it rubbed against the lineoleum floor. In the centre of the zombie pack, one head jerked up suddenly, sending dark hair cascading in a graceful arc. Glazed eyes locked onto the hand holding the cane, and tracked rapidly up the body to his face. “Crap. Move,” House barked. All pretence of stealth gone, the four men tumbled into the consulting room, Chase and Foreman bowling through and smashing into the examination table, leaving Wilson to try to haul House in ahead of the lumbering zombie-Cameron. The door slammed shut, and all four men moved as one to hold it closed as Wilson fumbled with the lock. Foreman winced when something thudded into the other side of the door hard enough to hurt. “One date,” he hissed accusingly. “You had to agree on one date! Now look!” House gritted his teeth as another thud sent repercussions spiking through his body. “They all say they want you for your mind. How was I to know she meant it?” “Shut up and push,” Chase yelled at them both. “Wilson, get the damn door locked.” “I’m trying,” Wilson responded, putting as much weight as he dared on the small latch set into the door knob. “Just keep the damn thing….ooh…shut!” Another door-rattling thump from the other side cut off any reply. Chase bent lower, trying to press his entire weight against the door in the small gap left by the other doctors. The wood panelling of the door began to bulge, inches from his face, and he fell back just as a fist punched through the wood and grabbed the thin air where his head had just been. As the hand thrashed around, House, Foreman and Wilson let go of the door and bolted out of range. Unobstructed, the door swung open. Zombie-Cameron stood on the threshold, looking proud and slightly greenish. “Rarr,” she groaned, looking between the foursome sprawled out in front of her like they were an all you could eat buffet. House reached over and pulled Chase towards him. “Here, Cameron,” he cooed. “Have some nice exotic foreign brains. Young, tender. Like veal! Tasty, tasty!” Chase squirmed free and scuttled backwards under the examination table. “Get off me!” he cursed. “You hired her. You feed her.” Zombie-Cameron took one shuddering step towards House. “Dr Cameron!” Cuddy’s voice boomed across the clinic area. “We do not eat members of staff at this hospital.” Cameron turned and lurched back into the waiting room. Chase and Foreman leapt to their feet and scampered up to the ruined door frame. “Holy shit,” Foreman exclaimed. “Cuddy’s got a gun!” Wilson pulled House to his feet and handed over his cane. “What did you say?” Wilson asked. Pushing his way past the two junior doctors, he and House moved cautiously back into the waiting area. Cameron was herding her zombie minions into a half-circle around the hospital Dean. Cuddy’s face remained impassive as she racked another bullet into the shotgun’s chamber. Her lab coat was gone, her red dress was in tatters, and yet somehow her hair was still perfectly upswept and her demeanour was calm and professional. “Dr Cameron. You know the hospital quarantine guidelines. If you have been exposed to any pathogen, you are to report it immediately and present yourself for assessment and decontamination.” “I think she’s a little beyond decontamination.” House looked to his left. “You were a priest, Chase. Think an exorcism would do it?” Chase shook his head slowly, feeling the last of his sanity flee. “Nope. That’s for demonic possession. For zombies, it’s all about the brains.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and called to Cuddy: “You’ve got to destroy their brains. They’re zombies, it’s the only thing that’ll work!” Cuddy raised an eyebrow as she sighted down the barrel of her shotgun. “Zombies? You have got to be kidding me.” Foreman crossed his arms, more relaxed now the zombie horde seemed to have eyes only for Cuddy. “I’ve got twenty nurses going Xena on their asses upstairs that say otherwise.” House shook his head as he took a limping step forward. “Want proof?” Hauling back, he used the metal handle of his cane to whack the nearest zombie over the head. It went down in a twitching heap. “Dr House!” Cuddy cried, scandalized. One of the zombies nearest her took advantage of her distraction and leapt. On instinct, she turned and fired. The shot was slightly off from true, and the zombie crumpled against the floor before sitting upright. Grey-green hands patted the air where the left side of its skull should have been, then it climbed to its feet and advanced on Cuddy with a low growl. “Oh. Zombies. Okay.” Cuddy’s brow furrowed in concentration for a moment. Then she racked another bullet and set to work. House raised an eyebrow, impressed. Wilson leaned over, shouting to be heard over the echo of gunshot and the yells of the attacking zombies. “Did she just use one bullet to shoot four zombies?” House grinned happily. “I wonder if she knows anything about grassy knolls?” Taking in the blank looks of two of the younger doctors, he sighed and grabbed the bedpan out of Chases’ slack hands and used it to whack upside the head a zombie that had only been grazed by Cuddy’s onslaught. It fell down on top of the rest of the de-animated corpses. Cuddy huffed once, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. “You said there were more?” Foreman nodded slowly, eyes never leaving the pile of corpses. “Level five, neurology,” he said tonelessly, stunned. Cuddy gestured with the shotgun for him to lead the way. “Come on.” Chase spluttered when Foreman pulled him along with him. “We’re going after them?” Cuddy’s grin was feral. “This is my hospital. I will not have hordes of the undead roaming around. Who knows what they’re carrying!” Wilson and House watched them go. “I think Cuddy’s developed a taste for blood-sports.” House grimaced. “It’s going to make getting out of clinic duty fun, I’ll tell you that.” Together, they headed more slowly for the elevators. Behind them, from beneath the pile of zombies, a single figure in a stained labcoat stirred, and with a soft, pathetic ‘grah,’ climbed free and headed for the exit. EPILOGUE: All over bar the bodycount House woke slowly, groggily, as the pain in his leg made itself felt even in sleep. Moving slowly, mindful of the terrible ache in his neck, he reached over and dry-swallowed two of his pills. What a dream. He leaned back and waited for the Vicodin to work its magic. In the distance, he could hear voices, but they weren’t distinct enough to tease out individual conversations. He let the rhythms of the hospital wash over him until the pain began to ease. When he thought he could stand, he levered himself to his feet and moved carefully out into the lounge. Foreman was there, head resting on his folded arms. Chase had gone one step further and was curled up in a foetal ball under the desk, using a thick medical reference book for a pillow. Every so often, one of his feet twitched slightly. House stared. From behind him, he heard someone slip through the doors. He glanced over his shoulder as Wilson came to stand beside him. “Look, ma, the kids are sleeping.” The sarcasm in his voice could have etched glass. Wilson rolled his eyes as House first thumped his cane on the floor, and then proceeded to poke Chase until he got a response. “Gerroffitt,” Chase muttered sleepily, waving ineffectually at the persistently prodding cane. “Wakey, wakey.” House loomed over Chase until the younger doctor awoke more fully. The inane grin, Wilson decided as he watched the scene unfold, was probably overkill this early in the morning. Chase obviously agreed, for he threw his arm across his face to ward off the evil sight, and groaned louder. “Go away. I’m buggered.” Chase rolled over, pulled his textbook pillow towards him, and curled up again. Within seconds he was snoring. Wilson moved over to the bench and flicked the switch on the side of the coffee maker. “Taking on rampaging hordes of the undead certainly takes it out of you,” he agreed mildly. House raised an eyebrow. “Wait. The rampaging hordes were real?” He shrugged and sighed. “And here I thought it was the vodka talking….oh crap.” “What?” “Cameron went zombie.” “Yes…” Wilson drawled. “That means I have to interview!” Cursing under his breath, he retreated to his office. Wilson watched him go, and retreated to the balcony to enjoy his coffee in peace. The crisp morning air was a relief after the closeness inside. Looking out over the gardens, Wilson willed his knotted muscles to relax. Movement out in the ground caught his attention, and he sucked in a startled gasp of air as he identified the figure lumbering away over the grass. Cameron. Coffee forgotten, he turned and went back inside. Snatching up his phone, he punched in the paging codes for Cuddy. “Cameron loose. Bring shotgun.” He then phoned reception to cancel his morning appointments, and went off to find a bedpan. |
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