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nobleplatypus) wrote2006-10-06 04:42 am
nobleplatypus) wrote2006-10-06 04:42 am
Island of the Zombies: Chapter Eight
Jack dragged a dead branch over to his growing pile of firewood and dropped it onto the dew-soaked grass. He cast about for a moment, then kicked at some low shrubs. "Where's the axe?" he asked no one in particular.
"Boone took it down to the beach last night."
Jack looked up sharply. Kate had been leaning against a tree a few yards away, watching him, but now she straightened. "We need to talk, Jack. About the zom--"
"Mass hysteria," he snapped. Kate opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. "It's practically a textbook case." He paused, then added, "Zombies aren't real," for good measure. This assertion was punctuated by Jack picking up one of the thinner branches and snapping it over his knee with more viciousness than was probably necessary.
Kate glared at him, annoyance outweighing any hurt his tone had caused. Like it or not, Jack was the unofficial leader, and people were looking to him for unofficial leadership. But they hadn't gotten any, because he'd spent almost all of the last twenty-four hours in a sulk that was only interrupted by flashes of exasperation. Kate was getting sick of it. Because of this, she suffered only a tiny twinge of regret after blurting, "From here, it's starting to look more like a textbook case of denial."
Jack whipped his head around to stare at Kate in disbelief. "What did you just say?"
Though she was sorely tempted to reply with a belligerent, "You heard me," Kate settled for an arched eyebrow.
Jack flushed. "Maybe you need your eyes examined," he huffed, picking up another branch.
"Good thing there's a doctor around," Kate said, trying and failing to hide a self-satisfied smirk.
"I'm a spinal surgeon, not an optometrist." Jack scowled and split the second branch with a sharp crack.
Now she was grinning outright. "Do you realize how ridiculous we sound?"
Jack threw down the branches and raised his eyebrows at her, refusing to be amused. "What did you want, Kate?"
Kate sobered and looked down at the jungle floor. "I came out here to tell you... Sayid, Shannon, and Boone are gone."
"What do you mean, 'gone'?" Jack rummaged through the remaining branches.
"Shannon--Shannon's dead." Kate pursed her lips, and Jack stopped mucking about with the woodpile to watch her. "Boone, from the sound of things, is probably dead, too. And by 'dead,' I mean..." she trailed off and looked up at Jack, who had folded his arms. "You know," she finished quietly.
Jack digested this. "What about Sayid?"
"No one's seen him since last night. He just disappeared into the jungle."
Kate waited for a response. After several moments of not getting one, she stepped towards him. "Jack, you can't keep ignoring this." For his part, Jack clenched his jaw and kicked at the woodpile as if to signify that he thought "ignoring this" a perfectly acceptable plan of action. Kate straightened. "I'm going after him."
Jack glanced at her. "Who?"
"Sayid."
He shook his head. "No."
"Well, if 'zombies aren't real,' I'm not sure what you're so worried about. And if they are, wouldn't you rather have our only soldier here, not tromping around in the jungle by himself?"
"What about the bears? And the thing that chased us before?" Jack planted his hands on his hips.
"I'll survive."
There was a brief stare-down, which Kate won. "I want the guns," she requested with the confidence of someone who already knew they'd get a positive response. Because of her certainty, she was thrown when Jack brushed past her with a flat, "No."
"What do you mean, 'no'?" Kate stared after him, then jogged to catch up. "Jack, we need them to--"
"What do you mean, 'we'?" he echoed sarcastically. "You think I'm going?"
Kate frowned, nettled. "By 'we,' I meant Charlie, Steve and I. Locke said he and Hurley should stay here to keep an eye on things, so I'm going to track Sayid, and Charlie and Steve will back me up."
Jack glared upwards, and irritated martyr. "Sounds like you have it all worked out."
"But we need the guns," Kate reiterated. "Not all of them. Just one for each of us."
"When Charlie gets his hands on a gun, he shoots first and asks questions later. And Steve--I don't even know Steve! I'm not going to be responsible for what they'd do if they were armed."
"But--"
"And furthermore," Jack continued, raising his eyebrows at her, "if these so-called 'zombies' attack the camp, we're going to need all the weapons we've got. Wouldn't you agree?"
She refused to agree. He did have a point, but he didn't believe what he was saying, so it hardly counted. "So we should just go into the jungle unarmed?" she asked, trying to hide her mounting frustration.
Jack looked at her, his expression softening by such a small increment that she wondered if she'd imagined the change. "No one's making you go into the jungle at all, Kate."
Kate wanted to say quite a few things regarding Jack's excessively paternal attitude, but she resisted. Barely. "If Sayid's still alive--"
"Sayid can take care of himself."
"Jack," she began, on the brink.
"You don't have to prove yourself to me or anyone else--"
Oh, that's it. Kate stopped in her tracks, gripped with a cold fury. "All right, first off, you're a spinal surgeon, not a shrink; don't psychoanalyze me. Sayid shouldn't be out there alone, so I'm going to find him. I can't just wait for him to wander back into camp, with or without amnesia. So if you're not going to help me, just say it and quit wasting my time."
Jack had stopped as well, and was staring at her with the special brand of shock he reserved for displays of open defiance. His mouth was open, though he didn't seem capable of using it for speech.
"No?" Kate raised her eyebrows. Jack shut his mouth, then looked down at the jungle floor and rubbed the back of his rapidly flushing neck.
There was an awkward silence.
Kate exhaled, grimly, illogically satisfied. Before he could say anything, she turned and strode off into the jungle, leaving him alone.
-------
"He refused?" Steve and Charlie had been kneeling next to the small pool in the caves and filling water bottles, but now they were both looking at Kate with matching shocked expressions. Evidently, she wasn't the only one who had considered Jack's compliance a given. In fact, the whole master plan was based on an unspoken assumption that if anyone could get Jack to cooperate, she could.
Locke had discovered Sayid's absence early that morning. The "great white hunter," as Charlie called him, had taken Boone's death a bit hard and had decided to go down to the beach to ask Sayid for his version of events. But Sayid's tent was abandoned. Of the four guards on duty, only one had seen anything; he claimed that Sayid had spent an hour or two constructing a rudimentary scythe out of bamboo and shrapnel. Then he had packed the French Woman's maps in a rucksack, hefted the scythe, and disappeared into the jungle about an hour before dawn. Locke had found the trail, noted the direction in which Sayid had been traveling, and then returned straight to the caves to plan the next move.
Their hastily-devised plan wasn't a bad one (short and simple: Kate, Steve, and Charlie would arm themselves and follow Sayid's trail; if they moved fast--and he didn't--they might be able to overtake him before lunch), but it had all depended on Kate getting the guns from Jack. She'd failed, and a rapid unraveling of the plan was now inevitable: they couldn't go out into the jungle unarmed, making decent weapons would take a few hours at the very least, and there was an excellent chance that before they finished, the skies would open up in a deluge of Rain From Nowhere, wiping out Sayid's trail and bringing any search attempt to a screeching halt. And even if it didn't rain, Sayid would have a sizeable head start. They might not find him before nightfall, and it would take more time--time they didn't have--to prepare for the possibility of a night spend out in the jungle.
It was because of all this that a not-so-little voice in Kate's head was repeating, you're an idiot, over and over, each successive repetition more emphatic than the last.
You're an idiot.
You're an idiot.
You're a huge, huge idiot, Self. Idiot of the Year. Here is your shining Idiot Award. I'd like to thank the Academy...
"What's the new plan, then?" Charlie asked, interrupting Kate's internal pity-party.
Kate exhaled, once again trying to rein in her frustration (though this time it was aimed at herself and not someone else). "Well. We can either go after him now, taking our chances with just knives and sticks... or we can take the time to make some weapons, hope it doesn't rain, and go after him later. IF we choose the second option, we're going to have to plan for at least one night spent out there, since he'll have a bigger head start."
Steve looked up at the craggy ceiling as if he expected the weather forecast to be engraved in the stone. "And if it rains?"
"If it rains... that's it." Kate stared irritably into the middle distance. "There's no point trying to find him without a trail."
There was a brief, sober silence. It was broken by a yelp from Steve--Vincent had bounded up from behind and enthusiastically buried his nose in the unsuspecting man's crotch.
"Aww, he likes you," Charlie observed as Steve held the dog off until Walt (who wasn't far behind) could collect him.
Walt grabbed the dog's collar and clipped on his leash. "Sorry. Bad, Vincent." The yellow lab, for his part, gave no indication that he even knew that "bad" meant. He snuffled at Steve's hand, tail fanning the air.
"walt, you gotta keep a closer eye on that dog." Michael walked up, put an arm around his son's shoulders, and looked at Steve with some concern. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"
"Just his dignity," Charlie supplied with a smirk. Steve scowled and walloped Charlie with his pack.
"Come on, you guys," Kate said sharply. They didn't have time for this. "We need to get moving. We'll just get some knives from Locke and hope for the best."
"Are knives going to be enough?" Steve asked, gratefully seizing the change of subject.
Michael looked at Kate. "What are you guys doing?"
"Sayid's disappeared. We're going after him," Kate explained.
"But we were counting on getting a few guns from Jack," Charlie added.
"And he didn't deliver," Steve finished.
"What, so you just need some good weapons?"
"Just that," Kate replied with what she hoped was only a small trace of sarcasm.
"We have those," Walt said, looking up at his father. "Dad, you could give 'em some..."
Charlie and Steve brightened, and Michael nodded half to himself. "Yeah, I started making some yesterday. Spears and stuff. Thought they'd come in handy; there aren't enough guns for everyone. I'll show you, come on."
Michael had, indeed, constructed some rather wicked looking weapons. Twisted or serrated bits of shrapnel were lashed to bamboo poles, sticks of driftwood had their ends roughly shaved down to dangerous points. "I made this one," Walt said with pride, pointing to a mace-like object that bristled with metal shards from end to end; other than telekinesis, Kate couldn't imagine a way of lifting it that wouldn't maim the wielder.
"Nice," Steve said, giving Walt a look of unsettled respect.
Kate picked up a spear. It would allow her to keep a bit of distance between herself and the zombies, and it could double as a walking stick. She hefted it, impressed by the decent balance and weight of the spear. Michael certainly seemed to know what he was doing. She tried to find this impressive and not kind of creepy, and mostly succeeded.
"I think we're set," Charlie said. He was holding something that looked like the ancestor of a baseball bat with a triangular shard of shrapnel pounded through the end. Steve was holding what appeared to be a giant mutant steak knife on a stick.
"Good," Kate said, nodding at Michael in thanks. "Let's go."
"Boone took it down to the beach last night."
Jack looked up sharply. Kate had been leaning against a tree a few yards away, watching him, but now she straightened. "We need to talk, Jack. About the zom--"
"Mass hysteria," he snapped. Kate opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. "It's practically a textbook case." He paused, then added, "Zombies aren't real," for good measure. This assertion was punctuated by Jack picking up one of the thinner branches and snapping it over his knee with more viciousness than was probably necessary.
Kate glared at him, annoyance outweighing any hurt his tone had caused. Like it or not, Jack was the unofficial leader, and people were looking to him for unofficial leadership. But they hadn't gotten any, because he'd spent almost all of the last twenty-four hours in a sulk that was only interrupted by flashes of exasperation. Kate was getting sick of it. Because of this, she suffered only a tiny twinge of regret after blurting, "From here, it's starting to look more like a textbook case of denial."
Jack whipped his head around to stare at Kate in disbelief. "What did you just say?"
Though she was sorely tempted to reply with a belligerent, "You heard me," Kate settled for an arched eyebrow.
Jack flushed. "Maybe you need your eyes examined," he huffed, picking up another branch.
"Good thing there's a doctor around," Kate said, trying and failing to hide a self-satisfied smirk.
"I'm a spinal surgeon, not an optometrist." Jack scowled and split the second branch with a sharp crack.
Now she was grinning outright. "Do you realize how ridiculous we sound?"
Jack threw down the branches and raised his eyebrows at her, refusing to be amused. "What did you want, Kate?"
Kate sobered and looked down at the jungle floor. "I came out here to tell you... Sayid, Shannon, and Boone are gone."
"What do you mean, 'gone'?" Jack rummaged through the remaining branches.
"Shannon--Shannon's dead." Kate pursed her lips, and Jack stopped mucking about with the woodpile to watch her. "Boone, from the sound of things, is probably dead, too. And by 'dead,' I mean..." she trailed off and looked up at Jack, who had folded his arms. "You know," she finished quietly.
Jack digested this. "What about Sayid?"
"No one's seen him since last night. He just disappeared into the jungle."
Kate waited for a response. After several moments of not getting one, she stepped towards him. "Jack, you can't keep ignoring this." For his part, Jack clenched his jaw and kicked at the woodpile as if to signify that he thought "ignoring this" a perfectly acceptable plan of action. Kate straightened. "I'm going after him."
Jack glanced at her. "Who?"
"Sayid."
He shook his head. "No."
"Well, if 'zombies aren't real,' I'm not sure what you're so worried about. And if they are, wouldn't you rather have our only soldier here, not tromping around in the jungle by himself?"
"What about the bears? And the thing that chased us before?" Jack planted his hands on his hips.
"I'll survive."
There was a brief stare-down, which Kate won. "I want the guns," she requested with the confidence of someone who already knew they'd get a positive response. Because of her certainty, she was thrown when Jack brushed past her with a flat, "No."
"What do you mean, 'no'?" Kate stared after him, then jogged to catch up. "Jack, we need them to--"
"What do you mean, 'we'?" he echoed sarcastically. "You think I'm going?"
Kate frowned, nettled. "By 'we,' I meant Charlie, Steve and I. Locke said he and Hurley should stay here to keep an eye on things, so I'm going to track Sayid, and Charlie and Steve will back me up."
Jack glared upwards, and irritated martyr. "Sounds like you have it all worked out."
"But we need the guns," Kate reiterated. "Not all of them. Just one for each of us."
"When Charlie gets his hands on a gun, he shoots first and asks questions later. And Steve--I don't even know Steve! I'm not going to be responsible for what they'd do if they were armed."
"But--"
"And furthermore," Jack continued, raising his eyebrows at her, "if these so-called 'zombies' attack the camp, we're going to need all the weapons we've got. Wouldn't you agree?"
She refused to agree. He did have a point, but he didn't believe what he was saying, so it hardly counted. "So we should just go into the jungle unarmed?" she asked, trying to hide her mounting frustration.
Jack looked at her, his expression softening by such a small increment that she wondered if she'd imagined the change. "No one's making you go into the jungle at all, Kate."
Kate wanted to say quite a few things regarding Jack's excessively paternal attitude, but she resisted. Barely. "If Sayid's still alive--"
"Sayid can take care of himself."
"Jack," she began, on the brink.
"You don't have to prove yourself to me or anyone else--"
Oh, that's it. Kate stopped in her tracks, gripped with a cold fury. "All right, first off, you're a spinal surgeon, not a shrink; don't psychoanalyze me. Sayid shouldn't be out there alone, so I'm going to find him. I can't just wait for him to wander back into camp, with or without amnesia. So if you're not going to help me, just say it and quit wasting my time."
Jack had stopped as well, and was staring at her with the special brand of shock he reserved for displays of open defiance. His mouth was open, though he didn't seem capable of using it for speech.
"No?" Kate raised her eyebrows. Jack shut his mouth, then looked down at the jungle floor and rubbed the back of his rapidly flushing neck.
There was an awkward silence.
Kate exhaled, grimly, illogically satisfied. Before he could say anything, she turned and strode off into the jungle, leaving him alone.
-------
"He refused?" Steve and Charlie had been kneeling next to the small pool in the caves and filling water bottles, but now they were both looking at Kate with matching shocked expressions. Evidently, she wasn't the only one who had considered Jack's compliance a given. In fact, the whole master plan was based on an unspoken assumption that if anyone could get Jack to cooperate, she could.
Locke had discovered Sayid's absence early that morning. The "great white hunter," as Charlie called him, had taken Boone's death a bit hard and had decided to go down to the beach to ask Sayid for his version of events. But Sayid's tent was abandoned. Of the four guards on duty, only one had seen anything; he claimed that Sayid had spent an hour or two constructing a rudimentary scythe out of bamboo and shrapnel. Then he had packed the French Woman's maps in a rucksack, hefted the scythe, and disappeared into the jungle about an hour before dawn. Locke had found the trail, noted the direction in which Sayid had been traveling, and then returned straight to the caves to plan the next move.
Their hastily-devised plan wasn't a bad one (short and simple: Kate, Steve, and Charlie would arm themselves and follow Sayid's trail; if they moved fast--and he didn't--they might be able to overtake him before lunch), but it had all depended on Kate getting the guns from Jack. She'd failed, and a rapid unraveling of the plan was now inevitable: they couldn't go out into the jungle unarmed, making decent weapons would take a few hours at the very least, and there was an excellent chance that before they finished, the skies would open up in a deluge of Rain From Nowhere, wiping out Sayid's trail and bringing any search attempt to a screeching halt. And even if it didn't rain, Sayid would have a sizeable head start. They might not find him before nightfall, and it would take more time--time they didn't have--to prepare for the possibility of a night spend out in the jungle.
It was because of all this that a not-so-little voice in Kate's head was repeating, you're an idiot, over and over, each successive repetition more emphatic than the last.
You're an idiot.
You're an idiot.
You're a huge, huge idiot, Self. Idiot of the Year. Here is your shining Idiot Award. I'd like to thank the Academy...
"What's the new plan, then?" Charlie asked, interrupting Kate's internal pity-party.
Kate exhaled, once again trying to rein in her frustration (though this time it was aimed at herself and not someone else). "Well. We can either go after him now, taking our chances with just knives and sticks... or we can take the time to make some weapons, hope it doesn't rain, and go after him later. IF we choose the second option, we're going to have to plan for at least one night spent out there, since he'll have a bigger head start."
Steve looked up at the craggy ceiling as if he expected the weather forecast to be engraved in the stone. "And if it rains?"
"If it rains... that's it." Kate stared irritably into the middle distance. "There's no point trying to find him without a trail."
There was a brief, sober silence. It was broken by a yelp from Steve--Vincent had bounded up from behind and enthusiastically buried his nose in the unsuspecting man's crotch.
"Aww, he likes you," Charlie observed as Steve held the dog off until Walt (who wasn't far behind) could collect him.
Walt grabbed the dog's collar and clipped on his leash. "Sorry. Bad, Vincent." The yellow lab, for his part, gave no indication that he even knew that "bad" meant. He snuffled at Steve's hand, tail fanning the air.
"walt, you gotta keep a closer eye on that dog." Michael walked up, put an arm around his son's shoulders, and looked at Steve with some concern. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"
"Just his dignity," Charlie supplied with a smirk. Steve scowled and walloped Charlie with his pack.
"Come on, you guys," Kate said sharply. They didn't have time for this. "We need to get moving. We'll just get some knives from Locke and hope for the best."
"Are knives going to be enough?" Steve asked, gratefully seizing the change of subject.
Michael looked at Kate. "What are you guys doing?"
"Sayid's disappeared. We're going after him," Kate explained.
"But we were counting on getting a few guns from Jack," Charlie added.
"And he didn't deliver," Steve finished.
"What, so you just need some good weapons?"
"Just that," Kate replied with what she hoped was only a small trace of sarcasm.
"We have those," Walt said, looking up at his father. "Dad, you could give 'em some..."
Charlie and Steve brightened, and Michael nodded half to himself. "Yeah, I started making some yesterday. Spears and stuff. Thought they'd come in handy; there aren't enough guns for everyone. I'll show you, come on."
Michael had, indeed, constructed some rather wicked looking weapons. Twisted or serrated bits of shrapnel were lashed to bamboo poles, sticks of driftwood had their ends roughly shaved down to dangerous points. "I made this one," Walt said with pride, pointing to a mace-like object that bristled with metal shards from end to end; other than telekinesis, Kate couldn't imagine a way of lifting it that wouldn't maim the wielder.
"Nice," Steve said, giving Walt a look of unsettled respect.
Kate picked up a spear. It would allow her to keep a bit of distance between herself and the zombies, and it could double as a walking stick. She hefted it, impressed by the decent balance and weight of the spear. Michael certainly seemed to know what he was doing. She tried to find this impressive and not kind of creepy, and mostly succeeded.
"I think we're set," Charlie said. He was holding something that looked like the ancestor of a baseball bat with a triangular shard of shrapnel pounded through the end. Steve was holding what appeared to be a giant mutant steak knife on a stick.
"Good," Kate said, nodding at Michael in thanks. "Let's go."
no subject
Sorry, I will never ever be able to let that go.
It's great! I'm so happy to see more of it. It is clearly the best fanfiction ever to hit this soapy fandom. I enjoy things that are funny AND kickass.
Like... Shaun of the Dead! Yay for zombies!!
I hope your inspiration sticks! :-)
no subject
:D
Me, too. But now that I know where I'm going, it should help.
no subject
no subject
Things are about to get iiiinteresting. >:]