It was lunchtime for the Alpha watch aboard the Starship Enterprise. Commander Spock and Doctor McCoy were having a private discussion concerning their burgeoning relationship.
"I'm sorry Spock. I know how much it offends you, but I won't - I can't give up eating meat." Leonard shook his head with a sad smile.
"Leonard, you should know as a physician that humans do not need to eat meat in order to survive. In fact, my mother has lived many productive, satisfied years as a vegetarian." The Vulcan countered.
"Yeah, yeah I know. Most folks are happy that way, but my metabolism is different." Len wagged an eyebrow. "It runs a little hot. I just need a some red meat once in a while."
"When" Spock quipped "under the full moon?"
McCoy opened his mouth to answer, when the red alert claxon sounded. Spock, McCoy and everyone else in break room three scrambled out the door to their duty stations or tried to; the corridor was blocked by the shambling walking corpses of several security officers who had died from a mysterious virus due to a poorly decontaminated shuttle.
"Back inside!" Spock ordered. In the rush to reenter the room , he didn't notice that McCoy was still out in the hall. He was busy opening an emergency phaser storage locker and handing out weapons.
Spock rushed to the comm panel on the wall and hit the button; "Spock to the Bridge. Captain Kirk, what is the situation?"
"Spock, where are you?" Kirk asked.
"We are pinned down in BR3. We have hand phasers."
"Good. Spock listen this is important. Set the phaser to full. You must disintegrate the …. Well for lack of a better word… zombies. Any lesser setting and they will only catch fire."
"Is that not effective, Captain?"
"Hell no! These things can't die and they don't feel pain. If you set them ablaze, then you have a flaming zombie coming after you." Kirk gave a wry chuckle. "Not an improvement really."
"You speak from experience."
"Yeah. And Mr. Chekov's idea of blasting their legs off didn't stop'em it only slowed them down." There was a loud thump audible over the speaker. "I gotta go. Good hunting and good luck. Kirk out."
Spock addressed the crew men with him. "All of you heard how to defeat these unfortunate creatures…."
"Creatures?!" Riley interjected. "They are our crewmates. That's Jeffry Combs and Ally Mitchell out there."
"A valid point, Mr. Riley. While Mr. Combs was one of the original stricken officers., Mr. Mitchell was alive and well this morning at shirt change. I suggest we proceed with caution. Phaser on full. We will attempt to reach Engineering and the Auxiliary Control."
Meanwhile, Doctor McCoy had his own problems. He has stepped out in corridor ahead of the group and was trapped out there. He ran to the right heading for the Biology Lab to warn the occupants and to use the contents of the lab to find a solution.
His long legs fairly flew down the hall ahead of the slow zombies. Len growled. He hated zombies. He was about ten feet away from the lab when he heard screams and he looked down a side passage; Nurses Chapel and Levi were cornered by a pair of late red shirts. He charged towards them. His growl became a full fledge roar as he leapt. His finger changing into claws, his mouth turning into furry steel-trap jaws as he soared. Landing his transformation complete; he attacked the zombies. He held on to a shred of humanity long enough to yell out "Run!"
Spock and his group broke to the left. The phasers were affective, but firing on full drained the batteries fast. Lt. Reynolds tossed her empty weapon aside and in desperation pulled the pin on a handy fire extinguisher. Whoosh! It enveloped the zombie in a cold of sub-zero gas. The zombie froze.
Spock noted this. "Good work. Lieutenant." he remarked as they raced to the Jefferies tube. "You have discovered another weakness. We will share this information with Mr. Scott when we reach Engineering."
They were nearly to their goal when the late Security Officer Black reached up from the deck and bit down on Med Tech Gonzales' leg. "Mother fucker!" He screamed. "Help! Get him off me!"
Spock dispatched the zombie. Then he turned to gun on Gonzales. "I'm truly sorry, but the contamination cannot be allowed to spread" He aimed his weapon at the unfortunate man.
"WAIT, WAIT!!" He pleaded as he pulled up his pants leg to reveal the mangled remains of his prosthetic leg.
Reynolds reached for the intercom by the door and the door slid open. They tumbled in and the door snapped shut. "I didn't know it could do that." She said in relief.
Scotty smiled. "I do have a few tricks up my sleeve."
"Such as knowing that we were outside?" Spock ventured.
"Aye, we have the tricorders we repaired in the Small Instrument Shop. With these beauties, tis easy enough to tell whose knockin' at our doors." He sighed. "I just wished I knew away to defeat the poor bastards."
Commander Spock described the fire extinguisher's affect. Scotty grinned.
"What is so amusing, Mr. Scott?"
"What is very cold, Mr. Spock?"
"Any number of things."
Scotty cut him off before the Vulcan began listing cold thing. "Space! Space is bloody cold."
"Yes, three Kelvin. That should be sufficient to immobilized our late comrades. We must contact the Captain."
"Agreed. Space them!" Kirk said, "but how can we do that? He slapped his palm on the arm of his command chair. "The shuttle bay, if we can get them in the bay, we can open the doors and out they go into the final frontier."
"But how can we get them there without putting ourselves in more danger?" Scotty asked.
M/T Gonzales raised his hand. Spock acknowledged him with a nod. "They can't tell living matter from artificial." He put his mangled leg up on the table where the Bridge crew could see it. "Chekov and Riley have remote controlled flyers."
"They are for piloting practice."
Riley explained. "And besides we can't get to them. They're in our quarters."
A slow smiled crept over Kirk's face. "What about the scutters?" he asked.
Scotty caught Spock's eye. Kirk hated robots, even dumb as dirt scrub computers modules -- the scutters. He sighed. He knew his newest toys were going to make the ultimate sacrifice. "Very good, Captain. Mr. Spock and I will set about programming the poor wee scutties, now."
In the end it turned out that the zombies would only chase the robots if they had crude mannequins in uniforms mounted on them. Ensign Chekov used the ship's internal sensors to find undead. Lt. Uhura coordinated with all sections to release the scutters and draw the zombies to the shuttle bay.
A tense hour of drag-stomp and whir later they were all there. Some zombies impaled on their unstoppable prey. From the observation booth, Kirk and Spock watched. "Fifteen, my god Spock. Fifteen of our crew turned into living dead."
"Thirty-two, actually, Captain. Only fifteen `survived' to make it here. In the course of defending ourselves we destroyed seventeen of them."
James T. Kirk nodded gravely. "Into the deep, we commit these bodies. Lord had mercy on their souls." With that he pushed the button and open doors.
Ponderously the great doors rolled open; star light, slowly illumining the great bay. As the air escaped, it screamed out the gap, growing fainter as the gap grew wider. All things in the area were drawn out with the screaming wind; loose tools, hidden bottles of contraband liquor, robots and zombies all rushed out to the deep, dark vastness of space.
Only after the doors were closed did Kirk and Spock realized that they didn't know where Doctor McCoy was. They called his name over the intercom and received no reply. Fearing the worst, they asked the computer for his location.
The computer informed that Doctor McCoy was on C deck, section 6. The friends hurried there. They rounded the corner and froze.
They were face to face with a canine-humanoid beast with steel-trap jaws, mottled brown on dirty yellow fur and blue eyes. It/he crouched there gnawing on the thigh of a decapitated zombie. The head had been torn from the body.
"Bones." Jim whispered in disbelief. His phaser trained on the cannibalistic creature.
"Doctor McCoy," Spock said levelly, "The crisis is past. We need our ship's physician now." He hoped that the call of duty would restore his lover's sanity.
It was that need and Spock's voice that brought Leonard back. He stood and gave a long laughing bark that chilled his listeners. As the echo faded he stood clad in the tattered remains of his gore stained uniform.
"Jim." he exclaimed in a husky voice. "Spock!" he tried to appeal to them both. "Let me explain."
Speechless, Kirk took a step back. He had a white knuckled grip on his gun.
The Vulcan sensed no danger from the -- what? He must know. Clamping down on his fear, he inquired lightly; "So you are a werewolf, after all, Doctor?"
"Naw, you green blooded hobgoblin, don't you know a were-hyena when you see one?" He tried to smile reassuringly. Realizing that his mouth was still bloody, he wiped it with his ragged sleeve.
"W, w, were, were, were-hyena!" Jim all but shrieked. "Good God, Bones. I thought I knew you." He fired hysterically. Bones moved slightly and the deadly beam scorched the bulkhead beside him.
"Tell ya what, Jim. Why don't we get away from this mess and let me change… ah, get cleaned up and I'll explain it to y'all."
"From the other side of a brig force field." Kirk snapped.
"If that's what makes you feel comfortable, then sure." Len tried to make reassuring gestures with his hands. Kirk stared at them and McCoy saw that they were red with zombie blood.
Spock volunteered to escort the good doctor back to his quarters and then to the brig. Kirk agreed.
Sonic-showered and pajama clad, Leonard H. McCoy sat calmly behind the security screen. He had refused to wear the blue jumpsuit, claiming it sawed into his family jewels. And as he could turn into a bone-crunching beast, Spock agreed to let him wear issue pajama's instead.
Leonard started; "I told you, Spock my metabolism is different and that I had to have red meat once in a while." He shrugged. "Dammit, Jim. I'm sorry. Look we all have some secrets."
"Some secrets" Jim snorted, "some secret!" Kirk laughed hysterically. "You're a ghoul. A human flesh eating, mighty morphing monster."
"Dead flesh eating." McCoy corrected him.
"Dead flesh" Kirk acknowledged. "Like that matters."
"It matters, a lot. It sure as hell mattered to those zombies."
""You ate Crewman Carstairs!" Jim cried in disgust
"He was going to eat Christine and Nancy, alive." McCoy replied.
"Perhaps, Doctor McCoy, we would feel more comfortable if you explained how you became a ghul." Spock tried to get the interview back on track.
"It's hereditary. I was born a ghoul, but didn't start changing until I reached adolescence. A ghul, g-h-u-l, a desert spirit like a genii, found my ancestress who had been buried alive, rescued her and took her for his bride. All their male descendents are ghouls, g-h-o-u-l-s." He paused to take a sip of water.
Jim jumped in still flabbergasted. "But you're a doctor, your father was a doctor." He shuddered.
"I have a mother, you know." McCoy said coolly. "And yes there are a lot of doctors in her family tree. Doctors and undertakers. In the days of yore, undertakers were considered `unclean', so it was perfect job for us ghouls. As life got more civilized, it became harder to keep quiet, but fortunately we don't need to feed or change that often."
Spock observed; "However, feeding gives you vitality. That is why in so many planetside situations you are the most vulnerable member of the landing party, because you refrain from partaking of human flesh."
"Yes, I resist my urges. Unlike some people on the other side of a force field." Len muttered.
"He's dead, Jim." Kirk quoted. He didn't know whether to be ironic or frightened. "You act all upset when a crew member dies. I'll bet you're just waiting to get them to the autopsy room for a little bedtime snack."
"I regret the death of each and every crewmember. I strive to defeat death and feel the loss deeply. I resist, Great Bird knows, how I resist, but once in a great while, before someone is cremated, I take nourishment."
"And what if he does?" The Vulcan inquired. "Think about the whole man and your history with him. Is Leonard H. McCoy in fact an award winning doctor that other starship and base commanders have tried to poach from you? Does he do his job above and beyond the call of duty?" Been a friend, steadfast and loyal?
"
"Yes, yes, and dammit yes!" Kirk was forced to concede. "Although, after today, I may rely a little more on Med Tech Gonzales. He can really think on his feet, er, foot."
"So, Jim, are you letting me outta here or outing me?" Bones wrung his hands.
"One thing first, tell me about zombies."
"Hate'em, can't stand the unnatural, trice damned things. This is only the second time in my life I've had the misfortune to encounter `em, and they always make me loose control. Hell, food should not walk around. And when they attack the people I care about, I fight back as best I can -- with tooth and claw." Len's blue eyes blazed. He dared Kirk to challenge him.
Instead, Captain Kirk slapped the panel and released the force field. "This is a lot to take in." He shook his head. "Gentlemen, I need a drink, probably more than one. Would you care to join me?"
FIN
