ALONG CAME A ZHI ZHU -Chapter FOUR

By BlueHandTwoByTwo (LarryL)

“You know, this isn’t exactly a convenient time for me to die,” Wash said, staring forlornly at his bandaged hand. “I still had some things I wanted to do first.”

Zoe took his other hand and gave it a squeeze. “You aren’t getting out of your marriage vows that easily. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Yeah, nobody dies on board my ship until I give them permission,” Mal said, standing next to Zoe. “Especially not my navigator. Didn’t you read your contract?”

“Must’ve been in the small print,” Wash chuckled, grimly.

“Zoe, I think your husband needs to get himself a good pair of reading glasses when we reach port,” Mal said. “Whaddya say?”

Zoe nodded. “It’ll be our top priority, Captain.”

Wash wasn’t in the mood for sappy distractions. The fact of the matter was he was infected. Right now, Simon’s ‘thingamabobs’ were in his bloodstream, crystallizing into dangerous, arterial roadblocks that would eventually cause him to stroke. Whether or not he’d be in full command of his senses at the time, though, remained to be seen. They attacked your brain as well. Simon said the condition sometimes caused dementia and that frightened Wash even more than having a heart attack truth be told. “I really wanted to be a dad,” Wash lamented with a warm smile to his wife. “Wouldn’t that have been fun, honey? Have a bunch of little baby Wash’s all running around the ship, doing my evil dirty work? An entire army of little blonde-haired, blue-eyed gremlins reeking havoc and chaos throughout the galaxy?”

“More fun than a barrel of Reavers,” Zoe rolled her eyes and laughed.

Wash snapped back, “Hell, even the gorram Reavers would’ve been scared of ‘em! My offspring would have been legendary!” He shook his head and laughed softly at himself. With one final deep breath and a slow exhale, he turned to Mal and said, “Okay, tell the doctor I’m ready for my sedative. I don’t want to go all looney tunes in front of everyone.”

“But how would we ever know the difference?” Mal shrugged.

“Can you believe this, honey?” Wash asked in exaggerated disgust and got up from his chair. “He’s mocking me in the twilight hour of my life.”

“It’s not polite to mock the dying, Captain,” Zoe played along.

Wash shook his head. “I mean, here I am shuffling off my mortal coil…”

“Don’t you mean your ‘slinky’?” Mal continued to joke, walking ahead of him and Zoe as they made their way to the Med-lab.

“Honey! Now he’s making fun of my mortal coil!”

Mal was still laughing when he walked through it. It was invisible of course, a slight tickle on the skin the only sign that it had even been there at all: an extremely fine net of silky, transparent threads that stretched from one corridor beam to the next. They adhered to his face and neck, the micro-dewdrops of secretion quickly absorbing into his skin. To this day, Malcolm Reynolds did not know exactly when it was he became infected. But it was in this moment, as he was trying to make light out of a grim situation, trying to distract Wash from what was to come; not knowing that he himself would soon be joining the ranks of those afflicted by the Green Nile Zhi Zhu.

*** *** *** They had already checked the bridge, the engine room, Jayne’s quarters, Inara’s shuttle, and over half of Serenity’s corridors and had turned up nothing. Zilch. Not a single sign of the gorram thing. Zoe and Mal were in their pressure suits, breathing the controlled flow of oxygen in their helmets, poking their flashlights into every dark corner and crevice. In their other hands, they held double-pronged charge prods, which they would use to stab the thing and then electrocute its rutting brains out. Normally, these weapons were strictly off limits for civilian ownership. Only fully-licensed Federal Officers were authorized to carry and use them but when your stock in trade was dealing with the black market, exclusive items like this were easy to obtain. It was Zoe’s idea to check the cargo hold and that’s where they were now. Mal had thought of it earlier, but the task of searching through dozens and dozens of shipping crates was more than a little daunting so he had been loathe to suggest it. They had split up, Mal searching through the East end, Zoe the West. Row by row they would poke and prod, look and listen, until they met each other in the middle. That had been the plan, anyway, until Zoe called out:

“Captain! Over here! I found something!”

Mal raced over to where she was standing. He came across her pointing to a fallen crate, its smashed top open. The Identi-tag on its side was still flashing: “Danger! Danger!”

“Stand back,” Mal said and readied his prod. Zoe backed up a couple of steps behind him. He pressed the button on the handle which activated the juice flow. The end glowed a bright, flickering blue. He kicked the crate and it flipped over, the lid unhinging itself to reveal… nothing. The crate was empty. Mal and Zoe both exhaled at the same time. A drop of sweat trickled down Mal’s face and he reached up to wipe it away. His glove knocked against the glass faceplate of his helmet and he sighed in frustration. He shook his head in an attempt to knock the drop of perspiration off but only succeeded in loosening several more from his forehead. He gave up as the beads began rolling down his brow, his nose, his cheeks. He batted his eyes to knock them off his eyelashes.

“You okay?” Zoe asked, noticing Mal’s predicament.

“Yeah, just sweating a lot,” he shrugged it off. “This must be where the damned thing came from. See the way it turned the straw into a nest?”

Zoe leaned over and peered down into the empty crate. “Yeah,” she nodded. “Definitely a nest.” Then something caught her eye, something buried beneath the clumps of straw. She pointed and said, “What’s that?”

“What?” Mal asked, peering into the crate. He hadn’t noticed anything before.

“There’s something buried under there.” She tried to reach for it but Mal’s hand shot out and grabbed her. His fingers were holding her a little too tightly for comfort and she winced. “Captain?”

Mal stared blankly back at her. Something flickered across his face for the briefest of moments, some dark cloud of disorientation, then it was gone and the Captain was himself again. “Here, let me,” he said. “I don’t want you endangering yourself just in case its curled up in there asleep or something.” He leaned down and pushed the straw aside with the edge of his prod and uncovered a fortune in Dekka stones! They were the size of strawberries and sparkled in that same deep red color as Kaylee’s favorite fruit. Strawberries were a valuable enough commodity on the open market, but these gems…these were downright priceless. Malcolm stood, transfixed by the sight. Dekka stones came from only one planet in the known galaxy and fetched tremendous amounts of money on the seller’s block. These, of course, belonged to Inara. Given to her by one of her wealthy clients for services rendered. Damn, Mal thought with a shake of his head, Companion School must have really taught her well. He wondered what incredible tricks that lithe body of hers must be able to perform, what orgasmic limits must she be able to break through in order to attain these precious gemstones as payment? Mal wanted to find out. NEEDED to find out. It had been a long time since he’d lain with a woman and this little game of cat and mouse that he and the whore played with each other was growing a bit tiresome. He needed release and he was not about to take no for an answer!

“Are those the Dekkas that Inara was looking for?” Zoe asked behind him and made to grab one. Mal moved so fast that she was unable to avoid him. He jabbed the end of his prod into her belly and let loose with a blast of electricity! She screamed and the force of the current flung her back almost eight feet! She crashed into a row of crates and hit her head.

“MINE!” Mal yelled angrily at her. “They belong to me now! You can’t have them!” He said walking towards her, the end of his prod glowing bright blue and humming with juice. “This whole ship belongs to me and so does everything on it!” Zoe was groggy and unresponsive as the Captain approached her. “These crates, those ladders, that girder, even the gorram zhi zhu --they’re all mine! Bought and paid for by my hard-earned cash! And if I want to keep any of this stuff we’re carrying, I will! It’s MY choice!” The prod swung through the air, threateningly. “I want those Dekkas. They’re shiny. And you had better not open that mouth of yours and tell her we found them. That’s a rutting order, do you understand me? They’re shiny and I won’t let you take them away from me!”

Zoe opened her eyes but she couldn’t bring anything into focus. The jolt of electricity had drained her of energy, made her weak. She took a breath and forced herself to say, “Captain, you must have got bitten. You’re infected---”

“NO I’M NOT!” he yelled, suddenly turning his rage against her and shocked her leg with the end of the prod. She screamed for a moment and then passed out.

Another voice in the cargo hold, deep and commanding. “Yes, Captain. You are.”

Mal swung his head up to see Book standing by the open hatch. “Get away from that door, Preacher Man! I’m warning you! Don’t you even think about it!”

“I’m sorry, Captain. But you leave me no choice.” He stepped back and shut the hatch, immediately locking it behind him. “I’m taking command of this ship now.”

Mal rushed over to the door and started banging against it in a frenzy. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! He tried using the end of his metal prod to break the tempered plexi-glass of the viewing port window but it was no use. “Let me out! Let me out of here! Gorram you, Book! So help me, when I get out of here, I’m gonna have your head on a plate! Then I'm going to flush the rest of your stinking body out the rutting airlock! I promise you! Your God can't help you now! You're MINE!”

“This is for your own good, Captain. I’m sure if you were in the right frame of mind, you’d agree.” Then he turned and left. Mal continued banging on the metal hatch door, yelling every Chinese obscenity he could think of.

Frighteningly, Serenity’s crew of nine had now dwindled down to a mere three. Book shook his head at the worsening situation, mentally composing a checklist of things that needed to be done if they were to survive this terrible ordeal. At times like this, he turned to God for help, for spiritual advice and divine guidance. Book closed his eyes and sought Him out but no one answered his plea for help. God was nowhere on Serenity at the moment. Apparently, He too had been scared off by the Zhi Zhu. The Shephard shook his head and said, “This is bad.”

*** *** ***

“I had to put her on a ventilator,” Simon said, pointing to Inara. A breathing machine had been rolled up to her bedside, a clear, plastic tube feeding her a steady stream of oxygen through her mouth. She was still and lifeless but the monitor was showing a slow and steady heartbeat. “I suspect he’s going to need one next,” he said, gesturing to Jayne, who was lying on the gurney beside her. Simon had carefully taken Kaylee’s dress off of him to keep it nice. “And then Kaylee. And then we’re in trouble.”

Book blinked back in surprise. “You mean, even more so than we already are?”

Almost apologetically, Simon said, “Serenity only has three breathing ventilators.”

Book went silent, allowing the gravity of those six words to sink in.

“In the meantime,” Simon offered, hopefully, “I’ve been playing around with some of the drugs I have and I’ve come up with something that looks like it might be a little promising.” He hurried over to his work station and flicked on the monitor. “I mixed some Tetracyde with some Foxomine, which is a derivative of Drapomine. I mean it comes from the same genus of plants but it doesn’t have the exact chemical makeup as the alginate we need. Come here and take a look at this.”

Book joined him at the computer monitor. He grabbed a syringe and squirted a drop of bright red blood onto a glass slide and put it underneath a microscope. The monitor showed the magnified image -red blood cells moving sluggishly as they labored to carry the Thurbibulens on their backs. “Now watch what happens when I mix this infected blood with my drug compound.” He was moving fast, excited by his new discovery.

Book watched the monitor as Simon grabbed a second syringe and carefully squeezed out a drop onto the glass side. The new mixture attacked the blood upon contact, yellow blobs attached themselves to the dark Thurbibulens and immediately began eating them away, absorbing them; making them their own.

“Look! It’s working!” Book exclaimed, a new-born hope shimmering within his heart.

“Not so fast,” Simon cautioned. “Keep watching. Not only does the new mixture attack the Thurbibulens, it also destroys the red blood cells.” And they did exactly that.

Book’s shoulders slumped. He sighed. Close. So damn close.

“If I can somehow get it to stop before it starts destroying the healthy cells, we may be in business. But until then, we really need that Drapomine.” He was only half paying attention as he reached for the syringe lying next to him on the countertop. “I suppose I can always add a couple cc’s of ---OUCH!” He jerked his hand back, wincing in pain.

Book jumped. “What is it? Are you bit?”

Simon grabbed the syringe off the table and held it up. There were two of them lying there. Please be safe one. Please be the one with the drug compound. He frowned, looked down at his finger, at the bleeding puncture hole in its tip. He glanced back up to Book, fear evident in his eyes, and he laughed, sheepishly. “I think I just infected myself.”

The Shepherd reached over and put an arm across the boy’s shoulders. “And the laughs just keep coming.”

“Knock-knock!” River’s voice suddenly called out from behind them. They turned to see her standing in the doorway, rocking on her heels, a big smile on her face.

“River, why don’t you come in here and look after your brother,” Book suggested.

The girl shook her head. “Knock-knock!” she said again, shifting her weight from foot to foot.

“River…” Book started, but Simon cut him off.

“Who’s there?” he answered. She was trying to tell them something.

“A man…” she giggled.

“A man who?” Simon asked. He had learned to be patient with her.

“A man on the ‘com,” she answered, and pointed towards the bridge. “He’s saying ‘knock-knock’ too!”

“Oh my god!” Simon uttered and ran for the door. Book rushed behind him.

“What is it?” Book hollered, trying his best to keep up with Simon. He wasn’t as young as the doctor, as much as he hated to admit that. “What’s she mean?”

“Someone’s heard our distress signal!” Simon yelled over his shoulder as he climbed the ladder up to the bridge. “We’re being hailed!”

"Thank God!" Book exclaimed. "I could use a little good news right about now."

Unfortunately, though, there was none coming.

(to be continued!)

**please be shiny and leave a comment with your thoughts so far. Thank you much.