NEW FIC: Stereotypical Christmas (Stargate Atlantis)

[deannie]

This is for kronette, who asked for the Atlantis team meeting a planet full of Santas.

With zombies.

If you would like a zombie fic for Christmas, go here and sign up! It's fun!


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Stereotypical Christmas
by deannie



“You know, I always thought the Easter Bunny was the black sheep—Santa’s supposed to be the good guy!” Sheppard let off another volley of gunfire at their pursuers. “How’s it going over there, Rodney?!”

Rodney was hidden behind another pillar and stabbed away at his datapad with all the frantic energy the situation called for. Which was a lot. “Contrary to popular belief, hacking alien computer systems isn’t as easy as it looks, Colonel.” He shook a cramp from his hand and continued stabbing. “Especially when all of Santa’s elves are after you!”

He sighed as he was blocked again by the Humaran mainframe, and tried to worm his way in through a different hole, wondering where things had gone wrong.

It actually hadn’t started off to be a bad week. Teyla had been introduced to the Humarans by a mutual friend. They were said to be a “generous and jovial people,” and to have a planet full of elk-like animals whose meat was a particular delicacy. They also had craftsmen who made amazing leather-ish products out of not-polar bear hides and pseudo-seal skins.

Rodney reminded himself to read Jensen’s treatise on the biologic similarities among fauna on Earth-like planets in the gate system. When someone wasn’t trying to kill him.

The Humarans were, indeed, a very jovial people. One might say jolly, in fact. Each and every one of them—even the women, unfortunately—looked like Santa Claus.

“It’s errie.” John Sheppard had leaned casually against the outside wall of the Alpha Site’s main building, watching the meet-and-greet going on by the gate.

“What?” Rodney had looked up from his datapad, his gaze flashing from John’s uncomfortable expression to the gathering in the field below. Four men and women stood with Teyla and Dr. Makepeace, wearing bright red snowsuits lined with white fur. And hats with pompons on the ends. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Definitely creepy.”

“We are glad to make your acquaintance!” the leader of the visiting contingent all but bellowed. He chuckled his happiness.

“‘And it shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.’”

McKay snorted at Sheppard’s whisper.

“Doesn’t look like jelly to me,” Ronan grunted. He had been perched on a rock about ten yards away and had wandered over in time to hear Sheppard’s last comment. “Just looks like he eats too much.” The pointed look he gave Rodney was completely unfair, given Rodney’s current level of fitness, and he sniffed and went back to watching the Santa Brigade. He saw Ronan smile out of the corner of his eye, like it was a job well done.

“It’s a reference to a poem,” Rodney began, though he had no idea why he was bothering. Ronan really didn’t care, probably, but the similarity needed remarking on. “The Night Before Christmas.”

“A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” Sheppard put in smugly.

“What?” Again, Rodney looked up at him, this time in irritation. “The poem is known as The Night Before Christmas.”

“And titled A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” Sheppard corrected again.

He was probably right, but Rodney didn’t care any more than Ronan did. “Whatever. The point is, it’s the story of a character known throughout Earth and those people are sort of the stereotypical clones of him.”

Ronan looked down at the gathering, watching as Makepeace gestured to the main hall. The quartet of red-and-white-clad, tall, portly visitors—and you could only tell the two women from the two men because their beards weren’t as full—followed the slight, short anthropologist with evident good cheer.

“It really is unnerving,” Rodney said quietly, packing his datapad away as Teyla gave the team a significant look and the three men made to follow her inside.

“Ho, ho, ho! That’s wonderful, Dr. Makepeace!” the lead Santa chuckled.

John shook his head. “I think you were right with creepy,” he muttered as he passed Rodney on his way in the door.

Yes, he was. Santa was a sham and now they were going to be killed by his elves.

“Anytime, Rodney!” John yelled out at him. Rodney suddenly noticed that he only heard two rifles firing, and he bent to his work with greater attention, wondering where Ronan was.

The negotiations had proceeded quickly, and Teyla was invited to Humar to visit the workshops where all the lovely trade goods were created. Which sounded like a fine idea. The main warehouse was, again, disturbingly like Santa’s Workshop, and Rodney had a minor and very frightening flashback to the visit he and his parents had made to one of those Christmas parks the Americans were so fond of (he thought it might have been in Minnesota, but he couldn’t remember and didn’t care). The elves had been rude and bored teenagers with plastic elf ears on, and Rodney had spent the whole time fearing for his life. Had nightmares for years afterward of Santa’s elves coming after him wearing retainers and headgear.

When Jeannie came along a year later and his mother insisted that Rodney “keep the magic of Santa alive” for his little sister, he plotted all kinds of elaborate ways to protect her from the creepy things.

And now he was going to be killed—and probably eaten—by them in a galaxy far, far away. Which sort of figured.

His datapad beeped. “I think I have it!” he called out, giving John and hopefully both Teyla and Ronan, a heads up. “Shutting down the reanimation protocol… NOW!”

There was a moment of complete silence.

And then John started firing again. “Nice try, McKay!” he shouted.

“I’m doing my best!” he retorted. Damn, the system had a failsafe. Of course it did. How else could Santa and all his little undead elves keep making such beautiful toys for the Pegasus Galaxy’s ungrateful kids?

The craftsmen, as the Humarans refered to them, didn’t look to be the same race as the santas. For one thing, no santa was under two meters tall, and most of the craftsmen were 150 centimeters at best. The santas were portly, while the craftsmen looked all but wasted in comparison, their color gray and unhealthy.

“Slave labor,” John had growled, tightening his grip on his gun. The craftsmen worked with an almost mindless diligence, and Rodney felt a little sick at the blankness in their stares.

“I see no fetters,” Teyla remarked cautiously, though Rodney could see her tensing up, too.

Ronan had a hand on his blaster and Rodney was a little afraid he’d just flicked it to full power. “You can make slaves without chains, Teyla,” he grunted. Oh yeah, this was going to go well.

“My friends,” Jilsa, the head Humaran said, his head cocked in a parody of St. Nick’s jolly curiosity. “Is there something wrong?” He threw out his arm to encompass the sweatshop before them. “Do you not think our craftsmen produce the finest goods in the galaxy?”

“Yeah, at what cost?” John whispered angrily. Rodney watched a little craftsman stand unsteadily from his seat, a finely worked sealskin belt in his hands, and keel over in a dead faint on his way toward a large table in the center of the room.

Sheppard, being Sheppard, ran to him immediately, and the rest of them followed right behind. Up close, the craftsman looked starved. Did they ever feed them?

“Where are your healers?” Teyla asked urgently, as John carefully put a hand to the craftsman’s throat.

Jilsa sighed. “We don’t need a healer.”

Rodney looked around as not one other craftsman in the room paid the fallen worker the least attention. The rest of the Humarans were watching the Atlantis team carefully. The hair rose on the back of Rodney’s neck.

“Colonel?” he said quietly, hoping the warning in his voice as clear.

John looked up and around like Rodney had. Ronan was on his feet with his hand on his blaster, watching the Humarans. Teyla had one hand on her gun and the other ready to unclip it. “I got it, Rodney,” John muttered. He leaned back from the craftsman with a sigh. “Doesn’t matter anyway. He’s dead.”

“I do not want to be eaten by zombies today, McKay!” John growled.

Rodney peered around the pillar and sighted the two-dozen undead craftsmen plodding toward them. Stereotypical santas with stereotypical zombies. How stereotypical.

“They do not appear interested in eating us, Colonel,” Teyla remarked, cutting down two of the shambling ghouls. They both fell to the ground, wriggled a little, and got back up again. Teyla’s arm still dripped blood, but she didn’t seem to be hampered by it.

“Remind me to introduce you to George Romero later!” Sheppard called back. He’d switched his rifle to single shot and Rodney hoped he was aiming for their heads.

The datapad beeped again. “Okay,” he called out again. “This should work this time!”

He closed his eyes and pressed the bright red EXECUTE on his pad.

Sheppard rose to his feet, still looking down at the dead man before him. Rodney looked away quickly and turned toward the Humarans. Even he could feel a change in the atmosphere.

“I think we can safely say the negotiations are over,” John said blithely, hand back on his rifle.

“Indeed,” said Jilsa, his eyes hardening. “And it’s such a shame, too.”

“Colonel!”

Teyla’s call of surprise was followed by the dead craftsman opening his eyes and rising fluidly to his feet again. Without seeming to even notice the rest of them, he picked up his finished product and threaded his way through the taller people, placing the belt on the table at the center of the room and returning to his seat to pick up the next piece of hide and get back to work. Ronan drew his blaster and leveled it at the slowly approaching group of Humarans.

“Zombies,” John breathed.

Ronan gave him a questioning look. “What’s a zombie?”

Really? Now was the time to discuss this? But Rodney played along, because he’d just noticed something about the now-not-dead craftsman. There was a dataport at the back of his head. Rodney walked up and, steeling himself, touched the man, sucking in a breath as he felt real dead flesh. “Reanimated corpses,” he told Ronan. Both the Satedan and Teyla went a little green. Rodney looked up at Jilsa. “Nanobots?” He snorted. “Can’t be magic.”

“Science is magic,” stated one of the women—he couldn’t remember her name. Lisjar or something. “The craftsmen were, sadly, not able to weather the severe climate change here on Humar. They were too small, and their constitutions too frail. Adaptations had to be made.”

Okay, Rodney was going to throw up now. “So you killed them and then reanimated them so that you could use their knowledge in leather working without having to worry about keeping them alive?”

Lisjar shook her head. “Of course not, doctor. You take us for monsters—”

“Hey, if the shoe fits,” Sheppard put in.

“They began dying when the orbit shifted ninety turns ago. There was nothing we could do. The ones that survive are given room to breed and learn the trade from those we have here.” She looked indignant. Not jolly at all. “The beauty of craftsman works are the lifeblood of our civilization, Dr. McKay,” she said, appealing to him alone. “You can see how we would do anything we could to maintain that?”

“Not really, no,” he said quietly. Breeding people to become zombies? It was like a bad B movie.

“We cannot allow others to discover this,” one of the Humarans said gravely.

“Oh, of course you can’t,” Rodney muttered. Because again, bad B movie.

“Sheppard!” Ronan called out sharply, turning to face the multitude of zombies, a number of whom had brought their heads up to stare at the Atlantis team.

Sheppard shook his head and drew his weapon, while Teyla and Rodney did the same. He looked over at Ronan and nodded. Ronan spun around and started shooting at the Humarans, and Rodney found he didn’t care much whether the blaster was set to stun or not.

“Incoming!” Sheppard said quietly, and Rodney turned back to find a few dozen of the craftsmen coming at them. Sheppard shot one down, and Rodney watched the little blue light on its dataport flash for almost a full second before he stowed his machine gun and yanked the datapad off the back of his pack.

“Rodney?” Sheppard asked, that long drawn out question in his voice.

“They have to be centrally controlled,” he said quickly. “If I can hack the Humaran computers—”

Teyla let out a yell, and Rodney looked up to see her bleeding from a cut on her arm. One of the craftsmen had gotten behind her and attacked her with a leather-working knife while she was shooting at the others. “Whatever you are going to do, please be quick about it,” she asked brusquely.

“Fall back and give him time,” Sheppard commanded, heading for the side of the great hall, where there were columns and statues they could hide behind.

Bizarrely, the majority of the zombies continued to make belts.

But no one was making anything now. Rodney listened to the moment of silence, smiling smugly when it became a lot of moments of silence.

“Took you long enough,” Sheppard called to him from his place at one of the other pillars.

Rodney snorted and rose carefully. Just once, he wanted them to get why his job was so difficult. And he had hacked an alien mainframe in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Didn’t he get points for that?

“DEX!” Sheppard’s bellow was unnecessary, as Ronan sauntered up to them, his knife out and really, really disgusting in a Night of the Living Dead sort of way.

“The ones in the main room are all dead, too,” he reported. “Just keeled over at their tables.”

“They were already dead,” Rodney said. “Hence the term zombie.”

John gave him a disapproving look. “What happened with the Humarans?” he asked.

Ronan shrugged. “They’ll all have headaches when they wake up, but they’re alive.”

Rodney sniffed. “And out of workers.” He looked up into three questioning faces. “I fried the nanobots permanently. They can’t reanimate.”

“Is it true?”

They all whirled as a tiny voice sounded from a nearby corridor. A female craftsman with the healthy pink skin of a living person looked up at them all in awe. “Is it true?” she asked. “We are free?”

Teyla stepped forward, that you’re-safe-now smile on her face. “If you wish to leave,” she offered, looking at the rest of them and receiving a collective nod. “We will take you where you wish to go.”

The craftsman nodded. “Away,” she said. “Please.”

*****

The fallout from the North Pole wasn’t the “complete diplomatic nightmare” Elizabeth initially yelled at them about it being. They’d taken the craftsmen—whose race name was actually Hanar—to the alpha site and from there, the more than three hundred living Hanarans had chosen to relocate to a tropical planet with plenty of reeds and grasses they could use to continue making their fabulous crafts.

It turned out the Humarans had been putting one over on their trading partners. There were a grand total of one-hundred-and-fifty Humarans, their race having faired no better in the radical climate shift than the Hunar. Elizabeth, being Elizabeth, had offered to help them either adapt more fully to their new climate, or help them relocate to a better one. Jilsa was thinking it over.

“You destroyed Santa’s Workshop, you know?” John said blithely, dropping into the seat beside Rodney as he ate his breakfast a week later. “Children everywhere will be crushed.”

“Jeannie used to love Santa,” Rodney replied. “I always knew he’d come to a bad end.” He smiled. “At least I was wrong about the elves—the living ones, anyway. Zombie elves were still evil.”

“Yeah, speaking of elves,” John said quietly. He placed a box carefully on the table before Rodney. “They sent you something. Looks like you didn’t stop Christmas from coming.”

Rodney shook his head in exasperation. “Why does everyone think I’m a Grinch? I don’t hate Christmas—which, by the way, isn’t for another four months—I just think the whole idea of a workshop dedicated to creating handmade toys for ungrateful little kids is a little far-fetched.”

“Well there’s your far-fetched present,” John said, a little too long-sufferingly. “Are you coming to movie night tonight?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows. “Day of the Dead.”

Rodney studied the present, a faint smile on his face for the film choice. “Sure. Zombies for everyone, right?”

John smacked him on the shoulder and left him in peace. He considered the plain little box for a moment longer before opening it.

To find socks.

How stereotypical.

****
the end



You know I expect you to beta this, too, kronette ?