[Moments of Adoration]

Written for the La La La 2004 ficathon. *smooches* to Karen for the quickie beta, and apologies to Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi and the Evil Dead trilogy for my literary abuse of homage to their awesomeness (some dialogue from the movies is used verbatim in this story).

And Jack had given his service pistol to Daniel after Daniel had lost his wrestling with Carter, but before he'd started twitching and licking his lips and staring at Jack's head.

Two hours, Jack realized as his watch beeped, since Daniel had howled, lunging across the pitiful little fire they'd lit after hiding in an abandoned house. Daniel, who minutes before had been shaking as he described Carter gnawing on his shoulder, tackled Jack to the floor and tore a mouthful of skin and muscle out of Jack's thigh. That gave Jack maybe two more hours before he started to smell like ripe roadkill if he followed the same pattern as Daniel. The Gate was at least two hours away at a fast march, and he wasn't doing much of anything fast right now.

Not to mention the horde of undead milling around outside the door.

Maybe he could make it back to the village down at the base of the hill, to the market and the gnarled little woman with the creepy smile who had tugged at Carter's hair and pressed charms against impotency, diarrhea and evil into their hands. She'd warned them away from the city on the hill and its temple, but Jack had blown her off as he listened to Daniel prattle on about superstitions and folk magic and, "Really, Jack, these things often have some root in truth, however bizarre the current myth structure may appear."

"You want to skip the temple, Daniel?"

"Well, no, it looks like it might be-"

"Then stop worrying about the bogeyman and let's go."

Okay. So that was one time he should have listened to Daniel.

The door shuddered once, twice, and Jack swung his weapon up, finger twitching on the trigger. The wooden door creaked alarmingly under another assault, and then nothing. Jack didn't think that was a good sign. Edging closer to the window, he pulled back the edge of the blanket, just a little. A figure crouched in front of the door, blonde hair matted against its skull. It poked at the lock, and then it cocked its head and ran broken, bloated fingers over the hinges.

Shit. Figured that Carter would be too damn smart even if her brains were leaking out her ear.

Jack dragged two chairs from the barricade at the door and stacked them in the center of the room under the tiny skylight. The houses were close enough together that he might have a chance to escape over the rooftops. The door shuddered again, and then the wood creaked and snapped, and he watched as it gave way near one edge.

He slung his P90 and clambered up his makeshift ladder, hoping these zombies weren't as coordinated as George Romero's.

"Wait, there's a zombie master?"

The gnarled little woman grinned, running her tongue over worn, yellow teeth as she smeared a rancid concoction across Jack's bare chest, sketching sloppy whorls and lines with her fingertips. He was sprawled in a rickety chair in front of her fireplace, where she'd shoved him when he stumbled in her door an hour before, shaking and sweating and puking on her rug.

"He hides, up in the temple. He was a powerful sorcerer king once, but the people grew tired of his demands and drove him away. So he cursed them with the living death and rules their minds, locked as they are in the space between life and afterlife. He reclaimed his temple, and no one goes to the old city now."

"And killing him will fix my team?"

"It will only break his control over them." She patted Jack's shoulder and some of the goop splattered into his hair. "But they have not been under his curse long, and the sorcerer's magic box will likely return them to health."

"Magic box..." Jack grabbed her wrist, trying not to gag from the stench of the stuff dripping from her hand. "This zombie master. Do his eyes glow, and is his voice all echoy?"

"Some stories paint him as such." She scooped the last of the goop out of the stone bowl she'd mixed it in, and packed it into the wound on his leg, swatting at him when he yelled and swore as it burned. "A human shell who speaks with another's voice."

"Aw, crap."

She cleaned her hands and pulled strips of cloth from a basket by the hearth, binding his leg. "You have heard stories of him."

"Yeah, something like that."

Fucking Goa'uld.

His leg still hurt like hell, but it was a clean pain, and he no longer felt like he was rotting from the inside out. That goop smelled like crap, literally, but it obviously did something useful. He shooed the woman away, ignoring her protests that it would be dark soon, and that it was not too late for him and he must rest, must wait until the salve burned out the evil in his blood.

"Look, I can take this guy, find his magic box, and then it won't be a problem."

She remained crouched by the hearth as he struggled into his shirt and picked up his weapon. Shaking her head, she sighed and said, "Are all men from your land such loud-mouthed braggarts?"

"I'm a special case."

The woman had given Jack charms and a large metal drum ("To chase away the spirits."). His smile had been genuine that time, though he ditched the drum just outside of town. It was too awkward to carry, and he had a more effective plan, if he could find his or Carter's pack and the rest of the ammunition.

Good plan or bad plan, he was the guy with the gun.

But he kept the charms.

Jack lurked at the edge of the city for a while before heading inside, sneaking along the winding streets. The stone temple that had so fascinated Daniel towered ahead, the smooth stone reflecting the light from the full moon. Ground zero of evil. It didn't look Goa'uld, what with the conspicuous lack of gold trim, but it certainly had "I am the big shit around here" architectural stylings.

The snake's "curse" was a nanite infection, Jack figured. It would explain the physical effects, the mind control, and the transfer through biting. So yeah, find the gear, kill the snake, destroy whatever mechanism he used to control the nanites, find the sarcophagus, zap his team back to life, and go home.

No problem.

Okay, slight problem. There were a fucking lot of zombies.

Jack flattened himself on the roof of a two-story shop near the city center, keeping low even though the zombies below seemed far more intent on moaning loudly and bumping into each other. His pack, thankfully untouched, had still been in the house where Daniel attacked him. He'd wolfed down a little foil packet of trail mix, dug out the little camp hatchet, and reloaded. That and the other magazine gave him a hundred rounds. Which had seemed like plenty until he saw the three hundred zombies lumbering around the plaza in front of the temple.

In front of the only door.

Right. Direct frontal assault it was.

The first zombie went down with a satisfying, if wet-sounding, thump. He cut the next two in half, raking full-auto fire across them. Four, five, and six toppled when their heads exploded. Jack dodged two more, but then stepped on another and slipped as skin and muscle gave way to slick things he did not want to think about. He went down hard and the zombies were on him before he got his feet back under him. Hands clutched and tore at his hair and clothes, and Jack swallowed the bile and trail mix that rose in his throat. Clawing his way free, he sprayed the area around him with gunfire.

"All right, who wants some? Who's next?"

The plaza fell silent as his shout echoed. A couple hundred blank faces turned to him, and a concert of hoarse voices cried out, "Braaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnssss."

Jack was down to half a magazine by the time he made it across the plaza and up the stairs to the temple entrance. The crowd outside was quieter now, almost half of it reduced to quivering lumps scattered on what had once been ornate slate tiles. The temple was empty, though; long, silent halls with cathedral ceilings and tiny windows that let in barely enough light to cut the gloom. An hour into his search, Jack's leg started to hurt again and his fingernails were tinged an unhealthy blue.

It took him another twenty minutes to find the center of the temple, a courtyard open to the sky, bathed in moonlight. A huge stone throne sat in the center, and on it... …

Jack limped in the door, cleared his throat and yelled, "Well hello, Mister Fancypants."

The zombie master's head snapped up. Scraps of once ornate brocade robes hung from a thin frame that showed no sign of any decay, other than maybe starvation. And when the symbiote glow in his eyes faded, they were still bright with madness. He hissed and raised a hand, fingers unclenching to reveal the all-too-familiar gold and gemstone of a hand device. "I'll swallow your soul!"

Jack dodged the first blast, rolling under it and up on his knees to fire.

"Come get some."

Jack used the little hatchet to hack off the zombie master's head and destroy the transmitter he found under the ornate throne, and went looking for the sarcophagus, which he found in one of the lower levels of the temple. And then spent the next hour in the plaza, digging through piles of rotting corpses for his team.

After dragging them (and parts of them, in Teal'c's case) back to the temple, he ran himself through a cycle in the sarcophagus, just in case, then Carter and Daniel. He saved Teal'c for last, not sure how it would handle Teal'c's amputated arm.

Carter popped up when her cycle was done, blinking hard, and wrinkled her nose as Jack helped her out. "Sir, did you roll in something dead?"

He finally stopped laughing, high pitched and a little hysterical, five minutes later.

Daniel woke up and asked for his glasses. And then asked why Teal'c was on the floor, and what was that horrible stench? Carter helped him out of the sarcophagus, quietly repeating what Jack had told her. They both looked a little green when she was done.

And then they all stood around Teal'c. "Maybe," Daniel said, squinting down and pushing up glasses that weren't there, "if we sort of stick it in the right place, the sarcophagus will reattach it."

Carter shrugged, nudging the severed forearm with the toe of her boot. "It can't hurt."

When the sarcophagus opened a half hour later, Teal'c sat up, one eyebrow practically crawling over the dome of his skull.

"O'Neill."

"Yeah, buddy?"

Teal'c grasped the edge of the sarcophagus. Carter's eyes went wide and Daniel said "Whoops" under his breath.

"Why is one of my limbs backwards?"