"I'll Be There For You" is the twenty-fourth mission of Season 9.
Red Scorpion has a way to track you, but you have a way forward, even if it feels like crossing broken glass.
Cast[]
Crew[]
- Writer: Zombies, Run! Writing Team
- Director: Matt Wieteska
- Sound Designer: Mark Pittam
- Series Created By: Naomi Alderman
Plot[]
But It Don't Mean Nothing to Me[]
You reunite with Frances who reassures Ernie that Van Ark never hurt her personally, which Ernie is relieved about. Frances plays you a transmission that Maryam picked up from Guillemette, which says they've figured out that they can track you using the thumb drive. Janine has a plan though. The tracker only pings once at dawn, so if you're somewhere where you can make a quick getaway at dawn, you can stay ahead of them. The Maghreb have arranged for motorbikes to be waiting for you, but you'll need to be quick. Dawn isn't far away.
Let the Wind Blow Through Me[]
You need to move carefully. Underneath the sand is glass left over from the war between the Maghreb and Red Scorpion. It's what happens when you set off a lot of burn cubes in the desert. If you tried to drive a vehicle over it, it would sent you plunging into the remains of an underground city. A city full of zombies. Condensation collects on the underside of the glass overnight and falls like rain, which has filled the tunnels with lush vegetation – with the zombies as fertiliser. Ernie is struggling to wrap his head around how Van Ark changed the world, but he does remember that Frances went to school in Southampton.
With All the Windows Smashed[]
Some parts of the glass are thin, but Frances has a map that should help you cross safely. Ernie is enchanted by the sky changing colour. In a few days he's seen more than he has before – at least that he remembers. Everything he remembers from Van Ark hurts, but up until now, his life was Red Scorpion base and watching Friends. Frances wonders how he can remember anything from Van Ark. Ernie doesn't know, but he does sometimes feel a rage that he assumes comes from his past life. The glass is fragile here, so move carefully and quickly.
Now the Pain Has Cut Too Deep[]
You're back in comms range of Sam, and you're halfway there. Ernie says that he knows he's put you in danger and he's grateful that you didn't kill him for it, since that would have been the obvious thing to do. Sam is shocked and says it isn't the obvious thing. You don't do that. Ernie gets angry because that thought had been Van Ark again. He stamps in frustration, which nearly sends him through the glass. You pull him out before he can fall, but the cracks are spreading so you need to run before the whole thing collapses!
Save Me From the Blast[]
The rest of the glass is intact. Ernie is still frustrated, but Frances and Sam reassure him. No one is born evil – you just choose to do good things or bad things. Even Van Ark didn't mean to create the zombie plague. He was trying to create immortality. He was very talented and clever, but needed to think about the effects of what he was doing, like Ernie should have thought about the glass. Ernie says he's frightened of what he could end up doing. The zombies are getting closer and you still need to make it to the bikes. Get running!
There's Nothing Left to Fear[]
You've reached the bikes. You'll get about 150 miles on the fuel but that should be enough to take you to your next transport stop. Ernie is impressed by how you just keep going and roll with the obstacles you encounter. He asks if the Maghreb would take him in. He thinks he could help them with useful projects, like the irrigation system. He wants to make something good. Sun's up! Time to get moving.
Transcript[]
FRANCES DEMSPEY: Runner Five, Ernie, over here! Oh, Five, it’s so good to see you again. My God, so much to talk about.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Do I… know you?
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Wow, fam. They told me you, you know, look like him, but you really look like him.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Oh, you knew me before. Or the other me. I don’t remember any of that. Mostly.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Yeah, yeah, they told me. Look, you never did anything bad to me personally, all right?
ERNEST VAN ARK: That’s comforting. I appear to have… tortured you, Five. I don’t remember that. I suppose it’s understandable that you killed me, Five. In a way.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Wow. Okay, right, this is a lot, but we’ve got to get moving. Maryam picked up a transmission overnight from her bug on Guillemette. Listen.
GUILLEMETTE FELIS: I knew Ernie must have had some way to find them. First, I spoke to everyone in the base he’d had contact with, then I checked all the logs to see whether the imposters had arranged the rendezvous, and then I began to wonder whether he tracked them somehow. At last, I found it. There’s a tracker in the thumb drive Five is carrying. Every morning at dawn, we will know where Five is. We will have your technology back tomorrow morning, boss.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Oh. I’m sorry. Me again? You must wish you’d never heard of me. Or I’d never heard of you.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Listen, Janine knew this was coming. We’ve got a plan. The tracker does a sort of bip once a day at dawn, right? So if you’re always somewhere you can make a fast getaway at dawn, we can always stay ahead of them.
It’s not far to go now, Five, only another few days, and the Maghreb will give you sanctuary. In fact, they’ve arranged for motorbikes to be waiting for us just over there across the dunes, but we have to be there exactly at dawn, which is not long, so we need to go, now.
~
[glass cracks]
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Ernie, don’t step there! Stay directly behind me.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Oh! Ah, yes. Okay.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Look, Five. Scuff your sand a bit with your heel and you can see why I couldn’t bring a truck down to pick you up.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Goodness me, that’s… glass!
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Yep. This whole place. I mean, bloody hell, seriously. I was learning all about this in the New Agadir Central Library before Janine got back in touch. So Red Scorpion and Maghreb are at war, right? Can you have a cold war in the desert? I guess, like, lukewarm war. But for a while at the start of the apocalypse, it was a very, very hot war.
They each blamed the other. Maghreb say Red Scorpion launched an unprovoked attack as a land grab. Red Scorpion say the Maghreb had tried to infiltrate their base. No idea who started it, but you’ve been running through the way it ended.
ERNEST VAN ARK: We saw the acid lakes.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Yeah, that’s weapon residue. Useful for us in a way, because no helicopters can land there, no wheeled vehicles can get through. Even tanks would sink. And this glass, this is what happens when you set off a ton of burn cubes in the desert.
ERNEST VAN ARK: So if you tried to drive a vehicle over this…
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Yeah, the glass would crack. You’d be upside down after 30 seconds, and… hey, look! Want to see something cool? Look down there.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Good lord, there are tunnels down there, filled with… plants. Living plants. [zombies growl] Oh, and zombies.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Yeah, so the tunnels were the remains of an underground city here. Might have been used as a Red Scorpion outpost, judging by the shreds of uniform on some of them. Desert moisture condenses on the inside of the glass overnight, comes down as rain at dawn, waters the plants. And the zoms are stuck in there. They’re um… turning into fertilizer.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Look at their faces. Some of them are… coated in glass. So they were already zombies before the burn cubes. You know, I am the one who caused the zombies to happen.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Yeah, I heard that.
ERNEST VAN ARK: This is what I’ve done to the world. People talk about their legacy, how they’ve changed things, and this is what I’ve changed. I’ve destroyed the world. I don’t know how to… I can’t make it sit inside my brain. It’s too big.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: You don’t remember it?
ERNEST VAN ARK: I remember… you went to high school in Southampton.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Um, yeah.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Sorry, I don’t know how I know that. Maybe I read your CV once.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Yeah. Ernie, you can’t stand there watching the zoms. We’ve got to keep moving. Run!
~
[zombies moan]
ERNEST VAN ARK: Listen, Runner Five. Can you hear more zombies? The glass must be thinner.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Yeah, some parts of the glass are very thin, but I have the map of the safe path. As long as we stick to it, we’ll be okay.
ERNEST VAN ARK: The sky is turning so many colors, like a dark rainbow. Black to blue to faint red and gold on the horizon. I’ve seen so many things in these few days with you, Runner Five, so much more than I ever saw before. Or at least, that I remember seeing before.
FRANCES DEMSPEY: But you do remember some of it, right? You remembered my school just now.
ERNEST VAN ARK: All the things I remember are… sharp.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Like clear?
ERNEST VAN ARK: No. Hurting. At Red Scorpion, I watched a lot of Friends on DVD. That’s what we had. And I enjoyed it, and that was my world. People were friends, and love was exciting, and everyone was silly but tried their best.
I thought maybe Sigrid and I had been a romance like Ross and Rachel. I remember little parts about her now, since the acid fumes. I suppose I remember the strongest emotions, maybe. All I remember is despising her, feeling repulsed by her needy clinging. Couldn’t get rid of her, couldn’t get on with my work. Her under my feet, interfering with my life, complaining about my dalliances.
I don’t like those memories. I thought I was maybe like Chandler. I always found Janice very attractive. But I think I was actually Joey, with the personality of Ross.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: I mean, it’s a bit weird that you remember anything, isn’t it? Like, you were a jam jar full of cells sold on the black market. There can’t be much of him in you.
ERNEST VAN ARK: I don’t think anyone knows. I was in a substrate in Red Scorpion re-growing for about 18 months. Maybe I overheard people say things about him. Maybe my brain knew how to grow. Sometimes a sort of rage comes up in me, and I used to not know where it came from, but now maybe I think it’s him, the parts of him that are left, angry that I’m not doing what he’d do.
[glass cracks]
FRANCES DEMPSEY: The glass! It’s very fragile here. Runner Five, step behind me along this part where these broad leaves are growing under the glass, and be quick, really quick!
~
SAM YAO: [radio static] Hello, can you hear me? Five! You’re back in comms range. I can see you on Maryam’s satellite receiver. You’re all going really well. Halfway here and on track to make it at dawn.
FRANCES DEMSPEY: We’re doing fine, Sam. Getting lighter, but the sun’s not up yet. We can see more of the vegetation under the glass here.
SAM YAO: Oh wow, yeah. I’ve got some of it on imaging here. Like a green scrawl written through the desert. That’s what Mo said, anyway.
ERNEST VAN ARK: It’s beautiful. Apart from the zombies. Listen, I’ve been thinking. I followed you all because I wanted to find out more about myself, and I put you in danger for my own selfish reasons, which is what I’ve done to you all, to the world.
SAM YAO: Uh, yeah, we noticed.
ERNEST VAN ARK: I wanted you to know that I’m grateful.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Well, we did what we had to, right? If we left you for Red Scorpion to pick up, you could have told them where we were heading or how to track Runner Five.
ERNEST VAN ARK: No, I mean I’m grateful you didn’t kill me. That would have been the obvious thing to do.
SAM YAO: Ernie, we would never have killed you. That’s not obvious. We don’t… we don’t do that.
ERNEST VAN ARK: You see? That’s him again, isn’t it? That other me, telling me things, pointing things out. “If you want to find them, just plant a tracker, Ernie! If you want to be rid of a problem, why not consider just killing them?” [stomps foot]
[glass cracks]
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Don’t stamp there, Ernie!
ERNEST VAN ARK: I can’t get him out! He’s inside me! Inside, inside!
[glass shatters]
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Ernie, no! Five, grab his hands, he’s slipping! Pull him out, Five.
ERNEST VAN ARK: I’m so sorry. Thank you.
[glass cracks, zombies growl]
SAM YAO: Guys, guys, the cracks in the glass are spreading. The whole lot’s about to give way, and some of the zombies are crawling out. The three of you have to move, now!
~
SAM YAO: It’s okay. It’s-it’s okay. You only cracked the glass in that section. Uh, yeah, the rest of it is intact.
ERNEST VAN ARK: You mean I haven’t impetuously destroyed another fragile ecosystem?
FRANCES DEMSPEY: Well, not today, but you know, it’s not even dawn yet, so think big. Who knows what you can accomplish?
ERNEST VAN ARK: [laughs] This is why you don’t trust me. It’s why I don’t trust myself.
FRANCES DEMSPEY: You can maybe learn to control it, you know.
SAM YAO: Well, yeah. I mean, I don’t like Van Ark. I really, really don’t like him. But… but we don’t believe in, well, you know. Bad orcs and good elves. Or… or being sorted at 11 into evil Slytherin or noble Gryffindor house. No one is born evil. We can all do bad things. We can all do good things. We have to decide. Even the zombies aren’t evil, they’re just infected with a plague.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Which I created.
SAM YAO: Yeah, well, to be fair - and I can’t really believe I’m trying to be fair to Van Ark - but he didn’t actually mean to make the zombie plague. He was trying to create immortality.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: He was a very talented, clever man. He just needed to ask himself about possible effects of what he was doing.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Just like I didn’t do when I was stamping on the glass. Even at Red Scorpion, I was never allowed in any of the labs. I heard them whispering about me. They were frightened of what I could end up doing. I’m frightened of that.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Dawn is coming. Five, we need to get to those motorbikes in a few minutes. We don’t have long, and the zombies are getting closer. Let’s run!
~
[motorcycle engine rumbles]
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Here we go, three oiled-up dirt bikes ready to go, full tank of petrol in each one. Five, get on that red one. Helmet’s on the handlebars. Yeah, sitting on a motorbike suits you. We’ll only get another 150 miles before we run out of petrol, but that’ll take us up to our next transport stop.
ERNEST VAN ARK: You’ve worked everything out.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Yeah. It’s taken work, but we figured it out. Sam, can you give us a countdown to dawn?
SAM YAO: Yeah, sure. Sun’s rising and Five’s tracker is going bip in 45 seconds.
FRANCES DEMPSEY: Ernie, on behind me.
ERNEST VAN ARK: You’ve done all this work because of something I did. I put that tracker in without thinking about how it would affect you, and you just… you haven’t missed a step, Five. You and your friends, you just… work with it, roll with it each time. You didn’t kill Visage, you haven’t killed me, you just go on trying, doing what seems right to you.
SAM YAO: Well, yeah. You’ve got to live in a way you believe in, you know? Or what’s the point? 30 seconds.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Frances, do you think the Maghreb would take me in, if I can get there? I know they have these big irrigation projects. Maybe I could help with those. I have a brain that’s good at thinking of… unusual solutions.
SAM YAO: Well, we’d have to tell them what we know about you, Ernie. 15 seconds.
ERNEST VAN ARK: Fair enough. I think I might not want to be allowed to work alone.
SAM YAO: 10 seconds.
ERNEST VAN ARK: I don’t want everything I left to be zombies and death. I want to try to make something green.
SAM YAO: Yeah. Yeah, we’ll ask. We’ll try.
ERNEST VAN ARK: You’ve got to live in a way you believe in, or what’s the point?
SAM YAO: Three seconds. Two, one - [tracker beeps] That’s it. Sun’s up. Guillemette knows exactly where you are right now, Five, so get moving. Fast as you can, far as you can. Race the sun down.
Codex[]
Supplies[]
The following supplies can be found in this mission.
(List may be incomplete.)
Anti-depressants
Axe
Bandages
Batteries
Board game
Book
Bottled Water
Box of Lightbulbs
Candles
Cricket bat
Flashlight
Football
Fuel Can
Garden tools
Hammer
Pain Meds
Penknife
Playing cards
Power Cable
Prescription Pain Meds
Radio
Shirt
Shorts
Sleeping bag
Sports Bra
Tampons
Tinned Food
Tool Box
Trainers
Trousers
Underwear
USB Key
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