WHITE FLAG ━ glenn rhee ¹ ✓

𝟏𝟎. decontamination

"Everything's empty. Why the hell is everything empty?" Kloe muttered, pushing her head closer to any generators and fuel drums. There was nothing at all. She pursed her lips and shook her head, continuing to search through the area. Her mind began to think about all the questions she could ask about what happened the previous night. She really wanted to know if he remembered any of it, because she certainly didn' t.

Who knew? Glenn might've been one of those guys where they remember things when they were drunk. But she definitely wasn't one of those guys. Just as she parted her lips to speak, her whole body froze as the whole place fell into darkness. "Holy shit," she muttered.

"Emergency lighting on," Vi spoke.

With fewer lights than before powered on, the small group could see again. "Come on, let's go," Glenn ushered, sprinting towards where Rick and Shane were. "Hey," he called out to them, "you guys kill the lights?"

"Nah, it just went out," Shane answered.

"Anything?" Rick inquired

"Yeah, a lot of dead generators," Kloe responded, placing a hand on her hip.

"And more empty fuel drums than I can count," T-Dog added, treading over to the rest of them.

Kloe stared at the only living generator, which by the look of it, had partially no gas left in it. The fuel gauge was pointing just barely above 'E', which meant empty.

"It can't be down just to that one," Shane stated, his eyes set on Rick, who narrowed his eyes into the air and clenched his jaw as he began to think of something.

...

The five adults all hurried up the staircase - them all skipping many steps, surprising themselves at how they somehow didn't manage to trip and fall. The stairs lasted forever, like there was never an end. "Jesus, why is there so many fucking steps," Kloe muttered to herself.

The second they reached the top of the stairwell, she stopped and placed both hands onto her knees, gasping for air. She swallowed down the nausea that settled in her stomach from all the running they'd done. It hadn't even been thirty minutes since they ate breakfast.

She may not have known what decontamination really meant, but she knew it meant something bad. Fatally bad. Without hesitation, She straightened up and began to speed up her pace. Rick pushed open the door to a room beside the big room, where Jenner had shown them the x-ray of TS-19's brain.

Kloe instantly noticed Jenner making his way down some stairs, along with the rest of the group who had panic written across their faces. "Rick?!" Lori called out, leaning over the railing and looked down at her husband.

He raised his hand in reassurance that he was fine as Kloe spotted Zayn looking directly into his younger sister's eyes. She nodded her head, followed by him doing it too. "Jenner," Rick said, narrowing his eyes at the man as he stepped closer and closer to him, "what's happening?"

"The system is dropping all the nonessential uses of power," Jenner explained, and the group all followed him into the lab. "It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half hour-mark. Right on schedule," he lifted his finger up to the huge clock, which had the numbers '00:31:28' and decreased each second.

Jenner pressed the bottle of alcohol that was in his left hand against his mouth and took a few mouthfuls. Everybody stared in shock at the man as Kloe's face scrunched up in disgust of Jenner, he was meant to be telling the group what was happening, but instead he was drinking alcohol, "Are you seriously drinking?" she asked in disbelief, making Daryl harshly snatch the glass bottle from the man's grasp.