[A/N) So it took me 4 months to update this last time. Let's see how long it takes this time. I don't even know where to start with this. The script I'd been using has changed and now it doesn't have the scene directions so I'm on the verge of crying lol]
[Also! I figured out - through the internet - that the apocalypse started on August 26th, 2010! NOW WE CAN CREATE A REAL TIMELINE]
[Comments are greatly appreciated but not mandatory. This is a SUPER long chapter at 8000+ words, so I'm sorry for the long read.]
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Previously on The Walking Dead: Fight With You.
The camera that moved.
"It did move!" I agreed quietly, turning back to the street as the sound of the dead crawled from the depths of darkness, snarling beasts with one goal.
"Please help us." Rick wept in a panic, pulling at the arms around him. "You're killing us! You're killing us! You're killing us!"
We were just about to leave, Rick being restrained into compliance, when the shutters to the CDC scraped open, drowning us in light.
----
[Trigger Warning for this chapter: Brief suicide mention; Mentions of the Shane/Loir non-con though it doesn't occur; Shane Is His Own Warning; The Walking Dead is also its own warning; Blood; Swearing; zombies; DEATH!; Y'know, canon typical things.]
Seconds passed as we stood there shellshocked, staring blindly into the light of the now-open CDC entrance. It felt like staring straight into hope, the feeling of life looking right back at us.
But if we wanted it, we had to move now.
Guns raised, we quickly but carefully stepped over the threshold and into the building, calling out to our saviour, "Hello?" I repeated, scanning the pristine walls and floors, careful of the open doors behind us. "Anybody here?"
A gun cocks from our right, and everyone raised their guns at a man.
He wore a simple short-sleeved t-shirt that looked grey - whether that be from the backlit area he stood in or from grime, I don't know - and I'd like to say jeans though I couldn't very well discern them from joggers at this very moment. What I could discern was the military-grade assault rifle he held in his grasp. The very same type that I had seen discarded outside, previously used by soldiers urging people to evacuate at the beginning.
"Anybody infected?" He demanded, though his voice was laced with panic. Meaning letting us in was indeed a split-second decision.
"One of our group was." Rick admitted, slightly lowering his gun as he spoke, "He didn't make it."
"Why are you here? What do you want?" The man asked, words coming out fast.
"A chance," Rick replied breathlessly.
"That's asking an awful lot these days." The man countered.
And I agreed.
The choking feeling of tension had risen in my throat like bile, and by the looks of the group in front of me, I wasn't the only one in that boat. We were all tired, hungry, and in dire need of a wash, and if this man turned us away, we'd have nowhere to go and nothing to hope for. This was our last chance.
And he knew that. I looked into his eyes and I could see him battling with himself, his humanity fighting his urge for survival and he took in the group's pleading faces.
Clearly, this man did have a stroke of humanity left, or else he would never have succumbed to Rick's cries for help, and an obvious conscience as he didn't want to turn us away and have that weigh on him for however long he had left.
He took a few steps forward, eyes still scanning us as he landed on Sophia and Carol cowering by Dale to the left of me.
"You'll all submit to a blood test." He announced, lowering his gun just slightly. "That's the price of admission."
"We can do that," Rick assured, everyone else nodding along.
The man dropped his gun fully and walked towards us, telling us to grab any stuff we had to bring in and to do it now because 'once this door closes, it stays closed' which in every sense of the word was ominous as fuck, but we didn't have time to unpack that now. Luckily we'd thought ahead and already had everything we could carry on our backs, but some people ran back to their cars for god knows what, and then T-Dog and Dale grabbed the doors and shut them tight.
"Vi, seal the main entrance." The man spoke into a keycard swiper on the wall to someone called Vi. "Kill the power up here."
I turned to watch the shutter fall mechanically back into place as Rick introduced himself.
"Dr. Edwin Jenner." He - Jenner - replied.
---
Jenner took us to the elevator he'd come up in, and we packed ourselves in snuggly. I stood between Glenn and T-Dog against the back doors, leaning slightly on Glenn as we travelled down.
"Doctors always go round packin' heat like that?" Daryl mused from beside Glenn. He had yet to put his gun away and held it towards the roof of the elevator.
Jenner turned calmy and spoke with a slight lilt of humour in his voice. "There were plenty left lying around. I familiarized myself." He paused for a brief moment in consideration, eyes once again scanning the group. "But you look harmless enough."
"Except you." He directed to Carl, who stood in the middle next to Sophia. "I'll have to keep my eye on you." He chuckled.
Carl smiled at that and it was a nice sight after a day of solemn near silence from the boy. Something I'd expected from Sophia, but not from him.
Jenner turned back to face the doors and from what I could see of his face from behind Andrea, he looked almost troubled.
The rest of the ride after that was spent in anxious silence, the ever-present elevator hum doing nothing to calm our nerves as the doors opened and Jenner stepped out and led us down a white hallway.
"Are we underground?" Carol spoke from in front of me.
"Are you claustrophobic?" Jenner questioned.
"A little." She replied, and I had to admit so was I.
He simply told her not to think about it as he led us further through the underground level and into a large circular room filled with computers that looked like they belonged in 1992 - though I'm no expert. He called out to 'Vi' again to turn on the lights in 'The Big Room' and stood still for a second as the room lit up to show nobody in it.
The place was empty.
He welcomed us to 'Zone Five' and when asked where everybody went, he turned in the middle of the room and announced that he was the only one left. Even 'Vi' wasn't a real person, she was a computer voice, Artificial Intelligence.
"I'm all that's left," Jenner reiterated. "I'm sorry."
We stood there quietly as the information soaked in. There would be no 'cure', no 'vaccine', nothing to help turn the world back to what it once was. This was it.
There was no one left.
---
Jenner led us to a lecture room of sorts and sat us down one by one for our blood tests. I sat down after Glenn had finished, nodding sympathetically as he held his arm to his chest.
"Just a heads up," I motioned to the new needle that Jenner was putting together for me, "I hate needles."
He looks at me as I place my left forearm on the table, poking his thumb over my tattoo before moving to the crease of my arm. "I never would've thought with your tattoos and earrings." He mused, feeling for a vein.
"You say that, but it took me 3 tries to keep my head still for my helix. Had to get my septum redone twice 'cause I flinched so hard the needle went off-course." I huffed lightly, looking up with a wince at the feeling of the needle piercing my skin. "I just sat there for my tattoos though, all ten of them. Dented a metal ashtray when I got my back done, squeezed it so hard." I was rambling to stop myself from flinching, which would've been more embarrassing if I wasn't so occupied with looking anywhere but the needle. "Sorry, I talk when I'm nervous."
"You're one tough cookie then, huh?" He mused, putting a cotton ball over the pinprick left from the insertion of the needle. "Done."
I stood with a light head and moved to stand beside Daryl against the wall, closing my eyes as I leaned back.
"If you don't like needles, why the hell did you get so many piercings?" The redneck spoke lowly beside me, and I opened my eyes to see him looking at me with a furrowed brow. "Kinda stupid if you ask me."
"Well it's a good thing I didn't, isn't it?" I blinked before letting out a groan as I registered what I said, and it made no sense. Rubbing my temple, I try again. "I like tattoos and piercings. Doesn't mean I have to like how I get them."
I looked back to the table as Jaqui caught Andrea as she stumbled from the chair. She mentioned that nobody had eaten properly in days, which was correct as far as I knew, and Jenner looked confused, taken aback as if he couldn't believe it.
Then Jacqui sat down for her blood test and we continued in silence.
---
Jenner had led us to a communal dining room of sorts and delivered brilliant news.
He had food. Lots of it.
We all ended up sitting around the room, laughing and joking as if everything in the world was right. It was nice, forgetting for a minute what the world was now. I watched from beside Glenn once again as Dale poured wine for himself and then Carl when Lori finally agreed.
We all went silent as we watched the boy take a sip before scrunching up his face and letting out a very childish 'Ewww!' that had us all laughing again.
"That tastes nasty." He grimaced as Lori took his cup and poured the wine into her own. Shane laughed and told him to stick to 'sour pop', which sounded just as bad.
I took a swig of my wine as Daryl grinned across the table at Glenn, telling him to keep drinking because he wanted to see how red his face could get, which set everyone off laughing again.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Rick looking at Jenner and I turn to see him quietly staring at the table. He looked completely out of it. Rick clinked his glass as he stood.
"It seems to me we haven't thanked our host properly." He drawled, picking up his glass and raising it as a toast.
"He is more than just our host." T-Dog slurred lightly, picking up his own glass.
A chorus of 'hear hear's came from around the room, and a very excited 'Here's to you, doc. Booyah!' from Daryl, which I 'Booyah'd right back as we toasted Dr, Edwin Jenner for his hospitality. But the man just looked uncomfortable.
I took another swig as Shane pulled the metaphorical rug from under our little bubble of bliss.
"So when are you gonna tell us what the hell happened here, doc?" He started, staring into his raised glass of wine. "All the... the other doctors that were supposed to be figuring out what happened, - where are they?"
"We're celebrating, Shane." Rick countered, sitting down again. "Don't need to do this now."
It became a spat of sorts, Shane, jealous of Rick - for what? I didn't know. But Shane was not happy.
"Woah, wait a second. This is why we're here, right?" Shane's voice held an angry tilt, though he obviously found some humour in the situation too. "This was your move... Supposed to find all the answers. Instead we..." He chuckles, pointing to Jenner, who sat there looking as happy as a cat in the rain. "We found him. Found one man. Why?"
Jenner took less than a second to respond as if he'd already anticipated this question to come up again, which was probably a good call.
"Well, when things got bad, a lot of people just left. Went off to be with their families." He looked around the room at us, a small dysfunctional family, before continuing. "And when things got worse... when the military cordon got overrun, the rest bolted."
"Every last one?" Shane pressed, a brief grin on his face.
"No, many couldn't face walking out the door." Jenner stared at Shane, agitation shining clear in his eyes. "They... opted out." He emphasized every word, his eye twitching slightly as he spoke before turning his eyes to the floor. "There was a rash of suicides. That was a bad time."
I nodded solemnly as I took a large gulp of wine straight from the bottle.
Andrea asked why Jenner didn't leave and he simply replied that he wanted to do some good so he stayed. Glenn walked back to me from where he'd paced and griped at Shane for being a fucking buzzkill, which in every sense of the word, he was.
We then drank and ate in silence as Jenner's words weighed back down on us, along with the reality of the world.
---
After everyone was finished eating, Jenner took us down a hallway of rooms and explained that these weren't the bedrooms here as housing - along with most of the facility - had been powered down to conserve electricity. There were couches - sofas for us Brits - which were comfortable but we also had the option of cots, and there was a recreational (rec) room down the hall for us but we weren't to use the video games or anything else that would use power.
"The same applies... If you shower, go easy on the hot water." He added nonchalantly before he turned and took his leave.
Glenn turned to us and murmured with a grin, "Hot water?"
"That's what the man said." T-Dog grinned back before they both laughed breathlessly, and everyone set off to find a room for themselves and their family.
I stood back and waited for everyone to pick a room before walking to one the way Glenn had gone, poking my head into an empty room and knocking. No bag was there to signal occupation and when I knocked on the adjoining door to the bathroom no noise indicated it was being used, so I turned back to close the door and headed straight for the aforementioned shower.
---
It was heaven.
All the dirt, grime, and blood peeled off my skin and washed down the drain, and though slightly sore, my skin was back to its newly tanned self, and the bruises on my skin were now blotting yellow, but clearer to see now that whatever was caked on my skin was gone. I washed my sweat-clumped hair until I could actually see the sunkissed brown strands in the reflection, and scrubbed my face practically raw, not caring as the small bruise on my jaw throbbed, before reluctantly stepping out from the glorious spray of water and wrapping a white towel that was soft to the touch around my body.
Finding clean clothes in the drawers was probably the best part. There were two large white T-shirts and a dressing gown, though I didn't need the latter. I pulled out the shirts and stuffed one in my bag for later in case somebody came and took it, pulling out a clean sports bra, underwear, socks, and a pair of baggy jeans, slipping them all on happily before putting my shoes back on.
It was probably the most comfortable I'd been since this whole thing started, it being the first time I didn't need to be on guard every second of the day.
I towel-dried my hair to the best of my ability and then let it fall down my back in damp waves, fishing my glasses out of my bag and placing them on my nose before picking up the wine bottle I'd nicked on the way here and set back out into the hallway to find someone to hang with.
"Glenn?" I called, poking my head through any open door I could see and coming up empty.
"He's still in the shower." Came from behind me and I turned to see Shane prowling down the corridor, a near-empty wine bottle in his grasp. "I'm here though."
"Which room is he in?" I huffed out, turning back down the corridor, and taking a few steps away from him. "I'll just wait for him there."
"You not hear me?" He slurs, taking a large step towards me and going to grab my arm, again. "Glenn's busy. I'm not, so maybe we can talk."
I stepped away from his grasp as quickly as I could and turned to face him, keeping enough distance that he couldn't just reach out and try again. "And I said I'll wait. How's about you fuck off and wallow in your self-pity elsewhere?"
"How's about we have a chat instead, huh?" He growled, tipping forward as I took another step back, holding the wine bottle as a possible weapon. "That'd help with my... what'd you call it? Self-pity? Take my mind off everything, huh? I still wanna know what your deal is, you know. There's just something about you that I don't trust." He points to me as he speaks. "There's something wrong with you being here. Tell me why you're alone, what your self-pity looks like." He was all but tripping down the hallway.
"You're fucking disgusting, look at you. You're not gonna find answers at the bottom of that bottle." I seethed, taking another step back. "I wouldn't actively search you out for conversation if it was the end of the world, and it is."
I watched as he slowly stood to his full height with a hand on the wall for support, and as bad of an idea it was, drunk me was not a smart woman, she was a stupid, over-confident, honest-to-god bitch. And she didn't mind speaking her mind in situations like this.
"You're a pathetic excuse of a man. You are now, and I bet you were before too. Was it fun lusting after your best friend's wife, huh? Were you not ashamed? No guilty conscience for threatening me when you thought nobody was around? You have no respect nor honour, and I can't wait for the day that all this gets spat back in your ugly fucking mug."
Shane's face contorted and he looked about ready to take a swing at me, his bottle ready to shatter in his hand when I noticed Daryl standing in the doorway of a room a few doors down. He'd been watching. The entire time, he'd been watching? I caught his eye and found that he looked at me with a furrowed brow, though he didn't just look angry, there was something else that I couldn't place. He glanced between Shane and me before slamming the door with a rattling 'bang' that caused Shane to turn with a start.
"You lookin' for Glenn?" He called out to me, strutting down the hallway with his own wine bottle - seriously are all of us carrying around wine? - and placing himself slightly out of reach of Shane, waving his arm and pointing back the way he came. "He's in that room there. The bastard wouldn't shut the hell up asking where you were, he's lookin' for you."
It was quiet for a few seconds as Shane's glare was directed toward Daryl instead of me, which gave me the perfect opportunity to dip out. I looked him in the eyes, and my eyebrows creased slightly at the something in his eyes, the thing I couldn't place. My eyes trail towards the room he'd just left and nodded quickly, practically diving around Shane and through the door, not caring to knock as I opened it with no thought for modesty if Glenn was even inside.
Which he wasn't.
I held the bottle of wine to my heart, still grasped tightly in my hand as I leaned against the door. Then I opened my eyes and actually looked at the room. There was a sofa against the left wall and on it was a bag, shotgun, and a crossbow.
So this wasn't Glenn's room.
He'd pointed me to his room instead. Which I probably should've realised as he'd been standing in the open doorway before.
Not a minute later there was a knock at the door and I spun around with wide eyes. What the hell would people think if they saw me in Daryl's room? Well actually, I doubt anybody would be sober enough to realize it was his room not mine, but either way.
"You in there?" Drawled a voice from the other side of the door, belonging to none other than the archer himself. "You ain't escaped into a vent or somethin', have you?"
Which meant that Shane had left.
Catching my breath, I go to open the door before realizing that this was his door he was knocking on. "Did you just knock on your own door, Dixon?" I smile at the door, knocking back at him as a sigh comes through the wood. "How does that work then? Where's Glenn?"
"I ain't allowed to knock on my own damn door, Townsend?" Daryl snarks back, letting himself in as I step back with a grin. His ears were tinged red behind his short hair and he frowned at me as he passed. "He ain't here. Whatever made you say that to Shane... You sounded ready to start screamin' by the end, so..."
He stepped between Shane and me with no idea what was going on, again. What was he even thinking, watching us from afar and deciding that I needed saving - which I won't lie, I definitely did. 'Did I look that scared?'. As he made his way over to the sofa, I spared a glance at the door. "He gone?" I ask, and Daryl didn't need a name to know what cunt I was referring to.
"Uh huh," He nodded non committedly, before focusing on something in his bag with a furrowed brow. "The hell is even goin' on between you two anyway? Y'look like a damn deer caught in headlights whenever he's around."
And what was I supposed to say?
"I hate the fact that people look to him as some kind of martyr for protecting the group when in reality he's a self-righteous, misogynistic ballsack who has a hard time taking no as an answer." I all but growl, unable to stop myself as my voice begins to rise. I take a deep breath through my nose as his hands stop moving in his bag.
I didn't want to look at him, didn't particularly want to see his reaction to my outburst.
I just shrugged, heaving a sigh, reaching to open the door. "Sorry," clearing my throat, my hand stalling before it reached the doorknob. "Really just don't like him, I guess. Don't trust him. He's not right in the head and all that shit. Doesn't like taking no for an answer, not from Rick, and definitely not from us." I settled for this instead, glancing back to find him still wrist-deep in his bag. "He's dangerous."
"What'd you mean? Don't take no?" Daryl finally looked up from whatever had mesmerized him in his bag and levelled me with a look of confused anger, something I'd normally laugh at but he seemed so much more serious than I'd ever seen previously. "This about him threatening you? Those bruises from him?"
So he had noticed them but decided not to comment, which I didn't blame him for, he barely knew me after all. And he'd been listening just then, too.
I debated on finally telling someone about it, especially since this person already knew something. But what if by telling Daryl, something broke out between the two? What if something happened to Daryl because I'd told him?
I wouldn't be able to cope with that.
So I decided that now would be the opportune moment to not only remove myself from the conversation but also the entire room - and maybe this side of the facility if need be.
"Eh, don't worry your pretty little head about it, Dixon." I waved my hand like it was nothing, and his eyes widened a fraction, "Thank you for what you did, I do appreciate it, but I'm okay. I can fight my own battles, I'm a 'tough cookie', didn't you hear Jenner earlier?" I swung open the door with a toothy smile, bending at the waist in some sort of half bow - though it was more to distract him from my previous statements by being weird, which was one of my strong suits - and held my free arm out to the side. "I bid thee adieu, my friend. May you get trollied on that wine, and have a good night, and may your hangover tomorrow knock you on your ass." Then I left a confused Dixon in the room and shut the door behind me.
As the lock clicked behind me, I faintly hear him mutter something along the likes of 'fuckin weird' and 'pretty head?' and I grinned again before setting off once again on my original task.
---
I found Glenn passed out on T-Dog's room floor, and the only reason I even found him at all was because Jaqui was standing at the door with her arms crossed over her chest and her lips curved into a frown. Apparently, she was supposed to be sharing this room with T-Dog because Andrea had locked her out accidentally, but plans had changed after their 3rd bottle of wine.
"You wanna room with me for the night?" I offered to her as I nudged Glenn's leg with my foot, barely earning a groan before he turned over and snuggled into the cushions. "Or you could take Glenn's room since he's here."
"I'll just stay in Glenn's room then, no offence. I'd like some time alone." She sighed, picking up her backpack and slinging it over her shoulder. "Y'know, I'm so glad we found this place. I don't think we could've lasted another day out on those streets. I know I couldn't have." Jaqui shook her head with a grimace before her face grew soft as she looked at T-Dog. I didn't know the nature of their relationship, but it was clear as day to me that those two cared for each other. "Thank you, by the way. For gettin' us out of Atlanta in one piece, and bringing these two back the next day too. I'm glad you answered the radio."
She patted my arm gently with a smile and headed down the hall to Glenn's room before I could reply or even school my facial features from shock to a smile. In her wake, she left me with a few things to think about, one less option of things to do, and one blackout best friend I'd have to torture tomorrow. But for now, I could be nice, so I took two blankets out of the cupboard and threw one over each of them.
As I walked out and shut the door, I was momentarily stunned by Rick stumbling into my shoulder, who immediately apologized before continuing his descent down the hallway. That man was absolutely fucking shitfaced, but his eyes were red and puffy, and he had a wet spot on the top of his t-shirt, so I didn't call out to him and simply watched him trip over his own feet twice more before stumbling into a room.
Then I found myself wandering the way Rick had come from, down the sloped walkway into 'The Big Room', and was genuinely surprised to find it all lit up when nobody was there. It gave me a chance to really look around the room and imagine what it must've been like not three months ago, bustling with scientists and workers putting in the time needed to shield the world from diseases that would've surely wiped us out way before this one had.
But the sole computer left online was what caught my eye, near the middle of the circle of technology and blinking with an unfinished video log of sorts. The camera was still recording, according to the 'rec' in the corner of the screen, and the time that was counting by at the bottom, so I sat down and took another look around the room before pulling a stupid face and laughing at the mirror image in front of me.
"This is so stupid." I huffed to myself, taking a large swig of wine. "How do people do these? Okay, uh... Hi? My name's Megan Townsend, I'm 26 years old and I'm from West Yorkshire, England. I am currently sitting in an underground bunker thing at the Center for Disease Control or something along those lines, and the world above me is... well, it's fucked."
"People got sick and started eating each other on the 26th of August 2010, and it's been 63 - no, 64 days since then. I'm keeping count. It feels like the only thing keeping me sane in this hell. Which it very well could be, y'know? Some sort of rapture shit." I leaned back against the chair and downed another gulp of wine, sighing at nothing and no one. " I once heard a man say that when hell is too full to fit a single sinner more, Lucifer would open the gates of hell, and the dead would walk among us. But that was all bullshit Christian stuff to keep us kids in line so we wouldn't cause utter world annihilation."
"But it got me thinking. Was there ever a way to stop this? Save the world and restore humanity and all that heroic mumbo jumbo people idolized in film. I seriously doubt it. Anyway, it is October 31st. Halloween! No need for costumes right? Nobody could compete with the carnage and horrors lurking outside. Plus, fake blood would be obsolete since we're covered in real blood every day anyway. So what's the point." I take another few gulps of wine. There was less than half the bottle left now.
"There was a point to this, actually, me sitting here and talking." I sat up straight and looked at the camera as dead on as I could. "I'm going to survive this. I'm gonna live and I'm going to keep the ones I love safe too. It's like Rick said, all we want is a chance. Nobody really wants to die, some people just can't keep living. It's not that they're not strong or smart enough to do it, it's just that it can be so tiring, fighting every single day just for a chance."
"And that's what I'm going to do." I stand, pushing the chair back as I do. "I'm going to fight and kill and do whatever it takes to live. To take this chance for those who can't. Because I'm stronger than this world and ain't nothing gonna stand between me and what I want."
I take three steps away from the computer triumphantly before circling back and ducking down to the desk.
"I'm quite sloshed right now so this is probably the wine talking," I lift the bottle up to the camera before taking yet another swig. "Drunk me is an over-confident bitch and I'm so sorry Dr Jenner for talking to your camera." I throw a quick thumbs up, "In a bit."
Then I really did leave the thing alone, but not before taking a long look at the giant red digital timer on the wall to my left. It was counting down, but I didn't know what for which was slightly ominous.
Then again, it was probably counting till the next month or something, it was the 31st, after all.
And so, I traipsed back to my room with my half-full wine bottle, quickly hunkered down on a mess of blankets (that I found in the cupboard) swaddling the scratchy sofa, and continued reading and drinking until I succumbed to a wine-induced sleep.
--- From this point I'm practically winging it, 98% is from memory concerning the actual actions and who says what, the actual dialogue is the only thing I found ---
I'd never been so happy to be practically immune to the after-effects of wine. It never really had me spewing over the bathroom or rolling out of bed with a t-shirt wrapped over my eyes, just a bit of a knock in the back of the head and a prick in the eyes but I was fine otherwise. Now if it had been a typical English drinking sesh, I'd be near dead in a Maccies car park wearing nothing but an 'Area 51' baseball cap and a black bag - I'd woken up to similar occurrences a fair few times in Uni, but don't tell anyone that - so this was fairly tame for me.
I couldn't say the same for my good friend Glenn though, who'd woken up and - according to T-Dog - started blaming me for his hangover before being told it was T-Dog that he'd hung out with.
"Apologise, child." I grinned at the man rubbing his temple with a groan. "By the time I even found you guys, you were absolutely FUBAR. To be honest, you were rat-arsed well before your second bottle."
"I'm not a child." Glenn moaned back, barely meeting my eyes for a second before closing his own again. "What are you even saying? What do those words mean?"
"I'm four years older than you, actually - I think at least. So yes you are. And FUBAR means 'Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition', and rat-arsed just means drunk," I explained, and the others at the table - Andrea, Dale, Lori, Carl, and T-Dog who was running around the kitchen somewhere - tuned in to the small conversation as I continued, counting them off on my fingers. "You've also got: Trollied, Smashed, Sloshed, Plastered, Pished, Wankered, Off Your Tits, Floored, Hammered, Lashed, Blotto, TAUC - Totally And Utterly Carparked -, Top-Heavy, Fanny-bawed-"
"Okay, wow." Lori chimed, covering Carl's ears beside her. "That's a lot of words for drunk."
"Oh, I can continue." I held up my fingers, "That was only a few. There are so many more. Squiffy, Blitzed, and Wellied are the only other child-friendly ones I can think of at the moment though."
Lori sighed in resigned approval, dropping her hands from her son's ears and picking at her bacon again, prompting me to do the same. It was slightly dry but still one of the best things I'd eaten since shit hit the fan.
"Mornin'" Rick mumbled as he came into the room and beelined for the food.
"Are you hungover? Mom said you'd be." Carl grinned up at his father as he passed.
Rick chuckled and he said he was, and Lori chimed in with an 'I'm always right' comment as T-Dog sidled in with a large pan of powdered eggs for us all.
"Eggs. Powdered, but... but I do 'em good." He mused, scraping some onto Glenn's plate before giving me some. "I bet you can't tell. Protein helps the hangover." He aimed that last part at Glenn, who was still groaning with his head in his hands.
"Where'd all this come from?" Rick asked, taking a seat by his wife with a bottle of aspirin - I think - before passing it to said woman. "Can you help me, please?"
"Jenner," I reply around a mouthful of powdered eggs, raising my eyebrows at the taste. T-Dog was right, you really couldn't tell. "Thought we could use it after our little wine sesh last night. Well, those of us who ended up plastered."
"Glenn's trollied, Dad." Carl chimed, earning me a glare from Lori. "Meg told us English words for hungover."
"Did she now?" Rick raised his eyebrows at me in amusement, and I shrugged with a smile.
"Actually, they were for 'drunk', words for hungover are-" Another glare from the mother, along with a sharp cough. "Trollied works for hungover, too," I laugh, voice crawling up a few octaves.
"Don't ever let me drink again," Glenn whines, leaning into Jaqui's hands on his shoulders. I hadn't even seen the others trickle in.
"Hey."
Ah yes, the voice from my nightmares.
Shane makes his way into the room and straight to the coffee machine, curtly replying to Rick as he goes about getting food as I keep my eyes on my plate.
"The hell happened to you?" T-Dog exclaimed, and I looked up to see three scratches on his neck, and he threw out some shitty excuse of doing it in his sleep.
I know that I didn't do that, so Shane definitely visited someone else last night. I subtly turned my head to look at Lori as everyone talked and saw her staring down at her plate. She looked up briefly and caught my eye and her face drained of all colour as I looked at her knowingly. Our situations were entirely different, with her having previously engaged in and encouraged their arrangement, but that didn't mean Shane was taking no from her now that she rescinded that permission.
Daryl strolled past me to the food and I very obviously avoided his eyes on me as he rounded the table, and then it was Lori's turn to shoot me a glance, which I shook off absentmindedly as Jenner arrived.
Before he even had the chance to fill his cup Dale was out of his seat asking questions.
---
I hadn't even finished my plate when everyone got up to follow Jenner into the big room. So I took it along for the lesson, picking at bits of powdered egg as we congregated at the terminals. I'm still hungry, sue me.
"Give me Playback of TS-19," Jenner called out to Vi, and the fucking massive screen spanning the front wall lit up with a playback of some kind of X-ray of a skull. "Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few."
"Is that a brain?" Carl asked, looking at Jenner.
No, it's a fucking pony, Carl.
"An extraordinary one." the doctor replied. "Not that it matters in the end. Take us in for an E.i.V."
The scan zooms in to show us a side view of the brain, before zooming in further into the brainstem and showing all the synapses that make a person unique, makes them - well, them.
And this is exactly what Jenner explains.
"What are those lights?" Shane asked, and Jenner explained in more words than the confused people in the room could grasp.
"It's a person's life...experiences, memories." He started, gesturing to the screen as he turned. "It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you..." He points around the room. "The thing that makes you unique. And human."
"You don't make sense? Ever?" Daryl mumbled, hands tucked under his armpits as he swayed restlessly beside me. I turned to him and - in an effort to lift the weird kind of tension that grew last night - threw a quick explanation at him.
"They're synapses, electric impulses in the brain that take every instruction you want to send to your body." I hummed, gesturing from my head to my toes as I spoke, careful of the plate in my hand. "You want to flip someone off? These things carry that message from your brain to the muscles and tendons and shit that work your fingers."
Everyone looked at me for a long moment as I finished and bit into a piece of bacon, some looking surprised and others looking like they were finally in the loop. Daryl grumbled something like 'way to make me feel dumb' which I instantly shook my head and went to rectify my mistake as Jenner spoke directly to me.
"You're a scientist?" He asked, brow furrowed.
"Oh, god no. No offence." I raise my hand in apology. "I'm a 'Jack Of All Trades', I guess. I just know a bit about different things. I'm nowhere near smart enough to be a scientist. I took some classes when I was a volunteer nurse, went down a bit of a rabbit hole of information."
Jenner hummed in thought before continuing with his explanation.
"Well, you're right. Those are synapses. They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks from the moment of birth, to the moment of death."
People then start to realize that this person died, which was kind of obvious seeing as this was a playback of something that had happened, rather than a live feed. Jenner spread light for the others, and Andrea - ever the smart person - spoke the conclusion out loud.
"This person died? Who?"
"Test Subject 19," Jenner said, eyes locked on the screen. "Someone who was bitten and infected... And volunteered to have us record the process. Vi, scan forward to the first event."
"Scanning to first event."
We all stood in silence as the screen changed, the x-ray-esque picture the same, but the brain was being infected by strands of the sickness of which we didn't know the name nor the origins. It spread through the synapses from the stem to the frontal lobe, effectively snuffing out every memory, thought, and feeling until there was nothing left.
"What is that?" Glenn exclaimed incredulously, watching as the infection took hold.
"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands haemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs." Jenner explains, pointing at the screen once again. "Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be... Gone."
"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia's soft voice quietly echoed through the room, and as Carol confirmed her question, Andrea grimaced. Lori told Jenner what had happened to Amy, and he confessed that he'd lost somebody too.
We all had.
"Scan to the second event." Jenner continued. Then we watched as the brain began sparking, a small red light growing at the stem as the brain booted back up. "The resurrection times vary wildly. We had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours. In the case of this patient, it was two hours, one minute... seven seconds."
"It restarts the brain?" Lori looks to Jenner for answers as we all stare at the screen, horrified, yet morbidly curious to see what'd happen next.
"No, just the brain stem. Basically, it gets them up and moving."
"But they're not alive?" Rick asks.
"You tell me," Jenner replies.
This all carries on for a while, Jenner explains that the part of your brain that 'makes you, you', the human part, never comes back. Then something appears at the top of the screen and shoots through the skull, effectively slicing through the brain stem, and then it was lights out for reanimated Test Subject 19.
Andrea voices this and has the audacity to sound disgusted as if she hadn't taken it upon herself to do the same to Amy just two days prior.
Then Jenner ordered Vi to power down the Big Room's workstations and Main Screen, and when prompted, began listing off things that could've caused the outbreak. He reasons that there could be someone else out there who knows, but he couldn't be sure as all forms of communication had gone dark months ago.
"So it's not just here?" Andrea clarified, and it felt like a punch to the gut.
"There's nothing left anywhere?" I interjected, that sliver of hope I'd held this whole time that my family could be safe and the virus was only in America. "At-at all..? No chance that this is just America?"
"That's what you're really saying, right?" Andrea finished, sparing a glance at me as Jenner clammed up, seemingly unable to find the words he needed.
And that's when I had to sit down, to come to terms with the truth that I'd been hiding behind since the beginning.
My family was most likely dead.
My dad, Step-mum, Mum, my ungodly amount of sisters and brothers, my nieces and nephews... Hell, even my cats.
And I didn't even have the chance to find out, because I was 4,000 miles away. Across an entire fucking ocean, all because I decided to be spontaneous and go on holiday.
"Dr Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but..." Dale's voice called through my quickly spiralling grief that had only just taken complete hold. "That clock... It's counting down. What happens at zero?"
"The... basement generators... they run out of fuel." Jenner replied curtly, walking away from the group and out of the Big Room, not taking any more time to answer Rick's question, so he asked Vi.
"When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur." Vi clarified.
"That's bad," I warned, trying to focus on the present and leave the grief for later once again. "decontamination of a disease prevention building won't just be some sanitization spray being let out everywhere."
---
We'd formed a group of five to check the generators, and everyone else went back to their rooms to ponder what we'd just learned from our very own Dr Jenner.
"Decontamination... What does that mean?" Glenn panted as we followed Rick down the stairs to the Generator Room.
"I don't like the way Jenner clammed up," Shane growled, following close behind Rick as we got to the bottom. "The way he just wandered off like that..."
"What's wrong with him?" T-Dog groused from behind me as we reached a map of the floor, "Seriously, man, is he nuts, medicated, what?"
"In there." Rick orders.
"He's definitely not telling us something important." I reckoned, and we all piled into the room. "He was off last night, too."
We split up, Rick and Shane checking left and Glenn, T-Dog, and I venturing right. But all we found were bone-dry generators and a shit-ton of fuel drums. Then the lights went out and Vi's voice confirmed the emergency lighting had been activated.
We sped back to the other two and gathered our findings - or lack thereof - and we realized with horror that there was one generator left powering the entire facility.
And it was running on fumes.
---
We made it back upstairs in record time and joined back with the group, who was conveniently together, looking like an angry mob as they followed after Jenner, who had a bottle of something in his hands as he headed to the Big Room.
"Jenner, what's happening?" Rick jogged in front and motioned for us to be quiet as Jenner explained more vital information that would've been great to hear yesterday.
"The system is dropping all the nonessential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark." The doctor spoke quickly as he rounded the corner to the Big Room, looking directly toward the doomsday clock. "Right on schedule."
Then he stopped at the stairs, taking a large swig of whatever liquor was in the bottle, before handing it back to Daryl, who snatched it back and sent half of it onto the floor.
"It was the French." He finally spoke, hands buried casually in his pockets. "They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know. While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the labs till the end. They thought they were close to a solution." And that's when he finally walked the stairs to the computer.
"What happened?" I ask quietly, looking between Daryl who was pacing like a cornered animal, and the doctor at the top of the steps.
"The same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs off fossil fuel. I mean, how stupid is that?"
Shane lunged at Jenner and was intercepted by the seemingly always levelheaded Rick, who ordered us all to go get our things so we could get the fuck out as the room exploded into ominous beeps.
A large timer popped up on the main screen, and Vi's voice spoke calmly to us, a stark difference from the news she was telling us.
"Thirty minutes to decontamination."
Jenner jumped into action for some reason and ran down to his computer as we all turned to get our stuff, and stopped in terror as a giant metal door came up from the floor, closing off our exit.
That's what he ran to do.
"He just locked us in!" Glenn cried out as we all ran towards Jenner, who had sat down at his computer and began recording himself.
It only escalated from there.
Daryl snapped, literally throwing himself at Jenner and only just being caught by Shane and T-Dog, and they had to carry him away else he threw the glass bottle at the man who'd just sealed our fates.
"Hey, Jenner, open that door now," Rick ordered, storming over to him and standing over the way-too-calm doctor.
"There's no point." Jenner shrugged. "Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed."
"Of fucking course it's a goddamn lockdown." I scoffed, all but throwing myself to the floor to sit against the back of a computer desk.
"I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that." He went on. "It's better this way."
I was hardly paying enough attention to anything other than Jenner and the fact he'd decided to create a suicide pact without our consent when he snapped.
"Do you know what this place is?!" Jenner bellows, shooting up out of his chair. "We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" The silence that resonated as he paused was positively stifling. Daryl was pacing again, not that I could blame him, and the rest of us just stared as Jenner sat back down. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure... in a terrorist attack, for example... H.I.T.s are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."
"H.I.T.s?" Rick repeated, and Jenner clamped up once again, instead asking Vi to define a H.I.T.
"H.I.T... high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives consist of a two-stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear. The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen between 5,000° and 6,000° and is used when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired."
"It sets the air on fire." Jenner sums up, and that's when I stopped listening altogether.
---
I caught parts of the conversation around me as I partially dissociated. Bits of 'there is no hope' and 'my daughter doesn't deserve to die like this' until I couldn't bear sitting still any longer and got up to pace.
"I think your lyin'," Rick announces, turning to Jenner.
"What?" The doctor breathed, turning to face the Sheriff.
"You're lying about no hope." Rick continues, panting heavily, and I tune into the conversation. "If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?"
"It doesn't matter." Jenner mumbles, shaking his head.
"It does matter. It always matters." Rick insists, getting closer and practically bowing in front of Jenner as he wipes his nose. "You stayed when others ran. Why?"
"Not because I wanted to." The doctor admits finally, standing up to full height once again, and the tense atmosphere that had fallen over us through however long we'd been locked in here silently mixed with curiosity. "I made a promise... To her." He gestured to the screen, where TS-19 was still up on the screen. "My wife."
"Test subject 19 was your wife?" Lori asked, looking up at the doctor.
"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. I- How could I say no?" The sound of Daryl hitting the metal door with an axe rang out as he spoke, "She was dying. It should've been me on that table. I wouldn't have mattered to anybody. She was a loss to the world. Hell, she ran this place. I-I just worked here. In our field, she was an Einstein. Me? I'm- I'm just... Edwin Jenner. She could've done something about this. Not me."
"Your wife didn't have a choice." Rick drawled, and I stopped my pacing to watch them fully. "You do. That's... that's all we want... a choice, a chance."
"Let us keep trying as long as we can," Lori begged.
The doctor sighed in defeat before moving around Rick to the keypad he'd used earlier to shut us in. "I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those."
Everyone looked up as Jenner swiped his card and input a sequence of numbers none of us could've guessed, and the metal door retracted in front of Daryl.
"Come on!"
There was a flurry of voices as people practically sprinted to the exit, that little sliver of hope reigniting our will to live. Glenn was urging people to go faster.
I stopped beside Rick as he thanked Jenner, who pulled him in by the hand and whispered into the Sherriff's ear.
"We're all infected." I catch Jenner's eye and Rick stands there frozen for a second before looking at me to see if I'd heard him too. He pulls something from the computer and hands it to me. "You should have this."
I looked down at the piece of metal in my hands, and before I had the chance to ask what it was, I was being dragged away by Lori, who'd run back into the room to grab Rick and me. I pocketed the thin piece of metal and ran.
"Hey, we've got four minutes left! Come on!" Glenn calls as we head for the ramp.
Then we stopped to watch Jaqui and T-Dog, the former wanting to stay and the latter pleading insanity. She didn't want to end up like Jim and Amy but urged us to leave as fast as we could.
Then Andrea announced that she too would stay, which I barely heard from the hallway as I rushed to grab my things from the room and get to the top floor before the four minutes were up, which seemed impossible.
We took the stairs two at a time as the clock ticked down - a faster route than the elevator we'd arrived downstairs in - and burst into the foyer.
"Get them doors open!" Shane ordered from behind me as people rushed around, looking for an escape route. "Come on!"
"It doesn't work!"
"Wait a minute! Wait a minute!"
"Try it! Try it! Try it now!"
"Come on! Come on!"
Voices clashed together in the panic.
T-Dog and Glenn tried the keypads beside the doors, while Daryl and Rick went at the windows with axes. T-Dog grabbed a chair and went at the windows too until Shane yanked a shotgun out of the duffel bag and shot round after round at the window, which was just as ineffective as the glass was bullet-resistant.
"It's fucking polycarbonate glass!" I cursed, standing back from Shane as he raged. "No normal bullet is getting through it."
"The glass won't break?" Sophia sniffled beside me, and Carol grabbed her bag and began rifling through it on her way to Rick.
"Rick, I have something that might help." She offered, hand still searching through her bag.
"Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it." Shane mocked, sneering at the petite woman.
"Your first morning at camp, when I washed your uniform-" Carol continued, not put off by Shane as she pulls out a fucking hand grenade. "I found this in your pocket."
I grabbed Sophia and ushered her and the others to the stairs as Rick took the grenade and jumped up onto the window ledge.
"Lie down!" I curled myself over Sophia and Carol who lay on the stairs. "Keep your heads down, cover your ears!"
Carol favoured her daughter to herself and clamped her hands over Sophia's ears - the poor girl practically had herself in a headlock - so I held my hands tightly over Carol's ears and ducked my head.
Then a weight draped itself over me and I turned my head slightly to see Daryl looking down at me with a slight frown. He moved my head back towards Carol and put his hands over my ears, shoving his face into my shoulder as Rick literally ran for his life as he dropped the grenade and bolted over to us.
And then BOOM.
And Crash.
And Fucking Groaning.
The telltale sound of the window shattering was one of the best sounds I'd heard in a while, yet the sound of walkers outside dampened the victory slightly.
We all but threw ourselves up as the room stopped shaking, and I pulled Carol and Sophia with me as Daryl grabbed my forearm and led us out the window.
Then it was a race against the clock as we sprinted to the vehicles - which we were extremely lucky hadn't either been overthrown by Walkers or nicked by other survivors - while dodging the grabby hands of death. The men and I took care of the walkers shuffling toward our group as I all but shoved the mother and daughter into their car, slamming the door and going without complaint as Daryl grabbed me and pulled me towards his truck, opening the passenger door before racing around to the other side and throwing himself in.
"They're coming!" I hear Lori from the RV and turn to see Andrea and Dale climbing through the broken window. "Come on!"
I stick my head out of the door window and scream at them to get down along with the others as the RV's horn blares out at them to take cover.
Yanking my head back in, I all but slide into the footwell while Daryl throws himself over the seats as the entire fucking world shakes from the blast that overtakes the CDC. A few seconds pass until the truck stills and I pull myself back into the seat as Daryl sits up to stare at the explosion.
That could have been us.
We could've been in there.
Jaqui was in there.
And now she was gone.
"Come on, get in!" I hear from the others and look out the window to see Dale and Andrea clamber into the RV as walkers appear from seemingly nowhere.
And then we drove off, still watching the flames of the CDC, smoke billowing in the wind.
We had no destination in mind as we peeled off the road and down the streets of Atlanta, one member down, and a glimmer of hope snuffed out.
All we had now was a chance.
---
A/N: AND THAT RIGHT THERE IS S1 COMPLETE. I AM SO SORRY IT TOOK THIS DAMN LONG.
THIS IS THE LONGEST CHAPTER I'VE EVER WRITTEN. IT'S 8994 WORDS WITHOUT THE A/N.
Feedback is greatly appreciated, and I'm sorry the spelling goes between British and American, my Grammarly is trying to convert me.
NVM I got it sorted out for the most part.
Love you all!
-IWriteStoriesNotSins