"Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."
Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was Daryl sleeping on a coat next to the couch. He was on his back and had an arm over his forehead, his breaths were deep and even, he looked so peaceful.
I had a slight headache and my throat was a bit dry but I was good compared to the amount of alcohol I had the night before. I usually don't get hangovers but I think I probably drank more last night than ever before.
I sat up and stretched, my back cracked a bit. I stood up and carefully walked out of the room to not wake up Daryl, he looked like an angel now and I didn't have the heart to wake him up and he would kill me if that happened.
I couldn't shower last night so I stepped into the shower and I felt like I was in heaven as the hot water touched my body. I closed my eyes and let myself enjoy this. I can't even remember the last time I had a decent shower, it seemed like so long ago.
After what felt like eternity, I finished my shower and got dressed in clean clothes and put a towel around my head, feeling clean for the first time since all of this started, then I heard my stomach grumbling so I stood up and walked out of the bathroom, when I passed my room I noticed Daryl was still sleeping, I smiled at him before walking into the hallway and closing the door as silently as I could.
"Hey," I heard a voice as soon as I walked out of the room. I turned to see Sean, fully dressed.
"Hi," I muttered and kept walking, flashbacks of last night appeared on my mind and I regretted it, I don't want Sean to misunderstand what happened last night, we were drunk, it happened but nothing else will, I'm not interested in him or anyone.
"You okay?"
"Just have a killing hangover," I lied.
Once I walked into the dining room I saw almost everybody in there. Rick and Shane looked quite bad, probably not better than me. Dale was always his cheerful self, Glenn didn't even looked up at me when I greeted him, he really looked like crap, poor him. Carl and Sophia smiled at me and made me sit in between them. Daryl and Teresa were the only people that weren't here.
"How do you feel?" Oliver asked me, he didn't look so bad.
"I'm good," I said.
"Noticed you walked in with Sean right behind you," he whispered in my ear. "Something happened, didn't it?"
"Absolutely not!" I exclaimed a bit too loud, almost everyone turned to look at us, I just smiled innocently at them. "We bumped in the hallway and came here together, that's it."
"You sure?"
"Of course!" I said giving him a look. He knew better than to push it. "Besides, I'm sharing with Daryl, so you can ask him if you don't believe me.
"Don't ever, ever, ever let me drink again," Glenn muttered before Oliver could reply to me, I turned to look at Glenn and he looked like he was going to puke at any minute. "How come you are not as bad as me even when you drank more?" he asked, looking back at me.
"I'm just cool like that," I said shrugging. "But you can't really be sure about who drank more."
Then Jenner joined us, I hadn't even noticed he wasn't here and I hadn't noticed either that Daryl had joined us by now. He was looking down at his food and whenever he looked up he wouldn't look at me, he couldn't be avoiding me, could he? I guess he just feels sick.
"Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing," Dale started.
"But you will anyway."
"We didn't come here for the eggs," Dale said simply.
After we were done with our breakfast Jenner led us to another room full of computers and specialised machines. I stayed next to Sophia the whole time. Carl stood next to us.
"Give me playback of TS-19," Jenner said to VI. "Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few."
Suddenly a screen was on. It had a computerized version of a person's head, their brain was a bit brighter than the rest of the body.
"Is that a brain?" Carl asked.
"An extraordinary one," Jenner replied. "Not that it matters in the end. Take us in for E.I.V..
Then we saw the brain with more details and even inside of it, nerves working, or that's what I assumed I was seeing as several blue lights stared to flash in it very fast.
"What are those lights?" Shane asked.
"It's a person's life – experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you. The thing that makes you unique and human."
"You don't make sense ever?" Daryl said, obviously not understanding anything of what he said. "Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says does or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death."
"Death? That's what this is, a vigil?" Rick said, taking a few steps forward.
"Yes," Jenner said nodding. "Or rather the playback of the vigil."
"This person died?" I couldn't help but ask.
"This person was bitten and infected and volunteered to have us record the process. VI, scan forward to the first event."
Then we saw how the computerized brain started to turn a bit black and how these new 'lights' but from other colour, got into the brain.
"What is that?" Glenn asked.
"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands haemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs," Jenner said as the brain went completely black and apparently lifeless. "Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be... Gone."
"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked me.
"Yes," I said nodding.
Then Andrea's eyes started to fill with tears. Lori told Jenner she had just lost her sister a few days ago. He nodded sadly.
"I lost somebody too. I know how devastating it is," he told her. "Scan to the second event."
I turned to look from Andrea and Jenner to Daryl, who was already looking at me. He looked away quickly and pretended he wasn't looking at me. He had been weird since breakfast, I couldn't believe he was avoiding me and if he was, why would he? We were okay last night, yeah we had a little argument but then he carried me all the way to the room. What's his problem?
"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."
In the lifeless and black brain some red faint glows started to appear but they were only in the lower part of the brain.
"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked.
"No, just the brain stem. Basically, it gets them up and moving."
"It's nothing like before," Rick commented. "Most of that brain is dark."
"Dark, lifeless, dead," Jenner said in an emotionless tone. "The frontal lobe, the neocortex, The human part – that doesn't come back, the you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct."
Then we saw a bright light go through the brain and then the person, whoever that was, just stopped moving.
"God! What was that?" my mother asked.
"You shot your patient in the head?" I asked, assuming that was a gunshot.
Jenner didn't answer me but his lack of reply only meant I was right. Then he ordered VI to turn off the screen and the whole area where we were, except for a single white light.
"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andreas asked him.
"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal."
"Or the wrath of god?" Jacqui added.
"There is that."
Then some of us asked him if there were other people in other places, he didn't know that either, which only made us more nervous and restless. I put my arm around Sophia she didn't say anything but I could tell she was scared, just like me but she was just a kid, I had to be strong for her now.
"There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing?" someone asked but I wasn't sure who. "That's what you're really saying, right?"
Silence.
That was all that followed that question. The little hope I had gotten when we got here just shattered into pieces and dissolved into nothing. I felt tears in my eyes but I couldn't let them fall.
"Man, I'm gonna get so faced drunk," Daryl announced walking away. "Again,"
"Doctor Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question," Dale started. "But that clock." We all turned to look at the clock then. "It's counting down. What happens at zero?"
I had stared at that clock and still hadn't noticed it was counting down, it was a timer, but the question was, a timer for what?
"The basement generators – they run out of fuel."
"And then?" Rick asked but Jenner didn't answer him, instead he just walked away so Rick asked VI. "VI, what happens when the power runs out?"
When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur."
"What the hell does that mean?" I asked but no one replied, not even VI.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rick, Shane, Glenn and T-Dog ran down to the basement while the rest of us just went back to our rooms. I opened the door to mine and saw Daryl sitting on the couch, drinking from a bottle of wine, there was a second full one next to him.
"Can I have some?" I asked him. There is no hope, might as well just get drunk and forget all this reality at least for a bit.
Daryl didn't say anything to me, he looked at me for a second before taking another big sip from it. I sighed in frustration and sat on the cot he had used to sleep the night before.
"What's your problem?" I exclaimed.
"You are!" he said raising his voice a bit. "You are just so annoying! Why don't you just leave me alone!?"
"What the hell are you talking about? We were okay last night, you brought me here, what changed?"
"I was just drunk!"
"Go to hell!"
"I'm already in hell!" he exclaimed. "And why don't you just go with your friends or that kid, Sean? Just bugger off!"
"Is that what this is about?" I asked him in surprise, my tone more calmed now. "Are you jealous?"
"What?"
"Jealous," I repeated. "Of me and Sean."
"You are not just stupid but crazy as well," he told me and I would lie if I said that didn't hurt a bit. "Why would I be jealous of him?"
"I regret it, you know?" I said in a very casual way, actually like he was going to listen and care about what I had to say. "I don't want to give him fake hope on something that will never exist. He might be handsome and all but I'm not really into him and even if I were, now is not the time for that kind of stuff."
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked but for once he didn't shout or seem angry. "I don't give a fuck about your love story."
"You are the only one here." I shrugged. "Want to give me some of that now? I just found out there is no hope left and I am really not in the mood to hear you shouting at me for no damn reason. I just need a drink and forget all of this."
Daryl looked a bit shocked with my outburst, I was even surprised about myself. Daryl looked at me a bit unsure but eventually he handed me the half-empty bottle and I took a really big sip from it. I closed my eyes for a second before taking another one.
We finished that bottle together and Daryl wasted no time to open the second one, I grabbed it quickly from him and took the first sip from it and then handed it to Daryl.
"Is it just me or has it got a bit ... hotter?" Daryl asked me after he had drank a bit less than half of the second bottle. For a minute I thought he was just messing around but now that I think about it, he's right.
Daryl stood up and put his hand under the air vent, it wasn't working and just minutes later the lights went a bit dimmer. Apparently we weren't the only ones to notice because we could hear people talking in the hallway. Daryl headed to the door, I took another sip, stood up and followed him with the bottle in hand, which Daryl took after he opened the door.
"Why is the air off?" Lori asked.
"And the lights in our room?" my mother added.
"What's going on? Why is everything turned off?" Daryl asked as Jenner walked through the hallway.
"Energy use is being prioritized."
"Air isn't a priority? And lights?" Dale asked.
"It's not up to me. Zone 5 is shutting itself down."
"Hey, what the hell does that mean? Hey man, I'm talking to you. What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?" Daryl asked as he followed Jenner, who had taken the bottle from Daryl.
"Hey!" I exclaimed at him, trying to get the bottle from him.
"You'd be surprised."
At that moment the other four men joined us as we all followed Jenner into the room where we saw what this thing does to the infected ones. He said that would happen at the half-hour mark and when we turned to look at the clock, it read 00:31:27. The energy was being prioritized to make the computers work until the last second.
Then Daryl took the bottle from Jenner's hand and only seconds later I took it from him. He turned to glare at me but I only shrugged my shoulders and took another sip, after that he took the bottle again without another word.
"It was the French." He suddenly said. "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 but they ran out of power, just like here."
"Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff," Rick ordered us. "We're getting out of here now!"
We started to run but an alarm went off and we saw red lights going off as well. That can't be good.
"What's that?" Shane shouted.
"Thirty minutes for decontamination." Vi announced. Oh fucking great.
"Everybody, y'all heard Rick. Get your stuff and let's go!" Shane shouted again.
Before we could leave the exit was closed. What? I stared in disbelief at our only way out from here. This couldn't be happening! We were trapped.
"Did you just lock us in? He just locked us in!" Glenn yelled, losing his cool.
"You son of a bitch!" Daryl exclaimed as he ran to Jenner. "You let us out of here!"
Who knows what Daryl would had done to him, Shane stopped him just in time, pulling him away from the man.
"Jenner, open that door now." Rick said with authority.
"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed."
"Well, open the damn things!" I yelled at him, finally losing my temper.
"That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again," Jenner told us. "It's better this way."
"What is? What happens in 28 minutes?" Rick asked. I wasn't so sure if I wanted to know the answer to that.
"You know what this place is?! 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!" Jenner yelled at all of us. "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 asked.
"HITs – high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives cocoists of a two-stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear."
That's when we all just lost it. Rick embraced his family, Sophia broke down crying, same as my mum, who had Sophia in her arms. Shane hugged Sean, Oliver pecked Teresa's lips before hugging her as they both cried.
Daryl was the closest person to me so I just wrapped my arms around him without thinking. I could feel how he got tensed for a bit but we were about to die and he had no one else, so he just hugged me back and quite tightly. I almost felt safe in his arms, but I knew we were going to die in less than half an hour and VI kept telling us what would happen to us.
"It sets the air on fire," Jenner told us. "No pain. An end to sorrow, grief regret. Everything."
It was then when I let go of Daryl, smiled sadly at him and then ran to hug both, my mother and my sister. My mother and sister each put an arm around me and I did the same. This wasn't the time to be upset, we only had minutes to live.
I pulled away from them when I heard glass shattering. Daryl had just thrown the bottle at the door. I just shook my head and embraced my family again.
"Open the damn door!" he shouted.
Shane and Daryl started to hit the metal door with pickaxes but I could tell they weren't making a difference.
"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher," Jenner said.
"Well, your head ain't!" Daryl said and headed towards Jenner with his pickaxe.
"Daryl! Daryl! Just back up! Back up!"
Dale, Rick Oliver, and T-Dog managed to stop Daryl from murdering him. If he dies we all die here with him. I turned to look at the clock and saw how the seconds kept going down and down. We are running out of time. We only had ten minutes now.
"There is no hope," Jenner told us. "There never was."
"There's always hope," Rick told him.
And that's when I realized I still had hope. Just minutes ago I was drinking my sorrow away because I thought there wasn't any hope but right now that I'm about to die and I want nothing else than to escape this and live, that my sister lives, makes me know I still have something worth fighting for. I still have hope.
"This is our extinction event," Jenner said. Damn, I just wanted to punch this man right in his face. If he didn't have something to live for, that's fine but why kill us all?
"This isn't right. You can't just keep us here," my mother cried, Jenner tried to tell her this was going to be pain free but that wasn't really comforting. "My daughters don't deserve to die like this."
Shane lost it then. He grabbed a rifle and threatened Jenner with it. Rick talked him out of it and instead he shot some computers just out of rage.
"I think you're lying," Rick told Jenner. "About no hope. 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," he said. "I made a promise to her, to my wife."
"Test subject 19 was your wife?" Teresa asked.
"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no? She was dying," he told us.
"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 just worked here. In our field, she was an Einstein. Me? I'm just Edwin Jenner. She could've done something about this. Not me."
"Your wife didn't have a choice," Rick told him. "You do. That's – that's all we want – A choice, a chance."
"Let us keep trying as long as we can," Lori spoke up as she held a cryibg Carl in her arms.
"I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those." He walked away and then pressed the password on a little keyboard and the door was open.
"Come on!" Daryl shouted.
I didn't waste a second to follow him out of here and pulling my sister with me. I turned to see behind me and saw my mother running just behind us.
We tried every door, we hit the glasses with everything we had in our hands but they just wouldn't break. Shane even shot at it and nothing. I was starting to think that we were actually going to die when my mum approached Rick.
"Rick, I have something that might help," she said looking into her bag.
"Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it," Shane told her.
"Your first morning at camp, when I washed your uniform I found this in your pocket," she said, giving Rick a grenade.
"Get down! Get down!"
We all jumped to the ground and tried to hide behind the stairs. Teresa and Oliver were right next to me, I couldn't see Sophia but I hoped she was with our mum.
The grenade exploded and I smiled and felt a rush of relief when I saw the glass had broken. I stood up as fast as I could and ran towards the last-minute-made exit. I jumped out and landed on the floor. I turned and caught Sophia as she jumped as well, I grabbed her hand and pulled her away from there, as far as I could go.
We ran back to the cars, there were about twenty walkers right outside the building. Some of us shot at them as we ran, Daryl even cut one's head off. I wanted to grab my gun but it was inside my bag and I didn't have time to look for it. When we got to the cars we all got inside them. Oliver got into the driver seat and didn't waste a second to start the engine, while I ended up in the back seat with Sophia.
I saw my mother getting into her own car with Rick, Lori and Carl. She gave me a look like saying 'take care of her' and I just nodded at her.
Then I turned to look at the building and saw Dale and Andrea coming out just now. Lori shouted at them to get down. They hid behind some sacks while the rest of us just went down in the cars. I shielded Sophia's body with my own.
Only seconds later there was a loud explosion and I could feel the heat of it, I didn't dare to open my eyes. Luckily none of the windows of the cars shattered or even cracked.
I sat up about a minute later and the CDC was gone. The building was nothing more than fire and ashes now.
After that we all just drove away and I silently thanked for being able to escape just in time and be able to live another day.
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Hello guys, hope you like this chapter! :) I'm so sick so I've been staying at home and since yesterday I have been writing new chapters, which I hadn't done in like two weeks!
Who watched the episode this Sunday/Monday? I actually liked it so much more than the previous ones! I just disliked the end so much! I want Richonne, goddamn it! :'(
Please tell me what you think and leave a review :)
xx