"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
~ Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
~×~
Time is running out, quick. I can feel my heart pound against my chest. Holding the gun Rick spared me in hand. While the others went back into their room to digest what Edwin Jenner had told us. Rick, Glenn, T-Dog, Shane, and I ran down the flight of stairs. Entering the basement.
"Decontamination? What does that mean?" Glenn questions breathlessly, walking swiftly behind me with a flashlight in hand.
"It means we blow up, Glenn," I growl.
"We don't know that!" Rick scolds me from the front of our small group.
"I don't like how Jenner walked out on us like that," Shane adds his two cents.
"What's wrong with him? Seriously, man. Nuts, medicated, or what?" T-Dog complains to no one in particular. Just to anyone who would listen.
We stop at the end of the steps, noticing a map hanging across the pasty white walls. Rick gives a quick look before turning to his right. "In there," he says, shinning his light down the dark hallway.
We follow behind him. Stumbling through the hallway. Flashlights guiding us. We finally reach a door, reading; 'Basement Generators'. Rick push open the heavy door and makes his way in with his flashlight. As soon as his foot hit the room floor, the lights flicker on. Sounds of the power hum with delight.
Glenn, T-Dog, and I split off from Rick and Shane. We check the fuel tanks, but they are all empty. My eyes fall onto Glenn and T-Dog with concern. Before the two could comment, the power shuts down. Leaving us in the dark.
"Emergency lights 'on'," Vi's voice rang in my ears, as the floodlights switched on.
Glenn and T-Dog use their flashlights to guide us. "Anything?" I yell back towards Rick. We attempt to find our way back.
"Yeah, a lot of dead generators and more empty fuel drums than I can count," Shane spat. "It can't be down to just that one!"
Back up in the Big Room, everyone crowd Jenner. Questions upon questions are unanswered. The power is not only down in the basement but in our rooms. As well as the Big Room.
Nervous sweat rolls down my forehead. My hands are now clammy around my weapon. Whatever is happening, it is happening fast. There is simply nothing we can do to stop this decontamination. And if my theory is correct, we will be nothing but ashes when that clock hits zero.
Jenner is now dressed in a white button-up shirt and black slacks. He wore his lab coat and badge. Hair combed and gelled back. Face shaven and neat.
What in the hell is getting all dressed up for? Death?
"Jenner, what's happening?" Rick hissed.
"The system is dropping all nonessential uses of power. It's designed to keep computers running to the last possible second." Edwin explains. He walks in front of us with a bottle of wine in hand. "That started as we approached the half-hour mark. Right on schedule."
I turn my attention to the clock. Only forty minutes left. Forty damn minutes to figure out what exactly happens at zero. And it seems our guy isn't sane enough to explain what exactly is happening.
Jenner paused for a moment and lean against the railing leading up towards the workstations. He took a small sip from the wine he held in his hand before handing it over to Daryl. Daryl yanks it from out of Jenner's hand, spilling half of it onto the floor.
"It was the French," Jenner began.
"What?" Andrea snorts.
"They were the last ones to hold 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."
"What happened?" Jodie questions from beside me.
"The same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs on fossil fuels. I mean, how stupid is that?"
Jenner gives out a chuckle and swirls around to make his way up the working stations.
"This isn't a joke, Edwin!" I shout. The panic is rising inside of me. I can feel it deep in my chest.
"Life is a joke nowadays is it not?" Edwin spat.
This man used to save lives, keep the little people safe. Yet, he spoke as if life itself no longer mattered. Not to him. But I refuse to be beaten down like Edwin. Our lives still matter.
Shane is the first to pounce towards Jenner. Following behind him as if he is ready to beat his face in. "Let me tell you-" Shane starts, but Rick follows behind him. Grabbing Shane by the shoulder to stop whatever he had in store for Jenner.
"To hell with it, Shane. I don't even care!" Rick growls at Shane. He pushes him away, stepping in front of Jenner to block Shane.
"We should grab our things so we can leave," I tell everyone. Whatever Edwin is on, I want no part of it. I'm ready to bolt towards the doors and never look back. Those who no longer want to hear what Jenner has to say start for the doors. However, we barely make it halfway for the sound of alarms blare down onto us. Frightened, I kneel slightly, covering my ears with the palms of my hands. "What is that?" I scream. Jodie kneels beside me, searching the ceiling like a scared puppy.
"Thirty minutes to decontamination," Vi calls out from over the loud sirens. The clock countdown flashes across the big screen. Metal shutters come slamming down in front of the archway leading out of the Big Room. Keeping us trapped inside.
"Doc, what's going on here?!" Daryl barks. The bottle still in hand.
"Did you just lock us in?!" Glenn speaks breathlessly, nearly backing into Jodie and me. "He just locked us in!"
My heart race more than it did twenty minutes ago. Before we thought we could just leave, but now we are stuck. Jodie holds my hand, completely shocked by Jenner's choice to keep us in with him. It doesn't take me long to notice Jodie's rapid breathing. Her eyes glued on to the metal shutters. I can tell she is trying to focus but it is failing. One of her attacks is kicking in.
"Dee." I place my hands onto her shoulders, pulling her body to face me. Her chest rises and falls quickly. A dash of hot pink forms from underneath her brown complexion. I've seen this plenty of times before. Since we could remember, Jodie suffered from not only panic attacks but asthma as well. Asthma made the attacks worse. And it wasn't like we could just pick up a new pump for her.
"Jodie! Look at me!"
Daryl stood behind Jodie, watching me attempt to calm my sister down. I look up towards him with fear in my eyes. Pleading even. I'm afraid and this time I can't keep my composure. Not this time. Daryl must have felt what I thought. Something shifts between us. understanding and empathy.
His face grows a deep red, and his eyes were glossy from drinking. Without hesitation, Daryl moves past me. He darts towards Jenner with his bottle of wine in hand.
"You summa bitch!" Daryl hollers.
Now focused on Daryl's stupid rage, my hand reaches out to catch his arm but I'm too slow. The others grab the drunken man before he could lay a finger on Jenner. T-Dog half carried - half dragged Daryl away. Daryl kicks out of anger and throws his bottle at Jenner, missing Jenner's head completely.
"Jenner, open that door now!" Rick demands.
"There's no point, everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed," Edwin huffed.
"Well, open the damn things!" Daryl spat. His attempts to get around T-Dog continue to fail.
"That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once those front doors close, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that!"
I pinch my lips and replace a gentle hand onto Jodie's left shoulder who held what looks like a trance-like state. Pulling Jodie into me, I kiss her temple. Hoping she at least knew I'm here.
"I told you this was a bad idea," Jodie suddenly says to me. Tears stream down her face and as I pull away from her, she glares up at me. "This is your fault."
My brow knit together and my own eyes grow itchy. This was my fault. My own doing. If we had left Rick's group alone, we could have been safe. Away from this bullshit. This is my fault.
"It's better this way," Jenner says towards Jodie. Overhearing her painful words.
"What is?" Rick questions anxiously. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes?"
Edwin turns his back towards Rick, acting as if his question did not matter one bit.
"WHAT HAPPENS IN TWENTY-EIGHT MINUTES!" Rick shouts.
"YOU KNOW WHAT THIS PLACE IS?!" Edwin suddenly sprung up, shouting right back at Rick out of frustration. "We protected the public from very NASTY STUFF! Weapon use smallpox. Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want to get out! EVER!"
His voice echoes across the room. Muffling the sound of Carl and Sophia's cries. Edwin sat back down at his workstation, fixing his lab coat and clears his throat.
"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," Jenner explains in a more calmed voice.
"H.I.T.s?" I whimper, awkwardly moving away from Jodie.
"Vi, explain."
"H.I.T.s - high - impulse thermometric fuel-air explosive consists 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 at between 5,000° and 6,000° and useful when the greatest loss of life and damage to the structure is desired."
"In short; it sets the air on fire." Edwin dumbs it down.
Carol, Lori, and their children cry together. Huddled up. Holding one another. My theory was correct. Unless Jenner doesn't let those doors open, we're all dead.
"No pain. An end to sorrow, grief - regrets - everything."
Daryl now done with T-Dog runs up to the metal shutters and kicks it with furry. "Open the damn door!" He shouts, kicking it again and again.
I move back to Jodie. She isn't panicked - she listens to Jenner. My arrival goes unnoticed.
Shane and Daryl manage to find axes by the fire extinguishers and start to hit the sharp ends against the metal. The sound of metal-against-metal scratch at my eardrums.
"You should've left well enough alone. It would've been much easier," Edwin says to Carol and Lori.
"Easy for who?" Lori hisses.
"All of you. You know what's out there; A short, brutal life. An agonizing death." Edwin cooed.
Jodie slips away from my grasp and leans against one of the desks. Daryl and Shane continue behind us. Grunting each time they swung the axes above their heads.
"Your sister" Edwin spoke towards Andrea, who kept to herself up until now. "What was her name?"
Andrea raised her gaze from her knees. She too sat on the floor but alone. Knees touching her chest, arms cradling her legs. No sass fall from between her lips this time.
"Amy. Her name was Amy."
"Amy," Edwin repeats. "You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that really what you want for your wife and son?" Jenner now spoke to Rick.
Rick licks his lips as sweat drips from the tip of his nose. I could see the fear inside of his stunning blue eyes as well. The same fear he held yesterday before entering this damn building. While everyone else wanted to leave for Fort Benning. We should have.
"I don't want this," Rick emphatically spat.
Shane stops his trying to break through those metal shutters. He drops the ax, places his hands on his hips, and shook his head. Daryl doesn't stop. Dixon yells at the shutters as if the object could somehow speak back.
"I can't put a dent," Shane says behind heavy breathes.
The sound of metal hitting against metal cease.
"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher," Edwin informs.
"But your head ain't!" Daryl yells, running towards Edwin with the ax still in hand. Raising it above his head, Daryl ready himself to put the blade into Jenner's skull. Rick and Shane push Dixon back, while T-Dog tugs the ax from out of his crazed hands.
"You do want this," Edwin says, unfazed by Daryl's threats. "You said this last night. You knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead." Edwin looked up to Rick.
All our attention pushes onto Rick. His eyes grow wide, and he backs away from Jenner slightly.
"What? You really said that?" Shane says in disbelief, "After all your big talk?"
Shaking his head out of denial, Rick turned towards his group. His people. Then, Rick raised his hands, looking at us one by one. "I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?"
"There is no hope," Edwin scoffs.
"There's always hope," Rick shuts Jenner down. "Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here but somebody - somewhere."
"What part of "everything is gone" do you not understand?" Jodie says harshly towards Rick. I turn my head to look at my sister with narrowed brows. She wrinkles her nose, disgusted by this.
"Watch it!" I scold.
"Don't tell me to watch it. You made a damn call to be with these people and now look at you," Jodie spat. "The doctor is right anyway."
I stare at Jodie with much disarray. Speechless. I want to smack some sense into her, make this girl understand what she is saying.
"This what takes us down. This is our extinction event," Edwin continued calmly.
"This isn't right!" Carol cries out. Disagreeing with Jenner and Jodie. Someone sane. "You can't keep us here!"
"One tiny moment - 19 milliseconds. No pain." He whispers towards the distressed Carol. "My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!" Carol cries. Holding a teary Sophia tight.
Jacquie stood next to me in silence. Her face unmoved by this all, but she is in deep thought. Had she concluded that Edwin was correct too? Is she willing to die rather than try?
A gun cocks and I see Shane point his rifle at Edwin's head. That familiar rage like the one from last night overshadows Shane's face. "Shane, no!" Everyone yells. At least, those who still saw this whole thing as madness spoke up. "Stay out of my way! Open the damn doors!" Shane hissed. He shrugs Lori's grasp off of his shoulder and his finger hovers over the trigger. "Or I'm gonna blow your fucking head off. Do you hear me?"
Standing beside his best friend, Rick pleads for Shane to put down the rifle. Edwin sat in his chair like a statue, unfazed. Too calm. That's what he wanted. Death.
"If he dies - if he dies, we all die!" Rick reasons with Shane. Moving a bit closer.
Wild-eyed, Shane glares down at Edwin with the barrel still in the doctor's face. Then he yells at the top of his lungs, pointing his rifle away from Edwin's face onto the computers. Shane shoots out each screen out of anger. As if killing the already dead screens could make a difference. We all duck out of fear that he might turn the gun. Afraid of his sudden and all too well-known rage. Even Daryl slightly hid behind a desk.
Shane lowers his rifle and we hold our breaths. Rick stood shy beside him. Perplexed. Possibly never seeing such a thing from the once police officer.
"I think you're lying..." Rick starts back up, after a moment of allowing Shane to cool down. "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," Edwin says grimly.
"It does matter. It always matters! You stayed when others ran!" I speak up.
"Not because I wanted to. I made a promise -" Edwin stood to his feet. Pointing his index finger towards the big screen. "To her. My wife."
"Test subject 19 was your wife?" I question. Pitying the man.
"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no?"
Pounding from the shutters starts once more. I look over to see Daryl with his ax in hand, hitting the metal with all his strength.
"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 just worked here. In our field, she was Einstein. Me? I'm just, Edwin Jenner, she could've done something about this, not me."
"Your wife didn't have a choice. You do. That's - that's all we want. A choice, a chance." Rick says, placing one gentle hand onto Jenner's slumped shoulder.
"Let us keep trying, as long as we can." Lori encourages. A small and weak smile crawls onto her lips.
Edwin gave their words some thought in silence. Then, he nods his head, "I told you top sides locked down. I can't open those." He says swiftly, scanning his card ID into a similar pad key by the entrance of the building. He presses in the same passcode as before and the shutters finally open.
The others make their way out. I too start for the door, however, Jodie does not move.
"Let's go!" T-Dog yells for Jacque, but she shakes her head. Backing away from his grasp. Dale spots Andrea and he tries to talk her out of this. Jodie stands before me like a child holding her ground.
"What are you doing?! Let's go!" I say, pulling at her arm once more. Still, she does not move. And I can see the look of defeat inside those glossy hazel eyes.
"I'm not going," she snatches her arm away from my touch as if it were poisonous.
"What?" I scoff, reaching for my stubborn sister. "Stop this! This isn't funny. Let's go. Now."
Jodie backs away from me, shaking her head. "Don't you understand, Will? I don't want to go out there. Anthony is dead. The world is dead. I don't want to wait to die."
My mouth ajar as my sister talks about suicide nonchalantly. I've seen this side before, but that was many years ago. I thought she had gotten through this. I was wrong. "No," my voice cracks. "No! No! I can't let you do this. No. I'm not letting you stay."
"Willow! You'll be happy again! Without me, you won't have to worry. You'll only have to worry about yourself. Isn't that what you always wanted? I can't drag you like this. Not anymore."
"No," I'm sobbing. Thick tears stream down my face. The stress of almost dying by explosive air and knowing my only reason for living wants to die - is breaking my heart. "I never wanted that. You're my sister. My fucking sister. I love you. Please. You're the only thing I have. The only one keeping me going, Jodie. We can get through this. We got through when mom got sick and died. We got through when dad left us behind. We can do this, together. Please...."
I hold out my trembling hand after my tearful pleads. Pulling myself together isn't much of a thought right now. I'm a mess and I can tell that this is shocking to Jodie. In seconds, my flushed face and pained stare compel her to rethink her stay; Jodie seized my hand soon after. Our fingers intertwine. Laced together.
With Jodie by my side, we run out of the Big Room to gather our belongings. We then head up the stairs leading to ground level and as we do so, I swing my bow onto my shoulders. Merging out from the hall, Jodie and I notice those who bolted minutes ago still in the main entrance.
The others struggle to find a way out of the building. The doors are unable to be opened as Jenner said. The keypad wouldn't work either. The windows were incapable to be shattered.
"The glass won't break?" Little Sophia questions after T-Dog fails to break the windows with a chair. Carol hands Sophia over to me, she pushes her hand into her purse. Then ran to the men with a look of planning on her face;
"Rick, I have something that might help," Carol tells them.
"Carol, I don't think a nail file gonna do it," Shane scoffs.
Carol pulls out a grenade from her purse. She hands it over whilst saying something I couldn't quite hear.
We all run for the stairwell for cover. Waiting. Moments later, a loud blast, followed by glass shattering, gives us the signal that Carol's grenade is successful. And with that, we crawl from out of the building, greeted by walkers.
I jump through the shattered window and once on the grass, I spin around to help Jodie down. The two of us sprint for the RV. We are halfway towards the vehicles, ready to be safe again, however, Jodie trips over one of the many bodies laid out on the lawn of the CDC. I swirl around to help her up, but Daryl is quick to take down a walker who drew near and helps Jodie up from the grassy flooring. The three of us continue onward.
Once in the RV, Jodie and I settle in the back. Glenn prepares to start it up, but as Jodie peeked out the small windows of the RV. She shouts; "Wait! Andrea and Dale!"
Two figures make their way from out of the same way we came. They start for the RV, dodging the wandering walkers. Dale and Andrea leap over the sandbags the military left behind and ducks behind them.
I pull Jodie away from the window and underneath me. Sudden and harsh, the RV shivers and vibrates as the heat from the blast grew. Explosions prick our ears.
The sound of what used to be unbearable and tense. Moments later, everything settles. With concern yet relief, I sit up, looking out the windows that are surprisingly held up.
Sweating from the intense heat.
The CDC is gone. The place we had thought was safe, just gone. Nothing left. Nothing but flames and slabs of concrete.
Andrea and Dale make their way into the RV. Jodie exhales next to me, her arms wrap around my waist like a child too afraid to let go.
Slowly, one by one, we all pull away and start to leave the city's limits. As the flames kissed the sky.