We all rushed in but we kept our guard up.
“Hello?” Rick yelled. We heard a gun cock and we all froze.
“Anyone infected?” A man stood at the top of the stairs holding a gun.
“One of our group was but he didn’t make it,” Rick told him.
“Why are you here? What do you want?” the man asked us.
“A chance.” Rick told him seriously.
“That’s asking an awful lot these days.”
“I know.” The man studied us all slowly before speaking again.
“You’ll all submit to a blood test. That’s the price of admission.”
“We can do that,” Rick agreed. The man lowered his gun finally.
“You got stuff to bring in, do it now. Once this door closes, it stays closed.” The men quickly rushed outside to grab anything they could. Once they returned to the door, the man slid a card and spoke into a security device. “Vi, seal the main entrance. Kill the power up here.”
“Rick Grimes,” Rick introduced himself.
“Dr. Edwin Jenner,” the man returned the introduction and led us to an elevator.
“Doctors always go around packing heat like that?” I asked as we descended.
“There were plenty left around. I familiarized myself. But you look harmless enough.” He smiled at us all until his eyes met Carl’s. “Except you. I’ll have to keep my eye on you,” the doctor joked and Carl smiled. And Carl’s smile made me smile.
“Vi, bring up the lights in the big room,” Jenner said once he led us into a huge research room. The place instantly lit up and it was completely empty. “Welcome to zone 5.”
“Where is everybody? The doctors and staff?” I asked him. Jenner walked to the center of the room and held his arms out.
“I’m it. It’s just me.”
“What about the person you were speaking with? Vi?” Lori asked him.
“Vi, say hello to our guests. Tell them welcome,” Jenner said with sadness in his voice.
“Hello, guests. Welcome.” A robotic voice was heard above our heads.
“I’m all that’s left. I’m sorry,” Jenner told us again. We just looked around at each other. We started the blood testing right after all that was settled. One at a time we lined up to get blood drawn. None of us wanted it considering we knew we hadn’t eaten in days.
“What’s the point? If we were infected, we would be running a fever,” Andrea asked Jenner once it was her turn.
“I’ve already broken every rule in the book letting you in here. Let me just at least be thorough.” He finished her testing and sent her to sit with the rest of the group. I volunteered to help him if I could since I had a little experience with this stuff. Andrea slowly stood up and had to catch her breath. I held her up right and the doctor asked if she was okay.
“She hasn’t eaten in days. None of us have,” I told him. He had a look of guilt run across his face but then he flashed a smile.
*****
“You know, in Italy, children have a little bit of wine with dinner. And in France,” Dale said pouring Lori a glass of wine. Jenner had let us raid his kitchen and of course wine was a necessity for a celebration.
“Okay, when Carl is in Italy or France, he can have some then,” she said, placing a hand over his glass.
“What’s it gonna hurt? Come on,” Rick batted those long eyelashes over his blue eyes and she lost instantly.
“Alright,” she shrugged, removing her hand. The group laughed at her defeat but she kept a smile on. Dale poured a little in Carl’s cup and Carl almost inhaled the wine.
“Ewww!” he squeeled and we all roared with laughter.
“That’s my boy,” Lori said proudly as she poured what was in his glass into her own.
“Stick to soda pop, bud,” Shane giggled as he played with my hair.
“Not you, Glenn!” Daryl hollered from across the table. Glenn looked over at him confused. “Keep drinking, little man. I want to see how red your face can get,” he joked with a smile. Daryl was much more tolerable when he was drunk.
“It seems to me we haven’t thanked our host properly,” Rick stood and raised his glass.
“He’s more than our host,” T-Dog said after him. We all raised our glasses.
“When are you gonna tell us what happened here, doc? All the other doctors that were supposed to be figuring out what happened, where are they?” Shane asked with a serious look on his face. I pulled away from him and looked at him like he was crazy.
“We’re celebrating, Shane. We don’t need to do this now,” I told him. Rick sat back down and gave him the same look I had.
“Wait a second. This is why we are here, right? This was your move to find all the answers but instead we found him. One man. Why?” Shane looked at Dr. Jenner.
“Well when things got bad, a lot of people just left, went to be with their families. And when things got worse, when the military was overrun, the rest bolted.” Jenner’s eyes went down with grief.
“Every last one?” Shane asked taking another sip of wine.
“No. Many couldn’t face walking out the door. They opted out. There was a rash of suicides.” Jenner took another sip of his wine. “That was a bad time.”
“You didn’t leave. Why?” Andrea asked him.
“I just kept working. Hoping to do some good.”
“Dude, you are such a buzzkill, man,” Glenn told Shane but he ignored the comment.
*****
“Most of the facility is powered down, including housing, so you’ll have to make do here. The couches are comfortable but there are cots in storage if you like. There’s a rec room down the hall that you kids might enjoy. Just don’t plug in the video games, okay?” Jenner guided us to where we would be sleeping. The kids really liked him and I did too. He was a great guy and our hero for even letting us in. “The same applies,” he continued to talk to the adults. “If you shower, go easy on the hot water.” He then left us to enjoy.
“Did he say hot water?” I asked the group.
“That’s what the man said,” T-Dog got the biggest smile on his face. We all split up into separate rooms to settle in.
Of course Shane and I showered together. Jenner said to go easy on the hot water so we took one together to save some energy. Shane was shitty drunk and decided he needed to go for a walk and I let him go. I wanted a moment to just breathe for a minute anyway. I slowly got dressed into a cute nightgown but realized Shane had been gone a while. I decided to look for him, hoping he didn’t get lost in this huge place. I was passing the rec room when I heard Shane’s voice.
“If you thought for one second that he was alive, would you have come? So I saved your life. You and your little boy. That’s what I did.” I realized who he was talking to but then his voice lowered. I put my ear up to the door but couldn’t tell what he was saying.
“Shane, you’re drunk. Get your hands off me,” I heard Lori say and that was it. I saw red. I nearly busted the door down when I walked in. I forced myself between Shane and Lori, who he had pushed against a ping pong table, but he was lost and drunk. Lori reached up and scratched his neck for him to finally back off. He held his neck and looked back and forth between Lori and me before stomping out of the room again. Lori started sobbing but I was too pissed to even care.
“I’m telling Rick. Right now,” I just walked out of the opposite door in hopes of finding a distraction because I was not going back to my room tonight. I probably wasn’t going to end up telling Rick just because he needed one of them to tell him. It wasn’t my place to tattle on grown ass people even though they are both acting like children. I knocked on what I thought was Andrea’s door but I was surprised to find Daryl behind it. He answered in nothing but jeans holding a bottle of wine.
“What do you want?” He asked me. I just scoffed and rolled my eyes. I turned to walk away but he stopped me. “Hey, wait. What’s wrong?” His eyes looked as though he was genuinely worried and it hit me. I started blubbering and he quickly led me into his room before anyone saw me. He set me down on his couch and took the seat beside me. I let it all out and told him everything. He just sat and listened as I poured my heart out to him.
“Well, I could’ve told you something was going on,” he said once I finished. I just starred at him in disbelief. “I’m sorry, what I meant to say was it will be okay.” He smiled hoping that would work but it wasn’t what he said that was changing my mood. The fact that Daryl was even trying was helping. I never thought that he of all people would be able to comfort someone but he was sincerely trying. He might not remember it tomorrow but it helped. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in for a hug. “Does Rick know?” he asked me. I shook my head in his shoulder. “Do you want to tell him?” I pulled out of his hug and looked at him.
“No he needs to hear it from them. At least Shane told me. I would hope Lori would do the same,” I said steadying my breathing.
“Well you can’t expect too much out of her. She’s set on disappointing people constantly.” I just smiled and looked at the floor. Daryl still had an arm around me. Once I looked back up at him I noticed him leaning in. I quickly jumped off the couch.
“I’m married.” It was the first thing that popped into my head. He just straightened up and scratched the back of his head before standing up.
“Right. Sorry,” he said avoiding eye contact. I just smiled again and thanked him, knowing he would have no idea in the morning. I turned to walk out the door but he stopped me. “Wait. You can sleep in here. I’ll just find somewhere else to go,” he said grabbing a shirt but then I stopped him.
“No it’s fine. Just grab a cot and we can both stay in here. No need to cause more attention to the situation by making you find another room,” he smiled and agreed. I had a hard time sleeping that night. I tossed and turned all night on the couch until finally falling asleep.
The next morning, I was the last down for breakfast. I walked in with a blanket still wrapped around me and everyone noticed I had a rough night.
“Are you the reason for the scratched on Shane’s neck?” T-Dog asked with a smile. I gave him a death glare and he held his hands up in surrender. I noticed I caught Daryl’s eye as he glanced at me a few times throughout breakfast but I just ignored it. I chose to sit with Dale and Andrea instead of Shane but nobody asked why. Soon Doctor Jenner walked in and told us good morning.
“Doc, I don’t mean to pin you with questions first thing in the morning,” Dale started to say.
“But you will anyway,” Jenner smiled as he poured himself some coffee.
“We didn’t come here for the eggs,” Andrea told him. We all quickly ate before Jenner led us back to his lab.
“Give me a playback of TS-19,” Jenner told Vi as we entered the room.
“Playback of TS-19,” the computer announced and images showed up on the giant screen in front of us.
“Very few people got a chance to see this.” Jenner placed his hands on his hips.
“Is that a brain?” Carl asked the doctor.
“An extraordinary one,” Jenner told the boy. “Not that it matters in the end. Take us in for EIV.”
“Enhanced Internal View,” the computer above us announced. The image moved on the screen and we all watched amazed.
“What are those lights?” Shane asked Jenner.
“It’s a person’s life experiences and 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.” Jenner explained.
“You don’t make sense ever?” Daryl asked him to elaborate.
“Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, thinks, and does from the moment of birth to the moment of death.”
“Death? That’s what this is, a vigil?” Rick asked stepping forward. Jenner nodded. Answering his question.
“This person died?” I asked as Andrea and I both stepped forward.
“Who?” she asked beside me.
“Test Subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected and volunteered to have us record the process,” he explained. “Vi, scan forward to the first event.” He told the computer. It repeated him and did as he asked. The bright lights Shane asked about quickly turned black.
“What’s that?” Glenn asked.
“It infects the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage. The brain goes into shut down, then the major organs. Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be gone.” Jenner looked distraught as we all watched the person die on the screen. Andrea and I both teared up.
“Is that what happened to Jim?” Sophia asked her mother.
“Yes,” Carol answered and hugged her to her side. Jenner turned and looked at me and Andrea. Lori explained that we both had lost siblings. Jenner told us he knew how devastating losing someone is. He then told Vi to scan to second event.
“We have reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard was eight hours. In this case, it was two hours, one minute, seven seconds. The brain dimply lit up but was nothing like all the lights before.
“It restarts the brain?” Lori asked.
“No just the stem. Basically it gets them up and moving. The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part, that doesn’t come back. It’s just a shell driven by mindless instinct,” Jenner continued to explain what he knew of the infection. There was a flash of light and the head looked like it had been split in two.
“God, what was that?” Carol asked.
“He shot his patient in the head,” Andrea said quietly. “Didn’t you?” Jenner told Vi to power down everything and the room went dark. “You have no idea what it is, do you?” Andrea asked the doctor.
“It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal,” he told the group.
“Or the wrath of God?” Jacqui added to the list.
“There is that,” he said.
“Somebody must know something. Somebody somewhere,” I said in frustration.
“There are others, right? Other facilities?” Carol asked him.
“There may be some.”
“How can you not know?” I asked him another question.
“Everything went down. Communications, directives, all of it. I’ve been in the dark for almost a month.” Jenner thought about how long he had been alone.
“So it’s not just here? There’s nothing left anywhere?” Andrea looked angry like it was his fault we still didn’t know. “That’s what you’re really saying.” Jenner didn’t say a word. He just looked around at all of our faces as we realized this was it.
“Man, I’m gonna get shit-faced drunk again,” Daryl rubbed his eyes.
“Dr. Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question but that clock is counting down. What happens at zero?” Dale crossed the room and pointed to the big timer in the corner.
“The basement generators run out of fuel,” Jenner said quickly avoiding eye contact with him.
“And then?” Rick asked with his arms up but Jenner kept quiet. “Vi, what happens when the power runs out?”
“When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur,” Vi explained. Shane, Rick, Glenn, and T-Dog all ran down to the basement to see what they could do while the rest of us went back to our rooms. I decided getting shit-faced drunk wasn’t such a bad idea and followed Daryl to his room where he had a full bottle hid.
“So you ain’t talking?” he asked after a period of silence.
“I don’t have much to talk about,” I said, taking a swig before handing it back to him.
“You talk to Shane?”
“I haven’t gotten a chance to.” He nodded and took a swig.
“Do you know what you’re gonna say?”
“No. I just know I wanna beat the shit out of him. He knows I’m alive. I’m right in front of him constantly. I mean hell we just took a shower together then he goes straight to Lori. And she was the one saying no!” I rubbed my temples as I spoke to Daryl with frustration. He sighed and handed me the bottle.
“You need this a lot more than I do,” he tried to make me laugh but I just took it from him and downed another swig. “Can I tell you what I would do?” he slightly leaned forward like he wanted to tell me a secret. I nodded and looked at him intensely. “I would keep my distance. Let him come to you, you know? If you’re always there, he won’t come looking for you.”
“But if I’m not always there, he will just look for Lori,” I said sadly.
“Good,” he said. My eyes narrowed before he could finish but he continued despite the pissed look on my face. “If he is always chasing Lori, Rick will figure it out. He’s not a dumb man. Then Rick will take care of Shane for you. Happy ending.” He took the bottle from me, took a small sip, then handed it back. “Tada!”
“Yeah, happy ending. Except I’m stuck with an unfaithful husband at the end of the world,” I took one last sip before the power started shutting off. We both just looked at each other oddly before jumping up and running to the hallway.
“What’s going on?” Daryl asked after he noticed everyone in the hallway. “Why is everything turning off?” I peeked out behind just as Jenner reached under Daryl and grabbed the wine bottle from his hand.
“Energy use is being prioritized,” Jenner said.
“Air and lights aren’t priorities?” I asked as Daryl and I followed him down the hallway. The others filed in behind us.
“It’s not up to me. Zone 5 is shutting itself down,” Jenner said, taking a swig from the bottle.
“What does that mean?” Daryl’s temper was coming out. “Hey man, I’m talking to you. What do you mean it’s shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Rick?” I heard Lori ask as we made our way to the stairs.
“Jenner, what is happening?” Rick asked him with a serious face.
“The system is dropping all nonessential uses of power. It’s designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. It started when we approached the half hour mark.” Jenner elaborated to Rick what he just told us as he checked his watch. “Right on schedule.” He took another swig of wine and handed back to Daryl before looking over to me. “It was the French,” he said.
“What?”
“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 til the end. They thought they were close to a solution.” He led us back into his lab as he explained.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“The same thing that’s happening here. No power grid. The world runs on fossil fuel. I mean, how stupid is that?” Jenner rolled his eyes and headed to his chair but Shane was pissed. He ran to catch up to him but Rick was one step ahead and was able to slow him down. He told everyone to grab our things so we could get outta there. Alarms started going off and Vi announced we had 30 minutes until decontamination. The doors started closing us in the lab and we all looked around frantically.
“Did you just lock us in? Glen asked nervously. “He just locked us in!” It was safe to say we were all losing it.
“You son of a bitch!” Daryl yelled as he made his way over to Jenner. Rick yelled for Shane to grab him. “You locked us in here!” Daryl almost got a hold of Jenner before Shane grabbed him and pushed him to the side. T-Dog rushed to help him. Rick rushed to Jenner’s side to try to convince him to let us out.
“There’s no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed,” he explained calmly.
“Well open the damn things,” I said desperately.
“That’s not something I control. The computers do. I told you, once that front door closed, it wouldn’t open again. It’s better this way.” Jenner wanted us to understand.
“What is?” Rick asked. “What happens in 28 minutes?” Jenner ignored him. Rick asked him again angrily and that set Jenner off.
“Do you know what this place is?!” He yelled. “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 got his point across and sat back down. “In the event of a catastrophic power failure, HITs are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out.” Jenner had calmed down.
“HITs?” Rick asked. Jenner told Vi to define.
“HITs: 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 at between 5000 and 6000 degrees and is usefull when the greatest loss of life and damage to structure is desired.”
“It sets the air on fire,” Jenner said quietly once Vi was done. “No pain.” Daryl slung his bottle at the door holding us inside.
“Open the damn door!” he screamed.
“Out of my way!” Shane yelled as he ran at the door with an axe. T-Dog passed another to Daryl and the two of them went at it. Jenner tried to convince us he was doing the right thing but it was no use. We were all desperate to get out. Shane came up behind me and leaned on a desk.
“It’s no use,” he said out of breath.
“Those doors are made to withstand a rocket launcher,” Jenner told him.
“Yeah? Well your head ain’t!” Daryl once again let is temper take over. T-Dog, Rick, and Dale all held him back.
“You do want this,” Jenner stood and looked at Rick. “Last night you said that it was just a matter of time before everyone you knew was dead.” We all looked to Rick for an explaination.
“What? You really said that?” Shane asked out of breath. “After all your big talk?”
“I had to keep hope alive, didn’t I?” Rick said mostly to Lori who looked terrified of her own husband.
“There is no hope. There never was,” Jenner said.
“There’s always hope. Maybe not you, maybe not here but someone, somewhere-“
“What part of everything is gone do you not understand?” Andrea asked Rick from the floor. I walked away from Shane and stood behind her.
“Listen to your friend, she gets it.” Jenner pointed to her. “This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event.”
“This isn’t right. You can’t just keep us here,” I told him with my arms crossed. I was shaking and didn’t know what to do with my hands.
“It’s one tiny moment. A millisecond. No pain,” he said trying to calm us down.
“These kids don’t deserve to die like this,” I pointed to Sophia and Carl who sat in their mothers’ arms in tears.
“Wouldn’t it be kinder? More compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?” Jenner said to me. We heard a gun cock and I turned to see Shane marching up holding his shot gun. Rick ran to stop him bit Shane was determined to get past him. Lori handed Carl off to me so we could get out of the way. The three of us took cover behind a desk.
“Open that door or I’m gonna blow your head off,” Shane said as he held the gun inches from Jenner’s face.
“Brother, this is not the way you do this. We will never get out of here,” Rick told Shane. I handed Carl back to Lori and walked over to him.
“Listen to him, Shane,” I calmly approached him. “If he dies, we all die.” Shane started screaming at the top of his lungs, turned in the direction of the clock and fired shots until Rick knocked him down. Rick stood over him and looked him dead in the eye.
“You done now?” he asked Shane and he nodded.
“Yeah, I guess we all are,” Shane said as he got off the floor. It was completely silent for a moment as we all looked at Rick to save us. He carefully looked at all of us before turning back to Jenner.
“I think you’re lying about no hope.” Rick stepped forward and he worked his magic. “If that were true, you would have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn’t. You chose the hard path. Why?” Jenner leaned back in his chair.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. You stayed when others ran. Why?” Rick leaned over so they were eye level.
“Not because I wanted to. I made a promise. To her, my wife,” he stood up then pointed to the blank screen that shadowed over us.
“Test subject 19 was your wife?” I stepped closer to the two men.
“She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no? She was dying. It should have 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. I’m just Edwin Jenner. She could’ve done something about this. Not me.” tears started forming in my eyes at the way he spoke of his wife.
“Your wife didn’t have a choice, you do. That’s all we want. A choice, a chance,” Rick pleaded.
“Let us keep trying as long as we can.” I motioned to everyone behind Rick and me. Jenner locked eyes with everyone except Daryl who was still trying to break through that door.
“I told you the topside’s locked down. I can’t open those,” Jenner sighed heavily and walked to a desk where he scanned his name tag and typed in a code. The doors opened and Daryl and Shane started leading everyone out. Jenner stood up and looked at Rick and me one last time.
“There’s your chance, take it.”
“We’re grateful,” Rick told the doctor.
“The day will come when you won’t be,” Jenner said morbidly. He smiled, grabbed Rick’s hand and whispered in his ear. I grabbed the arm Jenner wasn’t holding and tugged for Rick to hurry.
“Hey! We got four minutes left! Come on!” Glenn yelled for the last of us to hurry. T-Dog was ushering Jacqui but she decided she was staying.
“I’m staying, sweetie.”
“That’s insane!” T-Dog grabbed her arm and tried to pull her along but she pushed him away.
“No, it’s completely sane. For the first time in a long time. I’m not ending up like Jim and Amy. There is no time to argue and no point, not if you want to get out,” she cried as she pushed us to run. “Just get out.” Shane grabbed my arm and pushed me ahead. We sprinted to the door that we came in. All the men rushed to the windows and used all their force to try and bust it open but nothing happened. They used axes, chairs, guns, anything to save us.
“The glass won’t break?” Sophia’s little voice was heard after then men started losing hope.
“I have something that might help,” Carol approached Rick digging through her purse.
“I don’t think a nail file is gonna do it,” Shane said sarcastically. I peeked over her shoulder to see what she had in mind.
“Your first morning at camp, when I washed your uniform, I found this in your pocket.” Her hands were shaking as she pulled a grenade out of her purse.
“Hell yeah!” I said before grabbing her to take cover as Rick ran to the window. Everyone dove under the stairs as we waited impatiently to see if this was our chance to get the hell out of here. After a few seconds, we heard a bang and glass shatter. There was no time to celebrate. We had to get somewhere safe. As we ran out of the building, we all fired shots at the herd of walkers waiting outside. Our vehicles were right where we left them and we each made it to our own just in time. Andrea and Dale filed out just seconds before the explosion. The RV horn honked for everyone to get down. Shane pushed me into the floor board and laid on top of me to shield me from anything that may hit us, but nothing did. The building exploded and crumpled in front of us. Shane sat back up and helped me out of the floor before we started on the road again.