𝐓𝐒-𝟏𝟗

𝟏𝐱𝟎𝟔

WE made our way into the C.D.C after the door had been opened. We had our weapons up and ready to fire just in case. "Daryl, you cover the back." Shane said. "Hello? Hello?" Rick called out. "Close the doors. Watch for walkers." A voice instructed. All of us looked around wondering where the voice came from. "Hello?" Rick called out again. Everyone heard the sound of a gun being cocked and we all held out our weapons ready to fire.

"Anybody infected?" The unknown man asked with his gun held up. "One of our group was. He didn't make it." Rick responded referring to Jim. "Why are you here? What do you want?" The guy questioned while gradually stepping closer to us with his gun raised. "A chance." Rick said. "That's asking an awful lot these days." The guy stated.

"I know." Rick said. The guy visibly scanned over all of our faces to see some of us pleading for him to let us stay. "You all submit to a blood test. That's the price of admission." The guy told us. "We can do that." Rick said. "You got stuff to bring in, you do it now. Once this door closes, it stays closed." The guy ordered before Glenn, Rick, Daryl, and I went to grab the stuff from outside and rush back in. T-Dog and Dale closed the doors behind us.

"VI, seal the main entrance. Kill the power up here." The guy ordered some machine. He introduced Rick to himself as Dr. Edwin Jenner. We all went in some elevator and it was crowded for sure, I mean there was 14 of us all together. I was squished in the back between Daryl and Glenn. "Doctors always go around packing heat like that?" Daryl asked. "There were plenty left lying around. I familiarized myself." Dr. Jenner told Daryl.

"But you look harmless enough. Except you. I'll have to keep my eye on you." Dr. Jenner said to Carl. Carl gave him a small smile before Dr. Jenner chuckled to himself. We had gotten out of the elevator and Dr. Jenner was taking us somewhere. "Are we underground?" Carol asked. "Are you claustrophobic?" He asked while turning around to look at Carol.

"A little." Carol responded. "Try not to think about it." He assured calmly. "VI, bring up the lights in the big room." He called out and a bunch of lights turned on. "Welcome to zone 5." He announced to us. "Where is everybody? The other doctors, the staff?" Rick asked while all of us looked around the big room. "I'm it. It's just me here." He responded.

"Wait then who the hell is VI?" I asked. "VI, say hello to our guests. Tell them...welcome." Dr. Jenner said. "Hello, guests. Welcome." VI said. So she's a computer...cool. "I'm all that's left." Dr. Jenner told us. Obviously we can see that, thank you. "I'm sorry." He continued.

He then led us all to another room to take our blood samples to check if we were infected or not. Andrea was the last one on line to get her blood taken. "What's the point? If we were infected, we'd all be running a fever." Andrea asked agitatedly. "I've already broken every rule in the book letting you in here. Let me just at least be thorough." Dr. Jenner responded.

"All done." He continued after he finished up with Andrea. Jacqui helped her keep her balance when Andrea lost her balance. "Are you okay?" Dr. Jenner asked. "She hasn't eaten in days. None of us have." Jacqui informed him.

Jenner got us some food and some wine, and we were all gathered around the table having a good time. "You know in Italy children have a little bit of wine with dinner. And in France." Dale said. "Well, when Carl is in Italy or France, he can have some then." Lori said while sipping her own wine. "What's it gonna hurt? Come on. Come on." Rick said to Lori with a goofy smile on his face. We all started laughing with them and Dale gave Carl a cup with some wine in it. "There you are, young lad." Dale said. Carl them took a sip and made a grimace. "Eww." Carl groaned.

All of us laughed at his reaction. "That's my boy. That's my boy." Lori said while patting his back. Lori then took Carl's cup and poured the rest of his wine in her cup. "That tastes nasty." Carl said while shaking his head and we all continued to laugh at him. "Well, just stick to soda pop there, bud." Shane said.

"Not you, Glenn." Daryl said to my brother. "What?" Glenn asked with a smile on his face. "Keep drinking, little man. I want to see how red your face can get." Daryl said while smiling. I looked over at Glenn and bursted out laughing. Glenn made a face at us that said, "Alright alright."

"It seems to me we haven't thanked our host properly. He is more than just our host." Rick said not before clinking his glass to get our attention. We all held our glasses up in gratitude. "Here's to you, Doc. Booyah!" Daryl exclaimed before holding up the bottle of wine. "Booyah!" T-Dog and I exclaimed in unison. T-Dog and I laughed at each other and high fived.

We were all thanking the Doc and laughing at Daryl until Shane just ruined the vibe by opening his mouth. "So when are you gonna tell us what the hell happened here, Doc?" Shane asked while looking at Jenner. "All the other doctors that were supposed to be figuring out what happened, where are they?" Shane continued. "We're celebrating, Shane. Don't need to do this now." Rick told Shane.

"Whoa, wait a second. This is why we're here, right? This was your move supposed to find all the answers. Instead we-we found him. Found one man. Why?" Shane pestered killing the good mood that had once filled the room. "Well, when things got bad, a lot of people just left, went off to be with their families. And when things got worse, when the military cordon got overrun, the rest bolted." Jenner answered. "Every last one?" Shane asked.

"No, many couldn't face walking out the door. They...opted out. There was a rash of suicides. That was a bad time." Jenner answered. "You didn't leave. Why?" Andrea asked. "I just kept working, hoping to do some good." Jenner answered.

"You just had to kill the mood didn't you? You just can't help yourself." I said to Shane. Shane ran his tongue over his top lip and sighed. After that Jenner was taking us somewhere else. "Most of the facility is powered down. Including housing, so you'll have to make do here. The couches are comfortable, but there are coats 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? Or anything that draws power. The same applies. If you shower, go easy on the hot water." Jenner explained as we reached the end of the corridor.

"Hot water?" Glenn asked. "Shower!" I exclaimed. "That's what the man said." T-Dog told us. All three of us laughed at each other and hurriedly ran down the hall to get to the showers like little kids.

I got in the shower next to Glenn's and ran the water over my head and let it cascade through my hair. God I missed showers and donuts, but mostly showers. I lathered the soap all over my hair and my body to get rid of the grease, sweat, and dirt that had built up. I took my time because you never know when we'll get the opportunity to shower again. For a second, I almost forgot that the dead were coming back alive to eat the living.

After I got out of the shower my hair was still wet and dripping on the floor. I put on an oversized shirt and shorts underneath. I was about to go down to the rec room to see what they had in there.

As I was about open the door I heard struggling and I looked around the hall to see no one. I opened the door as quietly as possible to see Shane forcefully on top of Lori. I sped walk over to the table and shoved him before punching him in the face. "Touch her again and I'll do more then punch you in the face." I told him. He was holding his jaw in pain.

Lori had tears in her eyes and thanked me. "Come on." I ushered her out the door with my hand. "Don't tell anyone please." She asked me hysterically. I put my hands on both of her shoulders trying to calm her down. "I'm not gonna tell anyone alright. Go back to your room and regroup. Okay?" I asked her. She nodded her head as tears still ran down her face. "Alright. Go on." I told her as she made her way back to her room.

I looked back at the door for a brief and sighed. I'm so drunk ughh. I made my way back to my shared room with Glenn. I walked through the door and saw that Glenn was out like a light. I walked over there and kissed his forehead before falling onto the bed and sleeping as well.

Morning 

I was sitting at the table next Glenn with my head on the table. When I got out of the shower this morning I had changed into a black tank top and shorts with my black combat boots. I hate hangovers. "Morning." I heard Rick say. I stuck up my hand which he high-fived. "Are you hungover?" Carl asked. "Mom said you'd be." Carl continued. "Mom is right." Rick responded. "Mom has that annoying habit." Lori said.

"Eggs. Powdered, but-but I do em good." T-Dog announced. I lifted my head up and looked at T-Dog. "Me." I groaned lazily. Glenn moaned from beside me. "I bet you can't tell. Protein helps the hangover." T-Dog said as he put the eggs on our plates. "Yeah yeah." I groaned and so did Glenn.

"Where'd all this come from?" Rick asked while holding a pill bottle in his hand. "Jenner." Lori responded. "Could you help me please?" Rick asked. Lori took it. "He thought we could use it." Lori said. "Thank you." Rick said.

"Some of us, at least." Lori said jokingly while looking at Glenn and I. "It's not funny." I whined. "Don't ever ever ever let me drink again." Glenn groaned. "I concur." I said lazily. "Hey." Shane announced. "Hey." Rick replied. I glared over at him as he walked towards the counter to grab a cup. "Feel as bad as I do?" Rick asked. "Worse." Shane stated. "I bet you do." I grumbled under my breath. Lori looked at me and I looked back at her.

"The hell happened to you?" T-Dog asked Shane motioning to the scratches on his neck and the bruise I gave him. "Your neck and your face?" T-Dog pressed. "I must have done it in my sleep." Shane replied. I took a bite of my eggs and looked at Shane. "Never seen you do that before." Rick said. "Me neither. Not like me at all." Shane said before looking over at Lori and I. Lori looked at him and shook her head slightly before eating her bacon.

"Morning." Dr. Jenner announced as he walked into the room. "Hey, Doc." Shane responded. "Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing-" Dale started before getting cut off by Jenner. "But you will anyway." Jenner said. "We didn't come here for the eggs." Andrea remarked.

Jenner led us back over to the big room we were in yesterday. "Give me playback of TS-19." Jenner ordered VI. "Playback of TS-19." VI said before a bunch of data and brain scans showed up on the monitor. "Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few." Jenner announced. "Is that a brain?" Carl asked. "An extraordinary one." Jenner responded. "Not that it matters in the end. Take us in for E.I.V." Jenner continued before ordering VI again. "Enhanced Internal View." VI stated.

The monitor zoomed into the inside of the brain. Once it zoomed in you could see a bunch of ripples of light moving around rapidly. "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." Jenner answered in lengthy detail. "You don't make sense ever?" Daryl asked.

"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." Jenner answered. "Death? That's what this is, a vigil?" Rick asked. "Yes. Or rather the playback of the vigil." Jenner said with an underlying tone of sadness. Did he know this person?

"This person died? Who?" Andrea asked. "Test subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected and volunteered to have us record the process." Jenner said while looking back at Andrea. "VI, scan forward to the first event." Jenner ordered.

"Scanning to first event." VI stated. On the monitor it looked like a small bloody tree inside this persons brain. The roots of the "tree" looked like they were spreading. "What is that?" Glenn asked. "It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, and then the major organs." Jenner explained. On the monitor the lights and the "tree" faded and the person had died.

"Then death." Jenner stated somberly. "Everything you ever were or ever will be...gone." Jenner continued. A tear streamed down Andrea's face. "Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked. "Yes." Carol answered. Jenner looked over at Andrea seeing her crying.

"She lost somebody two days ago. Her sister." Lori told Jenner. "I lost somebody too. I know how devastating it is." Jenner told Andrea. "Scan to the second event." Jenner ordered VI. "Scanning to second event." VI stated. "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." Jenner explained as we saw the "tree" in the brain had started to glow.

This person was turning into a walker. "It restarts the brain?" Lori asked surprisingly. "No, just the brain stem. Basically, it gets them up and moving." Jenner replied. "But they're not alive?" Rick questioned. "You tell me." Jenner said while holding his hand up in a gesture that told Rick to look at the monitor.

"It's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark." Rick stated. "Dark, lifeless, dead." Jenner said. "The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part, that doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct." Jenner continued. Then something shot through the head of the person on the monitor. A bullet.

"God. What was that?" Carol asked. "He shot his patient in the head." Andrea told Carol. Andrea looked at Jenner and asked, "Didn't you?"

"VI, power down the main screen and the workstations." Jenner ordered deflecting Andrea's question. "Powering down main screen and workstations." VI stated. "You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea asked. "It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal." Jenner listed off. "Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui questioned.

"There is that." Jenner trailed. "Somebody must know something. Somebody somewhere." Andrea said. "There are others, right? Other facilities?" Carol asked. "There may be some. People like me." Jenner stated. "But you don't know? How can you not know?" Rick asked. "Everything went down. Communications, directives, all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month." Jenner confessed. "So it's not just here. There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing? That's what your really saying right?" Andrea questioned accusationally.

Jenner remained silent knowing she was right. This is it. The dead are just going to eat the living for forever. I know I probably shouldn't be so pessimistic about it and have hope like Glenn or Dale but the fact is, the odds aren't in our favor. Jenner just proved my point with his deafening silence. Andrea shook her head and scoffed with a gobsmacked expression on her face.

"Jesus." Jacqui let out with her eyes closed. "Man, I'm gonna get shitfaced drunk again." Daryl chimed in rubbing his hands over his face. "Same." I sighed in agreement. A drink couldn't hurt, well until I get a really shitty migraine. "Dr. Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but that clock, it's counting down. What happens at zero?" Dale pointed out as we all looked at the clock on the wall.

I've seen enough action movies to know that that isn't good like at all. "The basement generators run out of fuel." Jenner replied. "And then?" Rick pressed on the matter. Jenner remained silent so Rick asked VI. "VI, what happens when the power runs out?" Rick asked. "When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur." VI answered. Decontamination? That doesn't sound fun.

Commercial Break👍🏾

Rick, Shane, Glenn, and T-Dog went downstairs to look at the generators and figure out what the hell was going on while the rest of us stayed in our rooms. I was sitting in my room cleaning off my sword when all of a sudden the lights and the A.C shut off. I got up from my laid position on the bed and walked over to the vent in the room and stood under it and felt no air. I put my sword back in its scabbard and draped it across my shoulder.

I opened the door to my room to notice everyone else already out in the hallway wondering the same thing I was. "Why is the air off? And the lights in our room?" Carol asked Jenner as he walked down the hallway like nothing was going on. "What's going on? Why is everything turning off?" Daryl asked popping his head out into the hallway. When Jenner passed him he grabbed the bottle of alcohol out of Daryl's hand and kept walking.

"Energy use is being prioritized." Jenner stated nonchalantly as we all followed him to wherever the hell he was going. "Air isn't a priority? And lights?" Dale questioned. "It's not up to me. Zone 5 is shutting itself down." Jenner told us. "Not up to you? What the hell are you talking about?" I asked my agitation present in my tone.

He didn't respond to me and just kept walking. "Hey, man, she's talking to you. What do you mean it's shutting itself down?" Daryl pressed on the matter. "How can a building do anything?" Daryl continued. "You'd be surprised." Jenner said vaguely. "Rick?" Lori called out over the railing to see Rick, Shane, Glenn, and T-Dog right below.

We all went down the stairs hurriedly to meet with Rick at the bottom of the stairs. "Jenner, what's happening?" Rick asked. "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. Right on schedule." Jenner explained as he pointed towards the clock that read 31 minutes and 28 seconds.

Jenner abruptly stopped walking and we were all waiting on ceremony for him to explain in English. He held out the bottle he took from Daryl only for Daryl to snatch it away from him. "It was the French." Jenner stated out of nowhere. "What?" Andrea asked with a confused expression plaguing her features.

"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know. While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide out in the hallways, they stayed in the labs till the end. They thought they were close to a solution." Jenner stated. "What happened?" Jackie asked. "The same thing that's happening here. No power grid.  Ran out of juice." Jenner said with a simple shrug of his shoulders.

"The world runs of fossil fuel. I mean how stupid is that?" Jenner continued. "You are so full of shit." I dragged out. "Let me tell you-." Shane started about to run up on Jenner before getting cut off by Rick. "To hell with it, Shane. I don't even care. Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff. We're getting out of here now!" Rick directed towards the rest of us.

All of us scrambled off to go get our stuff, we'll the stuff we have anyway. Then an alarm started blaring loudly and we all halted our movements and looked around wondering what was happening. Then the monitor turned on and VI's voice chimed through the room.

"30 minutes to decontamination." VI said. "Doc, what's going on here?" Daryl yelled. "Everybody, y'all heard Rick. Get your stuff and let's go! Go Now! Go!" Shane exclaimed. "Let's go." T-Dog said. "Come on!" My brother said ushering us out.

Then the doors that led us out started to close and we all went into panic mood. "Did you just lock us in? He just locked us in!" Glenn exclaimed. Carl and Lori were calling for each other in panic while Daryl was running up on Jenner. "You son of a bitch!" Daryl yelled. "You locked us in here!" Daryl continued about to hit Jenner til Shane grabbed him. "No, stop. Don't!" Shane exclaimed.

Daryl managed to hit the rolling chair Jenner was sitting in. Shane held him back while T-Dog ran up and blocked his view of Jenner. "Hey, Jenner, open that door now." Rick ordered waking up to Jenner. "There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed." Jenner said.

"Well, open the damn things." Daryl demanded in his usual gruff tone. "That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that." Jenner stated defending himself referencing to yesterday when we first got here. "It's better this way." Jenner continued.

"What is? What happens in 28 minutes?" Rick asked for the millionth time. Jenner remained silent and started to type on his keyboard. Rick looked to Shane and Shane grabbed the back of Jenners chair aggressively. "What happens in 28 minutes?!" Rick demanded. "Come on!" Daryl exclaimed.

"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 ranted off while shouting at us and standing up from his chair.

Then he sat back in the chair, fixed his coat, and ran his hand over his chin. "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 explained.

"H.I.T.s?" Rick asked. "VI, define." Jenner ordered. "H.I.T.s, 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 5,000 degrees and 6,000 degrees and is useful when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired." VI explained thoroughly. Explosives?! What the fuck did she just say? Is this asshole gonna blow us up?!

"It sets the air on fire." Jenner stated calmly. "Oh I'm gonna kill him." I muttered before running up on him and punching him in the face. "Hey! Hey!" Rick exclaimed before he and Glenn grabbed me and pulled me away from Jenner who was on the floor holding his jaw. I've been on a roll with punching people these past few hours. "No pain. An end to sorrow, grief, regret. Everything." Jenner groaned out before using the chair to hold himself upright and sit back down. I was angry and ready to beat his ass for locking us up. I looked over and saw Carol and Sophia crying into each other's arms. And everyone else had mixed expressions on their faces, anger, panic, sadness, fear, you name it and we had it.

Daryl, Glenn, and Rick were over by the door as Daryl threw the glass bottle at the door. "Open the damn door!" Daryl shouted at Jenner. "Out of my way!" Shane called out running towards the door with an axe in his hand. T-Dog threw Daryl an axe to which he caught and started hitting the door with it alongside Shane.

I was standing by everyone else, some of us sat in the floor, some us were standing, and others were trying to get the door open. "You should've left well enough alone. It would've been so much easier." Jenner stated. "Easier for who?" Lori questioned aggravatingly. "All of you. You know what's out there, a short, brutal life and an agonizing death. Your-your sister what was her name?" Jenner asked directing the question towards Andrea.

"Amy." Andrea stated. "Amy. You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that really what you want for your wife and son?" Jenner said to Andrea before turning to Rick. "I don't want this." Rick told him. "Can't make a dent." Shane said to Rick while panting out of breath.

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher." Jenner informed Rick. "Well your head ain't!" Daryl exclaimed while raising the axe to hit Jenner before he was stopped by Dale, Rick, and T-Dog. T-Dog was able to pry the axe out of his hands while Dale and Rick ushered him back, putting some distance between him and Jenner. "You do want this. Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead." Jenner revealed.

I looked over at Lori to see she had a look of disbelief on her face. "What? You really said that? After all your big talk?" Shane questioned. "I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick defended while making eye contact with Lori. "There is no hope. There never was." Jenner said. "There's always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere-." Rick ranted off determinedly. "What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?" Andrea chimed in.

"Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event." Jenner carried on. "This isn't right. You can't just keep us here." Carol croaked out with tears streaming down her face as she clung to her daughter. "One tiny moment, a millisecond. No pain." Jenner stated calmly. "My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this." Carol continued.

"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" Jenner asked. Then a gun cocked from behind me and I looked back to see it was Shane. "Shane, no!" Rick exclaimed rushing over to him. "Out of the way Rick! Stay out of my way! Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. Do you hear me?!" Shane threatened pointing the gun at Jenner's head. "Brother, brother, this is not the way you do this. We will never get out of here." Rick said trying his best to appease Shane.

"Shane, you listen to him." Lori chimed in. "It's too late." Shane whispered. "He dies, we all-." Rick started before getting cut off by Shane screaming. "We all die! Shane!" Rick yelled as Shane shot a bullet into the computer by Jenner. We all crouched down behind something as protection in case the bullet ricocheted and hit one of us.

Shane kept firing bullets into the computers and shouting occasionally here and there. This dude was out of his freaking mind. I peered my head around the counter to see what was going on. "Shane!" Rick yelled while trying to get the gun out of his hand. He successfully succeeded and hit Shane upside the head with the butt of the gun. Shane was lying on the ground panting while Rick was standing above him holding the gun. "Are you done now? Are you done?" Rick questioned after a pause.

"Yeah, I guess we all are." Shane seethed. Rick looked away from Shane and turned to T-Dog and gave him the gun. Rick then looked around and made eye contact with all us to look over our expressions. Rick paused before turning to Jenner. "I think you're lying." Rick said. "What?" Jenner queried. "You're lying. About no hope. If that were true you'd have bolted with the rest and taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?" Rick wondered. "It doesn't matter." Jenner dismissed.

"It does matter. It always matters. You stayed when others ran. Why?" Rick pressed on the matter. "Not because I wanted to. I made a promise...to her. My wife." Jenner stated while pointing at the monitor. I knew it, I freaking knew it, of course that was someone important to him. "Test subject 19 was your wife?" Lori asked.

"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no? 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 an Einstein. Me? I'm just Edwin Jenner. She could've done something about this. Not me." Jenner told us as Daryl resumed trying to open the door with an axe.

"Your wife didn't have a choice. You do. That's, that's all we want. A choice, a chance." Rick said. "Let us keep trying as long as we can." Lori pleaded. "I told you topsides locked down. I can't open those." Jenner said before he asking over to some keypad and pushing some buttons. Then all of a sudden the door opened. "Come on!" Daryl exclaimed. "Let's go!" Glenn yelled. All of us rushing out of there. Well at least I thought so until I turned around and saw Jenner whispering something into Rick's ear.

"Hey, we've got four minutes left! Come on!" Glenn yelled at them. We were starting to go until I heard Jacqui say she was staying and that she didn't want to end up like Jim and Amy. "There's no time to argue and no point, not if you want to get out. Just get out. Get out." Jacqui said to us. We all rushed down a bunch of stairs to get to the front doors. T-Dog was the first one that ran toward the door trying to pry it open but it wouldn't bulge. Glenn ran over to help try and open it too, still didn't work.

Shane and Daryl ran over to the windows with the axes in their hands trying to shatter the windows. T-Dog tried with the chair but that didn't work either. We were running out of time. Shane attempted by firing a bullet at the glass yet it still wouldn't shatter. "The glass won't break?" Sophia squealed. "Rick, I have something that might help." Carol said suggestively. "Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it." Shane retorted.

"Your first morning at camp, when I washed your uniform I found this in your pocket." Carol said ignoring Shane before pulling a grenade out of the bag. "Come on." Rick muttered. "Look out!" He shouted making us all run in the opposite direction and crouch down on the floor. I shielded Glenn away from the window just in case. "Oh shi-." Rick started before running over to where we were. As he was running towards us the grenade exploded making a loud booming sound followed by the glass shattering. We all looked up and got the hell out of there.

As we were running out there were some walkers that Shane and Rick shot at while Daryl took another ones head clean off with the axe. We all ran to the vehicles we came in. We got in the cars and then through the window we saw Dale and Andrea. Lori then honked the horns and yelled, "Dale, Get down! Down!"

Then Rick ushered us to the back of the RV. "Get back! Everybody down! Down!" Rick yelled before we all heard the CDC get blown up. After we had heard the blast subsiding we looked up at the fire and the smoke that lingered in the air surrounding what once was the CDC. I let out a breath of relief. Glenn opened the door for Dale and Andrea to get in the RV. "Come one. Come on. Get in, get in, get in. Get in!" Glenn ushered them hurriedly. When they came through the RV door they made their way to the back and were breathing heavily just like the rest of us. After a short pause Rick started the engine and began driving with the other cars following behind us. Well I guess I was wrong, we didn't die today.

Whelp this was a little long chapter here. I decided to double update today cuz why the hell not, plus I'm pretty much neglecting my other books because I'm in a TWD type of funk so I might just publish a few at a time. Anywhoooo this chapter was 5k words one of the longest chapters I've probably ever written. That was also a wrap on season 1 and we're on to season 2. You'll get to see more Daryl and Ara interactions a lot more than this season cuz this one too short. Enough with my ted talk, vote, comment, do whatever I love you guys.
-brayla❤️❤️