The
Walking
Dead
Just one second
The clock was winding down; I was locked in the building. So were a few others, we had tried our best to find a cure, but we had no clue what it was, it was day 65 post wildfire and we'd failed. There was less than half-an-hour left and all we could do was wait to be incinerated. "This is it huh?" Candice asked "yeah, I think it is." Neil replied distantly "it's only a moment right, the explosion?" Candice asked "yeah, just a moment and there's no biological material left in this entire building." Jarred said.
"I want to take my chances out there." Keith said "too late, you should have left with Karen then. That was your last chance." I said. "Linda!" Candice exclaimed "what? That was all of our last chance to have chosen life, even if we found a cure right now we'd be able to say, hey we got the BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! It'd go down with this building, two nights ago was the last chance to choose life. We all chose to die quickly." I said.
"We can try can't we?" Keith asked "no, there's no way to get the top doors open, again, when Karen left she picked the absolute last time possible to leave." I said "FUCK!" Neil cursed. "What?" Candice asked "we fucking failed! We failed the entire world! GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!" he yelled pushing over a computer.
"Please, just calm down." I said "how the fuck are you so calm?" Keith asked me "calm about what?" I asked "ABOUT DYING! WE'RE ALL ABOUT TO DIE IN A FIREY EXPLOSION! AND YOU AREN'T WORRIED AT FUCKING ALL!" he yelled getting within inches of my face. "I knew I'd probably die in this place a long time ago, I've had that bit of my life figured out long before this disease." I said "but you're okay with it?" Candice asked.
I stood up and looked her in the eyes "I accepted that eventually some horrible thing would happen and that the building would blow up, and I'd probably be in here when it did, this is how I assumed I'd die, I would love to die of old age, that'd be great, to be so old that my heart was basically a fucking mechanical pump, but I figured that wouldn't be a privilege I'd get. I'm surprised none of you figured this out either." I said.
We sat in silence for another ten minutes; I looked at the clock 5:00. "Anyone up for finding god?" Keith joked pulling out a pocket bible. "I never knew you were religious." Candice said surprised "I'm not, my wife was, and I figured it'd be good to have the good book as a backup plan in case it turned out the big religions were right and there is a god, maybe I could convert just in time." He joked.
Neil simply sat and stared at nothing, I could see he couldn't accept it, he wished he'd left with Karen. I looked at the clock again 3:12 left. That was all the time I had to live. Candice looked at it and began to sob uncontrollably "hey, hey, hey. Shhhh shhhh." Keith said hugging her.
"Let her cry, burying sadness doesn't help." I said "will you just fucking shut your fucking face!" Keith snapped. I decided to be quiet, let the rest of them be. In the last two minutes they went through grief, they tried to rationalize the situation, became angry, and tried to bargain. They denied all of this, they denied this was real, tried to claim it was a dream. They all began to sink, their emotions all overpowered by sadness.
0:15
All the time left for us, we all linked hands and held each other tightly. I heard the pumps filling the room with oxygen and other components of the aerosol into the air. Then I heard the ignition and felt a wave of heat rushing towards me. "I'm sorry." I said just before being engulfed in flames. It hurt for only a…
The Oregon C.D.C. building explosion had no survivors; they failed to find a cure for the outbreak and along with the other C.D.C. buildings across the nation adhered to protocol. The loss of these brilliant minds cannot be overstated.