A/N A small prayer to my readers: may you never, ever get caught out by a thunderstorm whilst camping. You will wake up, and your tent floor will be a puddle. You will be forced to spend the night in the family car. You will regret the whole experience…so, yeah, check the weather forecast before camping.

Rick and friends arrive in this chapter (finally) – also, thank you to everyone who's supported this story thus far by favouriting, alerting or reviewing (actually especially if you've been reviewing – I'm kind of a review whore.)

Also, heads up – the chronology that's been going on through this fic messes around a bit here. Idk if this is a problem when reading or not.

Story Rated T for graphic violence, swearing and mild sexual situations.

CHAPTER 3

"No, no. No, see, this is a really shit idea. You know why? Because it's really obviously a shit idea."

-128 Days Later (2002)

Day 0

"Man, you're the idealist, I'm the realist – I'm just pointing out that there is no way in hell this girl likes me. Something tells me that 401-GO2-HELL isn't a number."

Rick laughed as they pulled up onto the curb in the police car. It was standard patrols, and he hoped to God that they wouldn't end up wasting another day like they had last time: busting a high school dealer, and then wasting half the day taking the cocaine to the state lab so that some guy in a lab coat could tell them what they already knew. Shane had been incensed (am I missing something here? Does everyone just believe what the dude in the white lab coat tells them? I went to state school! I know what cocaine looks like!)

"Nah, Shane. That's just her way of telling you she likes you," said Rick, fiddling with the volume of the dispatch radio.

Shane shook his head, glancing out his window. "I'm telling you. She's fucking crazy."

The pair fell silent. Rick stared out his window which faced out over the road and onto the opposite sidewalk. He watched as a man with his toddler wondered past, then a kid with a radio three times the size of his head balanced on his shoulder. Twins in school uniform who broke into identical grins at a magazine. And a woman with short waves of blonde hair that fell into her face as she struggled with the many bags she was carrying.

Inside Rick, everything stopped. He waited for the woman to lift her face – somehow it was important that she should – but she turned away to settle her bags on the floor of the sidewalk. She straightened upright and

A taxi cut the world in half and the dispatch radio reported a speeding truck and armed men a little out of town. Rick glanced at the radio, then back out the window – but by then the taxi was gone, and so was she.

"Hey, man, what are you waiting for? Start the car," Shane said, and Rick shook his head slightly, twisting the keys in the ignition and peeling off the curb.

Day 27

Sarah glanced up from the microscope when the lights flickered off once again.

She waited for them to turn back on – as they usually did – and when they didn't, she stood up from her chair.

Sarah could feel her pupils widening in response to the darkness – trying to catch the wisps of some none-existent light – and the hairs on the back of her neck begin to rise. She turned around and around on the spot like a human solar system – trying to remember where the door had been; feeling for the nearest desk so she didn't walk into it.

"Ed?" she yelled, but all that seemed to be going through her head was oh shit oh fuck oh my God I can't see. "Ed – the power's gone!" she cried out, louder.

Sarah stumbled backwards, tripped, and attempted to use her hand to break her fall. It slammed into the desk, on top of the vial of walker blood she'd been observing before the lights went out. The tube crushed underneath the force of her palm, glass cutting into her hand - and, as if the force of impact had been enough - a few of the more minor lamp lights flickered on. The light they shed was dimmer than that of the bright white of the paneled ceiling lights, but it was enough for Sarah to look down and see the harsh open cuts on her hand, and the little flowers they'd bled onto the desk below.

With the slight return of power, the screen on the lab wall had flickered on dimly. Projected onto it was Jenner making a video log entry from another room, and as Sarah swore under her breath, his voice filled the room.

"Day 31… In an attempt to conserve power I've shut down the electricity in the majority of the labs…"

"Jesus, that hurts." Sarah hissed, as she cradled her bloody hand in her uninjured one. "Bandages…where the hell are the bandages –"

She broke off suddenly. Looked at her hand.

"As the disease has taken hold of more of the globe, we've doubled our attempts to find a cure…"

Staining Sarah's skin a diseased brown color and seeping into her wounds was the walker blood that had been in the vial. She could feel oxygen flood her lungs, feel them constrict as she began to pant – hyperventilating.

"Oh God," she choked out.

She'd known idiots who thought that they could buy a tattoo machine and start inking up their friends – and always they'd forget one key element. The prevention of cross-contamination. The spreading of germs, bacteria and disease by carrying them from an infected area to the non-infected area. People should know that it was the things like that – the things you couldn't see coming - which would kill you.

"So far it seems that once the virus is in the blood, there is nothing we can do to prevent it…"

Sarah ran to a shelf, grabbing a beaker with the label Povidone Iodine. Her heart was beating fast, pumping the blood round her veins rapidly. She couldn't help but wonder if that would speed up the process of infection. She wondered how long it would take for her to go down with the fever.

"The disease hibernates under the skin like a bear until the death of the host – where it takes hold and re-triggers basic function of the brain. We've tried many different methods to flush the virus out of the system, but we're running out of options."

Sarah switched on a faucet and stuck her wounded hand underneath it, watching for a second as the water in the sink turned red with her blood. She unscrewed the cap of the beaker with her teeth, and then swallowed heavily as she positioned the cup over her cuts.

"The disease has a 100% kill rate. So far we've been looking at acquired immunity, but I think humanity needs to start looking at innate immunity, and if it's even possible in the individual…"

Povidone-iodine was a stable chemical complex of polyvinylpyrrolidone and elemental iodine, and since 1811 it had been used in the treatment and prevention of wound infections. Sarah was praying that the substance would purge her cuts of the contaminated blood, so, with a 'this is going to hurt, but I want to live' mind set, she tipped the contents of the beaker onto her wound.

The moment the liquid came into contact with her flesh, it burned. By the time she'd emptied out the whole of the cup a glowing, pulsating greenish spot had filled her vision.

A wave broke in Sarah's stomach and she threw up into the sink. Panic and fear were causing her head to spin, and she gripped the rim of the sink with her good hand to keep herself upright.

Over the ringing in her ears, she could hear the final words of Jenner's video log entry.

"…if we don't, I can't see there being much cause for hope."

Jenner turned the video camera off and settled back into his chair, running a tired hand down his face.

The CDC was failing. They had roughly a month's worth of generator power left after the national grid crash and it seemed harsh that time was the only thing that hadn't inexorably ground to a halt after the out-break. Time pulled him further away from Candace, time ran out on his and Sarah's failing search for a cure.

Jenner stood up from his seat and stepped out of the room and into the semi-darkness of the corridors.

When Candace had been alive, he'd had had a recurring nightmare that he'd been in a plane that had gone into a nosedive half way through his flight. He could remember the exact feeling of waking, shaking and sweaty, with the sickening feeling that he'd left his wife alone in the world. Somehow, he'd never been able to imagine it the other way around – even in his dreaming moments, his mind had never been able to conjure up the possibility of a world in which he was with out her. But then again, his mind had never been able to conjure up the possibility of a world in which the dead walked.

Jenner had taken to living, eating, and sleeping his research. Because there was no visual evidence of day and night underground apart from the little clock at the bottom corner of computer screens, his body clock was all kinds of messed up. He'd be looking at slides of tissue samples underneath a microscope at four in the morning and sleep through the main part of the day.

As for Sarah Hannigan, the fact that they'd barely held a conversation in the last two days surprised him more than the fact that her first vaccine had practically killed the human tester. Some inexplicable force that Jenner couldn't quite understand was driving her to work for days at a time with out sleep – to nibble at corners of stale ideas that they'd long since dismissed as impossible.

And she had always been like that – not one to believe in impossibilities. Jenner had first heard of the young Dr. Hannigan when she gave a talk at a conference that involved some radical ideas in the development of science and the possibility of bioterrorism. We are social beings, she'd said, and at twenty five she hadn't possessed quite the same authority as she did at twenty nine, but something in her voice had made him stop and listen. We need to stay close to our families, our communities. In order to be accepted into these groups, we need to play by their rules – otherwise we become outsiders and outcasts. Bioterrorism capitalizes on this weakness of human nature – it sets out a disease that manifests itself in communities. Ultimately, it could be what kills us.

And he'd be damned if she hadn't been right four years later: the walker disease had spread so fast because of large communities and cities, and, if the whole world hadn't been over-run and infected he would have assumed the whole thing to be a product of bioterrorism.

Jenner turned the corner of another corridor in time to hear a loud crash from the lab to his right.

"What –" he muttered, racing to the entrance of the room.

Sarah was lying on the floor; and looking at her then, her body seemed smaller somehow, curled in on itself. To begin with he thought her dead until she moved - turning onto her side to vomit and then coughing her way into consciousness.

"Jesus Christ," Jenner said, running forwards and grabbing her shoulders to steady her as she struggled to sit up.

Sun-strained grey eyes met his own as she looked up at him shakily. "What…what happened?"

"I don't know - you tell me," he said, grimly. "I came in here and you were out cold on the floor."

She touched her head. "I…I don't remember…listen, could you get a washcloth? My head's…spinning."

Jenner nodded, straightening from his crouch. He hadn't noticed it before, but the faucet at the desk directly next to her was running and the sink below it was spattered with blood. He stared for a second, picking up a beaker that lay discarded to the side.

'Povidone Iodine,' he read, his lips moving soundlessly. "Hannigan…" he said slowly. "You've got PVP-I up here, what the hell is going on? Did you get hurt before you passed out?"

When Sarah didn't answer, Jenner glanced back down at her. She was examining her left hand, the look of distant confusion on her face replaced with an acute horror.

"I have a fever," she said, looking like she was on the verge of tears.

"Yeah, I know I'm getting you a washcloth," Jenner said impatiently as he turned back to the desk, casting round for a towel he could wet. "But could you just try and tell me what happened here?"

"No," Sarah insisted. "Ed, I have a fever."

He looked at her as if she'd spoken Greek, and she touched the side of her head again – evidently still disorientated and dizzy – as she continued. "I remember now. I was looking at the blood samples of a walker…and then the power went off and – and I stumbled and I broke the vial," her breathing hitched. "I think some of the infected blood got into the wounds in my hand."

"Which explains the vomiting and high temperature…" whispered Jenner, crouching back down next to her to get a better look at the sweaty forehead, the sickly grey hue to her skin. "Hannigan this would be a really great time to tell me you've made a break through in finding the cure."

She shook her head. "The fever and sickness could both just be a product of the fainting and stress," she protested, but even to herself, it sounded like she was trying too hard. "The PVP-I I used could have cleansed my cuts of the infected blood."

"Or it might not have," argued Jenner. "Are you going to leave this up to chance, or are you going to come up with anything better than that?"

"Well I don't see you coming up with anything!" snapped Sarah, angrily. "I've been through everything in my head – chemotherapy, bone marrow implants. That'd all work fine on the virus if it was focused on one part of the body – but it's everywhere."

"And it's the fever that ultimately kills you," said Jenner. "If you'd just been looking at a way to prevent that, instead of ways to eradicate the disease – which we both know is a fucking waste of time because it's impossible – we might have some ideas right now!"

"Preventing the fever is a short term solution" Sarah hissed. "If we want to stand any chance we need a vaccination or a cure that'll kill the virus completely!"

"Well that mentality isn't going to save you now, is it?"

She opened her mouth to reply, but abruptly shut it again. She looked pale as death and was glaring tragically up at Jenner. The beaker of PVP-I was spinning in her nervous finger-tips – and every now and then it would slip and clatter to the floor.

"I'm surprised you haven't put a bullet through my head already," she said eventually, a hint of irony to the coolness of her voice as her flash of anger dissipated.

"But there's too much potential for medical research to shoot you," he shot back, sardonically and – half angry, and half aching with the thought of losing her – he glanced back at Sarah's face. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

She shook her head. The stray splashes from the faucet had caused strands of her hair to stick, wet, to her face and a few drops trickled down her cheeks like tears. "No, I shouldn't have," she said, suddenly looking very, very tired. "You never know what it feels like until it's you."

Jenner stared at her like he'd never seen her before, and he supposed in all fairness to himself he hadn't, not like this at least. Around the time of Candace's death he honestly had hated Sarah – she'd been driven and determined and wasn't going to let small ethical issues get in her way - and yet the thought of losing her now was almost as painful as losing his wife had been. She looked sick. Her face was pale and fragile and her fingers felt almost brittle when she reached out to grab his hand, prompting his reply.

"No," Jenner said, swallowing. "I guess not."

Day 30

Three days on and Sarah was showing no signs of scumming to the normal symptoms of a walker bite.

To begin with she'd still been sick and maintained a slight temperature, but that was the extent of it. It actually turned out that she'd managed to wash out the majority of the infected blood with Povidone Iodine before it could do any real damage.

Spooning up mouthfuls of cereal from her bowl as she scanned over a stack of research notes, Sarah tried to think of Jace Shephard and Candace who had changed into walkers, but they seemed too far away – had it really been almost a month ago? – and all she could remember, with out any resentment, were Zach and Roxanne and the other CDC scientist's who had shot themselves before they could come to the same fate. It made her think of Jenner and the chilling comment he'd made in his anger about not shooting her after she turned. It forced her to think, ultimately, how far would she go to obtain the cure? Would she sacrifice the well-being of her body in the name of medical research? When it came down to it, would she really have inflicted that fate upon Candace?

Sarah shook her head, attempting to refocus on the pages in front of her. The dips and curves of medical graphs were blurring before her eyes and she sighed. A few more months reading in this near-darkness and she was going to need glasses.

Her niece – Leah – had worn glasses. She'd had the freckles and the cute little pigtails and everything. Technically, Sarah had been – was - her godmother. Apparently that meant she was responsible for Leah's religious education, which was a gigantic joke seeing as Sarah had never set foot in a church in her life (blame it on the healthy fear of the roof bursting into flames). It was the type of thing she and Chris used to joke about, when really, it wasn't funny at all – they'd both lost a lot of faith in Him when they're parents had died.

Jenner had asked about her family exactly once, when he'd been taking her blood to ensure the disease didn't spike randomly after the accident with the vial. Despite living together in close physical proximity for the best part of twenty days, they hadn't offered up any kind of personal information to one another in that time.

"Your family somewhere out there in this?" he had asked, as Sarah watched the needle break the white skin of her arm. She gave a slight wince when there wasn't any blood flowing, and Jenner shook his head, removing the needle and sticking her again.

"My brother and his family, maybe - our parents died when we were younger…" Sarah trailed off. The day before her mother had died, she had been teaching her how to make chocolate chip cookies. Sarah had been more focused on eating the dough when her mother wasn't looking and never really learned how to cook properly – even in later life her diet now mainly consisted of a steady stream of take-outs. She had had it down to science, really, before arriving at the CDC. Monday was pizza night, Tuesday, Subway; Wednesday was Chinese; Thursday, soup; and the weekend was normally leftovers. It was downright lonely (and embarrassing) ordering – because was there any sadder phrase than asking for any meal out for one? At the point in her life when Sarah had been young she hadn't been lonely – she'd been a young girl with a mom and dad and a family, and the next day suddenly she was a young girl, forced into a black dress and uncomfortable shoes, standing at a graveside with her older brother, orphaned.

"What were they like?"

Telling Jenner about her parents made her feel ten years old again, and Sarah frowned. "I don't remember them too well and I haven't got any pictures of them down here, but supposedly my mom looked a lot like me."

"You mean you look like she did," he said, correcting.

"No," Sarah glanced down as he removed the needle from her arm smoothly before looking him in the eye. "I mean she looked like me. I'm the one that's still around, right? So I'm the one you should be comparing to."

Jenner didn't argue with Sarah's logic, just cleared away the equipment and carefully labeled the vial of her blood with her name and the date before setting it on a rack. "I guess," he said, finally. "Made any progress with research?"

Sarah nodded, rolling her shoulder slightly to get feeling back into her arm. "I'm looking into attempting to create a vaccine based on the cell-culture method," she said as she stood up and walked across the room for a file of notes which she picked up quickly, flicking through pages and pages of research. "You create a medium for the virus to grow in based on cells derived from modified mammal kidney tumor cells which should – should – promote the virus growth. Our first hurdle would be getting our hands on those cells, the next is making sure that the virus enters the cells and makes copies of itself. Then we'd separate the virus from the growth solution, chemically inactivate it and split into pieces. Basically all we have to do then is remove the structural proteins leaving only the surface proteins and inject that into some willing human source. Once the vaccine enters the body the protein triggers the creation of antibodies, which will swarm the invading virus and keep them from attaching to body cells. There's just one problem –"

"The virus mutates," said Jenner, folding his arms. It was an unpleasant discovery they'd made as they compared different blood samples through out the duration of Sarah's stay at the CDC, and only added to the list of things that stood against them.

"Right and it can mutate within days. This particular vaccine takes seven months to create. By the time we'd killed off one strain of the virus inside you, you could get re-infected, and it would take us another six or seven months to create another vaccine to defeat that strain, by which time you'd probably be dead. If we even think about a vaccine we need to think about one that trains the antibodies to adapt to all different mutations of this virus and means you only need one shot."

"Which I'm pretty sure isn't possible."

"It isn't," said Sarah, heavily. "For us to create a vaccine like that is impossible – we'd be looking at years, maybe even centuries into the future for the technology to create that kind of antibody – especially now the world's gone to shit and we don't have the thousands of scientists and doctors conducting medical research like we used to. I'm still going to try, but…basically, we're screwed."

Jenner stared at her for a moment, but she didn't notice, too busy glancing through her research as if skimming hastily through a dozen magazines. He shook his head, running a hand through his hair as he turned away from her.

Though Sarah Hannigan didn't fully realize what she'd said at that moment, Jenner had heard and he'd understood. In black and white it was Sarah admitting that her hope for a cure had been unfounded – that it wasn't possible - until you read between the lines: here was the first time she admitted, honestly, that she'd been wrong.

Day 50

Edwin Jenner did not have to be on the look out for angels: they haunted him already.

In the American Civil War, veterans suffered from 'soldier's heart'; in World Was I, it was called 'shell shock,' and in World War II, the term was 'combat fatigue'.

In this day and age it was called PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder: something that occurred when someone experienced an extremely frightening event in which actual or threatened death or serious injury occurred. The symptoms were often synonymous with reliving the event through intrusive memories or dreams, an emotional avoidance such as steering clear of reminders of the trauma; detachment emotionally from others and hyper-awareness that meant you could startle easily, sleep poorly and be on alert for any potential threats.

And Candace appeared wherever he went, no matter how hard he tried to avoid her. She rose with the steam that fogged the glass panes of his shower in the morning and walked through the CDC corridors with him in the day. Sleep was no longer a necessity, but a plea for release – and yet sometimes she was there, in his dreams, appearing in his sleeping memories as a walker and then as a human aged twenty six; when he'd first met her or at thirty five; nine years later when he'd killed her.

And now, the TS-19 samples were destroyed a long with the rest of their blood samples. The system alert that Vi had initiated had drawn Sarah from her lab in time to stand with Jenner in the decontamination room and witness the whole room go up in flames.

The decontamination process that they'd set up after Sarah had spilt the contaminated blood wasn't subjective – even the tiniest, most none-threatening spill could set it off. As Jenner knew, they weren't engineers and hadn't been able to program it to Alex Ramm's standards.

And Jenner had seen Candace in the flames. The last hope that he'd clung to – that her brain matter samples or skin tissue might be able to yield some kind of clue towards a cure – had instantly died with the sight of them being destroyed.

The taste of the wine at the back of his mouth was almost as bitter as the thought that, there was no point in surviving if you had nothing to survive for.

Sarah seemed to be in a similar state. They both stood in the Control Room, wine glass in hand – her forehead was bleeding, though neither of them could remember how it had happened. He watched as she pressed her palm to her forehead, wiping away another smear of blood.

"How did that happen again?" he asked, tipping the neck of the wine bottle he was holding towards her.

"My right hand's bleeding too," she shrugged, and then suddenly seemed to realize that she hadn't made any sense, and frowned. "I…think I tried to get back into the lab to save the samples. You stopped me."

They both remembered. The wine was having a stronger effect now – memories and moments occurring in snap shots like a camera, but then both being unable to connect each one.

He could remember her blond hair reflecting the light as she ran forwards, her attempting to wrench the door open before decontamination could occur. Then heavy breathing and the sound of crying as he pinned Sarah to the floor – she'd hit her head hard on the ground, that was how it had happened – so she wouldn't die trying to save the samples.

'No,' he'd yelled. 'It's too late. Don't.'

Yet she had still struggled.

She was never normally reckless, not ever so driven by instinct as she had been in that moment of terror as she'd tried to save their research.

He knew that Sarah was just as amazed at her brief lack of composure and sense of self-preservation. The fire was still reflected in her eyes, and he knew it was still haunting her: the idea that she could have so easily been burnt to a crisp, and the idea that she now had nothing left to live for.

With no research there could be no vaccine. And, being drunk, he told her so.

"There can't be a vaccine or any kind of cure." The words echoed in the silence of the room. "You're never going to find it now."

In the brief moment before she looked away there was, on her face, a clear flash of tension and anger. In a carefully controlled movement Sarah set her wine glass on a near by desk – still half empty – and stalked towards him.

"Tell me that when you're sober," she snapped – and Jenner suddenly realized that she was no where near as drunk as he thought she was. Sarah pushed hard against his shoulder with her good hand. "And maybe I'll listen."

And then she was gone from the room.

Jenner listened for a second to the angry staccato of her footsteps as she hurried away from him, before sitting back down at a computer and booting it up.

"The TS19 samples are gone," he said to the camera. "The tragedy of their loss cannot be overstated. They were our freshest samples by far…none of the other samples we gathered even came close. Those are necrotic, useless dead flesh."

He paused. "I don't even know why I'm talking to you. I bet there isn't a single son-of-a-bitch out there still listening, is there? Is there?"

He stood up. "Fine. Saves me the embarrassment. I think tomorrow I'm gunna blow my brains out. I haven't decided." He glanced in the direction Sarah had left in before saying: "But tonight, I'm getting drunk."

And maybe it was just to spite her and piss her off, but he took another swig from the glass of wine anyway.

Sarah ran a hand down the side of her face.

She was standing in the foyer now. It was the first time she'd seen it since she had been with Alex there. The supply boxes were now just empty crates, and the space that had once been bustling with army personnel was now eerily empty.

She touched her head again and ran a finger over the cut there. She was sure it should hurt, but she somehow felt distant from the pain, too angry at Jenner to really concentrate on anything else.

Time? We don't have time, Candace. Look at you!

"I…I'm sorry. I didn't…"

"Mean it? Honey, you can't just give up at the first sign of things going bad.

It had been one of the last things Candace had ever said with her, and for almost two months she hadn't given up.

And then there was Jenner, piss drunk, mocking her. He had already given up, but she doubted she ever could. Not with so much blood on her hands: Jace's…Candace's…

The fevered, bright light of the foyer cut her eyes and she squeezed them tight shut, only for them to fly open seconds later at the sound of the main door opening.

Rick pounded on the door, desperate. "Please!" he yelled. "Help us! You're killing us!"

Shane came out of nowhere and wrapped an arm round him, trying to pull him away from the door. "No!" Rick shouted, his voice strangled as he struggled against Shane's grip. "You're killing us! You're killing us!"

And, like open sesame, his words changed the whole landscape. The door opened, bathing the group in light.

From then, he could barely remember how he forced everyone in, how he double and triple checked to make sure Lori and Carl were safe and through the door before he himself entered. He could barely remember the precise moment that he realized that they weren't alone in the CDC foyer.

The blonde haired woman had her back to him, bent double as she helped T Dog with some bags and lowered them to the ground.

Rick stilled suddenly. He waited for the woman to lift her head – somehow there was something strangely familiar about her, or the situation – he couldn't decide which. She straightened upright and

"Rick?"

The woman was suddenly staring straight at him, grey, sun-strained eyes gazing incredulously into his own.

Something small and infinitesimal moved in him. Rick didn't answer - because what the hell could he possibly say, with his throat swollen like this? And that was all it took for her to understand. They'd always been like that. Words hadn't been needed, but then again, something like twenty years could change a lot.

"Oh Jesus," Sarah whispered. "It is you, isn't it?"

A/N Walking Dead Season 3 has just been too good - I've loved Rick being all bad-assy! And like father like son, Carl's been totally epic this season too, that kid is awesome.

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