Damn! The reviews are rocking now! I'm amaze you're all still here after the last chap cliffhanger. There will be more to come this weekend, I assure you since this chap turned out to be longer than I had originally planned.
Daryl started to wonder if he was losing his mind. For a second, he could've sworn that Beth had turned into a walker.
"Please, don't tell anybody."
After hearing her voice, Daryl's grip on his crossbow loosened. But he still couldn't comprehend how she looked or why she was even here. He realized how cold it was getting outside and realized she had to be too since she was still in her hospital scrubs.
"Are you crazy, girl?" he asked her. "You can't be out here like this!"
He gripped her arm and pulled her back towards the house. "What do you think you're doing out here, anyway?"
"I had to eat something."
"We had plenty of food back in the house."
"I can't eat that stuff!"
"So you thought you could do your own huntin'?"
"You don't understand."
"I don't need to understand nuthin' other than you've lost your mind."
With as much force as she could she pulled herself away from Daryl's grip. "You think I'M crazy?!"
Daryl stopped. He looked at Beth and found her looking both exhausted and frustrated. "I'm not as crazy as them...the people who took me!"
"What about them?"
Beth found herself unable to speak. Daryl just shook his head and they both walked quietly back to the house. "Listen...sorry about flippin' out on ya."
"You don't have to be," said Beth. "I think it's time you knew."
"You sure?"
She nodded. "Tomorrow, I'll tell you and Maggie."
She remembered very little about what happened after she found the window and headed towards the road. Only that she felt someone pulling on the bag she had on from behind and in her side vision, she swore she saw two blinding headlights before blacking out.
For hours, Beth thought that she was sleeping in the same coffin she was in the night before. She never believed Daryl when he said they were pretty comfy but after some urging she gave it a chance and he had been right.
But then Beth realized she couldn't move. That's when her eyes finally opened to her new surroundings. It looks like a hospital room.
Every attempt to squirm her way out of the straps that bound her to the hospital bed did not help but that didn't stop her from trying.
"Don't strain yourself. They'll take them off soon."
Beth turn her head to the right and saw a woman about a decade older than her approaching her. The woman looked scraggly and was wearing hospital scrubs. Her light brunette hair was frizzy and unkempt. If she was a patient, then Beth was not in a well-caring hospital. Behind, her Beth could see that the only window in the room had been both boarded up and barred.
"How do you know?" Beth asked her.
"They put me in the same straps when I came in."
"Where are we? What are they doing to us?"
"Alot of things." That was the most Beth knew she was going to get out of the woman. "I'm Sarah."
Beth sighed. "Beth."
It was going to be difficult. But Maggie had been right. She couldn't hide anymore. But she knew the truth would horrify the group. She didn't know how the new people would react either and she knew there was friction in the group, but that was typical.
She decided to just limit it to the people who found her first, Rick, Maggie, and Daryl. They needed to know more than anyone so they could decide what to do with her from here. Because Beth wasn't sure herself what to do anymore since everyone at the hospital was now dead. She didn't blame them for killing the doctors, however. They did deserve to die.
"Take your time," said Maggie. "We'll be patient." She eyed Daryl when she said that not having forgotten the way he interrogated her sister.
Beth was starting to feel feverish again. She hated when that happened and it was always at the worst possible times too. Now, as she looked at the three people in the room, she thought she was going to pass out. There would be sweating soon.
"The people I was with...in that hospital...they weren't doctors...not all of them. Some of them were scientists."
"Scientists?" asked Rick. "What were they doing?"
"They were looking for a cure," said Beth. "But they needed test subjects...walkers AND humans. The walkers were easy to catch. The humans, they had to wait...set traps where they think some survivors might go or stay..."
Daryl felt crushed. The funeral home really had been a trapped and the worst of it was that the signs were all there. A place that clean with plenty of food, of course it was going to be welcoming. He remembered how there was so many walkers when he made the stupid ill-fated decision to open that door. Walkers didn't just gather there like that. Drawing them out...that was what those scientists had planned all along. It made him sick to think about how he just let Beth fall into their hands.
"Based on how healthy we were, they would pick and choose what experiments they would use us for. A lot of them...they just let the walkers bite them...like it was important research."
"Oh Beth," said Maggie. "They didn't try to make one bite you, did they?"
"No," she said. But now that Beth thought about it, perhaps it would have been better...
Beth and Sarah had not been bothered for many weeks with the exception of the occasional examinations. They seemed like the typical medical exam but Beth knew better. Eventually the two of them would be given their assignments...or rather...their role of guinea pig for a particular walker-related experiment. The experiment would depend on the results of the exams. Surprisingly, none of them were fated for the walker biting that the other captives were subjected to...at least not yet.
During all that time in their prison though, Beth and Sarah had gotten to know each other and became good friends. In many ways Beth could see the woman's resemblance and nature seemed much similar to Lori.
"You were alone when the found you?" Beth asked her.
"I had just joined a group. But just after a few weeks, these vans appeared and walkers were spewing out everywhere. We were all split up. It made it easy to capture me, I guess." For a moment it seemed Sarah was reminiscing and then she started to get teary-eyed. "I thought it would be the one, you know? I thought I would finally be able to settle down...maybe have some 'semblance of a normal life."
"I know," said Beth. "I thought the prison was going to be the place, too. It really felt like a community there. Like a small town."
"That's funny," said Sarah. "I guess I was foolish, though. I actually thought that maybe I would find a guy there...maybe try again for a baby...do the things I hoped to do before everything happened."
"You said try again for a baby...what happened the first time?"
"Well my first marriage, we were like jack rabbits but we were getting no results. The doctor at the time believed I was infertile, but I wouldn't believe him. I guess he was right though. I was with a couple of guys after that marriage and nothing."
The door opened and several doctors came in. "Sarah, you've been given your assignment."
Sarah panicked but the doctors were already on her before she had a chance to run. Beth was also held down just in case, and was force to watch her only companion in that god-forsaken place be carried away.
...
The next week, they started drugging Beth's food. She found herself sleeping longer and waking up sometimes on the floor. After a while, the drugging stopped and she found herself becoming sick and nauseous all the time. Had they already started on their experiments on her without telling her?
It was getting rather obnoxious and it depressed her that Sarah had yet to return.
After three months, Beth wondered if she was starting to lose her sanity. She started noticing an unexplained bump on her abdomen and wasn't sure if she wanted to know its intended purpose. She only knew that the doctors must have done something...probably giving her some form of cancer.
A doctor would eventually come to have a talk with her. "Beth, have you developing any unusual physical changes?"
"Yeah, the bump on my stomach. Are you trying to make me sick?"
"It's not a cancer, Beth. You're pregnant."
Did she hear that right? Did the doctor just told Beth that she was...? "What? No. No, I can't be! It doesn't make sense." But the only conclusion had to be that people did something to her. "What...how did you...?"
"Egg implantation," said the doctor. "Have you heard of it?"
Beth nodded.
"It was necessary because of the donors we had to use."
"Donors? What do you mean donors? You mean the father...?"
"You don't have to be concerned about that, Beth. The child was conceived in-vitro. You won't be genetically related in any way. Before the walkers, you would get paid for this kind of work. You would be considered a surrogate parent."
For some reason, hearing that this wasn't really Beth's baby in any form made Daryl relieved.
"One thing I don't get," said Rick. "What does you being pregnant have anything to do with a cure to the walkers?"
Beth couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Why would you do this?! What's the point of it?!"
"It's important work. We all have to make sacrifices. The baby's parents...they had to make sacrifices too."
The parents? Were they test subjects or doctors? Beth had to know. "Can I meet them? The parents?"
"If you want. But don't try to run. We keep walkers in some of the corridors where some of our subjects have already tried to escape."
Beth reluctantly joined the doctor as they walked down the hall together. She rarely got to see the hallways. Once in a while she could hear the patients screaming or trying to run before being subdued. Other times, she would see walkers being strapped to gurneys just inches away from her. The only upside was that the doctors were at least careful with the walkers when they weren't needed.
They finally arrived in a former surgery room. Through the operation window, Beth could see a group of doctors studying something, as soon as they disperse, she was left to see two walkers...one a man, the other a woman, strapped to separate gurneys. Their bodies were already shriveling and rotting. Beth could see bites on both of them. But the female walker, something about her seemed familiar...until the walker tried to lift its head up.
"Sarah?"
Almost as if on cue the remains of Sarah turned too look at Beth but their was no sense of recognition...only that lifeless groan and stare.
Beth looked down at her stomach, the horrible realization hitting her. "Oh god!" She tried to back away from everything...the doctors...the walkers. But there was nowhere to turn. "What did you do?! WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!"