Chapter: Good to Bad
…..
…..The Next Day: …..
…..
Waking up in a comfortable bed, not worrying about dead people gnawing on flesh, Nakkita has finally got a good night's rest after Daryl and her passionate escapade. She slides out of Daryl's arms and she went to the bathroom first while getting ready for the day.
Once she was change in cargo pants, tank top and lace up boots, she went to the makeshift bed that Xavier was moving in. She coos over her precious son and smile when he smiles back up at her, kicking his feet about and waving his fists around.
"Let's go get something in that tummy of yours." Nakkita gently rubs Xavier tummy before lifting him up and securely holding him close to her body.
As Nakkita turns, she jumps a bit at being startle. Daryl was standing before her in his pants now, yawning and running his right hand through his unruly mahogany brown color hair.
"I need something in my tummy too." Daryl pats his stomach, turning away and walking to the bathroom.
"Do you want me to wait for you?"
"Nah, go ahead. Get something in our little ones stomach." Daryl answers, winking at her before disappearing into the bathroom.
Nakkita leaves the room, walks a good distance down the hallway before entering the kitchen. Xavier was playing with the collar of her tank top before letting go and gnawing on his hand instead, drooling everywhere.
The smell of eggs and ham waft the air, circling around her as she walks further into the kitchen/dining type room. She sees that T-Dog was in the kitchen, cooking up scramble eggs and slices of ham on the stove. At the long table, mostly everyone was presence and enjoying breakfast.
"Good morning, Nakkita." Rick grins making her to smile back as she stood near the table.
"Good morning Rick and everyone else." Nakkita greets, listening to the chorus of 'good mornings' flowing around the table.
Hearing everyone speaking, Xavier let out a few loud babbles as if he was talking back to them. This causes instant smiles to appear on their faces upon seeing the happy seven months old.
"Does anyone mind holding him? I need to go get the apple sauce from the fridge for him."
"I'll do it. Haven't held a baby for years." Rick offers, wiping his hands clean before holding his arms out.
Beside him, Lori has a small unsure grin appear, but she stares after Nakkita, who was walking to the kitchen fridge to get the apple sauce. Glancing back at her husband, Lori sees Rick smiling at Xavier and making faces at the baby, who begins to giggle and squeal with happiness, waving his arms and kicking his feet around.
"You are such a happy baby." Rick coos, chuckling as Xavier smiles back and squeals happily.
There was a tinge of jealousy spreading through Lori as she felt like her husband and Nakkita were a bit too close. Then again, Nakkita and Lori were both married woman and Nakkita loves her husband, Daryl very much. Hence, Lori was slightly relaxing and thinking that Rick only sees Nakkita as a younger sibling or new best friend because Nakkita wasn't exactly an unattractive woman appearance and personality wise. Nakkita was very much a natural beauty.
When Nakkita appear beside the table, she takes Xavier from Rick, thanking him before she walks to a small table beside the long table and sits herself down. She sets Xavier onto her lap where she begins to feed him the apple sauce, making sure to give him small portions.
After a few minutes past, Daryl appears into the room and directly makes his way towards Nakkita and Xavier. But he pauses to see that Nakkita didn't have food and so he went and got two plates fill with breakfast for Nakkita and him. He makes his way back towards the table.
When Daryl makes his presence sitting next to her with plates of food for both of them, she gives him a thankful smile. While feeding Xavier, Nakkita did take the time to look around the slightly quiet room. She sees Glenn paling a bit then gagging when a plate of scramble eggs was place in front of him.
"Jeesh, Glenn is hung over big time. Did you have to give him so much alcohol last night?" Nakkita asks, looking at Daryl with raise eyebrows.
"He gotta' live a little."
Nakkita shakes her head with a amuse grin. Once Xavier was finish with his apple sauce, Nakkita cleans him off then sets him into her left arm so she could eat with her right hand. Daryl stole her scramble eggs from her since she doesn't like eggs, thus, she settles with eating the slices of ham. Eating eggs is a last resort for Nakkita.
Since he was eating while she was feeding Xavier, Daryl finish his breakfast and therefore he plucks Xavier from her lap onto his.
While Nakkita finish eating, Daryl was tickling Xavier feet making him to giggle; it all came a stop when Andrea spoke out from the long table where most of the group was sitting at.
"Doctor, we didn't come here for the eggs." Andrea stares down Dr. Jenner with sharp eyes.
"Jeesh, let's start this again in the freaking morning." Nakkita mutters causing Daryl to snort in agreement.
All of them stare at Andrea before looking at Jenner, who stands up from his seat and waves at them to follow him. They quickly clean up their plates then quickly follow after the doctor into the computer room where he begins to turn everything on in the room.
Everyone spread out throughout the room and turn to stare at a large movie type screen light up. At the main computer, Jenner was pressing a few buttons on the control board and typing away.
"Vi, can you play back the system of TS-19." Jenner commands, glancing forwards at the screen to see it turn from blue screen to an image of a brain with stats and information along the border of the image.
The screen shows the outline of a person lying on a table, but the brain was what stuck out the most from the screen. It was a CAT scan of the brain, but highly advances. The screen shows how the brain was showing its functions as it pulses and flashes with transmit lights.
"Is that a brain?" Carl curiously asks with awe.
"An extraordinary one." Jenner answers, glancing at the young boy before looking back at the screen.
"Not that it matters in the end." He lowly tells himself.
Zooming in, the brain image got bigger and the brain pulses were seen traveling through the map of the brain quickly. The pulses were delivering messages throughout the brain and into the body.
"What are those lights?" Shane points out.
Nakkita glances over at the ex-sheriff before looking forwards, feeling like Shane wasn't exactly someone that would pay attention in school or know that those lights were synapses flowing throughout the brain. Then again, Nakkita was an RN and knew medical information.
"It's a person's life, experiences, memories…it's everything." Jenner replies, glancing at Shane before looking back to the screen with softens eyes.
The brain currents kept flowing throughout the brain, sending messages all throughout the brain and the body. It was an amazing sight to behold.
"Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you. It is what makes you a unique and a human." Jenner explains while glancing over at Rick, who was slightly staring at Jenner with narrow, curious eyes.
"Can you make sense?" Daryl blurts out, holding Xavier close to him.
Xavier was staring at the screen with widen artic blue eyes, simply intrigue by all the flashing lights on the screen. Nakkita grin a bit, seeing her son was getting some entertainment in this.
"They are synapse, Daryl. There is this gap in between these nerve ends. They almost touch each other, but don't. And what goes on between cell gaps is this electric pulse that transmits signals to one cell to the next and it keeps going on like that." Nayla explains, trying to make it simple for her husband to understand. She knew her husband was a smart man, but when it comes to explaining medical things, it wasn't exactly his field.
"Correct. The electric impulses that carry all the messages throughout the brain. They determine everything that a person says, does or thinking from the moment of birth to the moment of death." Jenner adds in.
"Still…"Daryl lowly mumbles to which Nakkita turns to him.
"Think of it like this, Daryl. Do you remember that one time we tried to kiss and as our lips were about a centimeter away, we shocked each other because of static electricity. And you swore you saw electric in between our lips."
"I know what I saw."
"Yes, yes, but do you remember that."
"Yes."
"That is what the synapse does. Cell ends close to one another, sending electric impulses through this tiny gap to the next cell, transmitting messages, and information to the brain on what to do."
"Ah, I get it now." Daryl mumbles, bending down and laying his lips on her forehead. She grins and turns back to stare at the screen again.
"Death? Is this what this is? A visual." Rick asks, stepping forwards to stand beside the doctor.
"Yes. Or rather the playback of the visual."
"This person died? Who?" Andrea questions, her eyes never faltering off the screen.
"Test subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected, but had volunteered to have us record the process." Jenner answers in a wavering voice. His eyes ran off the screen and land on Andrea, who has felt his stare and finds herself staring back at him.
"Vi, scan to first event." Jenner says, taking his eyes off Andrea and looking back at the screen where a new image was brought up.
The new image was still the same brain, but now the brain stem has this black mass forming inside it. But then, the synapses were slowly being taken over by the blackness too.
"What is that?" Glenn blurts out, his eyes widen with shock with a mix of fear too, not liking how he didn't know what was happening.
It invades the brain like meningitis. The glands start to hemorrhage and the brain goes into shut down mode and then the major organs too." Jenner explains pointing to the screen as the blackness starts to take over the brain in a rapid way.
The once blue electric currents in the brain were slowly dying off and were being conquer by the blackness now. The black color has bleed throughout the brain and was taking over the brain. Now, the blackness was running down the brain stem, down into the person's spine and seeping throughout the rest of the nerves throughout the body. Slowly, the body was shutting down and the person has stop moving and their vital signs were gone.
"Then death…everything will be gone." Jenner his eyes were not faltering from the image.
Once those morbid words came from Jenner's mouth, the tension in the air seems to be noticeable. Nakkita has taken a step closer to Daryl, who wraps his left arm around her waist and holds her close in comfort. Even Xavier has tucked his head underneath Daryl's chin as if he was hiding from the thick tension throughout the room.
They all realize that this is what those back at their Atlanta camp would've gone through if they have turn. This is what everyone that turns into walkers has to go through. It was a horrifying to watch and seeing the discovery of how the infection works.
"Is that what happen to Jim?" Sophia lowly asks her mother, looking up at her.
"Yes." Carol tells Sophia, not going to lie about this to her daughter.
To the side, Jenner glances at Andrea, seeing her heavily breathing and tears were slowly trickling down her cheeks. His eyes soften, realizing that either she was upset with this whole display of how the infection works or she has lost someone too.
"She lost someone important to her two days ago, her sister." Lori lowly informs Jenner as she could see the doctor staring at Andrea with soften eyes. He got his answer making him to nod at Lori and he step over towards Andrea with a small, weak grin.
"I lost somebody too. I know how devastating it is." Jenner tells Andrea before he walks back to the computer.
"Scan to the second event." Jenner commands Vi to which the computer system did its job and instantly brought up a new event of the brain now on the screen.
Slowly, everyone looks back at the screen to watch the new event of the brain that they have been watching the whole time. They saw that the brain was filled with the black ink substance and so was the body.
"The longest we heard of was eight hours. But in the case of this patient it was two hours, one minutes and seven seconds." Jenner tells them, staring at the clock that appear near the x-ray image body and he was watching the numbers ticking.
When it was getting closer to the time that he mention, the group eyes widen as they watch a small dull red glow was beginning to appear in the lower part of the brain, near the brain stem area.
"It's restarting the brain?" Lori asks, not believing what she was witnessing.
"No just the brain stem. Basically it gets them up and moving." Jenner replies.
"But they are not alive?" Rick slowly questions, his eyebrows scrunching a bit together.
"You tell me." Jenner steps back to stand near Rick and he nods his head to the screen. Looking at the screen with Jenner, Rick shakes his head.
"It's nothing like before. Most of the brain is dark." Rick says to Jenner, who gives a slight nod before he takes his place before the main computer.
"Dark, lifeless, dead. The front lobe, that's gone. That is the you part." Jenner says, his stoic look never disappearing from his face.
"So with that gone, all personalities, communications, emotions, thinking process…you're nothing without it. You are brainless. Not in the state of mind. Nothing matters anymore. Nothing is left. Absolutely nothing, but animalistic cannibalistic tendencies." Nakkita concludes, stepping a bit away from her husband as she stares at the screen with calculating eyes.
"That is correct. It's just a shell driven into mindless instincts." Jenner nods, glancing over at Nakkita with slight interest eyes of her knowledge.
Feeling the doctor's stare, Nakkita takes a glance at him before she steps back and stands extra close to her husband side. Daryl rewraps his left arm around her waist again, giving it a gentle squeeze.
The next scene on the screen was the figure starting to come back to life, but an outline of a gun appears onto the x-ray screen and shoots the now turn human walker through the head. It was an instant kill shot to the now infected walker subject on the exam table.
"God, what was that!" Carol immediately exclaims, her eyes widening and her arms were instantly wrap around Sophia, hugging her closer to her body.
"Instant kill shot." Nakkita whispers, looking up at Daryl, who looks down at her with a nod of his head.
"Vi, power down the work screen and the power stations." Jenner emotionlessly says while walking away from all of them.
The screen shuts down and the screen was slowly dimming off. The generator lights snap back on in the room. Everyone turns to see that Jenner was leaving the room.
"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea quickly asks Jenner to which he stops tucks his hands in his pockets and turns to look at all of them.
"It could be a microbial, viral, parasitic, fugal…"
"Or the Wrath of God." Jacqui speaks out, crossing her arms over her chest. Looking at her with a slight nod, Jenner has to agree with that explanation too. They were no answers to what or why this was happening.
"There is that."
"Somebody must know something. Somebody, somewhere out there." Andrea steps towards him, desperation lacing in her voice.
All of them want answers, but deep down they knew that they weren't going to get an answer to this whole epidemic event.
"Like other facilities?" Lori suggest, adding onto Andrea comment.
"There may be some people like me."
"You don't know? How can you not know?" Rick spread his arms out, asking Jenner with raised eyebrows.
"Everything had gone down. Communication, the directors…all of it. I have been in the dark for almost a month." Jenner answers Rick.
"So it's not just here. There is nothing left anywhere. Nothing. That's what you're really saying, isn't it?" Andrea states, trying to keep a strong voice but it was slightly cracking with her emotions building within her.
When they got no reply, they stare at Jenner with shock. Now they knew that the other facilities like this one were in the same situation or were not even around anymore.
"Jesus." Jacqui gasps out, her right hand coming over her mouth, shaking her head, and not wanting to believe any of this information.
"Man, I'm going to get shit face drunk tonight." Daryl blurts out; taking his left arm off Nakkita's waist to drag over his face then ran his hand through his hair with a loud sigh.
Nakkita shakes her head at Daryl's comment, but she couldn't blame him for it. The news of the other facilities not around, not working to find a cure was a very heart wrenching moment to all of them.
"Dr. Jenner, all of this has been taxing for you, but I have to ask one more question…that clock is counting down. What happens at zero?" Dale points out, staring at the large digital clock that was on the wall.
Everyone looks over at the digital clock to see that Dale was right about it counting down. But why was it counting down?
"The basement generators rung out of fuel." Jenner informs in a hurry manner as if he didn't want any of them to know this. Once again, Jenner turns away and he begins to speed walk away from them. This time, he looks determine to get away and out of the room.
"Something isn't right with him. I am telling you, Daryl." Nakkita stares up at Daryl before looking forwards to glare at the retreating form of the doctor.
"Vi, what happens when the power runs out?" Rick asks the computer system, wanting answers.
"When the power runs out, facility decontamination will occur."
"I'm sorry. But I thought that I just heard decontamination. That usually means cleaning out." Nakkita points out.
Everyone look at her and then at each other with questionable yet fearful eyes.
"Or wipe us out." Nakkita adds in causing Daryl to groan and shake his head, staring at the ceiling and begins to speak to himself.
"I am definitely fucking getting shit face drunk to the point that I can't even remember my own name."
…..
…..
…..
…..
…..
Hi Everyone,
Thanks for reading and reviews, especially those that keep repeatedly reviewing.
Thank you!
