A/N: Hi all! As promised, here is the second part of the chapter, we do get to see more of Leah's badass side and I personally love writing it! Let me guys know what you think, I love reading reviews and they inspire me to keep writing and always make my day when I get them :D
Onto the next and enjoy!
Chapter 6 (Part 2) – Free Bird
"Wake up kiddo!" Daryl yelled.
Leah snapped out of bed and opened her eyes to the most blinding light she had ever seen.
"Ow! Why would you do that?" It wasn't until after Leah's eyes adjusted that she felt her splitting headache.
"Got a little hangover?" Daryl laughed at her pain.
"A little hangover? I curse the day alcohol was invented. Damn," Leah was rubbing her eyes in an attempt to alleviate her migraine. She slowly got up, her back not agreeing to having slept on the floor the previous night, cracking in about ten different places as she stretched.
"You're telling me that you don't have the slightest hangover?" Leah looked at him in complete disbelief, he had been tipsy last night and now he was fine?
"Course I do, I just had a chance to get used to it. Just don't talk too loud," Leah saw him rubbing his temple.
"Prince, speak!" The dog barked as loud as he could and made Daryl wince at the sudden change in volume.
"Ha ha, serves you right," it was Leah's turn to laugh at Daryl's pain. She slowly got up from her makeshift bed and fed Prince his breakfast and gave him some water from the sink.
She walked over to Daryl and they headed to the kitchen to get some breakfast, "Now that we've both had our fun, good morning," Leah said gently, trying not to disturb the stabbing pain she felt through her temple.
"Mornin'," Daryl said quietly.
"Remember how I said that the only men I trusted at a party were Jack, Jim, and Jose?"
"Yeah," Daryl remembered everything from last night, especially the way Leah opened up to him and him to her.
"We always seem to have a love-hate relationship," Leah laughed at her own joke, earning a chuckle from Daryl as well.
They both slowly walked into the kitchen, it looked like they were one of the last ones to arrive. Leah saw T-Dogg was covering the food, and Rick had a bottle of aspirin. Leah knew all too well that aspirin and water were like gifts from the gods for a hangover.
"Don't ever ever ever let me drink again," Leah wondered what had happened to Glenn, apparently he hadn't had the best night either.
Leah and Daryl walked over the T-Dogg and took a couple of strips of bacon and a couple scoops of eggs, resuming their places on the counter from the night before.
"Hey," Shane greeted everyone, Leah didn't make eye contact with him, fully remembering the events from the previous night.
"Hey, do you feel as bad as I do?" Rick addressed his friend.
"Worse," Leah bet he did. She looked over to Lori and saw she was focused on her plate.
"What the hell happened to you?" T-Dogg noticed the three red scratches on his neck.
"Must have done it in my sleep," Shane dismissed.
"I've never seen you do that before," Rick was concerned for his friend.
"Me neither, not like me at all," Shane seemed to stare daggers at Lori, she just looked back down at her plate. Shane gave a fleeting glance to Leah, she only returned it with daggers of her own. She had respected Shane and he was walking on very thin ice with her now.
"What the hell was that?" Daryl whispered to Leah, his voice was thick with concern and suspicion.
"I'll tell you later," Leah whispered back, trying not to draw attention to herself. She knew that Shane would try to confront her about what she saw and she didn't need her telling Daryl to make him even more upset.
Jenner walked in and greeted everyone, receiving 'good mornings' in return.
"Doc, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing in the morning," Dale said.
"But you will anyway," Jenner responded humorlessly.
Andrea turned to face Jenner, "We didn't come here for the eggs." Leah knew as well as everybody else that they needed answers, even clues as to what the hell happened.
…
After everyone finished their breakfast, they were led to the large room they saw last night, questions burning through all of them.
"Give me a playback of TS-19," Jenner said to the virtual intelligence.
Playback of TS-19, the screen in the center of the room lit up and Leah suddenly felt like she was in WarGames.
They all walked towards the center of the room, unsure of what they were about to witness, "Few people have ever seen this, very few."
Leah immediately recognized the blue and purple image on the screen as a brain, she had seen a lot in her time as a Psychology major.
"Is that a brain?" Carl's eyes lit up at the sight on the screen.
"An extraordinary one… not that it matters in the end," Jenner responded. "Take us in for EIV."
Enhanced Internal View. The monitor zoomed in on the brain until the synapses were clear.
"What are all those lights?"
"That's a person's life. Experiences. Memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, in all those ripples of light… is you. The thing that makes you unique and human."
"You don't make sense, ever?" Daryl was still a little confused on the subject.
"How about we let our psychologist explain it," Jenner motioned toward Leah, she didn't like how all of the attention was on her now.
"Synapses, those lights, are the message carriers of the brain. Everything you feel, think, smell, see, and do is sent through your brain by them." Leah suddenly remembered back to her very first day of psychology class, the very first thing they had learned was the wiring of the brain.
"They determine everything a person does from the moment of birth to the moment of death," Jenner added.
"Death? That's what this is, a vigil?"
"Yes, or rather the playback of the vigil."
Andrea spoke this time, "This person died? Who?"
"Test Subject Nineteen. Someone who was bitten and infected and volunteered to have us record the process. VI, scan forward to the first event."
Scanning to first event.
The screen zoomed out on the brain once again and showed a black substance intertwining with the tissues of the brain.
"What is that?" Glenn sounded horrified, none of them had ever seen anything like it.
"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shut down… then the major organs. Then death." The body was convulsing, gasping for its last breath and then the black substance completely dominated the brain. "Everything you were or ever will be, gone."
Leah noticed that Andrea had started crying, everyone was getting emotional, the memories still fresh in their brains.
"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia's sweet voice filled the entire room.
"Yes," Carol didn't bother hiding the truth from her child, they were old enough to know. They couldn't afford not to.
Leah remembered how Jim hadn't taken a gun and he was one of them by now, wandering the earth trying to satisfy its cannibalistic hunger.
Jenner looked at Andrea, who was clearly crying now, "She lost somebody two days ago, her sister," Lori explained.
"I lost somebody too, I know how devastating it is," Jenner tried to comfort Andrea, "scan to the second event."
Scanning to second event.
"The resurrection times vary wildly. We have 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." Leah noticed how melancholy Jenner was talking about all of this, if she had to guess, he knew the patient on the screen.
Leah stared in wonder as a red light was emerging at the brain stem, sending flickers of light into the brain.
"It restarts the brain?"
"No, just the brain stem. Basically it gets them up and moving."
Rick spoke up again, "But they're not alive?"
"You tell me," Jenner motioned to the screen.
"It's nothing like before, most of that brain is dark."
"Dark, lifeless, dead. The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part. That doesn't come back, the you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct."
Leah's eyes widened as she was the outline of a gun come onto the screen, blowing a hole through the person's skull. Leah looked over at Daryl, worry written all over her face.
"Oh god, what was that?"
"He shot his patient in the head, didn't you?"
Jenner ignored Andrea's question, "VI, power down the main screen and work stations."
Powering down the main screen and work stations.
Andrea was on the verge of tears again, "You have no idea what it is, do you?"
"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal-"
"Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui interrupted.
"There is that…" Jenner said curtly.
"Somebody must know something. Somebody. Somewhere."
"There are others right? Other facilities?"
"There may be some, people like me."
"But you don't know? How can you not know?" Rick looked at the man in disbelief.
"It all went down. Communications, directives, all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month."
"So it's not just here? There's nothing left anywhere, that's what you're really saying, right?" Leah could see Andrea was getting less and less hopeful by the second.
"Jesus."
"Man, I'm gonna get shit-faced drunk, again."
"Holy shit," Leah put her hands on her knees, suddenly out of breath. She couldn't believe that no other facilities in the entire world had survived. But then again, this was the headquarters for all of the CDC, the others probably weren't as nearly as well stocked as this one was.
"Doctor 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 brought their attention to a digital clock on the wall, it had about an hour until it ran out.
"The basement generators, they run out of fuel."
"And then?" Jenner ignored Rick and walked out of the room. "VI, what happens when the power runs out?"
When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur.
Rick, Shane, Glenn, and T-Dogg decided to go down to the basement and see what the fuel situation was like while the rest of the group headed back to their rooms.
Leah decided to hang out in Daryl's room, they balanced each other out and he always had a way of making her feel better. They had been sitting there for about twenty minutes when they noticed the air conditioning and all the lights turned off.
Daryl and Leah went into the hallway to investigate and so had the others. Their questions were soon answered when Jenner appeared in a lab coat and tie behind them. He snatched the bottle of Southern Comfort out of Daryl's hands and took a swig, quickening his pace as he ran into a wall of questions.
"Hey what's going on? Why is everything turning off?"
"Energy use is being prioritized," he stated flatly.
"Air isn't a priority? And lights?" Dale questioned.
"It's not up to me. Zone Five is shutting itself down," Jenner was talking to himself now more than the group. They were right on his heels though, all starting to get concerned.
"Hey! What the hell's that mean? Hey man I'm talking to you! What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?"
"You'd be surprised."
"Jenner, I think we would all appreciate it if you could elaborate for us a little here," Leah kept her voice as level as she could.
"Rick?" Lori leaned over the balcony looking for her husband.
They all followed Jenner down the stairwell, desperate for some answers.
"Jenner, what's happening?"
"The system is dropping all non-essential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running until the last possible second. It starts as we approach the half-hour mark. Right on schedule." Jenner took another long swig from the bottle and handed it back to Daryl. Everyone's eyes were glued onto the back of Jenner's head.
"It was the French," he explained.
"What?" Nobody knew what he meant by that.
"They were that last ones to hold out as far as I know. While our people were bolting out the doors and committed suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the labs until the end. They thought they were close to a solution."
"What happened?"
"Same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice," Leah did not appreciate the tongue-in-cheek tone that Jenner was using. "The world runs on fossil fuel, how stupid is that?"
"Let me tell you something-"
"The hell with it Shane, I don't even care. Lori! Everybody! Grab your things! We're getting out of here. NOW!" Leah nodded in response, grateful to get out of that room. She turned on her heel but was stopped in her tracks by an alarm going off.
The screen at the center of the room lit up with the digital clock counting down. Thirty minutes to decontamination. Leah was really starting to hate the sound of VI's voice.
"Everybody, ya'll heard Rick. Grab your stuff and let's go."
Leah was just at the stairs when every entrance was sealed off by thick, metal doors.
"Did you just lock us in?! He just locked us in!" Glenn yelled. Leah could feel her heart drop to her feet, he was caging them up like animals. Just when she thought he couldn't get any crazier, Jenner started speaking into a computer monitor.
Leah realized a second too late that Daryl had snapped. He started charging on Jenner, "You son of a bitch! You locked us in here?!"
"Shane!" He was able to stop Daryl from strangling Jenner, if only by a second. It took Shane and T-Dogg to keep Daryl off of Jenner, Leah went over to him to try and calm him down, even if only a little bit.
Rick tried to talk some sense into Jenner, "Jenner, open that door now." Leah had heard Rick use that voice before and it meant that he was far angrier than he let on.
"There's no point. The top side is locked down, the emergency exits are sealed."
"Well open the damn things."
"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."
"And how the fuck is that fair, you're gonna get all lawyer on us now?!" Leah was beyond pissed at Jenner for twisting his own words, they didn't know what they were walking into at the time.
"It's better this way."
"What is? What happens in twenty-eight minutes? What happens in twenty-eight minutes?!" Rick and Shane descended on the doctor, sick and tired of his silence.
"Do you know what this place is? We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponized Small Pox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" Leah retracted a little at the doctor's sudden outburst, subconsciously grabbing Daryl's arm for security.
The doctor composed himself again, "In the event of a catastrophic power failure, a terrorist attack for example. HIT's are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."
"HIT's?"
"VI, define."
HIT's, high-impulse thermo baric 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 between five thousand and six thousand degrees and is used when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired.
"It sets the air on fire. No pain. An end to sorrow, grief, regret. Everything."
Leah looked at Daryl, her entire body was stricken with fear and disbelief, her hand still on Daryl's arm. Without even thinking about it, he pulled her into a hug. He promised her that she would be safe as long as she was with him and he would keep that promise. He hated seeing that look in her eyes.
Leah buried her face into Daryl's chest, feeling his strong arms wrap around her protectively. The last thing she expected to die from in an apocalypse was a bomb. She focused on Daryl's heartbeat in her ear, trying to calm herself down, it was beating a hundred times a minute, and she knew hers was too.
They stood like that for a couple of minutes absorbing the devastating information. Daryl's anger got the best of him and he broke away from Leah, picked up the bottle of liquor and threw it at the wall with a grunt, "Open the damn door!"
Shane's fury was boiling over as well, he grabbed an axe and ran up the walkway, "Out of my way!" He started to chop at the door so hard that sparks flew off of it. T-Dogg threw Daryl and axe too, both men venting on the thick metal.
Leah heard the kids starting to cry, clinging to their mother's in their last moments. Leah bent down to the ground, just taking notice of Prince whining at her side. She sat against one of the monitors and pulled him into her lap, nuzzling into his fur and kissing he velvety ears.
"You should have left well enough alone, it would have been so much easier."
"Easier for who?"
"All of you, you know what's out there. A short brutal life and an agonizing death. Your sister, what was her name?"
"Amy," Leah could see Andrea breaking at the mention of her sister.
"Amy," Jenner repeated. "You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that really what you want for your wife and son?" Jenner looked at Rick directly now.
"I don't. want. this."
Leah stood up, anger overtaking her, "I can't believe you, you're using the death of her sister to try and justify the genocide you're committing? If we can survive, we will."
Shane came up to them panting, "Can't make a dent."
"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher."
"Well your head ain't!" Daryl was charging the doctor for the second time. Dale and Rick ran up to him while Leah was able to get the axe out of his grip.
"Back up! Back up!" Leah handed the axe to T-Dogg, giving a warning look to Daryl.
"You do want this. Last night you said it was only a matter of time before everyone you loved was dead." Rick looked to his disbelieving wife and son, apology in his eyes.
"What you really said that? After all your big talk?"
"I had to keep the hope alive didn't I?"
"There is no hope, there never was."
"There's always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here but somebody. Somewhere."
Andrea spoke up again, "What part of everything's gone do you not understand?"
"Listen to your friend, she gets it. This is what takes us down, this is our extinction event."
Leah had had enough of Mister Debbie Downer, "You need to shut the fuck up! Who are you to decide how we live?"
"This isn't right, you can't just keep us here!"
Jenner tried to reason with Carol, "One tiny moment, a millisecond, no pain."
"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!"
Leah was about to lose it, how could this guy look into these kids' faces knowing he was going to kill them, "You may be suicidal, you may have given up. But you sure as hell aren't allowed to take us down with you!"
"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?"
Leah lost it, her fist collided with his face with a satisfying sound of bone breaking, "Not if we can beat the clock you son of a bitch!" Jenner wiped some blood dripping from his nose, staring at her with wide eyes. She shook out her hand and walked towards Daryl and Glenn, just in time too because Shane cocked his shot gun and put it right up to Jenner's face.
"Rick stay out of my way! I'm gonna blow your head off! Do you hear me?!"
"Brother, brother, this is not the way. You do this and we'll never get out of here!"
"Shane, you listen to him!" Lori was standing in front of Carl, shielding him from an armed, livid Shane.
"He dies, we all-," Shane started screaming at the top of his lungs and shot at several computer monitors before Rick could disarm him.
Rick stood over Shane, ready to hit him with the butt of the gun if necessary, "Are you done now? Are you done?"
"Yeah, I guess we all are." Rick ignored him and handed T-Dogg the shotgun, he seemed to be the only one in the room with a level head.
Rick looked around at everyone, they weren't any closer to being let out of the facility, "I think you're lying."
"What?"
"I think you're lying, about no hope. If that were true you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path, why?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It does matter, it always matters. You stayed when others ran, why?"
"Not because I wanted to, I made a promise," Jenner was standing toe-to-toe with Rick now, "to her, my wife."
"Test Subject Nineteen was your wife." Everything was falling into place, the reason Jenner was so flat and emotionless through all of this. He thought there was no hope but he would keep his promise if it was the last thing he did.
"She begged me to keep going as long as I could," Leah turned around to see Daryl chopping at the doors again, he wasn't going down without a fight, "how could I say no? She was dying. It should have been me on that table. It wouldn't have mattered to anybody, she was a loss to the world. She ran this place, I just worked here. In our field, she was an Einstein. Me, I'm just Edwin Jenner. She could have done something about this, not me."
"Your wife didn't have a choice, you do. That's all we want. A choice, a chance."
"Let us keep trying as long as we can," Lori begged, still holding Carl close.
Jenner finally gave in, "I told you, top side is locked down. I can't open those," he went over to a key pad and punched in a code, lowering the doors. Freeing everybody.
"Come on!" Daryl urged.
"Come on everyone! Let's go! We have four minutes!"
Leah started pulling on Glenn and Carl's hands, "Come on guys! Let's move it!"
"Come on Jacqui!"
"No, I'm staying! I'm staying sweetie." Leah froze in her place, staring at the woman she thought of as her second mother.
"That's insane!"
"No, it's completely sane. For the first time in a long time. I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy," Everyone looked at the woman, shock running through all of them, "there's no time to argue, and no point. Not if you want to get out. Just get out." Jacqui shoved T-Dogg, not wanting him to die because of her.
Leah started walking toward Jacqui, she could feel Rick tug on her arm, but she ignored it. She wanted to say goodbye to her friend.
"Jacqui?" Leah was like a deer in the headlights.
"Just go honey," Jacqui placed her hands on either side of Leah's face.
Leah embraced the woman one last time, "Goodbye."
Jacqui broke the hug and looked at her lovingly, urging her to run as fast as she could. Leah felt her heart breaking as she felt Daryl pull her from the woman, "Come on, kiddo. We gotta go."
Leah turned on her heel and started sprinting alongside Daryl, Prince running in front of them. They all stopped in their rooms to grab their things and bolted up the stairs to the entrance.
They got to the entrance, Glenn and T-Dogg slamming into the doors hoping to open them. T-Dogg tried pressing the emergency button on the pad, but to no avail. Daryl and Shane chopped at the glass, barely leaving a scratch. Then T-Dogg tried throwing a chair it, desperate to get out. Leah was dripping sweat, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, she was growing more and more anxious by the second.
"Dogg, get down! Get down!" Shane cocked his shotgun and stood at point blank range, the shells made an indent but the glass didn't shatter.
"The glass won't break?!"
Carol was ruffling through her backpack, "Rick, I have something that might help!"
"Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it," Leah glared at Shane, knowing exactly where Carol was going. "Your first morning at camp, when Leah and I washed your uniform, we found this in your pocket," she held out the hand grenade to Rick.
"Carol, you're a genius!"
"Look out!"
Leah wrapped herself around Prince's body and covering his ears, preparing herself for the explosion. She could feel Daryl wrap his arms around her and Prince, covering her back from the impact. She heard Rick pull the pin, "Oh shi-,"
Leah felt a wave of heat and heard the glass shatter. They were free, they all hopped out the window and bolted for the cars. Leah pulled her handgun out and started shooting every walker she saw, they all started flocking at the sound of the grenade. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Daryl behead one and Shane shooting others.
Leah, Prince, and Daryl hopped into the cab of his truck. Leah froze in place, relief flooding her as she saw two figures emerge from the building, Dale and Andrea. She had never been so happy to see two people before. Lori stuck her head out from the RV to warn the pair running towards them, "Get down! Get down!"
Leah laid down on Prince and Daryl covered Leah, trying to shield themselves as much as possible for what was coming next. Leah heard a deafening explosion, surges of heat coming from the building. The force from the explosion made the car shake, causing her and Daryl to tense up, tightening her grip on Prince.
Leah raised her head, the major duration of the explosion was over. Daryl released her and sat up, both looking at each other as they caught their breath. Prince looked at the remains of the building and whined, knowing that all of them had not made it out.
Daryl started his truck as the caravan started moving, they needed to be as far away from the city as possible now. There was nothing left of the CDC now except for a burning pit, a tower of smoke rising into the air. Leah's ears were still ringing from the detonation, only one face popping into her head, Jacqui. The person that had treated her like a daughter, was gone from this world. Leah was somewhat comforted by the fact that Jacqui was at peace now, she was with Amy and Jim in heaven. Although Leah wondered if there was such a thing anymore.
She pulled Prince into her lap and started thinking of the lyrics to one song.
If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on now
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see.
But if I stayed here with you, girl,
Things just couldn't be the same.
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now,
And this bird you cannot change
She would always remember Jacqui, Amy, and Jim. She would remember everyone she came across in this life.
