Chapter Eleven

Hangovers sucked. That was something that Naomi Grimes found out on the day of her twenty-first birthday.

She was sat in the large dining area with her head in her arms, mirroring exactly her best friend Glenn's positioning. Except maybe for the fact that she wasn't groaning about the sensitivity of her ears as he was. Naomi wasn't even sure how she managed to get out of the couch that was so very comfortable against her skin. She didn't even think that she had drunk that much. It wasn't the first time that Naomi had had a drink but she had never felt that way the next day. T-Dog didn't look affected at all by the night before and was chirpier than ever as he cooked breakfast. He was making it clear that he was having a great time messing with the rest of the group members. Especially talking loudest apparently, that was one of his strong suits to try and annoy the rest of the people. And boy was he going to town with it.

"Eggs!" T-Dog exclaimed, slopping said eggs onto Glenn's plate as he yelled annoyingly into his friends' ears. "Powdered But I make 'em good," He said, leaning over to put some on Naomi's plate.

She couldn't help but groan as the smell hit her nose. It made her eyes water and stomach clench. Naomi had never been that strong of eater of eggs and the smell was just making her un-appetised even though she knew that eating would probably make her feel better.

"I hate you," Glenn moaned at the same time as Naomi tried to be polite and thank him.

Lori, Carl, Dale, Andrea, Glenn, Naomi, T-Dog, Jacquie, Carol and Sophia were all up at the table eating the first breakfast they had that they actually mildly enjoyed. Rick stumbled in, clutching at his head as he sat down at the table, scratching his growing tassels of curly brown hair before looking up at the group, at Carl whose attention was on his mother's inquisitively and then at Naomi who was pale and looking down at her eggs with a glare as she rubbed her temples to drown the throbbing in her head. He couldn't help but grin, what a great twenty-first birthday, he thought to himself. What a way to celebrate it. He wondered whether or not she was going to say anything about her ageing up to the rest of the group so in that moment he remained quiet. He kew that Naomi wasn't the type of person who wanted to have attention on her when it wasn't needed.

"Are you hungover?" That was the first question that came out of Carl's mouth as he looked over at his father expectantly. "Mum said you'd be."

"Mum is right," Rick revealed trying not to smirk down at his son.

"Mum had that annoying habit," Lori mumbled as she looked over at Naomi with a small smug smile on her face. Mother knows best, she thought idly to herself.

As T-Dog served Rick his helping of eggs, he asked Lori where everything came from while indicating for her to help open the child lock off the Tylenol.

"Jenner thought we could use it...some of us at least."

"Don't ever, ever, ever let me drink again," Glenn moaned, feeling the full brunt of his liquor filled night and the pressure of being in the same room as everyone else when they were looking fine...well, all except for Naomi of course. She was in the same position as him in that moment. All that he was worried about was having to deal with one of the worst hangovers that he had ever had.

"Hey," Shane greeted as he walked into the room. They were still waiting on Dixon to enter but knowing him, he wouldn't be in there until everyone else left. Naomi looked up to greet him back but stopped when she saw some angry red scratch marks on his neck. Her eyes lit up in confusion but she didn't say anything to them.

"Hey. You feel as bad as I do?" Rick asked, somewhat perked up from the cup of coffee that he had just impressively sullied. Naomi had never seen anything like it from her father.

Shane paused to reflect on the night before with a dark expression on his face as he stared on at Lori. "Worse."

Shane caught eyes of T-Dog who curiously asked about the two large angry scratch marks on the side of his neck. "Must've done it in my sleep," Was all that he said.

"I've never seen you do anything like that at the station before," Rick said curiously.

"Me neither. It's not something that I usually do," He agreed and even in her hungover state Naomi could see the exchange between Lori and Shane and felt even more turned off of her food than previously.

"Morning," Jenner greeted as he casually strolled into the room breaking the tense and awkward atmosphere that radiated unhealthily around the group. A chorus of greeting came from everyone, most just wanting to get out of the tense situations and others not realising that they started it.

"Doctor I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing in the morning -"

Jenner rolled his eyes. "But you will anyway."

"We didn't come here for the eggs," Andrea's independent voice rang out. Jenner sighed and put down his coffee, turning to face them.

In the main communication room that Jenner led them in to, Jenner didn't say a word to them as he turned his back to them to converse with his computer. "Give me playback of TS-19," Jenner ordered Vi as the others attention shifted to the large screen in enchantment. "Few people ever got a chance to view this. Very few," The screen showed the top x-ray of half a human, their head and shoulder and then layering it from bone structure, blood system and then just a brain.

Carl was looking on in astonishment. "Is that a brain?"

Jenner smiled slightly as he looked down at Naomi's innocent brother. He and his wife had always wanted to start a family but work had always gotten in the way. "And extraordinary one. Not that it matters in the end...take us for an EIV."

"Enhanced Internal View," Vi sounded from the loud speakers. They body spun around, moving closer and closer into the brain until all that they could see was thousands of scattered lights floating around the screen. It was kind of beautiful in a depressing way.

"What are all those lights?" Shane as, just as mystified as the rest of them were.

"It's a persons life. Experiences, memories. It's everything somewhere in all that organic wiring all those ripples of light, is you. The things that make you unique and human."

"You don't make sense...ever?" Daryl asked making Naomi smirk slightly and lean back on a desk, getting ready for a lecture. That was the one thing that she didn't miss about her old life was the college component. Naomi knew that pretty much anything that he would say in that room she wouldn't understand, especially because she was extremely hungover.

"Those synapses. Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death."

"Death?" Rick asked, walking forward, his eyes still attached to the screen. "That's what this is, a vigil?"

"Yeah...or, or rather the playback of the vigil."

"This person died. Who?" Andrea asked, she too, creeping forward a bit, Naomi was lost in the swirling lights, words that had just been said floating around but didn't quite process in her mind. All she could hear was blinding hot ringing.

"Test subject nineteen. Someone who was bitten and infected and volunteered to have us record the process...Vi, scan forward to the first event."

The virtual camera then started to show the beautiful blue streaks of light get taken down by black lights that ran through like tree branches. Naomi guessed that that was death taking its course on the body. That was not something that they should be showing Carl and Sophia. They wouldn't even show something like that in a high school science class. Well, her morning just became even more depressing than it started out to be.

"What is that?"

It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands haemorrhage, the brain goes into shut down and the major organs...then death. Everything you ever were or will be...gone."

"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia's mousy voice asked her mother as everyone began to think back to the night that camp fell and heaps of people died and went though the same process as the test subject had. Just a friendly scientific reminder that no one was safe from the walkers.

"Yes."

"Scan to the second event," Jenner told Vi after comforting a crying Andrea weakly. She was obviously thinking about her sister as she saw what had happened internally to her sister. "The resurrection time vary wildly. We have reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours and the case of this patient was two hours, one minute, seven seconds."

Naomi looked at the board horrified when she saw bits of red speckle through the pitch black brain. "It restarts the brain?"

Jenner shook his head. "No. Just the brain stem. Basically it gets them up and moving."

"But they're not alive."

"You tell me," Jenner challenged, indicating to the screen.

Naomi bit her lip as she pointed to the screen, feeling like she was being tested back in school. "It's nothing like before. Most of the brain is dark."

"Dark. Lifeless. Dead. The frontal lobes, the human part. That doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct," As the body began to move, going into walker mode and then suddenly a flash of light and a bullet had torn through the skull, ending the suffering of whoever the person was.

Carol gasped, terrified. "God, what was that?: She asked, the hand around her daughter tightening instinctively.

"He shot his patient in the head. Didn't you?" Andrea threw back bluntly.

Instead of answering what most already knew, Jenner started ordering Vi around again. "Turn off the screen and the workstations."

"Powering down main screen and work stations." Vi repeated completing the actions that it was told to do effortlessly until there were hardly any lights on in the room. There was only that stupid clock that seemed to be counting down from the last time she looked at it. If she was to be stood corrected, but actual clocks counted up, not down so it must be for something else. But what was it counting down to? What else was going to happen?

"You have no idea what it is do you?" Andrea remarked, drawing Naomi's attention back to Jenner who was looking down at the ground as if thinking of what to say.

"It could be mircobial, viral. prophetic, fungal -"

"Or the wrath of God?" Dale asked.

"There's that."

"Somebody must know something. Somebody somewhere. There are other right? Other facilities?"

"There may be some people like me."

"You don't know. How can you not know?" Rick asked with wide eyes. He was looking between his family and Jenner with his hands on his hips.

"They're wiped out. Communications, transmissions. I've been in the dark for almost a month."

"So it's not just here. There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing. That's what you're really saying right?" When Naomi received no answer, she gasped and blinked furiously to try and keep her disappointment at bay. "Oh Jesus Christ."

"Oh man I'm going to get shiftfaced drunk...again," Daryl complained as he sulked off, scrubbing at his face with his calloused hands. It seemed that everyone was looking on in disbelief.

"Doctor Jenner. I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask you one more question. But that clock...it's counting down. What happens at zero?" Dale asked, voicing the question that Naomi was just previously thinking to herself. Well at least she wasn't the only one thinking about what might happen when the clock stopped counting.

Jenner shrugged. "The basement generators, they run out of fuel," He said simply but it was obvious that he was hiding something.

Naomi, annoyed, turned to Shane. The one who wanted all of the answers in the first place, who was just standing there and crossed her arms in front of her chest with a stern look on her face. The action reminded him of the exact same thing that Lori did all the time. Like mother, like daughter he supposed.

"You wanted answers and now you've got 'em," She said before spinning on her heel and making her way back to her room. She was finished sitting around and listening to depressing news that told her basically nothing about how the new world was like. She was sick of hearing Jenner lie.

Glenn had joined her a few minutes later. Puffing and claiming that they had gone done to investigate the basement and found that an emergency generator had been turned on and that there were gallons of empty fuel containers that were once full and running the building. Naomi, who had calmed down considerably since Jenner's life and death explanation, was worried by the fact that the air conditioning had just stopped a few minutes prior. Before either could say or do anything, the lights turned out, leaving them in darkness. Grabbing a hold of Naomi's hand, he instinctively pulled her towards the door, the two slipping out of the room and looking at Jenner inquisitively as the others began to ask questions.

"Energy is being prioritised," Was all that Jenner had to offer.

Dale scrunched up his nose at the lack of answers and followed after him, the others doing the same. "Air isn't a priority? And light?"

"It's not up to me," He said, swigging from a bottle. "Zone Five is shutting itself down," He sipped again on the bottle.

"Hey. What the hell does that mean?" Daryl asked, following after him and trying to get some answers for everyone. "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 said with a scoff.

"Jenner. What's happening?" Rick asked, approaching the man. He wasn't quite sure what was going to happen but he knew that it wasn't going to end well.

"The system is dropping all the non-essential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computer running until the last possible second. We just approached the half hour mark. Right on schedule," He took another swig before handing it to Daryl who angrily took it from his grasp. "It was the French."

"What?" Andrea asked, moving forward, her arms crossed over her chest.

"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know. While people were bolting out the doors or committing suicide in the hallway, they stayed in the labs until the end. They thought they were close to a solution."

"What happened to them?"

Jenner shrugged. "Same thing that happened here. The power gird...ran out of juice. The world runs on fossil fuel I mean how stupid is that?"

"Let me tell you something -"

"The hell with this Shane, I don't even care. Lori grab out things, everyone we're getting out of here now!" Rick yelled and as everyone began to move to grab their things, a long, high pitched beeping stopped everyone from going any further and the main screen broadcasted a timer counting down from thirty minutes. Everyone began to panic and Shane urged them on, yelling to grab their stuff so they could get the hell out of there and away from the crazy scientist who seemed unnervingly calmed by their panic.

Running, the group was once again stopped, this time by Jenner who had intentionally closed the door.

Glenn's terrified dark eyes widened, it was becoming evident that everyone locked in the room was losing their shit. "Did he just lock us in? He just locked us in!"

Shit began to hit the fan as Daryl tried to take Jenner down, only to be stopped by T-Dog and Shane who knew that the only way that they were going to get our would be through him. Jenner was the key.

"Jenner you open that door right now!" Rick hissed in a low voice, Naomi had never heard a sound that threatening before in her life from her father. He had never sounded that desperate either.

"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down, the emergency exits are sealed."

"Well open the damn thing."

The scientist shook his head. "That's not something I can control. The computers do. I told you. Once that front door closed it wouldn't open again you heard me say that. It's better this way -"

"What is? What happens in twenty-eight minutes?"

Receiving no answer, a furious Shane aggregately kicked a chair close Jenner and it went flying on its wheels. "What happens?"

"Do you know what this place is?" Jenner exploded, throwing his hands out. "We protected the public from very nasty stuff. Weaponised smallpox. Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country. Stuff that you don't want getting out. Ever!" Jenner took a minute to calm down before sitting down at his desk chair before starting again in a much calmer tone. "In an event of a catastrophic power failure, a terrorist attack for example. HIT's are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

Rick stepped forward now slightly confused but still angry and scared. "HIT's?"

Jenner sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose and looking up at the ceilings. "Vi define."

"HIT's: High Impulse Thermo fuel air explosives, that consist of a two stage aerosol that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other explosive except nuclear. The pressure affects the oxygen between five thousand and six thousand degrees useful where the greatest laws of life and extra structures don't apply."

"It sets the air on fire," Naomi sobbed into her father's shoulder, her arms around her mother's skinny torso and her brother's nimble shoulders. She did not want to die because some crazy scientist has locked them all in to burn when the building explodes. That was not his decision to make. She would rather try before giving up.

"Help me. An end to pain, regret...everything," Jenner whispered.

All hell was really breaking loose. Daryl was throwing the bottle at the closed door which did nothing but make the floor slippery and sticky. Shane and Daryl trying to open the doors with identical axes that did not make a dent in the metal. Naomi had tears creating trails down her cheeks. Lori was hugging Carl to her chest as Rick and Dale tried to convince Jenner to open the doors and let them back out so they could continue on with their lives and try to live in the new world. That they deserved to have a chance. That it wasn't his choice.

"Hey...Naomi," Glenn said gently while touching her shoulder. He too, had tears in his eyes. They just couldn't seem to catch a break. And she turned around, seeking his embrace where she started to sob. With the way that things were looking they weren't going to get out of there. There was so much that she wanted to do and learn and it was getting cut short by the crazy and selfish scientist. The feeling of hopelessness was starting to seep into her mind which made her cry harder.

Glenn pulled her closer. "Hey, hey," He whispered into her ear trying to make her feel better even though he wasn't feeling too good about the situation himself.

"We're going to die in here...he's not going to let us out," She sobbed.

"Shh, shh," He hushed her, running her back as he led her towards the chair. "We're gonna get out of here. I promise you," He said and once she was sitting down he stormed off over to Daryl and T-Dog even more determined to get out of there alive.

Carl ran over to Naomi, sitting in her lap while their parents debated with Jenner to get him to open the doors. The time was beginning to slip away, along with Naomi's patience and was beginning to believe that they weren't going to make it out alive. While she was trying to distract Carl, her parents must of done something to change the scientists mind because he opened the doors. They made a detour to grab their bags before trying to open the last strong glass windows and doors they knew that it would be a challenge to open with a few minutes on the clock before the building blew up. So far, Jacquie, Andrea and Dale were still staying in the building.
Surprisingly, Carol pulled out a grenade and Naomi had no idea where she got it from but it was really helping nonetheless. The window smashed into a million pieces and they wasted no time in climbing out over broken glass and running to the cars. Just before they were about to drive away and leave the horrible area, Andrea and Dale climbed out of the window, halting their movements. Glenn, knowing that they had run out of time, he gently and quickly pushed his best friend Naomi to the floor of the RV to shield themselves from the blast that was inevitably going to come.

"We made it," Naomi breathed, as he stood up to look at the fireball that was once the CDC.

Glenn smiled in relief and grabbed her hand. "Yeah...we did."

Authors Note:
Hey guys! This is officially the last chapter of season one! I hope you like this chapter.

Thank you for reviewing, favouriting/following. All of you support keeps me working to rewrite a story better than last one.
Thank you for reading and have a great day!