Disclaimer: I don't own The Walking Dead.

A/N: Had to do some transcript copying for this one. It killed me a little inside, but thankfully we can move on from the CDC after this, cause I can't wait to write the highway part. Thanks to those who too the time to review! Keep doing it!

Gimme Danger

Chapter 38: No Way Out

The shit had officially hit the fan.

In a matter of seconds, everyone had emerged from their rooms and were hot on Jenner's heels, Daryl leading the pack, demanding answers. It was amazing how frantic everything had gotten, after such a nice, relaxed morning. But once that unsettling feeling had risen, they should've known it would only escalate. That's just how things seemed to work now. "Zone five is shutting itself down."

Jenner's elusive answers to the questions regarding why a building was taking the liberty of shutting off without any command to do so weren't winning him any fans or doing him any favors at the moment. It was his offshoot revelation that the French were the last he knew of that were still working on curing the virus that stirred up an air of betrayal around the man. "He's trying to distract us. What's going on?" Roxy brought to attention, a sudden accusatory essence directed at Jenner. There were things he was outright avoiding answering, which made everyone even further on edge.

And Rick had enough of it, deciding now was the time to get out of here, and they would all follow his lead, regardless of what answers Jenner was willing to volunteer from this point on. Nothing he said would ever make this feeling of unrest dissipate after this; the cop could see the looks of panic from everyone he'd brought here. Jenner said this was all right on schedule. All that translated to them was that he knew this was going to happen, and had withheld it from them.

Shane had been ready to settle things with the doctor physically before Rick intervened, and demanded everyone get their things so they could leave. There might not be time to sort Jenner out, and Rick didn't want to risk it. But no one got far before an alarm began blaring through the facility. The computer warned, "Thirty minutes to decontamination."

Decontamination didn't sound good.

"Everybody, ya'll heard Rick," Shane reminded them as everyone seemed to pause in fear and anticipation, the unsettling feeling growing with every wave of sound that alarm sent off. "Get yer stuff and let's go! Go now! Go!"

"Come on!" Glenn called to Roxy, pulling her by her forearm. She looked back at Daryl to make sure he was coming too, but it seemed everyone was on the same page, ready to grab what they could and bail. Fuck this place.

Jenner pressed a button and the clanging of a large, steel doorway coming closed echoed through the room, stopping everyone in their tracks.

"No… Did you just lock us in? He just locked us in!" Glenn shouted, everyone coming back, the kids crying for their mothers and a pulsing panic throbbing throughout the room. It felt so surreal; Roxy was almost convinced it was a nightmare.

Daryl charged forward, rage in his eyes, over to an unaware Jenner as he logged into the computer, ignoring the rise of unsettling feelings everyone was having. Grabbing a nearby handle of liquor, the redneck made a b-line foe Jenner. "You son of a bitch!" he snarled, wielding the bottle and aggressively approaching Jenner while Rick shouted for Shane to intercept the situation and hold Daryl back.

The only thing that saved Jenner's life right then was Shane and T, who physically restrained the intoxicated hunter, and Roxy pulling him back by his arm as he wound down against the cop. Defeated, Daryl pushed away from Shane and turned to the girl, wondering why the hell they couldn't go back ten minutes in time and just stay there, while she watched Jenner breathe a sigh of relief, blinking away the recent and abrupt fear of Daryl's wrath.

"Hey, Jenner, open that door now," Rick asserted, having seen enough of everyone's wild attempts. This wasn't a game. It was time to part ways, and leave this place in the dust. There was too much at stake to be messing around with some guy they obviously couldn't trust.

"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed." What was he saying? That they couldn't leave? Roxy didn't buy that there was no way out. There was always a way out.

"Well, open the damn things," Dale answered, obviously. Why couldn't he just open them? Just let them out? What did it matter?

"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!" Jenner tried to reason with them. He just wanted to make them see. He was giving them their best choice. "It's better this way."

"What is?" Rick asked incredulously. They hadn't gotten their answer yet. The main question they'd all had a meltdown over before even knowing the details. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes?" Again, dodging the question, Jenner, turned back to the computer, beginning to type furiously. "What happens in twenty eight minutes?!" Rick shouted this time, ensuring that Jenner paid full attention by grabbing his collar.

Pushed to his limit by the pressure his guests were putting on him to answer questions he knew they couldn't handle the answers to, Jenner snapped. "You know what this place is?! We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" He calmed and began speaking instead of yelling. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure... in a terrorist attack, for example...H.I.T.s are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

"H.I.T.s?" Rick asked what everyone else was wondering. It was a foreign language to them, what Jener was saying.

"Vi, define," Jenner called out, feeling exhausted. The fired up tension and emotions had drained him of energy he didn't even know he still had.

They listened to the computer decode the acronym, phrases like 'fuel-air explosives' and 'used when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired' forcing them to grip the reality of the situation at hand. The children had started sobbing, Roxy nearby Sophia and Carol as the mother hugged her child tightly, the fear emitting from them both making Roxy's own body quiver from adrenaline she couldn't control. Her back hit the wall, and she slid to the floor, her head feeling dizzy and legs unstable. Anxiety welled within her as she pressed her hands to the sides of her head.

"It sets the air on fire. No pain." Jenner said it in an almost peaceful way, a serene, wonton look on his face. "An end to sorrow, grief…regret. Everything."

Roxy's jaw dropped while tears stung her eyes. "This guys gonna fucking incinerate us?!" She looked expectantly from Daryl to Shane, then to Rick, dread shooting like lightning through her every nerve. This was it? This is what happened to them? After everything they'd made it through, this would be the thing that ended up killing them, just like that, all because they trusted this man?

The weeping sounds of the women and children started to fill the area, the men not knowing what exactly they could do to fix this situation. How could they get out of this?

"Open the damn door!" Daryl shouted, smashing the bottle he'd been threatening Jenner with into the gateway blockade. Daryl looked at Roxy. At the kids. This wasn't right. They didn't wanna just give up, not even fight to survive. None of them did.

"Out of my way!" Shane suddenly warned, charging at the door with an axe. T threw one up to Daryl, who joined Shane in trying, futilely to break down the barrier.

All Roxy could focus on was watching Sophia and Carol cry in each others' arms. She was lost, blacked out to what Rick was saying, what Daryl was doing until she heard Jenner say a name that sent chills up Roxy's spine."Amy." He looked right into Andrea's eyes as he brought her sister into it, and this flared up Roxy's energy, the girl jumping to her feet from where she'd collapsed against the wall with everyone else.

"Don't talk to her about Amy!" Roxy interjected; offended he would bring the subject up.

He glanced dismissively at her and instead continued to try and get through to Andrea, the one he knew would understand the easiest. She'd experienced what it was like to lose the only thing you had left to those monsters. "You know what this does. You've seen it." Then he looked back at Rick. "Is that really what you want for your wife and son?" He'd shown them his wife, what had happened, what would inevitably have to happen to all of them.

Rick almost choked on his words, and Roxy wasn't sure if it was because of the stress of the scenario or the suppression to kill the man sitting before them. "I don't want this!"

"Can't make a dent," Shane admitted, delivering the bad news. They'd given it all they had, him and Daryl, nothing even chipped. They really were stuck in here.

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher." Jenner revealed, as though they should've expected such. And maybe they should've. It didn't infuriate Daryl any less.

"Well, yer head ain't!" Daryl had become belligerent. If this meant their survival, he'd beat a way out of Jenner. Daryl swung his axe back as he came closer to the doctor, a scream leaving Roxy's lips as she closed her eyes, really expecting Daryl to strike the man with the weapon, but he was restrained successfully by Rick, Dale, T and Shane this time.

"You do want this. Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead." Roxy didn't know what Jenner ways playing at, but she didn't like it. It was sneaky, and quite honestly, anything anyone said last night after they'd all drank whatever they could get their hands on, shouldn't be held accountable for the seriousness of the subject matter. And no man should be calling the other out on it in front of their wife and especially their kid during, what very well could be, their last minutes of life.

Everyone's eyes fell on the cop, some hurt, some confused, Roxy's disbelieving, Shane's accusing.

"What? You really said that? After all yer big talk?" Rick had given them all a new kind of hope. His story alone, waking up from a coma, left for dead, finding his surviving wife and son, and saving the ones in the city while he was at it. It was like they'd gotten left here with some kind of messiah to lead them through this. He'd made them feel that way. He'd given them hope.

Rick looked at a loss, unsure of what to say in front of his family, and quite frankly, Roxy thought it was a low, desperate attempt by Jenner bringing it up in the first place like this. Just to make them accept the fate he wanted to decide for them. "I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick pleaded with everyone.

"There is no never was," Jenner morbidly shot down.

"What do you know about it? You've been sitting pretty hiding in here the whole time! Who the hell do you think you are?" Roxy hated the man sitting right in front of her. She wished one of them had killed them. She had half a mind to do it herself, just out of spite if nothing else. He thought he could choose how they left the world. He was forcing them to give up, to roll over and surrender, and he was starting to make Andrea fell like it was a good idea.

"There's always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere..." And with Rick's words, Roxy knew he was right. There had to be something, some chance, somewhere. Who was Edwin Jenner to tell them they couldn't at least attempt to find it?

"What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?" Andrea's bitter interjection startled everyone, and killed what little fuel for hope Rick had began re-igniting.

"Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event." The words echoed in Roxy's mind, and everyone else's, stapling the punch line to the chaotic joke the gods seemed to have deemed the planet worthy of. This is what was left of 'help'. Well Roxy knew firsthand what it felt like to have no help; you help your damn self.

The way Jenner tried to reason with Carol as she cried for her daughter's life had flames flickering in the eyes of Roxy, which Glenn noticed from across the way, his attention focused to her, watching and waiting, wondering what she was going to do. She'd been known as one of the rowdier girls where she worked, prone to fighting and liquored outbursts. It came from her old life of entitlement; she expected to be able to get away with things. It was an oddly endearing quality.

But the sound of a gun cocking brought everyone to Shane, who was coming forward, weapon in hand, aiming it right between the good doctor's eyes, staring down the barrel at him from above. This is what should've been done to begin with. "Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. Do you hear me?!"

Rick talked him down, reminding him this wasn't how they were supposed to do things. They were cops, after all. But Shane had almost lost sight, bellowing out a feral yell of pure rage, Shane charged Jenner before Rick calmed him enough to back him off. "Are you done now? Are you done?"

"Yeah, I guess we all are," Shane sneered, out of ideas and sick of being told his weren't good enough, or ethical enough.

"So… so what? This is it? We just sit here and let him tell us we can't get out? Like some stupid suicide cult? No!" Roxy asserted herself, not buying it. There was always a way out.

She was too fast for any of them to catch as she rushed over to what looked to be the area Jenner had pressed the buttons to lock the door with earlier, using a millisecond to take in the array of unfamiliar controls and basing, on looks alone, her decision to push a few of them in order to try and get something to open, anything, by how vital they looked in her opinion.

"Roxy!" Shane warned just before she started pressing her hands across the board, much like a child in an elevator, discoloring them and making them light and flash. Lights flickered and more clanging and whirling sounded throughout the facility. "One of these has to open it!"

"Roxy no! We don't know what that stuff does!" Glenn warned as he made his way for her, but Daryl was already halfway there, having enough sense to realize she had no idea what she was pressing, and in reality could make everything worse for them. Jenner was right; this place didn't fuck around. Who knew what the internal clockwork of this building was capable of?

But to her it was a last resort; they were all dead anyway. What did it matter what the buttons did?

"No! One of them opens the doors. There has to be a way!" Roxy cried out desperately as Jenner went to grab at her to push her away, Daryl reaching her at that point, quickly interjecting before he even placed a finger on her.

"Don't put yer damn hands on her!" the hunter warned the doctor dangerously before Daryl himself pulled her back around her middle, the girl trying to squirm away and reach the controls again. He trusted himself not to hurt her or be rough, and he also trusted himself to be able to keep her under control.

She put up more of a fuss than he'd anticipated though, kicking and reaching, twisting her body around to try and wedge her way out of his grasp. She could slither around like a snake thanks to her previous occupation, and she managed to slam her hands on a few more controls before he yanked her way out of reach.

"Stop! Yer gonna kill us!" Daryl insisted, aware she was past the point of reason and was probably just blackout crazy trying to do anything to get out of this. None of them wanted to be lit on fire, no matter how painless and forgiving it may be compared to out in the world now. At least out there they had a chance. "Stop!"

He was surprised that she was actually really strong, and he had to pull back and clasp his arms to restrain her, holding her tight against him to still her the best he could, before she became so upset and frustrated by the fact she couldn't overpower him she just collapsed and cried, limp and shuddering in his grasp still. "I wanna leave now. Can't we just go?" she whimpered at him, like the previous option that had come up between them privately was still on the table. Listening to her beg like that was too much for him, on top of it all. It made his stomach sink even lower than it already had.

Bringing her over to where Glenn was near Carol and Sophia, Daryl became overwhelmed with the heavy aura of the terror vibing off these people, he handed Roxy over to Glenn who pulled her close to his side, looking more worried than Daryl had ever noticed, to the point where sweat was brimming on his forehead.

Daryl looked away form them before he went back to the door and started pounding on it with the axe again, Roxy watching him as he tried hopelessly to find a way for them to escape. He'd try till his last breath to survive. Rick was having words with Jenner, but all Roxy could hear was the failing sounds of Daryl's efforts, echoing over everything else.

With every clang he made she expected something to happen, the door to suddenly burst open and let them through, but no. He paused in his actions, looking back at them for a second, making the mistake of eye contact with the blonde, her pained expression sending another burst of energy through him as he began working on the door once more.

At least it would be quick. At least she had her best friend here, and Daryl. At least she wasn't alone, and scared, all by herself, running from walkers. Just when she was accepting the idea of impending death…

The door opened.

She didn't waste a second jumping to her feet and running for Daryl, who waited till she reached him before leading her down the hallways as fast as he could. They were getting out of here. And they only had a short amount of time to do it.

"Wait, they stopped," she protested, noticing the rest of the group had paused in their retreat.

"They'll come, jus' keep goin'," he ordered, , snatching her wrist to make sure she didn't stop and turn back.

"But, Glenn—" She couldn't leave him behind.

"He'll come," Daryl insisted. Didn't she understand that they couldn't stop? They needed to grab their stuff and go as fast as they could. He would make sure they did.

Pushing her towards the room she left her things in he instructed her to get her stuff. Daryl was still all packed up, so he just grabbed his things and went back for her, finding her shoving unpacked items into her bag. He grabbed a few things he noticed she still had out and stuffed them in his own to make things faster. "C'mon we gotta go," he told her. They heard voices and bodies bypassing the room. The others had made it not far behind them, Daryl leading the way once again.

But when they got to topside, everything was still sealed. Right on their tails, the rest of the group made it seconds after Daryl and Roxy had found their best shot at escaping. There were glass windows, huge and the only thing keeping them trapped inside the CDC. Shane and Daryl both tried to break the glass with weapons. Nothing. Then the guys just used whatever they could find, including a chair, when the standards didn't work. Shane even shot the glass. It didn't make a dent.

Jenner hadn't lied. They really were locked in here.

They'd been given hope only to have it ripped away. And just as panic was about to settle once more, just as Roxy had noticed Andrea, Dale and Jacqui were all missing, another ray of hope suddenly distracted them.

And they all watched in complete astonishment as Carol saved them.

She handed Rick a grenade, their best chance at breaking the impenetrable glass. "C'mon, git down," Daryl instructed Roxy, pushing her towards the ground, He ducked over her, using his body to shelter most of hers, sinking them both so flat into the ground that Roxy's stomach pressed against the cold floor where her shirt had ridden up.

Rick pulled the pin and left the small explosive near one of the windows, running to duck for cover himself, the wave of relief the sound of shattering glass brought to them combining with the fear of being enclosed with a live grenade putting a kick in their step as they all got up and hightailed it through a mine of bodies, Shane and Daryl clearing the way to the vehicles. A walker ran up on ROxy and Daryl, but he aggressively took it's head off, glad to let out a little rage on the geek since he hadn't been able to let it out on Jenner.

Glenn had the keys to the RV now, and Roxy planned to leave how she'd arrived, jumping into Daryl's truck with him breathing down her neck, prodding her along with words that encouraged her to pick up her pace and continue moving no matter what.

When he was in the truck and the doors were both shut, she felt like she could breathe again. She closed her eyes for a second and took a deep breath to steady her thundering heart. And when she opened them to look outside again, she saw two figured emerging from the window they'd all just climbed through to escape. "Is that Dale and Andrea?" she asked, though it was clearly them, bringing Daryl's attention to the pair.

"Guess they changed their minds." But the moment of ease was interrupted by the realization that time had run out, and the place was about to blow. And they were all still very, very close.

"Shit," Daryl cussed, having the same revelation before he pulled her close to his side of the vehicle and then shoved her low onto the seat, once again shielding her body with his.

The small cries of panic Roxy couldn't control made Daryl hold her tighter, flush against him, as close as they could possibly get. She gripped his forearms back even tighter than he squeezed her as the heat and vibration from the eruption rocked the truck. Tears poured out from Roxy's closed eyes, and just as quickly as it had happened, it was over.

Taking a second to be sure it was clear, Daryl sat up, slowly letting her go, and she did the same, sounding like she might be hyperventilating just a little, her breath quick, wheezing and short as she tentatively sat back up.

Silently, they watched the wreckage, the smoking inferno that was once the CDC, a place they thought they'd found security from this hell. But a sign of good faith emerged as Dale and Andrea rose from their coverage, rushing to get into the RV.

Letting her head fall back, Roxy stayed close to the middle of the bench seat, closing her eyes as Daryl started the truck. She let her head fall to the side, landing on Daryl's shoulder, who glanced at her from the side of his eyes, continuing to drive in silence, unconsciously leaning ever so slightly to the right so she could nestle her head at a more comfortable level on him as he drove them safely away from the only place that had any chance at saving them all.