7/28/15 17:59 GMT

Deptford, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

"SatNav says, it's in the next valley. Three klicks, as the crow flies." Daryl announced to the group, having briefly taken over navigational duties from Rick.

Rick wasn't foolish enough to feel relief at the Lance Corporal's words but they gave him a small degree of satisfaction. They were almost there. As they had moved further inland and away from the city-proper, the terrain had begun to live up to its name, presenting them increasing numbers of rolling, chartreuse hills and umber dales. At the same time, the local population, as signified by shambling, near torpid bodies that proved relatively easy to evade, seemed to decrease. It was true, the Highlands were quiet. Although that seemed to be more a function of its smaller population than some sort of imperviousness to the disease. In fact, the only visible evidence that anything had changed at all was the near staggering number of dead animals that littered the lawns, fields and small winding lanes that dotted and crisscrossed the countryside.

Not eaten but bitten and sometimes eviscerated, the animals– as large as livestock and as small as wild hares– bore witness to the new savagery that had taken over. "Bunny Homicide", Daryl had jokingly called it when they encountered that first rabbit. By the tenth, however, they had all fallen silent, cognizant that it wasn't only animals that were meeting that particular grizzly fate.

As if illustrating that, coming upon a small dairy farm, Rick had spied the leg of a teddy bear and a pint-sized pair of pale hands jutting out from beneath the family Land Rover. He and Dixon were, unfortunately, unable to distract Carol enough to miss seeing it. After Rick dispatched the little thing, 'Young children are not of sufficient size to sustain the virus', was all the explanation Milton had offered them and all the conversation on the topic any of them could abide. Still, the incident angered Rick. He felt strongly that Carol, as the mother of a presumably dead child, should not have been forced to see something like that. But as with everything now, he'd been powerless to prevent it.

Like anyone else, Rick knew of such things as 'widows' and 'orphans', but what did you even call a parent that had lost a child? It seemed there should be a name for that, he thought to himself. And the very fact that there wasn't one seemed less a failure of language and more proof-positive that even natural law found that situation abhorrent.

Even a half hour later, Rick was still thinking about it as they moved through the desolate landscape. Luckily, they had been gifted with another torrential downpour in the early evening that helped to keep things blessedly uneventful. It gave his mind time to wander to things like that and continued thoughts of Carl and Judith. After the rain, the sun hung low in the sky, as it came on six o'clock, making only brief appearances behind tall, billowy, dark gray nimbus stormclouds that filled the sky.

Unfortunately, the rainstorm also meant that what should have been a two-hour walk stretched toward four-plus hours of muddy drudgery. And though his constant complaining hadn't helped things, Rick couldn't lay the blame for the interminably miserable journey entirely at Dr. Mamet's feet. He was forced to admit that he had lost a step or two due to the injuries he'd sustained on the plane as well as just general fatigue.

"We okay, Doctor?" Rick chose that moment to check in with Mamet. The man had seemed to get more agitated as the trip progressed, muttering to himself and pawing at his face with increasing frequency.

Milton looked at Rick with surprise to find him there, as if they hadn't been walking side by side for the better part of three hours.

"W-what?"

"I asked if you were okay? Do you need anything? We can't stop yet but do you need a granola bar or some water, anything?" Rick pulled a small extra bottle of water that he had out of his pack and extended it to the doctor.

"NO!" Mamet nearly bellowed, taking Rick aback. "No, no, I'm fine." He collected himself quickly.

"I-I'm fine. I don't want anything."

Rick looked at the doctor's face more carefully, in a way he hadn't in hours. Milton spoke between clenched teeth, which was hardly a surprise. His face was puffy and swollen, bound tightly beneath his bandages. But now vivid, purple veins webbed across his cheek, extending in small windy tributaries up from his wound into his hairline and down onto his neck. His eyes were bloodshot, with a completely blown capillary in the eye above his injury. In that eye, his iris swam in a field of red behind his haphazardly-repaired glasses.

"You sure, Doc?" Carol added right then, seeing perhaps what Rick did.

She had been judiciously keeping a relative distance since he was bitten, but in that moment Carol approached the doctor and tenderly placed the back of her hand to his forehead.

"Milt, you're burning up." She said to him but locked eyes with Rick.

The implication was clear. He was beginning to turn.


It took another fifty minutes to make it over and down the tall hill separating them from the little unassuming village in the valley. Charming, nearly identical houses dotted the hillside and the vale below. Set out like a giant timber-clad nautilus, houses and buildings were arranged along a collection of ever-circling lanes, dead-ending into quaint cul-de-sacs and spinning outward. The town itself looked to be a minor feat of highly aesthetic engineering. And to look at it, walking through a picturesque field of heather onto the main road, you would never have guessed some of the most deadly diseases known to mankind sat frozen, in small vials secreted away somewhere among them.

Rick wondered for a moment why that was. Why they kept such dangers in remote, nondescript hamlets like this one and the one near Karengera? But just as quickly he realized the havoc a runaway contagion could wreak in a more populous place. Hadn't he just seen it with his own eyes in the second great burning of Atlanta? Threats such as these had to be kept as far away from urban areas as possible...and this tiny community with its cow pastures, fishmonger and village bingo hall certainly fit the bill. He wondered how many of this town's denizens understood quite what the trade-off was for such seemingly idyllic living.

"Look!" Milton exclaimed suddenly, pointing out something that Rick and the others had already clocked as soon as they set foot in town.

There were living, healthy people here.

"Put your hand down," Carol said under her breath, exactly as one might to a child. "Stop pointing."

Milton dropped his arm immediately, chastened.

But he was correct. The townspeople only made themselves known by curtains that seemed sway on their own and door bolts that fastened audibly as Rick's group passed by, in shades that moved down and glimpses of faces that disappeared from view as soon as you turned to see them. Somehow, it seemed, the village was untouched, which Rick found particularly ironic, given what it played host to.

"I wonder how that is?" Mamet began muttering to himself again. Something he was doing with increasing frequency.

Daryl exchanged a look with Carol that Rick caught. They were thinking the same thing he was. The doctor's transformation seemed to be progressing faster than Dr. Maitland's had, inexplicably. The fact that they still couldn't accurately account for how long the turn took, between seconds and hours aggravated Rick...and sent his mind, again, to his kids on a ship virtually alone.

The group turned off the deserted main road and cut through a small Anglican churchyard to the fenced-in, midsized industrial park along the far side. Still, they remained unaccosted by anything besides a stray calico cat that followed them at a distance.

"He's a survivor." Rick noted amused.

"It's probably been a few days since he's been fed." Daryl said leaving a piece of a sandwich from his pack on the side of the road.

"Lazy thing," Carol remarked, shifting her large gun from one shoulder to the other. "He better redevelop a taste for mice."

She still gave a rare genuine smile as she watched the small animal begin to slowly follow behind Dixon particularly. "Aww, D looks like you started another love affair you won't know how to end."

Daryl looked up at her then and frowned tipping his head toward Rick and Milton.

"Head's up. We're here." Rick announced rather redundantly instead of trying to decipher the exchange he'd just witnessed.

Carol's smile fell from her face and she turned back toward the direction they were headed. The cat did similarly turning off from them and scampering away as they scaled the chest-high chain link fence to get inside.

A large modernist structure loomed in front of them as they moved through the expansive carpark. At full capacity, the parking lot seemed to indicate that the entire town was employed here...and then some. A cluster of smaller structures surrounded a main office building made up of three stories of concrete, sleek glass and shiny steel. The main building itself lay separate, behind an eight-foot high concrete security fence. They walked up to it, then along the perimeter until they came upon the gate at the entrance. The World Health Organization plaque sat above a touchtone keypad. Rick looked around and hefted his sack further on his back before stepping forward to press the call button.

A moment later, the heavy metal gate buzzed open. Rick looked at his companions and saw the identical thought rattle through their brains.

That's it?


Rick took the lead through an ornate copper and stone sculpture garden in the courtyard at the front of the building. A large bowl-shaped fountain that resembled some sort of futurist cradle still overflowed with water as they walked into the empty atrium of the building. Their footfalls resounded, bouncing off the pale travertine walls and floor. Rick stopped to look around the expansive space. Someone had let them in so someone had to be there but it seemed entirely sterile and abandoned anyway.

Daryl dipped his hands in the shallow fountain then rubbed and inspected his fingers as if he suspected it was filled with something other than water.

"So, where's our welcome wagon?" Carol asked looking around.

"We're up on the third floor," The answer came through the public address system with the voice of a woman. "I'll meet you on the mezzanine level."

Dixon sighed as they moved toward the stairs following the voice.

"It's like every asshole on the planet suddenly turned into the Wizard of-muthafuckin'-Oz," He grumbled.

Rick and Carol both snorted involuntarily while Milton remained increasingly in his own world.

"Captain Grimes?" The voice asked overhead.

"Here." Rick waved his hand simply as they cleared the first set of steps toward the Mezzanine to identify himself.

A lone figure, a woman, stood there patiently, hands clasped behind her back, waiting along the railing overlooking the atrium. The whole experience was eerily similar to the USAMRIID site, except in every way that counted. Though she was alone to meet the group as Scott had been, there was no trace of the fear in her that had radiated off the nurse. Then there was the fact that she looked like she worked at a library not a medical facility.

She had short, shaggy, chestnut brown curls that fell into her huge eyes of an identical color. A shock of freckles dotted her honey-brown face making her almost childlike in her attractiveness as she stood in her floor-length skirt and tan cashmere twinset. Even the offices themselves had none of the austere utility of the Army site, with its soft ecru, sage and calming periwinkle blue color scheme. In that moment, it felt like a place Rick had been to a million times before, even though he'd never set foot in the building before.

Rick walked straight to her. It all suddenly seemed almost mundanely routine. As if he were the UPS man with her Amazon Prime delivery and not a man carrying the vital piece of a crucial puzzle with him.

"Captain Grimes?" She said again extending her hand for him to shake formally. It seemed absurd but he did it anyway.

"And you are?"

"Dr. O'Hare, but call me Ruth." Her Irish brogue provided her high-pitched voice needed gravity.

Rick introduced them all and he watched as Ruth inspected Dr. Mamet closely while simultaneously exchanging greetings with everyone else. Her eyes remained on him even as she shook hands with Carol and Daryl. Rick watched as the smile strained on her face as she spoke with him after.

"Dr. Mamet, it's an honor to meet you. I actually attended a Society of Epidemiologic Research conference in Minnesota four years ago where you gave the keynote." Ruth tried to catch his attention, which seemed to wander away from her mid-sentence.

He dragged his hand when it wasn't holding hers across his injured cheek muttering something that ended with "boring statisticians."

She laughed genuinely after straining to hear what he had said. "I'd agree if I wasn't one of those boring statisticians myself."

"Please follow me. We've been waiting for you. Thank you so much for coming all this way." She turned then to lead them further into the building, missing the way Carol rolled her eyes and scoffed at her words.

"As if we just came from across town to bring this," Carol muttered.

"Did you say something?" Ruth turned her head to ask as she moved through the empty office toward an elevator bank in the back.

"Nope," Carol said pleasantly with a brief and entirely fake smile that disappeared as soon as Ruth's back was turned.

Michonne had told Rick about this side of Carol the night before. The wholly counterfeit part of the woman that smiled easily and spoke mildly but he just couldn't believe Michonne when she told him. There was no part of Carol that to him seemed pleasant and easy-going, only calm, shrewd and somewhat coldly calculating. He shook his head at the memory and smiled to himself. As usual, Michonne was right.

"I was wondering how many of you there are left?" Rick asked of Ruth as they traveled up the two floors in the elevator.

"About thirty," She estimated then grimly added, "We're a staff of a three hundred usually."

Normally, hearing that only ten percent of the staff was left would seem like the literal decimation it was but things had changed so dramatically in only days. Now thirty still alive amongst a group of scientists was pretty impressive to Rick. The USAMRIID site hadn't done as well and most of them were supposedly Army officers. He looked around as they stepped off the elevator. The place looked pretty pristine for having lost a full two-thirds of its staff.

"Some didn't even make it in. Some left to be with their families once we realized what was happening. The rest we incinerated." Ruth added, presumably reading his face.

"Incinerated?" Daryl said, still eyeing the exits as they passed them walking through the hall.

"All facilities like this have rooms in which we can incinerate biologically hazardous materials."

"You have a crematorium?" Carol clarified.

"Of course. We couldn't bury or safely dispose of the specimens we have here otherwise. But I'm not talking about the crematorium. In our facility, we have controlled incineration at one station per lab. Some places have whole incineration rooms. Our physical plant has one large incinerator for medical waste...that's where we did it."

Ruth's voice trailed off as she clearly re-lived burning her former colleagues to death.

"We're just here." She perked up quickly, sliding the ID card she had on a lanyard around her neck through a keycard lock and pushing the door open.

Rick followed her in and a second too late felt the gun at his temple. The voice attached to it spoke smoothly, reaching with his other hand for the rifle that swung harmlessly at Rick's side.

"That looks heavy, Captain. Let me help you with it."