Day 65
Daryl was snoring. Not too loud, I could probably go back to sleep if I tried, but the contrast with the deep silence of the shared room and the corridor woke me up with a start. For a second I couldn't picture where I was, the shriek cry of a baby that had been only in my dreams fading to nothing as I looked around trying to understand the singing crickets and cicadas' absence. On the couch by the cot, now not reeking any sort of smell, Daryl didn't even more a muscle, his low, constant snoring lulling my heart back to a normal beat.
A clock on the wall above the door showed it was early morning. At camp, the group would be up and about by now, woken up by the growing heat inside the tents. The silence showed it was not the case this morning. I thought it was good; these people deserved a lie in to get some rest.
I got up, though, and padded silently to the tiny adjoining toilet, where I found a small pack with disposable toothbrush and paste. Making a mental note to put it in my bag later if we ever had to leave this place, because the toothpaste I had brought from home was being scrapped out of the package already, I brushed my teeth, drank water from the faucet and washed my face before tying back my headful of dreads. Daryl was still snoring when I quietly left the room.
Jenner was in the cafeteria, the same we all had had dinner the previous night, behind the counters filling a mug of fresh coffee.
"Good morning," he told me with a small, forced smile. "I think I probably shouldn't offer you coffee."
"Oh," I said as I stood on the other side of the counter. "'Cause pregnant women shouldn't drink coffee?"
"Well, yeah, people say. I wouldn't know, I've always focused on other areas of medicine."
"Right. Yeah, it's – so you got the result then."
"Yep," he popped after a sip of coffee.
"Right. Yeah…" Ilooked down with both hands on the counter.
"Mazel Tov," he said saluting with his mug and I looked at him again, snorting a laugh.
"Yeah, thanks. Fuck…"
Jenner went silent, staring at me with his brows creased. I didn't know him at all, but it seemed to me that he was worried and thoughtful, maybe.
"Hey, I'm the girl in trouble here having to give birth and raise a child during the end of the world. Why'd ya look like that?"
"Well... it's, uh… That's it, isn't it? A child, the dead…"
"Yeah, I'm a bit more positive now that we've found shelter," I crossed my arms and stared up at him. "Right? We didn't talk about this, I know, but I was wondering how this works. I got a big group, an elder man, a child, these women who are just now learning how to defend themselves… And now I got a bun in the oven confirmed, so I'd be kinda worried if we got to go back out there. This place might've saved our lives," I paused and looked at Jenner for a moment. He had rested his mug down, still staring at me. "If we don't stay, well... Gotta be prepared for this, anyway, you know, women've had babies for hundreds of thousands of years in nature, living in caves, defending helpless kids from animals and whatever…"
I then took a deep breath, suddenly nervous about the prospect, contrary to my words. Having it confirmed and my otherwise flat stomach showing turned everything even more real, scarier, and the timing of the unfortunate accident this pregnancy was just stunned me.
"I must say," Jenner started after a few seconds of silence. "I'm impressed by your positivity. Really," he looked down, nodding to himself, lips tight.
"Okay, what is it, Doc?" I lost it, but tried not to be rude. "I ain't blind, alright? You ain't just worried about some random pregnant person who you met. What is it? What you worried about? You ain't gonna let us stay here, is that it?"
He looked up quickly holding out a hand to me, "Hey, it's – it's nothing, ok? Just –" he started walking backwards, away from me. "Don't worry about it now. I just – I have work to do. Excuse me."
I tried to say something but he was gone before I could think of how to persuade him to tell me that the hell was happening in his mind. Something was seriously wrong and, with an icy feeling on my stomach – maybe the child had felt it too – I was certain this shelter was not what we had dreamed of. Entering it had been a miracle, and there were no more miracles these days.
And holy fuck, I really was fucking pregnant!
"Hey, you alright over there?"
Startling out of my reverie, I saw T-Dog having just arrived, standing by the counter. I smiled, giving some poor excuse and greeting him with a smile, not mentioning any worries. Together, T-Dog and I started fumbling in the cafeteria cabinets as to find something to make the group breakfast. The man was by the stove doing his best to prepare powdered eggs and I was mixing some artificial juice when the others began to flow into the space, most of them quietly. Glenn looked the worst, eventual groans demonstrating just how bad he felt. Dale, Andrea, Lori and Carl were also sitting with bowls of old but still good cereal.
"Dude, did you puke yet?" I asked Glenn as I stood behind him, a hand on his shoulder. He groans louder and hangs his head. Carl, a mouthful of cereal, laughs at him. "If ya haven't you should, trust me, you'll feel better."
Rick joined us just as T was serving scrambled eggs that surprisingly seem to be good and Lori was handing Glenn some aspirins. As they all started to eat, I leaned against the counter, sipping on my glass of juice. I was quiet with a smile so it would seem like I was following the conversations and quiet teasing going on by the table, but my mind is only half there.
I knew I was pregnant, I was sure 'bout it, why was I feeling this now? I needed to tell them. They had to know, life was about to get shittier for everyone with a knocked-up woman and then a screaming baby. Where was Daryl, still sleeping? The eggs kinda smelled good, I wished there was bacon. Damnit, bacon.
Interrupting my thoughts, Shane passed in front of me like a storm, walking fast and hunched, quickly dismissing the good morning wishes. At the table Lori flinched, looking down at her eggs, and seemed to shrink unbeknownst to anybody other than me, the only quiet and observing one.
"Fell as bad as I do?" Rick, at the head of the table, asked his friend.
"Worse," is all he said before turning around and heading to the table.
"What the hell happened to you?" T-Dog asked as he met Shane on his way. "Your neck?"
Shane sits nearly across from the Lori, who purposefully busied herself with her food. "Must've done it in my sleep."
"Never seen you do that before," Rick questioned as I was slowly abandoning my position at the counter and stepping around the table to stand close to Lori without having planned to do so.
Standing there I could see what T-Dog had asked about. Shane had scratch marks on his neck, as perfect as nails. The rest of the table was silent and I was glad I wasn't the center of attention. Blood had risen to my face and my throat was tight. I was sure Lori had made the marks, simply by her reaction to Shane's arrival. She'd had to defend herself from him, and that certainty burned on my chest like a physical blow. I remembered Ed slapping Carol – where are Carol and Sophia? Gotta go find them, see if they're okay – and the desire to do to Shane the same I did to Ed was almost stronger than me.
"Me neither," Shane answered and stared directly at Lori. "Not like me at all."
I then took a step closer to Lori's back, staring at Shane, whose eyes slid up from Lori straight to me. I stopped there and held his eyes hard, my own narrowed and head turning slightly to the left, daring him to say or do anything else or, I don't know, breathe.
Jenner returned to the cafeteria just then, finishing the subject. I held Shane under my gaze for seconds longer, though. I wanted him to know that, if no one else did, I had noticed and that I'd keep an eye on him. His look going even harder than before told me he got the message.
Seeing the image of the brain dying, and then returning to life, though only in few parts, was not exactly news to anybody. It was impressive to see the transformation occurring on the inside, though. Extraordinary brain or not, it was how happened to everybody. It had happened to Amy, it had happened to Jim by now. But we had seen it in real life, we had shot freshly transformed people in the brain to put them to rest. Andrea had done it to her own sister. The mood in the room was now densely gloomy, verging hopelessness. Though he explained the procedure in detail, Dr. Jenner never mentioned a cause.
"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea voices what was everybody's impression.
"It could be microbial…" he started, vaguely, his answer to the question very clear. "Viral, parasitic, fungal."
"Ain't there nobody who'd know that?" I asked from where I was perched on a desk by Daryl. "Other centers, wherever, nobody could take the – the thing and analyze it to know what it is?"
"And how to stop it – kill it, more importantly?" Rick completed my question standing closer to Jenner
"There are others, right?" Carol also added her question. "Other facilities?"
"There may be some. People like me. There's no way to be sure, though. Everything went down, communications, directives, all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month."
"So, it's not just here," Andrea's chin trembled as she spoke. "There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing? That's what you're really saying, right?"
The doctor didn't answer. Instead, he lowered his head as he nodded, and for long seconds nobody spoke a word.
"Well, fuck," I whispered making the others come out of their shock. Daryl stood up pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, mumbling to himself that he intended to get drunk again.
Behind the group, among the next row of desks and computers, Dale's voice came changing the subject and alerting the others for something that hadn't been noticed yet. "Dr. Jenner, I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but... That clock," he pointed to a wall further away and the whole group looked at its direction. A red digital clock had just marked one hour. "It's counting down. What happens at zero?"
Once again, like it was beginning to be customary for the doctor, he took seconds to answer, looked around as if in doubt of how to phrase something. "The basement generators... they run out of fuel."
"And then?" Rick asked him, his voice grave, but it had no effect on Jenner. He just lowered his head again and started walking away, completely ignoring the question. Rick looked up at nothing, as if talking to God, "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"
"When the power runs out," the robotic voice started. "Facility-wide decontamination will occur."
When Daryl entered the room we had shared the previous night, I was already shoving whatever personal belongings I had back inside my backpack.
"Hey, what ya doing?" he asked as he leaned against the doorframe, a bottle of whiskey in hand.
"Just making sure, leaving the bags ready to take and go," and I entered the touled, collecting the toothpaste. "I don't like this no-generator-power-fuel thing. The way the guy didn't even answer what'll happen – I don't know. I told the others to have their packs ready too.
"'Kay, I'll just –"
"Yours' done already," I cut him and pointed to his bag on the floor. "Didn't have much out."
"What you figure is gonna happen?"
"No fuckin' clue," I zipped the bag forcefully and rested my hands on my hips. "But just think 'bout it, we're underground, not a single window, if there's no power at all how're we gonna have air? You know?" I pointed up and Daryl looked at the vent on the ceiling.
"No lights, no fridge for the food, no air circulating…" he completed my though.
"Nope, don't seem to me like a place we can be for long. 'S why I told the others to get ready, Jenner's gonna have to explain what the fuck we're gonna do if when the guys come back they say there really ain't no more fuel."
Just as the last words filled the tense air of the room, the light went off, leaving only a faint emergency glow coming from the corridor, and the silent place became even more silent as the air from the vents stopped flowing. Everybody was out in the corridor at once, asking questions at Jenner, who had just appeared and was walking resolutely along the hallway. In seconds, the whole group was back in the control room, Rick, Shane, Glenn and T-Dog back from the lower levels informing there really wasn't any more fuel in the barrels. With his already infamous half-words, Jenner explained shallowly that the system of the building made the decisions, not him, and that air and light were not as important as keeping the computers running until the very last second.
"Alright, that's it!" I raised my voice above all the others. "Back to the rooms now, everybody, grab your things and we'll get the fuck outta here!"
For one or two seconds, everybody was following my orders, running towards the door, but everyone froze in place again at the loud, deafening alarm sound and blaring red light that took hold of our senses.
"30 minutes to decontamination," the robotic, cold voice informed.
"Everybody, you heard Sam!" Rick shouted at the top of his lungs, "Let's get out of here, now!"
A metal door rose from within the ground just as he spoke, closing the only way out of the room. It had looked like there wasn't any door there at all, but now it seemed like it was a solid, metal wall. Fear on the verge of despair washed the group like an ice-cold waterfall, screaming and cries and Daryl trying to attack the doctor, who now was calmly sitting down on his fancy chair.
"Jenner, open that door now," Rick tried, sweat rolling down his face.
"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed."
"Well, open the damn things!" Daryl yelled from where he was being held away by Shane.
"That's not something I control. The computers do," Jenner spoke firmly, but still carrying and annoying calm on his words. "I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that."
"We heard you say they'd stay closed, not that we'd be locked in even if we wanted out!" I yelled, despising how my voice trembled. "You were not very clear 'bout that, doc!"
"It's better this way."
"What is better?" Rick asked. "What happens in 28 minutes?"
He didn't answer, once again, turning away and trying to type something on his computer. There was yelling once again, the men around Jenner trying to get him to talk clearly for once. He finally did, getting up from his chair and screaming and spitting that the whole place had been designed to protect the public from horrible deceases, to keep viruses, bacteria and parasite inside and to just destroy everything in case any of it could ever get out. Calming himself down like what he was about to say was the most calming and reassuring thing, he explained how the system did that.
"It sets the air on fire," he practically smiled. "No pain. An end to sorrow, grief... Regret. Everything."
"You mean an end to your sorrow," I shouldered though the men and got closer to Jenner. "You're sitting there accepting your fate, the end to your grief, but making us stay when we want to go?"
"Open the damn door!", Daryl yelled from the door, where he'd started kicking it. Shane approached the door with an axe he had found somewhere and they both attacked it, grunting and making sparks come out of the metal.
"You should've left well enough alone. It would've been so much easier," Jenner said from his chair, watching us like he'd watch a movie. "You know what's out there... A short, brutal life and an agonizing death!", he tried to convince us. Looking at Andrea, he proceeded. "Your sister, you know what this does. You've seen it," and he looked back at Rick. "Is that really what you want for your wife and son?
"I don't want this!"
"There is no hope. There never was…"
"There's always hope!" Rick was nearly crying in anger. "Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere –"
"What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?" Andrea cried from her spot on the floor.
"Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event," Jenner said with a final tone, like the end of a discussion.
"This isn't right," Carol was openly crying with Sofia on her arms. "You can't just keep us here!"
"One tiny moment... a millisecond. No pain," the doctor carried on.
"What the fuck are you trying to convince us about, doctor?" I spoke again. "You want us to sit and accept the air around us will blow up and we'll die?"
"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?"
"Wanna hear what'd be kinder? Cause I don't think you know much 'bout it," I bent a little to look at him. "Compassionate would be to let us choose our fate for ourselves. Lock people in and tell them they'll die ain't compassionate, it ain't kind!"
"You may not see it, but I know what I'm talking about. There is nothing else out there other than dead people walking and ready to eat your flesh! Nothing!"
"You're a fuckin' liar, you know that?" I angrily whispered, but loud enough for everyone around to hear. "You didn't kill yourself like the others. You stayed and you were still trying, weren't you? Why is that, huh?"
"I didn't stay alive because I wanted to!" he stood up making me straighten my back. Jenner pointed at the screen where he'd shown the image of the transforming brain before. "I made a promise... To her. My wife."
"Test subject 19 was your wife?" Lori asked him.
"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no? She was dying. It should've been me on that table. I wouldn't have mattered to anybody. She was a loss to the world. Hell, she ran this place. I just worked here. In our field, she was an Einstein. Me? I'm just... Edwin Jenner. She could've done something about this. Not me."
I snorted a bitter laugh. "Good. You kept your promise to her right to the end. And then you fucked it all up. Bravo!"
"What is that supposed to mean?" Jenner took a step towards me just as Daryl restarted banging his axe on the door.
"You promised, you stayed, you researched, you did all of that. And then right at the end, in the very last minutes of your fuckin' miserable life, you go and turn yourself into a fuckin murderer. Poor 19… Poor woman who'll have a murderer for a husband."
"Murder? Is that what – That's not what I'm trying to do here!" he screamed and looked around trying to defend himself. "I'm helping you! You all came to me begging for help, and I've given it to you! You're all going to die out there, a suffering, painful death, I'm being compassionate here –"
"Bullshit!" I yelled at his face. "You're killing us! You're lockin' us in and giving us no choice! This is murder, plain and simple. Our lives are not yours to decide. If we wanna go back out there and die fighting to our last breaths, so we should be able to! These children's lives are their mothers' to decide about!" I cried out pointing at the direction where Lori and Carol held their kids. Then I pointed to my own stomach. "This child! My child! This life here is mine and I will fight like hell to save it. If we're gonna die, we're gonna die fighting. You don't make this decision for us!"
Nobody seemed to be breathing now. Daryl's banging on the door had ceased. Jenner stared down at me, eyes on mine for long seconds. Then he shook his head and walked towards the other side of his desk again.
"I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those," and with a simple card and password, the metal door loudly slid open.
"Come on!" Daryl shouted from the threshold.
"This is the right thing to do," I pointed at him. "Goodbye, doc!"
"Come on, Sam, let's go!" Daryl called again as everybody else ran towards the exit.
"We have less than four minutes!" Glenn informed as he reached it.
On my way, I grabbed Jackie, who'd been standing motionless on her spot, and dragged the woman with me. On the rise that led to the door, Jackie stopped.
"No, no, I'm staying. I'm staying, sweetie."
"What?! No, Jackie!"
"No, it's okay, I know. For the first time in a long time I'm sure about something. I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy."
"You're not, Jackie, we're fighting for –"
"There's no time to argue and no point, not if you want to get out!"
"But Jackie –"
"Just get out, please Sam, you have a baby there! Just please, go!"
"Sam!", Daryl returned from the hallway where he'd already reached. "Come on, Sam," he said urgently, though in a muffled voice. "We gotta go now, come on!"
With a last look at Jackie, who nodded and smiled at me, I turned around and let Daryl drag me away.
Carol had a grenade.
Yep. Carol had a fucking grenade.
When the doors upstairs didn't bolt even at gun shots, she suddenly took a grenade off her pack and handed it to Rick. He placed it by where the glass had been slightly cracked and everybody fell to the floor waiting for the explosion, Daryl right on top of me covering my whole body with his. The whole world shook as the glass broke at the explosion, the group climbing through the hole and out of the condemned building. Walkers outside fell like leaves at our shots, just not as scary as they had been just hours before. With seconds to spare everybody was inside the cars, ready to get out of there even before the explosion. Daryl pushed shoved me in before him into the truck through the driver's door and just as he closed it we saw Andrea and Dale leaving the building, climbing out and running away, though not fast enough.
"Dale!" I all but climbed over Daryl to be able to scream through the window. "Andrea! Get cover! It'll blow – get cover!"
There was still a moment to see them run and dive behind the sandbags before I was shoved down to the floor of the truck, Daryl over me and the deafening explosion, the heat on our skins threatening to burn everything around, an earthquake destroying anything that was still standing. For minutes we stayed like that, shaking, fearing the cars would not be enough to protect us, until it all started to fade, sound slowly lowering, heat cooling down degree by degree, faint cries coming from the other cars slowly reaching my ears.
"It's over," Daryl whispered from somewhere above me. "You okay?"
"Yeah! Yeah, you?"
He sat up on the driver's seat, still bent down to look at me on the floor, curved into a ball. "Fine! Come on, get up," he reached for my hand and pulled me up. "You fine. It's okay."
"Good, good, we're fine… They're all fine?"
"All cars whole, Dale and Andrea just entered the RV. Everybody's fine."
Being pulled up by Daryl, I didn't stop moving until I was all but over him, clutching to his shirt and sobbing into his shoulder. I didn't plan to do it, my body acting on its own volition. I didn't pay attention to him starting the truck and it moving away from the burning building, my emotions completely out of my control. Daryl didn't say a word; he held me against him with one arm as he awkwardly drove away following the other cars, only Shane's jeep behind us.