Short chapter compared to the other ones, but this is the end of season 1.
Thank you so much to those who have favorited and followed this story already, I hope you guys continue reading and enjoy this story. I would love to hear what you think of it if you want to leave a review.
And sorry for this chapter, is short and not really exciting. But it picks up a bit going into season 2.
Words: 2,821
(Rewritten)
The next morning found Charlie leaving the room she'd slept the night before. She took to carrying her bag with her as she wandered the halls once again until she came upon the kitchen.
Moving further into the room, Charlie pulled herself onto the counter and pulled out her sketchbook once again. When T-Dog wandered into the room, the man jumped when he saw the girl but covered it with a laugh and moved over to the stove to start cooking.
"Need any help?" Charlie asks the man when he starts making eggs, she felt bad, just sitting there while he worked.
"Nah, I got this, little lady." He responds with a smile, glancing at the teenager from over his shoulder.
Nodding, Charlie goes back to her drawing as the others filter in over time. T-Dog brought her a plate of breakfast and the girl smiled to him as Carl's voice cuts through the quiet chatter of the room. "Are you hungover?" He questions his father when the man walks into the room. "Mom said you'd be."
"Mom is right." Rick told his son with a smile.
"Mom has that annoying habit." Lori responded as she took a bite of her bacon. Smiling, Charlie shakes her head as she eats her own food.
"Eggs, powdered, but I do 'em good. I bet you can't tell." T-Dog says, walking over to Glenn as he moans in pain. Someones not taking his hangover well. "Protein helps with the hangover."
"Don't ever ever ever let me drink again." Glenn says as Jacqui rubs his back. Poor kid.
"Hey." Look up from my almost empty plate, I see Shane walking in, not looking any better than the others.
"Hey, you feel as bad as I do?" Rick asks his friends.
"Worse." Shane responds quietly as he grabs a drink.
"The hell happened to you? Your neck." T-Dog questions Shane, noticing three long scratch marks on his neck.
"I must have done it in my sleep."
"Never seen you do that before."
"Me neither. Not like me at all." Squinting her eyes, Charlie looks from Shane to Rick, her eyes falling onto Lori as the woman hunches her shoulder, keeping her head low.
"Morning." The doctor says as he walks into the room, going the same way Shane had previously.
"Hey, doc." A few people said in greeting before Dale spoke up.
"Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing..."
"But you will anyway." The doctor said, finishing his sentence.
"We didn't come here for the eggs." Andrea said. Speak for yourself, T-Dog was right, he does make nice eggs, powdered or not.
Jumping off the counter, Charlie throws her bag over her shoulder and follows everyone out of the kitchen and into the big room from the previous night.
"Playback of TS-19." The doctor says loudly before adding more quietly. "Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few."
"Is that a brain?" Carl asks when an odd picture of one comes up on the screen
"An extraordinary one." The doctor tells him as Charlie comes up on their left, Daryl a little ways behind her. "Not that it matters in the end." The doctor adds, more to himself than the others. "Take us in for E.I.V."
"Enhanced internal view." VI's loud voice says.
The screen changes then, it rotates to a side view of the brain. It was almost pretty, all the lights shooting through the organ. Almost light lightning during a storm.
"What are those lights?"
"It's a person's life experiences, memories. It's everything" The doctor says in answer to Shane's question. "Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light is you. The thing that makes you unique. And human."
"Do you make sense, ever?" Daryl asks the doctor.
"Those are 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? This is a vigil" Rick asks the doctor, taking a few steps towards him.
" Yes. Or rather the playback of the vigil." He tells us.
"This person died? Who?" Andrea asks, sounding almost sad.
"Test subject 19. 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." VI's robotic voice repeats.
"What is that?" Glenn asks as we all watch darkness slowly take over the brain.
"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs. Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be Gone."
"Is that what happened to Jim?" Little Sofia asks and Charlie moves her gaze from the screen to send the girl a sad glance.
"She lost somebody two days ago. Her sister." Lori was saying to the doctor, speaking of Andrea.
"I lost somebody too. I know how devastating it is." The doctor tells her. Everyone has at this point, haven't they? "Scan to the second event."
"Scanning to second event." Does VI really need to say everything she's doing? It's creepy.
"The resurrection times vary wildly. We had 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."
"It restarts the brain?" Lori asks when she sees the little orange light starting in the lower part of the brain.
"No, just the brain stem. Basically, it gets them up and moving."
"But they're not alive?"
"You tell me." Definitely not.
"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."
"God. What was that?" Carol asks when a thick line suddenly shoots through the image of the brain.
"He shot his patient in the head. Didn't you?" Well, it was a walker, not sure what else you expected him to do, Charlie continued to think to herself.
"VI, power down the main screen and the workstations"
"Powering down main screen and workstations." Guess she does need to repeat everything.
"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea asks in an accusing tone. It's not his fault, geez.
"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, - fungal."
"Or the wrath of God?" That's probably a safe bet.
"There is that."
The others question the doctor about everything, other people, other places, but he just tells them he doesn't know. Everything went dark a month ago. Everythings gone.
"Man, I'm gonna get shit-faced drunk again." Or you could not, that's an option too, Charlie thinks as Daryl turns away.
"Dr. 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 asks, pointing to the big clock with red numbers on it.
"The basement generators they run out of fuel."
"And then?" Ricks asks, only to be ignored as the doctor walks away. "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"
"When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur." That doesn't sound good.
Affter everyone left the big room, Charlie took to wandering the halls for the third time. She tried to sit still but just got restless. It was when she heard voices that she started walking with a purpouse.
"What do you mean it's shutting itself down?" Daryl was asking when Charlie reached the group. She didn't hear the doctor answer but kept following from a distance as Rick started asking more questions.
"It was the French." The doctor says after a moment of silence.
"What?" Andrea questions.
"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know. While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the labs until the end. They thought they were close to a solution."
"What happened?"
"The same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs on fossil fuel. I mean, how stupid is that?"
"To hell with this Shane, I don't even care. Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff. We're getting out of here now!"
Backing away from the group as they all turn to get their stuff, Charlie feels her heart jump as a loud alarm starts blaring out across the room.
"30 minutes until decontamination." VI's voice rings out over the alarm.
"Everybody, ya'll heard Rick, get your stuff, let's go now." Shane yells to everyone, causing them to start moving again, stopping when a large metal door falls over the exit.
"Did you just lock us in?" Glenn asks before yelling. "He just locked us in!"
Trying to push down my panic at being trapped, I watch as Daryl runs onto the platform towards the doctor before getting pulled back by Shane and T-Dog.
"Jenner, open that door now." Rick says as he marches towards the doctor.
"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down, the emergency exits are sealed."
"Well, open the damn things."
"That's not something I control, the computers do." Talk about stupid, letting computers have all the control over something. "I told you, once that door closes, it stays closed. You heard me say that." Everything goes quiet for a moment as everyone looks around at each other before the doctor speaks up again. "It's better this way."
"What is? What happens in twenty-eight minutes?" Rick asks the doctor. Charlie had an idea of what happened, she just prayed she was wrong. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes!" Ricked yelled when Jenner only turned his back to the man.
"Do you know what this place is!?" The doctor suddenly shouted at Rick, standing from his chair. "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!" Stepping back from the doctors' outburst, Charlie watches as he calms himself down. "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?"
"Vi, define."
"Hits high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives consists 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 5,000° and 6,000° 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." Feeling her knees go weak, Charlie steps back and feels a metal railing hit her bag.
This isn't the first time the threat of death has been hanging over the teenager's head and she had accepted the fact that she could die at any moment a long time ago. Or so she thought. Because standing here now, she could see that she hadn't. She may not have had a good life, but she was quite ready for it to end.
"Open the damn door!" Flinching at Daryl's raised voice, Charlie wraps my arms around her middle and lowers her head.
"Out of my way!" Shane yells before the sound of metal hitting metal echos through the room.
Charlie blocked everything that happened out after that until the unmistakable sound of gunshots filled the room. Jerking her head up, the teen sees Shane with his shotgun, shooting a bunch of computers. Rick comes up and struggled with him, overpowering his partner and throwing him to the ground.
"You done now?"
"Yeah, I guess we all are."
"I think you're lying, about there being no hope." Rick starts speaking to the doctor. "If that were true, you would 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...to her, my wife." The doctor says as he points to the big screen.
"Test subject nineteen was your wife?" Lori asks.
"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."
"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."
"I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those." Watching the doctor walks over to one of the computer screens, Charlie slowly uncurls from herself as he starts typing something, the big door opening shortly after.
"Come on!" Daryl shouts, waving everyone out the door.
"Hey! We got four minutes left! Come on!" Glenn shouts.
"I'm staying." Jacqui says and Charlie hesitates, her heart dropping as she looks at the woman. It was her choice, but Charlie liked her. She was sweet and kind. The world could use more people like her. "There's no time to argue, and no point. If you want to get out then just get out. Get out."
"Everyone go, just go!" Dale yells to us when Andrea says she's staying too.
Spinning away from them, Charlie runs alongside the others and up the stairs until they reached the top. Rich, Shane, T-Dog, and Daryl all bang on the doors and windows trying to find a way out.
"The glass won't break?" Sofia's small voice asks after Shane unsuccessfully shoots out the glass.
"Rick, I have something that might help." Carol says, leaving her daughters' side as she digs through her bag.
"Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it." Ignoring Shane's slightly sexist remark, Charlie walks closer to Sofia and stands by her side.
"Your first morning in camp, when I washed your uniform, I found this in your pocket." Eyes widening slightly, Charlie looks between Carol and the grenade she pulled from her bag. Well then, she wasn't expecting that.
"Look out!" T-Dog yells as Rick goes to one of the windows. Everyone runs and ducks behind the stairs right before a small explosion along with glass shattering sounds through the room. Jumping up, everyone rushes to the window and climbs out.
Looking behind her one last time, Charlie hopes to see the others coming as well, although she knew they weren't. "Kid, let's go!" Spinning around, the teen rushes to the broken window and jumps out, Daryl following close behind.
Running through the yard, few people take out the walkers milling around as the rest run to the vehicles. Some to the RV, T-Dog's can or Carol's car.
Swinging open the passenger side door of Daryl's truck, Charlie throws her bag onto the floor before jumping in, looking up just in time to see Dale and Andrea climbing out the broken window. No Jacqui, at least she's at peace with her choice. Charlie still wished she wasn't doing it, but it wasn't her decision to make.
Hearing the RV's horn, Charlie moves her gaze away from Dale and Andrea and onto the building before lying down just as the first explosion goes off.
It felt like the earth was shaking, Charlie could feel the heat of the fire as the building crumbled to the ground. It felt like forever before she slowly lifted her head to look out the windshield, seeing the destruction that was once a large building.
There was nothing left. Just fire and rubble. Gone, all in just a few seconds.
Looking to her left, Charlie meets Daryl's eyes before looking back to Dale and Andrea as they climb into the RV.
Feeling the truck vibrate under her, Charlie looks out her window as they drive away from what used to be the CDC building, watching as the black smoke floats away from the fire, almost as if its darkness was taking over the sky.
'-'