Finally posting the next chapter! Thank you to everyone who's been reading and thank you to Azurai Wolf and DJ Jazzy for the reviews! I'm glad you like the main character and there will be more Daryl and Isabell moments to come!
We had been waiting for a half an hour now. I had been constantly checking on the time, nervously waiting as the hour counted down. Rick, Shane, Glenn, and T-Dog had disappeared to check on the fuel tanks at the very bottom level of the building. Jenner said nothing as he had watched the group disappear. The rest of us—Dale, Andrea, Carol, Sophia, Jacqui, Lori, Carl, and I—had elected to wait in the rec room while they were gone. For a while I had tried to pry some answers out of Jenner, but he remained unresponsive, only increasing the fear growing in my gut. I had eventually given up and on my way to the rec room I spotted Daryl drinking by himself in the dining hall. From the way he had been kicking the chairs and upturning a few tables, I assumed he wanted to be left alone.
No one said much while we waited. I could tell both Sophia and Carl were scared, clinging to their mothers for comfort. Both Carol and Lori seemed to be clinging to their kids as well, almost as if they were the ones being comforted instead.
My mind wouldn't stay quiet; the words "facility-wide decontamination" kept repeating in my head. I didn't know what that meant and I hated feeling useless and unable to do something. I hadn't even realized I had been pacing the room, frustrated and deep in thought, until I felt everyone's eyes on me.
I paused mid-step when the only sound in the room suddenly stopped. The whirring of the air vents had halted abruptly. Lori raised a hand towards the vent above her, waving her hand around a bit. A moment later her hand slowly dropped as her eyes met mine.
"The air conditioning stopped?" I asked.
Lori nodded in confirmation.
I turned on my heel and exited the room, determination in every step.
"Where are you going?" Carol called after me.
"To find Jenner," I called back over my shoulder.
On my way down the hall, Daryl popped his head out of his room, a bottle of whiskey still in his hand.
"The air stopped," he pointed out.
"Something isn't right," I told him.
"You think that son of a bitch forgot to tell us somethin'?" Daryl asked, fully exiting his room now.
"I know he did."
Behind us, the rest of the group that had been waiting in the rec room started filling up the hall. I continued towards the big room full of computers we had all been in earlier where I'd noticed the clock counting down. The group behind me followed and their chattering grew louder as their anxiety rose.
Jenner was sitting at one of the computers, a framed photo in his hands. I noticed he was suddenly wearing a white lab coat over his earlier outfit. His eyes shot up when he spotted us.
"Enough with the silence, Jenner," I growled. "What the hell is going on here?"
The man sighed, turning his attention to the photo in his hands for another moment before placing it down on the desk in front of him. The lights flickered out for a moment, and when they came back, they seemed to be running on a sort of backup generator. The room was a lot darker, eerily so.
"The energy use is being prioritized," Jenner finally said.
"And the air isn't a priority?" Dale suddenly asked. "Or the lights?"
"It's not up to me," Jenner told him. "Zone five is shutting itself down."
"What the hell does that mean?" Daryl's voice shot out.
Jenner ignored him as he buried his face in his hands. Angrily Daryl rushed over and got in the man's face.
"Hey man, I'm talkin' to you!" Daryl snapped. "What do you mean it's shutting down? How can a building do anythin'?"
I spotted the rest of our group suddenly entering the room, Rick leading the way. From the looks on their faces I assumed they hadn't found a solution in the lower level to our power issue.
"You'd be surprised," I heard Jenner's voice answer Daryl.
"What the hell is happening?" Rick asked in a panicked voice as he approached our group.
Despite the dim lighting, I noticed just how tired Jenner suddenly appeared.
"The system is dropping all non-essential uses of power," he answered Rick. "It's designed to keep the computers running until the last possible second. It starts just as we approach the half hour mark." He raised a hand and pointed at the clock counting down on the wall. The red numbers were still glaring at us. "Right on schedule."
Jenner suddenly grabbed the bottle of whiskey out of Daryl's hands and took a few drinks straight from the bottle. Daryl looked too shocked at the sudden gesture to say anything, his mouth slightly parted. After Jenner had taken a few drinks, our group crowding around him in his chair, he handed the bottle back to Daryl. I watched as he roughly snatched it back, glaring at Jenner the entire time.
"It was the French," Jenner said suddenly.
"What?" Andrea's confused voice called out.
"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know," Jenner explained. "A lot of people were bolting out the doors or committing suicide. They stayed in the labs until the end. They thought they were close to a solution."
"What happened?" I found myself asking.
"Same thing that's happening here," Jenner answered. "No power grid. Ran out of juice." A humorless smile crossed his lips. "The world runs on fossil fuel. I mean how stupid is that?"
Somebody pushed past me forcefully causing me to stumble sideways. A hand gripped my shoulder and quickly righted me before it left my shoulder just as fast as it had been placed there. I glanced up and saw Daryl just as his eyes turned on Shane, who was currently being restrained by Rick. Rage was covering Shane's face.
"We don't have time for this," Rick told him. "We're getting out of here."
Shane stopped struggling against Rick's grip instantly.
"Everybody get your stuff, we're getting out of here," Rick's firm voice ordered.
The group behind me turned to make a quick exit to the hallway, but an alarm overhead went off. Everyone stopped to look around and I spotted Jenner by the control panel.
"What's going on here, Doc?" T-Dog called out in alarm.
Rick's panicked voice called out again, "Everybody hurry and get your stuff—we're going now!"
The group began moving again in more of a panic, but my eyes remained on Jenner. He was typing something into one of the computers.
A hand on my shoulder caused me to jump.
"Come on, let's go," Daryl's voice urged, his hand tugging on my shoulder.
Wordlessly I let him guide me towards the hallway, but my eyes never left the man in the lab coat. The way he was quickly and furiously pressing buttons gave me a bad feeling. It wasn't until a loud bang behind me sounded that I turned my attention off of the man. A door had just sealed the room we were in off from the hallway leading to our rooms. Another bang sounded and a door blocked off another exit across the room, the one the group had entered in from the lower level just a few minutes ago.
Daryl stopped leading me, his hand still lingering on my shoulder as realization hit him and everyone else. When it did, his hand dropped to his side into a fist.
"Did he just lock us in?" Glenn's shocked voice rang out. "He just locked us in!"
Panic erupted. Glenn began shouting furiously, both Carl and Sophia were crying and clutching their mothers, and Daryl was now racing towards Jenner who appeared to be making an entry log on a computer.
"You son of a bitch!" Daryl yelled as he rounded on the man.
Rick called out to Shane, who quickly raced forward and restrained Daryl. T-Dog ran over and pried Daryl's hands from Jenner. The insults Daryl was directing at the man only appeared to upset the two young kids even further.
"Jenner," Rick said, his voice all authority now, "you open those doors now."
"There's no point," Jenner quickly shot back. "Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed."
The words "facility-wide decontamination" ran through my head again.
"Then open the damn things!" I shot at the man.
"That's not something I control," Jenner said, his voice trying to remain level. "The computers do. I told you once that front door closed it wouldn't open again."
I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. What was going to happen if we stayed in here?
"What happens in twenty-eight minutes?" I asked Jenner, my eyes darting towards the clock.
He didn't answer me and instead spun back towards his computer. Rick lunged forward and pulled the man away to face him.
"What happens?!" Rick snapped furiously.
Jenner rose to his feet and rounded on Rick, anger finally causing him to snap as well.
"You know what this place is!" Jenner bellowed at Rick. "We protected the public from very nasty stuff!" He was in Rick's face now, his voice growing in volume with each word. "Weaponized small pox! Ebola strains that can wipe out half the country! Stuff that you don't want getting out! Ever!"
The room fell silent as Jenner's voice still echoed off the walls. Daryl was pacing furiously back and forth like a tiger waiting to pounce now that Shane and T-Dog weren't restraining him, but I could tell he was processing what Jenner had just said.
Facility-wide decontamination.
The only way to protect the public, or what was left of it, from all of the dangerous diseases in this building could only mean one thing. The building was going to be destroyed so that nothing in here could get outside. But how?
Jenner took a seat in front of his computer again. He took a deep breath in order to calm down, his fist clenching and unclenching on the desk.
"In the event of a catastrophic power failure and a terrorist attack for example," he suddenly continued, his voice no longer full of anger, "HIT's are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."
"HIT's?" Rick asked, his demeanor suddenly calmer as well as he tried to understand the situation.
"VI define," Jenner commanded.
The automated female voice rang out above us, "HIT's: High Impulse Thermobaric fuel-air explosives consist 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 degrees and is useful where the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired."
"It sets the air on fire," Jenner explained simply. "No pain. An end to sorrow, grief, regret. Everything."
A moment passed before anything happened. Immediately Daryl threw the bottle of whiskey in his hands at the door trapping us in the central room.
"Open the damn door!" Daryl demanded.
Glenn broke open two fire emergency cases and pulled out two large axes. Shane immediately grabbed one as Glenn tossed Daryl the second. The squealing sounds of metal on metal erupted as the two began hacking away at the solid doors, but the only results were a few scratches in the metal.
"What's out there is nothing but a short, brutal-life and an agonizing end," Jenner's voice gently said. He turned his attention to Andrea. "Your sister. What was her name?"
"Amy," Andrea's sad voice responded.
"Amy," Jenner said her name with sympathy. His eyes held Andrea's gaze. "You know what this does. You've seen it." He turned his attention to Rick. "Is that really what you want for your wife and kid?"
The man's question immediately set Rick off.
"I don't want this," Rick's voice snarled.
"We can't make a dent," Shane called out as he stopped swinging his axe.
Daryl continued on slamming his axe into the door, refusing to give up. I watched his determined swings one after another, the muscles in his arms flexing with each strike.
"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher," Jenner explained.
Daryl suddenly stopped swinging his axe and spun around. "Your head ain't!"
Rick, Shane and Dale were suddenly in an uproar as Daryl's rage now focused back on Jenner. He was racing forward at the man, axe slung back over his shoulder ready to swing. It took all three men to hold him back. T-Dog swooped in and managed to wrestle the axe from his hands before the three men let Daryl go. He began furiously pacing back and forth again, his eyes narrowed and his lip curled in a sneer at Jenner.
"You do want this," Jenner urged Rick. "Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead."
My eyes turned to Rick. "You really said that? After all you've been through?"
He had been so determined when we had left that hospital together. So full of hope to find his family when we made our way to Atlanta. And above all odds he had found them, both safe and sound.
"I had to keep hope alive," Rick explained.
"There is no hope," Jenner's firm voice cut Rick off. "There never was."
"There's always hope!" Rick suddenly shot at Jenner. "Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere!"
"What part of everything's gone do you not understand?" Andrea asked Rick solemnly from where she sat on the floor beside Jenner.
"Listen to your friend, she gets it," Jenner advised Rick. "This is what takes us down. This is…our extinction event."
My mind raced back to all the dead bodies outside of the hospital covered in sheets and swarming with flies. I remembered the undead woman in the park, her lower half entirely missing, yet she somehow was still animated. I remembered the couple in the farmhouse that had shot themselves; the sea of walkers in Atlanta that had trapped Rick and I in that tank; the ambushing walkers that attacked our camp.
If we made it out of here where would we go? How would we live? We had no food. There was no government, no semblance of order. Sophia and Carl—where they just supposed to grow up in all of this?
I sunk down on the floor beside Andrea, my mind reeling.
"This isn't right," Carol sobbed out as she clutched her daughter. "You can't just keep us here!"
Jenner leaned forward in his chair, his voice gentle. "One tiny moment. A millisecond. No pain."
Carol's sobs only increased. "My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!"
Shane suddenly stalked off, a determined look on his face.
"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate," Jenner continued on, "to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?"
The sound of a shotgun racking caught everyone's attention. Shane's gaze was deadlocked on Jenner as Rick, Dale, and T-Dog now raced forward to hold him back.
"Get out of my way!" Shane snapped, pushing Dale aside and aiming the shotgun at Jenner's face. "You open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. You hear me!"
"Brother, brother," Rick said as he leaned over to Shane. "This is not the way you do this—we'll never get out of here!"
"Shane you listen to him!" Lori ordered.
"If he dies we all die!" Rick shouted.
Shane let out a yell of anger before pointing his gun at a computer farther down and pulling the trigger. The computer blew apart and clattered to the ground, the sound still ringing in the room. Shane let out another shout before he began shooting one shotgun shell after another into various parts of the room. Rick took action and tried wrestling the shotgun from him. The moment seemed to last forever before Rick managed to pry the gun from his hands. He hit Shane with the butt of it, knocking the man to the ground. The blow to the head seemed to snap Shane back to the moment, but he remained on the ground breathing heavily.
"You done now?" Rick growled at the man.
Shane's response came in an even tone. "Yeah, guess we all are."