We stared into the while light until it lessened in brightness before rushing forward.

"Daryl, you cover the back." Shane ordered and he turned so he was facing the Walkers as we walked inside.

"Hello?" Rick called out. "Hello?"

"Close those doors. Watch for walkers." My dad ordered and we closed the doors behind us as we walked further into the large room.

"Hello?" Rick called out again. We heard a gun cock and we all pointed our weapons towards where we heard it coming from to see a man holding a gun on us.

"Anybody infected?" he called to us.

"One of our group was. He didn't make it." Rick told him.

"Why are you here? What do you want?" the man asked quickly.

"A chance." Rick said.

"That's asking an awful lot these days." The man told him.

"I know." Rick said and the man looked us all over.

"You all submit to a blood test. That's the price of admission." He told us.

"We can do that. You got stuff to bring in, you do it now. Once this door closes, it stays closed." He told us. We quickly went back to our vehicles careful of the Walkers and grabbed our stuff before running back into the building. The man slid a card in a card reader before speaking into it. "Vi, seal the main entrance. Kill the power up here. " The shutters closed on the other side of the doors. We were finally safe.

"Rick Grimes." Rick said holding his hand out.

"Dr. Edwin Jenner." The man introduced shaking Rick's hand. Later we all stood in an elevator moving down.

"Doctors always go around packing heat like that?" Daryl asked him.

"There were plenty left lying around. I familiarized myself. But you look harmless enough. Except you." Dr. Jenner said looking down at Carl. "I'll have to keep my eye on you." He said before chuckling. Once the elevator stopped we followed Jenner through some corridors.

"Are we underground?" Carol asked him.

"Are you claustrophobic?" He asked her.

"A little." She admitted.

"Try not to think about it." He told her before we walked into a room. "Vi, bring up the lights in the big room." The lights came on to reveal a large circular room. "Welcome to zone 5."

"Where is everybody? The other doctors, the staff?" Rick asked him.

"I'm it. It's just me here." Jenner told him.

"What about the person you were speaking with? Vi?" Lori asked him.

"Vi, say hello to our guests. Tell them... Welcome." Jenner said.

"Hello, guests. Welcome." A computerized voice said.

"I'm all that's left. I'm sorry." He told us. We moved to another room and sat down one at a time as Jenner drew our blood.

"What's the point? If we were infected, we'd all be running a fever." Andrea asked him as he drew hers.

"I've already broken every rule in the book letting you in here. Let me just at least be thorough." He said before pulling the syringe out. "All done." He told her. She stood up slowly and was about to fall over when Jacqui and I helped her.

"Ooh." Jacqui said.

"Easy does it." I told her.

"Are you okay?" Jenner asked her.

"Mmm." Andrea nodded.

"She hasn't eaten in days. None of us have." Jacqui told him. He turned and looked from us to the others as it contemplating what he should do.


Later we were all laughing over wine and a hot cooked meal.

"Fine." Lori said and Dale handed her the glass he was pouring the wine into.

"You know, in Italy, children have a little bit of wine with dinner. And in France." Dale informed her and she covered an empty glass.

"Well, when Carl is in Italy or France, he can have some then." Lori told him.

"What's it gonna hurt? Come on. - Come on." Rick insisted and we all laughed lightly watching her shrug her shoulders and Dale pour him a small bit of wine.

"There you are, young lad." Dale said handing him the cup. We waited for a moment with smiles on our faces as Carl tried the drink before making a face.

"Eww." He said and we all laughed at his face.

"That's my boy. That's my boy. Good boy." Lori said taking the cup and adding his wine to hers.

"Yuck. That tastes nasty." Carl said shaking his head and sticking his tongue out making us laugh more.

"Well, just stick to soda pop there, bud." Shane told him.

"Not you, Glenn." Daryl told him.

"What?" Glenn asked with a smile.

"Keep drinking, little man. I want to see how red your face can get." Daryl told him and we all laughed again.

"I'll stay and watch that." I said raising my glass to Daryl's and we clinked the two glasses.

"It seems to me we haven't thanked our host properly." Rick said and we all turned to Dr. Jenner who was sitting in a dark corner alone.

"He is more than just our host." T-Dog said.

"Hear hear!" Michael agreed.

"Here's to you, doc." My dad said raising his glass and we all cheered.

"Booyah!" Daryl said and I laughed.

"Booyah!" James copied.

"Thank you!" Rick said.

"Booyah!" T-Dog said and we all clinked our glasses.

"So when are you gonna tell us what the hell happened here, doc?" Shane asked and we all quieted down. "All the... the other doctors that were supposed to be figuring out what happened, - where are they?"

"We're celebrating, Shane. Don't need to do this now." Rick told him.

"Whoa, wait a second. This is why we're here, right? This was your move... Supposed to find all the answers. Instead we... We found him. Found one man. Why?" Shane asked.

"Well, when things got bad, a lot of people just left. Went off to be with their families. And when things got worse, when the military cordon got overrun, the rest bolted." Jenner explained to us.

"Every last one?" Shane asked him.

"No, many couldn't face walking out the door. They... opted out. There was a rash of suicides. That was a bad time." Jenner told him.

"You didn't leave. Why?" Andrea asked him.

"I just kept working. Hoping to do some good." He told her. The way he said it made it sound like he was lying.

"Dude, you are such a buzzkill, man." Glenn told Shane.

"Don't worry Glenn. We'll get you laughing like a pigtailed five year old soon." I told him and some of the people around us started laughing again much lighter than before.


After dinner, Jenner led us through another corridor explaining some rules.

"Most of the facility is powered down including housing, so you'll have to make do here. The couches are comfortable, but there are cots in storage if you like. There's a rec room down the hall that you kids might enjoy. Just don't plug in the video games, okay? Or anything that draws power. The same applies... If you shower, go easy on the hot water." Jenner said before walking away from us.

"Hot water?" Glenn asked looking back at the group with a smile on his face once more.

"That's what the man said." T-Dog told him with a smile and they both laughed before running to find their rooms and find the shower.

"Share a room or separate?" my dad asked me and James. My brother and I looked at each other then back to the man who'd raised us.

"Separate." We both said together before going off to find our own rooms.


In the shower I stood in the hot water for a while before getting out and changing into something to sleep into. I had some long red satin pants and a red satin tank as well as a robe that matched. I'd taken these clothes from a nice big house I had passed when my mom was still alive. I walked down the corridor and Daryl poked his head out Glenn's room.

"Got any shot glasses?" he asked me and I gave him a look.

"Yeah cause when the world ended I thought to bring a bar with me." I joked before shaking my head. "I have something that might work though. Give me a sec and I'll bring it back to you." I said going to my room. While on the road I'd found prescription bottles, ice trays and tablespoon measuring cups. I grabbed the cups and prescription bottles before going back to Glenn's room.

"This do?" I asked the man.

"Perfect." He told me before inviting me in his room where Glenn was sitting next to multiple wine bottles. Daryl and I sat next to him and the hunter poured us all a shot.

"Shouldn't we play a game or something?" Glenn asked us after we all took the first shot of the night.

"Don't have to but we can." I told him.

"What did you do before all this?" Glenn asked me.

"What does it matter?" I asked him. "We'll never be able to go back to that world."

"Come on. Just answer the question." Glenn said and I smiled lightly.

"I'm a farmer's daughter." I answered simply.

"Where'd you learn the medical stuff?" Glenn asked.

"I went to college then went back home." I told him.

"You spent all that money just to go back home?" Glenn asked and I poured us all another shot.

"I already knew I wouldn't be staying in a hospital, wasn't in my plans." I told him as we took another shot. I could tell that Glenn was starting to feel it cause he just couldn't stop smiling at everything that was said.

"I wanna know where you learned how to fight." Daryl told me.

"Have you met my dad? He made sure my brother and I could survive years in the woods let alone in abandoned towns." I laughed as I drank from my wine glass. We continued talking about our pasts as we kept drinking our shots and from the wine glasses in the room. When we ran out of wine we went back to the kitchen and grabbed another.

"Why are you always smiling?" Daryl asked me once Glenn was so far gone he was using an empty bottle as a mic.

"What do you mean?" I asked him. "This is a good place to be smiling. We're safe from the Walkers we have food, medicine, everything we need to survive."

"Before this, you were smiling, back at camp." He said.

"I'd just been reunited with my family. I was happy to have found them." I said and he looked back at Glenn. "I'm sorry about Merle. I should have stayed to make sure he would have been alright or unhandcuffed."

"Not your fault. Merle probably deserved to be handcuffed." Daryl told me.

"But not to be left behind. Or to have to cut off this own hand." I said.

"Not your fault." He told me and I looked back down at Glenn to see him passed out on the couch.

"Thank you." I said to Daryl with a small smile on my face.

"I'm going to go and drink more in my room. Ya comin'?" he asked me and I nodded.

"Yeah just give me a sec." I told him before he left. I covered Glenn up before making my way too Daryl's room to continue drinking. I was passing the rec room when the door slammed shut. I stated at it in confusion before putting my ear to the door and listening to the conversation happening inside.

"Yeah, but then I had y'all to think about, didn't I? I had you and Carl, and I needed to think about... Okay. No no. I had to get you guys safe to Atlanta. That's what I had to do. Just stop. If you thought for one second that he was still alive, would you have come? So I saved your life... you and your little boy's. That's what I did. Right? Okay. And if I could've traded places with him, I would have. I would trade places with him right now because... No no no. No. No no no, you... I love you. Shh shh." I heard Shane say to the other person, who I could assume was Lori.

"No. No, you're drunk." She told him and I peaked inside to see Shane holding Lori by the neck and her pushing him away but he was stronger.

"I love you." Shane told her.

"No, you're drunk." She repeated.

"And I know there were some things that say that you love me too. Because there's no way that you could've been with me the way that you were." Shane said.

"Shane. Shane. Shane! Just... Okay, stop." She begged him and I quietly made my way to the pair drawing my gun. They stayed talking at the same time making his words harder to understand but her pleas were crystal clear. She was eventually able to grab his neck and push him closer to me while scratching him. He started back to her but I cocked my gun and pointed it at his head.

"That's close enough you son of a bitch." I told him. He turned to me slightly shocked that I was there. "Leave now or there will be one less mouth to feed." I told him. He stated from me to Lori before going to the door and opening it, hitting the wall on his way out. Lori put her hands on her head an nd began sobbing hysterically. I put my weapon away and quickly moved to her. "Shhhh, Lori. I gotcha. I gotcha." I held her until she was calm enough to go back to her room without worrying her son and husband. I made my way to Daryl's room angrily and immediately started drinking from the bottle we had left.

"You okay? " he asked me.

"Shane tried to rape Lori." I told him taking another drink.

"How you know that? " he asked me.

"They were in the rec room when I was walking by." I said.

"She okay? " he asked and I nodded. "Then don't worry about it."

"Don't worry about it? How can I not? The man makes decisions for the group but the only thing he wants he can't have." I said before shaking my head. "I'm not nearly drunk enough."

"Good thing I found this then." He said holding the bottle he'd found to me. I took it and smiled.

"Why, hello Jack. Been a while since I saw you." I said staring at the liquor in my hands. We poured some shots and talked most of the night away away.


The next morning, I woke to someone's arms around my waist. It took me a few minutes to remember that I'd been drinking with Daryl in his room after helping Lori get Shane off her. I peeled his arm off me and stepped out of his room quietly to mine and changed before going to the kitchen to find bottles of advil and water on the table. I took one of the waters and some pain killers before sitting down next to a miserable Glenn and starting a light conversation with everyone who was there.

"Hello. Morning." Rock called out earning a few in return. Everyone was present except Daryl, Jenner and Shane

"Are you hungover? Mom said you'd be." Carl asked with small smile on his face.

"Mom is right." Rick said while sitting next to his wife.

"Mom has that annoying habit." Lori said with a smile.

"Eggs. Powdered, but... but I do 'em good." T-Dog called out coming from the area with the stove with a pan of cooled eggs and a smile. Glenn moaned making me smile at the younger man. "I bet you can't tell. Protein helps the hangover." Glenn moaned again drawing more silent laughter and the mothering from Jacqui.

"Where'd all this come from?" Rick asked Lori.

"Jenner." She answered as he tried to open the bottle.

"Could you help me, please?" He asked her making me laugh lightly.

"He thought we could use it." She said opening the bottle and handing it back to him.

"Thank you." Rick said before taking the pills.

"Some of us, at least." She said starting at Glenn with a small smile.

"Don't ever ever ever let me drink again." Glenn told us.

"So not doing that. Nice singing voice by the way." I told him and he gave me his best hungover glare.

"I remember our party days back at school. This one didn't know when to stop." Michael said smiling at the memories.

"What party days? " my dad asked and I nudged Michael who'd just say next to me.

"Now I'm never gunna hear the end of it." I joked making them laugh. "Party was quite last night until Justin Timberlake over here fell asleep. That was when Daryl and I went back to his room and continued drinking until we went to bed." I told them.

"Hey." Shane said as he walked into the room.

"Hey. Feel as bad as I do?" Rick asked his old partner as the man grabbed his food.

"Worse." Shane replied.

"The hell happened to you? Your neck?" T-Dog asked him.

"I must have done it in my sleep." He answered sitting down across from me.

"Never seen you do that before." Rick told him.

"Me neither. Not like me at all." Shane said looking to Lori. She looked up at him before quickly looking down to her food. I kicked Shane under the table causing him to look at me angrily.

"Oops. Sorry Shane didn't know you're leg was there." I lied with a smile on my face.

"Morning." Jenner called as he walked into the room. He was greeted with multiple hellos as he walked to the coffee maker.

"Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing..." Dale said.

"But you will anyway." Jenner said turning to look at us as Daryl entered the room.

"We didn't come here for the eggs." Andrea told him bluntly.


We followed him into the big room after we'd finished our breakfast per his request.

"Give me playback of TS-19." Jenner called to Vi.

"Playback of TS-19." Vi repeated as the large screen came to life.

"Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few." Jenner told us as we scattered across the room and the images loaded. What became very clear was the outline of a person's head until the brain seemed to glow out of their virtual skin.

"Is that a brain?" Carl asked him.

"An extraordinary one. Not that it matters in the end. Take us in for E.I.V." Jenner ordered.

"Enhanced internal view." The person went from standing to laying on their back and the view zoomed into the brain to show the most beautiful light show someone could ever see.

"What are those lights?" Shane asked him.

"It's a person's life... experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you... the thing that makes you unique. And human." Jenner explained.

"You don't make sense ever?" Daryl asked him with his arms crossed over his chest.

"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." Jenner told us.

"Beautiful." I said quietly only drawing the attention of the two men next to me, Daryl and Michael.

"Death? That's what this is, a vigil?" Rick asked Jenner moving closer to him.

"Yes. Or rather the playback of the vigil." Jenner said.

"This person died? Who?" Andrea asked him moving slightly closer to him.

"Test subject 19. Someone who was bitten and infected... And volunteered to have us record the process." Jenner told us.

"Brave person." Michael said and Jenner nodded.

"Vi, scan forward to the first event." He ordered.

"Scanning to first event." Vi repeated and the screen fast forward to a certain point in the process or turning. When the screen stopped it showed the brain was slowly turning dark with slow red lights taking over the beautiful blue.

"What is that?" Glenn asked him.

"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." Jenner said as we watched the brain go dark.

"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked her mother.

"Yes." Carol said honestly. I turned to my family to see them comforting one another and I had to look away. I didn't deserve their comfort. I took my mother away from them.

"They all lost somebody." I heard Lori tell Jenner and looked to see Andrea also crying.

"She lost her sister and we lost my mother." I told him and he looked at us all in understanding.

"I lost somebody too. I know how devastating it is." He told us. "Scan to the second event."

"Scanning to second event." Vi said.

"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." Jenner told us and I gave him a curious look. Very so prebiotic time for just some random patient. We watched the dark brain in shock add red light make their way through portions of the brain.

"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked in shock.

"No, just the brain stem. Basically, it gets them up and moving." Jenner told her.

"But they're not alive?" Rick asked moving forward.

"You tell me." Jenner told him motioning to the big screen.

"It's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark." Rock said.

"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." Jenner explained. Suddenly a portion of an object could be seen at the top of the screen and a flash of light tore through the patient's brain stem.

"God. What was that?" Carol asked.

"He shot his patient in the head. Didn't you?" Andrea asked him.

"Vi, power down the main screen and the workstations." Jenner ordered avoiding the question we all knew the answer to.

"Powering down main screen and workstations."

"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea asked him.

"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, - fungal." Jenner listed.

"Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui offered.

"There is that." Jenner agreed.

"Somebody must know something. Somebody somewhere." Andrea said.

"There are others, right? Other facilities?" Carol asked him.

"There may be some. People like me." Jenner told both desperate women.

"But you don't know? How can you not know?" Rick asked him.

"Everything went down. Communications, directives... all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month." Jenner told us.

"So it's not just here. There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing? That's what you're really saying, right?" Andrea asked angrily. Everyone was quite, watching Jenner with some small bit of hope. When he didn't say anything Andrea scoffed at him.

"Jesus." Jacqui said quietly.

"Man, I'm gonna get shit-faced drunk again." Daryl said rubbing his face worth his hands.

"I'll join you again." I told him and Michael nodded.

"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 asked him. We turned to the clock to see it go down to 00:59:59

"The basement generators... they run out of fuel." Jenner said before turning and leaving us.

"And then?" Rick asked him but he didn't answer. "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"

"When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur." Vi told us. Rick decided that he, Shane, T-Dog and Glenn would go check the generators whole the rest of us relaxed in our rooms. Daryl took a bottle of wine with him, me and Michael back to his room and we all drank while talking and laughing quietly, nothing like the night before. When I started getting hot I checked to see if the air was blowing only to find that comfort was once again gone.

"Something wrong?" Michael asked me.

"The air conditioning stopped." I told the two men in the room with me before the lights shut down add well.

"Why is the air off?" I heard Lori ask from the hallway.

"And the lights in our room?" Carol asked. Daryl got up and hung out the doorway with Michael and I behind him.

"What's going on? Why is everything turned off?" Daryl asked.

"Energy use is being prioritized." Jenner said walking past us in his white lab coat and snatching the bottle of wine we had been sharing just moments before.

"Air isn't a priority? And lights?" Dale asked and we all started following him.

"It's not up to me. Zone 5 is shutting itself down." Jenner told us.

"Hey! Hey, what the hell does that mean?" Daryl asked him as we all walked down the hallways back to the main room, the power slowly airing down around us. "Hey man, I'm talking to you. What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?"

"You'd be surprised." Jenner told him. We heard multiple footsteps making their way around below us and Lori looked over the railing to find the others.

"Rick?" She cakled to him.

"Jenner, what's happening?" Rick asked him as we met up with them on the lower level.

"The system is dropping all the nonessential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark. Right on schedule." We looked to see the clock at 00:31:27. Jenner took a drink of the liquor in his hands and stopped on the bottom step of the small set of stairs. He offered the drink back to Daryl who snatched the drink from him spoiling some of it on the floor. "It was the French." He said before going up the steps.

"What?" Andrea asked him confused.

"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 till the end. They thought they were close to a solution." Jenner told us.

"What happened?" JJacqui asked him.

"The same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs of fossil fuel. I mean, how stupid is that?" Jenner asked going to the computers.

"Let me tell you..." Shane started saying following Jenner.

"To hell with it, Shane. I don't even care. Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff. We're getting out of here now!" Rick told us and we all turned to leave when alarms suddenly started blaring over us.

"What's that?" Shane asked and we all stopped to look around.

"What's that?" James repeated.

"30 minutes to decontamination." Vi said showing the countdown on the big screen.

"Doc, what's going on here?" Daryl asked him as he moved around on the platform.

"Everybody, y'all heard Rick. Get your stuff and let's go! Go now! Go! Let's go." Shane ordered.

"Come on!" Glenn called out. Suddenly the door slammed down between us and our rooms. "No. Did you just lock us in? He just locked us in!"

"We've hit the 30-minute window. I am recording." Jenner said into the computer screen.

"Carl." Lori called for her son as we made our way to Jenner again.

"Mom!" The boy called out.

"You son of a bitch." Daryl shouted at Jenner running to him.

"Shane! Jackie!" Rick called for us to stop him.

"You let us out of here!" Daryl ordered.

"No, stop. Don't!" Shane ordered Daryl as we tried to pull him away from the older man.

"You lying..." Daryl started saying before T-Dog started helping us push him back.

"No no no no!" Shane said.

"Wait, no! No, don't do it." I told him and he called down slightly.

"Hey, Jenner, open that door now." Rick ordered him.

"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed." Jenner told us.

"Well, open the damn things." Daryl told him.

"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. It's better this way." Jenner told us.

"What is? What happens in 28 minutes?" Rick asked him but he just turned to his keyboard and started typing away. "What happens in 28 minutes?!" Rick asked again.

"Come on!" Daryl shouted.

"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!" Jenner yelled getting in our faces before sitting back down and straightening his coat. "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 him.

"Vi, define." Jenner ordered.

H.I.T.s... 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." Jenner told us as the mothers and their children began to cry.

"Open the damn door!" Daryl shouted at Jenner after throwing the liquor bottle at the door.

"Out of my way!" Shane ordered before running at the door and taking an ax to it.

"Daryl!" T-Dog threw an ax to Daryl and he began to help shame try to get us out.

"You should've left well enough alone. It would've been so much easier." Jenner told us.

"Easier for who?" Lori asked him.

"All of you. You know what's out there... A short, brutal life and an agonizing death. Your... your sister... what was her name?" Jenner asked Andrea.

"Amy." She told him.

"Amy. You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that really what you want for your wife and son?" Jenner asked Rick.

"I don't want this." Rick snarled ay him.

"Can't make a dent." Shane said leaning next to Rick on the computers.

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher." Jenner told them.

"Well, your head ain't!" Daryl said preparing to swing the ax at Jenner only to be stopped by T-Dog, Rick, Dale, James and I.

"Whoa! Whoa! Daryl! Daryl! Just back up! Back up!" We all shouted at him.

"You do want this. Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead." Jenner said to Rick and we all looked at him in shock.

"What?" I asked.

"What? You really said that? After all your big talk?" Shane asked him.

"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick asked us.

"Do you really have no hope?" James asked him.

"There is no hope. There never was." Jenner told us.

"There's always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere..." Rick said.

"What part of "everything is gone" do you not understand?" Andrea asked him.

"Not you too." My dad said.

"Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event." Jenner told us.

"This is our meteor?" I asked him and he nodded. "Then it can go back to space cause we will survive this." I took Daryl's disguarded ax and started on the door again.

"This isn't right. You can't just keep us here." Carol said through her tears.

"One tiny moment... a millisecond. No pain." Jenner told her.

"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this." Carol cried.

"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" Jenner asked us. I turned to them when I heard a gun cocked and watched as Shane made his way to Jenner.

"Shane, no!" Rick told him.

"Out of the way, Rick! Stay out of my way! Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. Do you hear me?!" Shane told him putting the gun in the man's face.

"Brother, brother, this is not the way you do this. We will never get out of here." Rick told him.

"Shane, you listen to him." Lori told him.

"It's too late." Shane said.

"He dies, we all..." Rick tried telling the man but Shane just shouted at Jenner. "...We all die! Shane! Shane!" Shane started shooting the computers and we all tried to stay out of his way except Rick who was able to knock him to the ground. We all watched as Rick stood over Shane prepared to got him with the but of his gun. "Are you done now? Are you done?"

"Yeah, I guess we all are." Shane told him from the ground. Rick stared at all of us for a moment.

"I think you're lying." Rick said turning to Jenner.

"What?" Jenner asked him.

"You're lying about no hope. If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?" Rick asked him.

"It doesn't matter." Jenner said.

"It does matter. It always matters. You stayed when others ran. Why?" Rick asked.

"Not because I wanted to. I made a promise... To her. My wife." He said pointing to the big screen.

"Test subject 19 was your wife?" Lori asked him as Daryl made his way back to the door with the other ax add he and I kept pounding on the door.

"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no?" Jenner asked the others. "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... that's all we want... a choice, a chance." Rick told him.

"Let us keep trying as long as we can."Lori begged him.

"I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those." Jenner told them. The door in front of Daryl and me lowered and we turned to the others.

"Come on!" Daryl called out. "Let's go!"

"Come on, let's go!" Glenn said as we waited for the others to join us.

"Come on!" My dad b said moving James in front of him.

"Move it! Move it!" I said anxious to leave this place.

"Come on, let's go!" Daryl shouted at them.

"We're gonna get out of here, Sophia." Carol told her daughter.

"There's your chance. Take it." Jenner told Rick.

"I'm grateful." Rick said shaking the other mama hand.

"The day will come when you won't be." Jenner told him before pulling him close and whispering in his ear.

"Let's go! Hey, we've got four minutes left! Come on! Let's go. Let's go." Glenn called to him. Rick made his way back to us and we started leaving when Jacqui said what we never would have thought.

"No no, I'm staying. I'm staying, sweetie." She told T-Dog.

"But that's insane!" T-Dog told her.

"No, it's completely sane. For the first time in a long time. I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy. There's no time to argue and no point, not if you want to get out. Just get out. Get out." She told us.

"Dog. Come on, man. Come on! Let's go! Let's go!" Shane said and we continued moving until we heard Andrea speak.

"I'm staying too." We heard her say.

"Andrea, no." Dale begged her. She turned from him and say down on the ground. "Just go! Go!" Dale told us and we complied.

"Come on." Rick said. After collecting our stuff we all ran up the stairs since the elevator was down with the rest of the power. When we got to the ground floor T-Dog tried the doors we'd arrived through yesterday with no luck.

"Get them doors open!" Shane told him.

"Come on!" T-Dog said trying to push the doors open before going to the key pad.

"It doesn't work!" Glenn reminded him.

"Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Try it! Try it! Try it now!" T-Dog told him.

"Jackie toss me the ax." Shane told me and I tossed him the ax as Daryl started to try getting us out.

"Come on! Come on!" My dad called to the mothers and their kids.

"Stay close, sweetheart." Carol told Sophia.

"Daryl, look out!" T-Dog shouted before he took a chair and tried breaking the window with it.

"Dog, get down! Get down!" We all moved out of the way as Shane shot the glass twice with no result. "Jesus."

"The glass won't break?" Sophia asked.

"Don't worry, we'll get out of here." James told her for comfort.

"Rick, I have something that might help." Carol said dogging in her bag.

"Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it." Shane said.

"Like you're doing any better." My dad told him.

"Your first morning at camp, when I washed your uniform I found this in your pocket." She said holding the gernade out to him shakily. He took the grenade from her and rushed to the windows as we moved down the stairs.

"Look out!" Shane called out. Rick set up the grenade and dropped it by the window.

"Move your ass cowboy!" I yelled at him.

"Oh sh... Get down! Get down! Shit!" Rick said. The grenade exploded and Rick was thrown towards us as glass shattered everywhere. We ran out the broken window with Walkers coming closer to us due to the noise from the explosion. We killed as many as we could not caring about the noise as we ran to the cars we'd arrived in. "They're coming." I said with a smile as I watched Andrea and Dale climb out the window.

"Jackie let's move!" Daryl called to me and I ran to his truck and climbed in the passenger seat as he got in the driver's seat. We lowered ourselves, him on top of me, before the explosion of the CDC building. We looked out the windshield and watched the fire burn what hope we'd had only earlier in the week. Daryl started his truck and we followed the caravan towards a temporary safe place. This was what we had to do until we found a home for us all to live in peace.