A/N: I know it's been awhile since I've last updated but with everything that's been going on my work hours increased to the point that I've been working 7 days a week and this was the first weekend in a long time that I've had off and have been able to focus on writing. I'm hoping that as things begin to calm down at work that I can start writing again more frequently. Hope everyone is doing alright and thank you again for reading.

Chapter 7

"Why do you watch this shit? You got some sorta fucked up, morbid obsession with death?"

"Nah, I just like history. You and Merle going to the strip club tonight?"

"Yeah, we'll prolly be back around two or so. If ya ask me, you really need get yourself a hobby."

"Last time you said that it was pouring down rain and I was curled up on the couch under a blanket with a cup of coffee and a good book."

"Last time ya didn't have the t.v. on watching some piece of shit documentary about Chernobyl. Don't even get me started on those stupid ass crime shows you're always watching. Next thing ya know, I'm gonna come home to find ya reading some crappy science book about God only knows what."

"See now that's the difference between you and me, Daryl. I have a love of learning and you have a love in teasing me to end about my interests, no matter how strange they seem. If I were to tell you I wanted to take a forensics class at some college in Atlanta or Savannah or hell even East Jesus Nowhere, you'd find some way to have the last word. Honestly, I don't know which of you is worse: you or Shane."

"You're fucking morbid as hell if you find 'love' in catastrophe and chaos that kills hundreds, if not thousands. And don't be bringing that douchebag's name up, he's worse than me and you know it."

"I never said anything about finding love in any of that; it's beyond terrible what happened and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. If you're really interested in why I'm watching this, it's because one of my cousins is writing a paper for his history class and he chose this topic. He called me a few days ago and asked me to help him pull some resources together."

"Fucking twisted ass kid."

"Daryl! He's 13 and it was either this or something called Minamata disease."

"The fuck is that?"

"I have no fucking clue; something about mercury poisoning that took place in Japan starting in the early '30s. Don't even ask how he learned about it because I don't know what they're teaching kids these days. The only reason I suggested he picked Chernobyl was because I at least knew something about it."

"Your whole damn family is messed up, ya know that?"

"Not as messed up as your family. You boys have fun, if you get too drunk and want me to come get ya, just call. I'd rather you and Merle ask for a ride home instead of bail money."

The cheap phone in my pocket vibrated against my leg and I silently groaned to myself knowing it was Merle, though I wasn't entirely sure why he'd be texting me now when he knew I was on my way to get him.

'Bail me out ya lil shit!'

'Fuck you! The fuck happened?'

'Drug raid.'

A low, guttural growl escaped as my eye twitched in anger and frustration; another Saturday night fucking wasted because of Merle and his buddies. It's the second time this month he got himself caught up in a drug raid and where in the hell does he think I'm gonna get the money to bail him out again? Flopping down on the couch, I propped my feet up on the coffee table and settled into the morbid display Claire was engrossed in.

"What happened?"

She never turned her attention away from the screen or looked my way; I guess having lived together under the same roof for the last six months or so she's learned when Merle's fucking pissed me off. She's also learned to cut straight to the point and rip the band-aide off without warning.

"Wait, don't tell me; Merle's gone and got himself locked up again, he's demanding bail money again, and we both know that if you don't show up within the next hour he's gonna be blowing our phones up until we cave. Stop me if I'm wrong."

"Ya think we should?"

She looked over at me with an all too familiar look and reached over to fish my phone from my pocket. Within a few seconds she tossed the piece of shit on the coffee table then got up and pulled the phone cord from the wall, disconnecting the damn thing instantly.

"Let that asshole sit and stew for the weekend; I'm sick of spending my hard-earned money on bailing your brother out instead of being able to enjoy the weekend or being able to save to fix the house up a bit. And you shouldn't have to spend your money on him either. You're a grown man and you shouldn't have to be bound to your brother with a fucking ball and chain! If you wanna go and bail that sorry son of a bitch out, be my guest but don't you fucking dare ask me for a cent, do I make myself clear?"

She was practically shouting as the rage built behind her eyes and her rant came to a boiling point when I found her nose pressed against mine (bitch has a worse temper than Merle at times). I hate to admit it but Claire was right about everything, even about the ball and chain bit. Quickly dropping my feet off the table I got off the couch and made a beeline for the fridge to grab a couple of beers; if I was gonna be stuck in this crap shack for the night watching some morbid show then I may as well get drunk.

"Nah, jackass, we're drinking whiskey tonight. Move your pansy-ass outta the way."

I hadn't realized she snuck up on me until she was using her hips to push me to the side and her hand reached into the fridge for the bottle of Jack. On nights like this she never bothered with pulling glasses out, we'd just sit on the couch and pass the bottle back and forth until it was gone. I'd usually pass out on the couch after a few hours and she'd stumble down the hall towards her room. There were a couple of times I'd get up to take a piss and I could hear her vibrator going; we'd fuck then pass out again then come morning it was back to normal.

Tonight would probably be no different as she slammed the fridge shut and grabbed my wrist, pulling me behind her until we were back in the living room. The end credits for that morbid documentary were rolling and I grabbed the remote to find something better than a show about Oak Island. Eventually I came across a movie we both agreed on and settled into our routine of passing the bottle back and forth until it was empty and Claire started nodding off.

"I'm gonna hit the sack," she yawned, stretching over to put the empty bottle on the table, "I'll see ya in the morning."

"We gonna fuck later?"

"I'm not in the mood tonight plus I gotta be up early tomorrow and drive to my grandparent's farm to help them get the peaches in. Good night, Daryl."

She yawned again, patted my leg, then got up and stumbled down the hall to her room. Since Merle was locked up for the weekend and Claire planned on being gone tomorrow, I guess I had the house to myself.

Guess I'll just get shit-faced all weekend.

"Give me playback of TS-19"

We met this quack of a doctor last night after we finally made it to the CDC; he made himself out to be a pretty good guy but something just seemed off about him. Last night shouldn't have happened the way it did – food, water, booze, beds, hot showers. It all just seemed too good to be true and the fact that he was only person here had me a bit on edge.

"Very few people ever got the chance to see this. Very few."

A computer system he'd been calling Vi pulled up a video and I knew that if Claire were with us she'd be just as fascinated as the cop's kid. She loved her crime shows and forensics, something like this at the CDC would've been like the icing on the cake for her. The computer wiped away one layer of a skull after another until -

"Is that a brain?"

No kid, it's a foot, of course it's a fucking brain you little twerp! Thank god we never had kids; I don't know how anyone could put up with all those stupid fucking questions all day.

"An extraordinary one," Jenner answered with a small smile, "not that it matters in the end. Take us in for EIV."

"Enhanced Internal View."

At Jenner's command, the camera zoomed in on the brain giving us all a look at what goes on and I had to admit the lights flickering and zooming had me fascinated. It wasn't until Shane spoke up that I refocused my thoughts into paying attention to what Jenner was about to explain to us. Perhaps it'd be the answers we were all searching for since things went south.

"What are those lights?"

"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, you unique. And human."

"It don't make sense ever?" I asked a bit confused by what he meant.

"Those are synapses, electrical 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?" Officer Friendly asked, just as confused as the rest of us, "that's what this is? A vigil?"

"Yes, or rather, the playback of the vigil."

"This person died? Who?" Blondie piped in, not allowing Jenner to get to what I want to know.

"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."

Seconds later, the camera zoomed back out to a side view of this person lying down on a table. We could all clearly see the lights still flickering in the brain like before but something didn't look right, the brain was turning black. Like it was dying.

"What is that?" The Chinaman beat me to it but I'm sure we were all thinking the same thing.

"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."

As Jenner continued to explain what this thing does I watched in horror as the person on the table struggled to breath and at the same time watched as their brain completely blacked out and died. The words 'subject deceased' was on the right of the screen and I hoped that if I ever met got bit that someone would put me out of my misery instead of leaving me to struggle to breath like a heartless bastard.

I barely caught Sophia asking her mom if that's what happened to Jim and the thought of knowing that's what happened to him, Amy, and the rest of our camp at the quarry made me feel a bit guilty for not having been back sooner. Maybe if we'd have been back with those guns before sunset we might not have lost so many.

"Scanning to second event."

"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."

I watched the screen as I began seeing flashes of red come to life and spread across the brain, the body on the table slowly twitching back to life. But it wasn't like before. The lights before were white and constantly moving across the whole brain but these red lights only stayed in one spot and barely moved.

"It restarts the brain?!"

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

"But they're not alive."

Of course they ain't alive you jackass, it don't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out.

"You tell me."

"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."

Before any of us could think to ask anything more a bright light flashed across the screen and the brain was severed in half. I didn't need for Jenner to answer to know it was a bullet; it was the only sure way to make sure they don't get back up.

"Vi, power down the main screen and the workstations."

"Powering down main screen and workstations."

We came here for answers and we definitely got some but it wasn't the one I needed to hear. I needed to know how it got started and if there was a cure because at the rate this was going I had a feeling we'd be dropping like flies in no time at all. My thoughts turned to back to Claire briefly before I caught a glimpse of hesitation on Jenner's face. The way he's talking and acting has me thinking that he's keeping something from us. The hairs on the back of neck started to stand on edge as his nervousness radiated out into the room.

"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Blondie asked as she tried to toughen up after a moment of weakness thinking about her sister.

"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal."

"Or the Wrath of God? Jacqui questioned, shooting daggers straight into the man.

"There is that."

"Somebody must know something; somebody, somewhere."

"There are others, right? Other facilities?"

"There may be some. People like me."

"But you don't know? How can you not know?"

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

"So it's not just here? There's nothing left anywhere? Nothing? That's what you're really saying, right?"

As Officer Friendly and Blondie argued with Jenner over the thin shred of hope of something left I came to realization that everything and everyone I knew from before was likely gone; that despite my gut feeling, Claire was probably gone too. If I ever saw her again she'd probably be a walker and I'd have to do what's right and put her down. As much as it'd kill me to do it, she'd have the strength to rip my throat out with her bare hands. In some morbid way though, at least we'd be together again.

I shook those dark thoughts from my head, rubbing my eyes "man, I'm gonna get shit-faced drunk again."

Then the old man decided to speak up and my heart sank knowing he was about to ask something none of us wanted to hear.

"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?"

"The basement generators – they run out of fuel."

"And then?" Officer Friendly pressed, "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"

"When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur.

I left the room in search of another bottle of wine from the cafeteria then retreated back to my room and got as drunk as I could with an hour left before this "decontamination" thing happened.

Just when I was about halfway through my second bottle I heard the air in my room shut off and voices in the hallway asking Jenner what the hell was going on. I guess I was too drunk to realize he scooped the bottle from my hand and it set me off on a mission to find out what the fuck was going on.

"Energy use is being prioritized."

"Air isn't a priority? And lights?"

Just shut up you old fuck, why you always gotta point out the obvious? It clearly ain't a priority if it's being turned off!

Why don't you by a little more observant? Look around Daryl, people are scared and when people are scared they start to panic. Panic leads to chaos. This is the breakdown of society.

I wish Claire was here so I could tell her to get out of my fucking head!

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

"Hey! Hey, what the hell does that mean? Hey man, I'm talking to you. What do you mean, it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?" I asked, feeling my own panic starting to rear its ugly head.

"You'd be surprised."

We followed Jenner back into the main room and found the others coming back upstairs from the basement. Jenner tried to remain calm and collected but after taking a swig from my bottle and handing it back to me, I knew he was anything but. He was just as scared as the rest of us.

"The system is dropping all the non-essential 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."

He paused for a minute like he was in thought before he looked back at Blondie, "it was the French."

"What?"

"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."

"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?"

When people are scared they start to panic.

The fear in everyone's faces had us all beginning to panic and the way Jenner was talking wasn't making us feel any better. Claire would always try to tell me when I was pissed to find another way of saying something and seeing as how we had kids in our group, it was one of the few times I wished someone would've told me the bad news in a better way.

The alarms were sounding and the computer gave us the alert for the 30 minute warning; while our backs were turned the doors were shut, preventing any of us from getting out.

Panic leads to chaos.

Nothing could've stopped me from attacking the son of a bitch as I started to feel myself fill with an alcohol-induced rage. I ran up the small flight of stairs towards the station Jenner was seated at and had it not been for Shane and T, I'd have killed that motherfucker.

As they dragged me away the others started arguing, even pleading, with Jenner to re-open the doors and then he lost it. He reached his breaking point and cracked just like all the other doctors and scientists here before him.

"Do 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!" He stopped himself for a minute and sat back in his chair, trying to get himself under control. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure – in a terrorist attack for example – HITs are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."

"HITs?"

"Vi, define."

"HITs – 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 at between 5,000 degrees and 6,000 degrees and is useful 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."

This is the breakdown of society.

"This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event."

I think I prefer Claire's words over Jenner's. Our collective panic increased as we watched Shane put a gun to the guy's face; Claire always thought he was crazy and didn't really care to be associated with him unless it was behind closed doors. Now I know what she meant, the look in his eyes just confirmed what Claire had been trying to tell me for years. Once Shane's moment of crazy had passed I picked up an ax and kept trying to work on the doors until the others had finally talked the good doctor into letting us out.

It was their choice whether to stay or go but I was getting the fuck out one way or another, just didn't think that way would come as the result of a grenade. I had barely made it back to the truck before the blast went off. Georgia summers are hot and miserable but I had never felt a heat like that. If we had parked any closer than what we were we'd have probably been blown up with everything else around the building.

It was a sobering reminder of how little time we really have as I watched what remained of the CDC burn from my rearview mirror. It gave me time to think about how truly close to death I was and of all the things I wish I could've said to Merle and Claire over the years.

"I love you, Daryl. I'll never expect you to say it back but I need you to know that if anything were to ever happen to me that at least one person on this planet said those words to you and meant them."

Never imagined it'd take a near death experience like this to make finding her more important than before. If nothing else she deserves to hear me say it back to her at least once.