AN: Here we are, another chapter here.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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For days, it seemed, they existed in a haze. For the first time since everything had simply gone insane, they could eat their fill, bathe, and sleep without concern. People enjoyed leisure activities like reading and completing puzzles.
It was, honestly, surreal, but Daryl enjoyed the first few days of it because, for the first time in a while, he could make love to his wife and he could sleep at night without worrying that he would lose even more than he'd already lost.
For a few days, he was allowed to begin the mourning process for his brother.
Daryl hated to admit that he thought Merle was dead—for so long he'd believed his brother was, somehow, invincible. Still, in his gut, he did feel that Merle was simply gone. The world had always been hard, but it was harder now than it ever had been before and, no matter how much he had seemed like something superhuman to Daryl, Merle was only a man. Daryl was starting to accept that.
Andrea was not faring as well as Daryl with dealing with her losses. She was, perhaps, processing her grief, but she was doing so in a much slower way. She was unnaturally quiet and, in general, seemed to be physically ailing from her losses. Still, she did eat when pushed to do so, bathed when Carol reminded her that she needed to do such a thing, and she allowed Sophia to stay close to her and nurse her the way that Sophia seemed naturally inclined to do for the aunt that she practically viewed as some kind of hero.
Despite the practical Utopia of the CDC, though, there were some things about it that just didn't quite sit right for Daryl.
Daryl found Jenner studying over his computers in what he could only consider the main room of the CDC—at least, it seemed it had once been the main room of this lower level, and that was all the lay of the land that Daryl really had for the time being.
"Everything to your liking, Mr. Dixon?" Jenner asked when he became aware of Daryl's presence. Daryl didn't miss that the man immediately reached up and turned off the monitor to the computer where he was studying.
"Them blood tests come back OK?" Daryl asked.
"Nothing too unexpected or surprising," Jenner said. "All things considered…"
"That mean that there was some anticipated problems?" Daryl asked.
"Nothing, really," Jenner said. "Nothing to be concerned about. A little thing here or there, but…"
"Nothing fatal?" Daryl asked.
Jenner smiled to himself and Daryl felt his stomach tighten.
"Nothing I'd worry too much about," Jenner said.
"You see—that's what concerns me the most, I think," Daryl said. Jenner hummed at him in question. He got to his feet. He tried to do so smoothly—nonchalantly. There were few things in life that were more awkward than a person who was trying to look relaxed when they were anything but relaxed. Daryl felt his hair stand up slightly in recognition of Jenner's movements. "You don't seem too concerned about anything."
"What is there to be concerned about?"
"You ain't been outside lately."
"There's no reason to go outside," Jenner said.
"Except—you say the food, the drink, all that…you say we got enough to last forever." Jenner nodded. "I don't need a medical degree to know that—food don't last forever. And if there's more comin'? It's gotta come from somewhere. It's gotta get in somehow. Is the government sendin' us more food?"
Jenner laughed. There was a distinct sound of nervousness in his laughter that made Daryl's stomach tighten. Daryl walked around, taking in every aspect of the room, but always keeping some slight awareness of the location of Jenner. Jenner moved around, too, but his only interest seemed to be in keeping a certain distance from Daryl. That caught Daryl's attention, too. Jenner obviously read Daryl as a physical threat. That was nothing new. In Daryl's life, being read that way had come in handy more than once, especially in some of the situations in which his brother had landed him. Daryl knew, though, that nobody bothered to read him as a physical threat unless they had done—or were planning to do—something that they thought might lead him to physically threaten them.
"You don't answer," Daryl offered a long beat of silence. "This is new. What is this?"
Daryl stared at the numbers on the digital readout on the wall. They ticked, second by second, downward. He knew it was a timer—it had to be. The only thing he wasn't sure of was exactly what the timer represented.
"It's nothing, really," Jenner said.
Daryl smiled to himself.
"It's countin' down," Daryl said. "What the hell I wanna know is—what's it countin' down to?"
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It was something of a rude awakening. Daryl had come rushing through the rooms they were starting to consider home and raised the alarm. They were to grab what they could, and meet him in the computer room where Jenner normally haunted the space and did whatever it was that CDC scientists did when they were the last of their kind.
There was something going on, but Daryl didn't share that information with them—not right away. He only let them know that it was urgent and they should immediately do what he asked. The tone of his voice was enough to get everyone to comply even without explanation.
Carol wrapped her arm around Sophia and walked quickly with the girl. Sophia carried her few precious belongings, and Carol carried her own bag. Sophia kept looking over her shoulder, but Carol assured her that Dale had Andrea, and he would make sure that she kept pace with the rest of them as they rushed through the hallways.
They spilled out into the computer room, all of them with questions pinballing through their minds and hanging on their lips. It was Rick that finally voiced the concerns of all of them.
"Tell 'em just what the hell you told me," Daryl insisted.
Carol listened in disbelief as Jenner explained to them that the CDC was, as they had predicted, the last stronghold of the government. It was also a place that was full of medical horrors that they couldn't even imagine. In the event of a catastrophe—a true world catastrophe like the one in which they currently found themselves—it was wired with a failsafe. It would continue to function until the last possible minute, and then it would self-destruct.
The clock on the wall, to which none of them had really been paying attention, had been counting down to that moment—the final one.
When the CDC self-destructed, it would take them all with it. In the matter of a few blazing hot seconds, everything and everyone would be incinerated at temperatures so high that not even the germs themselves could survive.
Carol's own voice sounded foreign to her as she begged for her daughter's life.
Everyone's voice sounded distant—like they were all underwater in a fish tank of sorts—as they responded to Jenner's death sentence. The indistinguishable cacophony only got louder when the heavy doors closed to lock them into this room—the room where they would all die.
Carol was shaking and holding onto Sophia. She was aware that Daryl, in a desperate attempt to save them, was trying to break through the steel door with a fireman's ax.
"Don't you understand?" Jenner said. "It's better this way. It's better for all of you. In a matter of seconds, it's all over. It's a death so fast that there is no pain. No suffering. Only oblivion. What is there for you out there? From what we can tell, the virus—whatever it actually is—had a perfect spread record. Every living human being was infected. Is infected. There's no escaping it. You die out there. And when you die, you change. You become one of them. You die, and then you kill. Here? Death is fast. Easy. There's nothing."
Carol heard Shane arguing that they had the right to choose how they lived and died. She seconded his words and heard the others agree. They begged for their lives.
Somehow, someone must have gotten through to Jenner because he opened the heavy metal door. He freed their passage.
"You'll never make it," he said as his parting words to all of them.
But they had to try.
Carol didn't hesitate. Daryl yelled at her to move the moment that the door slid open. She ran without thinking—dragging Sophia with her and holding on tight enough to her daughter's arm that Sophia complained about the discomfort. She wasn't willing to risk the possibility that anything could separate them with a clock ticking down to the second when they would lose their lives in a blaze.
As they spilled out the staircase into the ground floor lobby, everyone threw themselves into the struggle of trying to break the windows through which they could see sunshine, freedom, and life. The windows weren't made of regular glass, and they simply sent chairs and everything else bouncing back toward those who tried to break them.
"It's not working! We gotta have something better! Stronger!"
Carol's breathing was loud in her ears. Her heart was pounding. The blood rushing by her ears sounded like roaring. She'd never been so overcome with adrenaline in her entire life. With shaky hands, she fumbled in her bag for something she'd tucked there—something she'd felt the need to take, at the time that she took it, without even understanding why.
"I have something," she managed to get out as her hand closed around it.
"Carol—we're gonna need more than a nailfile," Rick growled at her. She ignored him.
The grenade was heavy in her hand. She pulled it free and thrust it toward Shane who was standing near her.
"I took it," she said. "When Rick first came to camp. It was in his pocket."
Nobody asked her about her decision to steal the grenade—nor her decision to keep it. Instead, Shane rushed the grenade over to where Daryl was trying, in vain, to beat the windows out with the ax he was still carrying.
Carol got down on the ground, like everyone else, when they yelled at her to do so. She covered Sophia's body with her own, blocking her daughter's ears with her hands, and guarding her head with her chest. The explosion was deafening, and Carol wondered if her ears would ever stop ringing. She felt dizzy, at first, but recovered quickly—the adrenaline was still driving her. She got to her feet and pulled Sophia after her as soon as her hearing cleared just enough for her to hear Daryl yelling at her to go.
"Mama! Mama!" Sophia screamed at her, as Carol dragged her toward the blown-out window, her internal clock aware of how little time they must have left. "Where's Andrea? Mama! Where's Andrea?"
Carol looked around. Admittedly, until now, her only concern had been to save her daughter.
"Daryl—Andrea?"
"She's comin'!" Daryl barked at Carol. "Go on—get out. Go for the truck. Don't'cha look back."
"Daryl?" Carol asked as he practically pushed her out the window. She didn't have much time to argue, though, and she knew there was no need to waste time discussing things. Her job was clear. She had to get Sophia out of the building and to the truck. She hit the ground, dragging Sophia after her. As soon as she could get to her feet, she pulled Sophia up and ran, pushing her daughter toward the truck. She had no weapon against the Walkers that were coming, drawn by the sound of the explosion. She had nothing but the desperate need to get Sophia to safety.
Somehow, it was enough. She practically stuffed Sophia into the truck's cab and climbed in after her. She kicked a Walker back as it reached the door and slammed the door shut. She pulled her daughter into her lap despite the cramped space and hugged her as tightly as she could.
"Where's Daddy? Where's Andrea?"
Carol shushed Sophia. Even as she did so, she saw Daryl making the wild run across the lawn of the CDC with long strides. He flung what he was carrying into the back of the truck seconds before he yanked the door open, jumped inside, and slammed it back. Immediately, he wrapped his arms around Carol and Sophia both, pulling them down, together, toward his lap to cover them with his body.
The CDC would explode. They knew that. There was no getting out of there before it did. All they could do was hope that the explosion left their vehicles intact.
"Where's Andrea?" Carol asked, peeking out of the window as much as she could. People were scrambling toward vehicles. "Daryl? Where's Andrea?" Daryl was completely silent. He said nothing. He acted as though he couldn't hear her—something that was actually possible since he'd been closer to the grenade when it had gone off in the building.
She felt his muscles relax slightly, though. At that precise moment, she saw what made them relax.
Dale hopped down from the window and Andrea hopped after him, into his arms. Together, arms locked, they ran for the vehicles.
"She made it," Daryl said, breathing out a sigh. "She's OK. She's out. She made it."
"Andrea?" Sophia asked, not complaining about her position, practically crushed under Carol and Daryl both.
"She's alright, sweetheart," Carol assured her daughter.
She jerked when the explosion happened—unexpected to them all without a clock to keep track of the seconds ticking down. Carol buried her face against Sophia and Daryl pressed down on her. Still, the truck was still standing and, when she sat up, so were all the other vehicles.
For a moment, they sat, all of them shaking, and watched the burning remnants of what had once been the CDC—the last monument of civilization as they'd known it, perhaps.
Ahead, Shane moved his vehicle and, taking the lead, started to lead them out of Atlanta in a somber caravan. Everyone followed.
They didn't know where they were going—not exactly—but they couldn't stay here. Atlanta was gone. The world, as they knew it, was gone.
There was nowhere else to go except onward.