...and a Narrow Escape
KENZI SLUGGISHLY ENTERED THE mess hall, dressed in torn jeans and an off shoulder grey sweater with a wolf and dream catcher design with her black ankle boots with studs on the heel. She took a seat opposite Lori and Carl at the table.
"Here sweetie." Lori handed Kenzi two aspirin tablets and a cup of coffee.
Kenzi managed a small smile as she popped the pills and took a gulp of her drink. "Thanks." she replied.
"Are you hungover auntie Kenzi?" Carl asked, not hiding a smile. Kenzi nodded, holding the sides of her head. "Mom said you and my dad might be."
"Well, she was right." Kenzi muttered. "But, this isn't the worst hangover I've had." she rested her elbows on the table, her knuckles against her cheeks.
"Well, maybe this will help a little bit." T-Dog walked over and set a plate of powdered scrambled eggs in front of the dark-haired girl.
Kenzi inhaled the aroma of her breakfast, "Spasibo[1]T." she took a bite and smiled, enjoying the taste of food other than woodland creature meat.
"So, what does a hangover feel like?" Sophia asked Kenzi, taking a seat next to the girl she saw like an older sister.
"Like a demonic pixie is using your skull for a Rock-N-Roll drum solo." Kenzi answered, meeting the young girl's eyes.
Daryl chuckled, grabbing a plate of eggs from T-Dog. "Shouldn't have drank so much then."
Kenzi shot him a glare, pointing her fork in the redneck's direction. "I blame you Dixon." she stated, flipping her hair off her shoulder. Seeing him shake his head and dig into his breakfast, Kenzi rolled her eyes, "And how are you not hungover?" Daryl shrugged his shoulders in response.
Glenn pulled out the chair next to Kenzi, laying his head down on the table, groaning. Kenzi pushed her plate in his direction, half of the eggs eaten. "Eat." she ordered.
Glenn looked over at Kenzi and managed a half smile, taking the offered food. "Do me a favor Kenz." he mumbled, taking a small bite. "Don't ever, ever, ever let me drink again."
Kenzi nodded, letting a chuckle escape her small grin, "You got it buddy." she lightly jabbed his shoulder, earning another groan from the Korean. "Although, you shouldn't have let Daryl talk you into drinking past your limit last night."
"Bite me Kenzi!" Daryl shot from behind the bar.
Kenzi whipped her head in his direction, "Don't tempt me Dixon!" she snapped back with a small grin. Sophia giggled from beside Kenzi, eating the eggs her mother set in front of her.
Carl laughed as well, holding his fist out across the table, "Yeah, you don't take no BS from anybody."
"Damn straight lil buddy." Kenzi bumped his fist, brushing her shoulders off. Lori cracked a smile and shook her head, sipping her coffee.
The rest of the group slowly piled into the cafeteria, Shane being the last one. "The hell happened to you?" T-Dog asked, pointing to the scratches on Shane's neck.
Shane shrugged, grabbing a cup of warm coffee. "I must have done it in my sleep."
"Never seen you do that before." Rick noted, popping an aspirin.
"Me neither." Shane sat down, casting a glance at Lori. "Not like me at all."
Lauren and Jenner walked in, greeting everyone and grabbed themselves a plate of breakfast.
After everyone had eaten, the two doctors led the group to the control center. Jenner turned on one of the computers, "Give me playback of TS-Nineteen."
"Playback of TS-Nineteen." the computer voice repeated. The lights dimmed and a larger screen switched on.
"Few people ever got a chance to see this." Lauren whispered to Kenzi. The two women leaned against a middle row of computers, standing on the far right of the group. "Very few."
Images appeared on the screen that resembled MRI scans. "Is that a brain?" Carl asked, him and Sophia stand at the front of the group.
"An extraordinary one." Jenner informed. "Take us in for E.I.V."
Kenzi raised an eyebrow and glanced at Lauren, who was flipping through a file. "Enhanced Internal View." Lauren clarified, the file opened to scans similar to the ones shown on the screen.
A 3-D model appeared on the full screen, the brain itself lighting up. The model delved deeper into the brain stem, the lights getting brighter. "What are those lights?" Kenzi asked Lauren, her hands in her back pockets.
"It's a person's life experiences." Lauren answered. "Memories. Everything." Carl and Sophia looked to her for more information. A smile spread across Lauren's face, "See, somewhere in all that organic wiring-" she motioned to the lights on screen. "-all those ripples of light, is you." she elaborated. "The thing that makes you unique." Lauren tapped Kenzi's nose, knowing she was the most unique person she ever met. "And human."
"What are those lights called?" Sophia wondered.
Lauren smiled down at the young girl, "Those are synapses." she answered. "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?" Rick repeated. "That's what this is, a vigil?"
"Yes, or rather the playback of the vigil." Jenner confirmed.
"This person died?" Andrea struggled to even speak out loud, running her palms down her jeans. "Who?"
"Test subject nineteen." Jenner answered. "Someone who was bitten and infected, and volunteered to have us record the process." he swallowed, "Vi, scan forward to the first event."
The model scanned forward, the brain stem area completely black. Kenzi folded her arms across her chest, watching as the black spread throughout the whole brain, "Woah." she muttered.
"What is that?" Glenn asked aloud, his jaw slack.
Lauren flipped through a couple more pages, notes sprawled in red and blue ink on the open page. "It invades the brain like meningitis." she answered, earning a confused look from Kenzi. "The infectious agent transmitted from the bite." she clarified.
"The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs." Jenner went on, the 3-D model showed the body convulsing, which stopped when the brain went completely dark. "Then death. Everything you ever were or ever will be, gone."
Kenzi looked down at the toes of her boots, biting her lip and shifting her weight from one foot to the other, shoving her hands in her jean pockets, her elbow brushing against Daryl's. She glanced up at him, clearing her throat and moving her hand to tuck some hair behind her ear before sliding it back in her pocket.
"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asked, looking up at her mother.
Carol nodded, laying her hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Yes."
Andrea stared blankly at the screen, moisture welling in her eyes. When the tears threatened to spill over, she turned away, wiping her nose and eyes with the back of her hand. "She lost somebody two days ago." Lori told Jenner and Lauren, who were watching Andrea. "Her sister."
"I lost somebody too." Jenner sympathized with Andrea. "I know how devastating it is." he glanced over at Lauren, who nodded.
Lauren cleared her throat, "Scan to the second event." she spoke loudly.
"What's the second event, Lo?" Kenzi raised an eyebrow.
"Resurrection." Lauren answered, making Kenzi nod her head before turning her attention back to the screen. "The resurrection times vary wildly." Lauren continued to explain. "We had reports of it happening in as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours. In the case of TS-Nineteen, it was two hours, one minute and seven seconds."
A small cluster of red lights appeared at the base of the brain stem. "It restarts the brain?" Lori questioned.
"No, just the brain stem." Lauren corrected, closing the file she held and set it by the computers in front of her. "Basically, it gets them up and moving."
"But they're not alive?" Daryl questioned, glancing at the female doctor.
Lauren looked over at him and Kenzi, "You tell me."
"It's not like before." Kenzi noted, nodding her head towards the screen. "Most of that brain is dark."
"Dark, lifeless, dead." Jenner described. "The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part That doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct."
Once the body reanimated, a bullet was fired right through the brain, the body ceasing movement. Everyone's eyes widened at the sighed. Jenner powered down the screen and work stations, the only light coming from the ring above them. "You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea asked, folding her arms over her chest.
"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal." Jenner listed.
Kenzi snorted under her breath, the word 'Fae' going through her mind. "Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui spoke up.
"There is that." Jenner muttered.
"Somebody must know something." Andera spoke up. "Somebody, somewhere."
"There are others, right?" Carol asked. "Other facilities?"
"There may be some." Jenner answered. "People like me. Like Dr. Lewis."
"But you don't know?" Rick questioned. "How can you not know?"
"Everything went down." Jenner elaborated. "Communications, directives all of it. We've been in the dark for almost a month."
"So it's not just here." Kenzi muttered, sitting on one of the desks. "There's nothing left anywhere."
"Nothing." Andrea repeated. "That's what you're really saying, right?"
Daryl scoffed, running his hands over his hair, "Man, I'm gonna get shit-faced drunk. Again."
"I just might join you." Kenzi agreed, watching the redneck pace back and forth. She jumped down from the desk and leaned into it, her back facing the rest of her group, her hair falling over her shoulders. Lauren rubbed her back, brushing Kenzi's hair out of her face.
"I know it's overwhelming information, Kenz." Lauren soothed.
"Are you sure that it's not Fae?" Kenzi asked in a low voice. "Like some human was infected by some UnderFae and it somehow spread?"
Lauren sighed, "I wish I could answer that, but the truth is I don't know." She wrapped her arm around Kenzi's shoulders and touched her forehead to the young girl's temple.
"Dr. Jenner." Dale spoke up. "I know this has been taxing for you and I hate to ask one more question, but that clock," he pointed to the large digital clock on the far wall, "it's counting down." Everyone at that point was looking at the clock, watching the seconds tick away. "What happens at zero?"
Jenner sighed. "The basement generators they run out of fuel."
"And then?" Rick asked. Jenner stayed silent. "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?" Rick asked the A.I. that ran the systems.
"When the power runs out, facility-wide decontamination will occur." the automated female voice answered. On that very ominous note; Rick, Shane, T-Dog, and Glenn headed down to the basement to inspect the generators. Dr. Jenner retreated to his office while the rest of the group went to the rooms they were staying in.
Kenzi stood in the bathroom, applying makeup while Lauren sat on the couch. "I don't like the way Jenner clammed up back there." Kenzi admitted, coating her lips with a light shade of lip gloss.
"He hasn't been the most open colleague." Lauren agreed, twisting her hair around her fingers. "So tell me more about your group."
Kenzi applied grey eyeshadow to her left eyelid, her signature look reflected in the mirror. "Well, Dale's kinda like the grandfather figure to us all, he looks out for us." she switched to her right lid. "Shane was an officer before, so he kept order. Glenn and I went on supply runs into Atlanta for ammunition, clothes, and other necessities. Daryl went out hunting." Kenzi switched out her eyeshadow for a black eyeliner pencil. "We all divided up chores. We had a good system. It was nice." Images from the slaughter from a few days prior flashed through her mind, the mangled bodies of her fellow survivors.
"At least you were safe." Lauren pointed out. "They seem like good people."
Kenzi nodded in agreement, adding a little bit of mascara to her eyelashes. "Yeah, they are. Surprisingly, Carl and Sophia adore me." she chuckled. "Call me auntie Kenzi. Of course, I did bring them back little things from the city when Glenn and I went on runs." she shrugged her shoulders.
The young Russian overlooked herself in the mirror, smoothing her hair. With a light coat of makeup on, she started feeling like her old self; the carefree, spunky girl who ran with the Fae. Her lips curled into a smile, that is, until the lights shut off suddenly, as did the air. She stood in the bathroom doorway, "What's going on Lauren?"
Lauren's eyes widened, "Nothing good." she muttered, jumping up from the couch. Kenzi's facial expression switched to confusion, and she ran out after Lauren, grabbing her sword and buckling it as she did so.
Jenner walked down the hallway, everyone in the group asking why everything was shutting off. "Zone Five is shutting itself down." Jenner answered, the survivors following him to the main control room.
"Lauren, what the hell's going on?" Kenzi asked, her and Lauren bringing up the rear of the group following Jenner.
"I don't know Kenz." Lauren answered honestly. "The CDC has strict protocols, Trick had to call in a few favors to even get me here. I was brought in as a guest researcher, and the staff only shared a fraction of their protocols and research with me."
"That's not very comforting." Kenzi sighed, rolling her eyes. She ran her hands over her hair, sighing heavily.
The four who went to the basement returned, "Rick?" Lori called down, looking over the railing.
"Yo Glenn!" Kenzi leaned over the railing, catching the panicked look on her best friend's face. She stepped back and practically crashed into Daryl, who looked down at her with raised eyebrows. "What?" she asked, quirking her own brow.
"What's all that." Daryl motioned to her face.
Kenzi rolled her eyes, "It's called makeup, genius." she scoffed, the two following the rest of their group to the main floor.
"Jenner, what's happening?" Rick asked.
"The system is dropping all the nonessential uses of power." Jenner elaborated. "It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark." He looked at the clock and it was counting down from thirty-one minutes. "Right on schedule."
Jenner stood by the work stations, the survivors crowding behind them. "It was the French. They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know." Jenner went on. "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?" Jacqui asked, not looking directly at the doctor speaking.
"The same thing that's happening here." Jenner answered. "No power grid. Ran out of juice." he stood in the center of the work stations. "The world runs of fossil fuel.I mean, how stupid is that?" he started mumbling to himself.
Shane was about to strangle him, but Rick held his partner back. Rick urged the rest of the group to go get their things, but once they neared the door, a steel shutter came down, locking them inside. Kenzi's shoulders sank as she leaned against the side railing, "Holy shitballs." she muttered, seeing the two kids standing in front of her. "Don't repeat what I just said."
"You son of a bitch!" Daryl swore, charging right for Jenner. "You let us out of here!" Shane, Dale, Glenn, and T-Dog held him back, giving Rick the opportunity to get next to Jenner. "Hey, Jenner, open that door now." he ordered.
"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down." Jenner informed. "The emergency exits are sealed."
"Well, open the damn things." Daryl scoffed. Kenzi slapped her hand on the back of his shoulder to try and calm him down, which failed.
"That's not something I control. The computers do." Jenner clarified. "I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. It's better this way."
"What is?" Rick asked, looking at the clock which was counting down from twenty-eight. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes?" when Jenner didn't immediately answer, Rick asked again, only louder. "What happens in twenty-eight minutes?!"
Jenner jumped from his chair, raising his voice. "Do you know what this place is?! We protected the public from very nasty stuff!" he exclaimed. "Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" Once that was off his chest, Jenner spoke calmly, sitting at one of the computers. Each one of the survivors were staring wide-eyed, a few were glaring. "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 repeated.
Jenner sighed, "Vi, define."
"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 automated voice elaborated. Everyone's expressions fell. "The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen between 5,000 and 6,000 degrees and is used when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired."
Kenzi looked to Lauren for simplifications, her friend's eyes reflecting a less than describable expression. "It sets the air on fire." the female doctor told her friend.
Kenzi tapped her heels against the desk she leaned against, biting her lip. She took the half-empty liquor bottle Daryl held and took a large swig to calm her nerves. She tossed it back and walked over to the kids, watching as they were held tightly by their mothers who were clearly scared by the newest revelation.
Using large hatchets, Shane and Daryl started hacking away at the steel shutter. The metal clanking against metal wasn't doing anything to ease the tension in the room. Lauren kept quiet as she watched Kenzi slide down, sitting between Sophia and Carl, taking each of their hands and squeezing them reassuringly, a smile on her face.
"Can't make a dent." Jenner informed the two men hacking at the shutter. "Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher."
"Well, your head ain't!" Daryl snapped, holding the hatchet above his head. Rick, T-Dog, and Dale held Daryl back while Kenzi blocked the hatchet with her sword.
"Whoa! Daryl! Back up!" she told him, pushing him back away from the others. Kenzi sheathed her blade, brushing her hair from her face. "You're pissed, I get it." she sympathized, "But hackin' up Jenner and Lauren isn't gonna solve this." Daryl tried looking away from Kenzi's piercing blue eyes, but she followed his movements, forcing their eyes to meet. "We'll figure out a way, just keep calm."
"Why're you defending her?" Daryl asked, shooting a less than friendly glare in Lauren's direction.
Kenzi sighed heavily, "Wanna know how I know Lauren?" she arched her brow. "We go back, before this shitshow occurred. She used to date my sister, Bo."
Before Daryl could respond, Jenner mentioned something about a conversation with Rick the night before, making everyone turn in that direction, listening intently. "Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead."
"What? You really said that?" Shane scoffed, "After all your big talk?"
"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick defended.
"There is no hope. There never was." Jenner contradicted.
"There's always hope." Rick repeated. "Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody, somewhere."
"What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?" Andrea pointed out.
"Listen to your friend. She gets it." Jenner agreed. "This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event."
"This isn't right." Carol sobbed. "You can't just keep us here."
"One tiny moment a millisecond. No pain." Jenner tried to reassure the older woman.
Carol tightened her arms around Sophia, "My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this." she continued to sob, laying her head on top of her daughter's.
"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" Jenner theorized.
Shane grabbed a double barrel shotgun and held it right at Jenner's face, ignoring his best friend's pleas. "Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off." Shane threatened. "Do you hear me?!"
"Brother, brother, this is not the way you do this." Rick continued to plea with his friend. "We will never get out of here."
"Shane, you listen to him." Lori agreed, holding Carl closer.
Shane's hands trembled as he held the gun tighter, actually contemplating killing the doctor right there. He cocked the gun and started firing rounds into the computers, making everyone jump. Seeing the scared expression on Lauren's face, Kenzi marched up to Shane, grabbing the gun by the edge of the barrels, yelling at him that Rick and Lori were right. The former officer elbowed the younger girl in the sternum, causing her to yank the shotgun from his grasp and smack him in the face with it. Kenzi cocked it once and aimed the barrels down at Shane's face, keeping his body on the floor by putting her boot on his chest.
"Mackenzie." Rick stated, placing his hand on the gun, "Not this way."
Kenzi looked at Rick, her piercing blue eyes set in a narrowed glare. Seeing the sternness in his eyes, Kenzi released her hold on the weapon, removing her boot from Shane. Without another word she turned on her heels, leaning against one of the desks, taking a deep breath with a shuddering exhale.
"I think you're lying." Rick confronted Jenner. "You're lying about no hope. If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out, but you didn't." he stared at the doctor. "You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?"
"It doesn't matter." Jenner sighed.
"It does matter. It always matters." Rick rebuked. "You stayed when others ran. Why?"
"Not because I wanted to." Jenner admitted. "I made a promise, to her." he opened the file related to the TS-Nineteen playback the group was shown earlier. "My wife."
"Test subject nineteen was your wife?" Lori questioned.
Jenner nodded in confirmation. "She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no? She was dying." all the while Jenner was talking, Daryl was busy hacking away at the steel door with a hatchet. "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." his shoulders sank and he shook his head. "She could've done something about this. Not me."
"Your wife didn't have a choice. You do." Rick reminded. "That's that's all we want a choice, a chance."
"Let us keep trying as long as we can." Lori begged, her arms wrapped around Carl.
Seeing the looks on everyone's faces, the last one being his colleague, Lauren, Jenner gave a nod. Lauren swiped her ID badge and inputted a code, the steel door lowering, freeing up the exit. Everyone rushed back to their rooms, grabbing their belongings.
Making their way to the lobby, Shane and Daryl grabbed the hatchets and started striking the windows. Seeing that it wasn't working, Shane fired a shotgun round, which barely made a dent. "That's not going to work." Lauren sighed.
"Why not?" Kenzi asked, adjusting the strap of Daryl's crossbow on her shoulder.
"The glass is double paned and bullet proof." Lauren answered. "It'll take a grenade to even blow a hole in it."
"Well, I don't think we have any of those." Kenzi shook her head.
"Actually." Carol cut in, digging through her bag. Long behold, she pulled out a grenade.
Kenzi's eyes widened, "Where in ad ili vysokaya voda[2] did you get that?" she gaped.
"It was in Rick's uniform when I washed it." Carol answered, walking over to Rick and handing him the grenade.
Knowing the explosion that was to follow, everyone ducked down at the bottom of the stairs while Rick set the grenade by the window, arming it. He ran and practically jumped over the stairs, right when the explosion went off. The blast shook the entire building and shattered the window.
Grabbing their belongings, everyone jumped down from the window, making a beeline straight for their vehicles. Those with guns fired rounds at the approaching walkers. Kenzi kept Lauren close to her until they were cleared from the building, "Get to the RV!" she yelled, firing off more rounds. When more and more started coming, she turned on her heels and darted for Daryl's pickup, sliding into the passenger set, leaning back with a heavy sigh.
"Damn." Daryl sighed, slamming the driver's side door.
Kenzi nodded in agreement, turning to out the window, where she saw Dale and Andrea jump out of the window and jumped over a military blockade, using it to take cover just as the CDC erupted into a fiery explosion. Kenzi laid down on the seat, with Daryl's body on top of hers, the truck shaking from the aftershocks that followed.
The dark haired girl opened her eyes, her chest heaving. When she rolled onto her side, her face was inches from Daryl's, and on reflex she pulled back, feeling her cheeks heat up a few degrees. "Thanks." she muttered, as they sat up. She smoothed out her hair, and looked at the smoking rubble that was once the CDC. "So what now?" Daryl bit his lip, unsure himself.
The other vehicles started up, which signaled the group was moving on. Kenzi twisted her hair around her fingers, watching Daryl as he drove. She sighed and scooted closer, resting her head on his shoulder, just needing to feel close to someone, knowing that from that point on, things weren't going to be easy.
A/N: Well, that's it for the first season. Thanks again to all those who favorite/follow/review, it means a lot. Hope you're looking forward to the following chapters.
Translations:
[1] Spasibo="Thank you"
[2] ad ili vysokaya voda="hell or high water"
