The drive is long, and tiring, and it almost feels like they'll never get there when the cars in front of the truck come to a stop. Remy gets out of the truck carefully, looking around the street for walkers that were living up to their name. She goes into the back and grabs her bow and arrows, securing them on her body and loading one arrow onto the bow just in case she needed to use it sooner rather than later. Remy walks forward next to Daryl, and they meet with the rest of the group as they walk slowly through the sepulchral street, stepping over dead bodies swarmed with flies.
"Stay close," Rick calls quietly.
"Stay quiet," Shane adds. They move toward the large building in a strange formation, and the dead bodies on the sidewalk and grass all stay dead—for the time being. The stench of the rotting bodies hits hard, and Remy chokes down the spoiled air. Those that couldn't stomach it cough as they run through the bodies, and walk around tanks, and pass dead soldiers on the street. They reach the building, and Remy started to feel the smallest twinge of hope—but she knew better. Remy knew that she shouldn't let herself hope for anything, so she forces away the feeling and grips her bow as Rick and Shane approach the wide doors and attempt to pull the metal up, or open it automatically.
"Nothing?" Rick asks. Shane slams his fist against the metal, and it echoes in the empty air.
"There's nobody here," T-dog states.
Rick turns to him. "Then why are these shutters down?"
Remy moves forward, feeling her muscles tense, and the short lived hope fade away quickly.
"Walkers!" Remy spins around, and Daryl shoots the walker with an arrow. He turns on Rick, moving forward quickly.
"You led us into a graveyard."
"He made a call!" Shane defends his friend.
"It was the wrong damn call!" Daryl growls.
"Just shut up. You hear? Shut up. Shut up!" Shane orders, he turns back to Rick, and moves forward quickly. "Rick, this is a dead end."
"Where are we gonna go?" Jacqui asks, worry etched into her face. Go back to the tree, that's where you'll go.
"Do you hear me? No blame." Shane continues.
"She's right." Lori says. "We can't be here this close to the city after dark."
Shane goes on. "FortBenning, Rick…still an option."
"On what?" Andrea challenges. "No food, no fuel. That's 100 miles."
"125." Glenn corrects quickly. "I checked the map."
"Forget FortBenning." Lori says. "We need answers tonight, now."
"We'll think of something." Rick speaks again.
Shane tries to pull him away. "Come on, let's go. Let's get out of here. Let's go. Please."
Rick's eyes snap up to the security camera as he backs away, and Shane starts to bark out orders. "All right, everybody back to the cars. Let's go. Move."
"The camera… it moved." Rick moves forward again.
"You imagined it." Shane tells him blankly.
"It moved. It moved." Rick assures himself.
"Rick, its dead, man." Shane insists. "It's an automated device. It's gears, okay? They're just winding down. Now come on."
Rick still moves forward and Shane tries to pull him away. Shane tries to make Rick let go of the only hope he had. But what else was he supposed to do? What else was a man that stumbled into the role of leader supposed to do? He was supposed to have hope.
"Man, just listen to me. Look around this place. It's dead, okay? It's dead. You need to let it go, Rick." Shane pleads.
Rick slams on the shutters. Lori moves forward. "Rick, there's nobody here!"
"I know you're in there. I know you can hear me." Rick yells at the camera.
Shane tries to drag him away, now with the help of Lori. "Everybody get back to the cars now!"
"Please, we're desperate. Please help us." Rick moves frantically now, proving that he is, in fact, desperate. "We have women, children, no food, hardly any gas left."
"Rick. There's nobody here." Lori says to him quietly.
"We have nowhere else to go!" Rick pounds on the door. "Keep your eyes open. If you don't let us in, you're killing us! Please!"
Shane drags him away. "Come on, buddy, let's go. Let's go."
Rick tries to pull himself forward again, but Shane keeps his grip on Rick firm. "Please help us. You're killing us! You're killing us! You're killing us!"
The group turns to walk away; Remy feeling like there was nothing else, nowhere else that they could possibly go that would ensure survival. She hears a grinding sound, and turns around to be blinded by light, coming from inside the building—where the metal door is now open.
Everyone stands in shock for a moment before it sunk in that the door was open in front of them. Someone was inside the building—and they had opened the door to let them in. They weren't going to die—not today at least. Walking into the CDC lobby, Remy holds her bow at the ready, still not sure about the safety of the building according to the sight of the outside. A man is standing across the brightly lit lobby, holding an automatic in his hands. Those with guns raise them; Remy draws her bow and aims it on the man's head.
"Anybody infected!?" he yells.
"One of our group was," Rick calls back. "He didn't make it."
"Why are you here, and what do you want?" The man asks, unsure, as he moves forward. The guns are lowered. Remy eases the draw on the bow despite the unease she feels and holds it down in front of her.
Rick glances back at the group. "A chance." he replies simply.
"That's asking an awful lot these days."
"I know." Rick nods lightly.
Remy stares at the man as he moves under a light, and feels just the slightest twinge of recognition. She recognized his face, and looked into his eyes and saw nothing but fear and desperation. He wanted the group to leave. For a reason she can't think of at the time being, she feels a strong need to shoot the man in the head with an arrow. The doctor looks around, into the faces of the survivors.
"You all submit to a blood test. That's the price of admission."
Rick nods once. "We can do that."
"Grab your things, once this door closes it stays closed." He warns, dropping the gun to his side. The feeling in Remy's gut intensifies, not liking the sound of a door that would lock behind them. Get back to the tree. A few members of the group leave the lobby and run back outside. Remy stares straight at the doctor, and he locks eyes with her. She sees surprise on his face, but he covers it quickly, and looks away from her, avoiding her gaze at all costs. Remy takes the arrow from the bow and slides it into the quiver on her back. She slings the bow over her shoulder, seeing the doctor let out a small breath of relief. Like he thought she was going to kill him.
The rest of the group arrives back in the lobby after only a few minutes and Daryl hands Remy her backpack. She thanks him quietly and stares up at the doctor as they start following after him. They follow him into an elevator, where he talks into an intercom. "Vi, seal the main entrance. Kill the power up here."
Rick shakes his hand. "Rick Grimes."
"Dr. Edwin Jenner." Remy feels likes his name hits her in the face—but she can't remember why. Whether it's because her body is still pumping adrenaline through her veins, or because she had recently suffered a blow to the head, or if it's because over the past two months she was forgetting things about how life used to be. Like how it felt to have air conditioning coming out of a vent—like it was now. Or how it felt to have real hope for the first time in a long time; but she was remembering now. It's quiet and crowded as Jenner pushes the button for the basement.
"Doctors always go around packin heat like that?" Daryl asks, eyeing the gun in the doctor's hand.
He looks back. "There were plenty left lying around. I familiarized myself. But you look harmless enough." He glances down at Carl. "Except for you. I'll have to keep my eye on you." Carl smiles lightly at the joke.
The elevator doors open and the group shuffles out and into a hallway. "Are we underground?" Carol asks.
"You claustrophobic?" The doctor asks.
"A little." She says meekly.
"Try not to think about it." he replies. Remy follows behind the group silently, so silent that they could have forgotten she was there as they're lead into a large room. "Vi brings up the lights in the big room." The lights instantly turn on, shining down on a raised platform that held computers and desks, where the research was done. "Welcome to zone 5."
The group looks around the unusually empty room. "Where is everybody?" Rick asks. "The other doctors, the staff."
"I'm it." The doctor informs them. "It's just me here."
"What about the person you were speaking with?" Lori asks. "Vi?"
"Vi, say hello to our guests, tell them, welcome." A computerized voice rings through the room.
"Hello guests. Welcome."
"I'm all that's left." Jenner assures. "I'm sorry."
Andrea sits in the chair across from Jenner and he sticks a needle in her skin. "What's the point?" She asks. "If we were infected, we'd be running a fever."
"Humor me." The doctor replies. He pulls the needle from her arm and Andrea stands up—and wobbles. Jacque moves forward and helps her.
She looks down at the doctor. "She hasn't eaten in days. None of us have."
The doctor looks at Remy expectantly, but he still doesn't meet her eyes, she notes. Remy drops her bag and bow, and limps forward. Jenner stares at the pistol at her thigh—the only weapon apart from a knife that she moves forward with, against her better judgement. She sits in the chair, stretching out her knee and stares at him as he puts the tourniquet around her bicep and readies a needle. Remy barely feels the pinch.
She opens her mouth. "Have we met before?"
The doctor glances at her for just a second, not in her eyes. "I don't think so."
"You look familiar." Remy replies, knowing she had met him before. Somewhere. He doesn't reply and he glances at Remy for just a second. She narrows her eyes. The doctor rushes her along, pulling the vile of blood from her arm. She stands up and limps away, feeling like the room was spinning.
"You know in Italy, children have a little bit of wine with dinner," Dale smiles at Carl as he hands Lori a glass of wine. "And in France."
"Well when Carl is in Italy or France he can have some them," Lori replies, covering Carl's glass with her hand.
Rick chuckles. "What's it gonna hurt? C'mon."
Lori smiles slowly, and moves her hand away from the glass. Dale pours wine into the glass and hands it to Carl, who takes it happily. Everyone around the table watches as he takes a sip. He swallows the wine and shakes his head. "Ew!"
Everyone laughs, and Lori pours the wine from Carl's glass into her own. "That's my boy."
Shane smiles. "Stick to your soda pop there bud."
"Not you Glenn." Daryl calls.
Glenn looks up. "What?"
"You're drinkin little man; I wanna see how red your face can get." Daryl smirks.
Remy sees Rick look at Jenner, who's sitting at the end of the table, not laughing in the least. Rick stands up, tapping his fork to his glass. "It seems to me we haven't thanked our host properly."
"He is more than just our host," T-dog holds up his glass. The whole group calls out agreements, and Remy stares at Jenner, ignoring her headache. She doesn't hear anything around her as she stares at him, feeling her heartbeat pick up, her blood pumping faster. She chews on her lip, and downs the last of the liquid in her glass, which no longer has a taste. There's something in Jenner's eyes that just wouldn't stop gnawing at her.
"Hello?" a voice drawls in Remy's mind. She flinches when there's a hand in her face. She looks up at Daryl, who's staring at her with his eyebrows raised.
"What?" she asks.
The group laughs. Daryl holds up the whiskey bottle. "You want a refill?"
She holds up her glass and he pours the alcohol in. Remy downs it in one sip and holds her glass up again. He laughs and pours her another shot. "Alright."
"So when you gonna tell us what the hell happened here, doc?" Shane looks over at him, and the room falls silent. "All the other doctors that were supposed to be figurin' out what happened, where are they?"
"We're celebrating Shane," Rick sits down. "No need to do this now."
"Wait a second, this is why we're here, right?" Shane retorts. "This was your move. We're supposed to find all the answers, instead, we found him." Shane laughs and hooks his thumb at Jenner. "We found one man, why?"
"Well when things got bad, a lot of people just…left." Jenner starts. "Went off to be with their families. And when things got worse, when the military got overrun…the rest bolted."
"Every last one?" Shane finds it funny.
"No, many couldn't face walking out the door," Jenner says. "They opted out. There was a rash of suicides. That was a bad time."
"You didn't leave," Remy states. "Why?"
"I just kept working," he answers. "Hoping to do some good."
Glenn stands up, glancing at Shane. "Dude…you are such a buzz kill man."
Remy downs her whiskey again and slides the glass down on the table.
"Most of the facility's powered down, including housing, so you'll have to make due here." Jenner walks swiftly down the hall, the group following after. "The couches are comfortable, but there are cots in storage if you'd like."
"There's a rec room down the hall that you kids might enjoy," he leans down in front of Carl and Sophia. "Just don't plug in the video games, okay?"
Carl and Sophia nod, happily. Jenner stands up. "Same applies. If you shower, go easy on the hot water."
Remy's eyes snap over at the sound of hot water. Jenner walks off, and Glenn turns toward the group from the front, in disbelief. "Hot water?"
T-dog laughs, clapping Glenn on the shoulder. "That's what the man said."
Remy backs away from the group and enters the room beside her; she flips the light on and throws her stuff down by the couch. Remy hears water start running in the rooms next to hers and she smiles. She stands up and enters the bathroom, laughing when she looks at the shower. She turns the knobs and puts her hands under the water, feeling them warm instantly.
It was easy to take those things for granted when there was no chance that they would go anywhere. Never did Remy think that one day it would be a miracle to feel hot water on her skin, or to have clean clothes to change into. So as she watches the blood, sweat, and dirt wash from her skin and sink into the drain…she can't help but feel tears well up in her eyes. Now that she had a minute to think—to really think about something other than where she was going to go next, or how she was going to find food, or water—she thought about all the things that she couldn't afford to worry about before.
Like her family, that were all dead.
I'm so sorry Remy. I gotta go, be careful.
Get back to the tree.
It doesn't surprise Remy when she looks in the mirror and doesn't recognize the person looking back at her. It certainly wasn't the bright eyed young girl that she had seen last. Remy didn't know who she had become—she didn't recognize the girl in the mirror, simply because it wasn't her. It wasn't her reflection in the mirror, it wasn't Remington Whitaker. It was an entirely new person—a girl that had a completely different mind set, a completely new set or morals, and values, and most importantly, a newly constructed list of priorities.
Number one on the list of importance had suddenly gone from the generic be successful, to survive today.
Remy's fist pulls back and slams into the wall next to the mirror. She shakes out the pain in her hand and exits the bathroom. Remy limps over to the couch, and falls back on it, stretching out her right leg. She rubbed the wound on her shoulder lightly, feeling it start to scab over and heal. That's what Remy needed to do…she needed to heal. Inside and out before she did anything.
Remy stands up and leaves her room, walking into the empty hallway. She limps back down to the dining area, and sees Glenn and Daryl, both freshly showered sitting at the table, drinks in front of them. Glenn sways in his seat and smiles at Remy."Hey!"
She limps forward and grabs the bottle of whiskey. She grabs a glass from the bar and pours herself a shot. Glenn laughs. "You're pretty Remy."
Remy looks back at Glenn, mid pour. She looks at Daryl, who's already laughing. She downs another shot. "Glenn, I think you drinking might have been a bad idea."
He takes another sip of whiskey. "What are you talking about?!" He slurs. "This is fun!"
Remy puts the bottle down and sits down at the end of the table. Glenn laughs again, and puts his head down. "I'm tired." And within a few seconds, Glenn was snoring. Remy kicks him in the leg and he stuttered, sitting back in his chair instead of leaning forward, and the snoring subsided. Daryl moves forward and sits on the other side of the table, taking the last end seat.
Remy sips her whiskey. "He doesn't handle liquor well."
Daryl smirks. "Apparently not." Remy's silent and Daryl stares down at her, taking a sip from his bottle. "What's botherin' you?"
She looks over at him, and puts the glass to her lips, taking another burning sip. "It's nothin."
"It looks like its drivin' you crazy." He replies. Remy stares at him, wondering how she was the one who went through years of school to be able to read people and know how the mind works, yet she's the one getting read like a newspaper on a sunday morning.
She shakes her head. "I've met Jenner before, and I know I have. I just can't remember." Remy rubs her eyes and holds her forehead, thinking past the headache.
"That why you're watchin his every move?" Remy sighs.
"Whatever it is that I remember him from—it can't be good. All I know is, every time I look at him I feel an intense need to put a bullet in his head."
Daryl nods. "You sure you didn't see him in the city?"
Remy shakes her head. "It was before all of this. I just can't remember." Glenn stirs, and then settles again. Remy picks up the bottle of whiskey and slides the glass onto the table; she takes a sip from the bottle and looks up at the ceiling. The air coming out of the vent sent a chill down her spine. 'You're one cold bitch Remington' her father's voice rings through her head.
Her father. Jenner. Remy sits up.
"What?" Daryl asks.
"That piece of shit." Remy jumps up, and her hand moves to the knife in her belt. She moves toward the door and Daryl jumps up after her, knowing that if the girl was going for a weapon, she had most definitely remembered Jenner, and if he let her go, there might not be a Doctor Edwin Jenner in the morning. Remy moves down the hallway quickly, taking only one turn before she's in the large room Jenner had brought them into before. She passes Rick on her way in, and hears Daryl yelling to Rick from behind her not to let Remy get near Jenner. Rick tries to grab Remy's arm, but she pulls away from him roughly.
Jenner stands up as Remy moves toward. "You thought I wouldn't figure it out?" Remy laughs, grabbing his shirt and slamming him against a desk. "You thought I didn't know you son of a bitch?!"
"Please let me explain!"
Remy feels someone pull her back roughly. "Easy." Daryl holds her back as she reaches for Jenner again.
Rick steps in front of Jenner. "Wait a minute...wait! Remy, tell me what's goin on."
Remy reaches for Jenner again, and Daryl pulls her further away. "My dad used to work here," Remy explains, to which Rick looks surprised. "He wasn't a doctor, he was a janitor. The only thing he could do drunk. One night he comes home out of his mind. Told me he heard some doctors talkin about somethin big that was comin—a doctor named Jenner—"
"We barely knew anything about it then! We were just taking precaution!"
"And what about all the dead people on the street outside?!" Remy yells. "Think they would have liked to take precautions?!" Remy tries to grab Jenner again, but Rick takes a step forward and Remy can't get out of the iron grip Daryl has her in.
Rick holds his hands out. "Tell me what happened." he says slowly.
"My father went missing for a week. He went to work one day, and just didn't come back, I thought he was on another bender, goin bar to bar like usual, and then he came back beat to hell, yellin about how we needed to leave the city. A car dropped him off that night, and I could only see one other person in the car with him. Now when we got here I didn't know where I recognized Jenner from. Tonight I realized that Jenner was the driver of that car—the car that held the men that beat my father nearly to death.
"Then we started hearing about the attacks. My dad told me and my brother we had to leave the city, but by the time we were leaving, too many people were comin in. The next day they started dropping the bombs. My dad tried to come back here, find out what was happening, when it would go away, anything. My father was inside for all of five minutes when Jenner here kicked him out, forced him back into the street. Me and my brother ran—and I haven't seen my father since."
"There wasn't anything I could do for him!" Jenner exclaims. "People were dying!"
"I was out there you bastard! What do you know about people dying?!" Get back to the tree.
"Okay, okay," Rick sighs. "Daryl, get her out of here." Rick moves back in front of Jenner as Remy reaches for him again. Daryl drags her out of the room and stands in front of her in the hallway when she tries to run back to get Jenner. "Dammit girl! Stop fightin!"
"I'm gonna kill him!"
"What in the hell is goin on?" T-dog walks down the hallway.
"She's tryna kill Jenner." Daryl mutters, grabbing Remy's arm as she reaches for her knife. "Alright, let's go." Daryl and T-dog pull Remy down the hall and she's put down in a chair in the dining room. Daryl puts a glass in front of her and pours her two shots. Whiskey, and tequila. Remy takes them both, one after the other and the shaking in her hands starts to fade. Remy hadn't felt anger like that in a long time…mostly because—with it being the apocalypse—there wasn't anything to be angry about.
"What the hell'd he do?" T-dog asks.
"Killed my father." Remy mutters.
T-dog stares at her for a second. "You mean he...actually killed your father?"
Remy sighs and takes another shot. "My father came here for help. Jenner kicked him out. My father never made it back."
T-dog runs a hand down his face and takes the bottle of whiskey, taking a long sip. "All this damn shit is too much."
Remy runs a hand through her hair and takes another shot, feeling the warmth radiate through her body and calm her down, which was contradictory somehow, because the sober part of Remy's mind knew that she wouldn't be reacting so strongly and creating such a scene if she wasn't drunk. Remy puts her elbows on the table and leans her head into her hands. "I don't know why I ever thought this was gonna be a good idea."
T-dog has another shot. "I'm goin to bed. I'm too tired for this." He leaves the room and Daryl sits down across from Remy.
"Your dad was a drunk?"
Remy swallows alcohol and nods. "He was. It was bad when my mom was alive…when she did nothing but beat the hell outta me…somehow it got worse when she passed. He'd black out and he'd blame me for her death—he decided that she was right in saying I deserved to get hit. He picked up right where she left off."
"He was an abusive drunk…then why do you care about him dyin?" Remy doesn't think the question's too harsh—he's right. Why should Remy care that the man who put her through hell disappeared?
She scoffs. "I ask myself that question every goddamn day."
"Ever get an answer?"
She shakes her head, and chuckles humorlessly as she looks down at her whiskey. "I used to wish he'd disappear. I used to pray and beg for somethin to happen to him. So I could leave—so he would stop stealing every penny I made, and I would leave and never come back. And now he's gone—and I wanna be happy…but the thought that he's out there as one of them—no one deserves that."
Daryl scoffs. "I think any piece of shit that's so pathetic he would raise his hand to a woman, let alone his own daughter, deserves whatever he gets."
Remy's eyes snap over to Daryl. She laughs, and wonders why no one in the group particularly liked Daryl…why they all thought he was a volatile, sad excuse for a human being. Remy wondered why he secluded himself—why he didn't show this side of himself around everyone else. Why he didn't care about them, and show that he was a decent human being. Remy doesn't know if it's the alcohol making her head buzz, or if it's what Daryl had just said to her, but Remy felt her heart start to beat faster when she looked into his blue eyes, shining from the liquor.
She stands up quickly, and takes her bottle. "I'm gonna go get completely out of my mind drunk and pass out in my room."
He smirks. "Have fun."
Remy leaves the room, and takes a sip from her bottle as she walks down the hall, back to her room. The hallways of the CDC were completely empty, and if it weren't for the bright fluorescent lights, the hallways almost reminded Remy of the woods with its peaceful silence. the only thing the hallway didn't have was the feeling of home Remy got in the woods. Despite what Remy wanted to believe and despite what she knew a few of those in the group believed…Remy knew this wouldn't last. Not for her at least.
Remy flips the light on when she gets to her room, and closes the door behind her; she sips the bottle of whiskey and falls back on the couch, where she lays and stares at the bow leaning on the wall across the room, and the arrows laying on the floor next to it. Remy sips from the bottle and aches for fresh air as she leans her head back on the couch, which was something she never thought she would crave again. Remy knew she would beg and plead for water, for food, shelter, safety…but one thing Remy didn't ever think she would miss again was fresh air. Though this shelter was a dream—Remy knew it was temporary…just like everything else. Nothing had changed just because the group was here now. The end of the world was still outside, whether or not they could see it.
It almost seemed like some in the group thought otherwise…or they wanted to. They wanted to stay here, and think that while they were underground everything was okay above them. Remy wished more than anything that they would resurface and everything would be gone, that there would be no more walkers—everything would just be okay again. And she could go home, with or without her father. Or her brother. Remy would be broken, but she would be alive—physically anyway—and safe.
Remy takes a deep sip from the bottle and feels her head spinning. She couldn't let herself want things. Remy couldn't let herself hope for anything. She kicks off her boots and pulls the knife from her belt, holding it tightly in her hand as she feels her eyes slide closed. Get back to the tree.
::
Remy sits up, the nightmare jolting her out of her deep sleep. Get back to the tree. The empty whiskey bottle falls from the couch onto the floor, and Remy sighs, and runs a hand through her hair.
I'm so sorry Remy.
She rubs her eyes and stands up leisurely, her head aching with the foreign movement. Remy groans as she limps into the bathroom, and turns on the tap water in the sink. The nightmare fades gradually from her mind as she splashes the cold water onto her face. She just had to wake up…that's what she told herself. Just don't think about it. Remy looks at the girl in the mirror, and disregarded the shaking in her hands as she walks back into her room to get dressed.
Remy thought about the last time she had a hangover, and even though it felt like years ago, she could remember the night her father went missing and she sat in the kitchen and drank a whole bottle of his bourbon. She could remember hoping he wouldn't come home, and praying that he would walk through the door any second at the same time. Remy stayed irresolute the whole night as she downed shot after shot—her body ached with phantom pains when she thought about her father, from the beatings she took as he cursed her mother for leaving him with two kids that he didn't know how to take care of.
Remy remembered how she would crawl into her room after her father passed out and clean up the cuts and stitch whatever wounds she had acquired in the time that he got so angry he couldn't control himself to completely wearing himself down. Remy slept with a knife in her hand every night since her mother died, just in case her father awoke from his stupor sometime in the middle of the night and decided that it was time for Remy to go too.
Remy enters the dining room some time later, where most of the group was already awake, and eating breakfast—a breakfast that looked like an improvement from what the group normally had. Remy sits down in an open seat and replies to the good mornings that are offered to her. Glenn is holding his head over his plate, and Remy smirks, knowing he couldn't possibly be feeling any better than she did.
"Sleep well?" Lori asks, biting into a piece of toast.
Remy shrugs lightly, doing her best to banish the nightmare from her mind. "Good enough."
Lori nods, understanding.
Rick walks into the room, and approaches the table. "Morning."
Carl smirks up at him. "Are you hungover? Mom said you'd be."
Rick sits down at the table and smirks. "Mom is right."
"Mom has that annoying habit." Lori grins.
T-dog walks in from the kitchen. "Eggs." he announces, carrying a frying pan. "Powered, but I do 'em good." Glenn groans. Dale laughs, and T-dog continues. "Bet you can't tell." He scoops a small pile of eggs onto Glenn's plate. "Protein helps the hangover."
"Where'd all this come from?" Rick asks, holding up a bottle of aspirin. Remy perks up at the sight of it. Rick fumbles with the cap before holding it out to Lori. "Can you help me?"
"Jenner," Lori replies, taking the bottle. "He thought we could use it, well, some of us."
"Don't, ever, ever, ever, let me drink again." Glenn pleads. Lori holds the bottle over to Remy, and she takes it graciously, pouring out two pills into her hands. She swallows them dry and sighs in contentment. Pain medication…everyone missed it.
Shane walks into the room and Remy instantly feels the atmosphere change. Things got tense. "Hey." Remy glances up at Shane as he walks by and she stabs her fork into her eggs.
"Hey." Rick replies. "You feel as bad as I do?"
"Worse." Shane calls back quietly as he gets coffee.
"The hell happened to you?" T-dog asks, looking at Shane. "Your neck."
Shane sits down and Remy looks at the scratch marks on his neck, three lines ran straight down his neck, the skin surrounding the cuts was red and puffy, some dried blood still on the edge of the wounds, like Shane tried to clean them but didn't do a very good job. "Must've done it in my sleep."
Remy knows he's lying instantly, and she glances back at Rick to see if he noticed as well. Lori catches Remy's eye, as she stares down at her breakfast.
"Never seen you do that before." Rick says.
"Me neither." Shane mutters, looking at Lori. "Not like me at all."
Remy sits back—she didn't know how she missed it. Shane and Lori? Lori was Rick's wife…and Shane was his best friend. Remy sighed lightly, and it went unnoticed. She was worried that this camp was going to end up like those soap operas her mother watched on TV all day. Remy was just counting down the days until she was out of the trap she was falling in.
Jenner walks in the room, and Remy tenses up. Rick glances at her and then at Jenner.
"Mornin'." Jenner briefly stares at Remy.
"Mornin doc." A few call.
"Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing…" Dale starts.
"But you will anyway," Jenner mumbles.
"We didn't come here for the eggs," Andrea assures him. Remy grips her fork tightly as she stares at Jenner, surprisingly losing her appetite. She was completely sober now—but if anything, it just made her angrier. Jenner turns around and looks at the group.
Remy follows behind everyone else as they walk into the same room that she attempted (unfortunately) to kill Jenner in the night before—Zone five. Jenner walks straight toward a computer. "Give me a playback of TS-19."
"Playback of TS-19." Vi replies. Images begin to appear on a screen in front of the group, flashing by quickly, like it's zooming in on a grid, only it's a blurry image and it starts to get clearer the farther in it goes. The image starts to focus as Jenner speaks.
"Few people ever got a chance to see this," Jenner tells them. "Very few."
Remy watches as an outline of a person's head appears, and it clears up again for another image.
"Is that a brain?" Carl asks.
"An extraordinary one," Jenner replies, he thinks for a moment. "Not that it matters…in the end." He looks back at the screen. "Take us in for EIV."
"Enhanced Internal View." Vi announces, and the screen zooms in on the brain. Remy watches the brain activity of a healthy person on the screen.
"What are those lights?" Shane asks.
Remy moves forward, intrigued now. This was something that peaked her interest…for once. She opens her mouth to answer Shane's question. "It's a person's life. Experiences, memories. It's everything."
Jenner nods once to her, and takes over. "Somewhere in all that organic wiring…all those ripples of light, is you. The thing that makes you unique. And human."
"You don't make sense, ever?" Daryl asks, looking slightly confused.
"Those are synapses," Jenner says. "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 echoes. "That's what this is? A vigil?"
"Yes," Jenner replies, nodding lightly. "Or, rather, the playback of the vigil."
"This person died?" Andrea asks shakily, moving forward. "Who?"
"Test subject nineteen," Jenner answers. "Someone who was bitten, and infected, and volunteered to have us record the process. Vi, scan forward to the first event." Remy didn't like how Jenner was rushing through this…like he was on a timed schedule.
"Scanning to first event." The screen jumps forward, and the lights in the brain start to dim, darkness moving through the stems like liquid, filling all the light and blocking it out.
"What is that?" Glenn asks, shocked.
"It invades the brain, like meningitis, the adrenal glands hemorrhage," Jenner explains. "The brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs." The body convulses, and the brain completely turns black, the light slowly dulling and getting completely taken over by the darkness. The stems completely disappear, and Remy watches the brain die.
"Then death," Jenner continues. "Everything you ever were, or ever will be…gone."
"Is that what happened to Jim?" Sophia asks.
Carol looks down at her sadly. "Yes."
Jenner watches Andrea, who's looking closer to tears by the second. Lori opens her mouth. "She lost somebody two days ago. Her sister."
Jenner moves closer to her. "I lost somebody too; I know how devastating it is."
"Scan to the second event." Jenner calls out, completely forgetting the comfort he was giving Andrea.
"Scanning to second event."
"The resurrection times vary widely. We have 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 speaks robotically. The stems in the brain begin to flash again, a deep red, and when Remy thinks the light should stretch back up the stems and into the rest of the brain, it stays in one place, balled up and flashing darkly.
"It restarts the brain?" Lori asks in disbelief.
Remy moves even closer to the screen, staring up at it, not able to keep quiet anymore. She needed to understand, and the best way for her to figure something out was to say it out loud. "No, just the brain stem. It gets them up, and moving. Basic instinct is the only thing that drives them. There's no thoughts, or logic, or reasoning, just primal needs."
"But, they're not alive," Rick questions, looking between Jenner and Remy.
"You tell me," Jenner moves back.
Rick stares at the screen and shakes his head. "It's nothing like before, most of that brain is dark."
"Dark, lifeless, dead, the frontal lobe, the neo cortex, the human part, that doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct." Something flashes across the screen quickly, leaving a large gap in the head of the brain.
"God, what was that?" Carol asks.
"He shot his patient in the head." Remy states, staring at Jenner's back.
"Vi, power down the main screen, and the work stations." Jenner calls. "Powering down main screen and work stations."
"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea accuses.
"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal…"
"Or the wrath of God," Jacqui says sternly.
"There is that," Jenner nods.
"Somebody must know something," Andrea says. "Somebody. Somewhere."
"There are others, right?" Carol asks. "Other facilities?"
Jenner turns to her. "There may be some. People like me—"
"But you don't know, how can you not know?" Rick demands.
"Everything went down, communications, directives, all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month."
"So it's not just here," Remy says. "There's nothing left anywhere."
Jenner's silent, and the group gets nervous and fidgety as the information sinks in. They were alone. Well and truly alone in this shit storm…and they knew it now. For sure.
"Jesus," Jacqui breathes.
Daryl rubs his eyes. "Man, I'm gonna get shit-faced drunk. Again."
"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?"
Remy looks over to the clock Dale's referring to, and sees that there's exactly one hour left on it.
"The…basement generators…they run out of fuel."
Remy knows immediately there's something he's not telling them. Rick speaks before Remy can. "And then?"
Jenner doesn't answer as he walks out of the room, toward a large set of doors and Remy looks up to the ceiling. "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"
"When the power runs out, facility wide decontamination will occur." Jenner leaves the room, leaving the group to contemplate what the computerized voice had just told them. The room was so silent Remy was starting to think no one was breathing around her. Remy looks around the room, and judging by the looks on the faces around her, she was pretty sure she wasn't the only one who didn't like the sound of decontamination.
Remy looks up from the pistol in her lap when she hears the air stop running. Remy puts her gun back together as quickly as possible and stands up, putting her pistol in the holster on her thigh. She reaches up and puts her hand under the vent by the door to feel no air coming out. Remy hears talking out in the hallway and pulls her door to open to see who was creating the noise. Remy saw Jenner first, walking down the hallway in the direction of her room, some following after him and some hanging out of their rooms like Remy was.
"Hey what's goin on? Why's everything turning off?" Daryl asks, whiskey bottle handing from his hand. Jenner grabs the bottle mid stride and walks farther up the hallway, his face pensive, causing deep lines in his forehead that made him look older. Remy didn't care about Jenner or his well being, but with a look like the one he was wearing…she worried about everyone else's.
"Energy use is being prioritized."
"Air isn't a priority?" Dale asks, following after Jenner now, using that same tone that he always did.
"And lights?"
"It's not up to me," Jenner says as the lights in the hallway flip off. Remy follows after him and the small group he has building up. "Zone five is shutting itself down."
"Ay, what the hell's that mean?" Daryl calls after him, catching up quickly. Jenner doesn't answer, and Daryl walks up behind him. "Hey man I'm talkin to you. What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a buildin do anything?"
"You'd be surprised." Jenner mutter absent-mindedly. His mind wasn't with the group following him through the underground hallways, no, Jenner was somewhere else completely with other people, talking about other things. Rick, Glenn, Shane, and T-dog run into the room below the group, their footsteps echoing against the metal panels that made up the floors in Zone five.
"Rick?" Lori calls, leaning over a railing to look down below.
The group follows Jenner down the stairs and Rick greets him at the bottom, concern etched into his face. "Jenner, what's happening?"
"The system is dropping all the nonessential uses of power," Jenner explains, not stopping once. "It's designed to keep the computers running until the last possible second. That started as we approached the half hour mark. Right on schedule." The group follows Jenner through to the sector floorboard and he sips from the bottle of alcohol, just one quick shot before he hands it back to Daryl, who grabs it from his hand, looking offended that Jenner would dare touch his alcohol.
Jenner looks back at Andrea. "It was the French."
"What?"
"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know." he clarifies. "While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the lab till the end. They thought they were close to a solution."
"What happened?" Jacqui asks.
"The same thing that's happening here," Jenner says. "No power grid. Ran out of juice. The world runs on fossil fuel…I mean, how stupid is that?"
Shane jumps forward. "Let me tell you somethin'—"
Rick grabs his arm. "The hell with it Shane." Rick turns to the group. "Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff, we're getting out of here now!"
Remy immediately turns to leave, the whole group doing the same, because they all got the feeling then, the feeling that they should have had for the day they were underground. The CDC wasn't permanent. There were no more doctors, no research was being done, the food supply would run out soon, so would the water and the electricity. The underground shelter wouldn't be much better than outside soon, and the doors were locked behind them. Remy just knew the sooner she could get away from Jenner, and be outside—in the woods, in the fresh air—the better off she would be. An alarm rings through the air, making everyone that's running come to a halting stop, and spin around.
"What's that?!"
"Thirty minutes to decontamination," Vi announces, the voice echoing through the large room and making Remy's chest hurt.
"Doc what's goin on here!?"
Jenner moves toward another desk and scans a card over a small device. Remy watches as he puts a number in, knowing that whatever he was doing would crash down on them in a second.
"Everybody! Ya'll heard Rick! Get your stuff and let's go now!" Shane yells. And then the automatic door that lead to the hallway slams down shut in front of them. A few sit there and stare at the door, their brains not comprehending just what had happened. Remy turns around slowly.
"Did you just lock us in!?" Glenn calls out, turning to look at the group. "He just locked us in!"
"You son of a bitch!" Daryl runs for Jenner. "You locked us in here!?"
"Shane!" Rick yells. Shane dives after Daryl, pulling him away from Jenner with his arms behind his back, which didn't stop Daryl from struggling.
Remy slides her fingers over her pistol as her heart officially starts to race and watches Rick move forward quickly. "Jenner, open that door now."
"There's no point," he insists, sitting down in a desk chair. "Everything topside is locked down, the emergency exits are sealed."
Remy moves forward, pulling out her pistol. "I don't think you heard him Jenner! He told you to open the goddamn door!"
"Shane!" Rick yells again. Everyone that was preoccupied holding back Daryl jumped forward to grab Remy before she could get her gun to his head.
"That's not something I control!" Jenner yells, making everyone turn to him. "The computers do! I told you, once that front door closed it wouldn't open again, you heard me say that!"
Remy pulls herself out of T-dog's grip on her arm, and begins pacing as the room falls silent with tension and anticipation. Remy felt something building up inside of her, something that would explode soon. She didn't want to be here anymore—she needed to get out. Get back to the tree. Remy felt the air leaving her lungs, and something in her throat clawing to get another breath in, but the large gulp of air Remy took in didn't feel like much.
"It's better this way." Jenner presses.
"What is?" Remy snaps, moving forward again, pistol still in hand. "What happens in twenty eight minutes?" Jenner stays silent; Remy cocks her pistol. "What happens in twenty eight minutes!?"
"You know what this place is!?" Jenner stands up, the roar that came out of his was unexpected, and Remy felt like with the way he was glaring at her, Jenner was trying to intimidate her, which Remy would have laughed at had this been a different situation. "We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponized small pox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!"
Remy began to pace again.
Jenner sits down. "In the event of a catastrophic power failure, a terrorist attack, for example, H.I.T.s are deployed to prevent any organisms from getting out."
"H.I.T.s?" Rick asks.
"Vi, define," Jenner calls.
"H.I.T.s - high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosive consists of a two-stage aerosol ignition which produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear. The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen between 5,000 and 6,000 degrees and is used when the greatest loss of life and damage to structures is desired."
Remy feels the air leave her lungs again and she tightens her grip on her pistol. If she didn't want to put a bullet in Jenner's head before, she undeniably wanted to now. This wasn't how Remy would die. No. Remy could accept that one day she would almost certainly get attacked by a walker, and she could recognize that as her way of death…but being blown up in a building with a group of people she barely knew? That was deplorable, in Remy's mind.
Rick moves forward and hugs Lori.
"Sets the air on fire," Jenner says quietly. "No pain, an end to sorrow. Grief. Regret. Everything."
Remy watches Daryl, Glenn and Rick move toward the door. Daryl throws the whiskey bottle at it. "Open the damn door!"
"Out of my way." Shane yells as he runs up with an axe. Shane and Daryl begin to hack at the door, barely putting scratches in the thick metal.
Remy moves forward, still gripping her pistol. She walks up the ramp. "Move!" Daryl and Shane move back and Remy pulls the trigger, lodging the bullet in the door, but barely making a dent. She fires again—and again, and again, until her gun clicks. "Son of a bitch!"
She spins around and moves back down the ramp, hearing Shane and Daryl behind her.
"Can't make a dent," Shane mutters quietly to Rick.
"Those doors are built to withstand a rocket launcher."
"Well your head ain't!" Daryl runs up, moving toward Jenner, the axe in his hands over his head. Rick, T-dog, and Dale jump forward and stop him. Remy wished they would just let Daryl do it. If she was going to die, she wanted to see Jenner get eradicated first.
"You do want this," Jenner tells Rick desperately. "Last night, you said, you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead."
Everyone turns to Rick. "What? You really said that? After all your big talk?" Shane demands.
"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick says quietly.
"There is no hope. There never was." Jenner states solemnly.
"There's always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not be here. But somebody somewhere..."
"What part of "everything is gone" do you not understand?" Andrea scoffs.
"Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event." Jenner sits down.
"This isn't right," Carol cries. "You can't just keep us here!"
"One tiny moment, a millisecond…no pain."
"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!"
"Wouldn't it be kinder? More compassionate, to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?"
What if you don't have loved ones asshole?
Remy hears a shotgun cock. She turns around to see Shane moving forward.
"Shane!" Rick yells, trying to hold him back.
"Stay out of my way Rick! Stay out of my way!" Shane holds the gun in front of Jenner's face. "Open that door or I'ma blow your head off. Do you hear me!?"
"Brother, this is not the way. You do this, we never get out of here." Rick tries to coerce Shane into dropping the weapon, and for a second, the look in Rick's eyes says that he doesn't want to.
"Shane, you listen to him," Lori calls. In one way, Remy wants to pull Rick back and let Shane blow Jenner's head into pieces, despite how completely wrong it is. But…take away a person's peace of mind, their safety—they turn into an animal. Remy was starting to feel like she was in a cage, and there wasn't a feeling she hated worse than feeling confined.
"He dies, we all die!" Rick tells Shane. Shane yells, and points the gun across the room, pulling the trigger and taking out lights and computers. There goes the built up rage. Rick grabs the gun from him and elbows Shane in the face, knocking him down. Rick stands over Shane, holding the end of the gun to his face. "You done now? Are you done?"
"Yeah I guess we all are." Shane hisses. Rick stands up, and looks around the group. He turns to Jenner.
"I think you're lying."
"What?"
"You're lying about no hope. If that were true, you'd of bolted with the rest. Taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path, why?"
"It doesn't matter." Jenner replies, shaking his head.
"It does matter," Rick scoffs. "It always matters. You stayed, when others ran, why?"
"Not because I wanted to," Jenner states resolutely. "I made a promise. To her." Jenner points to the screen in the front of the room. "My wife."
"Test subject nineteen was your wife?" Lori asks slowly.
"She begged me to keep going as long as I could," Jenner rushes. "How could I say no?"
Remy jumps when she hears the axe against the metal door again.
"She was dying."
Bang.
"It should have been me on that table."
Bang.
"It wouldn't have been a lost to anybody; she was a loss to the world."
Bang.
Remy stops listen to Jenner talk about how his wife was so smart, and how pathetic he was. She couldn't breathe—that cage was getting smaller and the air was running out.
"—that's all we want," Remy listens to Rick. "A choice—and chance."
"Let us keep trying as long as we can," Lori begins to cry.
Jenner takes a deep breath, and moves forward. "I told you topside's locked down—I can't open those." She watches Jenner go back over to the same desk as before, and scan the same card, and punch in a few numbers, and subsequently she hears the door open behind her.
"Come on!" Daryl yells.
"Come on let's go!"
"Let's go!"
Remy moves forward quickly, abandoning her limp. Four minutes left didn't leave much time for a jacked up knee. Remy and a few others run down the hall, and grab the bags from the rooms to make it as quick of a getaway as they could make it, everyone just grabbed some bags and ran—it didn't matter who they belonged to. Remy enters her own room and throws on her backpack, and slings the bow and arrows over her shoulder, and grabs whatever's left in the other rooms next to hers. Shane's running down the hallway when she leaves her room and she jogs after him, going back into zone five to see Jacqui and T-dog having a rushed and loud conversation.
Remy hands bags to whoever has an open arm and her hands begin to shake in the eagerness to get out of the building that would soon be coming down around them.
"Just get out!" Jacqui pushes T-dog back, and Shane grabs his arm.
"Come on man."
"Let's go!" Dale moves forward and Jacqui walks back over to Jenner.
"I'm staying too," Andrea announces.
"Andrea, no!" Dale moves forward. Dale looks back at the group. "Just go! Go!"
Remy starts running instantly, and all she can hear is the sound of her own heart in her ears and the group sprints down the hallway, and up to the first floor. The entirety of the group run toward the doors, and none are surprised when they don't open with just a push.
"Does it work!?" Remy hears Glenn yell.
"No!"
Remy throws the back of her shotgun into the glass of a window, not getting even a crack out of the action. Remy looks over and watches T-dog throw a chair into the window, and still nothing.
"Dog, get down! Get down!" Shane yells, holding up a gun. T-dog jumps off the ledge by the biggest window in the room and moves back. Shane fires at the window—barely cracking the glass.
"Jesus."
"The glass won't break!?" Sophia's voice breaks through the commotion as she stares at Carol with large eyes full of fear.
"Rick!" Carol calls, moving forward, digging something out of a bag. "I have somethin that might help."
"I don't think a nail file's gonna do it," Shane mutters, pacing behind Rick.
"Your first morning at camp, when I washed your uniform, I found this in your pocket." Carol holds up a grenade in her shaking hand and Remy moves forward.
Rick takes it. "Look out!"
Remy runs back instead, and leans her back against the wall on the other side of the room. Rick removes the pin and looks panicked for a second before he throws the grenade.
"Oh shit!" Rick yells as he runs toward the rest of the group. Remy covers her head and the explosion shakes her holds body as she hears the glass finally shatter. Remy jumps to her feet and follows after the group hastily, pulling her shotgun up as she jumps through the window and sees the walkers already on their feet. She shoots the first in the forehead as the group runs forward toward the cars still lined up on the street. Remy pulls in another breath quickly and shoots another walker as she approaches Daryl's truck. She doesn't waste a second jumping in and throwing her bow and arrows to the floor.
Remy looks ahead of them and sees everyone ducking down in their cars. Remy had almost forgotten about the building about to explode, and she's only reminded when she hears the explosion. "Fuck," Daryl yells as Remy feels something yank her down and she hits the seat, feeling Daryl laying half on top of her, covering most of her body if the explosion reached out to the cars. It's the longest few seconds of Remy's life as she listens to the roar of the fire outside the truck, and the thunderous explosions that make the building collapse into a heap of rubble.
Remy sits up when she feels the extra weight leave her body. The building is on the ground, nothing but broken glass and cement remains. There was nothing left, nothing that resembled any kind of structure or foundation. Remy takes in a shaky breath and sees Dale and Andrea running toward the Winnebago, feeling relief that Andrea changed her mind, last second or not.
Remy runs a hand through her hair and rubs her eyes as the cars all start to move again, leaving behind the now non-existent CDC building. Remy felt all optimism leave her body as they pulled away. If the CDC couldn't give the group any kind of safety…then what could? What ever would? Remy watches the black smoke in the air in the side mirror as they drive down the highway, leaning her head against the window.
"You're bleedin'." Daryl's voice breaks her gaze away.
Remy looks down at her shoulder, to see blood soaking through her shirt. She pulls at the collar of her shirt to see the broken stitches on the arrow wound. "I'll be fine." she says quietly. Don't you always have to be?
Get back to the tree.
