AN: Here we go, another little chapter.
I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!
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They'd made camp not more than three miles from where they'd left Jim with Alice and Merle. At this point, "making camp" simply meant that they'd parked their vehicles in a line right in the middle of the road with no concern about the fact that they might be disrupting traffic or something. Carol hadn't seen another car besides theirs since they left, at least not one running, so she imagined that they weren't likely to bother anyone.
Darkness was falling around them when they heard and then saw the motorcycle approaching. Carol was sitting in the cab, in silence, beside Daryl while Sophia leaned on her and tried to sleep wrapped in the blanket that she'd brought her from the back of the truck.
Daryl cranked down the window when Merle pulled the bike up by the truck.
"Done?" He asked.
Merle grunted and nodded his head.
"Where you gonna sleep?" Daryl asked.
Merle killed the engine of the bike and Carol watched as he and Alice got off of it, neither of them speaking for the moment.
"See if they'll let us in the damn RV," Merle said. "If not…back a' the truck."
"That's not safe," Carol said.
Merle stared at her through the window.
"Ain't much is these days, sugar," Merle said. "They'll let us in the RV."
Daryl cranked the window up as the two of them walked off, leaving the bike where it was, and went toward the RV.
"She asleep?" Daryl asked Carol, looking over her at Sophia leaned against her.
"Yeah," Carol said softly. "She's asleep."
Daryl bit at his thumb and nodded slightly.
"We better too," he said. "Early start ta get ta the place tomorrow."
He leaned against the window, settling down into the uncomfortable truck seat. Carol watched as he moved his head a few times to get comfortable, his eyes closed. She leaned her head back, finally, against the back window, not sure she'd sleep, but at least willing to try. She hoped she'd sleep…and she hoped that her dreams might be sweeter than the flashes of horror she saw behind her eyelids as she thought about Jim and what his final moments might have been like.
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When they arrived at what was supposed to be their so called land of salvation, Daryl was impressed with the size of the building but with little else. It was a huge ass building, he could give it that, but it looked to be locked up tight with heavy rolling doors around it that were the style that you'd see at any shop.
Surrounding the whole building were corpses. Some of them were mobile, others weren't, but they were all dead.
"Is this it?" Carol asked quietly.
"Looks like it," Daryl said.
"They're not open, are they?" Carol asked. "It's closed. There's no one here."
Daryl hummed.
"Don't reckon I know too damn much about it," he said, even though he secretly agreed with her sentiments. He hated to be the bearer of bad news, though, when the place was such a place of hope for those who still believed that there was some kind of way out of this hell. "Let's check it out. Stay close…can't go runnin' after everyone an' it's gonna be dark soon."
Ahead of them, Alice and Merle were already off the bike and after the Walkers that were coming after them. Daryl slipped out of the truck, snatched up his crossbow, and crossed around in front of the truck to clear the Walkers headed for them so that Carol and Sophia could safely climb from the driver's side.
No one bothered with any more supplies than their weapons at the moment. There wasn't any need. Daryl was sure that he wasn't the only one that figured the place was just as surely shut down as everything else in the world.
When they reached the building, Daryl herding the woman and child that he'd somehow become responsible for, Rick was the one to start beating on the metal doors. Most everyone else followed suit while Daryl, Merle, Alice, and T-Dog took the role of killing off the Walkers that were coming toward the beating noises.
"This place is closed!" Andrea called at Rick. "There's no one here! We're the only ones left!"
"They're here," Rick called back.
"Rick, man, it's closed," Shane responded.
And it went back and forth…and back and forth some more before Rick announced that he saw something move. He saw a camera move. He swore that there was someone in there, there was someone watching them through the cameras.
Daryl turned back to take in the camera that he was pointing out, but he heard the tossed out explanation that it was probably automatic and set on some kind of timer. The building, being a government building as it was, probably ran off some kind of generators that kept going even though everything else in life had simply stopped.
Rick made a plea to the camera. He begged the camera to a degree that Daryl couldn't imagine begging anything…especially something that most likely wasn't listening.
And night was falling around them which seemed to either make the Walkers worse or else it just seemed to make them worse because it made it more difficult to see them coming. Daryl kept his eye on the fading light and then yelled back at them.
"We gotta give up," he said. "Gotta get back ta the fuckin' cars 'fore it's too damn dark an' we ain't never gonna make it back alive."
And they might have given up, except for suddenly they were bathed in a flood of light and their ears ached at the metallic screech of the door closest to them being rolled up. Daryl stopped looking toward the Walkers that were ambling about of the sheer surprise that something was happening, even if he didn't know what. It could be their salvation after all, or it could be something different entirely.
A man opened the door, a gun pointed at them all.
"Go away," he said.
"We have women and children!" Rick responded. "You have to help us. This is all there is for us. Please…let us in!"
"Go away," the man repeated. "There's nothing here for you. Go back where you came from."
"There's nothing out here for us. If you don't let us in, if you don't help us, you're killing us all. Please!" Rick begged to the man.
There was something like a silent stand off between them all. Finally the man spoke again.
"Get your things," he said. "Whatever you're bringing in. Once these doors close, they don't open again."
They all took that as the words that meant their salvation. This place was still up and running. This place would be what they'd been promised by Rick that it would be. It would be a place of salvation and safety.
In a stampede, almost, they ran back to their vehicles and grabbed everything they could. Daryl carried more than twice what he probably should try to carry in any one load, grabbing his bags and anyone else's bags that he could, and then he ran back toward the building, herding Carol as he went, Sophia safely left at the building with Carl.
When they got inside the building, the man with the gun didn't lower his weapon. He ordered them inside, yelling at them, and the heavy metal doors they'd begged to get through closed behind them.
But they were safe.
Daryl went with the others, quiet and listening but not really understanding anything that the man was spouting as he walked.
Daryl got the basic information out of him. This was a government facility. It was set up to run when everything else around them shut down, as it was clearly doing now. The man was a doctor. His name was Jenner. He had been here researching a cure to whatever it was that was causing the ambling corpses.
They were led onto an elevator, all huddled together, and taken to another part of the building. The man walked them down long and winding corridors lined with rooms and Daryl marveled at the coolness of the air…there was air conditioning. Already this place was turning out to be nicer than most places he'd lived before they'd landed flat in the lap of hell.
"The bunks are all closed down," Jenner said as he walked. "The offices are open and they've got nice couches. You'll have to make do with that. There's hot water for showers, but you'll need to be sparing. There's a game room with books and games for the kids, but don't plug anything in…"
Daryl walked right behind Carol who held Sophia close to her.
"Are we underground?" Carol asked.
Jenner turned back and smirked at her.
"Claustrophobic?" He asked.
Carol nodded and Daryl put a hand against her back.
"Try not to think about it," Jenner responded. "You can leave your things here. I'll show you the rest of the wing that's open. You'll all undergo blood tests. That's the price of your admission."
Daryl didn't hear much else the man had to say because everyone was beginning to drop into rooms. Some of them were acting like animals trying to lay claim to their territory. He pushed Carol and Sophia toward a room, afraid that everyone else would take everything available, and passed the woman the bag that he was carrying before he turned around and found that Merle and Alice had claimed an office for them and were hanging out the door at him, waving him to bring his things.
Their things dropped off, their group was herded into a room where, one by one, they offered up more blood than most of their bodies could really stand to spare at the moment. Daryl was concerned at the fact that both Carol and Sophia looked like they didn't feel well, and he didn't miss it when Merle caught Andrea under the elbow when her step faltered slightly.
"Is there something I should know?" Jenner asked, pleased with his samples and seeming to Daryl to be an oddly cold man at the moment. "Are you people sick?"
"Starving…dehydrated," Alice muttered from where she was leaning against a wall.
"We haven't eaten in days," Jacqui said, speaking up. "We haven't eaten…we ran out of water. We barely slept."
Jenner looked back and forth at the various faces in their crowd and chuckled lightly to himself.
"Is that the problem?" He asked.
No one spoke. No one really knew what to say or what to do. Daryl imagined they were all feeling like he was at the moment. They were trapped somewhere between wanting to believe this was the greatest thing that could happen to them and feeling like there was something off about the man and the whole thing.
The man who was, from the story he told, the only one left. The only one who hadn't run and who hadn't, as he described it, "opted out" when things went to shit.
And therein lie a small burning ember of question…this place was amazing, so much more amazing than anything they'd been living in for the past few months…why had they opted out when they had all of this?
But Daryl never asked the question and no one else said anything at all beyond confirming that they were starved, they were thirsty, and they were exhausted. Those things taken care of, in fact, Daryl thought the whole thing might look a good deal different.
"Well if that's all it is," Jenner offered, "then come on. We can take care of that."
And they all glanced at each other before they started to follow the man once more, those of them who were surer on their feet helping along those that were having a more difficult time keeping themselves moving.
They were in this now, and if the man had food and water, it would at least make it easier to start to trust him and to believe that this was the blessing that it appeared to be.