digging graves// rick grimes x OC//

TS-19 Part 4

Rushing down to the basement, everyone is panicking. "Decontamination— what does that mean?" Glenn shouts out.
Shane began to voice his thoughts, "I don't like the way Jenner clammed up. The way he just wandered off like that."
"What's wrong with him? Seriously, man, is he nuts, medicated, what?" T-Dog asks.
They stop to look at a map, Rick glances it over and turns, "In there."
They enter into a darkened room, everyone has their flashlights on, they find the switch and turn the lights on. Rick turns to Glenn and T-Dog, "Check that way." The two nod and leave. "Shane," Rick gestures for the man to follow him.
The two groups look around the pipe filled room, searching for the generators. Shane watches as Rick goes over to a tube attached to a fuel drum.
He lifts the drum, "It's empty."
Shane comes over and, suddenly, the lights go out.
"Emergency lighting on," Vi says.
"What the hell is this?" Shane asks looking around.
Glenn and T-Dog come in, "Hey, you guys kill the lights?"
"Nah, it just went out," Shane states.
"Anything?" Rick asks the two.
"Yeah, a lot of dead generators and more empty fuel drums than I can count," T-Dog responds.
Shane looks at Rick, "It can't be down to just that one."
——
Back upstairs, Winona is hanging out with Lori and Carl, "Is it just me, or does it feel like the A/C just stop?"
"No, no I feel it too," Lori concurs.
Winona drags a chair under the vent, she stands on it trying to feel for any air that may be coming out. "Nona? Something wrong?" Carl asks.
She gets down and turns back to the boy, flashing Lori a worried expression, "Nothing. It's just... the air conditioning stopped, Bud."
——
Everyone begins coming out of their rooms. "Why is the air off?" Carol asks Jenner, "And the lights in our room?"
"What's going on? Why is everything turning off?" Daryl questions, holding a bottle of alcohol and swaying from already drinking.
"Energy use is being prioritized," Jenner replies simply.
"Air isn't a priority? And lights?" Dale says in disbelief.
"It's not up to me," Jenner says, "Zone 5 is shutting itself down."
"Hey!" Daryl shouts, "Hey, what the hell does that mean?!" He catches up to the scientist, "Hey, man, I'm talking to you. What do you mean it's shutting itself down? How can a building do anything?"
"You'd be surprised," is all Jenner says.
The rest of the group emerges from the basement, "Rick?" Lori says.
Rick goes up to Jenner, "Jenner, what's happening?"
"The system is dropping all the nonessential uses of power. It's designed to keep the computers running to the last possible second. That started as we approached the half-hour mark. Right on schedule," Jenner explains as he points towards the clock. He takes a swig of alcohol and hands it back to Daryl, he faces Andrea, "It was the French."
"What?" she was confused.
"They were the last ones to hold out as far as I know. While our people were bolting out the doors and committing suicide in the hallways, they stayed in the labs till the end. They thought they were close to a solution."
Jacqui speaks up, "What happened?"
"Same thing that's happening here. No power grid. Ran out of juice," Jenner explains, "The world runs on fossil fuel. I mean, how stupid is that?"
Shane becomes frustrated, "Let me tell you—"
"To hell with it, Shane. I don't even care," Rick says cutting him off. He turns to the group, "Lori, grab our things. Everybody, get your stuff. We're getting out of here now!"
The group begins to rush towards the rooms, an alarm begins to blare overhead. "What's that?" Shane asks.
Carl looks up to his father, petrified, "What's that?"
Abruptly the screen turns on with a countdown, and Vi comes over the speakers, "30 minutes to decontamination."
"Doc, what's going on here?!" Daryl shouts.
"Everybody, y'all heard Rick," Shane speaks, "Get your stuff and let's go! Go now! Go!"
Before anyone can leave, Jenner punches in a code, shutting the doors and exits. Glenn looks in disbelief, "Did you just lock us in? He just locked us in!"
Winona watches as Jenner sits in front of a computer, seemingly recording the last 30 minutes of their lives.
Lori calls out for Carl and he begins to sob. Daryl gets pissed off, "You son of a bitch."
"Shane!" Rick commands, pointing over at the upset redneck.
"You locked us in here!" Daryl yells running over.
"No, stop! Don't!" Shane shouts, pulling him away from harming Jenner.
"Hey, Jenner, open that door now," Rick demands.
"There's no point. Everything topside is locked down. The emergency exits are sealed," Jenner says.
"Well, open the damn things," Shane speaks.
Jenner shakes his head, "That's not something I control. The computers do. I told you once that front door closed, it wouldn't open again. You heard me say that."
Winona rubs her head, "For the love of God, Jenner, we didn't think you were serious!"
"It's better this way," he calmly states.
"What is?" Rick asks facing him, "What happens in 28 minutes?" Jenner starts to type, ignoring the question, Shane grabs him so he stops. "What happens in 28 minutes?!" Rick repeats.
Jenner stands up and shouts, "You know what this place is?! We protected the public from very nasty stuff! Weaponized smallpox! Ebola strains that could wipe out half the country! Stuff you don't want getting out! Ever!" He sits back down, adjusting his coat, "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 questions.
"Vi, define," Jenner says looking down.
"H.I.T.s— high-impulse thermobaric fuel-air explosives consist of a two stage aerosol ignition that produces a blast wave of significantly greater power and duration than any other known explosive except nuclear," the computer clarifies, everyone begins to sob, feeling hopeless. Vi continues, "The vacuum-pressure effect ignites the oxygen at between 5,000° and 6,000° and is useful when the greatest loss of life and damage to structure is desired."
"It sets the air on fire," Winona whispers.
"No pain," Jenner says, "An end to sorrow, grief... regret. Everything."
——
Daryl throws a bottle at the doors, "Open the damn door!"
Shane begins to run up with an axe toward the door, "Out of my way!" He begins to hit it, Daryl joining shortly.
Dale walks over to Jenner, who begins to talk, "You should've left well enough alone. It would've been so much easier."
"Easier for who?" Lori asks in anger.
"All of you. You know what's out there— a short, brutal life and an agonizing death," he says. Jenner turns towards Andrea, "Your— your sister— what was her name?"
"Amy," she answers.
"Amy," Jenner repeats, "You know what this does. You've seen it." He then turns to Rick, "Is that really what you want for your wife and son?"
"I don't want this," Rick says emphasizing each word.
"Can't make a dent," Shane says out of breath.
"These doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher," Jenner states.
Daryl comes over, raising his axe, "Well, your head ain't!" Everyone held him back from hurting the doctor, wrestling the weapon out of his hands.
Jenner stands up, facing Rick, "You do want this. Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead."
"What?" Shane asked, "You really said that?"Lori looked in shock towards her husband. "After all your big talk?" Shane continued.
"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?"
Winona became upset with her ex-fiancé, "Shane, you know for a fact we would've been dead two nights ago if we had chosen your route."
"No, Win, we didn't know. We could've been better off there, instead of stuck in a metal box, rigged to explode." She scoffed and rolled her eyes at him.
"There is no hope," Jenner cuts in, "There never was."
"There's always hope," Rick argues, "Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere—"
Andrea interrupts, "What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?"
"Listen to your friend. She gets it," Jenner speaks, "This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event."
"This isn't right," Carol says between sobs, "You can't just keep us here."
Jenner leans forward in his chair, "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?" Jenner asks no one in particular.
"That's the thing, Jenner, in your mind you see this as the best way to go, but you can't make that decision for everyone else here. It's our choice if we want to go out like this or not," Winona says crossing her arms.
The sound of a shotgun cocking is heard, Winona looks over to see Shane running towards the doctor with a loaded weapon. "Shane, No!" Rick shouts.
"Out of the way, Rick!" Shane yells back, the volume of his voice made Winona shake in fear. "Stay out of my way!" Shane continues to yell commands while aiming at the doctor, "Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. Do you hear me?!"
Rick comes up beside him, "Brother, brother, this is not the way you do this. We will never get out of here."
Lori speaks up, "Shane, you listen to him."
"He dies, we all—" Shane interrupts Rick with a scream. "—We all die! Shane!" Rick shouts over. Shane aims his gun behind Jenner and shoots the monitors. Everyone panics, terrified from the deranged man. "Shane!" Rick pushes the gun up, so that the next shot hits the lights. He disarms his best friend, knocking him to the ground, "Are you done now? Are you done?"
"Yeah, I guess we all are," Shane says seething with anger.
Rick turns around to Winona, handing her the shotgun, "I trust you with this." She nods and takes the gun. Rick looks around the room, scanning over the faces of concern and fright. After a few moments of silence from shock, Rick turns back to Jenner, "I think you're lying."
"What?" Jenner asks in confusion.
"You're lying about no hope. If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out," Rick states, "You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?"
"It doesn't matter," Jenner answers.
"It does matter. It always matters," Rick crouches down to Jenners eye level, "You stayed when others ran. Why?"
"Not because I wanted to," Jenner turns and stands up, "I made a promise..." he points towards the screen, "to her. My wife."
Everyone stands in shock. "Test subject 19 was your wife?" Winona asks in disbelief.
"She begged me to keep going as long as I could," Jenner continues, "How could I say no? She was dying. It should've been me on the 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. She could've done something about this. Not me."
"Your wife didn't have a choice," Rick starts, "You do. That's— that's all we want— a choice, a chance, like Winona said."
"Let us keep trying as long as we can," Lori says holding Carl close to her.
Jenner pauses for a moment and looks back towards Rick, "I told you topside's locked down. I can't open those." He goes over to a keypad and punches in a code, proceeding to unlock the doors.
Daryl lowers his axe—he had been trying to break the door down the whole time, "Come on!"
Everyone starts to rush towards the exit. Rick looks at Jenner, the doctor began to speak, "There's your chance. Take it."
"I'm grateful," Rick says.
"The day will come when you won't be," Jenner replies. He shakes Rick's hand, Winona stands next to Glenn, watching as Jenner leans in to whisper something into Rick's ear. Lori runs over and grabs a stunned Rick, to pull him towards the exit .
Winona holds Carl close to her, while Glenn shouts at the group, "Hey, we've got four minutes left! Come on!"
She sees T-Dog trying to force Jacqui to leave, "Let's go. Let's go."
"No no, I'm staying," the woman says back, "I'm staying, Sweetie."
"But that's insane!" T-Dog says, panicking— Jacqui had become a mother figure to him.
"No, it's completely sane," Jacqui counters, "For the first time in a long time. I'm not ending up like Jim and Amy." Everyone turns, looking at the woman. "There's no time to argue and no point, not if you want to get out," Jacqui speaks pushing the man away, "Just get out. Get out."
Winona grabs T-Dog, her eyes tearing at Jacqui, "T. Come on. Come on!"
She hears Andrea, "I'm staying too," but Winona has no time to dwell, running to the room she shared with Glenn and grabbing her bags.
——
The arrive at the surface, the doors are sealed tight. T-Dog tries to punch in a code, with no success. Daryl and Shane are trying to break the windows with the axes. Winona almost laughed at T-Dog trying to break the window with a chair, but she was too worried. Surprisingly, T-Dog's chair-method was cracking the window.
"Dog, get down!" Shane says loading another shotgun. He shoots the glass but it doesn't budge, "Jesus."
"The glass won't break?" Sophia worriedly asks.
Carol starts to dig through her bag, "Rick, I have something that might help."
"Carol, I don't think a nail file's gonna do it," Shane says.
"God. Shut up, Shane," Winona mumbles under her breath.
"What was that? You got something to say to me, Win?" Shane says angrily.
"N-No," she stutters in fear, Rick notices and makes a mental note to ask her later.
"Your first morning at camp, when I washed your uniform I found this in your pocket," Carol continues, pulling out a grenade, Rick takes it and runs over to the window.
"Look out!" Shane shouts, everyone runs to take cover.
Rick pulls the pin, "Oh, sh—" The grenade explodes and the glass shatters with it.
——
The group begins running towards their cars and away from the rigged building, and killing the walkers near them. Winona looks back to see Carl lagging behind Lori and a walker getting dangerously close to him, Lori wasn't paying attention to her kid like usual. Winona turns around running towards the boy, she shoots the walker in the head with her pistol. Picking up the young Grimes, and pushing her legs to go as fast as they could, she runs towards the RV. Carl began to cry into her neck.
She rubs his back, shushing him, "Hey, you're okay. I've got you." She lets Carl down once they reach the RV, and approaches Lori, who was by Rick, "What the actual fuck, Lori?! Carl almost got eaten out there and you weren't even paying attention to your own son!"
Lori puts her hand up to her mouth, "Oh, God, my boy. Is he alright?"
"Ask him yourself. You are his mother, maybe you should start acting like one."
Rick went up to Winona and hugged her. "Thank you, Winona," he said, noticing bruise marks around her throat and a swollen cheek— the makeup had come off with her sweat, "Hey, how'd you get these bruises?"
Her eyes went wide, "Oh! Uh... probably from the explosion of the grenade, I ducked pretty hard, I guess. Anyways, I better get to Daryl's truck, bye!" Rick couldn't speak fast enough before Winona left. He didn't believe her, he saw how the bruises were shaped like a hand, he'll just make another mental note to ask her later.
Winona ran out of the RV, and made it to Daryl's truck just in time to see Dale and Andrea making it out of the building. She and Daryl brace for the explosion, and when it comes, it was a heat like she had never felt before.
The caravan of cars begin to drive away from the fire, uncertain of where they are going and what lies ahead.
——
2756 words

//end of season one//