A Dead World.. • G. Rhee

Chapter Thirteen

(Late night talking)

"You know in Italy children have a little bit of wine with dinner. And in France." Dale tries to convince Lori to let Carl try some wine as we were all sat around a large dinner table, laughing and eating the food and wine that Jenner had supplied us with.

"Well, when Carl is in Italy, or France, he can have some then." Lori tells him, not fully on board with the idea. "Come on, what's it gonna hurt?" Rick tells his wife and she looks at him with wide eyes but a smile on her face, she shakes her head laughing. "Okay, fine."

Dale pours some wine into Carl's glass and sets it infront of him. "There you are young lad."

Carl takes a sip of it and his face scrunches in disgust. "Eww. That's nasty." Everyone laughs at the young boys reaction and Lori pours his wine into her own glass. "That's my boy. That's my boy. Good boy."

"We'll just stick to soda pop there, bud." Shane laughs from the other side of the table.

"Not you, Glenn." Daryl shouts over to Glenn, who lifts his head in confusion.
"Keep drinking little man. I wanna see how red your face can get. You too Hailie." Everyone laughs and I pat Glenns shoulder.

Looking around the table it's honestly nice that we can have one day where nobody's watching the door or jumping at every sound. Instead everyone's laughing with each other, getting hammered. Key point there. And just not giving a shit about the mess that's going on outside those doors. Right now we're just worrying about what to do when we get to the last drop in our bottles.

Until somebody always has to bring us back to the reality in life.

"So, when you gonna tell us what the hell happened here, doc? All the —the other doctors that were supposed to be figuring out what happened, where are they?" Shane kills the mood making everyone look either down at their hands or look at the scientist, awaiting answers.

"We're celebrating. Shane. Don't need to do this now." Rick tells him and Shane puts his hands up in surrender. "Woah, wait a second. This is why we're here, right? This was your move —supposed to find all the answers. Instead we-" he chuckles as he continues. "-instead we found him. We found one man. Why?"

"Well, when things got bad, a lot of people just left, went off to be with their families. And when things got worse, when the military cordon got overrun, the rest bolted." Jenner answered but that just wasn't enough for Shane. "Every last one?" He retaliates sounding almost like he was accusing Jenner of something.

"No. Many couldn't face walking out the door. They.. opted out. There was a rash of suicides. That was a bad time." Jenner lowered his head.

"You didn't leave, why?" Andrea questions and I feel like I'm already sober again.

"I just kept working. Hoping to do some good."

"Dude, you are such a buzzkill, man." Glenn tells Shane and I nod my head in agreement. "I too conquer, that you. Shane Walsh. Are a total buzzkill." I take another sip from my glass.
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Jenner was walking us down a large hallway.

"Most of the facility is powered down, including housing so you'll have to make do here. Couches are comfortable but there's cots in the storage if you'd like. There's a rec room down the hall that you kids might enjoy. Just don't plug in any of the video games, okay? Or anything that involves power. Same applies if your using the showers, go easy on the hot water." Glenn looks around the group with a wide smile after Jenner finishes his speech. "Hot water?" "That's what the man said!" T-dog laughs as we all race for the showers.