Here We Are, Come Join Us (The Walking Dead FanFiction)

Chapter 4

Allison awoke with a start when the motion of the truck changed suddenly. They were coming to a stop.

"Nice nap?" the voice beside her asked.

"Huh...? Oh, God, I must've fallen asleep," she sat up straight, embarrassed. She immediately patted down the front of her T-shirt. "Did I drool or anything?" she murmured.

"Nope. Snored pretty good, though," Daryl answered with a very slight smirk.

"I do not snore!" she protested.

"Well, maybe I should check see if I've been dragging the muffler for the past half hour then." He threw the gearshift into "park" as the caravan pulled to the curb. Everyone slowly emerged from their vehicles, weapons in hand and gathered as a group on the sidewalk. Rick gave a hand signal that indicated they should follow behind him. As they moved toward the imposing concrete and glass building looming ahead of them, they stepped gingerly around the bodies of dozens of dead walkers.

"This doesn't look very promising," Andrea remarked sotto voce, nodding towards a burned-out military tank.

"Place looks pretty deserted," T-Dog agreed.

The doors were locked, unsurprisingly. Rick called out "Hello?"

"There's nobody here," T-Dog stated, shoulders slumping in defeat.

"Another dead end," Shane agreed.

"Then why are the shutters down?" Rick asked.

"Walkers!" Daryl called out and aimed his bow in the distance, prepared to shoot if any of the geeks got too close.

"It's going to be dark soon, we should get out of here," Lori fretted.

"No! The camera moved!" Rick said suddenly, pointing to a CCTV camera mounted over the front door.

"You imagined it," Shane replied. "Come on, everybody back to the cars!"

"No, I saw it move!" Rick insisted. "Hello! You – in there! I know you can hear me! We're desperate. We have women, children...no food...nowhere else to go. Please help us!" His voice rose to strangled scream. "If you don't let us in, you're killing us! You're killing us!"

"Rick, come one, buddy, let's – " Shane stopped mid-sentence when the shuttered front door slid open. With sighs of relief all around the group quickly shuffled into the lobby of the CDC. A sandy-haired man in a T-shirt and sweat pants was standing above them on a balcony, gun in hand.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"A chance," Rick replied.

"That's asking an awful lot these days," the man stated, slowly lowering his weapon. "Any of you infected?"

"One of us was; we had to leave him behind." Allison thought of poor Jim who had been in such pain that he'd eventually begged to be left in a field by the side of the road while they were en route to the CDC.

Rick agreed on behalf of the group that they all would submit to blood tests as a condition of entry, and everyone quickly retrieved their belongings from the various vehicles and returned inside to this strange, Inner Sanctum-type place. Dr. Edwin Jenner introduced himself and then made some mention of "once these doors close, there's no going out" that Allison vaguely heard.

The entire crew crammed into an elevator and Dr. Jenner took them underground, to a long corridor that led to a large fluorescent-lit room filled with computer terminals. As everyone looked around, taking in their surroundings, Rick asked "So where's everyone else? All the other doctors?"