3rd POV
"Open the damn door!" Daryl screams as he throws his glass bottle at the metal door.
Shane grabs an axe and runs at the door at full speed and starts banging and banging, hoping to make at least a dent.
"Daryl!" Someone calls and throws another axe to him and he starts banging on the door as well.
As they attack the door, Carol, Sophia, Carl, and Lori huddle in one corner together and cry.
"You should've left well enough alone. It would've been so much easier." Jenner says.
"Easier for who?" Lori asks.
"All of you. You know what's out there--a short, brutal life and an agonizing death. Your--your sister--what was her name?" He asks Andrea who is curled up against a desk.
"Amy." She says.
"Amy. You know what this does. You've seen it. Is that really what you want for your wife and son?" He turns to Rick.
"I don't want this." He says empathetically.
"Can't make a dent." Shane says.
"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher." Jenner says.
Daryl hurries up to him with the axe up. "Well, your head ain't!"
"Whoa! Whoa!" Dale says as he, Rick and Shane stop him from cutting Jenners head off.
"Daryl! Daryl!" Rick exclaims as T-Dog comes to take the axe away. "Just back up! Back up!"
"She's out there! She's out there all by herself! She doesn't deserve to die alone and scared like that! You saved her life! Why if you were just gonna kill her?!" Daryl screams at him and everyone becomes quiet.
In the room, Ash is trying to move but all she can do is cry in pain and fear. All she can do is move her little finger and that sends pains throughout her whole body. "Rick! Daryl! Please, somebody! Anybody! Help!"
"You do want this. Last night you said you knew it was just a matter of time before everybody you loved was dead." Jenner tells Rick and everything goes quiet once more.
"What?" Lori asks and Rick looks to her. She had wide eyes and was looking at him in shock.
"What? You really said that? After all your big talk?" Shane asks.
"I had to keep hope alive, didn't I?" Rick defends himself.
"There is no hope. There never was." Jenner says.
"There's always hope." Rick says. "Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody somewhere--"
"What part of 'everything is gone' do you not understand?" Andrea says.
"Listen to your friend. She gets it. This is what takes us down. This is our extinction event." Jenner says and sits down.
"This isn't right." Carol speaks up for the first time. She has tears running down her face as she holds Sophia close to her. "You can't just keep us here."
"One tiny moment--a millisecond. No pain." Jenner says to her.
"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this." She says and Dale helps Sophia up as Shane runs off. Carol pulls herself up.
"Wouldn't it be kinder, more compassionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" Jenner asks as Shane cocks his gun and walks up to Jenner.
Rick runs up to him. "Shane, no!"
"Out of the way, Rick! Stay out of my way!" Shane pushes Rick out of the way and walks up to Jenner. "Open that door or I'm gonna blow your head off. Do you hear me?!"
"Brother, brother, this is not the way you do this. We will never get out of here." Rick says to him.
"Shane, you listen to him." Lori says.
"It's too late." Shane says.
"He dies, we all--" Rick begins.
Shane screams as he shoves the large gun in Jenners face.
"--We all die! Shane!" Rick pushes the gun out of Jenner's face as he pulls the trigger and shoots a computer instead. He continues to shoot computers in anger until Rick grabs the barrel of the gun as he continues to shoot, causing sparks of electricity to shower everywhere. "Shane!"
Rick rips the gun out of his hands and hits him in the face with it, knocking him to the ground. He stands over Shane, threateningly holding the butt of the gun to his face. "Are you done now? Are you done?"
"Yeah, I guess we all are." Shane says and Rick shakes his head and walks away from him and hands the gun to T-Dog. He looks to Lori who is looking at him with wide eyes. He looks around to see they all are.
He looks over to Jenner and starts walking over to him. "I think you're lying."
"What?" Jenner asks confused.
"You're lying about no hope. If that were true, you'd have bolted with the rest or taken the easy way out. You didn't. You chose the hard path. Why?" Rick asks.
"It doesn't matter." Jenner says as he shakes his head.
"It does matter. It always matters. You stayed when others ran. Why?" Rick asks getting close.
"Not because I wanted to. I made a promise..." He says as he stands up. "To her. My wife."
"Test subject 19 was your wife?" Lori asks.
"She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no? She was dying. It should've been me on that 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. You do. That's--that's all we want--a choice, a chance." Rick says as Daryl bangs on the door with his axe.
"Let us keep trying as long as we can." Lori says.
"I told you Topside's locked down. I can't open those." Jenner says as he walks past Rick and over to the device and scans his card once more as everyone watches him.
Suddenly the door opens and Daryl looks back at them. "Come on!" He screams and picks something up.
"Let's go!" Glenn yells and runs for the door.
"Come on, let's go!" Daryl screams at them. They all run out except for Andrea, Jacqui, and Dale. They are all about to leave when they see Daryl run the opposite way.
"Where are you going?! We have 4 minutes!" Glenn yells.
"To get Ash!" Daryl screams back and runs to his room. He busts through the door to see Ash on the ground crying in pain, blood covering her face. "Ash!" He screams as he picks her up and she screams in pain. He looks at her face, blood covering most of it. "What happened?!" He asks in a panic as he runs out of the room and down the hall with her in his arms.
She doesn't answer but continues to shake. He makes it to the others just as the glass explodes.
YOU ARE READING
Into The Dark
Fanfiction[Currently Under Rewrite] She was lost. She was alone. She was scared. She was surrounded by the dead. Ashley Grant was thrown into the terrifying world of the dead walking the streets. All she wanted was to go to the grocery store but she ran into...
