Walkers

Chapter 20- I'd

Jake's POV
Dr. Jenner came in shortly after Amy and I, after we had finished our amazing shower.

"Mornin'." Jenner said.

"Hey Doc!" Everyone yelled to him.

"Doctor, I don't mean to slam you with questions first thing." Dale told him.

"But you will anyways." Jenner chuckled.

"We didn't come here for the eggs." Andrea said.

Jenner then took a sip of his coffee and gestured for us to follow him. We all walked until we got back to the room we were first brought to. It was massive and filled with tons of computers.

"Give me a playback of TS-19." Jenner told Vi.

Playback of TS-19.

"Few people ever to see this." Jenner said as everyone gathered around and stared at the main screen as it downloaded it's data. A scan of TS-19's head popped up on the main screen.

"Is that a brain?" Carl asked.

"An extraordinary one, not that it matters in the end. Take us in for the IV." Jenner told Vi.

Enhanced Internal View.

Everyone looked astonished as they watched the main screen. It showed the inside of the brain, I thought it was awesome. Stuff like this always fascinated me since I was young.

"What are those lights?" I asked Jenner.

"It's a persons life." Jenner answered. "Experiences, memories, everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you. The thing that makes you unique and human."

"You don't make sense? Ever?" Daryl asked him.

"Those are synapses, electric impulses in the brain that carries out the messages." Jenner told us. "They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks from the moment of birth, to the moment of death."

"Death? That's what this is? A vigil?" I asked him.

"Yes. Or rather the... Playback of the vigil." He answered.

"This person died? Who?" Andrea asked him.

"Test Subject Nineteen." He answered. "Someone who was bitten, and infected, and volunteered to have us record the process. Vi, scan to the first event."

Scanning to the first event.

"What is that?" Glenn asked as the flashes of light inside the brain started to change color.

"It invades the brain like meningitis. The adrenal glands hemorrhage, the brain goes into shutdown, then the major organs." The little flashes of light go black. "Then death." Jenner stated.

"Is that what happened to daddy?" Sophia asked Carol.

"Yes." She replied, flatly.

I noticed Amy looked to the ground, tears forming in her eyes. I could tell she was thinking about Gabby so I went over to her and enveloped her into a hug.

"We lost somebody a while ago, someone we were very close to, our daughter, my parents. We didn't see them after they were bit." I told Jenner.

Jenner looked to Amy. "I lost somebody too, I know how devastating it is." He comforted her. "Scan to second event."

Scanning to second event.

"The resurrecting times vary wildly." He told us. "We have reports of it happening as little as three minutes. The longest we heard of was eight hours. In the case of this patients, it was two hours, one minute, seven seconds."

The black part of the brain started to spring with red flashes of light.

"It restarts the brain?" Amy asked.

"No, just the brain stem. Basically it gets them up and moving." He told her.

"But they're not alive?" Rick asked.

Jenner pointed to the screen. "You tell me."

Rick shook his head. "It's nothing like before. Most of that brain is dark."

"Dark like the... Dead." Jenner said. "The frontal lobe, the neocortex, the human part, that doesn't come back. The you part. Just a shell driven by mindless instinct."

A long flash of light ran though the skull, signaling he shot the patient.

"Gosh." Lori said.

"What was that?" Carol asked.

"He shot his patient in the head." I told her.

"Vi power down the main screen and the work stations." Jenner said.

Powering down main screens and network stations.

"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea asked Jenner.

"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal." He told her.

"Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui spoke up.

"There's that."

"Somebody must know something. Somebody, somewhere?" Andrea asked.

Carol piped in. "There are others, right? Other facilities?"

"There may be some, people like me." He told us.

"But you don't know?" I asked him.

"How can you not know?" Rick added.

"Everything went down." He told us. "Communications, directives, all of it, I've been in the dark for almost a month."

"So it's not just here. There's nothing left anywhere. Nothing. That's what you're really saying, right?" Andrea asked him, he just looked to the ground.

"Jesus." Jacqui mumbled.

"Man, Imma get shit faced drunk again." Daryl muttered.

"Dr. Jenner, I know this has been... taxing for you, and I hate to ask one more question, but, that clock, it's counting down. What happens at zero?" Dale asked Jenner.

"The basement generators, they run out of fuel." He replied.

"And then?" He asked, Jenner walked away. "Vi, what happens when the power runs out?"

When the power runs out, facility wide decontamination will occur.