Chapter 8: The CDC
The CDC building rose from the Atlanta skyline like a concrete monument to humanity's hubris, its glass and steel facade reflecting the dying light of another day in hell. Jake stared up at it through the RV's window and felt his death sense scream in harmony with his conscious dread.
The building was wrong. Not just empty or abandoned—wrong on a fundamental level that made his teeth ache and his skin crawl. It felt like a tomb, like a place where hope had come to die in sterile, fluorescent-lit rooms.
"There it is," Rick announced unnecessarily, his voice carrying a mix of relief and anticipation. "The Centers for Disease Control."
Jake's hands clenched involuntarily. Hundreds of corpses filled the building's sub-levels, their psychic weight pressing against his consciousness like a physical force. Scientists, security guards, office workers—all dead, all rotting in the basement levels while the automated systems kept the lights on and the air conditioning running.
The convoy pulled up to the main entrance, vehicles arrayed in a defensive semicircle that would do exactly nothing to protect them from what was coming. Jake climbed out of the RV on unsteady legs, his death sense painting the building in shades of wrongness and decay.
"Turn around. Please, just turn around and drive away. Don't go inside. Don't meet Jenner. Don't trust anything about this place."
But his voice remained locked in his throat, the speech block as absolute as ever.
The group approached the glass doors with weapons drawn, expecting walkers, expecting resistance, expecting anything except what they found. The entrance was clean, well-lit, entirely empty. Automated systems had kept the facility running long after its inhabitants had died.
When the doors slid open with a hydraulic whisper, Jake physically recoiled. The sensation was like walking into a freezer filled with corpses—cold, sterile, utterly devoid of life. His death sense painted the interior in stark detail: motion sensors still functioning, air filtration systems humming quietly, and beneath it all, the massive grave that the lower levels had become.
"You alright?" Dr. Jenner's voice made everyone jump. The man had appeared from an elevator like a ghost, dressed in a lab coat that had seen better days. His eyes were bright with the fever of someone balancing on the knife's edge between genius and madness.
Jake stared at him and felt his stomach clench. This was the man who would try to murder them all in a few hours, convinced that death was preferable to the world they were trying to survive in. The man who had lost his wife to the plague and his sanity to grief.
"This place feels... wrong," Jake forced out, the words scraping his throat raw.
Jenner's eyebrows rose with interest. "Wrong how?"
Jake groped for an explanation that wouldn't trigger his speech block. "Dead. It feels dead."
"Perceptive." Jenner's smile was sharp as a scalpel. "It is dead. Has been for weeks. I'm the only one left, and some days I wonder if I count."
The admission sent ice through Jake's veins. Here was a man who had already made peace with death, who saw extinction as a mercy rather than a tragedy. Exactly the kind of person who would lock them all inside and trigger a self-destruct sequence.
The tour that followed was a masterclass in psychological manipulation disguised as scientific exposition. Jenner showed them research labs, living quarters, the cafeteria with its promise of hot food and cold drinks. He painted a picture of safety and civilization, of answers to questions that had been driving them all to the edge of madness.
It was all lies. Not intentional deception—Jenner believed what he was selling—but lies nonetheless. There were no answers here, no cures, no salvation. Only a madman's final gesture and the countdown to extinction.
That evening, Jenner served them wine with dinner, real wine from his personal collection. The group relaxed for the first time in weeks, surrounded by walls and climate control and the illusion of safety. Jake couldn't touch his food. The weight of coming disaster had murdered his appetite.
"You're an interesting case," Jenner said, settling into the chair across from Jake with a glass of wine in his hand. "Most people find this place reassuring. You seem to find it disturbing."
Jake took a large gulp of wine, hoping alcohol might loosen the stranglehold on his voice. "Tick tock, boom o'clock," he muttered, the words spilling out before he could stop them. "Time's up. Always ticking."
Jenner leaned forward, his eyes bright with scientific curiosity. "What did you say?"
Jake laughed bitterly, the sound hollow in the sterile dining room. "Nothing. I said nothing. Never can."
The frustration was eating him alive. Here he sat, sharing dinner with a madman, surrounded by people he cared about, and he couldn't say the words that might save them all. The entity that had sent him here had been thorough in its cruelty.
Rick was watching him from across the table, those sharp cop instincts picking up on Jake's distress. "Jake? What's wrong?"
"Everything. This whole place is wrong. Jenner's going to try to kill us all in a few hours. The building's rigged to explode. We need to leave. NOW."
But what came out was: "Gory leg ace song. Nerd oil eye pull slaw. Gilding fig plode. Eel eve. OW."
Several people stared at him in confusion. Lori reached across the table to touch his forehead, checking for fever. "Are you feeling sick? You're talking strangely again."
"I'm fine," Jake managed, the words coming easier now that he'd stopped trying to reveal forbidden knowledge. He drained his wine glass in one gulp, hoping the alcohol would dull the sharp edges of his panic.
The evening wore on, conversation flowing around him like water around a stone. Jake barely participated, too focused on the countdown running in his head. He knew approximately when Jenner would trigger the lockdown, knew how long they'd have before the building's thermal protection system activated.
Almost without realizing it, he began counting down on his fingers. Folding them one by one as the minutes ticked away, tracking the approach of disaster with obsessive precision.
"What are you counting?" Carol asked softly, settling beside him with genuine concern in her eyes.
Jake opened his mouth to answer and found his voice completely gone. Not scrambled, not distorted—simply absent. The speech block had evolved, preventing him from communicating anything about the timing of coming events.
He shook his head mutely, continuing his countdown. Seven fingers. Six. Five.
Daryl noticed from across the room, his pale eyes narrowing with concern. The tracker had learned to read Jake's moods, to recognize when his mysterious danger sense was triggering. He stood up casually, hand drifting toward his crossbow.
"Fascinating," Jenner murmured, watching Jake's finger countdown with scientific interest. "You're an interesting case, young man. Almost like you know what's coming."
The words hit Jake like a physical blow. Jenner suspected something, could see the foreknowledge written in Jake's behavior. But instead of being alarmed, the doctor seemed intrigued, as if Jake was just another variable in his grand experiment.
Four fingers. Three. Two.
Jake's hands were shaking now, fine tremors that spoke of barely controlled panic. Around him, the group continued their conversations, oblivious to the disaster bearing down on them like a freight train. They felt safe here, protected by walls and locks and the illusion of civilization.
They had no idea they were sitting inside a bomb.
One finger left.
Jake closed his fist and waited for the countdown to begin.
In the distance, almost too faint to hear, an alarm began to sound.
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