RE: The Walking Dead [Zombie LitRPG]

"Those doors are designed to withstand a rocket launcher." Jenner's words are seriously not helping with the situation.

Annoyed at the boastful tone he had, Daryl charged at him, ready to split his head open with an axe.

"Well, your head ain't!"

"Whoa! Whoa!"

"Daryl! Stop!"

Rick, Dale and T-Dog rushed to stop him, and the latter immediately snatched the axe from his hands.

"Just back up! Back up!" Shane angrily pointed at Daryl.

Jenner stood up from his seat and tried to convince the others to just accept it.

"There is no hope. There never was. You..you just don't know it yet, but you people actually want this."

Rick took a couple of steps forward and confronted him. "There is always hope. Maybe it won't be you, maybe not here, but somebody..somewhere! We'll search for that hope, even if it means we'd have to make that trip to England!"

Jenner just let out a chuckle listening to him. "Michael said his last connection with them was a week ago. We don't even know if they are still standing strong right now. This..is our extinction event. We can't do anything to change it."

"..."

His words only brought silence.

"This isn't right! You can't just keep us here!" Carol cried out while hugging her daughter, sobbing in between.

Jenner moved his seat towards her and tried to sugarcoat it. "One tiny moment, a millisecond. No pain."

"My daughter doesn't deserve to die like this!"

Shane was growing frustrated at Jenner and made his way over somewhere around the room.

"Wouldn't it be kinder? More passionate to just hold your loved ones and wait for the clock to run down?" Jenner just wouldn't just shut up and kept trying to convince everyone to just embrace the inevitable quietly.

"Well, why don't you start loving this?!" Shane aggressively walked towards Jenner with a loaded shotgun in his hands.

"Shane, no!"

"Out of my way, Rick!"

Rick tried to stop him, but Shane just shoved him to the side while the people around them quickly retreated.

"Shane!"

"Stay out of my way!" Rick once again tried to stop him, only to get shoved aside again. Shane advanced unobstructed and aimed the shotgun at Jenner's head.

"Open that door! Or I'm gonna blow your brains out! Do you hear me?!"

Rick slowly went face to face with Shane and tried to calm him down, "Brother, brother. This is not the way you do this."

While the two best friends are busy confronting Jenner, Daryl has gone over to Michael.

"We're gonna die for real this time. We should not have come here. Damn it!" Daryl cursed while giving a kick at the railings Michael is leaning on.

Michael chuckled. "Merle wouldn't even know you died here."

"Well, shit." Daryl also realized that and let out a curse.

While looking at the nonchalant attitude of Michael towards the crisis they are currently facing, Amy turned to her sister and complained. "Why is Michael like that? Isn't he the least bit worried?"

"I don't know the answer to that. Even I am left wondering what's going on inside that head of his." Andrea shook her head. She just finds Michael being weird sometimes.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Ahh!"

Multiple shotgun shots went off, alongside the sound of machines getting destroyed and Shane yelling in frustration in between.

"Shane!"

Wham!

Rick forcefully snatched the shotgun from his hands, then smacked its butt on Shane's face, sending him lying on the ground.

"Are you done now? Are you done?" Rick stood over him, irritated at his friend's display.

Shane glared at him from below. "Yeah, I guess we all are."

'What's taking them so long?' Michael was starting to grow a little anxious. He didn't notice that he had started repeatedly rapping his foot on the floor while looking at the clock that's almost at the five-minute mark.

'Maybe it was a bad idea getting trapped here with the others. Maybe Andrea and I should have stayed behind and we could have found some way to help them if we were on the other side of this door. Dammit! If we get out of this, I should re-evaluate my plans multiple times before giving it a go. I should have realized this when I failed to convince Morales and his family to stay with us. I should refrain from relying too much on the knowledge I have of this world. I can reference them, but not ever expect them to happen since I'm the biggest..variable right now. I'm such an idiot for only realizing it now!' Michael made a mental note for this nerve wracking experience and started pacing back and forth while watching Rick and the others.

"You stayed while the others ran, why?"

Slightly triggered, Jenner quickly turned towards Rick. "Not because I wanted to."

"I made a promise." He stood up, and continued while pointing at the brain scan on the big screen. "To her. My wife."

That revelation from him shocked all of them, and they just stared at him.

"Test subject 19 was your wife?" Andrea thought aloud and, in the back, Daryl had resumed pounding the door with an axe.

Jenner addressed the group. "She begged me to keep going as long as I could. How could I say no?"

Then he turned to Rick and started venting his frustrations on him, "She was dying. It should have been me on that table. Not her, me! It 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's an Einstein. She's that important. Me? I'm just..Edwin Jenner. A nobody. She could have done something about this, not me."

Again, Rick tried to get some sense into the doctor in an almost pleading tone. "Your wife didn't have a choice. You do…that's..that's all we want. A choice, a chance. Please?"

"Let us keep trying as long as we can" Lori pleaded alongside her husband while embracing Carl.

There was a short silence between them before Jenner lightly shook his head and let out a sigh.

"I told you topside is locked down. I can't open those."

Then Jenner briskly walked past Rick and went over to a small terminal. Got his ID scanned before he started inputting some numbers on it.

Beep!

The locked entrance immediately opened up and the eyes of the survivors lit up with hope. They quickly stood up and started running for the door.

"Come on!"

"Let's go! Come on, move it!"

Daryl led the charge with Glenn just behind him as they urged the others to escape.

"We're gonna get out of here, Sofia."

"Move it, move it!"

Michael smiled and gripped both his fists like he had just won the lottery. He quickly went over to the sisters and helped Dale pull them up from the floor.

"I told you Rick can do it."

Andrea just scoffed and grabbed his outstretched hand. They quickly followed after the rest, but when he looked back, he saw Rick had stayed behind still talking to the doctor. Then he panned his eyes to Glenn and the others who stood by the door and were waiting for Rick. His line of sight then fell onto Jacqui who remained standing in her place and didn't bother chasing after the others.

"Shit! You guys go first! I'll catch up!" Michael let go of Andrea's hand and urged them to go ahead.

He already turned around and was about to run back when Andrea quickly grabbed him. "What are you doing?!"

"Go, now." Michael commanded in a solemn voice and lightly pushed her back.

Amy grabbed her sister and pulled her along with Dale. "Come on, Andrea!"

Michael arrived just in time to see the doctor whispering something to Rick.

"Hey! We've got four minutes left! Come on!" Glenn yelled with urgency as Lori quickly pulled her husband away.

T-Dog noticed it and quickly went back to Jacqui and tried to pull her along, but the woman quickly shook him off.

"No, no, I'm staying! I'm staying sweetie." She was on the verge of tears.

"But that's insane!" T-Dog grabbed her and yelled, but she just shook off his hand again.

"No, it's completely sane!"

"No, sweetie. I think you sound insane right now." Michael briskly walked past the others and over to Jacqui and like a sack of potatoes, he suddenly picked her up by her legs

"W-what are you doing?! Put me down!" Jacqui was startled by Michael's sudden actions and panicked and started hitting his back.

Michael looked at the people around him who had stared at him in daze. "What are you looking at? Are you guys planning to stay behind too and die with the doctor?"

Rousing from their daze, Glenn quickly urged the others as he pulled Carl along with him. "Ah, c-come on! Let's move it!"

Jenner just calmly watched them flee, but then saw Michael stop in his tracks and turned around to look at him.

"Michael, put me down! Let me go!"

"Hey doc! There might not be a cure yet, but even if there never will be. The human race will continue to survive, just like how we always had been. This is not our first extinction event. Humanity has always bounced back from the brink of extinction, and this one wouldn't make a difference."

"Michael, come on!"

Rick yelled as the group just reached the elevator door.

Michael smiled and quickly dashed for the elevator with his voice echoing behind him. "See ya in hell doctor!"

Jenner showed a small smile and let out a murmur in reply. "Live."

With just three minutes left on the clock, the group finally reached the surface.

Reaching the entrance, they saw the others trying to break the glass window to no avail.

"Andrea! The grenade in the bag, quick!"

Andrea finally remembered the grenade and felt like an idiot for forgetting it. She quickly rummaged through the bag and grabbed it.

"Not me. Rick, the grenade!"

Without him even saying anything, Rick had already run to Andrea when he heard Michael's shouts to Andrea and quickly took the grenade from her.

"Take cover!"

Rick yelled and ran for the window while the others quickly scattered for cover.

His hand was shaking as he took off the pin, and when he dropped it on the ground. He was so nervous that it took him a moment to realize what he just did before he quickly scampered away.

"Get down!"

BOOM!

"Oh shi-"

The grenade exploded and sent Rick flying onto the floor as the glass window behind him shattered from the explosion, sending fragments everywhere.

"Go! Go! Go, hurry!"

Shane urged everyone as T-Dog ran over to Rick and helped him up.

Everyone made a quick exit through the hole they made and ran for their cars while taking down the scattered zombies along the way.

"Hurry!" Rick urged after looking at the time on his watch.

"Fuck off!" Michael used his remaining free hand and decapitated a walker who tried to sneak up on him when he ran past an Army Tank.

[You terminated a Zombie! Gained +1 EXP and +1 Coin.]

Back inside the big room, Jenner is watching them through the security cameras with 25 seconds left remaining on the clock behind him.

"Move, move!"

Everyone hastily boarded the vehicles as they all simultaneously roared to life.

"Go! Go! Go!"

The drivers quickly stepped on the gas. Every vehicle went on full throttle. They hastily made a U-turn to the direction from where they came from and sped up with five seconds on the clock.

BOOOOM!!!

They hadn't driven far before the CDC behind them exploded into a ball of fire, sending shock waves in all directions!

"Kyaaa!"

"Hold on!"

"Oh God, please have mercy!"

The vehicles rocked back and forth as the shockwave hit them, causing the people inside to scream in fright.

As the seconds passed, the drive slowly became smooth and everyone finally started to calm down.

"We did it."

"We're alive!"

Everyone on the bus cheered and started hugging each other, some even cried out of joy.

Sitting beside him Michael, Andrea turned to him and kissed him. "We made it out."

"Yeah, except for one person." Michael smiled and gestured at Jacqui sitting beside Amy, who looked like she had just the world.

"It's going to be fine."

"It's never going to be fine!

Amy tried to comfort her, but the only thing she got was a rebuke from her and everyone suddenly quieted down when they heard her outburst and turned their attention to the middle seats of the bus.

"It will never be fine! For the first time in a long time. I'm not ending up like Jim and wanted to die on my own terms." She sobbed.

"Stop it. That line of thinking should be stopped! Jim and the others who left before us didn't have the same chance or choice like we do. They wanted to live even if it was painful. Jim wanted to live even if he had to be constantly reminded of the death of his family. Can you really tell them that death is the only answer? That striving to survive in this world is a futile effort that it's better to just..die?! That trying to survive was meaningless? Would you really say that to them?! Should they be proud of you taking your life?! They won't be! So live, goddammit! Their memories serve as an example to us all! Their lives have meaning because we the living refuse to forget them! So live, so they will not be forgotten."

Michael took a deep breath as he had realized he had become too emotional and had even referenced a famous speech in an anime he had watched before.

Seating down, Michael added, "If you still want to die after this. Then at least go down doing something for the greater good. Our deaths should be meaningful so that the people we'd leave behind would find the will and courage to keep moving forward. For our sake and everyone's."

It wasn't just the people in the bus who heard him, the others in the other cars heard it too since Shane thought that the others should hear him too. So, he opened the radio and had someone stretch the microphone as close to Michael as possible.

'This guy is something else.'

He doesn't quite like the guy, but Shane had to admit, the guy has some way with his words.

The journey towards the unknown remained silent for a while as everyone digested his words and pondered on it.