*Disclaimer...I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters. I only own the five characters not from the show.(Rob, Sara, Preston, Jack, and MJ)

Surviving Our Extinction

Chapter One

His eyelids were barely open. All he could make out through his wavering consciousness and the sound of his own labored breathing was a familiar face. A man, his friend, who had always been at his side. He was there when it had happened and he was there now.

Listening to the beeping of the hospital equipment he focused on his thoughts. He remembered now as his consciousness continued to drift in and out from his position in the hospital bed. He remembered the call they had received on their radio. He could recall setting up the spike strip and positioning themselves on the side of the road in wait.

Then, the crash. The two suspects exiting the car ready to go down with nothing less than a fight. The third man who they hadn't known about – who they hadn't seen exiting the car – firing his weapon. The pain that struck him was so intense as he fell to the ground that he drifted out of consciousness while listening to the comforting voice of his friend, who was there with him again.

He worked his eyes slightly open again at the sound of his friend's voice. His vision was blurry and even though he didn't have the strength to keep them open for very long, he tried.

The man with thick, dark curls settled on the top of his head leaned in close with a bouquet of flowers gripped in his hand. "Hey, bud. We're still here. We're still hanging in." He breathed in deeply, shaking his head as he backed up, off of the bed. "I'm sorry, man...same crap every time I'm here."

Lying there, listening, Rick wanted to speak. He wanted to tell his best friend how much he appreciated him visiting. As far as Rick could recall, Shane was the only one to visit him for however long he'd been in there.

A few days? A few weeks? He couldn't tell.

He knew he'd probably missed anyone else coming in. He'd been unconscious for the most part of his hospital stay. Rarely was he awake this long. But aside from Lori, maybe even more than Lori, Shane had been the one constant in his life. The one person he could count on to have his back no matter what.

Rick's eyes shut again as he drifted off. He heard bits and pieces of whatever Shane was telling him. Something about the flowers he had brought and who had sent them. He heard in a mumbled voice that they'd be on his table beside his bed.

But then, Rick's eyes were open. For the first time since he had taken a bullet he could see clearly. He coughed. His mouth was so dry; full of that awful taste people have when they first wake up, but it seemed to be much more intense than he ever remembered. As his slight coughing fit moved him in his bed, he felt the strong ache in his side where the bullet had hit him. He needed water.

"Shane?" Rick struggled to speak. All he had been doing for however long he was in the hospital for was lying down, resting. The fact that he was barely able to get his friend's name out was incredible to him.

He waited, but there was no response. "Shane? You in the john?" Rick spoke again, but still received no answer. He coughed again feeling the pain in his side.

Where'd he go? Rick turned his head and immediately found himself looking at the flowers that Shane had brought in to him.

He stared at them for a minute and in that single minute several things occurred to him.

The room was silent. No beeping was coming from any of the equipment in the room. The lights were off with only the light from outside filtering in through some of the blinds over the windows. Then, the thing that really caused Rick's heart to skip a beat with the onset of panic was the fact that the flowers that Shane had just brought in were already dead. Pedals littered the top of the table around the vase.

Rick swallowed hard, his throat sticking to itself as he did from the lack of saliva in his mouth. He continued to stare at that bouquet, reaching a hand out toward it. His fingers reached a single flower at which he rubbed between two fingers. It was completely dry, crumbling as it fell to the table, meaning that his assumption of time was off. It had to have been at least a few days since Shane had been here.

Rick realized that he must have fallen back into unconsciousness at that point and had just woken up again now.

His heart began to race as he blinked furiously at the ceiling. He looked around and saw that all of the equipment was shut off. His head turned to the left, slowing down as his eyes met the clock.

It showed 2:16 in the afternoon. But it wasn't working. It had stopped.

Looking away he grabbed at the oxygen tube around his face and pulled it off. He pushed himself onto his side, his healing wound causing him such intense pain as he pushed his way into a seated position on the edge of his bed. Aside from his wound his whole body was still and aching due to the fact that he had been lying in the same position for what had likely been weeks now.

He reached out, careful not to pull or tangle any of the other wires attached to him, and gripped the IV stand at the side of his bed. Mustering all of his strength he pushed up and off of the bed, his hand still holding onto the stand as his legs began to shake. Before fully standing, he had collapsed onto the floor, pulling the IV stand with him and disconnecting any wires still attached.

Turning over on his side, gasping for air and struggling not to choke from the dryness of his throat, he called out. "Nurse, help." He waited for a second before calling out again. "Nurse! Help!"

Just like when he called out for Shane, he received no response this time either.

Where is everyone? What's happened? How are there no people here to help!

He managed to pull himself up to his feet. Pushing past the pain that engulfed-what felt like-his entire body, he stumbled across the floor to the bathroom, threw open the door and fell into the sink. He lowered his head, pooling the water-which he was thankful was still running-into his hand and drinking what seemed like gallons to him.

Lifting his head up he stared into the mirror. His beard. A full beard had grown on his face, narrowing his guess at how long he had been in the hospital for. Now knowing it to be at least two – probably more – weeks since he had been shot.

Opening the door to his room, he found the doorway to have been blocked by a hospital bed. Without thinking of why, he pushed it aside and stepped out into the hallway.

The lights flickered throughout half of the hallway, while the other half that he stood in had no working lights. The doors were thrown open and papers were scattered across the floor. Aside from the debris and several chairs that had been knocked onto their sides, the hospital looked pretty normal. Clearly the people had left in a hurry at some point. But why?

Had they forgotten to help the patients or was it just Rick who was still in the building? He peered into two of the rooms that were near him. The scenes were similar to his room when he had woken up. He even peered up at one of the clocks and found it to be stopped at the same time as his had been.

What happened here at 2:16?

Rick didn't understand what was going on? What had happened that caused everyone to leave...and in such a hurry? Why was he still here? Alone.

He squinted down the hallway, spotting the information desk not far from where he was. He shuffled past the open doors, pushing aside the trash and papers on the floor as he went. His arm reached out over the top of the desk and he clumsily pushed aside several useless items. Paperweights, cups of office supplies, more papers...that wasn't what he was looking for.

With the lights overhead and nearby out, the small area that was home to the information desk was drenched in darkness. Luckily, his hand passed over something. A small square paper, but thicker than most. He lifted it up and stared at it.

A matchbook.

Opening it in his hand he pulled off a single match and struck it. They worked.

Now he could see, although small areas and for only several seconds, but if he needed to light up an area to move through it, he was able to do that with the matches.

He knew he had to find someone. Get help, find out what was going on, even get some clothes if he could. He couldn't be walking around in his underwear. People would think he was crazy or something.

He turned around and tried to figure out which way to go. He had rarely been in the hospital for any reason in recent years, and he couldn't remember anything for the life of him when he had arrived here, so he had no idea what the layout of the building was. Which way would get him out.

The room turned off into another hallway and with the light still working there – flickering, but not out – he figured to head in that direction.

He held his hand up to shield his still sensitive eyes from the bright light overhead. Moving forward he realized there was a door in front of him which lead into the hallway. His feet brushed against the floor as he moved up against the door's windows. His hand fell as he squinted harder into the hallway in front of him.

He could see something in the hallway, lying out on the floor. He couldn't quite tell what it was though. But after blinking several times his eyes adjusted and that's when he noticed the blood on the floor. He had seen enough blood in his days as a cop to know that what he was looking at on the floor was exactly that. But as to what the object was on the ground, surrounded by the blood stains, he still wasn't sure.

Slowly his eyes opened as they took in the image. His breathing slowed and his heart began to race again. He didn't want to believe that was he was seeing was real.

What he saw truly terrified him unlike anything else he had ever seen in his life. A human body. A nurse. But her body, that he could clearly make out now, was not how it should have been.

The blood belonged to her. Her torso was one gaping hole of rot. Her insides, her guts, falling over the sides of her corpse. Something had torn her apart and left her there to remain a sight to be seen for anyone unlucky enough to walk through the area.

So many things went through Rick's mind at that point. What had happened and why. Was he in danger since he was still inside the hospital? Clearly everyone had left and this must've had something to do with why. Did the law enforcement know about this? But most importantly, he had to get out.

Turning around he continued down the opposite hallway. His palms sweating, his breathing increasing in speed, the pain in his body not nearly as noticeable as he started to worry about his safety and getting out.

This hallway had been torn apart. The ceiling was caved in, allowing the wires to hang down from overhead. The walls around him were riddled with bullet holes. Blood was splattered everywhere across the walls as well as sitting in small pools that had formed at the base of the walls. Rick stared at the destruction as he walked along, ducking under the exposed wires and continuing past them, trying his best not to focus too much on the blood surrounding him or the nurse's corpse that he had already seen. He made his way closer to the double doors at the other end of the hallway and slowly approached them. The words Don't Open, Dead Inside were spray-painted on them in black lettering. A wooden board was fastened underneath the door handles, helped by the thick chain that was wrapped between the handles as well with a padlock holding everything in place.

He hadn't noticed the paint or the restraints on the doors until he had approached them. But there was another thing that he hadn't noticed, or better put, he hadn't felt. After Rick had left the previous set of double doors, he hadn't realized that multiple sets of living eyes, too scared and too watchful to alert him to their presence, were focused on him as he continued down the hallway.

Five pairs of eyes looking out from behind those doors that he hadn't seen, all curious as to why he was in there. One of those sets of eyes was much more curious than the rest, practically refusing to look away from Rick's back.

"Rob!" The woman behind him hissed. "Maybe he knows where we can find medicine."

"Ya think he would?" Another voice, this one a man's. His strained voice hurting with the pain in his leg.

"It's possible. Maybe he came here. Why else would he be in the hospital at this point. It's been a month since this all happened." Another voice, another man, but a younger one. He held a boy close to him, his arm around the boy's shoulder, keeping him at his side.

Rob, the makeshift leader of this tired, worn out group turned back around. "I doubt he came here. He's in a hospital gown, and he's holding his side like he's hurt."

The others around him just exchanged looks with each other realizing Rob was likely right.

"So why would he be here then?" The younger man asked.

"I don't know...but his face...when he saw this nurse here," Rob pointed to the corpse of a nurse who had been torn open, lying on the floor behind them. "He doesn't seem to know what's going on."

Confused expressions met Rob's stare.

Rob thought for a second before he continued, looking back at the man down the next hallway, who now was stumbling backward away from the door and falling to the ground in terror. The door that was now shaking, trying to break open. He watched, as did the others, as the man forced himself to his feet and made his way down another hallway, anxious to get away from what he was seeing.

"Come on, we gotta help him." Rob said as he turned around, putting his knife back in its sheath at his waist. "I think he's going toward the staircase that leads outside."

"Rob, wait!" The woman pushed out a whisper. Rob turned and met her annoyed stare. She tilted her head to the others.

His eyes followed her head's motion and looked upon the other three people in their group. "Preston, you good to keep walking?"

Preston, the older man who was fighting an injury to his leg sustained not two days earlier nodded slowly and looked up at Rob. "I think so. Yeah."

Rob nodded. He looked to the younger man and the boy at his side. "Jack, you and MJ here good?"

The boy, who's nickname was abbreviated as MJ, exchanged looks with the younger man, Jack. Jack gave the boy a soft, small smile and then returned his eyes to Rob, nodding a "yes" to the man.

Rob nodded back, giving MJ a smile. "Good. Okay."

He turned around again. "Sara?"

The woman held his stare for a moment, then looking to the ground shook her head. She looked to her side at the other three. "We need medicine Rob. And we need to find a place to stay before dark."

Rob held her stare and smiled lightly. "And we will...we'll find a place and we'll find medicine. But I can't let this guy run outside to his death if he doesn't know what's going on either."

Sara sighed and lifted her hand, rubbing it against her forehead. "Alright...lead the way then."

They held each other's stare for a moment until Rob nodded again, moving toward the next hallway to their left. "Alright, come on. This way."

But before they took more then a few steps they heard the telltale noises of the dead closing in.

Stuck in the intersection of the hallways, they couldn't go through the door they were looking through as it was locked, but they couldn't go back the way they came either.

The groaning grew louder and the smell began to engulf them as they stood there waiting.

"Shit." Preston hissed as he leaned against the nearest wall.

"Which way, Rob?" Sara's voice was riddled with nerves and fear, anxious to get out of the hallway and to somewhere safe.

Rob tensed his jaw and thought to himself. Not again. They had already been running for almost 2 days, since Preston's leg got hurt. The rest of the people they had been with were dead, overrun by a large group of the dead. They were lucky to have escaped.

"Rob..." Sara called out again. The urgency in her voice growing stronger and interrupting his thoughts.

"We gotta go back the way we came." Jack said. He held the younger MJ close to his side. The boy stared down the hallway, looking to where they were planning to run just moments earlier. The boy's breathing grew faster; his eyes holding wide open.

Rob saw what MJ's eyes had caught on to at the same time the boy had. Shadows on the far wall moving in their direction. It was time to go.

Rob thought to himself at that moment as his eyes met the terrified look on MJ's face.

Only one option.

"Follow me guys. Come on, this way!" Rob waved them on behind him, leading them down the only other hallway. It led in the opposite direction from the door they were at, watching the hospital man through, but it still could very well lead around to another exit. He'd find one. He had to find that man, but more importantly, he couldn't let anyone else die. Not here, not now.

If he could have it his way, he wouldn't let that happen ever.

** Author's Note - Thank you to everyone who reads this. Huge fan of The Walking Dead here so I wanted to write my own take on the story(to some degree) which includes several characters of my own creation.

The question that's always in my head after watching every scene, no matter how small, is how could that have played out differently and if it did how would that affect the rest of the story moving forward. What else would have been different after that? So I'm hoping to explore that question in writing this re imagining of the story.

Feel free to comment/like/favorite if you like it. If you didn't enjoy it for any reason, let me know too(as long as you're nice enough about it)!

I'm writing this on my own time and if people enjoy it and want to keep reading it I'll upload more. Until then, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the story!