A Few Notes From MissCanary
Thank y'all for checking out my story! It's been forever since I wrote a fanfiction. My love is The Walking Dead, and so most of the characters are from the show. However… this story doesn't have Lori. I just couldn't morph her into the character I wanted for this, which resulted in Scarlett. Therefore, I give you a Shane/OC story. These first few chapters focus on the evolution of the outbreak, something we don't get to see much of in the show.

Let me know how you like it!

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters except for Scarlett.

Edit: I tweaked this first chapter a bit. I re-read it recently and decided it was a little TOO medical. Not much has changed, but nonetheless. Here we are.

Scarlett Grimes sat hunched over the computer, forcing her eyes to focus on the screen. A tiny digital clock on the bottom right read 9:30PM. When is this going to be over? Her pale fingers clawed at the air beside her, searching for a lukewarm cup of coffee.

The overhead pager clicked on. "Scarlett, 4700 please; Scarlett, 4700." A tired groan escaped the nurse's lips. Wearily, Scarlett picked up the off-white 1980's telephone, habitually wrapping the cord around her wrist. "This is Scarlett."

"Hi Scarlett, this is Rachel from the lab." Scarlett yawned, automatically logging in to her hospital account. "Hey Rachel, what can I do for you? Were y'all able to run the culture?" She heard the faceless girl clear her throat on the other end of the line. "Yeah, well, sort of. We don't know what it is."

The small Atlanta girl slumped against her chair, raising a pale delicate eyebrow. "I'm sorry, what? Like, you couldn't get a culture?"

"No, we grew a culture. There was definitely an organism in Mr. Hicks' blood, but we don't know what it is. I've never seen anything like it before. All I can tell you at this point is that it's a virus, and it was transmitted by that bite."

Scarlett eyed room 113, watching the crowd of family members mourn over their dead relative. Shoulders shook with grief as people clutched tissues and leaned on one another. "Will you relay this to Dr. Shaw please?" Rachel complied, and Scarlett quietly hung up the phone. The ICU was hushed with death. All of the day shift had gone home except for her, and the night nurses were studying their patient's charts. Even the sobs in Mr. Hicks' room were quiet.

A million thoughts ran through Scarlett's mind. She drug her fingers through light blonde hair, letting her forehead rest in her palms as she mulled over the previous six hours. He had arrived via the Rapid Response team, a balloon of oxygen manually pumping breaths into the young man's lungs. Samuel Hicks was at the clinic downstairs with his mother, having a bite looked at. When he became unresponsive, he was rushed to the ICU. Samuel's temperature was 107.2, the highest Scarlett had ever seen. Mrs. Hicks told Scarlett that her 19 year old son had been bitten as he walked home from work the previous day.

She replayed the chaotic code as they threw bags of ice all around the tortuously overheated kid. He began bucking in the ICU bed, seizing from the heat in his brain. After that, it was over. Three rounds of CPR later, Mr. Hicks was dead. Dr. Shaw called the time of death as Scarlett watched the deep gash in his arm ooze. The dressing had been ripped off in the commotion, exposing a bite so deep his bone was exposed. Scarlett shuddered, coming back to reality.

Smoothing light blue scrubs as she stood, Scarlett quietly bowed into room 113 and assessed whether his family was ready to leave. It'd been 3 hours since he died; she needed to pack him up for the morgue. No doubt Dr. Shaw would order an autopsy.

She drew the curtains closed. Samuel lay in his bed, tastefully and carefully covered with a blanket, as though he were sleeping. His mother had arranged him. Usually it was up to Scarlett to clean up a deceased person, but Samuel's mother had done it herself. It takes a strong mother to do that, she mused. An image of Scarlett's own son suddenly flashed into her mind, and she forced it out with anger, squeezing her eyes shut and pinching the bridge of her nose. To avoid unwanted memories, the petite nurse busied herself at the IV pump, disconnecting and coiling lines. She unhooked Mr. Hicks from the monitor.

As she shoved empty ice bags into the trash can, Scarlett heard something move behind her. Thinking it was Dr. Shaw returning for a follow-up, she turned around to greet him, but nobody was there. Scarlett frowned. "Okay then…" Looking over at Samuel, she noticed that his head was turned to the right, toward her. Alarmed, Scarlett froze and stared at the body. He still looked as dead as before. His head must have just fallen that way. The physics of it didn't make sense, but Scarlett was much too tired to read into it. Bodies were known to twitch after death. She chalked it up to that and continued cleaning the room, turning back to her work.

Another movement. "Jesus Christ, we've got ourselves a twitcher", she muttered. Then, what sounded like a long exhale. This was why Scarlett hated post mortem care. It was truly creepy. Dead people weren't supposed to move and make sounds. And after what happened with her husband and son, she struggled to not loathe seeing dead people. After all, the clean-up had to be done.

But then, a sound came from the body that Scarlett had never heard before. "Uunngghh." She gasped and spun around to face Samuel. It took a few seconds to process what she was seeing. Milky white eyes were open and fixed on Scarlett. The body's lower jaw was rotating slowly side to side, as if using it for the first time. Fingers twitched, and then his long, pale arm slowly lifted toward her.

Scarlett stifled a scream, stumbling backward away from the body. Samuel's eyes remained on the nurse. His head turned to follow her as she slid against the wall, toward the curtain. Another garbled moan escaped his lips just as she crashed backwards through the curtains and onto the floor. Immediately Dr. Shaw, who had just arrived, and two night nurses were at her sides.

Scarlett leapt to her feet and tore around the nurse's desk, putting it between her and the room. "The fucking… t-the body. Samuel. He's awake." Scarlett could barely speak. Every muscle in her body was shaking, every nerve on high alert. Something was terribly, terribly wrong. He'd been dead for three hours.

Dr. Shaw glanced at the other nurses, Chad and Allison. "Scarlett, you know that bodies twitch after death, right?" He was talking to her as if explaining rules to a 5 year old.

Scarlett shook her head. "No. Go look. Go look. He was moaning at me." Involuntary tears pricked at her eyes, which irritated her. She was quickly losing her composure. People seemed to think she was unstable these days, and maybe she was, but this was real. She knew it. Dr. Shaw sighed and went to the curtains, drawing them apart with a swift yank.

As suddenly as Scarlett reacted, Chad jumped back with a stream of profanities and then rushed into the room. Dr. Shaw moved to Samuel's bedside, followed by 4 more nurses. Everybody spoke at Samuel, attaching monitors and attempting to calm him down.

Is this real? Did we fuck this up? He can't be alive. He hasn't taken a breath in 3 hours.

Scarlett automatically moved into the room, participating in the commotion on auto-pilot as she thought. The body- Samuel- moaned. He moved his jaw in an awkward and unsettling way, raising his arms stiffly, as if they were fighting against death. His breath stank of the beginnings of decomposition, but here he was, moaning and thrashing. He couldn't be dead.

Chad turned the monitor back on and studied it as other nurses placed wrist restraints on the inconsolable Samuel. "Dr. Shaw, I'm not getting any reading on the monitor." He turned it off and then back on, but the same showed – asystole, the characteristic wavy line that indicated no heart activity.

He examined the leads. Everything was intact. "Why isn't this reading?" he murmured. The young patient's eyes were fixed on Chad as he moved above the bed. Suddenly, Samuel found his strength and erupted into a fit of violence, attempting to break free of the restraints. His teeth snapped together and, in a flash, he clamped down onto Chad's hand.

"AAAAHHHHH!" The charge nurse ripped his hand from the man's jaws. A deep gash punctured his palm and trailed down three fingers where he'd pulled away. "Shit!"

Everybody took a giant step away from the patient and Allison rushed over to tend to Chad. Scarlett stood, stunned, as she watched Samuel thrash against the restraints, snapping his jaws and fixing those milky white eyes on anything that moved. His skin was the same gray shade of pale that had accompanied him in death.

"Scarlett, call a code gray." She dashed out of the room, grateful to have an excuse to move away from the scene. Trembling fingers dialed the intercom, and she nervously wrapped the cord of the phone around her wrist. Code gray meant "combative patient", and Samuel fit that word nicely.

"Code gray, ICU; code gray." Her voice was shaking.

Reliable as they always were, security arrived in less than 30 seconds, ready for whatever scene had caused the code. Scarlett heaved a sigh of relief, feeling instantly safer. Family members of other patients were beginning to peer out of their rooms at the commotion in 113.

The guards replaced the flimsy wrist restraints with steel handcuffs, placing a pair on each ankle as well. Scarlett returned to stand by Dr. Shaw. Chad and Allison had already descended down to the Emergency Department. Two guards stood by, looking both disturbed and frightened.

She glanced at the doctor, noticing his intent gaze on the heart monitor. Scarlett followed suit. It read nothing. No heart rhythm, no pulse, and no oxygen saturation. There weren't even respirations, save for the sporadic readings whenever the "patient" hissed and groaned.

"Maybe some versed…" The doctor seemed distant. Scarlett obeyed without a word, drawing the strong sedative into a syringe. With a twinge of fear, she moved to Samuel's arm. The 19 year old hissed his putrid breath at her, stretching as far as he could with an open and hungry mouth. He wanted to bite her. Somebody instructed the guards to hold the man's arm steady, advising them to stay clear of his mouth. Scarlett quickly administered the drug. They all backed up again, letting him free to fight against the handcuffs.

"Any second now," Scarlett said.

But nothing happened. In fact, the patient became enraged at the constant presence of people near him. The boy turned his blank and bulging eyes on Scarlett and clawed at her with trapped hands. "Give him another 10, Scarlett." Her stomach sank at the thought of going near him again, but she drew up more of the sedative. Ray, the security guard, and his comrade, approached them cautiously to restrain the arm once more. Scarlett noticed that Samuel's wrists were bleeding from the strain against the handcuffs, with deep gashes forming in the fragile post mortem skin. It isn't post mortem, she reminded herself, but deep down she wondered otherwise.

As she administered the second dose, a loud crack startled them all, followed by a sickening ripping sound. "Back up!" Dr. Shaw yelled, and as Ray moved, Scarlett saw that Samuel's farthest arm had snapped at the gash where he'd been bitten, both bones protruding from his pale skin. Each time he thrashed, another tendon snapped, another inch of skin ripped. The most unnerving part of all was the lack of reaction from Samuel. He didn't even notice what he was doing to his arm. He kept his disturbing gaze on her, the closest person to him, and continued thrashing.

For whatever reason, maybe shock, Scarlett didn't move. She watched him with a strange fascination, the empty syringe dangling from her small hand. He never let up, never indicated any fatigue or pain. Only violence, and what seemed like intense hunger. Somebody was talking to her, but she didn't hear. She couldn't hear anything but this thing's loud raspy groans.

Samuel finally ripped his arm free in a makeshift amputation and lunged at Scarlett. The blood from his wound splattered on her arm, and she noticed that it was cold. His whole torso flipped toward her and he attempted to climb over the bed rail, his farthest leg twisting unnaturally against the cuffs.

Ray lunged at Mr. Hicks again, pulling the shoulder back so that the patient would lay flat again. Scarlett saw that Ray was struggling against Samuel's strength.

What happened next was too quick for Scarlett to process before it was too late. As quickly as Samuel had fought against Ray, his attention was suddenly on Ray. He hooked his bloody stump around the guard's neck, and with a disturbing amount of strength, pulled the guard's head down to his waiting mouth.

Scarlett screamed as the patient bit down on Ray's neck, ripping a chunk of flesh into his mouth and severing the man's artery. Dr. Shaw and the other nurses yanked Ray away from the monster and on to the floor, where the nurses began their work on him in a panic.

She heard a loud pop, so loud that her head was spinning, and watched blood blossom from Samuel's chest. Ray's partner was standing in front of the bed, his finger still on the trigger of his glock. Still the boy lunged at everyone with his mangled arm. She heard the guard swear and reload his gun, which had jammed, and another deafening pop made her jump.

Samuel instantly went limp and slumped into the hospital bed, a small trickle of blood running out of a neat bullet wound in the side of his head. The other side was a mess of brain matter. It had all narrowly missed covering Scarlett with flesh and blood, and still she stood, staring at the body in the bed in a dumbfounded state of shock.

She vaguely heard one of the nurses. "Dr. Shaw, I'm not getting a pulse on Ray."

The dark apartment building was a welcome sight. Scarlett turned off her Jeep and slumped against the driver's seat, glancing at her watch. 4am. A heavy sigh escaped her lips. She wondered why she hadn't cried yet. Probably too tired, she thought absentmindedly. Truthfully, she was still in shock. A bottle of pills rolled in the passenger seat; Dr. Shaw had prescribed them to her and those involved in the incident, including himself. Some type of sleeping pill. He guided her into the locker room, instructing her to rinse off with disinfectant. When she emerged, he tried to get her to stay at the hospital, to sleep in a room with an IV of fluids and sleeping pills, but thought made her gag. She had to leave. She had to get away from the horror she'd just witnessed. In a haze, Scarlett stumbled past the frightened patients, the inconsolable family of Mr. Hicks, and out of the hospital. Somehow she found herself here.

She wasn't even sure he'd be awake.

Scarlett hesitated when she arrived at his door on the 3rd level, debating whether she should knock or not. The physical effects of the shock were beginning to come on, however, and she'd begun shaking. An animal rustled in the trees below and she nearly jumped out of her skin. So, she knocked.

He was awake. She felt him inspect her through the peephole and then wrench the deadlock. He flung the door open and stared at her. "God damn, Sky, what are you doing awake? Are you okay?"

She considered the question, blinking. Her teeth were chattering in the warm July breeze. "I don't know." Instantly he was in front of her, his strong hands cupping her face. "Hey, look at me. Look at me. Are you hurt?" The questions seemed to echo in her head, and slowly she shook her head no. Her ears were ringing. From the gunshots, she thought. She noticed that he was studying her intently. "You look like you seen a goddamn ghost." The softness of his normally harsh voice was soothing and familiar.

"Can I come in?"

He led her inside and sat her on the couch, a couch Scarlett knew well. It smelled like him, like Shane Walsh. It was comforting. "You want a beer?" She nodded. He left for the kitchen and she fell back into the cushion, watching the picture on the TV absentmindedly.

He came around the corner, opening two Bud Lights. His dark hair, shaved close, was covered with a black baseball hat that said POLICE in bold white print. It was stained an off white from years of use. He wore it low, shading his dark brown eyes. A charcoal gray button up shirt hung casually off his built frame, rolled to the elbows and open, exposing his muscular torso. He wasn't terribly tall, about 5'11, but his no-nonsense attitude made up for average height. Faded jeans clung on toned hips, exposing about an inch of his briefs.

Shane took a long swig of his beer as he handed Scarlett hers. He sat next to her, eyeing her with genuine worry. "Now you know damn well that keeping an ol' bulldog like me in the dark ain't gonna fly. Especially when you come knockin' at 4am. Now we can talk about this now, or we can wait, but either way I'm gonna figure out who I need to kill for puttin' that look on your face." Unlike her intermittent drawl, Shane's accent never let up. He was a born southern boy.

Scarlett looked at him, feeling so exhausted. "Something happened at work; a death. One of the security guards had to shoot a patient."

Shane's brow furrowed and he squinted at her. "That normal protocol these days?" Scarlett could tell he was trying to lighten the mood, but, regardless, she felt a lump rise into her throat. He sobered a bit, acknowledging how serious the situation was.

"No," she said thickly, taking a deep breath. "No it isn't." They looked at each other. Shane didn't press her for more information. His jaw was set very carefully. Scarlett could tell that the cop in him wanted to know more. She cleared her throat. "If I promise to explain in the morning, will you let me stay tonight? I don't want to be alone." Shane's jaw relaxed and he gaze softened.

"Scarlett you ain't ever got to ask." The usual, palpable tension that hung between them was present, but Scarlett didn't care. "How 'bout we watch us some Die Hard, Mrs. G." She managed a tired smile, ignoring the prickle in her gut at the mention of her last name. Shane took another swig of his beer, assuming his normal night-owl routine. Together they sunk into the couch, his arm wrapped securely around Scarlett's tired shoulders. In seconds, she fell into a deep sleep.