Glenn was always tired. He didn't know how much longer he could keep it up.

Putting out fires for this group was a full-time job, and a surprisingly dangerous one. On any given day, Glenn would save at least a half-dozen lives, and that was a conservative estimate. A few weeks ago, he had heard Lori tell Amy that the only way to identify toxic mushrooms was by eating them. Glenn's carefully worded subsequent questions about how to identify safe mushrooms had quickly revealed Lori's defensiveness, and her profound confusion about the subject. (He couldn't blame her for the lack of clear-headedness, considering how little sleep she got. Shane seemed to be insatiable.) Fortunately, Glenn knew that the poison mushrooms that grew in this region grew only on the north side of coniferous trees, so he spent the next few nights pulling up every one he saw within 500 yards of the camp. He'd also offered to cook just in case some slipped through.

It had been this way from the very beginning. He had met the group when they were hiding in an abandoned elementary school. When they acted shocked that he had found them despite the fact that they had left the doors and windows open and were cooking bacon, he realized he was dealing with a group of people who were at extremely high risk of getting themselves killed.

At first Glenn had tried to be straightforward and make his suggestions directly to the parties involved. After all, his old friends had nicknamed him McGuyver because of his ability to find solutions for a huge array of problems. However, the people at camp seemed absolutely determined to do things their way, and were actively threatened by anyone who tried to suggest a better way of doing things. In a different situation, he would say, "screw them" and move on. However, he knew that these people would all be dead, including their children. So he found himself playing the role of an easygoing dimwit who allowed himself to be directed by the self-appointed leaders in the group, but who was in reality circumventing the group's most deadly plans.

Sooner or later he'd need to confide in someone. He'd like to tell Rick, but considering that Lori was one of the worst offenders (her solutions routinely involved something that defied the laws of physics), he wasn't sure how Rick would react. . He figured it would probably be Daryl, since he was pretty damn sure that Daryl was on to him. He had been in the middle of converting the RV to solar power one night when he became aware that the hunter had been standing behind him, watching him. Glenn pretended to be sleepwalking, but he knew that Daryl wasn't buying it.

He also remembered that one time Daryl had asked him what he did prior to the end of the world. He'd answered "pizza delivery," but Daryl had merely looked at him through narrowed eyes. Technically, it was the truth. He was in charge of PETESA, but that was actually an acronym for the government's top-secret Program for Elite Transportation, Engineering and Science Advancement. Glenn had been recruited at 11 when his IQ had been tested at over 200.

Ever since Glenn had dodged that bullet, Daryl occasionally would say, out of nowhere, "Pizza delivery, huh?" as if it was the most ridiculous thing he had ever heard. Very little got by Daryl, it was clear.

Other than Daryl, though, he hadn't been able to take the any sort of measure of his campmates, in large part because he was constantly springing into action to prevent the group from killing themselves. That lack of insight meant he often was left trying to piece together what happened, or that he had to work double time to prevent a disaster. Most recently, he had been shimmying down an elevator shaft during the last trip to the department store, so he still didn't understand what had happened with Merle. Something seemed odd, but he just didn't have time to pursue it.

He felt so alone sometimes. He knew that Merle, Morales, T-Dog and Daryl had some sort of late-night campfire coffee klatch going on, but that was the key time for him to do things like surreptitiously repairing the RV to undo the damage that Dale had done with his tinkering. (Most recently, it appeared that Dale had accidentally diverted the RV's exhaust to the interior of the vehicle, nearly killing Jackie, who slept there, in the process.) It was a shame that he couldn't compare notes with the men, especially T-Dog, who, like Glenn, was a concrete thinker who understood how things worked. Glenn thought that it was a real shame that T-Dog had been forced into a life of crime, because the man would have made an excellent engineer or inventor.

He shook his head ruefully as he began designing a makeshift water purification system for the group. (He could see that looming as an issue since the group never thought to check water for contamination no matter how many times Glenn had pointed out that there were likely to be walkers thrashing around in lakes and streams.)Yes, he was probably a genius, but how useful was that when he couldn't get this group of people to listen to anything he said?