AN: Here we go, another little chapter.

I know that Hayes has everyone concerned, but I'm hoping that (for the most part) it will turn out well (and by that I mean it will be exciting to read how everything plays out). He's not in this chapter. He'll show up again eventually and you'll get a warning for his appearance if anything disturbing happens or is mentioned in the chapter.

I hope you enjoy the chapter! Let me know what you think!

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"It's a nice enough night that I'd sleep out here if it wasn't for the bugs," Michonne declared.

As a response, she heard a slap from someone else as they killed one of the life sucking mosquitos that was determined to bleed them all to death.

"It is nice," Daryl said, "but we stay out here too damn long and Sadie and the kids ain't gonna be the only ones passed asleep in the dirt."

It had been about a week and half, maybe two weeks, since they'd gone for lumber for their buildings. In that amount of time they'd worked over time and they had a barn and a storage building framed already behind the current barn and they were working on getting the rest of the buildings put together.

Since they'd come back from that run, they'd sent one more group to gather supplies from the same warehouse, but they'd seen no evidence of the men that had approached Glenn and Daryl. No one else had ventured outside of the fences, either, given that they'd been working from sun up to sun down on the buildings.

If the group was in the area, it wasn't interested in them, and Michonne was standing strong behind her conviction that they shouldn't go looking for the group because looking for them was likely looking for trouble.

She was content, honestly, if they simply went under the radar.

Daryl, on the other hand, was itching to go in search of the men and their perhaps mystical herd of livestock. His train of thought was that searching them out and at least knowing where they were would give them a chance to keep an eye on them. She contradicted this by suggesting that it might be a way of inviting the other group to keep an eye on them instead.

So they'd reached an impasse and let it drop until they either got everything built that they could from the supplies the warehouse had to offer up, or they were forced to face the other people for one reason or another.

And tonight most of them were still gathered around the dying fire that had been used to warm bath water for everyone after work and to cook dinner while they washed themselves clean of the efforts of the day. Michonne's lap was full with her son and Hope had been sleeping, curled up in Daryl's arms, almost since they'd first come out there to sit.

There really weren't many children at this point that were doing more than drifting into consciousness every now and again to check their surroundings before they dropped back off.

"Tomorrow I'm going to work on those generators," Tyreese offered, his voice almost hoarse from having spent most of the day directing everyone who was working. He was good at leading them when it came to working on the buildings and part of the reason that they were able to make the fast progress that they were making was owing to the fact that he was talented at managing nearly every one of them. "I think we're going well enough with the buildings that I can step away."

Michonne could hear him, but she couldn't see him. She could hardly see Daryl and he was close enough to her to feel the warmth of his skin. The only time she caught a glimpse of anyone else in the circle was if the flame, for whatever reason, flared up just a little and offered her a second of light.

"You think they'll work?" She asked.

"Oh, they'll work," Tyreese said. "Dick looked them over. We need more gas, though, if we're going to run them much at all. We should stockpile it. We don't need a building, but a lean to might be a good idea for storage."

"This damn time we do something like stockpile gas and we're doing it all the way over there," Daryl said. "Somewhere where it can't blow nothing up and burn nothing down before we get control of the fire."

There came a hum from a voice that Michonne couldn't identify until they offered words.

"If the fire spreads," Maggie said, "there's no stopping it out here. Not with the woods and the grass like it is?"

"Put it on the other side of the water," Michonne said. "Then it can spread, but it isn't going to spread as quickly as it might if we put it over where we're planning on clustering houses."

"How long do you think it'll take?" Glenn asked. "To get the houses built and everything?"

Tyreese hummed, his voice was clear to Michonne, but that was probably because she'd spent so many years of her life now listening to him in almost every situation while they shared a house together. You learned someone's voice well when they were always present.

"That really depends," Tyreese said. "Once we have to start cutting our own wood it's going to slow us down considerably. We haven't even figured out how many houses we're putting up yet and how many people are comfortable staying bunked up. Then there are the additions…we're building onto our house. We can't do five kids, or more, in that one room without expanding."

"Or more?" Carol asked. She sounded half asleep and Michonne imagined she was close to being out. Sadie had been the only one to succumb entirely and sleep, but that was because conversation in the dark held relatively little interest to her.

Tyreese chuckled.

"I'm just saying," Tyreese said in a placating tone.

"Realistically," Michonne asked, "can we expect to have most of what we've got planned up and going before winter?"

"If we bust our asses like we've been doing?" Tyreese responded. "Absolutely. Realistically by the time we're into winter enough that it matters, we should have almost everything we need done. We get a few crews out searching for animals and some chopping wood? A couple small smokehouses up and running? We're not going to freeze out and we're not going to starve out this winter. I'm confident in that."

"Could cut down on time looking for livestock if that group's legit," Daryl growled out, his voice almost as harsh and tired as Tyreese's.

"We could also end up finding some lunatic with an imaginary herd," Michonne responded, unamused by the pushing of the topic. "We find our own animals, just like we've done before. The rabbits are multiplying like mad already…if we have to we live off rabbits for the winter."

"And eggs and milk?" Daryl asked.

"We've lived without it before and we'll live just fine without it again," Michonne said. "We have enough milk producing women around here to take care of the babies and everyone else will get by."

Daryl grunted at her, unsatisfied obviously, and moved around to get up, taking Hope with him.

"This ain't getting us nowhere and winter's a day closer," he said. "Let's all turn in and get some sleep."

"I'll put the fire out," Carol offered. "Be up in a minute."

"We got it," Tyreese offered. "Goodnight everyone."

Michonne let Daryl help her up and she stumbled behind him in the pitch of night, holding to the back of his shirt like something of a seeing eye dog while the others that had been lazily gathered around the fire found their feet and headed in the directions of their own homes for the close of the night.

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"Do you have a minute?" Tyreese asked, knocking at the doorframe of the room that he'd seen the brunette step into. He backed away immediately when he realized that she had obviously come in to freshen up and change her filthy, sweat soaked shirt out for another one that was less offensive to her senses.

She didn't seem bothered by his accidental intrusion, though. She rolled her clean shirt down as she walked toward the door and toward him to see what he might need.

"I've always got a minute for the man of the hour," Alice said with a smile. "Something serious or what can I do you for?"

Tyreese smiled at her joke and she returned his smile.

"I just wanted to talk to you in private a moment," he said.

"Come on in," she said. "Mi room es su room."

She swept her hand to invite him into the bedroom and he stepped into, closing the door behind him. He'd been working on the generators all day long and they were running. A little more work and he'd have this cabin able to provide however many hours of electricity that they could get out of the fuel they could find.

A little more time and he was certain he could figure out how to harness the powers of Mother Nature to give them more electricity.

And he was counting on this woman to be some kind of medical savior to them all if they needed it.

The room that she shared with the woman that she called her partner…the woman that she claimed to have been involved with for more than sixteen years…was about the same size as the room that he and Carol shared, but the cabin was much more sparsely furnished. There wasn't really anywhere in the room to sit besides the bed, so he stood until she gestured to the bed.

"Sit?" She asked.

"I'm filthy," he offered.

"Yeah," she said. "I got that. We all are. Here…"

She came over and flipped up the blanket that they apparently were using to cover their sheets. It was coarse, almost like one of the horse blankets from the barn, and Tyreese made a mental note to tell Carol that they needed a nicer blanket.

He took a seat, though, gingerly on the edge of the bed and the brunette sat down beside him, staring at him like she was clearly waiting for him to state his business.

"The generators are working," he said. "We're going to fix it so that it's easy to turn them off and on. Dick knows a good bit about electricity and he thinks he can wire it so that you can have it more or less at the drop of a hat."

"Good," she declared. "Then we can save it when we don't need it."

He nodded. That had been the idea. Fuel was hard to come by and would get harder to come by as time went on. They were siphoning it now and that just wasn't going to cut it for long. The fuel was going to be like an hourglass to tell him how long he had to study the books on water and wind energy and figure out how to make it happen…in case he needed it to make the brunette save his family.

"How are you going to turn this place into a hospital?" He asked.

"We already started," Alice offered with a shrug. Clear everything out, put in more beds if we can. I'm using the kitchen and dining room area downstairs for an operating room. It's going to be easier to disinfect that way. I could use some help making it better…you know take out some walls and add some things…but for now it'll work."

He nodded.

"And just the two of you will live here?" He asked.

Alice nodded.

"It's easier that way and it frees up room for patients. I'd like to never have anyone here, but I want to be prepared, you know? Besides, I thought we were putting people out, but no one's complained about relocating."

There had been some shifting around in housing. It would hopefully cease to be a problem, though, as soon as they were able to get some houses up for the people who wanted to live in the small, cookie cutter houses that he was sure that they could build.

"You just came to find out my life goals?" Alice asked. "Because it seems like something's on your mind."

Tyreese decided he should just spit it out. He'd gone over a few ways that he might go about discussing things with her, but none of them really sounded that great when he thought about it.

He cleared his throat.

"My wife isn't that young," Tyreese offered.

Alice smiled.

"She isn't that old, either," Alice said. "What's wrong? Is she OK?"

Tyreese nodded his head. The woman had openly admitted that she knew only a small amount about obstetrics and gynecology, enough to be dangerous by her counts, but she'd already examined Carol and declared her to be healthy as far as she could tell. It was a relief to Tyreese because he'd been worried about pretty much everything since she'd told him she worried she might be pregnant.

"I think she's fine," Tyreese said. "But…this baby was an accident."

He stopped and then spoke quickly, waving his hand at her.

"Don't get me wrong, it's a blessing and we're thrilled, but it wasn't something we planned," he added quickly. "Neither was Isaac. And…those kinds of accidents can happen. We know that now. We don't have any way of preventing it except just…"

"Not doing the do?" Alice asked.

Tyreese chuckled and nodded.

"And we don't like that option very much," he said.

Alice nodded and shrugged.

"Well, of course," she said. "You…clearly love one another. You're committed to one another. You like that physical intimacy. Who wants to be forced to abstain when they're with a willing partner they want to be with?"

Tyreese cleared his throat again. He almost wished she wasn't a woman, but he couldn't imagine this would be any easier discussing with a man.

"I know that having her tubes tied would be a serious surgery for Carol," Tyreese said, "and…I know that another accident like this could be dangerous, if this isn't dangerous enough…and I don't want that for her and she doesn't want it."

Alice nodded again, urging him on now, her brow furrowed with the intent listening.

"I wanted to know if you think that you could perform a vasectomy," Tyreese said. "I know that's not your area and I know it's not some kind of emergency surgery, but…it's an emergency to us. I don't want to not be with my wife because we're scared she'll get pregnant…but I don't want to put her through the whole pregnancy thing again after this baby's born."

Alice smiled and nodded.

"I could do that," she said.

Tyreese felt oddly relieved. He'd almost thought she might judge him for making such a request, though he wasn't sure what she would say.

"Safely?" He asked.

"Well," Alice said with a little hesitation, "I mean like anything you're going to have to watch out for infection afterwards, but yeah. It's not too complicated a surgery and it's not too bad a healing process. It's not comfortable, though…I mean I have stuff to give you for the surgery itself…but the healing process? And there's no ice now. I can make ice here, I guess, once the electricity's up and going, but it's a lot of strain on the generators…"

Tyreese cut her off before she could keep rambling, trying to talk around the thing and sounding like the verbal equivalent of someone stuck in a maze.

"I'm not bothered by the fact that it'll be uncomfortable," he said. "I suspected that."

He laughed.

"And I saw Carol give birth to Isaac and now there's another on the way, so I think that it might even things out, right?" He added.

She laughed at that.

"Yeah…well…I'm sure it'll be close," she said with a smirk. "When do you want me to do it?"

"As soon as you can?" Tyreese responded.

"You get me up and running," Alice offered, "and I'll make sure I get everything shut down for you in time to stop any more additions to your household. Deal?"

Tyreese nodded and got to his feet, motivated now more than before even to make sure that everything in the house was running well.

"Deal," he said. "Thanks."

"Not a problem," Alice declared. "Now I gotta get back out there and haul some boards before someone notices I'm gone. Did you want me to keep this double top secret?"

Tyreese shook his head.

"No," he said. "I've got nothing to hide."

He thanked her again and left her to finish whatever she might be doing to prepare to go back out to work while he went and found Carol to tell her what the woman had said before he returned to helping Dick get everything ready to go on the place they hoped would be their "state of the art" clinic.