10:30 PM
Woodbury

Rick stumbled out of the woods with Rowan's arm over his shoulder. Then Tara came out half carrying Eisenberg. "Quick, lower the draw bridge," Rick called to Rosita, who was now on the fence. "They've both spiked sudden high fevers and Rowan is coughing up blood!"

Shit, Rosita thought. Two of their other soldiers – Karen and David – were currently in the infirmary with similar symptoms. They'd gone in twenty minutes ago. Tyreese had tried to stay with Karen in the infirmary, and Sasha had forced him away. Whatever this sickness was – and the veterinarian believed it had started with the pig - it would eventually spread to people within coughing distance.

Dr. S had insisted the infirmary become a quarantine room and that he alone treat the patients there, so Bob would be less like to become contaminated and could remain free to serve as a field medic. Bob had equipment and supplies at the ready for that purpose, and field injuries would be treated on the spot or in the living room of Mitlon's townhouse.

This wasn't good. How many more soldiers would come down sick before the battle erupted?

Rosita looked to the east and then west, dreading the possibility that Simon might arrive while they were letting in their own people, and then whistled down to Sasha to open the gate and lower the draw bridge.

She then called down to Bob, "Two sick coming in. Get Dr. S!"

The patients were settled in the infirmary and the drawbridge returned without event. Rick and Tara had their temperatures checked, were cleared, and Abraham sent Oscar and Axel to the woods to reinforce them and Halley.

10:45 PM
The Kingdom

"Let us confer together," Ezekiel told Gavin.

Gavin set down his hammer. Still feeling bitter eyes on his back, he followed the King past an outbuilding and along the front of the high school to a bench alongside a garden. After sitting down with Ezekiel, he leaned forward and rubbed his eyes. "How's the boy?"

"Benjamin will live. Alas, he may never again walk without a cane. The rising star has seen his glory dimmed, and he mourns for that lost light."

"But he lives." Gavin exhaled in relief. He didn't know if he could accept the trade-offs he had made if the boy had died anyway.

"Have you given much thought to your plans after this?" Ezekiel asked. "After the Saviors have fully fallen?"

"No. Not really."

"This battle has been difficult for my people. So, too, has the news of the secret I kept from them. Some felt robbed by you – as indeed we were. Yet not all were keen to fight or understood the purpose, since they did not even know they were being robbed. And those who have lost loved ones at the hands of Saviors this day will mourn their losses for some time. When the Sanctuary has fallen, we're hoping for a fresh start, here in the Kingdom. And it would be easier if it was just us."

"Just…us?" Gavin asked.

"The original citizens of the Kingdom. The band of brothers and sisters who hoed hope from this hard earth."

"Is this your wannabe Shakespeare way of saying my people and I aren't welcome here?"

"Shit, Gavin, I'm not trying to be the bad guy here. I just want to get back to the way things were. To the people we were, here in this Kingdom, before this bloody day. Before Shiva lay dead in my once peaceful hall. Before the graves yawned for Richard, Colton, and Avaro…" He sighed and shook his head. "Stay the night, you and your workers and your fighting men," Ezekiel told him. "Breakfast with us tomorrow. Join the memorials we will hold for our dead as well as yours. But then…I think it best you journey on and take the six surrendered Saviors with you. You'll know better how to assimilate and lead them than I would. After everything...do you think you could give me that?"

"I'll do what you ask, but don't pretend you're offering me a choice." Gavin stood and walked toward the steps of the high school.

10:55 PM
Fun Kingdom

As Dr. Stevens labored in the infirmary, Hershel, who had developed mild symptoms of his own but was still doing well, was put in charge of treating the patients quarantined in the Old Timey theater, while Carol – who was symptom free - was tasked with checking symptoms in the house and Royal Banquet every thirty minutes and continuing to send people to quarantine as needed.

The Old Timey Theater now housed seventeen quarantined patients – after Hershel had sent three worsening patients – Duane, the teenager Jody, and the elderly Mr. Jacobson - to join Carl and Patrick in the infirmary. Dixon was helping to walk them down now and would return to quarantine here, because his symptoms were not so severe.

"I feel sick, Daryl," Luke said as he lay his curly head against Daryl's side where he sat with his back again the theater wall and his legs stretched out.

"I know, kid." Daryl draped an arm around him. "We all do."

Others lay on the stage on the mattresses that had once been stacked there for the Princess and the Pea fairytale play, or in sleeping bags. The soft moans and whimpering of the sick were amplified by the acoustics.

"But my head hurts so, so much." Luke began to cry.

"Hershel! Hey, Hershel!" Daryl called, and the veterinarian made his way over from another patient. "Can you give Luke some more of that headache medicine?"

"I already gave him the maximum safe dose. I can't give him more for six hours. How about you? You ready to admit you need some pain medicine now?"

Daryl had taken the anti-viral – they all had, in hopes of kicking this thing before it worsened – but the headache meds were just for pain. "Nah. Save it for people who need it more than I do."

"We have plenty," Hershel assured him.

"Really? For every six hours? For all these people? For however long this goes on? 'M fine. In fact, you need some help? I can help."

Hershel nodded down to little Luke curled at Daryl's side beneath his arm. "Best help you can give right now is not to move so you don't wake him."

Daryl looked down and saw the boy's chest softly rising and falling. He'd cried himself to sleep.

11:00 PM
The Kingdom

Gavin sat outside the clinic in the high school on a low, circular, bench-type structure in the center of the hall waiting for Frankie. She was assisting in there and had said she would finish up her work and come to bed with him in fifteen minutes. The overhead, emergency lights in the hallway glowed lightly, powered by back-up generators that might last another six months if the Kingdom rationed well. He lay back on the circle, hands folded on his stomach, and closed his eyes for a moment.

Two minutes later, he snorted awake when he was poked with a stick. He grabbed the stick instinctively, sat up abruptly, and felt the stick tugged back. It wasn't a stick. It was a staff. And there was a boy tugging it back. "You're Gavin," the boy said.

"Yeah."

"I'm Henry. People say you surrounded my brother and the king with guns when they were out hunting and made us start paying tribute to the Saviors. And now my brother is wounded in the infirmary."

"I suppose you blame me for your brother's suffering?"

"He's going to live," Henry replied. "And he was a hero in the battle. He killed men who were trying to kill us. He says Negan was going to make you take him, and Negan was going to torture and kill him, but you had Negan killed instead."

"Yeah, that's right," Gavin agreed.

Henry nodded. "Then you're a hero, too. And one day, I'll be a hero." The kid twirled his staff and then walked off down the hall.

Gavin smiled and shook his head. Well, not everyone loathed him here, he supposed. Still, the king had made his position clear. He was about to lie back again when his radio crackled: "Gavin. Come in. It's Laura. The Sanctuary is taken. What's happening there? Over."

He hastened to unclip the radio and press the talk button. "The Kingdom stands. Six Saviors surrendered, the rest dead, including Jed and Regina. I lost Mark, Gomez, Quan, and Jake. Dwight's face is badly cut up with shrapnel, but he'll live. The Kingdom lost three men. You can tell Walsh the men he loaned us - Eduardo and Kal - still live, though Kal's been wounded. Over."

"Alexandria lost the leader's sons – Spencer and Aiden. They also lost a man named Eric who was the husband of their general or ambassador or…I don't know what Aaron is. Hallowbrant suffered the most. Seven men down, including their leader Anton, so now Anton's mother Natania and his daughter Cyndie will be in charge of Hallowbrant. The library lost two men. Hilltop lost three – Casper, Martin, and Miles. The Saviors lost thirty, and the rest surrendered. Walsh is erratic, Gavin. I got him through the roadblocks to the other communities to round up soldiers and plan a rendezvous spot for the attack. That was all well and good. But I told him I would help him from the inside, that I'd let the coalition army in through the west gate, and that when the battle started, I'd assassinate Gary, make this as easy as possible with as little collateral damage as possible. I went back to the Sanctuary a couple hours ahead of the attack. But instead of sticking with the plan, Walsh decided to drive a truck through the front fence. I don't know if he didn't trust me to follow through or he just didn't care about preserving the Sanctuary and thought he'd have more leverage in the battle barreling in. But now the windows are all shot to shit. Keno, who was working with me, is dead from the crossfire and so are some of the workers. We're still putting out some of the fires set by grenades. I've had men out there knifing and shooting walkers while we try to get an emergency patch up for an entire section of fence that never had to come down. And then Walsh went to the radio room and got on the ultra-long-range radio as soon as the coalition had control of the place and tried to turn Simon around. Told him Negan was dead, which we did not want him to know yet. Told Simon he'd taken over the Sanctuary, that most of the Saviors were dead, and if Simon wanted control of the Saviors, he better turn himself around and come back here and fight him for it. Over."

She seemed to say the over more because she was out of breath from talking than because she was done reporting. "So Simon's headed back? Over."

"No. Simon said he was already fifty miles outside of Woodbury, and if Shane wanted the Sanctuary he could have it. He's not coming back. At all. He's going to start his own operation by attacking, taking over, and moving into Woodbury and then extorting Egypt and Paris - wherever they are - from there. And then just to needle Shane, Simon told him he's going to rape Lori until she miscarries. Walsh went batshit. Started telling the coalition soldiers they had to head down to Georgia right now with him and deal with Simon. Aaron – that's the one from Alexandria – and Jesus tried to calm him down, told him the coalition army isn't going anywhere, so he threatened the surrendered Saviors – even the workers - and told them they'd all be executed if they didn't come right now with him to Georgia. Aaron and Jesus told him he'd be getting no support to execute noncombatants or even surrendered soldiers, and then chaos ensued for a while. The long and short of it? Walsh is headed to Georgia right now with about ten of the surrendered Savior fighters who agreed to join him. I don't know why they agreed. I guess they seem him as someone with more strength than Negan, and they need someone to follow. Anyway, I guess I'm in charge of the Sanctuary for the time being. Over."

"I'll come help you work things out tomorrow," Gavin told her. "I'll bring the surrendered Saviors with me. We'll decide where to go from here. Tonight, I just need some goddamn sleep. Good work, Laura. Over and out."

11:30 PM
Fun Kingdom

Luke was now tucked in under a blanket with his head on a pillow. After awhile of sitting with his arm around him, Daryl had managed to ease him still sleeping into the nest. Now he fetched the food and water and towels and additional blankets Carol had left outside the door after knocking three times. By the time he opened, she was standing, masked, several yards away, and he was glad for it. The last thing he wanted was to make her sick. For now, she was still in the clear.

Carol waved to him and blew him a kiss, and he nodded back to her. He wanted to run to her, hug her tightly, and all he could do was nod to her.

He brought the supplies inside and found there were letters, also, stuffed in envelopes and labeled with names. He brought the supplies to Hershel, who was looking tired and had a sweaty brow. "You got a fever now?"

"Mine was low grade, and the medicine knocked it back. I'm just working up a sweat."

"What do you need me to do?"

"Pass out the letters. And Gatorades."

Daryl took the letters and began passing them out, giving each person a bottle of Gatorade to go along with their reading. He handed one from Beth to Dixon, who had returned from the infirmary and was sitting in one of the chairs in the front row, his head tilted back and his legs stretched out in the aisle. He was holding a cold compress to his head to help cool his fever. Daryl's own head was pounding like hell, and he was pretty close to asking for some of those meds.

Then he walked over to where Tom the Head Electrician was sitting against the wall on the carpet in the audience area. "Looks like you got yourself a girl," he said as he handed the letter to the man, who covered a cough with one hand as he took the letter with the other. "Now you ain't got to try to date mine."

Tom smiled weakly and Daryl walked on. When he was done delivering the letters nad making sure everyone had a drink, he settled in a chair in the back row of the theater to read his own letter from Carol. He turned on his flashlight to do it, because the theater was only dimly lit by a few solar-powered nightlights and one lamp near Hershel's medicine table that was plugged into a portable battery pack. He had a hotpot plugged into that pack, too, for heating water.

Dear Daryl,

You don't have my permission to start coughing up blood, and you certainly don't have my permission to die. And since you know what a pain in the ass I am to deal with when I'm upset, I advise you not get any sicker and to pull through this.

I'm praying for you. Without ceasing. I know that doesn't mean much to you in a religious sense, but it means something to me. It's at least some comfort right now. I'm praying for you and Carl and Patrick and Dixon and Duane and little Luke and Eileen and that poor baby and Hershel and all of you in there and in the infirmary.

I love you so much. I've had a new life with you. A sometimes scary life, because of the world we live in now, but a good life. A better life than I ever hoped for.

I want to keep living that life with you.

Love,

Carol

At that bottom, Sophia had written –

I love you, too. Get better very soon, Daddy.

That Daddy made him grit his teeth to keep from sobbing. Dad he'd gotten a few times already. But daddy…there was something desperate in that word from an almost thirteen-year-old girl.

God, he wished he could be with his girls right now.

The theater seat next to his creaked as Dixon sat down in it. "Hershel said to give you this." He extended Daryl a little paper Dixie cup with medicine in it. Daryl took it and shot it without protest this time.

"Beth wrote me a letter," Dixon said.

"Yeah. Saw."

"She said…uh…if I make it through this…" He coughed behind his hand a few times and then continued, "She wants to. You know. Finally. She wants to. All the way."

"Please tell me you didn't start this damn virus to get in your girl's pants."

Dixon laughed. Then the laugh turned into a cough. He hacked for a few seconds, swallowed, and then said, "Think I'll live to do it? I mean…have they got us all in here to die?"

"They got us all in here so others can live. Still a bunch of people ain't caught it yet. And you're gonna pull through, kid. Gonna make love to your girl."

"Shh!" Dixon looked cautiously toward the stage where Hershel was helping a woman to sip Gatorade form a straw. "Not so loud." Daryl chuckled. Dixon rubbed his head. "Beth's a virgin," he practically whispered. He dropped his hand to his knee. Then, in a still quiet but clearer voice, "I hope I make it good for her. I've never had sex with a virgin before. I mean…I've only ever had sex with one girl before. My old girlfriend. I was a virgin. She wasn't. So, I just followed her lead, you know? With Beth…" He sighed. "I just don't want to screw it up. Have you ever? With a virgin?"

"Nah." Though Carol had been like a virgin in her initial reticence and fear of discomfort. Not that he was going to share any of that with Dixon. He was not comfortable with being asked for sexual advice from his nephew. "Listen, I ain't Dr. Ruth here."

"Who?"

"That old lady sex therapist! Dr. Ruth?"

Dixon shook his head.

"Had a sex talk radio show in the 1980s. Guess that was long 'fore your time."

"I'm not an old lady though."

"She was an old lady. Not a sex therapist for old ladies. Gave advice to everyone."

"Who wants sex advice from an old lady?" Dixon asked.

"Dunno. Who wants sex advice from me?"

Dixon shrugged. "Fair point."

"Think maybe Dr. Ruth got around back in the 50s," Daryl muttered.

"You listened to this show?" Dixon asked with a smirk.

"Nah, I didn't listen to it." Daryl coughed, to sharp coughs and then cleared his throat. "It was just on sometimes. On the radio."

"Okay, well, if you were Dr. Ruth," Dixon said, and coughed, and finished, "what advice would you give me?"

"Dunno. Ain't Dr. Ruth. Tell you this, though. Gonna be fine. Probably ain't gonna be perfect the first time, but it's gonna be fine. Tell Beth no matter what, you're still gonna want 'er, even if it ain't perfect. Tell 'er to tell you what she likes and don't like and just listen. And it'll get better every time until it's fuckin' fantastic."

Dixon nodded. "All right."

"And for fuck's sake make sure ya wrap it, kid."

Dixon chuckled. "Yeah, I know. Thanks." He glanced at Hershel on the stage again, covered his mouth, and coughed.