Before the turn, if you'd watch an old western, there would almost definitely be a showdown, probably at the end of the movie. It would be on a long stretch of road and there'd be at least one bad guy and at least one good guy, squaring off with their hands floating around their holsters. All would be still and quiet, except for the cowboys themselves, who would talk a little before the shooting started. Once the shooting did start, though, it would all be over for the bad guy. The good guy would always win.

Old westerns don't matter anymore, and even if they did, they wouldn't have a place in real showdowns. Like this one. Thing is, even as I stand in this dim hospital hall, about to go into a real showdown for my life and the lives of others, I can't shake that old classic image out of my head. The bad guy and the good guy. And the white hat walking away.

None of the cowboys ever had a friend in a wheelchair. But, well, I'm not a cowboy, and Carol can't walk that good yet. She probably shouldn't be walking at all, even though she was trying earlier. Not now, though. Now, she's sitting in the chair, with Beth holding the handles behind her. Beth's fingers are white. Carol takes my hand.

We're at a standstill, surrounded by enemies. Dawn and three of her cops or ex-cops are in front of us, and Dr. Edwards is hanging around our tail. I've checked him a few times. He's not doing anything, doesn't even have a gun out, like Dawn and her gang do. He's just watching.

But it'll be over and done soon. Dr. Edwards and Dawn, all of these people, they'll be gone. One more bad memory, what's one more bad memory?

. . . . .

I see my people.

They're standing behind the double-doors at the end of this long hall, peering through the glass windows. They're just shadows, shapes, but the kind you see at night, the kind that make you stay up for hours because of the chill they send down your spine. That is, if you don't know what they really are. Who they are. I do, so I'm not afraid.

Not of them.

Daddy, please be here.

It takes too long for Dawn to give a nod to her ex-cops. When she does, they all lower their guns. Dawn clicks a button on the walkie talkie in her shirt pocket. "Holster your weapons."

No, Dawn. The good guy is supposed to tell the bad guy to put his weapon down, so the good guy doesn't have to kill him.

The other walkie talkie belongs to one of Dawn's men, one of the men who are behind that door with our people but who aren't hostages. They're the messengers and the guides. Our people found them and told them what was going on, and they told Dawn, and now we're all coming together, and it should be – should be – a simple trade.

I flex my left hand and feel some half-healed skin snap back open. It hurts but it feels good. The drop of blood that flows out leaves more room for my body to fit all its fear, so the fear doesn't have to push so hard on every inch of my skin to try and get me to make more space . . .

The shapes behind the doors move and shuffle, shift. Then they come in, and they're not just shapes anymore. They're Dad, Rick, LC, Tyreese, Sasha, and – the guy who shoved me into a walker. And five people in cop uniforms, three of them bound and held by Dad, Rick, and Tyreese, and two of them free to move and moving indeed down the hallway, to Dawn and the rest of us, wearing grim, sweaty faces.

Dad's stopped in a shadow, which is no surprise, because he seems to do that even when he doesn't mean to. He presses the back of his free hand against his mouth, and I know why. I look at him but I don't know what else to do. Except get to him soon. Let him feel my forehead and see for himself that I'm still here.

And then there's LC. She isn't in a shadow, no, she stands right in a stream of light, which figures. Both of her hands cover her mouth, her eyes are shining, but she's totally still. Like a photo. The kind with eyes that follow you wherever you go.

Dawn moves a little to the side, and the other cops do too, and the two who brought my people here meet them and blend in, like they never left, they're just as shitty as the others . . . But all the cops get out of our way, that's the point. Carol's wheelchair squeaks as Beth pushes her forward, and since Carol still has my hand, I trail along. We don't go all the way down the hallway. We only go a few steps. The trade isn't happening yet. We're just proving we're still alive.

Maggie isn't here, I realize. Wouldn't she be, if she knew Beth was alive? Yes, and so would Glenn. New drops of sweat form on the back of my neck. Not everyone would come on a rescue mission, sure, Carl, Judith, Eugene, they would stay behind, and I could see Abraham, Rosita, and Tara staying with them, but what about Michonne, one of Rick's most trusted, probably the best fighter next to him and Dad? And what about Owen? If he wanted to be here, he'd be here, no stopping him. And he'd want to be here, he'd be looking for a fight – so why isn't he across the hall from me?

"They haven't been harmed," Rick says. I snap out of my fast, scary thoughts. His voice soothes me, even though it's dark. Thank you, Rick, my brain drizzles out, nice and easy, and I feel warm for a moment. Only a moment. Then I'm burning hot and freezing all at once. Of course Rick's talking about the hostages, not any of our people.

What's wrong with you?

I'm insane. I accepted that, head, remember? You were there.

"Where's Lamson?" That was Dawn. The hall makes her words echo. I don't know who Lamson is. But one of the hostage cops, the only woman, says that the rotters got him.

Rotters. Stupid name.

"It's true," says the cop Dad's holding. "We watched it go down." He lifts his chin up like his word's holy law. I wonder if he was a good man, before.

Or, Miss Dixon, maybe he's a good man now. Ever think of that?

No one in the hall talks, but it isn't quiet. A place that echoes like this is never quiet. You can always hear breathing, nervous coughs, clothing scratching against damp skin as people readjust their bodies just to have something to do. I listen to it all to pass the two or three seconds before Dawn says anything else. Her voice trembles some as she does.

"I'm sorry to hear that. He was one of the good guys."

I hate that I can't see her face. I want to see how wet her eyes are, if it means anything. I'm good at telling things like that. I can spot a liar pretty well. Lawyer's blood.

No one says anything back to Dawn, and Dawn finally clears her throat. "One of yours for one of mine," she announces, and that means it's really starting.

"Alright," says Rick.

"Move," growls Dad, as he shoves his cop forward.

"Time to go," says Beth, just for me, touching my shoulder. "Go on."

Carol lets go of my hand and I walk forward, so terribly alone. The hallway gets longer as I step, step, step, but I try to keep a normal pace. I know I can't run, can't make quick movements like that, because people panic and then someone dies. I pass the hostage cop about dead center between our groups, but I don't look at him. I've got my eyes on Dad, and finally I'm close enough that I've done enough, and Dad takes a couple of strides to me and wraps me up. He kisses my head. His beard scratches against my skin. I trace the wings on the back of his vest with my good hand, my arm snaking underneath the heavy crossbow. My bad hand I keep tucked into me.

"You alright?" Dad says in the way I've come to know means he's trying not to cry.

"Mm-hmm –"

"You alright?" He pulls away, panting, and grapples with my left arm until my bandaged, deformed hand is presented for his examination. But then he stops, because you don't know what to do, do you, Dad? You can't fix this, can you?

"Yes," I say. "No fever. No anything."

He meets my eyes, and there's a lot there between us, but I only catch a glimpse of all that before he wraps his hand around the back of my neck and kisses my forehead. His head rests on mine for a second, and then he's pulling me behind him. "Go to your mother."

I'm halfway to LC before I realize what Dad called her, and I turn around to stare at him but then I go where he said to anyway. LC takes me in and holds me against her. Her hair falls over my head and hides me. She doesn't say anything. Not a word. Neither do I. Talking would prove that I'm me and that would prove to her that it's really me doing this, that I'm in her arms willingly, and I won't do that. I won't make it real. She hasn't earned it, she hasn't, no matter what Beth said.

But I've earned a little peace, so I stay.

I hear people moving some more. Hear them walking . . . something creaking. I twist and peek through LC'S hair. The woman hostage is leaving and Carol's coming, pushed by one of Dawn's people. He has a black bag. Our black bag. Does it still have our weapons in it?

When Carol gets here, Dad and Rick help her up. She eases forward, face tight, until she's gotten to Sasha, and Dad and Rick can focus again on being a force to be reckoned with.

Time's up, LC.

I pull away from her. I don't jump back or push her or anything. She can't be blamed for this. Not her alone. So I just pull away and don't look at her. Like it never happened. I go to Carol and Sasha. I fit better with them –

- liar –

– but I watch the hallway. It's Beth's turn.

She starts towards us. Tyreese releases the final hostage. He and Beth both walk that long hallway.

Then . . .

Then Beth's here. Just that simple. Rick has his arm around her, she's under his protection, so – Beth's here, Carol's here, I'm here. None of us are dead. Nobody from Dawn's group is dead – not by our hand, anyway – so what's the catch?

Is there a catch?

"Glad we could work things out," Dawn says.

"Yeah," answers Rick, and that's all he says before Dad has my shoulder and we're heading for the doors. All of us, the good guys. We're heading for the doors.

No catch. Sydney, there's no catch.

And to my credit – to my credit – I whisper back to that particular voice that it has to be wrong right before I hear Dawn say, "Now I just need Noah."

We all freeze. Sasha's foot is out the door.

"And then you can leave."

Sasha's foot is out the door. That's how close we are. How close we came.

I knew it, though.

Dad twists around, and I do, too, but it takes me a minute to work up to actually looking at Dawn. The bitch never said anything about Noah, at least not to me. Judging by Beth's face, she didn't say anything to her, either.

Noah stares at Dawn, eyes frozen open and wide. I stretch and tighten my three-fingered hand as I watch him, and there it is – a little more pain. A little more blood.

Rick goes toward Dawn. Dad follows him. The rest of us hang back, and LC is with me again. I let her be, because there are more important things. We're back to how life works again. I'm ready, have to be. Of course, I have no weapons, so what does ready mean?

Take your pretty bow away, and what's left but a helpless little girl?

"That wasn't part of the deal!" Rick is snarling at Dawn, and I close my eyes and crack my neck – Come back, Sydney. Here, now.

"Noah was my ward!" I hear Dawn argue. I open my eyes. She's gotten closer to us. Did she do that when Beth came over, or when Carol did . . . ? "Beth took his place," Dawn explains her sick logic, "And now I'm losing her, so I need him back."

"Ma'am," the woman Rick just let go says from The Other Side, "Please, let them –"

"Shut up!" Dawn snaps at her, as fast and final as a well-placed snare, and the cop shuts up like she's the animal with the snapped neck. "My officers put their lives on the line to find him! One of them died!"

Boot Hill. That's what they called a lot of the graveyards they would bury the cowboys in. The bad ones. Most of them didn't have a family to go back to, some of them probably didn't have names worth remembering. I caught on early, watching those westerns with Papaw on his den's overstuffed couches, that if a cowboy ended up under a boothill grave he probably earned it. But some . . . some . . .

Some probably didn't. Some were probably good guys.

Noah starts moving. Towards her. Limps forward like a damn hero, this guy who pushed me into a walker and cost me two fingers, and it's with a bitter heart that I decide we have to fight for him. Stepping forward, that made him one of us. Damn him.

Dad shares my reasoning, like he usually does. I know because he gets in between Noah and Dawn and pushes Noah back in that harsh but kind way he has. "No. He ain't stayin'."

"He's one of mine," Dawn says. "You have no claim on him."

"The boy wants to go home, so you have no claim on him." Rick. He and Dad are next to each other now, blocking Noah off from The Other Side.

Dawn, their leader, the ex-cop – just like Rick! – shakes her head with little fast jerks. She speaks as tight as every one of her muscles has gone. "Well then, we don't have a deal."

Catch.

The air goes thick, but everyone moves through it fast anyway, even if they only move a bit. LC jumps in front of me, Sasha pivots back into the room, Carol grabs onto Tyreese, and I bend my knees and prepare to pounce – wherever. I don't know where, no, it's just instinct, and so is everyone else's response. It's all instinct, preparation for one of the two options my uncle taught me years ago: Fight or flight. Either, or. Whichever one will get you out alive. That's what it's all about, isn't it? Getting out alive. Survival, first, always.

"The deal is done!"

Rick sounds like thunder. He's picked fight.

But Noah doesn't know Rick like I do. So he bolts forward right as Dawn's bared teeth open to hiss out a reply. "It's okay!" Noah shouts. He comes up next to Rick, comes up next to him with his stupid limp. He's breathing hard, but he's talking strong.

"No." Rick gets in his way again.

But Noah stares him down. "I gotta do it." He takes a gun from his waistband and hands it to Rick. Surrendering. In a noble way.

Rick slowly takes the gun and I swallow, but it's hard, because my mouth has dried all the way up since Dawn made her last demand. No – since Noah limped forward. Changed the game in my head and out here.

"It's not okay," I hear Beth whisper.

Dawn's smug. That's the one word that works. Smug. Smug in her stupid, crazy, terrible victory. I feel sick.

Rick moves and Noah goes.

"Wait!" cries Beth, and I turn to see her run and throw her arms around Noah. They softly says something to Beth, and then Dawn, all too close to us now, softly says something to Noah, not even having the decency to give him and Beth their goodbye.

Whatever Dawn says flips a switch in Beth. I can tell by how she parts from Noah while looking at Dawn. I can only see the back of Beth's head with her turned like she is, but there's something to her – the way she's holding herself, the way she creeps towards Dawn. The way she plants her feet when she's right in front of says something. I can't tell what she says, either, and the next thing I know she's punching Dawn.

BANG.

A gunshot. I see red stuff fly up and stick to the ceiling. As I stumble to the side, I see some more red stuff hit the white tile and splatter. Through the space between Dad and Rick, I see a body not that much bigger than mine rattle the way bodies do when they've been shot. I see the body fall. I see Beth fall. I see her hit the floor, also the way bodies do, all heavy and boneless. Blood pours from her head, stains her hair. I fall to my knees and watch it come. Lots and lots of moving all over. I don't care until it's Dad moving, until he pulls his gun and shoots Dawn in the head like Beth's been shot in the head. Dawn lands next to Beth. Her head bleeds, too, of course, so I watch even more blood come.

There's some . . . yelling. Guns being pulled on both sides. LC gets me up. It's over! a woman shouts. Yes. It was just about her! the same woman shouts. I slip out of LC's hold and get back on the floor and crawl past feet and to the blood. It's getting all over Beth's clothes, oh, and her hair . . . I pool some of the blood between my hands and wipe it away from her with that heavy lump of bandage I have on me. I try to roll Beth out of it, the blood, but she's heavy. Someone lifts me up by the back of my shirt. I recognize Dad's arm when he pins me against his chest. He's crying. Full-out crying.

"Beth?" My hands are red and wet, the bandages soaked. My legs bend and won't straighten. I sort of hang from Dad's arm. "Beth?"

Dad drags me back. I don't fight. I wish I knew what to say to make him stop crying, but I'm too confused by the blood, and why no one else cares about how much of it is getting on Beth's clothes.

. . . . .

It's not very sunny out here, but it's oddly hot, so I get away from LC yet again to try and cool down. I've been walking just fine on my own ever since Dad pulled Beth out of the blood. That's all that needed to happen. Now we can clean her things. Get the stains out.

LC and I exited the hospital behind Sasha, who exited behind Rick. Now we're in a parking lot, a back parking lot, the kind that would have been for the doctors and nurses and other workers. It's surrounded by buildings except on the far side, where the cars come in from. There are lots of bodies all throughout the parking lot, but they're just walker bodies. Nothing I haven't seen before. Damn it, LC's still holding my arm. I yank all the way away from her and drift off. Uh-oh, there are people coming from far away. No, wait . . . wait . . . they're our people! Our people, making their way to this door from across the lot. How did they find us? Unimportant. There's Michonne, and Abraham and Father Gabriel and Rosita and Tara and Glenn and Maggie.

Maggie.

Of course. She'll probably know how to get the stains out.

Except, just when I'm close to her, she collapses with a scream. Starts sobbing. Glenn bends over her, touches her, tries to comfort her like he should. I follow Glenn's eyes to the door I just came through. Dad's carrying Beth out here in his arms, and Maggie is upset because of the blood, isn't she?

I take a few steps back, then I kind of fall back, but I – I catch myself. Dad and Beth get closer. Dad's still crying. And – and Carol is, Tyreese, too . . . and Noah. Noah. He's here? He should be. He is. Crying. And Rick, Rick's eyes are red, all of the people, my people who just got here – I think they're crying, some of them – all the blood –

I look at my hands. LC tried to wipe them off, but they're still covered in Beth's blood. Probably have some parts of her brain and skull on them. All that will never come out of the bandages.

I move back some more. I don't want to look at Maggie so I turn my back to her. That's when I see them running up. Owen and Carl. I watch them come, watch them stop in front of me. Owen soaks in the scene, blinking, and then turns to me and doesn't blink. Carl sees it, the blood on Beth, Beth's stained hair falling down, I know he sees, and he sucks in his lip as he does. He lost his hat on the way here, it blew off with the wind as he ran, so there's nothing to hide him the way he would want. He slouches over, his lips form No, and he looks at me like he wants me to tell him this isn't what it looks like.

But I can't. And I can't tell him it's okay. I can't even tell him it'll be okay. I don't have that in me this time. There's too much blood.

I go to Owen because he can make things better. "Beth," I explain before crashing into him. He holds onto me, and I know it's safe to sleep now.

END OF PART ONE