Fear gripped Rick's entire body as he wound his way through the maze of burning buildings, desperately chasing the figure that bobbed in and out of view.

Every house and outbuilding on fire, every desperate refugee left coughing and spluttering in the frigid night air was a testament to his hubris – his greed. He could no longer deny the responsibility he bore for what had happened here.

He had done this.

'Carl!' he shouted breathlessly. It had been a long time since he had run so far so fast. One of the benefits of having so much power and influence was that running had finally become a thing of the past. When he first reached Alexandria after so long on the road being chased by Walkers and cannibals, he pledged never to be in that position again. 'Carl, come back!'

Rick rounded a corner and finally saw Carl standing in front of the smouldering skeleton of a house. He watched a look of shock and pain blossom on his son's face and realised with horror that it was his house. He reached out and grabbed his son's arms, restraining him.

'Millie!' he shouted. 'Let go of me!

It surprised Rick how strong his son had become in the intervening years. He felt an enormous sense of grief that the boy who used to look up to him – both literally and figuratively – had been replaced by a stranger.

'Carl?'

A handsome black woman approached him, her eyes wide with the effects of delayed shock.

'Susan?' Carl looked at her with desperation. He broke from Rick's grasp and stumbled towards his neighbour. 'Did you see Millie? Do you know…?'

'Carl…' Rick saw tears sparkle in her eyes. 'I came to get her and the kids when the fighting started. Carol ordered everyone to hide in the tunnels. I had Ricky and the little one and Millie and Judith were behind us. There was an explosion and I turned and saw the house on fire…'

Susan paused, and Rick was so accustomed to hearing terrible news that he knew what was coming.

'She fell…'

Susan did not need to continue as Carl lurched over with a cry of anguish. Rick was at his side in an instant, placing a hand on his shoulder in an attempt at consolation. He stepped back in shock when Carl contemptuously shrugged him off.

'Susan…' Carl uttered tearfully. 'Where are my kids? Please tell me, are they…'

'I don't know.' Susan looked apologetic and helpless. 'It was total confusion. I had to find Ben and the kids…'

There was a look of total despair on Carl's face that wrenched Rick's heart. He waited for his son to turn his grief and anger upon him.

'Go ahead,' he said to himself. 'I deserve it.'

A swell of pain rose up inside him at the realisation that he would never get to know his grandchildren. He quickly became aware that another figure was approaching. It was Judith – he felt such relief that a cold sweat broke out over his entire body.

He looked down and saw that she held a baby with one arm and gripped the hand of an infant boy toddling beside her. Without speaking a word, she held out the baby towards her brother. Carl closed the distance between himself and his sister in the blink of an eye, swooping the baby out of her arms and grabbing Ricky in one fluid motion.

Rick felt lightheaded, as if he had just been spared from execution. He had a strong sense of reunion, of having his family returned to him. Twice in the past twenty-four hours he had had his family poised on the brink of annihilation before being snatched to safety.

He felt humbled as if bathed in divine grace and silently thanked the God he had abandoned years before. His mind turned in guilt to Michonne, sitting a mile down the road with her team of Alexandrian survivors and Hilltop fighters, awaiting his signal. What she didn't know – what none of them knew yet was that this second wave was not there to rescue Sophia, but to take it over. He planned to finish the work of the Harrowers. Thinking of it now, he was struck by how squalid his ambitions were. Had he truly been reduced to this – to picking the bones of a devastated community?

The rusty, rasping sound of a bullhorn shocked him back to awareness. The voice that emerged was cool and mocking. Rick immediately recognised the educated, elegant tones of Cheryl, the women he had mercilessly returned to slavery so long ago.

'I think you know who this is, and I think you know now what I'm capable of. Don't worry – we are reasonable people. We will leave you in peace, just as long as you give us what we want. We want Rick Grimes delivered to us at the crossroads of Highway 7 and Fruitfield, tomorrow at noon. If you fail to do this, of you try anything, we'll come back here and finish you. Then we'll go to Alexandria and Hilltop and all the other settlements where you're friends live, and we'll finish them too. This is a friendly warning.'

The announcement ended as abruptly as it began. He should have known that her voice would come back to haunt him some day. All his plans for Fort Sophia were for nothing – they were the height of vanity. He had already caused so much pain and suffering – there was only one way to make amends.

He stalked off in the direction of Carol and Daryl's house.

Daryl found his partner hauling buckets of water from the town well, part of a desperate effort to save the stables from destruction. The conflagration had reached such extremes that they had been forced to open the gates and release the animals to prevent a stampede. A few hours earlier, that would have been considered the worst possible outcome.

Now they were fighting for their very lives.

Most of the other major fires had been brought under control. Crucially, the barn and the contents of the tunnels beneath had been secured. Now the human cost of the attack was slowly being counted. In total, there were at least two dozen lives lost and scores more injured. The barn had been turned into triage, where burns, smoke inhalation and broken bones were being treated to the best of their limited ability.

'Carol?' Daryl struggled to make himself heard above the general confusion. She continued to work, oblivious to him. 'Carol,' he tried again. 'They got it. Come on, I need you.'

Reluctantly, she allowed another volunteer to take her place. 'What is it?' she rasped when they had reached a sufficient distance. Her face was coated in soot, making her blue eyes stand out in contrast. She had a haunted look about her and appeared to have aged about ten years in the preceding hours.

'There's someone wants to talk to us,' Daryl eventually broke his silence, shocked by her altered appearance. 'It's Rick.'

She kept her head down, making her expression unreadable. He pulled her aside when the house came into view. 'Talk to me, Carol.'

'About what?' She again refused to meet his gaze, instead keeping her focus trained on the smouldering town.

'About Pip.'

She glanced at him briefly, a dangerous look in her eyes. 'I don't know if you've been paying attention, but we've got a bigger problem here.'

'Talk to me,' he repeated.

She was silent for a long time, and Daryl saw her shoulders tremble slightly. 'This is my fault. God is punishing me.'

Daryl was tempted to scoff. He was aware of his wife's feelings about the Almighty. After all these years she was still haunted by a sense of guilt about her daughter's death, as well as the lives she had snuffed out since then. He knew that if God was there, surely he saw how she struggled with her conscience over those deaths, how everything she did was based on love.

'I was proud,' Carol continued. 'I thought what we built here was enough to make up for the things I've done. But Pip…' she paused, her voice shaking. 'Pip was my test. All she wanted was a family, someone to love her. She chose me, but I pushed her aside. I couldn't love her because she reminded me of Sophia, and now I'm being punished.'

Daryl grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to look directly at him. 'This ain't your fault, woman. This is the world now – dog eat dog. We couldn't escape it forever, but we gave these people a place to hide for a while. Maybe we should'a been more ready, should'a been stronger. We know better now. We can start again, long as we have each other.'

She gave him a curious look, perplexed by his unwavering faith. Where she trusted in God, he believed in them. She remembered what had drawn her to him in the first place – his innate goodness despite the circumstances, despite appearances. His unwavering belief in right had given her strength in the worst of times, but she was unsure if even he could carry them both through this nightmare.

'You ain't the one to blame,' Daryl repeated.

At that moment, Carol looked up at their house and saw Rick framed by the large window of their front room. At that moment, she knew who was to blame.

The shattered and grieving people of Fort Sophia – even the injured – waited in the barn for the meeting to come to order. It was still before dawn and the last of the fires had been extinguished, yet there was no time to rest or mourn the fallen, even to bury them.

They were hunched in defeat and terror, caught between the awful memories of what had just happened and the invisible promise of the Harrowers' return.

'Friends,' Carol said, her voice cracking with the effects of smoke and exhaustion. 'This has been a terrible night for all of us, but we are not through the worst of it. Our attackers won't rest until they have got what they want, and so neither can we.'

A voice came from the back of the room. 'We know what they want – it's him!' Annabelle, the elderly baker lady pointed a shaking finger at Rick.

Her decrepit husband Claude shakily stood to his feet in solidarity. 'Yeah! Hand him over – what are we even waiting for?'

A dangerous atmosphere was brewing among the frightened and angry survivors. Daryl could tell that things would soon get out of control.

'Hey! Listen y'all!'

It was so rare for Daryl to raise his voice that a shocked silence fell upon the crowd.

'We're here to talk about our future,' he began, unsure what he wanted to say but knowing that the longer he spoke, the less chance the crowd had of turning violent. 'We've made something here that's stronger than the walls around it, something that can't be torn down with guns or fire. These Harrowers – they can kill our people, but as long as we stay standing, as long as we do right by each other, then Fort Sophia lives on.'

Daryl sensed a growing calm which seemed to radiate outwards from his chest to encompass all of his listeners. It was a heady feeling, considering that he had never been comfortable with making speeches, preferring actions to words. He glanced over at Carol and was struck dumb by the love and warmth in her eyes.

'Rick thinks he can get the Harrowers to see reason,' Carol announced. 'He plans to hand himself over and try and persuade them to join us.'

A ripple of confusion mixed with derision moved across the room. Rick stepped forward, bracing his hands on his hips in a show of confidence.

'I realise that my actions have brought us here. I take responsibility for everything – for the Harrowers coming to be, for the attack that destroyed your town. Fifteen years ago, my arrogance drove Daryl and Carol to build Fort Sophia, and last night, that same arrogance drove the Harrowers to burn it down. I want to try and make it right.'

'What makes you think you can do it?' It was Judith who spoke. Her words jolted a dazed Carl, sitting next to her with baby Becky on his lap, to attention. 'What makes you think they won't just kill you?'

Rick stared into his daughter's eyes. Like so many others, she seemed to have completely lost faith in her father. He wondered if it hadn't all been an illusion – her love for him, his people's trust. Perhaps it was all rooted in fear, in a misguided notion of his power and righteousness. That illusion was broken forever last night.

'They might,' he finally answered. 'But if I know anything, it's making people believe in me. It started the moment I woke up after the Apocalypse. Before the world ended, I was just an ordinary man – a town sheriff with a happy family. When shit went down, I discovered what I really was – a huckster. I made people believe I was a leader. Eventually, I believed it myself. It wasn't until I came here that I saw the difference. What I stole – you people built. Where I wanted to control, you wanted to share. That all came from you.'

He looked at Daryl and Carol. 'You achieved something I never could, not with all my cunning – all my alliances. I'll tell you the honest truth – when I first looked at this place, I wanted it. I wanted to take it over – now I want to belong to it. I want to rebuild it.'

'Why should we believe you now?' It was Susan this time, trying to wrangle Ricky, the child that Carl had named after him.

Rick kept his eyes trained on the small boy wriggling on her lap. 'If the Harrowers kill me, I guess you'll know for sure.' He saw Carl and Judith react to his words.

'And if they don't?' Susan asked.

Rick took a deep breath and told them his plan.