For the past two days I had been working through the military manuals, seeing if there was anything I could make in preparation for war. With the fertiliser I grabbed from the meeting point, I would be able to make safer bombs that were less likely to blow up in my face than ones made of gunpowder.

Taking a tin, I looked down at the things I'd piled up on the table, before grabbing the pliers and taking some nails. I cut into some of them, dropping the small pieces of metal inside, before taking the bigger nails. I poked them through the metal of the tin. The explosion would blast them all randomly, so I wanted some facing in a certain direction to see if I could get some kind of accuracy with this thing.

I only wanted to make one for now, telling Rick that when it was done I wanted to take it inside the prison to see if we could cut down the waves of corpses that Glenn and Carl had been saying were coming inside.

A shadow in my doorway blocked my view, and I gave a smile when I saw Michonne. "Hey," I greeted.

"What the hell is that thing?" She nodded down at my desk.

"Nothing so far," I said, picking it up. "But hopefully when I add the explosive and trigger it will be a nail bomb. I wanna see if it's effective against the walkers in the tombs."

"If anything can kill 'em," Michonne muttered, staring at it for a second. She shook her head, reminding herself of why she came here in the first place, and asked "You got a second?"

I glanced up from the unfinished bomb and nodded. "Yeah, I guess."

"Come on, there's something I wanna try." she nodded for me to follow her but stopped before I could even stand up. "Bring those pliers."

Grabbing the tool, I raced off after Michonne who was already marching out of the prison like she had a mission or something.

"What are we doing?" I asked finally.

"I got a really cool Ace-like idea," she smiled at me, brimming with excitement. I just raised my eyebrows and waited for her to explain, now very intrigued at the Ace-like idea. Michonne pointed across the courtyard at the fences separating us from the field. "See how the inside fence has barbed wire across the top?"

I nodded.

"I think we can use that to make road spikes. Stops the Governor from coming up and breaking down that second gate," she explained. "We can nail it to some planks and leave it in the tall grass to keep it hidden."

"It won't stop them from just cutting the gate open," I reminded her.

"No, but they can't bust through with their cars," she said. "We're just making it more trouble for them to get here. They might give up."

"Give up?" I questioned. "You think they're going to give up?"

Michonne chewed on the inside of her cheek for a second, before she said, "Andrea said they're training civilians, right? They aren't gonna fight to get as much as the soldiers, and a lot of them only have a week of training. If we keep them pinned down, keep ruining whatever the Governor has them planned to do, we might scare 'em out. If they run, the soldiers have to follow."

It made sense.

"And how exactly do you want to get the barbed wire?" I questioned. "It's not like we have a ladder."

"Well, either we move a car over here and you climb on top and cut it down," she stopped and looked at me for her idea.

"Lucky me," I said sarcastically.

"Well, if you don't like that plan, I was also thinking you could get on my shoulders and I would lift you up there myself," she grinned, holding her hands up to her shoulder pretending she was doing that already.

"It's nice to know that you only asked me to do this because I'm the easiest to lift," I said, and she just laughed. "As much as I would love to see if you could hold me up on your shoulders, I think moving a car over here is the option that doesn't result in me getting dropped on the ground."

She reached in her pocket, and pulled out the keys. "I thought you'd say something like that," she handed me the keys. "Pull the truck out, climb up there, while I get some planks and hammers."

I did as she said, pulling the pickup out from near the prison and bringing it around really close to the fence Michonne wanted me to cut the barbed wire down from. Then I got my pliers and climbed up on top of the car. As I put the pliers to the wire, I heard the walker slam against the fence below me, swinging the barbed wire around.

I retracted my hands quickly.

"You aren't done yet?" Michonne called out, planks laying across her arms with a hammer on top.

"I haven't even started yet," I called back. "You didn't give me gloves or anything!"

"Just be careful," he said.

After a moment of building up courage, I managed to grab a long unbarbed section of the wire in my hand, holding it still so I could cut the other end with the pliers. It was hard to get the tools through, but eventually the small blade did snap the wire.

"What the hell are you two doing?" I heard Glenn call out behind me. I glanced back over my shoulder, still holding the wire and pulling it towards me so it didn't fall down where the walkers were behind the fence.

"Makeshift road spikes," Michonne explained extremely vaguely. "You want in?"

Glenn quietly mulled over the idea, and out the side of my eye, I saw him nod. "That's good. Nice one, Ace."

"Excuse me? That was my genius idea," Michonne jokes.

"Yeah, I'm just the manual labourer," I called, stretching up to grab the barbed wire, hoping that I hadn't missed any of the spikes.

"I'm making sure you don't fall, aren't I?"

"Are you?" I grinned back at her.

I then stepped along the wall of the hatchback, holding the top of the fence to keep my balance before holding the pliers up to the wire. I struggled trying to get the wire to snap, having to try harder to balance now than before.

"So what? Nail it down and drag it out to the field?" Glenn asked, still very intrigued.

"Yeah, we should be able to hide it in the grass," she explained.

As the wire snapped under my weight, I lost my grip on the top of the fence and fell backwards, landing on my ass in the hatchback. The pain jerked straight up through my body, up to my chest where it felt like it was screaming in agony.

I squeezed my eyes together and gritted my teeth, leaning back against the other end of the truck, my back against the wall as I waited for the pain to ease in some way, gripping my hand over my chest. Luckily, it didn't feel like anything had snapped.

"Ow! Ow!" I groaned.

"You okay?" Glenn asked.

"So, great," I seethed.

"Good news is, we have the barbed wire," I watched as Michonne stepped into the bed of the truck, standing up and pulling the wire straight down so it unwound from the fence in front of me. "Good job, sunshine!"

"You're so welcome," I muttered, finally able to move from my sitting position.

"Come on," she nodded to Glenn.

"I'll help you hammer it in the field," I said, standing up. "I just need to get some pills."

"Yeah, we shouldn't be too long here," Glenn agreed.

Before I could walk away, I stopped and turned back to them, "You might wanna get someone on the fence down there, so they can distract the walkers or something."

"We got it," Michonne nodded.

I walked across the courtyard and made it into the common room. There were a few people in there, but I just walked to the bag where Hershel had given me some pills before and started searching the minimal bottles for pain killers.

As I sat down, reading the orange bottles, I heard footsteps near where I was, just as I found the right bottle. I took two out and looked up to see Rick heading my way, and he stopped at the table in front of me.

"We gotta talk," he said.

I should have guessed it'd be something bad, but at that time I never really considered the gravity of those words. Sure, it made me nervous, but there was nothing really terrible happening that hadn't already been happening for the past two days. I took two of the pills and followed him anyway.

He walked me around to the side of the prison, outside. Hershel and Daryl were already waiting there with very different looks on their faces. Hershel had some hopeful look in his eyes, mixed with sadness. Daryl just seemed confused.

"What's all this?" He asked as we neared.

I just shrugged.

"It's about the meeting," Rick started.

"We already spoke about the meeting," I reminded him. "We're going to war."

Rick went quiet, his eyes landing on the ground in front of him for a moment. "I don't think we'll make it through a war. But . . . The Governor, he gave another option," Rick was quiet again, but only for a second. "He wants Michonne. We take her to the meeting point today, he calls it all off. No more fighting."

I didn't even know what to say.

Hershel didn't react to the news, so all I could think was that he already knew about this. Rick must've told him after the meeting, when we got back. Daryl had the same confused look as me, which meant that Hershel was the only one he's told so far.

I shook my head. "Well, we aren't doing that."

"Ace—" Rick stopped himself, his head falling forward.

"Why the hell are you telling me this?" My voice got louder, and I got angrier the more the idea sat with me.

"You brought her here."

I shook my head, mouth wide open as I stared at him. I hoped there was more of a reason to get me involved with this, because I would have been so much happier completely naive to this plan. Sure, I had followed Rick's orders completely, but this was different.

Instead of trying to argue or explain the point anymore, he just said, "It's the only way. No one else knows."

"You gonna tell 'em?" Daryl asked.

"Not till after," Rick went quiet for a moment, like he was still trying to convince himself of the plan.

It wasn't strange that he'd hide something like this from the group, he'd done it before with the bar. When we found out you only had to die to turn, he decided to hide that from the group until it was completely necessary.

And now it was worse.

If he told anyone else, they'd fight, tell Michonne. There was no way he'd be able to get this done if he told anyone else, and I was surprised I had kept myself from marching back to the group to reveal this stupid idea.

"We have to do it today," he said finally. "It has to be quiet."

Daryl nodded, and quietly asked, "You got a plan?"

"We tell her we need to talk. Away from the others," his eyes landed on me, only for a moment. "We need a car, too."

I shook my head, crossing my arms as I turned away. There was no way I could do anything like this, send Michonne to her death. I'd killed people and this was worse, because we didn't know what he'd do once he got her, but we had an idea. He'd done the worst kinds of things to Maggie, and now sent her away to him . . .

No.

I couldn't.

Daryl shook his head, "Just ain't us, man."

"No," Hershel sounded really upset, and I completely understood. "No, it isn't."

Hershel started leaving, and I was in my right mind to follow after him. I wanted no part in this plan, no part in whatever sick deal the Governor was trying to make. Because this wasn't Rick speaking right now.

Rick was scared, scared of what the Governor would do to us if he got in here. But we spent two days preparing for that, making defences, locking down the buildings, clearing walkers. I should have been scared too, but I wanted a fight. I wanted a fight much more than I wanted send someone to the enemy to get tortured.

This was wrong.

I first hand knew that the Governor wanted us dead. I was one of his main targets right now, and i still couldn't let him to this. "If this is because if the shot, then I can—"

"—No," Rick stopped me. "We do this, we avoid a fight. No one else dies."

Rick was no longer presenting his idea to me, as his eyes remained on Daryl, which was better for me. I understood his point, his fear, why he wanted to give into the deal. His family, son and baby would be safe, they wouldn't die in some fight.

Daryl eventually gave a nod, "Okay."

Then his eyes landed on me, and I couldn't give that level of agreement. "I don't think this is going to stop him," was all I said.

Rick nodded, understanding my point. I guess we're doing this. I hadn't denied, but Rick knew that I had his back. No matter how stupid the idea. Maybe I had to rethink how far I was willing to follow him, and I silently prayed that he would change his mind.

"We need someone else," Rick said finally.

We needed someone who was willing to march Michonne over to the Governor, was what he meant, and there was only one person in the group here willing to get something like that done. Merle wanted to be with his brother, which might not happen if a fight broke out. Either one of them could die. Merle would do this just for Daryl, which is why I think Rick got Daryl involved in the first place.

"I'll talk to him," Daryl agreed.

Rick shook his head, holding one hand in the other. "I'll do it."

"I'll go with you."

"No," Rick said. "Just me."

I walked back towards the prison after Rick and Daryl, not looking at either of them as we came back around the front of the courtyard. I saw Daryl glance back a few times out of the corner of my eye, but I ignored whatever look he was trying to give me.

Rick turned and headed to the prison, probably to find Merle like he wanted. As he walked up the steps, Michonne came out from the prison. I saw him pause awkwardly as she passed him. She seemed to ignore the interaction, and waved me over to her.

"Hey!" She called. "I've been looking for you! Are we doing this or what? Glenn's got the car ready."

I nodded, barely able to look at her as I approached. "Yeah, yeah . . . coming."

"Doing what?" Daryl asked, following me.

"Michonne came up with the idea of making road spikes," I explained, not looking back at him. "We cut barbed wire down and we're going to nail them out in the field so they can't smash through the next gate."

"Smart," he commented, giving her a nod.

"It wasn't all me," Michonne nudged my shoulder. "I did have to send Ace up the fence on top of a car."

I cringed internally. Why can't you just hate me? This would all be easier if you hated me.

Michonne nodded for me to follow her, nearing the car. "I got Maggie and Carl down there drawing the walkers to the fences," she explained, and turned to Daryl. "We're taking the truck down, too. You should come help us."

"Yeah," Daryl agreed with a nod.

Glenn opened the door and stepped up with one leg on the seat as he stared down at the field for a second. "Looks like they got the walkers rounded up," he called as he got out of the truck. "Let's get down there before they lose interest."

"I'll drive," Michonne said, walking to the truck.

Glenn nodded, and turned to Daryl. "Take the keys?"

Daryl took them from him, walking to the gate to unlock the chain. I walked to the truck and glanced over to see all that they'd packed in the back. Really it was just to see how secure the road spikes looked, whether they'd stand up to a car driving over them.

"Did you get the tools?"

Glenn stood at my side, pointing just below me in the bed of the truck. "Couple hammers and some really long nails I found in your cell."

"Cool," I mumbled.

I turned for the back of the truck, ready to jump in the back of the truck, but Glenn placed his hand over my arm and stopped me. "Hey, you okay?"

I just nodded. "Fine."

He let go of my arm, but I didn't miss the concerned stare from him as I climbed into the back of the truck. His worried look continued as he jumped in after me, sitting opposite me on the other wall of the truck bed.

Michonne pulled up to the gate, and then out when Daryl pulled the gate open for her. She slowed the car down and Daryl jumped in the back, sitting next to me so she could drive us down to the front of the field.

I could now hear Maggie and Carl screaming at the walkers from inside the fence, as we drove down there, and saw them slamming their hands against some pots they must've taken from the common room.

Michonne turned the car around and stopped it, before climbing out to take out some of the walkers just coming in through the gate. Glenn opened the door at the back and jumped down, yanking the road spikes down to the ground. I slid the hammer and nails his way, grabbing a handful for myself and a hammer and jumping down after him.

I ran to the other end, slamming the nails down into the plank and through the dirt underneath, securing the plank so it wouldn't come up from the ground after being driven over. Glenn did the same opposite me, and when I stood up, I kicked my foot against it, making sure it was going to stay down.

"We're good," Glenn said, nodding for me to get back in the truck.

Daryl slammed the door behind us as we jumped in, and we sat waiting for Michonne. She killed two walkers as she walked back towards the truck, and Daryl called out to her, "Come on!"

She rushed back, opened the door and slid across the seats to get back inside the truck. The car jerked, and Glenn placed a hand on my shoulder, maybe to stop me from falling again as we came up to the gate.

Daryl went to jump down, but I saw Rick on the other side of the fence, and he pulled the gate open and closed behind us. Michonne kept driving towards the prison, pulling the car out of sight from the field as Rick walked over to join us.

"They try to drive up to the gate again, maybe some blown tires will stop them," Glenn said.

Rick gave a nod, impressed. "That's a good idea."

"Yeah, it was Michonne's," Daryl said.

I could tell that he was trying to jab at him, tell him that we shouldn't get rid of her with everything she was doing for us. Rick got it too, because he went quiet, and watched as she climbed out of the truck, turning to face us.

"We don't have to win," she said. "We just have to make their getting at us more trouble than it's worth."


I didn't know whether Rick and Merle had gone ahead with the plan, keeping myself outside so I didn't have to see when it was happening. Rick said it had to be today, and I assumed that the Governor had given him a two day deadline for him to take Michonne to her.

In the courtyard I had some random things that didn't really need working on, checked the cars to see if anything needed fixing before moving onto killing walkers through the fence at the top of the courtyard which was pointless because more and more kept wandering in.

"Hey!" Daryl called out, but I moved to the next walker and slammed the pipe through the fence. "Stop!"

As I took a step to the side, the pipe was pulled out of my hands from behind me, and I turned to see Daryl holding it back, away from me.

"Don' that hurt?"

I understood the snap in his tone, the way he was staring at me. What he just did, that was his nice way of saying 'The hell are you doing? Are you stupid?' And maybe I was, because it did in fact hurt like a bitch.

"It's fine," I said, reaching for the pipe, but Daryl held it back out of my reach.

"It ain't fine," he snapped. "The hell are you doing?"

Oh, there it was.

"I'm working."

"You ain't working on shit," he said. "You ain't never gonna get through all 'em walkers, and it don' need doin' right now."

That was true, but there was no point leaving it to get all piled up anyway. These weren't the strongest of fences, and with all the gunfire we seemed to have coming from the prison, there would be a day where enough walkers would lean on some of the fences to knock them down. There would need to be a lot of walkers, but it could happen.

"Go inside," he said.

"No," I shook my head. "I can't."

Daryl stared at me expectantly, like he wanted more of an explanation. I was shocked that he even needed one, but I suppose his brain didn't work the same way as mine.

"If I go in there, I'll know when it happens."

"It ain't happening yet," Daryl said. "It might not ever happen."

"It will," I was shaking my head at the thought. "You saw him, he had his mind made up."

"Merle thinks he's gonna call it off," Daryl said.

"I don't care what Merle thinks!" I snapped. "I don't care!"

Daryl was quiet, just staring at me.

"He's gonna make it right," Daryl said, after a beat. "He is."

"It isn't going to take everything back," I shook my head, my nose scrunching up as I tried to hold back my frustrated tears. "It isn't going to take back what happened, what I've—"

I stopped myself, unable to even say it.

"It's going to take a lot of shit for me to cover everything he's done," I said.

"I'm sorry—"

"—Don't," I stopped him.

I didn't want him to be sorry about it now, because if he was sorry he wouldn't have left. He shouldn't have left. I wasn't going to have him pretend that he cared about what I did there, because it wasn't about that anymore.

Daryl just nodded, and stayed quiet. Then he held out the pipe, handing it back to me. I took it from him, and was going to start killing the walkers on the fence again, but I heard a door open in the prison and Rick called out.

"Hey!" We both turned to look at him as he marched over to us. "It's off. We'll take our chances."

I breathed out a sigh of relief, walking over to join him.

"I'm not saying it was the wrong call, but this is definitely the right one," Daryl said, following his steps. He could see, the same as me, that there was something else going on. Rick didn't seem happy, which I knew couldn't be about him changing his mind. "What's wrong?"

"I can't find Merle or Michonne," he said. "They've gone."

Daryl nodded his head for us to follow them. "Come on."

Me and Rick followed him along the outside of the prison and to a door that went off somewhere inside. Daryl said that he was talking to him about the plan a little while ago, and the boiler room was the last place anyone had seen Merle. We ran inside and through the prison until Daryl showed us the door where he had seen Merle.

"He was in here," Daryl explained. "Said he was looking for drugs. Said a lot of things, actually."

"Like what?" Rick asked.

"Said that you were gonna change your mind," Rick glanced at me as Daryl rounded a corner there was a rag on the ground, and he knelt down to inspect it. "Here we go. Yeah, he took her here. They mixed it up."

"Damn it!" Rick muttered and marched for the door out. "I'm going after him."

"You can't track for shit," Daryl stopped him.

"Then the both of us," Rick said.

"I can go," I offered.

Daryl shook his head. "No, just me. I said I'd go and I'll go. Plus they're gonna come back here. You need to be ready. Your family, too.

Daryl ran out of the door leaving me and Rick in the boiler room. Rick was now very stressed, aware that Merle had taken the plan into his own hands after realising that Rick was going to call it off. He kept saying jumbled sentences as he listed off everything he needed to do now he'd called off his plan.

"I need to tell the others," he finally got out, "find out what everyone wants to do when the others get back," Rick said. "And after that we need someone on watch. When the Governor realises that we're not bringing her there then he may just bring the fight here."

"He won't have his army. We'll have a little bit of time, at least. I'm going to put the armour on and wait outside, get on watch for the others to get back," I moved for the door as I spoke.

"Ace!" Rick stopped me.

I halted in the doorway, "Yeah?"

"You were gonna let me do it?"

I didn't really have an immediate answer, because really it made me look just as bad as he did. Maybe he was asking for some confirmation that on some level I agreed with him, which was a reasonable assumption to make because I was going to let him do it. Maybe he just thought I was a bad person, another reasonable assumption.

Since Woodbury I have done everything I was told, not that most of it was a bad thing, but it did leave me with six kills under my belt. Some of these things were necessary, I was just glad that Rick decided this wasn't.

There was really only one thing I could say, which left us on the same level of being horrible people. "This isn't a democracy anymore, right?"

Rick just stared at me.

"I got your back," I nodded, and ran out to take watch.


I stood around out there for a little while until I saw Rick bringing the entire group out. He stood in front of them at the head of the group, and I could see questioning stares being sent my way when people saw that I was already waiting outside. Glenn and Maggie were the last ones to join them, giving me a glance as they followed.

Stepping back a little, I decided to listen in, partly in case there was some backlash from Rick explaining the plan. No one was going to be very happy that we had resorted to sending someone to the enemy to keep ourselves safe.

His eyes remained fixated on the ground, until he finally spoke up, "When I met with the Governor, he offered me a deal. He said—he said he would leave us alone if I gave him Michonne. And I was gonna do that . . . to keep us safe."

I moved around, behind Glenn and Maggie so I was standing between them and Rick. I could read everyone's expressions better, and they sat somewhere between sad and horrified. Carl bowed his head, and Carol tried to exchange glances with the others, but she looked so upset as she held the baby in her arms.

No one was expecting what he said.

My eyes met with Glenn, who was looking at me, probably working out that I had been somewhat informed of that plan, so I moved my eyes forward, staring straight at the wall behind Rick. I didn't want to continue looking to see his disappointment in me.

"I changed my mind," Rick continued, but he was shaking as he explained the next part. "But now Merle took Michonne to fulfil the deal and Daryl went to stop him and I don't know if it's too late. I was wrong not to tell you. And I'm sorry."

No one's expression changed, and I kept my eyes forward. I just hoped that Daryl would be back with Merle and Michonne soon so everyone could see that the plan was actually cancelled. It was one thing to say it, but with nothing, no one here to show for it, it just seemed like what he said was being taken with a grain of salt.

Rick looked at me, meeting my eyes, as if he was just talking to me now. "What I said last year, that first night after the farm . . . It can't be like that. It can't. What we do, what we're willing to do, who we are, it's not my call. It can't be."

I didn't know how I felt about that, because up until now Rick had been a good leader. He got us through the Winter, kept us together and alive when we lived on the road. Only now, now things were going bad, was he falling apart, but I a hundred percent believed that he would have handled everything so much better if he didn't lose his wife.

Still, after what happened today, I nodded in agreement. We needed more discussion, so long as it didn't overpower things so badly that nothing would ever get done. We had to agree on things.

"I couldn't sacrifice one of us for the greater good because we are the greater good. We're the reason we're still here, not me. This is life and death. How you live . . . how you die, it isn't up to me," he said, "I'm not your Governor. We choose to go. We choose to stay. We stick together. We vote. We can stay and we can fight or we can go."

My head was nodding as I silently agreed.

"It's up to us."

And then Rick left, giving me a nod to follow him as he walked out of the courtyard. I did as told, going after him. I had to jog a little to keep up with his steps as he led me back towards the guard tower at the top of the field.

When we got far enough away, he stopped, and turned to me. I just stared at him, waiting for orders or some kind of idea about what to do with none of them back yet. I didn't like it. We don't know whether the Governor was going to trade anyway so something could've gone bad.

"Any sign of 'em?"

I shook my head. "No, maybe I should—"

"—Any of you going to let me in?" Michonne's voice came from outside the gate.

"Oh my God," he muttered beside me.

Rick ran over to the gate. He unlocked the chain and pulled it to the side, allowing Michonne to slip in, before he closed it again. She gave a single nod when she saw me, before Rick turned and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm so sorry."

"It's cool," she nodded.

"Where's Daryl?" I asked.

Michonne glanced back down across the field. "He went off after Merle."

"Then, how are you here?" Rick asked.

"He let me go," she shrugged. "Took the fight to the Governor himself."

"Rick," I got his attention, and he nodded. "I should go. We don't know what happened and now it's just the two of them out there. I don't like it."

Rick gave a nod, and reached in his pocket. "Get the Hyundai, I'll open the gate for you."


The only thing I could think about as I drove was that something terrible had happened. Every minute I spent racing to the meeting point was eating me up, and I just wished there was a way I could drive the car faster, but my foot was to the ground and the car was basically maxed out.

I didn't have to drive for too long, and when I saw something walking towards the prison in the dark, the orange glow masking what the figure looked like, I slammed on the brakes. The car slid to a stop, barely even managing to slow down in time to stop in front of the person.

At first I thought that it could have been a walker, and didn't want to hit it, but as I got closer the steps were too even, and it didn't stumble once.

I unclipped my belt and stood up, now able to see the headlights shining on Daryl. He raised a hand to cover his eyes, just staring at me when he realised who I was. He didn't even try to raise his weapon at the car, which was unusual for him.

Stepping around the car, I ran over to him. "You're okay!"

I realised too late that I had spoken too soon, because when I saw the look on his face, the fact that he was alone, it was now apparent to me that he was not okay. He just continued staring at me, as I slowly started to understand what had happened.

My face fell, and I was shaking my head, "Oh my God, Daryl. I'm so sorry—"

He shook his head, stopping me.

I couldn't believe it. Merle was really gone? Part of me thought that man was going to live forever with how stubborn he was, and I'm sure Daryl thought the same thing as well. Back in Atlanta, he was so certain he was alive, there was no doubt in his mind.

It was different now, though. I could see the devastation in his eyes, his slumped over figure and the fact that he didn't even try to defend himself when he saw the car. This day had broken him, and he couldn't say anything about it.

"They send you down here alone?" He asked, after a long moment of silence.

I shook my head, "I offered."

He nodded, just silently staring at the car.

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked.

It was Daryl's turn now to shake his head, denying my offer for help. After another long second of silence, he weakly raised his hand and pointed at the car.

"C'mon. Let's go."