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The sun is sinking fast in the sky. The golden hour that I normally love passes us by. Carl keeps glancing back at me, his face and hair soaked with sweat, short wispy cowlicks sticking up from under his hat. He looks like he's crying, but it's so hard to tell as Alexandria plunges into the nightfall. I can't help myself from looking behind me, too. Apart from Jessie, everyone else is keeping their eyes on their feet.

Rick stops us by the lake, the armoury visible on the far side.

"Alright," he whispers to us, holding up a hand to make sure we're all listening. "New plan. Flares from a few guns won't be enough. Too many walkers, too spread out."

I point my bad ear to the floor, keeping the good one up, trying to listen, listening for any signs of life, the hope of Maggie. But all I'm getting are growls and Rick. I decide that I can't worry about Maggie as much as I want to right now. I need to focus on us. Focus on keeping my promise to Deanna.

"We're not going to the armoury," Rick says. "We need our vehicles back at the quarry. All of us drive. We'll need to round 'em up. We leave, we come back."

"Okay," Jessie nods confidently, only for her face to turn sour. "But Judith... to the quarry and back?" She doesn't look hopeful. Nor does Rick as he looks around for the solution.

Gabriel steps up.

"I'll take her," he tells Rick. "Keep her safe in my church until you lead the walkers away."

"Can you do this?" Michonne asks from her position nearer the lake, keeping her eyes on the dead as she stands on the bank.

"I'm supposed to," Gabriel gives her a short smile. "I have to." He turns to Rick, "I will."

Rick nods, and Carl hands Judith to the priest, the small girl looking terrified as she briefly leaves the bedsheets.

"I'll go too," Minnie whispers, her already high voice jumping a little higher as she glances around with her shotgun clutched tightly to her chest, terrified as the dead stumble by. "Just in case they need help."

Rick thanks her.

"Take Sam," Jessie says suddenly.

"No," Sam protests, seemingly less scared than he was.

"Yes, Sam, it'll be safer."

"I'm not leaving you..."

"Sam-"

"Mom, I'm not."

"-Sam," Jessie looks about ready to cry.

"I can keep going," he insists.

Jessie keeps looking between Sam and Ron, the eldest giving her nothing.

"Please," Sam adds, his confidence cracking slightly with his voice.

Jessie finally gives him a fleeting nod, "Okay."

"You can go too..." I whisper to Mikey. But he shakes his head a hundred times over.

His voice is shaking when he tells me, "I'm with you guys."

"It'll be safer with them."

"I'll be fine."

I exhale, tempted to go myself. But I don't and nod okay to Mikey.

"I'm going to keep Judith safe," Gabriel tells Rick, not breaking eye contact. And I don't know if I've gone mad, I very well may have, but I believe him.

Gabriel and Minnie disappear into the crowd of walkers with Judith.

I take Carl's hand when I see him moving instinctively after them. Jessie takes Rick's, telling him, "They're going to make it, okay? I know it."

Rick looks distraught, but he shakes it away, stretching out his arm and telling Sam to take his hand. Sam does, then reaches out to take his mother's hand in his other. Carl catches Jessie's free hand, then I take his. Mikey takes mine, followed by Ron and Michonne.

The eight of us start our slow walk to the gate.

And the walk is slow.

Slower than the walkers themselves as we weave between them, stopping every few seconds as we wait for openings. A walker ambles between Carl and me, forcing us to let go. My stomach is in my mouth, but we find each other again.

Before long, the dark takes full control of Alexandria, sweeping in and swallowing us whole.

After an eternity of walking like the dead, the gates are finally in sight. My legs are shaking violently as I look up to Maggie's guard post, unable to make her out in the darkness. I squint hard, only for my eyes to fall down, down to the street, down onto one of the dead walking away from us. A kid. A little boy, still in his pyjamas, soaked in blood as he stumbles down the street.

I look away, knowing it can't matter now.

Sam sees it too, stopping dead in his tracks, all of us halting.

"Sam?" Jessie tries to whisper, her voice breaking from unbearable worry and fear. "Come on, come on. Sweetheart? Sam? You can do it, yes you can, Sam. Sam, come on."

Rick tries too as Sam lets go of his hand, slipping away and stepping back. "You can do it. You can, Sam."

Sam's trying to walk backwards, but Jessie holds her son's hand tightly in her own. He looks like he's about to cry, his face scrunched up as the walkers circle him unknowingly.

"Sam," Ron whispers to his little brother. "Hey, you can do this. Sam, just look at Mom."

Jessie's trying to pull her son back to her. "Honey, you can do it... I need you to come with me."

I want to help, but the teeth of walkers chattering down my neck keep me still.

"I can't," Sam whimpers, his whines high as he starts to cry. "I want to..."

"Sam, baby," Jessie squeezes his small hand. "Honey, I need you to be strong... I need you to-"

But it's too late.

His cries are too loud.

Decaying teeth find Sam's throat, another walker piercing his shoulder. A pair of cold, rotten hands squeeze against his chin and the side of his head, yanking him back and chewing into his face. We all have to watch as the boy screams in agony, dead moments after, choking on his own blood and desperate cries.

Jessie's screaming her son's name as he falls to the ground, a wreck under teeth and rot. Ron's eyes are wide as he watches, this clicking sound coming from his mouth as he tries to speak.

"Jessie," Rick tries. "Jessie, please..."

But the walkers take her next, silencing her maternal screams as they tear the vocal cords from her throat with a sickening twang, blood spurting from her mouth.

Carl's next in line.

Jessie doesn't let go of his hand as she dies in pain.

I see it happening in my head the same way it did for Noah.

I watch, helplessly, as Carl is eaten alive in my mind.

"Dad!" Carl grunts, trying to pull himself free of Jessie's death grip.

I pull on his other hand, trying to keep him safe, yanking until he's wincing, until I know he's hurting. I keep pulling even then, needing to save him. But Rick's eyes change and he raises his hatchet, bringing it down hard on Jessie's arm, hacking at her until he's severing it and sending Carl and me flying, her dismembered limb tumbling to the ground with a heavy thud, Carl's gun clattering there too.

I've lost everyone except Carl, his hand the only one I still have to hold, one that I refuse to release as we stand, but Carl lets go of mine, pushing me back when he sees something behind me. I turn, witnessing Ron raise Carl's gun to Rick.

"You," he mutters, his whole family dead around him.

Rick lifts a hand to him, thinking of something to say. I see Michonne with her sword out, approaching Ron silently from behind. But another gunshot rings out. Ron's stumbling back with a hole through his throat, his gun firing off as he falls. I've covered my ear from the shots looking around, trying to keep my head low. Michonne holds her katana out, inches behind where Ron had been standing, ready to have brought him down. She looks confused too. But then I see Mikey... his gun still smoking as he drops it to the floor.

"I'm- no... I'm sorry," Mikey stutters, watching as Ron clutches his squirting jugular, eyes staring up at him, trying to scream as he's eaten by the dead.

The walkers are drawn to Mikey next. Drawn by the sound. By the promise of something to eat. The dinner bell tolled. They're all around him, but I'm still reaching in anyway. Reaching for something other than rotten flesh. I find his wrist, pulling as hard as I can. Mikey comes flying into me before the dead can take him. I keep dragging him away, both of us tumbling to the floor. The side of my head cracks hard against the road, my head spinning as I quickly sit up and get ready to run, but the walkers are too busy swarming the last Anderson to realise us.

"Dad?" Carl mumbles to my side as I stand, sounding breathless.

I didn't think about Ron's shot.

I turn to face Carl, but half of his is missing, a hollow and gaping crater where his eye was, where Ron's bullet went. Flesh and bone scraped away from his face as blood streams down what's left. He collapses to the road in a heap of lifelessness.

"C-carl..." Rick chokes out. He's picking his son up in a second, cradling Carl's limp body as he starts to run away, across the grass, back into the community. Michonne's running too. I can't move, watching them leave me, but Mikey's grabbing me, and we're following, all of us, crashing past the dead as we make a break for the infirmary. And we do make it. It's opening for us. I'm tripping at the door, Michonne grabbing my arm and throwing me through. Mikey, slamming the door shut.

Denise is over Carl after Rick places him on a blue gurney that she pointed to. Spencer is here, rushing bandages to the doctor, checking on his brother after. Heath's rushing by me to watch the door for walkers.

Denise is examining. Asking questions.

"This is a gunshot?"

Michonne's answering her.

"Handgun. Close range."

Rick's muttering to the doctor.

"P-please save him."

I'm just staring at Carl's head. His open head. All the blood that's supposed to live in there, it's escaping. Running from his mind as it sleeps. I'm trembling and crying, and trying to speak to everyone- anyone -but I'm pushed aside by Heath as he sets up an IV. Aaron's here too, rushing towels to Denise as Spencer switches on a light when the doctor asks.

"Michonne- towel. Hold it here." Denise is pointing at his head. "Okay, we need to keep pressure on the wound. I'll go in and sew up any lacerations."

Mikey's taking the bedsheet from over my head, leaving me feeling cold as I stand utterly still. He's speaking to me, but I can't hear it. He hugs me, but I can't feel it.

Denise is still working, shouting.

"Now, Spencer, I need that pan... that one on the tray, good. Michonne, keep following me with the towel!"

My legs finally decide to work, trying to get me closer to Carl as I reach for him.

"Rhys, I need you to stay back," Denise is telling me without looking as she takes a needle and thread to where Carl's eye should be. "Someone... stop him."

Mikey's taking my shoulders, holding me back from him, pulling me to sit in a chair. My view of Carl is half blocked by people and medical instruments. My head is on fire. I cover my eyes, the bandage on my head wet with blood as it pours from me, leaking onto my hands. I can't tell if my ear is weeping or if I'm just covered in so much blood of the people I loved. People that are dead or dying.

I hear the front door open again. I look up to see Rick walking out with his hatchet in hand.

"What- what are you doing?" Michonne cries after him, "Rick!"

The door slams shut.

As I look at Carl on the gurney, lying and bleeding, I see Tyreese in that car, bleeding, dying. I feel how it felt to be out there. To be beyond the safe walls, to wade through the dead, to cut them, to kill them, to keep my family safe.

I stand up, Mikey attempting to make me sit, only to be pushed aside by my free arm, the other reaching for the door.

"Rhys!" Michonne screams at me as I open the door Rick closed. "Rhys... don't you- don't you dare! Rhys? Stop! Please!"

But I let the door swing shut the same way Rick did.

Walkers are upon me the instant I'm out. I punch the first one that gets too close to me on my way off the porch, my knuckles cracking a sicking sound against its jaw. I'm drawing my knife next, finishing it off as it swings its head back around from my strike.

I can see Rick in the crowd, rolling a walker over his back before sinking his axe into its soft skull as he vanishes deeper into the endless horde.

One stumbles at me, and I end it with my blunted knife. Another comes, and I slam its head over and over against the porch bannister until there's only pulp between my fingers.

Too many surround me, but I can't stop. I keep swinging my blade, pulling my gun and firing into the figures, only for more to swarm over me.

"Rhys!" A gunshot puts a hole in the walker beside me, first in its chest, the second through its head. Mikey's here, jumping off the porch to join me as I hunt the walkers.

"Go back," I growl, kicking a walker backwards, knocking over the ones behind it like skittles, allowing me to shoot them while they're down.

"You're going to get yourself killed!" Mikey screeches, wildly stabbing a walker in the shoulder as it staggers onto him. I blast it through the temple. My gun clicks an empty sound after that.

The relief was brief, but the dead crowd both of us now. I lose my knife as one of the walkers falls with the blade still inside its head. I draw Tyreese's hammer, bringing it down on rotten faces, one after the other, tiring as wicked hands grab me from every angle. Mikey yelps as one grabs ahold of him, teeth inches from his face. I try to reach him, but I can't, watching helplessly. I see red. Someone else arrives. Rick. He lays waste to the walkers as he tears them apart, barreling through the horde towards us, saving Mikey's life with moments to spare. Michonne's here too, slicing apart three heads in one swing. Heath and Aaron are behind her, Spencer too, grabbing his brother's shoulder as they take one down. All of us, back to back, as we shred through the corpses.

"Knock 'em away!" Rick screams to us over the growls, "Drive them down!"

Eric and Olivia run out of a house, weapons in hand, as they join us in the street.

"We can beat them!" Rick roars, his thunder giving us strength. Electricity through our veins."We can beat them!"

A walker behind me has its head slashed in half by Rosita as she appears from another house, Eugene and Tara with her. Minnie joins us next, Gabriel, Bruce, Tobin, Carol, Morgan, Francine, Barbara, Anna, almost everyone fighting for this place, earning it the way we used to. The way we have to. The way we're supposed to.

For a second, I think I see Enid, only for a walker to steal my attention by grabbing my arm, but it's taken down by a familiar face. Maggie, rushing to my side, nodding at me as we keep fighting, giving all we have. My heart skips a beat when I see Glenn in the crowd of the living, back and breathing, helping me take down an especially towering walker when he reaches Maggie and me. The three of us, together, drive back a small cluster in front.

Gunshots ring out towards the gate, but I can't see anything over the walkers. We keep fighting in the dark until that ends too... The sky radiates as the lake bursts into flames, illuminating Daryl's flaming wings as he stands atop an oil tanker parked on its bank. I think I spot Abraham and Sasha there, too, firing rifles into the crowd. Everyone here. Everyone back. The furthest walkers turn their attention to the blazing lake, walking in and dying as their flesh is melted from their bones, their brains boiled in their skulls.

I endure. Dripping with blood. Fighting my way forward with Sasha now at my side, Rosita too, Glenn and Maggie, Mikey, our family carving into the dead.

When the end finally comes, it hits us hard. The walkers litter the streets of Alexandria as the living take it back.

It's hours later, Ron's watch is ticking against my wrist, pulsating through my numb arm. I'm sitting in the infirmary, a small private room lit by dim candlelight. Carl's tucked tightly into a bed, a clean white bandage wrapped securely around his head. I reside on one side of the bed, Rick on the other, both of us holding one of Carl's hands. A silence lies between us for a long time, the two of us sitting there drained.

Just when I think I might drift off, Rick speaks.

"I was wrong."

I open my eyes, not realising how close to shutting they were. Rick is speaking to Carl, maybe thinking that I fell asleep.

"I thought after living behind these walls for so long that..." Rick lets a pregnant pause hang as he watches Carl, "...maybe they couldn't learn."

A tear collects in the corner of his eye, rolling down his nose and dropping onto the bed. "But today... I saw what they could do. What we could do, if we work together. We'll rebuild the walls- we'll expand the walls. There will be more. There's gotta be more..."

Rick looks up, seeing me watching him.

I get up, moving towards the door, but Rick stops me, catching my wrist across the bed.

"Rhys..."

I nod to let him know I'm listening.

"Thank you for being what you are to him."

I feel my chin shaking, not sure I'm anything anymore.

"I don't always understand it... but you mean everything to him. Thank you for becoming friends with him in the Prison. We're lucky you came to us."

I look back to Rick, then to Carl, then I leave, shutting the door gently on my way out.

Outside the door in the infirmary's main room, Denise is stitching up a deep cut in Daryl's back, Michonne standing beside them, Judith held tight in her arms. Abraham is leaning across the kitchen island, a bottle of something in his hands, blood staining his orange moustache. They don't notice me. I feel like I'm floating and invisible as I walk to the exit. Like I'm the last walker that no one can see. Glenn and Maggie are holding each other quietly in the corner; I walk past them, remaining invisible... except Maggie's hand finds my arm, pulling me into the two of them, both of them holding me and each other tight. I hold them back, breathing out a release of something extreme, crying as I do.

A million years later, the hug ends, Maggie and Glenn let go of me. Maggie rests a hand on my shoulder, examining my face. "You need to change your bandage, sweetie."

I nod, wiping my face dry of tears on the back of my bloody hands. Pretty sure that it's smeared onto my face. Not sure if it's noticeable past all the other blood.

"Yeah," I croak.

Rosita walks in, blood dried onto her sleeveless arms. Glenn squeezes my shoulder, and Maggie kisses my forehead before they send me to Rosita. She sews me up in a comfortable quietness. When she's done, she tells me to go and shower.

People are dotted throughout the building, everyone wanting to stay together after it all. I clamber past Eric and Aaron as I climb the stairs, the two checking each other over for cuts and bites.

I find Mikey sitting with Enid on the top step, the two of them holding onto each other. Wrapped up in each other's limbs. I try to walk around them, but Enid punches my leg, standing up and looking like she wants to hug me. She doesn't though, she just stares with teary eyes.

"Why'd you punch me?" I mumble. I found it outside where he fell.

Enid rubs her arm, looking sorry. "...'Cause you didn't say hi."

"Hi," I say.

"Hey," Enid tries smiling.

Mikey gets up too, handing me Carl's hat. "I found it outside where..." he trails off. Then he pulls my knife from his pocket. "Found this too."

I take the hat, shaking my head at the flip-knife, saying, "keep it." So he does.

I go into the bathroom, closing the door gently. I realise I'm still holding the hammer. I don't think I ever stopped. I put it down, blood on my palms making it sticky and hard to let go of. I shed my clothes and fall into the shower, sitting under it and reaching up to switch the water on. When I'm done, I put the same blood-crusted clothes back on, clutching Carl's hat to my chest and leaving the bathroom. Still dripping from the shower.

I get onto the porch outside. Almost everyone else has gone inside the infirmary. Only one person's still out here. Sasha, standing on the edge of the porch looking out, hugging herself. She turns when she hears me.

"Hi," she whispers, her eyes wet the second she sees me. She squeezes herself tighter.

"Where were you?" I ask. My voice is so small and afraid that I don't recognise it.

"We got stuck," she smiles, a sad and open-ended smile.

"Don't leave me again," I whisper. I can't tell if I mean it or if I'm so tired that my mouth just wants to put words between what's making me sad and what I need. Sasha doesn't seem to know either, but she nods.

"I won't."

A/N

The chapter title here is a call back to Carl's birthday present from Mikey. It was inscribed with Latin that said, If the wind fails, use the oars. That chapter was called the wind- the easy part. This chapter is the Oars- the hard part. Idk... I thought it was clever. Don't usually explain my convoluted chapter titles, but I was proud of this one. Hope everyone enjoyed it.

Also, on a really unimportant note, went back and added some dialogue out of Rhys' lopsided haircut in chapter 69 with Carol.