"Ace," Rick brought me back to the car as quietly as possible. "Come on, you need to know this."

I wanted to argue, wanted to be absent for just one car ride now I was away from prying eyes. But I was here, and being here meant that I could get lost. It would be my luck to become lost in a state I had never been in before.

I nodded, my eyes falling on the map again.

"Okay, we left the others on this road here," he pointed at the map sprawled out across my legs, in the middle of him and Michonne. "See?" I nod again. "The town is over here, right? It's a little long of a walk if anyone gets lost, but we don't have any other options. You understand?"

Pain buzzed against my forehead as I squeezed my eyes closed, running my hands over my face. I shouldn't be here today. The only reason I was dragged along was to get me away from Eugene, but whether it was for me or his safety I wasn't sure.

"What if they get pushed out?"

Rick tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"If a herd comes, and someone is lost, where do we meet up? Like a, uh, I can't think of the word . . . apwyntiad," I frowned, quickly reminding myself, "No that's appointment."

"Like a meeting point?" Michonne asked like it was obvious.

"There's a word for it. French one."

"Rendezvous?" Glenn asked behind me.

"Yeah," I answered, not looking back toward him. My eyes were fixated in front, hoping the conversation would be over soon. "Do we have a rendezvous?"

"No," Rick answered, confusion still written on his face. "No, but I have Carol on the radio so if anything happens then we'll be the first people to know about it. And the same goes for us, if something happens, they know where we are and can follow us."

Twp iawn. Very stupid not to have a rendezvous. Not that it mattered, because, unfortunately for him, my directional awareness on a map and in real life were still disconnected. Well, maybe it was the distance in my mind that kept the information away.

"Is that it?" I asked.

"Where are the others held up at?" Rick nodded to the map, still keen on ensuring I knew where I was.

I sighed, loosening tightness in my chest and dropping my finger to the same place he showed me.

"Good," he nodded. "And where are we going?"

Again, I lifted my finger and pointed to the location he showed me.

I think Rick was picking up on my blank face as I flicked my eyes up to meet his own, once again asking the question, is there anything else? He took the map away, folding it up and placing it in the net on the back of the driver's seat.

"Is apwn—that word you said French for 'appointment'?" Michonne asked, after a moment.

"A-point-ee-add," I corrected her. "It's Welsh."

"Welsh?"

"I'm Welsh. Just wanted to see if I could remember the word." Sometimes remembering words in another language reminded me of what I was thinking about.

"I didn't know you could speak another language," she said.

"I'm not fluent, I'm not fluent in French either, but I learnt it," I said. "It's not important anymore."

I could see Michonne wanted to keep pushing, but my bored replies were probably hindering her questions, which was the point. I had many hobbies that no one had asked about because they weren't useful to the group. Still weren't. Nobody in North America speaks Welsh, which meant that I would have had short conversations.

British schools pushed languages more than American ones, they had to, with all the countries in such proximity. Even as a child I had to ask ga i fynd i'r ty bach, os gwelwch yn dda? or some teachers wouldn't let you go to the bathroom unless you embarrassed yourself and said you don't remember how to say it.

Welsh was pushed the most in Wales in the 20th Century because the language was ripped from the country when the English took over. There was an old tradition in schools where if children were caught speaking Welsh, they'd have to wear a wooden sign. The child with the sign at the end was punished. Sometimes to get rid of the sign they would have to tell on another student who spoke Welsh, sometimes they were all caned anyway.

Eventually, the government realised there was little Welsh spoken as a first language (I wonder why?) and Welsh became compulsory until GCSE, the tests you take when you're 16. I went back and forth a lot, so I had to occasionally pick the language up every so often. I got some practice every so often while I was bored, trying to remember everything I learnt in school. Then again, Welsh was only spoken in two countries before the world ended, and I'll never get the chance to be in either one, so what was the point in remembering the potentially dead language?

Michonne decided to stop pushing the questions and turned to face out of the window.

"How far out?" Rick asked the two in the front.

"You can't tell from the map?" I asked under my breath, only to have my head shoved forward as a playful gesture to shut it.

Noah leaned forward in his seat to glance at the dashboard. "Five miles."

Rick unclipped the radio from his belt. "Hey, Carol."

"I'm here."

"We're halfway there. Just wanted to check the range," he said.

"Everybody's holding tight. We've made it 500 miles. Maybe this can be the easy part." Her voice was a lot clearer than I imagined at this distance. Last time I used a radio it was crackling and screeching badly. Then again, the last time I used a radio, it broke. Maybe that had something to do with the quality.

"Got to think we're due," Rick agreed. "Give us 20 minutes to check in."

"We don't hear from you, we'll come looking."

"Copy that," Rick finished.

He clipped the radio to his belt again.

"I've been wanting to tell you something," Noah began.

Tyreese glanced from the road to look at him. "What's that?"

"The trade. It was the right play," he decided. I leaned my head back on the seat, hoping to find something to distract me from the conversation. "It worked. It did work. Just something else happened after."

"It went the way it had to," Tyreese answered. "The way it was always going to."

"I never wanted to kill anybody before."

Everything was starting to feel like a silent dig towards me, and I needed my brain to stop twisting the things people said. Noah didn't know me.

"I've wanted that," Tyreese said. "But it just made it so I didn't see anything except what I wanted. I wasn't facing it."

"Facing what?" he asked.

"What happened, what's going on," Tyreese gave a vague answer. "My dad always told Sasha and me that it was our duty as citizens of the world to keep up with the news. When I was little and I was in his car, there were always those stories on the radio. Something happens 1,000 miles away or down the block. Some kind of horror I couldn't even wrap my head around," he continued to explain. "But he didn't change the channel. He didn't turn it off. He just kept listening, to face it. Keeping your eyes open. My dad always called that paying the high cost of living."

"I lost my dad in Atlanta." What a coincidence. At least Noah knew what happened to his dad, which was something I couldn't relate to. "I think he would have liked yours. "Still got a mom and a couple of twin brothers," the smile fell from his face as he looked around. "I hope."

"I hope so, too."

Noah glanced at the dashboard again. "Two more miles."

"All right," Rick leaned closer to me as he sat forward to speak to Tyreese. "Let's pull into the woods. We'll go on foot. Stay off the road."

"We don't need to," Noah argued.

"Just in case."

I understood. It was to keep us safe for several different reasons; if Noah wasn't seen before the rest of us then his people might be inclined to shoot us for getting so close to their home. Or all of Noah's people were gone and other people resided in his community, which meant that we didn't know what we were really up against.

Tyreese did as Rick told him, and pulled into the forest where there was an opening to fit the car through. In another small clearing, there were some more cars abandoned between the trees, left there for so long that they were covered in trees and dirt.

"This is good," Rick said. "Through the trees, it might just look like part of the wreck."

There was a bang from the car behind me, and I looked to see a silhouette of a walker through the dirty glass. At least, I thought it was a walker. These cars had been here for so long it was hard to tell what was really inside.

I stared at the car, confusion clouding my mind. It was so close to their camp. What? A mile? Two miles? Even a simple walk of the perimeter could lead someone out here, getting a wider scope of oncoming threats. How didn't his people ever find this?

"Ace?" Isaac quietly caught my attention, and I realised the others had started walking away.

"Just thinking," I said quickly, dismissing his concerned look as I followed the group away.

We caught up to the others in seconds, heading straight into the dense woods. I could feel Isaac beside me, his eyes burning into the side of my head. We hadn't spoken since we found out Eugene was lying. There was nothing to say between us, and Isaac spent a lot of his time trying to make Noah welcome for when he permanently had to join our group. Or we joined his . . . I guess that would be what Isaac was likely considering.

In amongst the trees, there was metal wire strung up, either to keep walkers or people out, I wasn't sure. It was a good idea either way. Maybe it wasn't a sound trap or anything, but people were likely to be hurt if they tried getting through this death trap. It looked like something out of Saw.

"Your people do this?" Michonne asked.

"Wanted to," he said simply. "They must have."

I moved to the trap as Glenn caught my wrist. "Are you going to be okay getting through this?"

"Don't see a way around it," was my response. There probably was a way around it, but that would take us longer than the 20 minutes that Rick had promised Carol. I decided to come, so I had to keep up with the others.

Pulling out my knife, I ducked under a thin wire, my body parallel to the thick wound metal below. I gripped it with my hand to balance myself, my joint creaking at the foreign movement I was trying to pull off. With my breath held, I made it to the other side of the wire trap.

Noah yelped, and I shot back to look at him. He had his fingers pressed to his forehead, where a small slice had formed. He probably caught himself on a barb of the thinner wire or just didn't keep track of the distance between himself and the thicker metal ahead.

"You all right?" Rick asked.

"Yeah," He poked the edge of his cut. "Yeah."

As we neared the end of the forest and grew closer to the road, I looked around for any signs of walkers. It was quiet, really all of Virginia had been very quiet. There were few walkers, we had to fight less than ten since being in the state, but still, I was vigilant. Or at least, as vigilant as I could be.

Rick tapped Noah on the shoulder as he went to walk ahead of the others. "They have spotters? snipers?"

"We built a perch on a truck," Noah answered honestly. "Sometimes it's out front."

Glenn peaked through the gaps in the trees, leaning forward to get a better view. "Not today," Glenn said.

We walked out onto a wide-open road, which was when I saw Noah's community. It had tall walls, but there was nobody on watch or standing post. That didn't fill me with confidence, and my first thought was that they were gone (not that I was shocked). There was a large sign outside of the walls that said SHIREWILT.

As we neared the community, we passed some road kill before a grandfather clock in the middle of the road. Noah ran towards the gate and slammed himself into them, trying to push them open, but when he couldn't, he leaned his ear against the metal.

He looked back over his shoulder as we followed him. "You hear that?"

"Just wait." Glenn sheathed his knife and walked towards the wall. He jumped up on the ledge of the lower was before grabbing the top metal fence that had been blocked off with planks of wood. As he lifted himself to be able to see, he dropped his hand down. on the wall beside him and shook his head.

They were dead. Or gone. Either way, Noah was in disbelief, but he climbed up over the other side of the fence. Rick and the others followed him quickly, climbing over, while I just stood there and stared at the fence. Every part of this process was going to hurt.

"Ace," Isaac called from the top of the fence and lowered a hand down. "Come on, I'll help."

I shook my head. "Nah, just go ahead."

"You sure?" He asked.

(I don't need to embarrass myself by falling on my ass in front of everyone.) "Yeah."

There was a moment of contemplation on his half as he glanced to the other side of the fence to where Rick was calling after Noah, his voice becoming more and more distant. "Come on, don't be ridiculous," Isaac waved his hand. "I'll help you down on the other side."

I bit my tongue and sighed. He wasn't going to let me struggle to climb over alone, which meant embarrassing myself in front of him (not for the first time, either.) I hoped that when it was time to leave then we could just open the gate.

As I walked closer, Isaac lowered his hand. Instead of taking it, I took out my axe and wedged it between the wall and the plank. Pulling myself up, I used the axe to pull myself up onto the top of the fence. Isaac took his hand back and watched for a second. I winced as I pulled my second leg up and over, taking a second to breathe as I squeezed my eyes closed.

"Let me help you down," he offered again in a quiet voice.

"Just—" I snapped but cut myself off before I could finish. When I next opened my mouth, I managed to settle my tone down for a second. "Stop. Just, please, go ahead. I just—" (need a second.)

Isaac nodded, and lowered down, before stepping from the wall to the ground. "Okay, sorry."

Bitch, I reprimanded myself. I wanted to be able to act like I had before, like I remembered before we made it to the prison. Didn't I used to be nice? It was getting harder and harder to remember because those moments were coming few and far between.

When he turned away, I pulled my axe from the gap in the wall, I turned it around and shoved it in the same crevice so I'd be able to gently lower myself down without putting too much weight on my leg. I grabbed the handle and used my other hand on the plank to turn myself around, before slowly lowering my weight down.

It was harder than this used to be, when I worked in my garage I could hold my weight for so long, but without having regular meals I was losing a lot of muscle definition. Maybe I should practise climbing, being able to use the axe for its main purpose. I picked it up because I wanted to be like Lara, if I put the time into it, I would be able to climb the way she can.

Something for the future, when I didn't have all these injuries.

When I caught up with the group, Noah was already collapsed on the ground and crying. Isaac glanced back to see me but turned his attention back to Noah. I could see the disappointment on everyone's faces, but I felt nothing. Sure, I was upset for Noah, but losing the community was not a big surprise for me.

Michonne looked the worst, even as the walkers spotted, she was more pissed off than anything. Her arms fell to her side before she conceded and grabbed the sword. "I'll get him."

Rick walked over and knelt beside Noah as he cried. "I'm sorry, Noah. I truly am," he said. "We should see if there's anything we can use and head back."

"Then what?" Michonne asked before she looked at a group of walkers. "They see us."

Her tone was pissing me off, even though I had been the unbearable one, I didn't place unrealistic expectations on this place being here. It sounded like she thought Rick wanted this like he wanted the place to be overrun. A backup hadn't been worked out yet, because so many people had been counting on this place still being here.

He needed some time to think. None of us were from here, we didn't know this area, we didn't know what was around for us to take over. Hell, we barely knew what was in Georgia, because after I learnt to read the map back home, I followed our trail and we ran circles around the prison before stumbling upon it.

"We can make a quick sweep," Glenn informed him.

Rick turned to Tyreese, who gave a knowing nod of his head. "I'll stay with him," Tyreese said.

He gave a silent agreement before taking a few steps away. As he reached for his radio, Michonne began taking out the walkers that were coming for us. I leaned back on a brick signpost and waited for Rick to say our neck moved.

He held up the radio. "Carol, you copy?"

"We're here."

"We made it." He stopped for a beat, looking around. "It's gone."

My head snapped over my shoulder when I heard something smash, and I looked back to see Michonne had put her foot through the glass of a picture frame. Rick leaned forward and tapped her elbow, which was when she sent a look over her shoulder and said in an obvious tone.

"Clean shirt," she leant down to pick it up, shaking away the glass.

"We'll figure it out," Rick promised her.

"We will," Michonne headed into the open room. "There's some garbage bags in the garage."

As Glenn walked around the two of them, going to stand by one of the dusty cars, Rick turned to look at him instead. "You didn't think it would still be here?"

"Did you?" Glenn seemed shocked that he'd even asked.

"After it happened, right after Beth was in the hospital, I saw that woman Dawn. She didn't mean to do it. I knew it, I saw it. But I wanted to kill her," he said. "I remember . . . I just wondered if it even mattered one way or another. Didn't have a thing to do with Beth."

Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I kept my eyes down and rifled through the plastic box in the garage, pretending like there was still more for me to find in there. There were a few things I could take, extension cords and miscellaneous wires I could strip for parts. This was the first time I'd heard someone mention Beth to Glenn that wasn't Maggie.

"I don't know if I thought it would still be here," Rick concluded. "But Beth wanted to get him here, she wanted to get him back home. This was for her—and it could have been for us, too."

I'd had enough, couldn't listen anymore. I stood up and marched towards the house across the street. I didn't care at all if this place was still here or not, so why was hearing about it making my throat hurt? The answer was probably just because I was hearing about Beth for the first time in three weeks.

"Ace!" Glenn called after me.

"She's alright," I heard Rick say in a quieter voice.

I pulled my knife out as I entered the house, banging on the wall to draw any attention to myself, to pull out any walkers from their hiding places. There was no sound, no bangs in return, nothing in this house for me to kill.

Once I checked all the rooms I started looking through the house for supplies I could grab, anything to take. There was nothing in the kitchen. It didn't look like this house was even in use after the world ended, it was dusty and bare.

"There's fuck all here," I muttered, slamming the drawers. "Fucking place."

I turned around and plonked myself down on the stairs, resting my head in my hands as I took a second to breathe. Everything was wrong, I felt wrong. Nothing seemed to matter to me anymore, and I was angry all of the time. Pinching my lips together, I tapped my fingers against my head, still hiding my face in my palms.

"Ace," I didn't look up, didn't have to. Isaac entered the house. "Are you okay?"

I didn't move, hoping that maybe he'd get the memo. I'm not even really sure I was looting anymore, just using this place to get away from everyone. Before I never thought I needed an escape, everything with me and my dad was normally okay, but I missed the privacy, even just being an option for me.

"I don't want to talk," I muttered when I didn't hear him leave.

"You sure?" He tried to push, but when I didn't answer, he changed tactics. "Do you need me to do something? Go? Whatever you want."

Stop trying to help me! I wanted to say. Instead, I held my tongue tightly between my teeth, or it would have come out in a snapping tone again. But I needed him to stop because I had been feeling redundant enough that I didn't need anyone making me feel more useless. I couldn't get any time alone.

I kept my head down, my eyes closed between the palms of my hands, and I just breathed. There had to be some way for me to cope, to stop getting so frustrated at anything that happened around me. Maybe I just needed time, but it was hard to get any time to myself when I had people checking up on me 24/7. Sure, maybe a run was not the best time to cool off, but what other time was there? Back with the group, the sound of Eugene turned my stomach, and I couldn't just walk off on my own without being followed, like now.

"I don't want anything," I finally conceded as I lifted my head, wiping my eyes as I crossed my arms. "I don't care. I didn't care that this place could have been here, I don't care that it's gone. I just . . . I don't know why."

Isaac was quiet, contemplating—no, just listening. Listening to what I had to say. I expected him to give reasons or aid, say that everything was going to be okay. That's what anyone else would have done anyway.

"I should want us to find a place, Carl and Judith need a place where they can be safe. But I don't care one way or the other."

"That must be hard," he said. "But even if you don't want it, you aren't actively turning away from having a place like that. You came here today. You're still trying to find somewhere that they can be safe. That has to be something, right?"

I just nodded, to stop his reasoning for why it was okay because nothing felt okay right now. Everything was wrong with me. I used to be happy, I used to be funny, good at talking to people or helping them. Something was wrong with me, and I didn't know what, which meant that trying to talk about it was just leading me to a dead end. This was what I was feeling, and right now, nothing seemed able to change it.

"I'll search the place, then we should find the others," Isaac said.

"There's nothing here," I stopped him. "Don't bother."

"Okay," he said. "Do you want some time? I can tell them you're searching."

"No," I muttered. "Let's just find them."

As we walked outside, we met up with the others who were finished searching. Each of them had a rubbish bag worth of things they found in their collective houses they had been looting while I was just trying to be alone.

Isaac was ahead of me, walking to Glenn and Michonne who were looking around for the next place to loot. As I went to follow, planning on searching for a house that might have supplies, Rick placed his hand on my shoulder as I joined the rest of the group.

"You alright?" He asked.

(Sure, everything is great.) "Fine."

"Come here a second," he nodded his head for me to follow him.

We stepped away from them as Michonne, Isaac and Glenn headed to the next house. None of them seemed to notice, until they reached the door, looking back for us, while Rick had led me to a building opposite theirs across the street. He banged the door and stood beside me as we waited for a sound in return.

"I never said I was sorry," Rick said. "That night at the church, I didn't know how bad things would get with you. You didn't want to go, and I made you. I didn't want to be the reason you stayed, but I turned out to be the reason all of that stuff happened to you. And I am sorry."

I just kept my mouth closed, my eyes on the house across the street as I watched the other's movement through the windows.

"You are my kid," he insisted and I met his eyes only for a second. "Hey, maybe I didn't expect one of my kids to listen, huh? That you'd stay," he tried to joke, before his face turned serious. "I know it probably doesn't feel like it, that I expect a lot from you. And it isn't fair, but I've seen what you're capable of. I'm responsible for most of it, and I'm sorry."

I don't think I'd considered that Rick was the reason I began killing, but I suppose it was true. He was the one that brought me back to Woodbury, where I killed five people. But I did that for Daryl, who got caught inside the walls. I would have done that for anyone, not because Rick had been expecting it from me.

"I want you to be able to talk to me if that's what you want or need," he said. "You can't let these things build up, they'll start to wear you down. Eat you up. You saw what happened to me at the prison, I don't want you to go down the same path."

Keeping my mouth closed, I tried to suppress the eye roll. I was the person to help Rick at the prison, even when I needed help, after the things I did in Woodbury. It always turned out that way, my problems were always pushed to the side when something else happened.

"If you need to talk, a break away from everyone, I'm here," he tried again.

I pushed myself away from the wall. "There's nothing in the house."

I heard his footsteps behind me as I entered the house, and I went to the kitchen to find things for us to eat. Rick turned off into a different room as I pulled the tins out of the cupboard, however, few there were. One of the tins was dented and the food had rotted on the inside, which made me gag as I shoved it back in the cupboard and slammed the doors closed.

I stood up and pushed the tins towards Rick to put in his bag as he came out of the bathroom. He shook some pills in my direction,

"Naprosyn," he said. "It's a prescription, but it's strong. Should help your leg."

"What is it?" I asked.

"Naprosyn," he repeated, as though it was obvious. I just stared at him to remind him that I didn't have a clue what that meant, and he clarified. "Anti-inflammatory. It's like ibuprofen, but stronger. It should help with your leg.

"Naproxen?" I questioned.

Rick raised a brow. "What?"

"I think it's naproxen in Britain," I said.

He nodded in understanding and placed it down on the counter. "You can take it."

"Can't," I shook my head.

"What?"

"Can't take ibuprofen without eating," I said. "It rots your stomach."

A look of realisation appeared on his face as he nodded. "Right, well I found some advil in the other house—"

"Paracetamol."

He stared at me for a second, realising that's what I called Advil. If dad ever gave me pills before he'd just call them what I already knew they were, so I'd only heard these new words for medicines when I met everyone here.

"Right, well, you can take that for now and keep the prescription for when we eat," Rick said.

"Yeah, alright," I grabbed the pills as he placed down the paracetamol.

As Rick packed away the tins, I took my bag off and put the pills in my bag. I took two paracetamol out of the packet before chucking it into my bag. Rick grabbed the end of the rubbish bag as I took down the two pills.

"We should go," Rick said.

I hummed, grabbing my water to take a sip.

We waited outside for the others to leave the building, and met up with them on the other side of the road. Their bags were filled up more than when we left them, so they found more things in their house. That was good, at least.

They came to join us in the middle of the road when I spotted something out of the corner of my eye. "Walls down."

Everyone had seen it, but it was another reason that we didn't have to live here. Not that anybody needed more reasons, I thought. I didn't realise I was wrong until Michonne began to walk towards the gap.

"That's how the walkers got in," Glenn agreed, his voice as miserable as my own.

"We could put some of the garage doors together against the break. Park a car against them until we can brick it back up," Michonne was saying, partially glancing at me like I would have any input. Maybe she wanted to know if I could build the place back up if I had any ideas for it. Sure, I had ideas, but what was the point? "It can work."

"This place is surrounded by a forest, there's no sight lines." Michonne sighed, frustrated. "Whoever, whatever would be on top of us without us even knowing it," Rick told her. "That's probably what happened."

"That's what happened to us," Glenn agreed.

"We could start taking down the trees," she tried again. "We use them to build the walls up. Ace, come on. We can do something here."

I clenched my teeth and breathed out a sigh, remembering when I had that much hope for the prison. "I already did all of that."

Michonne stared at me for a moment but then walked ahead for the rest of us to follow. "Look."

We walked after her to the gap in the wall, and when we caught up with Michonne, we saw what had made her stop in surprise. There were legs on the ground, button halves of bodies that had been severed in some way. I shook my head, my breath catching in my throat.

"Oh my God," Isaac muttered, turning away.

He walked back inside the wall, and nobody decided to follow him. This wasn't what he was used to, he didn't typically deal with these kinds of sights. Hell, something like this was new for even the rest of us, and I struggled to stand there with the smell.

"It doesn't matter," Glenn said.

"What?" Rick asked.

"You said you wondered if it even mattered if you killed her or not. It doesn't matter if you had done it or if I had, or that Daryl did. It doesn't matter," he muttered.

Still, even if it didn't matter, I wished we had been there. Any one of us would have shot Dawn, but Glenn knew that even if Daryl had let her live, then she would still likely have been killed by someone else, because that's what happened now.

I could tell by the look on his face, the other's face, the way Isaac walked away that this was the harsh reality. Breathing out a long breath, I shook my head as my eyes returned to the halves of the corpses over the ground.

"Washington," Michonne burst out, turning back to us. "Eugene lied about a cure, but he thought of Washington for a reason."

"But he was lying," Glenn said.

"About the cure," she clarified. "But he did the math and realised that Washington was the place where there'd be a chance."

I didn't agree with anything she was saying, and with my anger towards Eugene, it became impossible to keep my mouth closed. "What maths? Washington is a fucking city, you don't want to be near cities, there's more likely to be walkers."

"We're close," Michonne ignored me. "What if there are people there? Huh? What if it's someplace that we can be safe? We're 100 miles away. It's a possibility. It's a chance. Instead of just being out here. Instead of just making it. Because right now, this is what making it looks like. Don't you want one more day with a chance?"

What I wanted was for my leg to heal, so that I could stop being in so much pain. That would give me more of a chance than what I had now. But randomly searching random places for a home was what we did over the winter, and we learned that cities weren't safe. Sure, maybe the walkers had left now, had moved out of the cities to find more food but that didn't necessarily mean they were deserted. Walking right into an area that once had a high population density seemed stupid.

"We should go," Rick said. Glenn turned away, his tone suggesting that it was time to head back to the group. But Rick continued, "It's 100 miles away. We should go to Washington."

Great.

Abraham would've been very happy about that, I imagine. And me? Thrilled. I wanted to follow Eugene's lie to Washington after all the pain it caused me. I know I didn't care about finding a place or where it was, but not wanting to go to Washington was just me being petty (if not thinking ahead a little).

Michonne seemed happy, not that I was surprised. She lived on the road before us, and I know she hated it because she spent most of that time with Andrea. She had someone. Hell, I knew being alone was hard. I did it myself until Glenn found me.

Before anyone could say anything, there was yelling from inside the community. "HELP!"

Isaac looked back at us from where he was inside the walls. "That's Noah!"

We rushed into Shirewilt, running towards the screaming we heard. It was just Noah, though. I couldn't hear Tyreese, weren't they supposed to be together? Everyone dropped the bags they had been carrying as we sprinted to find Tyreese and Noah.

As we ran around to the front of one of the houses, we found Noah underneath a trellis, using it to fight the walker back. "Help!"

"Noah, hold on!" Glenn yelled. The walker on Noah turned at the sound, facing Glenn who swung the bat, knocking the walker into the wall before jamming the knife in its head while it was stunned.

Michonne had her sword in her hand as she ran towards the furthest walker away. Its head was tucked into his shoulder like it was broken or something. "I got him."

As she swung her sword down at the walker, something clanged and the head got loose. Michonne shoved her hands up before the walker could bite her, pushing it away. As Rick stabbed the second walker on Noah.

"You okay?" He asked Noah before turning and running to help Michonne. He took his knife and stabbed the walked in the head, saving her.

Glenn helped Noah up.

"It's Tyreese!"

"Where?" Rick asked.

"My house," Noah said. "He's been bit."

We followed Noah through the community as he led us to his house. I was slower, unable to keep up with the group's sprinting, even with the paracetamol, my leg still felt like it was being torn from the joint with every step. I caught up to them as they entered the building behind Noah.

Tyreese was in the bedroom, leaning against the wall as he mumbled to himself. Incoherent sentences that I couldn't quite make out. He'd paled, he looked sick and he had two bites on his arm. It didn't look like even cutting his arm off would help. He'd been here for too long, infected for too long.

"Glenn, hold his arm!" Rick yelled. "Michonne, I need you to use the sword, it'll give the cleanest cut. Give him a better chance."

I was in the doorway beside Noah, who just stared down at the bloody sight. There were two walkers dead on the ground, one small boy that from the pictures over the walls, I assumed to be one of Noah's twin brothers. The other had fallen down over the desk chair.

Rick turned to Isaac. "Help Glenn hold him down—"

"I-I can't," Isaac cut him off, shaking his head before Rick could even get the sentence out. "I can't help, I can't—"

I could see Rick's jaw set, but he didn't try to make him feel bad or guilt him. He knew why Isaac wasn't going to be in the room while we cut off Tyreese's hand. "Keep an eye out for walkers, kill anything that tries getting in, alright? Can you do that?"

"Yeah," he nodded.

"Good," Rick patted his shoulder before quickly retracting his hand. "Go!"

Isaac left the room past me and Noah, and I spoke up when he was out of earshot. "He doesn't look good, I don't know that he's going to make it."

"We have to try," Rick said. "Get a towel, something to cover it when we make the cut. Need to hide this from Isaac as well as we can, we need all the help we can to get out of here. Then we have to get him back before he bleeds out."

"Is he going to make it that far?" Glenn asked.

"We have to try," Rick repeated sternly. "You hold him!"

I ran out of the room as Rick barked instructions, and I began looking for a towel as he instructed, a clean one so the wound wouldn't get infected as we brought him back to the car. I grabbed one from a cupboard in the bathroom and shook out any of the dust I could before bringing it back to the room.

"One hit! clean! Go!"

I returned to see Michonne swing the sword down, pulling it back up just as quickly so she didn't cause any more damage. I knew that this could work, I'd seen this work before, so I held out hope that, like Hershel, Tyreese would make it.

"Rick!"

I threw him the towel, and he used his belt to secure it around his arm so we could carry him out of the house. Noah looked distraught, watching by the door to the bedroom, his breathing short as he was shaking his head.

"Help me get him up!" Rick told Glenn, as they each tried to heave Tyreese to his feet. "Let's go!"

"Through the back," Michonne led us out.

"Isaac! This way!" Rick called for him as they carried Tyreese out the back door.

"We've got to break the chain," Rick yelled.

I slammed the axe into the wall and pushed onto the fence. There were ten or so on the other side of the fence, not something we'd be able to deal with. I pulled out my gun and put my other arm over the fence, balancing myself with the axe before shooting the farthest two away. "Not yet!"

"We have to!" he yelled.

"We can use the bat," Glenn said.

I jumped down from the fence, standing behind Glenn as he tried to break the chain.

"I got him," Noah rushed to take Glenn's place to keep Tyreese on his feet.

Isaac didn't look back, not wanting to see the blood or his arm, but once the gates opened, the alternative would be fighting a small herd of walkers. I could see the contemplation on his face, but he just kept his eyes forward.

"Can you hold him up?" Rick asked Noah, briefly releasing Tyreese.

"Yeah," he nodded.

Rick grabbed his gun and rushed forward as Glenn broke the chain, pulling it out from the gate. "Get ready!"

Glenn pulled the gate back, almost falling over as a walker came around to bite him. I placed my gun against its head, shooting it before it could get a bite off, not that it didn't try. Glenn gave me a nod before turning to stab the next one before it could make it too far or get to Tyreese.

Rick shot the next one through the gates as Michonne and Isaac worked on the other side to keep the attention off of the man bleeding out. He was on the ground now, as Noah was unable to keep his weight up.

Rick stepped forward over the bodies as a walker slipped by him, so he spun around and sent off a shot that landed in the walker's shoulder. Noah didn't see it as he tried to keep Tyreese awake and only saw as Rick sent off a second shot which hit the walker in the head, blood flying out.

"Into the woods, back the way we came!" Rick yelled as he and Glenn lifted Tyreese back up. "Come on!"

We ran down the road, and the grass banking back into the forest. Walkers had heard the commotion and were coming towards us as they ran around. I went to pull out my gun to take out a walker that was going to follow us when Rick stopped me.

"Leave it!"

I clenched my teeth and followed after them, letting the walker follow us as it tumbled down the short hill behind us. I knew this was going to get so much worse when I remembered how we made it to Shirewilt, and before long, the wires came into view.

"Noah, help us!" Rick called, as they tried getting Tyreese to step over the wires. "Ace, Isaac! Deal with any walkers!"

"Yeah," I yelled, sliding underneath the wires myself. I could barely get myself through this maze, there wasn't anything I could do to help Tyreese.

"I got you. Easy now, easy," Rick was saying as they tried heaving Tyreese over the wires. "Okay, one, two, three."

All of them grunted as they tried to lift his weight, pulling him along. As they heaved, Tyreese didn't move, and I could see his foot tangled between the wires which stopped him from being able to move. Michonne was the one to see it.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait!"

Glenn rushed back and yelled out "Isaac!" as a walker grew closer to him. Isaac shot it before it could get close, which was probably the better move, kill it before it could get too close to Tyreese and the blood splatter could get into his arm and infect him again.

As Glenn opened the wires up, they pulled him through and Tyreese fell on the ground. His eyes were closing as he lay there, his body going very still as everyone began yelling for him to open his eyes. Rick knelt and gave his shoulder some hard pats to wake him up.

"You got to hold on, man. Hold on!"

"His feet! Get his feet," Glenn said.

Michonne and Noah did as they were told, and when Rick went to help lift Tyreese by his shoulders, they all heaved and grunted as they had to carry him the rest of the way through the forest. Me and Isaac ran ahead, and I checked around for walkers.

We passed the bones on the ground as the clearing and the cars came into view, still where we left them. Glenn rushed to climb into the car first as the rest of them carried him over, and Isaac just stood back, his face grim as he caught a glimpse of the wound.

"Come on, give him to me!" Glenn said as they heaved him into the car. "Bring him in. I got him."

"Hold him up."

"You're all right," Glenn was telling him. "You're all right."

As soon as he was settled, Rick shut the door and ran around to the other side of the car, talking on the walkie. "Carol, we're at the car, we need to cauterise the arm and wrap it," Rick was saying down the radio. "Get Sasha and Carl away. They don't need to see this."

As he put the radio down, I moved to sit in the passenger seat as Noah had taken the one beside Tyreese and Glenn and Michonne had taken the boot. Rick wiped his arm on his trouser leg and pulled the keys from his pocket, before throwing them to Isaac.

"Isaac, can you drive?"

Isaac nodded and caught the keys. "Yeah."

"Floor it," Rick was telling him. "You know the way back?"

"I do, yeah," he nodded.

Isaac sat down beside me, noticeably avoiding the scene behind him as Rick slid in the car beside Noah, who sat beside Tyreese. Isaac turned on the engine and tried moving when the car just growled but stayed in the same place it was.

"We're stuck!" He said, revving more and more as the car yelled out. "Come on, come on, come on, come on."

With one more squeal, the car slammed forward into the truck in front of us, sending the boot flying open as a group of walkers fell out of the vehicle—no, not just walkers. The heads, the other halves of the bodies we found scattered outside the wall.

On each of their foreheads were the carved letter 'W'.

"What the fuck?!" I screeched. "Is that a 'W'?"

"Isaac, we gotta go!" Rick reminded him.

"Sorry," he breathed out and reversed as some of the bodies fell to the ground in front of us, but some remained on the bonnet. Isaac drove out of the woods and back onto the road to camp, where the others would be waiting just miles down the road.

I could see his face as he drove, a mixture of worry and disgust of having to be that close to the walkers, to look at them even if it was through the window. I know why he didn't just immediately turn the car to get rid of them, because it would shake Tyreese around, maybe hurt his arm even more, but it was more important that we got back safely, and if Isaac was behind the wheel, that meant not having walkers on the bonnet.

"Shake them off," I told him.

Isaac glanced back, he didn't want to move the car that much but I could see the hesitance on his face of driving with walker corpses on the bonnet. "Yeah."

Everything was silent in the car as he drove, and I leaned back in the seat, resting my hip that was screaming out in pain. I wish I could've taken the Naproxen Rick found for me, because, even if it rotted my stomach, that would still probably feel better than I did right then.

In the seat behind me, I heard Tyreese quietly mutter. "Turn it off."

"Tyreese?"

I looked back over my shoulder. I could've sworn I heard him say something, but it was faint, and as I looked back over my shoulder, his eyes were closing, closed, and his chest stopped moving as the last breath left him.

"Rick," I said, reaching an arm back between the gap of the door and the seat, grabbing his other hand and squeezing it a little to see if he'd wake up. " I think he's . . . he's gone."

Rick leaned over Noah, a hand on Tyreese's face as he tried to shake him awake, but Tyreese was unresponsive. I clenched my teeth and turned the other way to look back through the middle, but still, there was nothing.

He was dead.

Isaac was once again cringing in the seat beside me, and he tried to look over his shoulder. "Is he—?"

I pulled my sleeve down over my hand and used it to block his view, gently pushing his face back to the road. "Don't look."

"He's gonna—gonna turn . . . I-I don't want . . . I can't—" he was shaking his head, tears growing in his eyes. I couldn't tell if he was sad or whether it was just his symptoms taking over.

"Isaac, pull over," Rick told him, hearing the panic in his voice rising.

Isaac nodded, following the order immediately as he stopped the car. The second it had stopped, he climbed out and walked away, not looking back as everyone followed suit. Glenn climbed over the seat to help Rick pull Tyreese out of the car as Isaac fell to his knees further away, covering the sides of his eyes so he didn't see anything happening behind him.

When they checked one more time, looking down at him as he lay on the ground, it was undeniable. Rick stood up and walked away, staring off down the road in disappointment and grief. My eyes flicked between his body and Isaac.

"We have to . . ." I didn't want to say much more, to let Isaac know.

"Yeah," Rick looked back over his shoulder, wiping under his nose with the back of his hand before he nodded. He reached for his knife and came back to kneel on the ground beside him. Rick lifted his head off the ground and stabbed it into the back of his head, destroying the brain before he could turn.

Tyreese was dead.

"What about—?" Noah trailed off, glancing at Isaac as he wiped his eyes.

Rick looked up, realising that it could be a problem, he couldn't even drive when Tyreese had died, and now he'd have to stay in the car back to camp with all that blood and his dead body. There was no way he was going to do that.

"Isaac, are you going to be able to get in the car if we?" Isaac swallowed, before looking back at the body, and I could see him shaking his head, but I don't think that was his answer. Maybe it was. It didn't even seem like he could answer at that point. He just turned away again, trying to stammer out an answer that he could try.

But he shouldn't have to, not after today.

"We can walk back," I gave an option. "You guys have to bury him, so it'll give us some time to get back."

"Would you want to do that?" Michonne asked. "We can send someone back in the car to fetch you guys."

"Yeah," Isaac nodded. "Yeah. I want to . . . yeah."

"Okay," Rick nodded. "We can send Martinez back with the other car when we get to the others," he turned to Michonne and Noah. "Get him into the car."

"Yeah," she said.

Rick nodded for me and Glenn to follow him to the side. "If you walk back together, we can get the funeral done without him, keep him calm," he said in a low voice. "I can tell Martinez to take his time getting you guys, give us some time to deal with it."

"I think he'd be okay with being there if he hadn't seen any of it," Glenn added in a whisper. "But after today? It's probably better that he misses it. We'll have to keep an eye on him, how many times he washes hands or something so he doesn't hurt himself."

"Take it slow," Rick said to me. "Maybe even rest up for a while, just give him some time."

"We will," I said.

"Go now," he said.

I nodded and walked over to Isaac. He looked up from the ground and I nodded for him to follow me, so he pushed himself up with his blue gloves on the ground and walked after me, not looking back at the car as the others climbed back in.

They drove off ahead of us, and we walked in silence down the road. We walked for maybe five, ten minutes before I made us stop, giving the excuse that my leg hurt and that Rick was going to send someone back anyway.

"They were so disappointed in me. Rick was—I couldn't do anything I—" he trailed off, shaking his head as we walked down the road. "I was supposed to be the one helping you today."

They weren't disappointed in him, they were trying to help him, but I knew now with his OCD that he was just going to be thinking that they were upset that he needed to get away from the blood or the body. He couldn't help those thoughts, and he couldn't stop them. Even if I told him that they wanted to make sure he was safe, he wouldn't be able to believe me.

We sat on the road in silence as I remembered all the times that Isaac had tried helping me, and now part of me wished I'd agreed to accept his help. At least then he could feel like he did what he'd set out to do.

Maybe twenty or thirty minutes later, I saw the glint of our other vehicle down the road as Martinez was coming to pick us up. Isaac and I remained seated, and I stared down the road, watching him approach us at the slower pace he'd been instructed to use.

"We help each other," I said. "It's the only way this works."

Isaac looked at me as I pushed myself up, and lowered a hand down to help him, which surprisingly, he accepted.