Reviews:

Bucket Hat — More Daryl? Well, boy, do I have the chapter for you!

Rhys' shirt clung to his back, sweat making his whole face glisten and drip in the heat. The others looked just as bad as he did — skin red and sticky. The sun had come up a while ago, and the shade from the trees was the only thing keeping the blistering heat off their heads. But that went away, too, when Connie ushered them out of the forest and onto a road.

They weaved between a pile-up of dusty cars on an old basketball court, stepping over a fallen hoop pole that Dog wriggled under.

Connie pointed to a tall building ahead — it looked maybe ten stories high — an office building with balconies on every floor overlooking the road. She pointed at all six of us, then gestured up.

"Take the high ground?" Daryl asked. "Yeah."

Connie scratched something onto her notepad. Rhys rose on his toes to read it over Daryl's shoulder.

'Chokepoint'

Daryl glanced at Rhys and Carl, who both nodded. "Good idea," he grunted at her.

They crossed the road towards the building, Henry pulling a face. "I don't understand."

Daryl glanced over his shoulder as they moved. "They use walkers to protect themselves, right?"

Henry nodded.

"So we go up someplace the walkers can't go. We separate the living from the dead." Daryl looked at Lydia, who was following at the back, hugging herself and watching where they came from. "They travel in a herd, but there's only like five or six of them in the middle, right?"

"Yeah," she said, her voice shaking. "But if we go up there, we're trapped."

Carl reached the front door first, kicking it in after the handle broke off when he tried it. No walkers sprung out from the darkness inside. "We won't be trapped. Once they come up, we'll take them out."

"We've done it before," Rhys mentioned. "Even if she sent an army, we'd just take them out one at a time."

Henry stared at him and cleared his throat awkwardly. "You have?"

"Alpha's not gonna send an army 'cause she doesn't have to," Lydia interjected, a cold, scared look in her eyes. "She'll send Beta."

Rhys and Carl looked at each other, just the name giving them pause — the way she said it. Connie glanced over her shoulder to the woods then. The trees seemed to curl in on themselves as if they hid something precious.

"I'm sick of running," Daryl grunted. "This Beta— he their best?"

Lydia nodded.

"Good... we kill him first."

Connie headed straight to the top floor without much warning, scrambling over and disappearing past furniture that was barricading the stairwell. Carl went after her.

"We need to make sure the other two stairwells are secured," Daryl said. "Northside and South."

"We'll check out the South," Henry said, standing in the stairwell doorway and looking down a dark corridor to a pair of double doors with a rusted exit sign above them.

Rhys frowned but nodded, he pulled his pack off his shoulder and fished out a spare flashlight. "Take Dog, too."

Daryl watched the two disappear through the doors, face scrunched to one side like he wasn't sure, but he pointed to another hallway. "North is this way."

Rhys followed, knife in hand, as they checked each room on the way for stray walkers. He pointed his own flashlight at the back of Daryl's head. "You been thinkin' about what we're gonna do with her?"

Daryl nodded.

"And?"

"Ain't up to me."

Rhys shook his head, kicking an empty cardboard box to the side of the hallway. It crumpled in on itself, wet from a leak dripping down from the mouldy ceiling tiles. "Carl said she could go to Alexandria, but Michonne won't like that. I don't think he would either, not really. Not with his sister and brother there."

"He offered... so I guess that makes it your choice," Daryl grunted, pointing his light at a faded brown sign on a door to their left.

NORTH STAIRWELL

"Here."

It was locked. Daryl peered through the glass in the door.

"Blocked from the other side," he said.

"I'm thinking Connie's been here before."

Daryl nodded. "Let's get them two and go up."

-Henry's POV-

The top floor was brighter. I guess it must have been under construction when the fall happened because the windows were just plastic sheets. The walls were just insulation and drywall with tools scattered around the concrete floor. Connie found a hole in the floor filled with food, water, and medical packs. More likely stored than found. Daryl called it smart — a secret stash for an emergency.

Carl eventually came over to where Rhys and I were breaking open a gap in the furniture blockade at the top of the east stairwell. He was holding two bottles of water that Connie must have given him from her stash.

My throat felt like sandpaper, so I drank the small bottle dry quickly. Rhys was still pulling at a side cabinet that wouldn't come loose, so I bumped his shoulder and handed him the other bottle. Sometimes he would act like he couldn't hear people, point to his ear and shrug. But I'm pretty sure it's just his way of not leaving his own head.

Carl patted my shoulder and told me he had it, helping Rhys finally yank the cabinet free. I went to find Lydia but stopped around the corner to listen when Rhys started talking.

"I've got to go."

"What do you mean?" Carl asked him.

"We can't take Lydia to Hilltop or Alexandria... Kingdom, neither." Rhys sighed. "Daryl said it's my choice. And, well, there's a whole world out there. I think I should take her and go."

I almost walked around the corner to yell at him for being an idiot. I would have. But Carl spoke first... softer than I would have been.

"You can't just leave everyone."

"I don't want to."

Carl was quiet, but it felt purposeful, like enough time to fit an eye roll or to fold your arms.

"Seriously," Rhys said. "I don't."

"Okay, what about Sasha, Henry, Tara... the rest of us."

"You all have each other... I mean, shit, Carl... this is the first time we've all spoken in years. The future's actually looking like it might be ours again."

"And so you're gonna leave?"

"Lydia doesn't have anyone." Rhys' voice trailed quieter until I had to lean close against the wall to hear through even the thin ply. "We both know what it feels like. To feel abandoned and used like that."

My eyebrows arched up as I listened. Rhys had obviously told me about those people that took him on the road all those years ago. But he'd never mentioned anything happening to Carl. In fact, the way Rhys used to tell me about him made it sound like Carl had lived the most painless life. I realised then that it was probably just how Carl made him feel.

Carl argued, and Rhys argued back. I pushed away from the wall when Dog spotted me and trotted over with his head tilted curiously and almost blew my cover. Needing to do something, I found a closet on the far end of the floor with mostly torn coats and tattered old work boots, but in the corner, a broom was leaning against the wall. I snapped off the head and sharpened it to a point. Then I found Lydia hammering boards onto a window in an old office on the floor below. Since we're so high up, I guessed it was more of a needing to feel useful thing.

"Hey, Lydia..."

She turned to look at me. Her eyes were red.

I held out the broken broom turned spear. "I found it in a coat closet... sharpened the tip."

She took it, then looked at mine, which I'd left leaning against a pillar behind me.

"Yours doesn't have a point."

"No, I don't need one," I said, not meaning to smirk. "I just thought a spear would be easier for you."

She tapped a muddy finger against the pointed wood. "Easier to kill, you mean?"

I frowned, sighing, frustrated that she didn't get we need to defend ourselves.

"These are my people," she muttered. "They've looked out for me for most of my life. Sorry— I can't... I can't do it."

"No, it's okay..." I took the spear back and leant it on the wall beside mine. "Then don't."

When I turned back her eyes were wide. "Will you?"

"I'll try not to."

She looked concerned still.

"I promise."

She watched me as I tipped over a filing cabinet, stacking a chair on it to make some cover.

"Why are you doing this?"

I glanced at her, frowning. "Well, you didn't want to go back, did you?"

"No— but that's no reason for you to risk your life for me."

"Sure it is," I said, smiling at her. "I mean, I just wasn't gonna let them take you if you didn't want to go. It was the right thing to do."

"No, it was a stupid thing to do," she growled. "You made my mother look weak. She won't let this go. She can't."

"Then we'll run..."

"Will you stop?! There's no place to go where she won't find us."

"Come one, sure there is..." My heart was pounding as I realised why Rhys would risk everything to help her. He wouldn't be doing it for himself like Carl asked. He wouldn't do it for her like I thought. He'd be doing it for me, because he knew what I was going to say next. "Lydia... there's a whole world out there."

"Did you mean what you said last night?" She paused. "That you'd go with me?"

"Yeah, I did."

She stepped closer. There was a breeze coming from somewhere in the room — a whisp of air that tickled my neck and carried the smell of stale furniture.

"Why did you come for me? For real this time." She shook her head. "Tell me why."

I couldn't breathe. The breeze was no good, and my lungs felt flat.

"Because... I care about you."

She kissed me then, her cold palms pressed against my cheeks for a second.

"Hey..."

We both jumped apart at Daryl's voice from the door behind us.

"Come on," he hissed, leaning against the door. "We're headed up to keep watch."

It didn't take long until the whisperers were here.

Lydia spotted them first. Daryl shot down at them from the balcony but only managed to get the real walkers. When he came back in, he told us he saw Beta.

"Think we can take him?" Rhys asked, swallowing nervously.

"He's a big fucker," Daryl grunted. "But yeah."

"They'll be more," Lydia whispered. "Three or four."

Daryl led the way up another flight of stairs, taking Lydia and Connie with him down a hallway while the rest of us started blockading the door. Dog galloped after them.

"Don't we want them to get in?" I asked Rhys as he checked if the barricade would hold.

He nodded. "Not this door, though. They'll hopefully split up their forces between the south and north stairwells... Connie and Daryl will take south; we've got the north."

I grabbed my staff and followed Carl and Rhys as they jogged down the hall until we reached the north stairwell that came out into an office space. "What about Lydia?"

"She won't fight," Carl said. "Daryl's gonna hide her with Dog 'till we're done."

That's when we heard running on the floor below us — more than one set of feet sprinting towards the stairs. I could see the other two were scared. Daryl told me how awful that night in the graveyard was.

"Okay, we hide and surprise them," Carl said, pointing Rhys and me to a corner, before wheeling a chair away from a desk to make space under it.

Rhys nodded, about to move, but Carl caught his arm, pressing their lips together and holding them there for a moment.

"Oh," Carl whispered, "and don't die."

I ducked behind a cabinet with Rhys while Carl crawled under the desk.

Then it was quiet.

We waited.

Rhys' breathing was deep — low heavy breaths as he knocked an arrow to his bowstring behind me.

I heard the stairwell door creak open.

A shuffling of feet, then a knife came into the light beside me, a hand creeping past us.

I struck my staff down, disarming the Whisperer. Before she could speak, I struck her again in the stomach, then cracked the tip of the bow staff across her head. She slammed against the filling cabinet and then fell to the ground unconscious.

Footsteps dashed in the shadows ahead of me. I saw another whisperer draw a bow. But Rhys was faster, leaning from cover and loosing an arrow that found its mark, more fatally than my blows, in the Whisperer's chest. They groaned and fell to their knees.

"Go!" Rhys hissed at me.

Not a second after, a throwing knife collided with the filing cabinet beside us. Rhys pushed me back as the blade's owner sprinted from the dark with another. She had long, tangled dreadlocks that whipped around her face as she began madly slashing at Rhys' torso, missing by an inch each time as he sprung backwards and back again. Carl rushed out from under the desk behind her. She heard him and swung her knife around... but Carl caught her arm and twisted his own knife into her neck.

Rhys pushed me backwards again, and I rushed to the next room.

Every shadow seemed to move behind the furniture and against the walls.

I heard someone yell from the room behind me...

Should I go back?

Was it the Whisperer?

Do they need help?

No. Listen to Rhys.

I kept running, hurdling over a knocked-over trashcan and past a desk turned on its side. Before I could look over my shoulder, someone came from in front, tackling me to the ground. I tried to hit them back with my staff, but they knocked it from my grip, finding the spear I made for Lydia leaning against a wall and driving it into my leg.

I felt the flesh tear.

I'd never felt that before.

The skin and muscle of your body splitting away and bursting open.

It's not something you can be ready for.

I screamed.

The Whisperer raised the spear high above his head.

"NO!" I yelped.

Before he could kill me, Dog bounded from the dark and leapt at the Whisperer, getting a scream from him as his bared teeth sank deep into the guy's arm.

I found my staff and managed to pull myself up long enough to crack the Whispers over the head with it, both of us falling to the floor after.

Then Lydia was beside me, Carl and Rhys rushing in behind her.

"Henry!" Rhys gasped, pushing Lydia aside as he shone his flashlight over my leg, checking the oozing wound in my thigh.

"It's okay..." I panted, nodding and trying to convince myself the same. "It's okay, Lydia let Dog out."

Rhys glanced over his shoulder at her, watching as she bit at her cardigan sleeve and stared at my leg.

Rhys nodded at her briefly. "Thank you."

Carl watched the door we came from with his revolver up and ready.

"We should get Henry patched up, then go check on Daryl and Connie."

Rhys nodded, getting Lydia to help him hoist me up onto a table.

It didn't take long. Rhys told me that his friend Rosita from Alexandria taught him most of this stuff, but I guess hanging out with Enid every day probably helped, too. When he was done wrapping my leg with a torn shirt that Carl found in the same coat closet I got Lydia's spear from, Daryl and Connie found us. Both of them were bruised and bloody, but no one asked much more than Carl did—

"He dead?"

Daryl nodded at him. "Knocked his ass down four stories."

Rhys grimaced. "Good."

Connie had the smart idea to shoot some car windows with her slingshot from the balcony to lure the dead outside away, and when she got back, Daryl told us we should go.

"Figure out where we're going?" I asked.

Daryl glanced at Rhys.

Rhys pinched his nose and sighed.

"You think Alexandria will let us in?" he asked Carl.

"Sure," Carl chuckled.

"No, we can't," I interjected. "If her people find out we're there—"

"We ain't stayin'," Daryl jumped in. "We'll get you stitched up, back on your feet, and then we'll move on. All of us."

Rhys looked at him, and Daryl was smiling a little more than I'd ever seen from him. Then Connie put her hand on Lydia's shoulder and nodded in agreement. Carl shrugged, holstered his gun, and nodded with the rest.

"Wait..." I stuttered. "But, where are we going?"

Everyone looked at Daryl.

"I heard there's a whole world out there." He said. "Come on."

Rhys' eyes narrowed for a moment at me, and then he chuckled.