Don't Get Dead (Volume 2)

by Bobbie15Jo

With the war at the prison finally over, Ace and her family start turning it into a home. Under the act of the council, they opened their group up with three simple questions: "How many walkers have you killed? How many people have you killed? Why?" But nothing can ever be that easy . . . [Season 4 ] - I only own the rights to the OC, and a few other characters

50. This is the Beginning

Noah died.

That was the news that greeted Abraham and I as we drove through the gates. Noah was dead, Aiden was dead and Tara was dying in the infirmary. There was an accident—a grenade, and Tara hit her head on something and hasn't woken up since.

It was surprising how that kind of conversation could make the construction workers disperse so quickly.

Those were the only names mentioned and details were left vague as Rosita danced around some of the details. It was either like she didn't know what happened or couldn't say, not that it mattered. I knew I would figure it out.

I already had suspicions because of her wording: Glenn said . . . That meant somebody was saying something else. Somebody was lying—Nicholas was lying. My mind did slinker to Eugene who one, didn't want to be there and two, he was known for his dishonesty. But as much as I hated to admit it, Eugene was too smart to miss a grenade on a walker.

"Where is everyone?" I asked when Rosita finished talking.

"They're okay," she said. "Glenn and Martinez are at the infirmary with Tara."

I was glad she only mentioned those two names because she knew those were the only two names I cared about anymore. It was good to know they were unharmed in the ordeal, but not seeing them immediately had sent a blizzard of thoughts through my mind that I could not penetrate.

Abraham, who had been silent throughout this conversation, jutted his head in the direction of the infirmary. "Head on over."

I was already on my way before he could finish his sentence, walking around the pond to get to the small building dubbed the infirmary.

My heart was in my throat as the information finally sank in; I had barely gotten the chance to speak to Noah before he died. It was becoming increasingly common with the recent deaths: Bob, Noah, Tyreese. If Tara didn't make it through the night that would be another member of our group we lost that I didn't know.

In some cases, I didn't have the chance. On the run with Bob, he stole alcohol instead of helping the group and the next time I had seen him was when he was leaning over the trough. It was days later when he was bitten.

With Noah, I was just pissed at the universe and didn't feel the need to drag him down with me, not after Beth.

As I reached the infirmary, I saw a shadowy figure illuminated by the dim lights in the infirmary and my pace picked up.

"Glenn!" I called, seeing him sitting outside.

His head snapped up and he stood before running over to me and crushing me in a hug. "I heard about the attack at the construction site, are you okay?"

As Glenn released me from the hug, I stared at him as he started inspecting my face, his arms coming down my shoulders as he looked for bites or scratches or injuries. His eyes were wet as if tears were going to spill over.

"Those were just walkers," I told him, my hand coming to sit on the crook between his neck and his shoulder as if to steady him. "What happened with you?"

Glenn stopped, freezing up for a moment. He then shook his head as he pulled me back to come sit on the curb, where he had been when I found him.

"We were split up in the store, shooting these walkers," he began to explain. "There were so many of them. And—and I saw this walker, it had a grenade on it and if it got hit—" he took a steadying breath before shaking his head. "I tried to tell Aiden but it was too late. When I woke up he'd been knocked back onto his metal . . . I don't even know. Tara was hurt so Martinez and Eugene got her out. Me and Noah tried saving him, but we needed Nicholas and he just . . . he ran."

Fucking coward, something I wanted to say aloud, but the look on Glenn's face told me to keep my venom inside.

"We had to leave Aiden behind," he said. "And when we caught up to him we got trapped at either end of this revolving door, me and Noah with Nicholas on the other side. We were trying to break the glass to get out, but Nicholas just shoved through," his voice broke and he was shaking his head. "I tried holding onto him—" Glenn choked off as I buried him in a hug. "I tried."

"I'm sorry," I whispered, trying to keep my own emotions at bay as tears trickled down my face.

His breaths were shaky as he held me, and I pushed myself up onto my knees beside him. My arms wrapped around the top of his shoulders, one rubbing up and down in an attempt to comfort him after the loss. All I could do was be there.

When he had enough he gently pushed me away with hands over my ribs, making me sit back down on the curb beside him as we both took a second to wipe our eyes. My breath stammered as it entered my lungs.

I looked around after a moment, remembering that Rosita told me who else would be there. "Where's Martinez?"

"He's inside with Tara," Glenn said. "He helped Eugene get her out and came back for us after."

Keeping my mouth shut, I tried to gauge how he felt about that. Glenn disliked—no, hated Martinez. I tried to pretend it was better than it was, that I hadn't been inconsiderate of Glenn's feelings by saying he could stay with us. Martinez was one of the people who saw Maggie after what the Governor did to her, and I knew why he blamed him.

"He chased down Nicholas," Glenn said. "He didn't know what happened, he could see the blood but . . . I told him to stop Nicholas and he just chased him down while I was trying to get out."

I nodded, he had always been selfish to a point, but since joining us, Martinez seemed to do whatever he could for my people. If there had still been tension between them, I think Martinez had broken it today—one small win amongst all the horror.

"He's one of us," he added after a moment of silence.

"And these people?" I asked, gauging.

"We are them," he said. "We're a part of them."

Still, I could not believe that. I clenched my teeth and stared at him, not out of anger or frustration, but because they did not deserve him. If only Deanna or her people could act as inclusive as Glenn was—even now he hated one of their own, he was still willing to call himself one of their group.

It just doesn't seem that way, I wanted to tell him, because it would justify the plan I had with Rick and Carol. Less so now with Daryl because he was gone with Aaron, both of them looking for more people to recruit.

"Do you want to take a walk tomorrow?" I asked after a while, thinking of ways to make him feel better.

"I'm not allowed out until she finds out who she thinks is at fault," Glenn finally said. "Neither of us are allowed our guns, or to go beyond the walls."

I frowned. "Nicholas lied."

"I'm hoping she sees through it."

"She just lost her son," I said, my voice harder. "Nicholas was his friend, she might be too emotional to make that decision."

I wasn't sure if anyone had seen Deanna since it happened, whether they had spoken to her or seen how she felt about Glenn or Nicholas since she had interviewed them herself because apparently, that was something that had to be done when they came back. Never mind letting them breathe.

"This place saved him," I said after a while. "Nicholas."

Nicholas would be dead, had the walls not gone up, something that I suspected of most people in this community. Abraham had to offer to train the builders to kill walkers, over a year into a world where we had to live with them.

"I'm going to talk to him," Glenn said, "tell him that he needs to back off and stay behind the walls. I can't—I don't want you going out there if he is."

"Okay," I said softly.

I wasn't going to argue or say that I could handle myself, because he'd just lost Noah in front of his eyes—someone his sister-in-law worked so hard to save. I could see in his eyes, the way they drooped and his gaze drifted to the ground.

It broke my heart to see him that way.

"You should go," Glenn said. "Go get some food and sleep, it's getting late."

"I'm going to talk to Martinez first," I said, standing. "You should get home too."

"I will, soon," he promised.

Tara was the first thing I saw as I entered the room, covered by a white sheet with a bandage wrapped around her head. She'd turned pale and it looked like she was sick, and my heart jumped into my throat when I saw the damage done to her.

That could have been me, if I'd decided to go on that run today, I could have been in the same place.

Martinez was sitting in the corner of the room on the other side of her bed, and he only cast a glance to the door to see who it was. He gave a nod as a greeting and kept his head propped up by his hand, his elbow on the armrest.

"Is she okay?" I asked after a moment.

"Rosita's been working with Pete," Martinez said. "She says that we're just waiting right now." He looked up and around like he hadn't realised she was gone until now. "Where is she?"

"She was with Abraham at the gate," I said.

Martinez paused for a second, and his throat bobbed before nodding as he sank back down in his chair. I knew he and Tara were close friends, they knew each other before either of them had joined us, and spent a little time together before the Governor came back to the prison. Martinez had been selfless since joining us.

"Apparently you've won over Glenn," I tried, hoping that would get him to engage more.

Martinez only nodded, taking a second to look back over his shoulder. "I'm not really in the mood right now, Ace. My shoulder hurts like hell and it's been one shitty, sucky day."

I didn't ask about his shoulder, knowing he probably knocked it in the blast. That and one of his best friends was lying on a bed in front of him with a bandage wrapped around her head, and it was unclear as to whether she'd wake up.

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."

I stared at him for a while, but there was nothing but gloom in his expression, and I didn't blame him. I don't think he was allowed to leave the walls now either if Nicholas had lied about the reason Martinez caught up to him and hit him. There was blood on his knuckles.

"Do you want me to go?" I asked.

"Yeah, you shouldn't see this," he answered, not looking at me.

I nodded and made my way out of the infirmary to find Glenn gone, his shadow walking up the street past Deanna's house to get home. On the way back, I didn't follow him or pass Deanna's house. It didn't feel right.

Instead, I turned the other way and headed down towards the watchtower before turning right with the road. I past the cars that were left near the front gates and turned myself to look at the prettier sight, the pond opposite.

I looked to the trees we sat by the night of my attack, the night of the party. The night Isaacc asked me to be his girlfriend. It was one of the only good things I could cling to at that moment, him asking me to be his girlfriend and our kiss.

But in the trees, I saw some movement, a shadow lowering his head by the same tree where me and Isaac had been drinking that night. I frowned and took a few steps closer to make sense of the shape I was seeing, and when the figure finally came into view, I recognised it as him. Isaac.

"Are you okay?" I called as I neared.

His features were clearer as I grew closer, sitting on his jacket, the dark grey t-shirt clinging to his skin as he stared off at the pond. I could even see the stains down his cheeks reflecting from the light across the water, streams down his face.

"Just thinking," he mumbled.

"Can I sit?" I asked him quietly.

He nodded after a moment.

I took a seat on the ground beside him and looked around. Even though this place was surrounded by a lot of areas that received a lot of foot traffic, it was one of the most private places I'd seen. The dip in the roots and the bank to the pond made this place almost invisible.

Isaac was shaken by what happened on the day of the run; I had no idea if he knew about the walkers at the construction site, but I had no intention of telling him. He needed to grieve—he and Noah were close.

"Reg gave me this," Isaac handed me a notebook that had been beside him on the ground.

I looked inside, and there was only one line in the front: This is the beginning. It cut off there like someone had been expecting to continue the sentence, to write about something, though I wasn't sure of what they were writing.

"He gave it to Noah this morning," Isaac explained quietly. "Noah wanted to learn architecture too, learn how to rebuild the walls if something happened," Isaac wiped the corner of his eye with the palm of his hand. "Noah was going to work with me."

"I'm so sorry," I whispered.

"Reg told me I should keep it," he said, taking it from my hands. "That I should do what he told Noah and write everything down, continue it for him," he closed the book on his lap and held it up with one hand. "I mean, this is it, isn't it? The next graveyard."

His tone was angry, probably angry about losing Noah, maybe over how his death was lied about to frame Glenn. Isaac already carried the burden of the drawings he held in his notebook that was falling short on pages, and now Reg had given him the means to continue that in honour of someone else.

"It doesn't have to be," I whispered. "But I do think Noah would have wanted you to have it over Reg. It's up to you what you do with it," I promised. "You could carry on what Noah wanted to do, write everything down, but that has to be your choice."

Isaac put it down beside him as he wiped his eye with his sleeve. "I don't know, I don't—I just want someone to tell me what to do."

"I'm sorry," I whispered again.

I placed my hand on the clothed part of his arm, I still didn't understand him enough to decide when was right to touch him, and maybe the kiss the other night would have been too much had I been thinking clearer. It was something I'd work out over time, I believed, but now it seemed best not to upset him further.

And at this moment, I wished we had more beers. Me and Isaac had been here drinking over my problems, and it seemed only fitting that I did the same thing for him, giving him the company he needed to grieve what happened.

But I could see the exhaustion in his eyes as he stared at the infirmary across the water, and while I didn't want to demand he should go to bed, I waited it out for him to declare he was tired himself. Maybe he wouldn't, maybe he'd stay up all night, which meant I'd be there with him too.

After maybe ten minutes, Isaac finally wiped his eyes and spoke up. "I don't want to go into my room."

"Why?" I frowned, scooching a little closer.

"I just . . . he's gone," he broke down, burying his head in his knees. "We used to—he used to—"

Isaac couldn't get out a sentence as he tried to explain, but he didn't have to. I understood what he was trying to tell me, that he didn't want to return to his room because he and Noah used to share. I could imagine how a space like that could feel so large now with him gone.

"You don't have to if you don't want to." I would have given him suggestions, but nowhere seemed fitting for him to sleep when he was as upset as he was. Instead, I offered, "You could . . . you could come to mine. Sleep in my room until you can face it again."

There was a pause as he considered, still crying, but now silently as he tried to get himself to settle down. "Thank you," he finally choked out.

"Do you want to go now?"

Isaac nodded at my request, and I stood, offering my hand. As he stood, he reached back down for his jacket and followed me back to the house. Part of me was worried about running into anyone, but the people in my house would probably be asleep at this point, so I didn't worry about it too much.

I took a quick peek into the living room, even though the lights were off, and led Isaac through downstairs towards the back of my house where my bedroom was. He entered the room first, and I closed the door behind us.

I stopped just inside the door as Isaac slowly made his way into the room. He sat down on my bed and began untying his shoes with one foot perched on what was showing of the frame. When he finally looked up, he met my eyes.

"What?"

Still, I hesitated. "I was just wondering if I should sleep on the sofa."

Isaac frowned. "How come?"

"I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable," I said quietly.

He knew what I was talking about immediately, I could tell in the way his eyes flickered to the bed and back to me. I wondered whether he had truly considered the ramifications of his anxieties, whether they'd be able to cope with me beside him.

"I'm not."

I nodded and stepped further into the room, making my way to the double bed that had been pushed back against the wall. That was one of the only ways it would have fitted in my room. As Isaac seemed to claim the outside, I walked down to the end of the bed and climbed up the inside until I was sitting on the pillows.

Isaac lifted the duvet for me, but I shook my head. "I can't."

"Why?" He raised a brow.

"Too warm," I said.

Still, he seemed shocked by this. "You don't sleep under the covers?"

"Not when it's hot out." I pushed the quilt to the side and laid on the bed sheet. "You should take it all, so I don't lay on it."

Isaac pulled the blanket to the side as he settled down, staring up at the ceiling for a while. We both were in silence, and I rested my head on the pillow, trying to sleep. It wasn't too long before Isaac had spoken up again.

"Is this uncomfortable for you?" Isaac asked quietly after a while.

"I thought it might be," I turned on my side to face him. "But no."

Isaac also rolled onto his side, facing me in the bed. "No?"

"No."

"It's not for me either," he said.

Trying to prove that point, he kicked the blanket down his body, leaving it at the end of the bed, getting rid of the one thing that separated us. He scooched a little closer, his hand reaching out to brush my own just barely.

On instinct, I also moved closer until we were barely centimetres apart.

"Are you okay?" I asked quietly.

His other hand held my own in the bed, and he nodded. "I will be."

---

I was roused by a quiet knock on my door. The sound caused movement on the outside of the bed as Isaac shifted in his sleep, moving further onto the side as the duvet tightened around his hips. I swallowed before forcing myself to sit up.

Trying to keep my movements slow, I shuffled down the length of the bed to get around Isaac, but my movements stirred him awake even more. He mumbled out a near-incoherent question along the lines of Is it morning? as he tried to push himself into a sitting position.

"No," I whispered and placed a hand on his shoulder when I stood beside the bed. "No, just go back to sleep."

It didn't take much to get him to lay back down, and his eyes fell closed the second his head hit the pillow. I just looked at him for a second, standing quietly so he didn't wake anymore when the person behind the door knocked again, a little louder.

"Coming," I called quietly as I opened the door.

Rick was the one who'd been knocking, looking at me as I rubbed my eyes at the lamp in the living room. I then tucked an arm between the door and the frame so the sound of creaking didn't wake Isaac further than he'd already been.

"Were you sleeping?" Rick asked apologetically.

I nodded tiredly in response.

"Sorry, I just—" he shook his head. "We need to talk."

I glanced back into my room, a place that would have been an inconspicuous place to talk about what he wanted on any other day, but was now where Isaac was trying to rest after losing one of his closest friends.

"Not in here," I said quickly.

Rick tilted his head. "Why?"

A breath shot through my nose as my face turned pink. "Isaac is sleeping."

I turned and reached inside my room for the trainers that sat just beyond the door. Without opening it fully. When I got them free, I quietly closed it behind me, the mechanism making a muffled curchunk as the latch held it closed.

Rick had careful eyes on me as I sat down on the ground to pull my shoes on, shoving the laces down the sides. "Is he okay?"

"He shared a room with Noah," I said, yanking roughly a few times on the back of my shoe to unfold it from under my heel. "He tried, he just couldn't be in there. Not after—" I took a breath and shook my head as I finally got the trainer on. "He's fine."

I followed Rick into the kitchen as he was leading me out to the back porch of the house.

"Do we have any food?" I asked. "I haven't eaten today."

"I think there's some leftover pasta from a casserole Carol made," Rick nodded to the fridge. "She sent it to Deanna's family."

Because we needed to save face and pretend like Aiden was the biggest loss we suffered today, like Isaac wasn't asleep in my room with tear-stained cheeks like Tara wasn't lying unconscious in the infirmary with a head injury.

I didn't blame Carol, we needed her to like us, a way of making sure she believed Glenn over Nicholas.

I walked over to the counter and grabbed the tub of pasta that had been cooling on the side, before taking a fork from one of the drawers. Rick waited for me, before leading me out onto the porch, where our meetings inside the walls typically happened.

As we stood outside in silence, there was an air between us, but something told me it wasn't his disapproving feelings towards Isaac sleeping in my bed. He seemed to care about that a lot less than I ever expected like something was off about him.

Still, Rick gave me a chance to eat a few mouthfuls of pasta as I leaned against the porch railing, eating greedily. I hadn't gotten used to the concept of having enough food yet, and whenever we had dinner, I noticed myself eating like every meal was going to be my last.

When I finally took a second, looking around at the other houses in the night, Rick finally spoke up. "Pete is hitting Jessie."

I lowered my fork into the tub, blinking a few times. "What?"

The question was supposed to be more of how do you know?

"Sam asked Carol to steal him a gun, said he wanted it to protect someone," Rick explained. "He didn't say who before he ran out, but—"

"He didn't have to," I finished, shoving my fork down into the food. "Fuck."

Whether this messed with our plans or not, it was a horrible situation. I had no idea if anyone else around Alexandria knew, but remembering what happened back at the Atlanta camp, if anyone was aware then they'd just pretend it wasn't happening—especially with Pete, the only doctor.

"Carol told me that I should kill him," Rick said. "I don't know if it's going to come down to that, I might need another plan. Do you think he'd still be open to training you? Teaching you to practise medicine."

I cringed at the idea, only because if that were the case, then one day I would have to tell people that I learnt to save lives because a man was hitting his wife. Frowning, I placed the now-closed tub down on the chair behind me.

"He didn't like me." It was a fact true of many people in this group because I hadn't made a great first impression. But I always thought that Pete's reaction towards me at the party was a little strange, even if I was as antisocial as I had been with the others.

Rick thought for a moment, before shaking his head. "At the party, it was me he didn't like. It had nothing to do with you."

I wanted to ask why, but I assumed I wouldn't enjoy discussing his answer. Had Jessie been the reason Rick had been acting strange, as much as I admired Rick as a person, with the plan we had in place, we shouldn't have cared enough about these people to step in with something like this. We had to make the group like us, and stirring things up was only going to hurt our case.

"I don't want to learn medicine anymore," I reminded him. "Rosita is already working with him, you could talk to her."

"This would be to save Jessie from beatings," he stressed and added quickly. "Maybe even her kids."

"You want me to be bait for someone hitting his wife?"

"Not bait," he said, but he couldn't admit that this plan would keep me out of harm's way, something that was usually his top priority. "But if you're there then that takes up some of his time, distracts him. He'd have to put up a front with you there."

"Why do we care?" I asked, and had realised I had to clarify what I meant quickly. "And I'm not asking that to be mean, because I do care. But—" I stopped, thinking about what I meant. "Back in Atlanta, I asked Shane to help Carol. I could tell what Ed was doing, and I saw bruises on her arms. Sophia was terrified of him, Carl hated him."

Rick twisted his neck to look at me from where he leant on the railing at the mention of his son as if I'd reminded him that we were there in a time when he wasn't.

"Shane wouldn't step in, and I didn't understand. I didn't realise that even cops before would barely get involved in a domestic case like that, not because they didn't want to, but because they just couldn't in some cases," I said, not missing how Rick flinched. "He said he couldn't make him leave because Carol and Sophia may follow or object."

And no blame would have been passed onto either of them if that were the case because that's just the way abusers worked. They made it seem as though they were needed when we have proven that Carol can survive so much better without her piece-of-shit husband.

But I wanted to remind Rick that Jessie could have felt the same way about Pete.

"We didn't have the means in Atlanta to lock up Ed," I told him. "And I remember being so mad at Shane because he wouldn't step in, but it was early. Not even Shane would kill for that at the time."

Still, I wasn't sure if I should have been speaking about him by name with Rick, especially if he was off from his usual character. The last time we spoke of him, Rick said that he never expected me to forget Shane, but the only reason I brought him up this time was because of how the situations overlapped.

"I think you're in one of those cases where you can't do anything," I said. "This place has no way of punishing anyway aside from exiling, and we both know that letting someone go means they can just come right back." I stopped, images of the Governor settling in my mind, before forcing myself to continue. "Deanna will exile him, not before defending him, because he's their only doctor."

And she would consider the exile to be his death because she was so naive about the strengths of people. They don't know the way we do, Abraham reminded me in my head. She didn't know how someone could get away, and live, and ruin your lives in return.

"If we're going to step in, the only thing we could do is kill him," I said. "And both of those things will get someone exiled."

"They can't exile us," he stressed. "They can't send us away, because Deanna doesn't allow any of her people to carry a gun inside the walls. We have three people with access to guns inside the walls right now, four if you count Sasha who could see any conflict from the walls."

I straightened up

"We wouldn't lose a single person if they tried."