Isaac didn't want to let her go—not when he had her so close, their fingers intertwined as Ace stretched their arms out to the side. She smiled up at him from where she sat in the boot of the car, and he leaned down to kiss her, lingering there for a few seconds before straightening up.

He tried to stop himself from peering around, meeting the eyes of the man who had definitely noticed at this point. They had some time to kill while Rick was pacing around, waiting for the Alexandrians to gather for the dry run. But despite the looks from Glenn, Rick, anyone really, the group gave them a surprising amount of privacy that he didn't expect.

As the Alexandrians gathered, he could see Ace getting antsy, her eyes wandering around to keep track of who was there. He knew she just wanted to get a move on, to finish the job and teach the group what they had to do to protect their home.

"We should be going soon."

Isaac leaned down to kiss her again. "Be careful."

"It's just a dry run," she shrugged, not taking her hands back. "You should come, see what it's going to be like tomorrow."

He wanted to go, or at least he did, but Isaac knew better than that. He had to pretend that he didn't notice the looks Rick had given him in the meeting and the tone he used. He didn't want to bring it up around Ace and drive a wedge between them because, in all honesty, Rick was probably right.

"I'll see you when you get back," he changed the subject.

"And tomorrow we start our date?" She raised a brow.

He grinned. "Definitely."

"Alright, everyone!" Rick called. "We should head out, we have a lot to do today."

"Bye," Ace said.

He kissed her one more time. "Bye."

Isaac stepped back as Ace got into one of the cars with Rick so they could finish the wall and then go on the dry run. He stood back and watched as the gate closed behind them, blocking his view from the group as they drove away.

After standing around for a few seconds, Isaac turned towards the watchtower. He wanted to grab some things Reg was using to teach him and take them back to his house; he needed to do something while everyone was away and getting to know architecture and planning would be useful.

Isaac turned up the street to pass the storage rooms and infirmary, where a woman with dirty blonde hair and glasses was sitting. He went on his way, Deanna's place only up the street when the woman stood to talk to him,

"You're Isaac, right?"

Isaac stopped and stared at her for a second, wondering if he'd met her at the party or somewhere, but he hadn't seen her before. "Yeah, and you?"

"Denise. I'm the new doctor, I guess," she shrugged and gestured with both hands to the infirmary.

"Well, uh, great," Isaac rubbed the back of his neck, noticing the distinct lack of enthusiasm. "I guess."

"I, uh. I heard some people talking before, about you. You have OCD?" Unable to miss the disdain on his face, Denise continued. "I was a psychiatrist before. I just thought, considering everything, I'd let you know I was around if you ever needed help with that."

"I think, considering everything, I'm doing okay," Isaac said, but he couldn't stop this worry gnawing at the back of his mind. "Do you know what you need to know to be a doctor?"

"I'm brushing up on everything. I went to med school, I was on track to be a surgeon until I started getting panic attacks. I got interested in psychology after that," she said. "That's why I think we should talk, it'd be nice to have a patient where I can use my actual degree."

"The world's ended, there are going to be plenty of people who need a psychiatrist," he told her.

"Is it COCD?" She said and clarified, "Contamination, I mean."

"You don't have to break it down for me, I'm well-versed on the subject," Isaac said. "Look, this conversation would be kind of weird if you weren't a psychiatrist, and I have something I need to be doing."

"Yeah, okay," she nodded. "Just think about what I said, things aren't always going to be as easy as they are right now."

"Guess not, see you later."

The conversation didn't surprise Isaac, but he thought he was done with being investigated about his disorder. However, he did not expect to meet a psychiatrist in the middle of an apocalypse.

Deanna wasn't there when he entered her house, and Spencer was the person that was on watch at the time so he just let himself in to retrieve the things he needed from Reg. He asked Maggie to ask what she had done a few ago.

Isaac grabbed the books from the shelf and left to take them to his own house, where there was nobody. Abraham, Martinez and the others were out on the run and Maggie was tending to Deanna and trying to bring her back from the precipice of grief. Others were working around town, not that he knew where.

Reg had a lot on his plans that Isaac didn't know how to decipher. His eyes flicked between the equations and the textbooks every few seconds as he looked for consistencies between the drawings and the pages he flicked through.

He didn't let himself think about Reg otherwise, the potential he saw in him. All he could do was run with that idea and try to teach himself what he was going to learn. Isaac wasn't good with manual labour because of the mess, but he could still be a part of Alexandria's growth. He wanted to be a part of it.

He was starting to get it a little, some of it anyway. Once he worked out where the numbers came from and what they meant, what were actual plans from just ideas that had been written in the corner of the page, he managed to write down the important things in the notebook he'd been given beforehand.

Isaac ran his hands over his face, breathing out a long sigh. What was he thinking? He couldn't learn everything that he would have learnt from Reg. He wondered if there was any point to keep trying, but in that case, he'd have to get involved with the other jobs that would make him feel so much worse than this.

He reached for his pencil again, when he heard a noise behind him—a noise, like a creak.

He lifted his head, turning his head back ever so slightly as he tried to listen closer. He pressed his lips flat and closed his eyes for a second as if to listen closer. Nothing. But the silence didn't stop the tightening in his chest.

Isaac flexed his fingers over the gun on the counter. He decided to take one when Rick let them carry inside the walls. If Rick and Ace thought they needed them, and things were changing, then he wasn't going to say otherwise.

A man yelled out behind him when Isaac snatched up the gun and threw himself off the bar stool. The man slammed his knife down into the counter, getting it stuck in the surface, giving Isaac the time to send a shot off into his head.

He didn't get much time to get over what he'd done, the blood pooling into the wooden floors. There was a noise at the back of the house and Isaac stepped around the counter and aimed his gun at the door. It shook back and forth as someone tried to get inside, but he shot, his bullet hitting the frame before they could.

"STAY BACK!"

"It's me!"

His stance faltered. "Carol?"

The door opened, revealing Carol in her blue cardigan as she rushed inside. She stopped as she came into the kitchen, her eyes drifting to the ground, staring at the body. Then she saw the knife sticking out of the counter.

"He came at you with a knife? You had a gun on you."

"He didn't." He looked down at the boy again, cringing as the pool of blood grew, ever-expanding. "Are there more here?"

Carol nodded and walked to the front of the house as she peered through the blinds. "Yeah, and they're attacking everyone."

Isaac whipped his head around, before landing on Carol. "Where's Judith?"

"In the house, Carl is watching to protect her. But if they don't have any guns then I'm worried they'll start coming here to look for some, so we should try and draw them away from these houses," Carol explained.

Isaac worried about Carl alone in the house, but he knew he was more than capable of keeping himself and Judith safe. "Alright."

Isaac chased Carol as she ducked out of the house, keeping tight on her heels as they sprinted across the street. Whoever these people were, there were a lot of them, and he couldn't help but wonder how they got in.

One of them was on the ground stabbing someone before he took the blood to wipe it on his face. Isaac didn't care or want to look long enough to figure out what for.

"Come with me, quick!"

They sprinted across the street, where Isaac saw one of the men smashing an axe down on one of the Alexandrians. Their face was so bloody that he didn't even recognise who it was. He pushed down the sick feeling in his stomach and turned his attention back to Carol as she stopped by a garage.

Around the corner, he didn't miss the screaming as a woman begged for her life. He recognised her from the party, one of the women who Ace had been talking to when she had her attack, but he didn't know her name. Carol reached for her knife as she begged the man, but before she could get around the corner and stab the man, he'd slashed her stomach.

She cried and bled on the stairs as Carol rushed forward, pulling her to lay on her lap. Carol tried shushing her, holding a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet as he ducked down, seeing some of the men running through the background. Isaac ducked down under the view of the porch steps to keep himself hidden.

When Carol couldn't keep her quiet, still holding her knife she pulled her closer under the guise of hugging her. Isaac flinched when Carol drove the knife through the base of her skull to kill her, silencing the woman. He remembered seeing them around and talking, so he never expected her to just stab her.

She didn't meet his eyes for a while, and it took Isaac a second to stand up a little while he checked for any of the bad people running around. He didn't see them, didn't hear them nearby, which was when he allowed himself to stand up completely and let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

"Are you okay?" Isaac asked.

"We were going to get caught," she said simply.

It was all surreal to him. "I know, but you saw her a lot."

"We need to get to the armoury," she placed the woman on the ground and stood up. She leaned down and took a scarf from the dead body when Isaac noticed the W on his forehead, like the walkers they'd been seeing. "Come on, let's go."

A horn went off near the watchtower, and Isaac looked around. "What the hell is that?"

When he turned to face her again she was pulling the jacket from the man she had killed and putting her arm in the sleeves.

"Okay, what the hell are you doing?"

She held the scarf to him. "Wear this, cover your face."

"No." He didn't miss the blood that was seeping into the fabric, or the disappointed look she gave him when he denied her.

"You have to."

"I don't have to do that!" He exclaimed. "Do you want my help? Because wrapping a bloody scarf around my face is not going to be helpful to you. Besides, they're not going to be tricked if the rest of my clothes are this clean."

"I saw one of them taking prisoners, I could take you prisoner," she suggested.

"That might work," he thought about it.

"You'd have to look like we fought, stand still," Carol said.

Isaac lurched back. "Carol, you're not hitting me. It's not happening."

"Fine, just stay hidden if we come across anybody," she snapped.

Issac followed her, looking at the woman one last time before weaving between the bushes. She stopped between them and he knelt beside her, glancing around for a second.

They spent minutes there, looking around, waiting. He hoped that the run group wouldn't come back just yet, or maybe they should. All their best fighters were gone, but if Ace came back then she could get caught up in something she might not be able to handle.

As Carol planned silently, Isaac realised that it was just that. Silent. The horn or whatever had rung out across town had been silenced.

"The horn stopped," he commented. "Didn't even notice."

"They probably did it, whatever it was," she said. "At least all the walkers that could be dangerous to us are in the quarry."

That was true, if the walkers were still locked away inside the quarry then the horn wouldn't matter, because they'd be distracted from the sound when the group opened the floodgates and drew them away the next day.

"Yeah," he agreed.

Across the street, they saw another one of the W men, who stopped when they came across someone. It was Morgan, standing up to the man with his stick. Morgan? But he was supposed to be on the dry run with the others. The man taunted him, but it seemed like he was trying to barter instead, convincing him to just leave instead of fighting.

Isaac raised a brow. "Is that Morgan?"

His eyes flicked around for any sign of the others, but he could only see that Morgan had returned. Maybe they were around town, looking for survivors when they worked out what had been happening when they returned.

"He's going to get himself killed!" She snapped.

She sprang into action and sprinted over to them. Carol ran over and stabbed the man in the back, and Isaac checked around one more time to see if there were any more of them before going to join them.

"I could have stopped him!" Morgan exclaimed.

Isaac frowned. Carol did stop him, so what was the problem? Unless it was the killing he had a problem with. That was something he hadn't considered of anyone in a long time, not until they found this town. But Morgan wasn't from this town, and Isaac didn't understand how he could be so against killing after being on the road for so long.

Carol just ignored him as she knelt by the body, dipping her fingers in the blood and drawing a W on her forehead. "The others back?"

"No."

"What the hell, Carol?" Isaac cringed to himself.

"It's happening out there," Morgan told them.

Carol looked up. "They're doing it now?"

"The herd?" Isaac snapped to look at them. "They're moving the herd now."

"We had to."

"But—" Isaac stopped himself.

If they hadn't gotten the herd far enough away then the horn sound could have drawn them back towards town, towards them. He had to pray that the walkers were taken far enough by this point, because killers were hard enough to deal with, let alone a herd walking through the gates.

He wanted to ask more, find out what Ace was doing out there, but he couldn't bring himself to. The answers wouldn't help him, and if he thought they were in trouble, it didn't matter. The people needed him here to deal with whoever these new enemies were.

"These people don't have guns," Carol said.

Morgan repeated himself though. "I could have stopped him."

"If they had guns, they'd be using them."

"Did you hear me?"

"We have to get to the armoury before they do," she said, taking the chain from the dead body. "If we keep moving, this might work."

"You don't have to kill people," Morgan told her.

"Of course we do," she almost scoffed.

"Carol! You don't like it."

"I'm gonna get to the armoury and I need your help," Carol looked at Morgan, holding a chain she'd taken from the dead body. "They've been taking prisoners,

Morgan considered, knowing what she wanted more guns for, but did eventually agree. "Okay."

"I have a gun," Isaac said. "I should look for some of the others, see if I can help anyone from these guys. I mean, I don't have to get anywhere near them to fight them, so I have that advantage over them."

There was some scepticism in Carol's stare, but he had more than proven himself capable of looking after himself if it came down to it. Isaac had no gloves, so he would not be caught in a fist fight with these men to get himself covered in blood, and he was a good shot.

"Okay," she eventually nodded.

Carol walked away with Morgan chained behind her, and Isaac turned to search Alexandria for any survivors. There were more bodies than anything, more bodies than he expected. Then he remembered how little the Alexandrians knew of surviving because none of the bodies were the people he'd been on the road with, no one he considered family were dead. It made him sick to his stomach, but he was relieved in a way.

Isaac, after finding nobody for the longest time, assumed that anyone else around town would have found somewhere to hide or hold up until someone could come and save them from the attackers. That was until he heard a woman cry out.

"Stop!" Maggie.

Maggie, he had to save Maggie. Isaac ran across the street, barely even looking for more dangers as he tried to listen out for where he heard her again. When he finally saw her, she was on the ground by one of the walls, crawling backwards as she tried to push herself to her feet.

Standing over her was a man, one with the W on his forehead which he gestured to as he stalked over to her. It was too far to try and shoot because any missed shot would just give the person over her a chance to grab or kill her. The man held up a machete over his head and as he swung it down, the blade almost cut at her stomach.

"NO!" She screamed.

Still sprinting forward, Isaac raised his gun and shot the bullet while running. It landed mid-temple, and the man flew to the side. He swallowed, his eyes on the body as it hit the wall, leaning awkwardly against the corrugated metal. He stopped just before Maggie.

Tears streamed down her face as she palmed her stomach, gripping her shirt into a bunch as she looked at where the man almost hit her. Isaac knew he never should have let it get that far, but it didn't look like the shot was landing on him, and he assumed he had a few more seconds. What if he did it again and it wasn't the case?

"Maggie!" Her hands were shaking as she covered her mouth, her breaths quickening as she cried. He stopped in front of her, his hands on her arms as he checked her for any visible injuries. "They didn't get you, did they? I thought I got him in time, I—"

"It's not that, I—" She shook her head, her breathing steadying out. "I'm pregnant."

He stared at her for a moment, the word repeating in his head over and over. Maggie didn't expect much of a reaction from him, but after a second Isaac lurched forward, wrapping his hands around her, ignoring the blood spotted on her shirt or the body they were standing right next to.

It didn't matter to him, not as much as this, not since she was willing to confide such important information in him. Maggie returned the hug, wrapping her arms around him, her eyes scanning the streets behind him as he hugged her.

Then he immediately pulled back, his eyes darting around. "You shouldn't be out here in the open, we have to find somewhere safe for you to hide until this is over."

"Isaac," she stopped him. "I'm okay, I can help. This—" she pointed to her stomach, "this is the least of my problems right now, okay?"

He swallowed thickly but nodded. "Okay."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Her eyes drifted to the ground beside them, landing on the body that lay dead. "I'm sorry you had to do that."

"Don't worry about me."

More shootings rang out across the community, and Isaac tried to keep Maggie safe, his mind weighing with the news she told him. He kept in front, ready to draw any of the attention away from her if it came down to it, but as the town quietened down, they didn't come across any more of the group. The streets were littered with bodies, but they didn't come across any more enemies.

"I think it's over," he said. "I don't hear anything else."

"Me either," Maggie agreed.

He closed his eyes and breathed out a sigh of relief. Two more kills to his name . . . it seemed so small when he considered what Ace had done for the group, how many people she's had to kill. He probably didn't even know all of them.

Isaac knew they'd have to put the bodies down soon, innocent and killers, but that was the last thing on his mind, especially because he didn't want to be the one to do it. As his mind raced over the things he had to do that day, Isaac had to change the subject.

In the distance, he saw Rosita stalking around, a gun in her hand. She straightened up when she saw the two of them and began walking over to them. This was good, now that they had someone else he could check on Carl and Judith, left in the house at the beginning. He had to make sure they were okay.

"Are you two okay?" She asked.

"We're fine," Maggie assured.

"I should check on Carl and Judith," Isaac said.

"Yeah, you do that," Maggie agreed. "Make sure they're okay."

When Isaac made it to the house next door, he reached for the door. When he began remembering how he tried to shoot Carol earlier, he stopped. He didn't want to get shot—Carl would be the first person to try and shoot him. With the way he looked at him sometimes, he wouldn't be surprised either.

He thought it was safer to announce himself before entering the house. "It's Isaac!"

Carl and Enid were sitting back to back in the main room when he entered, her with a knife in her hands while Carl had a machine gun at the ready. Carl looked less than thrilled to see him, but Isaac

"It's over," he told both of them. "I saw a body outside, is everything okay?"

"One of them had Ron, he went back to his own house," Carl was the one to answer.

Enid barely looked in his direction.

Isaac was not wanted there, he understood that much, but he was still going to ensure that Rick's kids remained unharmed. "Nothing else?"

"Nope," Carl said.

"Judith's okay?"

"Yeah."

"Alright," Isaac nodded, his eyes trailing back to the front door. "I guess I'll get started on moving those bodies."

Carl gave him a bewildered look, staring at him, probably wondering if he was going to say he was joking. Honestly, it just made Isaac a little petty, further cementing his plan to work on moving the bodies from the streets.

Without another word, he turned to the door.

Isaac helped around the town for a while, he stayed with Aaron and the others who began moving the bodies. His mind had been on Ace the entire time, what was taking so long, why they hadn't come back. Be careful, he told her before she left as their hands untangled from each other, only for her to respond It's just a dry run.

Just a dry run.

Maybe he should have gone, to be there for her like he wanted to do in the beginning. But he chickened out. Rick hadn't shown much faith in him, which made him lose faith in himself. All he wanted to do was be there for Ace, show her that he could be useful and help her when she needed it. That wasn't the case.

When he was done moving bodies, to the point where his brain told him that if he went near another one he'd tear off his own skin, Isaac stopped by the front gate. His mind had been stuck on Ace, why the dry run was taking so long, and from there he began to spiral.

Maggie returned from her round of the fence and stepped inside, when Deanna climbed up on the watch tower at the front. Spencer stayed by the front gate to take duty there, seeing as the bottom of the watch tower was in rubble while Rosita left and passed Isaac to help others further inside the walls. Maggie walked over to him.

"How were the fences?" He asked.

"The truck did some damage to the wall, but we think it's going to stay up," Maggie said. Isaac didn't know much about that, bits and pieces he picked up from some of the others. He remembered hearing the horn going off while he was with Carol. He nodded either way. "Where's Ace when you need her, huh"?

"They're not back yet," Isaac said, his eyes fixated on the gate. "I should take a car, go out there."

Maggie denied immediately. "No."

"If they're in trouble, they could use some help," he said.

"They can handle themselves, and we need some help around here," Maggie said. "People died today, others are scared. We need help here."

"I've been moving bodies," he told her. "You may not know this about me, but that takes a lot. If I keep doing that I'll be catatonic and no help to anyone, so I could drive out there and find the others."

She crossed her arms. "There could be more of those people out there. I'm not letting you go."

"Not letting me?" His tone was enough to tell Maggie that she didn't have any say in that. Still, he continued with his bewildered and defiant expression. "That isn't your decision to make."

"Isaac—"

"They're back, open the gates!" Deanna yelled, cutting Maggie off. "Let them in!"

The gate was rolled open to reveal Michonne and Heath carrying a limping Scott while Martinez covered them, who had bandages wrapped around his leg. Nobody else, Isaac noticed immediately. They helped him through the gate, but when Michonne saw the two of them there she left Scott to Heath and one of the others who came down to help.

Maggie ran over and hugged Michonne. "What happened?"

Isaac followed slower.

"The quarry broke open, so we had to start the plan early," Martinez said.

Isaac's eyes widened. Part of him was glad he didn't join the practice run, he wanted to go to see if he could handle it, but if the real thing started and he was there. He probably would have come back to the community, or Rick would have sent him back.

"What happened here?"

"Some people broke in," Maggie said. "They climbed the walls and killed people—they had a W on their heads just like the walkers." She looked at Isaac, who had turned to one of the bodies he could see up the street. "They killed a lot of people."

"They're gone now," Isaac said. "We got all of them, I think."

The topic moved on quickly from the group that attacked when the absence of the dry runners was noticed. As Heath helped Scott away, Michonne glanced down, Maggie watched them closely before asking, "Where's Glenn? And the others."

"Where's Ace?" Isaac added quickly.

Michonne was quiet for a second. "It was going fine. But when that horn went off, it drew away half the walkers. Rick and Ace went back to the RV to make sure they wouldn't make it back here."

Ace was with Rick—Isaac couldn't tell if that was a good or bad thing. They were both good survivors, and neither one of them wanted the other to die. But that also meant that either one of them would put themselves in stupid positions to save the other. His jaw set and he nodded, his arms falling limp at his sides.

Maggie placed a hand on his shoulder, rubbing her hand in a circle before she asked, "And Glenn?"

"The rest of us started coming back here, but we got surrounded. The town was overrun, and we lost people," Michonne said. "When we were hiding in this store, Glenn split off with Nicholas. He had this idea that . . . if he lit a fire, it would stop the walkers from coming here. I tried to go instead—I wanted to. The fire never got lit. We had to keep going."

Maggie had the same look he imagined having

"I'm sorry," she was quieter this time. "He said if he got stuck, he would find a way to send us a signal."

"A signal?" Maggie asked.

Isaac turned to her "I'm sure he's okay, they probably just had to leave before they could get the fire started. If there were that many walkers then—"

"OPEN THE GATE!"

Unedited again, apologies. Just not finding the motivation to go back and do that lately. But still, we're getting through this book.

Hope you enjoyed and let me know what you thought :)