The morning brings walkers. I guess it was thanks to all the gunfire. There's a whole cluster of them outside the walls that the people on guard are stopping from grouping into one big mass by banging and making noise at different spots along the walls.

We don't have the medicine or the bullets to fight off another attack, so we're getting the cars ready to go if the Saviors hit us again.

Bruce, Tobin, Jess, and a few others are in the infirmary with cuts and arrow wounds, but nothing they can't pull through. Tara got shot with an arrow by Dwight during the attack. I heard Daryl and her talking about it. Apparently, Dwight saved them from some Saviors by leading them away from the group on their way to Hilltop after Alexandria. He ended up going back to Sanctuary with them. Surprisingly, Tara thinks he's still on our side. Daryl thinks he's still Negan. I'm just glad he's not here.

Maggie's turned off the generators to conserve what gas we've got left, making Barrington house a stuffy box of sweaty people even with most of the windows open. I stay outside by Glenn's grave for most of the morning, trying to ignore Jerry and Carl as they bury our dead around me. I guess I'm staying with Glenn and Abraham so that we don't lose them in the blooming field of graves. Making sure that they don't just become turned over dirt and stacks of rocks.

Maggie shows up with the Savior that has the soft voice, the one she had speak to Simon last night. She cuts his hands free and tells him he can bury his people outside the gates under guard, gesturing to a truck of dead Saviors.

"They're not mine," he tells her. "But I'm glad you see 'em that way. As people."

Kal shows the Saviors to the back gate where the walkers aren't waiting. Carl hands the guy a shovel and tells him he'll help bury them.

When the three are gone, Dianne tells Maggie that she's a good leader.

"You saved the gates. You saved the community. You saved lives."

Maggie frowns and tells Dianne that she wanted Negan to attack us.

"I sent Negan that body in the box to make him mad. To lure him here. Because I wanted my husband's grave to be the last thing he saw. Even if it came at a cost."

When it's just me again, Siddiq shows up with a small satchel filled with bandages and antiseptic.

"How are you?" he asks.

I'm quiet.

"Was this someone close to you?" he glances at the grave, keeping a respectful distance.

I glance up at him, I nod.

"You know," he tells me, "there is a prayer for the dead I first heard when I was a little boy... It ended with the phrase, do not send us astray after them... those who died wouldn't want us to be consumed by our revenge."

I shake my head.

"I know that you're right," I mumble. "But it doesn't change what I want."

"What's that?"

"To kill Negan. All of the Saviors."

"Would they want that?" he asks. "This person you lost? How about Mikey?"

I'm quiet again.

"All that's left of the people we lose," Siddiq tells me, "what was theirs... are their ideas."

Carl and I give up our room to the sick by nightfall. Barrington house is full of them now; everyone that got so much as a cut seems to have picked up a fever by the time the moon hits the sky. The two of us find a corner at the top of the stairs to lay down pillows and blankets for the night, only we have to share a pillow because so many people are doing the same thing. Maggie says goodnight to us as she does her final rounds and makes sure everyone is okay. I said goodnight to people before we settled in. Jenny and Mateo were in Maggie's office with some of the sick from the Kingdom. Sasha and Rosita are pulling the late shift on guard duty together. Michonne and Rick are sleeping in one of the bedrooms with Judith.

I wait until Carl falls asleep, watching his chest rise and fall until it hits a rhythm and I know he's out. I hate how crowded it is. Every room is filled with people, and the constant coughing from every corner keeps me tossing and turning. It's too hot for me to sleep, even with every door and window open in the house. At some point, Henry walks past me from the room he's staying in with Ezekiel.

"Hey," I whisper, only able to make him out by the size of the darkened silhouette. He's holding something long, and I assume it's his staff. "You okay?"

He jumps a little, moving a few steps back in the shadows at the top of the stairs. I think I see him nod. "Just need to pee," he says quietly.

I chuckle. "Okay, dude."

He vanishes into blackened shapes, and I listen to his footsteps going down the stairs by my head. I check my watch, holding it to the tip of my nose before I can make out the hands in the dark, and it's three-thirty in the morning.

"Christ," I yawn, shuffling as I try to get comfy, pushing Carl's arm off my middle because of the heat and trying to match his breathing. But the hardwood floor is relentless.

And then I hear it creak.

I look just in time to see someone fall on me. I catch the girl before she hits me, thinking someone tired just lost their footing on the way to the bathroom. But her face catches the moonlight, and I see that it's Jess from Kingdom, and she's dead, hissing and snapping her teeth at me, her clawed hands trying to scratch my bare arms.

"Fuck," I gasp, pushing her away. But she's so strong and only inches from my face.

"Carl— Carl, fuck, wake up, man!" I scream, kicking at his leg as Jess' blue, cracked lips graze my nose.

Carl shoots up, rubbing his face groggily and falling back when he sees Jess. He scrambles under blankets for his knife, finding mine instead and jamming it through the back of Jess' head. Her body falls limp across my chest, blood from her eyes pouring into my t-shirt.

Carl rolls her off me, and then we're both sitting up, gasping and looking at each other, horrified.

Then someone screams downstairs.

We dart to the edge of the landing and peer over the bannisters to see beams of flashlights scrambling around in the dark as people panic. Carl rushes to the stairs, but I catch his arm.

"We don't know how many are down there," I hiss.

We can hear growls below, but everything just looks like shifting shapes in a sea of black. People rush past us and down the stairs, some retreating up them. When more flashlights pour in, everything becomes a little clearer, all of it happening so fast. Someone is bit, and Siddiq is down there, holding him to the ground while Rick hacks off his bitten arm. Daryl saves a woman as she struggles with who looks like Wesley before Daryl kills his walker. Jesus pins someone to the wall while Michonne chops their head in half, and the two usher a group out the front door.

Carl pulls in the direction of the stairs again, and this time I follow him. The two of us double-check every person that comes at us before we put them down, making sure no one's alive.

"The hell happened?!" Daryl yells when we get to the ground floor.

"I don't know," Rick barks back, burying his hatchet in someone's face as they sit up and hiss at him. "Maybe walkers got in."

"Maybe during the fight," Morgan says, rushing in from Maggie's office with a bloody-ended staff.

"Jess," I pant, "Jess wasn't bit. I wasn't asleep... I would have seen a walker go past me."

Daryl nods, pointing. "These are all our own people."

Teo and Jenny suddenly appear from one of the offices, out of breath and terrified.

"Did you say Jessica is dead?" Teo gasps at me.

I nod. "She turned."

"Almost killed Rhys," Carl adds.

"She must have already been bitten," Rick says, waving over Maggie as she rushes in from outside, blood dripping from the point of her knife.

"No," Jenny says, shaking her head. "I helped Siddiq clean her wound after that arrow hit her shoulder in the attack. I would have known if she was bit."

We hear Bertie screaming from one of the upstairs bedrooms, making it to her in time to see Carol standing over Tobin's walker, her shoulder rising and falling rapidly. Bruce is lying in the bed, sweating through his sheets, Bertie standing beside him.

"You alright?" Daryl asks Carol, glancing down at the walker.

Carol's panting, her eyes look wet, but she brushes it away fast enough that if I didn't know her better, I would blame the light. "Yeah, just... Tobin wasn't bit. But he turned."

"Negan's bat..." Rick mumbles under his breath.

"What about it?" Maggie asks.

"When I was out there with him, it was covered in walker blood. I just thought he'd come across some, but maybe..."

"They have us workin' for them again," Maggie hisses. "Killin' our own."

"Wait, you saw him out there?" Carl asks his dad. I'm pretty sure the two haven't spoken since Rick got back.

Rick nods. "I saw him out there with the convoy comin' here. Cut him off, tried to end it real quick."

"I'm guessing he got away?" I ask.

Rick grimaces and nods.

"It's the fever," Bruce murmurs. His eyes are shaded with dark purple shadows, and his skin is as pale as the sheets he's under.

We all look at him.

"That's what it is. It makes sense now," Bruce says in a shaky voice. He starts crying when he realises that he's dead already. "One of you... you're gonna have to do it. I can't. You gotta do it for me. Please."

Maggie holds his hand as he cries and sniffles into his pillow. Everyone else leaves, and I stay quietly in the corner as Maggie takes out her knife and waits for Bruce to drift away before she stabs him through the temple. It's quiet and cruel at the same time.

Most of the dead have been cleared out when we leave. I find Carl, and we make our way up to Tara's room with dread in our guts, holding our hands up when Rosita and Enid are in there and pointing guns at us as they watch over Tara and Judith. They lower them, and Carl goes to his sister. Tara was shot by one of Dwight's arrows, which means she's going to be dead soon, too. Daryl's the one that points it out to me when he comes in. I know he wishes he hadn't when he sees the look on my face as I storm from the room; when I saw the hopeless terror in Tara's when she realised.

I go outside to clear my head, but I see Maggie talking to the Savior prisoners by their pen, only they're out and holding farm equipment as weapons.

I pull out my gun, running down to point it at the guy with the soft voice that Carl helped bury dead Saviors.

"Drop it!" I bark, shaking my gun at him until he drops the rusty hoe.

Maggie's gun is at her side. And Jesus holds up a hand to calm me. "Rhys, it's fine... Alden here, and the others, they helped."

"How'd they get out?" I growl, slowly lowering my pistol.

"A kid came and opened up the pen," Alden stutters. "We had people turn inside."

"You mean Henry?" I ask.

"I— I don't know," Alden says. "He just wanted to know about someone killin' his brother and—"

"Where is he?!" I yell.

"I don't know! I swear!"

"Where are all the other Saviors?" Maggie asks Alden then.

"The ones that didn't stay to help get the gate closed didn't say where they were goin'. They just ran."

Maggie frowns. "And you didn't?"

"You saw what we mean to Negan and Simon," Alden shrugs. "Which might be a dumb thing to say because it doesn't make us worth much to your people, either, but those who stayed, stayed."

Maggie's face doesn't change, her lip twitching a little as she tries to figure out if she buys it.

"We had plenty of chances to run," Alden adds.

"No," I say, holstering my gun. "Just the one."

Jenny, Carol, Ezekiel, Jerry, Morgan, and I search for Henry until the morning sun is well and truly up. We check every trailer, every car, every room in Barrington house and find nothing. After searching the cellar for the fourth time, Jerry and Jenny call over Ezekiel, Carol, and me.

"Yo, we've checked everywhere," Jerry sighs. "The little man's gone."

I kick the trap door to the cellar, cursing and hopping on one foot when it feels like I broke my toe.

"Hey!" Enid yells, running around the corner of Barrington house. "Some of the Saviors said Henry broke into the pen just before the others escaped."

"I know," I groan, leaning against the wall and squeezing the tip of my shoe between my index and thumb until I'm sure my toe isn't broken.

"But he was down there, and then he wasn't," Enid says.

"You think he went after them?" Jenny asks, her face a vale of bad vibes.

Carol turns on the spot, hissing to herself. "I told him. I told him what would happen."

Jerry and Ezekiel set out to look for Henry immediately. Jenny wanted to go, but his tracks went into the woods after the Saviors, and the other two would be faster without her. Carol and Morgan just left, too, supposedly to do the same. I wanted to go, but Maggie said there's enough people looking and I have to stay.

Enid finds me crying behind the infirmary trailer.

"Rhys— are you...?"

I wipe my eyes aggressively on my sleeves, standing up and trying to look normal.

"Sorry," I stutter. "I was just— erm..."

"It's okay," she says, sitting down with her back to the trailer wall like I had been. I join her. It's a tight squeeze back here between the trailer and the timber wall.

"I went to see Tara," I say quietly.

"How is she?"

"I remember back on the road," I sigh, ignoring the question with an obvious answer, "Tara and I would always sit next to each other when we got lucky enough to find a car. She called us road trip partners."

"I can't imagine she'd let it get boring," Enid says, smiling.

I don't smile, but I nod. "Never. This one time she got really excited because we stopped outside a carnival, and she thought there might be candy floss."

"Was there?"

I shake my head. "Always thought I'd find some for her birthday or something..."

"I'm upset, too," Enid tells me.

"I'm not upset."

"Then what?"

"Mikey's dead," I say bitterly. "Tara's going to die from the infection. Jess. Henry." I stop, looking at her. "We're losing."

She looks upset when I say Mikey's name, but she shrugs. "Nothing we can do about it. The king and Jerry are looking for Henry. But there's nothing we can do."

I think about that.

"Yeah, there is," I whisper.

"What do you mean?"

Enid stands up when I do, staring at me the whole time as I awkwardly squeeze past her to leave.

"Rhys," she says, catching my arm and holding it tight, "what are you going to do?"

I study her face for a moment, looking at all the laugh lines running below her red eyes.

"I'm going to get that fucking rat-faced prick," I tell her.

"Don't," she mutters, shaking her head and looking at me with the saddest eyes I've ever seen from her.

"Why?" I ask her, angry. "I can't sit and do nothing... Carl's going out with Jesus to find supplies. Morgan, Jerry, Ezekiel, Carol... they're all out there."

"Killing Saviors—" she stops. She's crying. Like really crying. The way people cry when they realise the last train has gone and they're never going to get where they wanted.

"Enid?"

"I killed Natania," she tells me, not trying to stop her tears, speaking through them.

I watch her, carefully.

"You had to," I tell her. "They wouldn't have given you a choice."

"I know that," she says. "But Carl pointed out this morning that if I let that change me, the Saviors win. If I turn into what they are."

I grimace, finding it hard to look away from her.

"I told Carl this morning that Mikey's dead because he tried to save people..." Enid smiles a little, but turns her face to stone when she notices. "I told him that I lived because I killed Natania, so why should we stop fighting the Saviors?"

"You're right," I say. "If we don't fight, we'll end up just like Mikey. We won't survive."

"Yeah," Enid nods. "But Carl said that surviving isn't living."

I shake my head, biting my lip, and telling her to stop.

"We have to fight, but we can't lose ourselves," Enid says. "Glenn said the same thing to me once. If we don't hold onto who we are, that little bit of them that makes us who we are will die. That last bit of Glenn or that last bit of Mikey. They're still alive as long as we honour them."

"They're not alive!" I hiss at her. "They're both dead because of the Saviors!"

"You can go," Enid tells me. "I won't stop you... but I will tell Sasha if she asks me, which she will when she realises you're gone."

I huff and puff but can't seem to blow any air out. I stand there, all puffed up and sad, as Enid watches me.

"What are you going to do?" I finally ask her.

She shrugs. "A lot of people are injured. Siddiq will need help."

A/N

Sorry for the delay, my new lesson schedule is kicking my butt.

Thanks for reading!

:)