The Walking Dead Files

“This will only hurt a little,” Scully promised Enid.  They were both tucked away in a corner of one of the more open areas of the spaceship.  The interior of the ARV was more spacious than it appeared from the outside.  It consisted of the pilot’s quarters, a couple adjoining hallways that led to the two shared living spaces, a handful of sleeping bunks tucked into little cubbies and two compact, airplane-style bathrooms.  It seemed to be designed to carry about ten people comfortably.  Having packed closer to two dozen people into the space made living conditions somewhat cramped, but it was hardly the worst thing the Alexandrians had been through.

When the ship had launched, many of the passengers had been sick.  The launch itself was jarring.  Even Mulder hadn't been prepared for the breakneck speed with which the spacecraft would leave the atmosphere.  There was a reason astronauts spent years conditioning themselves for space travel.  But the occupants of the vessel adjusted quickly.  Now it was just a matter of passing the time until their arrival on the alien planet.

They had no real way to measure time anymore.  They didn't know how long they had been traveling.  Their only measure of time on Earth was counting the sunrises.  In the blackness of space there were no sunrises.  They had quickly rocketed out of Earth’s atmosphere and through their solar interstellar neighborhood, past their local galactic group, and beyond the Virgo supercluster.  It was a feat that would have taken a human-designed shuttle years, if not lifetimes.  But this alien vehicle had technology that humans had never dared to imagine.  They estimated they had left the Milky Way Galaxy in the equivalent of about one day.

Rick guessed by the growth of his beard that they had been traveling for several weeks.  His crew had fallen into a sort of suspended animation.  He couldn't remember the last time they had gone this long without having to worry about some sort of imminent threat or attack.  But there was still a great deal of apprehension about their ability to reach the alien planet and what fate might await them when they finally arrived.  Still, with a journey of this length ahead of them and nothing to do but wait, it was easy to fall into a sort of complacency about those fears.  It seemed that everyone had accepted that whatever will be will be.  There was no sense worrying about it until they arrived.  Rick never ceased to be impressed by his people.  They were unstoppable.  They were resilient.

Even now, they were working toward survival.  Rick stood idly by and observed as Scully carefully drew a blood sample from Enid.  After it was clear that everyone had survived the launch and that they were truly on their way, Carl had brought Enid to Scully.  She hadn't been present in Alexandria when everyone received their injection of arcB.  She wouldn't have the gene pairing necessary to survive the atmosphere of the alien planet.  Scully had determined that the easiest way to give Enid arcB would be to give her a blood transfusion.  It was what she had done for Mulder when he nearly died at the beginning of the outbreak.  It had worked on him.  It was simple and effective.  But first Scully needed a sample of Enid’s blood to determine if they shared compatible blood types.

“Sorry,” Scully said as she noticed Enid wince at the insertion of the needle.  She slowly filled a vial with Enid’s blood.

“It’s fine, Dr. Scully..”  Enid looked away, probably having seen more than enough blood in her young life.

“Please, call me Dana.”  Scully hadn’t known Enid as long as everyone else, but she had quickly noticed how quiet she was.  The teenager seemed melancholy most of the time.  It was understandable, of course.  They had all been through hell and back again.  But it must be harder on those who were so young when the outbreak occurred.  They had their whole lives ahead of them only to have it all ripped away.  Scully understood that Enid had watched her entire family die in front of her own eyes and then had been left to roam the world alone before stumbling upon Alexandria.  It was difficult for the girl to connect with people.  But Scully sensed there was more to it than that.  Enid seemed different somehow.  As if she had seen more than she let on.

Scully thought she'd try to engage Enid.  She hadn't been present for Scully’s explanation of the alien genomes to the rest of Alexandria.  Scully was sure if Carl had explained it to her something had been lost in translation.  “Would you like to see what the alien DNA looks like compared to your own human DNA?” she asked tentatively.

Enid thought it over.  “Yeah, I guess so.”  It wasn't as if she had something better to do.  She watched as Scully extracted a bit of the blood she had just taken and put it in a smaller vial with a little plastic lid.  She snapped the lid shut and placed it in the centrifuge.  Scully switched the machine on and Enid’s blood went swirling around in an impossibly fast blur.  When the proteins had separated from the rest of the blood, Scully removed the sample and placed a few tiny drops on a microscope film.

Enid observed as Scully peered into the microscope, adjusting the knobs, searching for a specific chromosome.  “Okay, take a look at that.”  Scully moved aside so Enid could look through the lenses of the microscope.  “Do you see that DNA right in the center?  That's your normal human DNA.”

Enid nodded indicating she understood what she was looking at.  She had taken biology class.  She had seen plenty of diagrams of DNA.

Scully took back the controls and went hunting for the arcA she was sure Enid possessed, the alien chromosome that everyone had been given along with their Polio vaccine as a child.  Enid waited, distractedly picking at a stray thread on the sleeve of her sweatshirt.  Scully suddenly stiffened and looked up at her.  “Enid…” she said, questioningly, but then trailed off.  She looked through the microscope again, trying to confirm that her eyes weren’t deceiving her.

Enid was now at full attention and the silence seemed to stretch on longer than she could bare.  Finally she couldn't take it anymore.  “Dr. Scully?”  Scully didn't look up.  Enid tried again.  “Dana?”  Still she didn't pull away from the microscope.

“Dana?”  Enid was worried something was terribly wrong.  “What do you see?”

Scully looked up and met the young woman’s troubled eyes.  “Enid,” she said, unsure how to explain what she saw.  “You already have arcB.”

Enid’s face barely changed, but Scully thought she saw a glimpse of something in her expression.  Something had just clicked in her mind.  Some long buried connection had been made.  It looked like a mixture of pain and relief.

Scully was baffled.  “How can this be?”  She meant the question to be rhetorical, but to her surprise Enid had an answer for her.

“I was abducted.”  Enid dropped her gaze to the floor, no longer able to look Scully in the eye.  She looked wounded, dejected, ashamed.

Scully was overwhelmed with emotions.  She felt guilt for having reopened what was obviously a terrible memory for Enid.  She felt anger at the people who had abducted her, taken her from her family and injected her against her will.  She felt a maternal instinct to protect this girl from her own past.  She also felt a strange sort of camaraderie as well.

Scully put an arm around her and pulled her close, unsure how Enid would react to a show of affection.  When she didn't pull away, Scully squeezed her a little tighter and said, “Me too, honey.  Me too.”

*****

“Are you sure this is it?”  Rick stood over Eugene’s shoulder in the pilot’s quarters.  He looked at the planet that had come into view in front of the ARV.  Just as Mulder had been told, the passengers in the ship could see out even though it appeared windowless from the outside.  It was sort of a trick of the eyes.  Rick could see the controls of the ship immediately in front of him, but if he shifted his focus forward, outside of the ship, he could see what lay beyond.  Eugene explained that it had something to do with the spacecraft being invisible.

Rick worried for a moment about their invisibility.  If they could actually land this thing on the alien planet, would anyone even know they were there?  He shook off the thought.  The alien race that occupied this planet had designed this ship.  Surely they had some method of observing their approach.  Besides, Eugene was confident in his ability to land the ship safely.  It was a confidence Rick had never seen in him on Earth.  He was a new man; a redeemed man.

Eugene had called him to the front of the ship when the planet came into view.  From that distance, outside the atmosphere, it looked very similar to Earth.  There were large bodies of water separating various land masses.  As they came closer they could see vast areas of brown deserts, green forests.  After entering the atmosphere they could make out brightly illuminated cities.  It was strange to observe something that looked so earthly, but without the familiar shapes of the continents they knew from their own globe.

The ship had zeroed in on its landing destination, seemingly navigating itself.  They slowed as they approached what looked a little bit like an airport.  Bright lights designated landing areas.  Instead of being stretched out to illuminate a long landing strip, they were arranged in triangular shapes that the ship could drop straight down upon.  As they drew closer they could see other similar ships resting in their designated landing spots.  Most were much larger than the ship the Alexandrians had traveled in.

It seemed they were arriving as dusk was falling.  The light was fading from the sky, but it wasn't dark just yet.  The ship came in for a very smooth landing compared to its takeoff.  Rick was awash with relief as he felt the movement of the ARV cease.  He noticed that the landing field was surrounded by a circular building.  As the ship touched down, a door in the building opened, but Rick didn't get to see who, or what, came out of it.  The ship shimmered and became once again opaque.  It must have become fully visible again from the exterior, which meant the occupants could no longer see out.

Rick had been planning this moment in his head over the months it had taken them to travel this far.  He had planned what he would say to his people.  He had planned to take Mulder and Scully with him to make first contact with the alien beings.  But every time he thought through the plan he would get to the part where he actually stepped out he door of the vehicle and he wouldn't know what to expect.  He couldn't begin to imagine what would await him, what the planet would look like, how the aliens would communicate.  He had no idea how to plan for that.  So he focused on his own people.

Everyone gathered in one of the common rooms.  Rick attempted to make eye contact with every person in the cramped space.  He tried to read their expressions.  He saw fear, anticipation, relief, weariness.  He began the words he had rehearsed in his head over the course of their journey.

“We have arrived.  This is what we’ve been working toward.  It's what we’ve been struggling to achieve.  And now we’ve done it.  We’re here.  We don't know exactly what's waiting for us out there.  But that's no reason to be afraid.  We’ve been through horrors most people couldn't have imagined.  We’ve survived it all.  We think of ourselves as Alexandrians.  We were all from somewhere else before.  But Alexandria is where we came together as a family.  Now we’re in a new place, uncharted territory.  On this planet we’re not just Alexandrians.  We’re people.  We’re human beings.  We’re earthlings.  We’re refugees.  We fled our home because it no longer sustained human life.  Yes, we are refugees and we hope that whoever is waiting for us out there will accept us as exactly that.

“But no matter what happens, no matter where we go from here, I want you all to promise me one thing.  Promise me you will hold onto your humanity.  It's all we have left of the world we came from.  That and each other.”  Rick stole a glance at Glenn.  “It's been pointed out to me that I'm a leader.  A leader is nothing without his people.  I'm nothing without all of you.  I just want you all to know how proud I am of you.  How proud I am of us.”

Rick looked across the faces of his people.  They looked like survivors.  They were hardened by the world they had fled.  It's what made them who they are.  They could never forget everything they had been through.  They must remember where they came from.

“Okay.”  This was as far as Rick was able to plan in his mind.  It was time to face the unknown.  “Me, Mulder, and Scully are going to make first contact.  I want you all to wait here.  And no matter what happens, remember, we have our humanity.  Hold onto that.”

He headed toward the sealed door of the ship that would lower down to become a ramp.  Mulder and Scully followed close behind.  As Rick reached the door Eugene knelt down to open the latch.  The door seal released and all of their ears popped with the slight pressure change.  Eugene looked up toward Rick.  “Are you positive you're ready for this?”

Rick nodded and, even though the question wasn't directed at him, Mulder uttered under his breath, “I'm beyond ready.”  Eugene pushed the door release and the floor lowered down revealing the ground below.  Mulder stepped out first, unable to contain himself any longer.  Rick and Scully followed.  What they saw took their breath away. They were greeted by a silently waiting crowd of about a dozen alien life forms, all gathered in close to get a look at the new arrivals..  Rick gasped at the sight of them.  Scully swallowed her shock and fear and stood stalk still.  Mulder alone moved toward the beings, unafraid, more sure than ever before that this was exactly where he belonged.

Rick couldn't help thinking they looked like monsters.  Tall, hairless, unclothed, with large heads and eerily giant black eyes.  He reminded himself that after the monsters he had seen on Earth, these looked relatively harmless, peaceful.  Just as Rick had his story and his humanity to hold onto, he told himself that this alien race also had their story.  He was just one intelligent life form meeting another.  He had no idea how to address these people, these things.  Having come all this way, he still didn't know what to say.

It turned out he didn't have to say anything.  Mulder addressed the crowd.  “My name is Fox Mulder.  We come seeking refuge.  We mean you no harm.”  He held up his hands in surrender.  He hoped they would understand the body language and take it as a show of good faith.  He knew this society had been studying humans for at least 60 years, probably a great deal longer than that.  He expected they would know how to communicate with him.  He prayed they understood English.

He waited for what was probably a matter of seconds, but felt like eons for a response.  They didn't speak.  They didn't open their mouths.  But, one by one, all the alien beings turned their heads, looking toward the back of their own crowd.  They stepped aside so Mulder could see what they were looking at.  At the back of the group of fleshy gray creatures were two figures, shrouded in hooded cloaks.

One of them spoke.  “Fox.”  It was little more than a whisper, but it rang loud and clear in Mulder’s ears.  “I sensed your proximity.  I knew it was you.”  The speaker reached up a hand and pulled back the hood, revealing a woman, a human woman.

She was older.  She looked weary.  She was changed in many ways.  But there was no mistaking those eyes.  Mulder knew those eyes.  He was frozen where he stood, feeling almost too weak to stand.  It took all the energy he had left in him to say her name.  “Samantha.”

Scully’s eyes widened in disbelief.  She stepped forward to stand by Mulder’s side, to get a better look at the sister he had lost so long ago.  Mulder had been right all along.  She wasn’t dead.  She was alive and well.  She had been waiting for him all these years.

Samantha placed her arm around the other shrouded figure, sliding back the hood of his cloak in the process.  Mulder could hardly tear his gaze away from his long lost sister.  When he did his eyes fell on a boy, a teenager.  He had Scully’s fiery red hair and Mulder’s icy blue eyes.  Scully didn’t need to hear Samantha’s next words to know who this was that stood before her.  “William has been waiting for you for a very long time.”

Scully nearly fainted.  She felt as though all the blood drained out of her as she dropped to her knees.   Mulder broke her fall.  This was her son.  This was their son.  The son they had let go of so long ago.  The son they had given up for adoption in order to protect him from the things she and Mulder had seen, to give him a chance at a normal life.  The son she worried had been consumed by the outbreak.  The son she thought was lost forever.  Here he stood before her, alive, thriving.

She wanted to run to him, embrace him, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.  She didn’t know if he would accept her.  She didn’t know how to explain to him the choice she had made to give him up.  She didn’t know if he could ever forgive her for that.  Finally, as she stood frozen in indecision, he approached her and placed a hand on her shoulder.  She shook her head, unable to believe this was real.  He spoke to her with a voice like an angel.  “She told me you would come.  She always believed.”

Tears streamed down Scully’s face and she finally found the strength to wrap her arms around the boy she thought she had lost.  “I never wanted to leave you.  In my heart, I never left you.”  Samantha stepped forward and the four of them wrapped their arms around one another.  Rick stood by and observed the scene, stunned.  A family reunited across galaxies.  This moment, this beautiful moment, was worth everything they had been through.

He turned, slowly, and walked back up the ramp into the ship to face his people, his Alexandrians, his earthlings.  He peered up at a sea of anxious faces.  Rick spread his arms in welcome as he said, “We are home.”

*****

Daryl sat on the front porch of one of the houses he sometimes occupied, watching the stillness of the town as darkness settled around him.  He had kept his promise to himself.  He had returned to Roxobel.  It was where he had left all of his supplies.  It was where he had left Carol.  But those weren't the only reasons he came back.  Something drew him back to this place.  Some force pulled him in every time he strayed too far.  He had left many times.  He had to go out hunting.  He had to scavenge for the necessities of life.  But something always brought him back to Roxobel.  He told himself that sometimes in life you make choices.  Other times your choices choose you.

He had given in.  He allowed himself to be drawn back.  He refused to call this little town home, but truthfully it was as close to it as he was ever going to get.

It hadn't taken too long for the walkers to clear out.  Occasionally one would wander through town and he would take care of it without much trouble.  He guarded the cemetery fiercely.  He didn't want to allow anyone, living or dead, to set foot on that hallowed ground.  Sometimes he would spend the night there, alongside Carol’s grave.  But most nights he took shelter in one of the tiny houses that dotted the little town.

On this night he was staying at a little house on Sam Pruden Road.  Daryl didn't know who Sam Pruden was or what he did to get a road named after him.  But he liked to think of this house as Sam’s house.  From the front porch he had a distant view of the entrance to the cemetery.  He stayed at this house a lot just for that reason.

The moon was almost full, which meant he had good visibility even as night crept in on him.  The nights were the hardest.  They seemed to stretch on forever.  He kept himself busy during the day, but in the darkness of night he had nowhere to run from his memories.  It was the memories of the people he had lost that haunted him.  The memories made the loneliness feel palpable, heavy.

He had run across very few living people in the months since his friends had made their escape.  His gut had told him they were bad people.  None of them had survived the encounter.  Trust no one.  That was Daryl's new axiom.  Loneliness was his only companion.  He wouldn't make new friends.  He had accepted that he would live out his days as the solitary protector of this tiny town.  The knight of Roxobel.  That's who he was now.

The wind suddenly picked up, catching Daryl’s attention.  It had been a very still night.  The incoming breeze caught him off guard.  Something about it didn’t sound right.  He cocked his head to one side, trying to listen more closely, like an animal sensing a predator nearby.  He stood, picking up his crossbow, and moved to step off the porch.  He hesitated, his foot hanging in midair.  Then he stepped back.  He decided he needed more protection, just in case.  He opened the front door to the house, Sam’s house, and retrieved an RPG from inside.

When he stepped back out onto the porch the wind was whipping more violently.  There was the sound of trees rustling, but there was definitely something else, something unnatural.  He stepped off the porch and looked up.  The sky was clear, nothing but a bright moon and a sea of stars.  He started down the road.  With each step the sound grew louder.  It sounded mechanical.  It wasn’t a car.  It sounded more like a helicopter or a small plane, but not quite.  He headed automatically toward the cemetery.  As the sound increased in volume, Daryl increased his speed.  He trusted his instincts, and they told him to run.  He rounded the corner onto Cemetery Road.  He hopped the fence into the graveyard, sprinting around the outside of the burial plots to arrive at Carol’s gravemarker.  He peered up through the trees, still seeing nothing out of the ordinary.  The sound grew louder.  

Daryl stepped out into the open.  The mechanical sound was almost deafening now and it reverberated through his head, making it hard for him to think.  This noise made no sense in his quiet little world.  Finally some sort of movement caught his attention in the sky.  Something shimmered and began to take shape.  He took aim at it with his rocket powered grenade launcher.  He held his breath.  The shape shimmered again and then, all at once there was a great expanse of steel on top of him.  Polished metal blocked out the night sky, reflecting the darkness and blotting out the moon.  He nearly fell backwards, but regained his footing.  He blinked a few times to try to reassure himself that what he was seeing was real.  Hovering over him was an enormous triangular ship.  It looked like a much larger version of the ARV that had taken everyone he cared about off this planet.  But his gut told him this was no replica.

Rick’s heartbeat returned to a somewhat normal pace as he reached the bottom rung of the ladder and set foot back on the warehouse floor.  He still felt nauseated at the idea of leaving one of his friends behind.  It wasn't a task he could ask of anybody.  They were a group, a team, a small army.  But first and foremost they were family.

As he looked at the forlorn faces of his tribe he realized Glenn was only partly right.  It was true, a good leader would let his people decide.  He couldn't single out one person and ask them to stay behind, to be abandoned by their clan.  But he knew his friends and he knew he wouldn't have to ask.  There would be volunteers.  The part that Glenn had left out was that, as a good leader, Rick would have to tell some of them no.  He may not be able to decide who should stay behind, but he could decide who must go on this journey.

Maggie and Glenn had a baby to raise.  They couldn't be separated.  That child would need them both.  Spencer, Denise, all the people who had been part of Deanna’s village.  They had already been in Alexandria when Rick and his original group arrived.  They had been protected from most of the horrors of the apocalypse.  They had learned a lot since Rick’s arrival, but they didn't know how to survive, how to fend for themselves outside the safety of those walls.  He couldn't allow any of them to volunteer.  It would be a death sentence.  Michonne was a survivor.  But the mere thought of being separated from her pulled at his heartstrings.  He loved her.  In truth, a lot of people in Rick’s community had found love.  He made the decision that none of them could be separated.  Love was a rare commodity in this world.  Of all the things they should bring with them on this journey, love was probably the most important.

As Rick gathered these thoughts in his mind, Abraham broke the silence.  “How many are there?”

“Too many to count,” Rick replied with a defeated sigh.  “Probably not as many as that herd from the quarry.  But definitely too many for us to take on.”

“How far out?”  Abraham was following the same line of thinking Rick had walked himself through on the roof.  If they couldn't kill them, could they outrun them?

Rick shook his head.  “They're at the edge of town, but they're heading this way.  They'll be on us in ten minutes or so.”

Abraham was thinking through the logistics of every possible escape plan and wasn't coming up with anything feasible.  Rick spoke these same thoughts to the rest of the group.  “We can't fight them.  There are too many.  We can't run from them.  We’re too low on gas and we have nowhere to run to.  We could try to wait them out, but I don't trust this building to hold them back.”

Carl was next to come to the same conclusion Rick had.  “So our only chance is to try to evacuate, launch the ship.”

Eugene interjected, “But, as I mentioned, that does entail leaving someone behind.”  Silence fell as the group let the direness of the situation sink in.  The unfairness of it all was too painful.  They had been through so much, both collectively and individually.  They had all suffered so much loss.  It seemed a great injustice that this world was going to force one more loss upon them before they left.  Rick stared at his feet, searching for the words.  How could he ask someone to stay behind?  How could he abandon a member of his family.  He didn’t have to ask.

“I'll do it,” came the voice of a volunteer.  Rick’s eyes shot up to meet Daryl’s.  As Rick stared in disbelief at his right hand man, his colleague, his best friend a chorus of protests rose up from the rest of the group.

Daryl stared back at Rick, not in a challenging way, but with a resigned indifference.  As if he were volunteering for something as simple as an extra watch in the guard tower.  He held up a hand to silence the protests.  “I'll do it,” he said again.  He turned to Eugene.  “Just show me what to do.”

Before Eugene could take a step toward the control panel, Morgan interrupted.  “It should be me.  I've been part of this group for the shortest time.  I was out there on my own.  I can do it again.”

Daryl shook his head.  “This isn’t a seniority thing.  It doesn’t matter if you joined this group first last or somewhere in between.  You told Rick that leaving Negan alive on Earth was a fate worse than death.  Those were your words.  How can you ask him to do that to you?”  Morgan opened his mouth to argue further, but Daryl cut him off.  “Besides, you can't bring yourself to kill anyone.  You need to go some place where killing isn't the way of life.  That place ain't here.”

Aaron was next to volunteer.  “I'll stay.  You know how much time I've spent out there alone.  I'm a survivor.  I can find another group.  I won't be alone.”

Daryl had an argument against that as well.  “You won't be able to recruit another group without the offer of Alexandria.  You would need some other group to take you in and I wouldn't trust anyone anymore.  Not after seeing how far Negan’s control reached.  Besides,”. Daryl pointed to Aaron’s boyfriend, Eric.  “He needs you up there, not down here.”

Abraham raised his hand.  “I should do it.  It’s always been my mission to keep these people safe.  Let me take this responsibility.”

Daryl gave Abraham a half smile.  “I can’t let you do that, buddy.  She needs you,” he said as he pointed toward Rosita.  “It makes the most sense for me to stay.  You’ve got to let me take this one for the team.”

“And what about me?”  There was an edge of anger in Mulder’s voice as he stepped away from the ship and toward Daryl.

“There’s no way in hell you can stay here,” Daryl told him, caught off guard by his apparent offer.  “You know more about that planet full of aliens than anyone else here.  Of all people, you have to go.”

Mulder took a few more paces forward until he stood just inches in front of Daryl.  “That’s not what I meant.”  The harsh inflection was still there.  “I meant what about me?  Eric needs Aaron.  Rosita needs Abraham.  Well guess what, I need you.”

Daryl stared back at Mulder, their eyes locked in a battle of blue steel.  He took a few measured breaths, trying to form the right words in his mind.  “You told me you spent your whole life looking up at the sky because you always knew something was out there.  Something was calling to you.  You said you felt like you never belonged here.  And I think you’re right.  But the thing is, I’ve never belonged anywhere else.  I didn’t even belong in the world before the outbreak.  A part of me always knew that.  But this world, right here, right now.  This is what I was meant for.  And that’s why I have to stay.  That’s why it has to be me.”

The anger in Mulder’s expression melted away and was replaced by despair.  “But how do you know?  How do you know that you don't belong up there too?  Most people don't know where they're going until they arrive.”

Mulder’s pleading tone tugged at Daryl's heart, but he held his ground.  “That might be true for most people.  But not for us.  I think you know exactly where you're going.  And I think I've already arrived.”

Mulder lost the staring contest.  He looked down at his feet with a sigh of frustration.  When he looked back up there were tears in his eyes.  “I know you're right.  But you can't make me like it.”  The anger was back in his voice, but it wasn’t anger toward Daryl.  It was anger at the situation.

Daryl smiled a little.  “I figured out pretty quick that I can't make you do anything.”

Without warning Mulder leaned in and kissed him.  Daryl's instinct was to pull away.  He had been experiencing so much self doubt about his feelings toward Mulder.  He had halfway convinced himself that it was all just a big mistake.  But now he realized that life was too short for regrets.  He might as well accept himself as he is.  Without looking he could tell all the surrounding Alexandrians were exchanging inquisitive looks and shocked expressions.  But he didn't pull away.  What did it matter what anyone thought?  In a matter of minutes he would never see any of these people again.  So he gave in.  He kissed Mulder back, placing a hand at the back of his neck and leaning into him, because it felt right.  It felt like where he was supposed to be.  He had arrived.

As Mulder pulled away, he whispered, “Just promise me you’ll keep looking up.”

Daryl couldn't speak.  He couldn't find any words.  So he just nodded and turned to face a wide-eyed Eugene.  “Show me what to do.”

Eugene shook off his astonishment and followed Daryl to the control panel as the rest of the crew went about loading themselves into the space craft.  When Daryl felt confident in the instructions he had received he turned to find Rick, looking tearyeyed and a little queasy.  He looked like he was having trouble making eye contact, much less forming words.  “I'm sorry,” was all he managed to utter.  Daryl knew he didn’t want to put this burden on anyone.  Probably Daryl least of all.  But the fact remained that someone had to do it.

Daryl was suddenly struck by how much he was going to miss Rick.  “Don't be sorry.  Someone has to stay.  I make the most sense.  I'll survive.”

Rick swallowed hard against the lump forming in his throat.  “You know you're not just my friend, right?  You're my best friend.  You're my brother.”

Daryl was starting to feel a little choked up himself.  “I know, man.  I know.  You're my brother too.”  Rick pulled him in for a hug.  Rick had never been the hugging type, but he couldn't say goodbye to Daryl with a handshake or a pat on the back.  Not after all they had been through together.  Not after the number of times they had saved each others lives.  Not after the sacrifice Daryl had just made so that this whole family of people could have a chance at a life away from all this death.

As Rick released him Daryl saw Abraham standing over his shoulder.  He was holding the case of RPGs.  “I don't do heartfelt goodbyes, my friend.”  Daryl nodded in understanding and gave the former military sergeant a little salute.  Abraham saluted him in return.  He handed the case to Daryl by the strap.  “I think you'll be needing these.”

Daryl accepted the weapons readily.  He knew this group couldn’t outrun the herd.  They had nowhere left on Earth to run to anyway.  But one man could outrun those monsters.  He could outrun them.  There was no time left for long goodbyes if he was going to have a chance for escape as well.  He solemnly watched every friend he had left on the planet file into the alien replica vehicle.  The last person Daryl saw before the ship door swung shut was Rick.  There were no more words to be spoken, just a sorrowful expression to be shared.

The door sealed itself shut with a loud clang.  Daryl flinched at the finality of the sound.  He couldn’t allow himself to think about anything but the task in front of him.  If he stopped to think about everything he was about to let go, he might just lose his mind.  He had to focus on Eugene’s instructions.  He approached the control panel.  Eugene had left one of the radios resting there and it clicked on.  Eugene’s voice sounded, “Check, one, two.  Do you copy?”

Daryl gave a small laugh at the familiarly strange mannerisms of his friend.  “Yeah, man, I hear you.”

“Prepare to engage.”  Daryl placed his hand over the engage switch.  As Eugene ordered, “Engage!” Daryl flipped the switch.

“Okay,” Daryl said into the radio.  “The powercheck gauge is in the green.”

“Copy that.  Mine shows green as well.  Prepare for release.”

Daryl placed his thumb over the release button.  “Hey, Eugene.  You keep everyone safe up there.  Got it?”

There was a pause in which Daryl guessed Eugene was feeling either very proud at the authority he had been given or terrified by the responsibility.  He came back on the radio.  “Copy that.”

Daryl smiled to himself.  “Okay, I’m ready.”

As Eugene exclaimed, “Release!” Daryl pressed and held the button.  He jumped back as the ship suddenly shot straight up.  It was a smooth motion, but Daryl was startled by the speed of the spacecraft.  It hovered above the warehouse.  It shined so brightly in the sunlight that he had to squint to look at it.  He was about to look away because it was nearly blinding.  Then the ship shimmered and looked somehow pixelated.  Then, all at once, it was gone.  It just faded out and disappeared.  Daryl searched his memory.  He thought Mulder had told him something about the ship becoming invisible.  He wondered how he was going to know if the launch was successful if he couldn’t see the damn thing.

Just as the thought had crossed his mind, the ship itself gave him an answer.  He felt a concussive pulse, like a bomb going off.  It knocked him on his back.  He stared up at the place where the ship had been and thought he saw the outline of it shimmering there for a second.  Then there was a sudden rush of air.  Oxygen was being forced into his lungs, but sucked out at the same time.  He felt like his eyes were going to burst out of his head.  Then there was a sound.  He could only describe it as a sonic boom.  Every speck of dust in the warehouse was kicked up into a cyclone, obscuring Daryl’s vision.  Then, all at once, everything was still and silent.  The dust settled.  The only sound he could hear was the ringing in his own ears.  Dust settled all around him.  He wanted to cough, but whatever that force was, that pulse, had left his lungs so weak he couldn’t quite manage it.  He allowed himself a moment to just lay flat on his back on the warehouse floor.  He allowed himself to be still.

As the ringing in his ears began to fade he was able to make out a muffled sound.  A familiar sound.  An undead sound.  The herd was pressing in, close enough to hear them.  He was worried about his friends.  He hoped that they had made it out, that they had survived the launch, that they were already on their way to safety.  But he couldn’t worry about them too much just yet.  He needed to worry about himself first.

He rolled himself over and managed to cough up some of the particulate he had inhaled.  He pushed himself onto his hands and knees and slowly crawled to the case of rocket powered grenade launchers.  He opened the case and removed one of the weapons.  Slinging it over his shoulder he pulled himself to his feet.  He strode toward the ladder that would lead him to the roof, kicking up a little cloud of dust which each step.

Daryl reached the roof and peered over the edge of the building.  The parade of walkers was about 50 yards out.  At the sight of him the leaders seemed to move a little more quickly.  This was as close as he would get to earthly companions from now on.  These roaming bands of corpses were all that were left to keep him company.  He had assigned himself a very lonely existence.  But that was okay, he thought.  Lonely was something he was used to.

These companions had to go.  He propped the RPG over his shoulder, took aim, and fired.  The sound seemed faint compared to the din of the ARV launch.  The front of the herd suddenly vanished.  Probably three dozen walkers just disappeared.  All that was left of them were puddles of charred flesh and an assortment of smoldering body parts.  The ones that were far enough back to survive the blast were burning.  That was the only time they made a different noise.  When a walker was after you the sound was always the same, a sort of hissing growl.  Even if you stabbed them, dismembered them, the sound was always the same.  But fire?  Fire seemed to be the one thing they could still feel.  When a walker caught fire it shrieked like a banshee.  The haunting sound sent a chill down Daryl’s spine.  The noise seemed to be an effective distraction for the remaining stream of monsters.  They were no longer an organized herd, but a swarming mass of chaos.  This was his chance for escape.

Daryl climbed back down the ladder into the warehouse.  He made sure that the rollup doors were secured.  Then he grabbed his crossbow and made his way out the little white door, careful to close it behind him.  He had bought himself some time.  But the sound of the ship launch coupled with the RPG was sure to draw in every walker for miles around.  He had to go.  He mounted his bike, examining the other vehicles, remembering the small ration of food left for him in the warehouse.  He would come back for it, he promised himself.  He would allow enough time for the herd to disburse and then he would come back to this town.  He fired up the motorcycle’s engine and quickly turned it back onto the road, heading southwest, away from the herd and the smell of burned corpses.

Mulder pressed his hand against the cold steel of the bay doors separating him from his goal.  He felt the metal grow warm under his touch.  His palm cooled at the same time.  It was an exchange.  Man adapting to metal.  Metal adapting to man.  His mouth grew dry with anticipation.  His heart beat in his chest like a hammer.

The vision of the alien replica vehicle had haunted him since the day he had seen one in person.  He had traveled to New Mexico to see it.  He had been invited.  In hindsight he realized the invitation was probably the result of Spender, The Smoking Man, pulling his endless supply of strings.  How much of Mulder’s life had been dictated behind the scenes by that man?  He would never know.  Still, he was grateful he had been given the opportunity to see that spacecraft.  He had touched it.  He had been shown what it was capable of.  Ever since then it had often visited him in his dreams.  Calling out to him.  Drawing him in.  It was a vessel of possibility.

Now here he stood, tantalizingly close to another one.  All that stood between him and the ARV was four inches of solid steel.

“Why can't I just blast the damn doors open?” Abraham asked, holding up the case of rocket powered grenade launchers that he was always itching to use.  He was standing impatiently near the doors.

“Because,” Eugene replied without looking up from the control panel at the back wall of the warehouse, “You would risk damaging the spacecraft and, I'm sorry, but I simply cannot allow that.”  He looked from the schematics in his hand to the controls.  Sweat beaded on his brow.  This was his chance to redeem himself.  He knew he had made a lot of mistakes, let a lot of people down.  This was his one chance to make up for it.  He couldn't screw this up.

After confirming and reconfirming that the schematics made no mention of how to open the bay doors he determined he would have to wing it.  He started with the illuminated amber button on the far side of the panel.  He pushed the button down and held it, along with his breath.

Just as he had hoped, an electronic whirring filled the space.  It was the kind of white noise that people would ignore in the old world.  An ever present hum, like a television that had been left on.  But in this world it sounded foreign.  It sounded alien.  A series of pinging noises rang out and then the whole control panel lit up like a Christmas tree.  Eugene thought it might be the most beautiful sight he'd ever seen.

He scanned the panel, looking for anything that might indicate the door controls.  Everything was labeled with symbols instead of words.  Eugene had always been annoyed by that trend.  He understood the purpose.  If you go about labeling the world with icons instead of words, you reduce the language barrier.  But those icons were a form of word association that had never clicked in his brain.  He had come to realize his brain didn't work quite like most people.

There! He spotted some familiar symbols.  There were two buttons together, red and green.  The red one had a picture of a padlock.  The green one had two triangles pointing in opposite directions, like the button in elevators that held the doors open.

Eugene took a deep breath, trying not to let his anxiety show.  He depressed the red button.  Everyone's attention turned to the steel doors as they heard a mechanical cranking sound.  Metal on metal.  Gears working together.  Cogs biting into each other.  Eugene released his breath.

Then the green button.  He placed his finger over the button, said a silent prayer and pushed it down.  This button gave more resistance and his instinct was to hold it down.  He felt a slight rumble beneath his feet.  The whole building shuddered slightly as the solid steel doors parted at the seam, swinging out into the room and causing the onlookers to take several steps back.  Years of dust billowed out into the space.

There was a collective gasp as the dust settled.  Mulder dropped to his knees.  There it was, the thing that had been haunting him.  The hunk of metal and machinery and alien technology that had spent years living in the corners of his mind.  Made by man, designed by an alien race, the only interplanetary collective effort in the known universe.  Now the alien replica vehicle stood before him.  Well, floated would be more accurate.  Just like the one he had seen in New Mexico, this ship was suspended in midair, some unseen alien force holding it about four feet off the ground.  It was more or less triangular in shape, all metal with no visible windows of any kind.  Mulder had been given the understanding that the occupants would be able to see out without the aid of any windows.  Despite the dust that had accumulated in the warehouse over the years, the spacecraft looked shiny, polished, pristine.  The dark colored metal reflected the faces of the awed onlookers.  It seemed everyone was afraid to move.  Within the confines of the building the ship looked massive.  It was certainly bigger than the Winnebago.  But Mulder knew their journey would be a long one and the space would be cramped.  Still, wasn’t that worth survival?  Wasn’t that worth a chance at a real life?

As Mulder kneeled on the cold concrete floor, staring at the technological marvel before him, he caught sight of his own face in the reflection.  But it wasn’t his eyes staring back at him.  He couldn’t quite explain it, but he felt sure they were his sister’s eyes.  He thought he could hear her whispering again.  It’s time, Fox.  Come home.  This was exactly the type of calling that made him a believer.  He had no doubt in his mind.  In that moment he knew this would work, that they were doing the right thing.  They would make it out and they would survive.

The group may have stood and stared forever if it weren’t for Eugene strutting past them toward the ship.  With more confidence than he truly felt, Eugene located the handle that would open the ship’s door.  There was a hissing whoosh as some sort of airlock was released.  Then a large door folded down to become a ramp.  The group took that as their cue to get to work.  Everyone maintained a sort of solemn silence as they went about the business of unloading the contents of their earthly vehicles.  As the rest of the Alexandrians went about forming a sort of assembly line to load their supplies onto the ARV, Eugene had to work on powering everything up.  In the meantime he needed someone else to climb up to the roof and see about retracting it.  The ship was designed to launch straight up.

He glanced around and his eyes first fell on Abraham.  He considered assigning him this chore, but then decided against it.  Their relationship was still rocky at best.  Of all the people Eugene felt he owed something, his debt to Abraham was the greatest.  The man had risked his life to protect Eugene because of a lie he had told.  He had claimed to be someone he wasn't.  Someone who had knowledge of the outbreak and the power to fix it.  He claimed to be exactly what Scully actually was.  He had finally been forced to own up to his lie and he had been trying to make up for it ever since.  He hadn't earned redemption yet.  Least of all from Abraham. He would ask someone else to climb up to the roof.

His gaze drifted to Glenn.  Glenn was a very forgiving man.  He always tried to believe the best of people.  He could be trusted with the task and wouldn't make Eugene feel too guilty for asking.

As if he were a mind reader, Glenn noticed Eugene staring and broke away from the assembly line.  “Is there anything I can help with?”

Eugene was relieved by the offer.  “I need someone to climb up there.”  He pointed to a ladder near the roll up door that led to a hatch in the ceiling.  “There should be a latch and a crank to roll the whole thing back.  If you would not mind, I would be much obliged.”

Glenn clapped him on the shoulder, sensing his comrade's discomfort at his suddenly position of authority.  “You got it, boss.”  He made his way toward the ladder as Eugene returned to the control panel, preparing for launch.

As Glenn opened the hatch a shower of rusted paint chips rained down on him.  He shook himself off and climbed up to the roof.  Most of the top of the building looked like a larger version of the roll up doors, only horizontal.  There was a latch at one end of the door, just as Eugene had predicted.  Near the southeast corner of the building was the crank box.  He began with the latch which he quickly found was rusted into place.  Glenn said a silent curse to himself when it didn't budge under his force.  For lack of a better tool, he removed his gun from its holster and used the butt of it as a hammer, pounding away until finally it gave, just a little.  He leaned in and blew the rust and paint chips away, then tried to push it with his hand again.  Still nothing.  He hammered away with the grip of his gun until all at once the latch swung wide open.  The retractable roof gapped open with the release, less than an inch, but at least it moved.

Glenn accepted the tiny victory and stood to walk to the crank box.  The handle of the crank was behind a little aluminum door and had likely been protected from the weather.  There was significantly less rust in this part of the mechanism.  He tested the handle and found it moved without too much force.  Glenn braced himself and gave the crank a full rotation.  With a great metallic squeal of protest, the roof rolled back about one foot.  He gave it two rotations in succession and the roof rolled back another two feet.  He looked at how far he had to go.  He guessed the ship was at least 50 feet, nose to tail.  He'd have to get the roof rolled back at least that much.  He mentally prepared himself for the labor ahead and dug right in.  After a lot of sweat, and a few blisters on his palms, he reached the end of his task.  Another small win. He thought about how lucky they had been.  Lucky to have Mulder and Scully stumble into their village with the knowledge they possessed and the plan they formed.  Lucky to have made the journey here, trying as it was.  Lucky to have defeated Negan and sent his Saviors running.  Lucky the ship was still here, that it still had power.

Glenn peered into the opening and looked down at the spaceship below.  There was no denying, it was an impressive sight.  He caught sight of Maggie, holding William, in the building below and he smiled.  He smiled nearly every time he saw her.  As if she sensed his gaze she looked up and smiled back.  As Glenn tried to catch his breath from the work of rolling back the roof he thought how out of place this shiny, futuristic contraption was.  How could this thing exist in the middle of such a tiny little rural town.

Maggie was still looking up at her husband when he looked out at the surrounding town and she noticed the second his face fell.  All the blood seemed to drain out of him.  He was ghostly pale.  Something was wrong.

“Glenn!” Maggie called, catching the attention of many of her friends on the ground, but not Glenn.  He was frozen, staring off into the distance.  “Glenn!” she called again, more panicked.  Everyone on the ground stopped what they were doing and looked up at Glenn.

Finally snapping out of his shock he managed to choke out the words, “We have a problem.”  He looked down toward Maggie, holding their baby son in her arms.  Then he saw Rick and the concern in the eyes of his leader, his friend.  He had trouble forming the words, but as the blood returned to his brain he managed to shout, “Walkers! Everyone inside!  Close the doors!”

Rick raced toward the ladder as everyone else clambered to secure the warehouse.  Rick reached the top rung of the ladder as Daryl and Abraham slammed the roll up doors closed and latched them, barricading the Alexandrians inside.  Glenn met Rick at the top of the ladder and helped hoist him up onto the roof.  Rick dusted the rust off his hands onto his pants as he turned to look at what had struck Glenn with such dread.  After one look he pressed his eyes closed, not wanting to believe what he saw.  But as he peeled his eyelids open again he couldn't deny the sight.  A herd was pressing in on them.  The road they had come in on was suddenly filled with a flood of walkers that were slowly, but incessantly, making their way toward the red building with the little white door.  The horde was still a ways out, but they would arrive soon enough.

The commotion of the battle with the Saviors must have drawn them in.  Or maybe the racket of their entire journey from Alexandria was drawing together a parade of the dead all along the way and they were finally catching up.  Whatever the case, this meant trouble.

Rick had seen herds before.  He had tactics to use against them.  If it was a relatively small group his people could take them out with guns and knives and any other weapons at their disposal.  But this was definitely a bigger group than that.  If it was an enormous gathering the best approach was to try to lead them away.  But that took time and a lot of planning.  Time was something they didn't have.  Sometimes if you were very quiet a herd would just pass you by.  But with this many live people in one small space, the walkers were as likely to smell them as hear them.  Their best chance with this particular group was to launch that ship as quickly as possible.

Without pulling his eyes away from the approaching undead army, Rick called down to his ship pilot.  “Eugene!  How long until you can get this thing off the ground?”

Eugene was hunched over the buttons and knobs and levers, sweating profusely.  At Rick’s question he planted his clenched fists on the control panel, worried he may physically crumble under the pressure.  He had to keep it together.  He sucked in a sharp breath and fumbled for an answer.  “Um, well.  It's just that…”

Abraham was losing his patience.  “Spit it out, numb nuts.”

Eugene stood up straight, trying to regain his composure.  “We have a problem.”

Rick was growing impatient as well.  “Yeah, well I've got a problem up here too.  Can you fly this thing or not?”

“I can.”  Eugene’s response was for Rick, but he turned to face Abraham as he said it.  “I can.  However, there is a problem with the dual launch controls.  It's a security feature.  The controls are clearly diagramed in the schematics.  There’s an engage switch and a power check gauge and a final release button.”

Abraham couldn't take the rambling.  “In English, Eugene! I don't speak tech nerd.”

Eugene searched his mind for the simplest way to explain the problem.  His brain didn't really do simple.  “It takes two people to launch the ship.  Two people with two sets of controls.  One set is in front of the pilot seat in the ARV.  The other set is right here.”  He indicated a set of buttons and levers on the control panel at the back of the warehouse.

A long pause followed this revelation and Eugene wasn't sure if his audience didn't understand or if they were just letting it sink it.

Rick asked for clarification.  “What are you trying to tell us, Eugene?”

“I'm trying to tell you,” Eugene said, flustered, “that if you want to launch this thing, someone is going to have to stay behind.”

Rick felt his heart drop into his stomach.  Eugene went on, saying something about the lack of indication in the schematics, but Rick barely heard it.  He turned his gaze toward the approaching herd.  They were still tiny figures on the horizon, like the little plastic army men Carl used to play with.  But they were growing larger all the time.  He sat down on the roof in defeat.  How could they have come this far only to find out they would have to sacrifice one of their own?  This couldn't be.

Glenn sat down beside him.  “You know, we don't have to do this.”  Rick buried his face in his hands and didn't respond.  Glenn went on.  “We could go back to Alexandria.  Negan is dead.  We could regroup, come up with another plan.”

Rick looked at him.  He knew his friend was trying to be helpful, but Rick felt utterly helpless at the moment.  “We would have to find a way past those walkers first.  We’re out of gas.  The world itself is running out of supplies to sustain human life.  And even if we could make it back to Alexandria, there will always be another Negan.”

Glenn could hardly argue with him.  Those were all valid points.  They had committed to this plan and they hadn't really left themselves an out.

“I'll stay,” Rick declared.

Glenn shook his head.  “You can't do that anymore than I can, Rick.  You have a family.  Carl is a tough kid but you can't leave him with the responsibility of raising his baby sister.”  Rick looked unconvinced.  “Besides, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, you are the survivor you've become because of these people.  You're a leader, Rick.  It's your role.  You’re good at it.  It's who you are.  Without your people to lead, I'm not sure how you could survive this world.”

Rick was crushed.  He knew Glenn was right.  He had stepped into the role of leader somewhat hesitantly, but it was all he was ever really meant to do.  He couldn’t survive as a loner.  He had survived this far because of the skills of his people.  His only job now was to keep his people safe.  He couldn’t very well do that by staying behind.  Yet the fact remained, they had to evacuate and that meant someone had to stay here, on Earth.  But who?

As if hearing Rick’s thoughts, Glenn said, “Come on.  Let’s get down from here so you can do what a good leader does.”

“And what might that be?” Rick asked, struggling to hold his thoughts together.

When the gunshot rang out Rick instinctively hit the ground.  He was inside the red building, the hangar, as it were.  Abraham had busted the lock off the little white door and he, Eugene, Rosita, and Rick had entered cautiously.  The caution was unnecessary.  No one, alive or dead, awaited them inside.  This building had been locked up tight and it was unassuming enough that looters likely left it alone.  Rick thought to himself that if he had come across this building on a supply run he would have driven right past it.  He wondered how many people had done exactly that.  How many wayward souls had passed up this unmarked, windowless structure in favor of something more promising?  In fact this building was the most promising thing left on Earth.

The drawings Scully and Mulder had shown him were of the ship itself, which he couldn't see upon entering the warehouse.  Still, he felt sure this was the place.  In the dim light pouring in through the open door Rick could make out a complex instrument panel against the back wall.  It's buttons, knobs, and levers were coated in dust, but appeared to be intact.  One button on the far right side was illuminated.  The glowing amber light might as well have been pure gold.  It gave promise.  It gave hope.  Something was still powering this place.  To his right there were some heavy duty steel doors with an intimidating looking electronic lock.  But Rick would not be intimidated, not when he had come so far, been through so much.

It all seemed so out of place.  How could this shabby building in the tiny little town of Roxobel hold something so secretive, so technologically advanced, so vital to survival?  Yet here it was, their chance at a new life, their last hope for safety.  He felt an electric zing pulsing through his body, like his blood was magnetic and the ship was pulling him in.  It didn't feel natural, but somehow it still felt right.

They had their cars lined up outside the roll up doors on the side of the structure and the Winnebago was parked on the road out front.  They were poised and ready to load all their worldly possessions into a spaceship that would carry them to another galaxy, another existence.  Rosita cut the lock holding one of the roll up doors in place and was ready to hoist it open.  That was when they heard it.  One crisp, clear gunshot echoing through the emptiness of the deserted town.  The sound reverberated through Rick’s skull.

The four of them hit the floor inside the red warehouse with the little white door.  None of them moved.  None of them breathed.  The silence felt endless.  Rick had nearly convinced himself that it was one of their own.  One of his people must have come upon a walker and needed to take care of it quickly.  Any second he expected to hear the voice of Glenn or Maggie or Michonne calling out, telling him it was all clear.  Everything was fine.

But that wasn't the voice he heard.  The voice he heard was filled with malice.  The voice he heard was fueled by rage, hatred, revenge.  The voice he heard brought a crushing weight down on Rick’s chest.  A weight he didn't know how to remove.

“Try as I might I just can't seem to forget the name Rick Grimes.”

Rick stood, Negan’s voice drawing him off the ground like a marionette, propelling him toward the little white door.  Abraham moved to follow him, but Rick held up one hand, indicating for his three companions to stay put.  With his other hand he drew his gun.  As he reached the door he made one swift move over the threshold back out into the daylight.  He looked quickly left and then moved right, toward where his people had been waiting for the roll up door to open.  Toward Negan's voice.  He took about twenty steps until he reached the corner of the building, but it could have been miles for all he knew.  He felt like he was trying to run in a dream.  His pulse raced, his heart pounded in his ears, but his legs wouldn't obey his sense of urgency.  The world was stuck in slow motion.

As he reached the corner of the building, looking down the sights of his pistol, he found a great mass of people.  A silent mob, all waiting for his arrival.  Front and center in the swarm of indistinguishable bodies was an apologetic looking Carl with a gun pressed firmly against his temple.

Rick would have sworn his heart stopped.  Bile rose in his throat and he felt his knees might give out.  The sound of Negan's voice reminded him he had to be strong.  He had to stay in control.

“You missed one,”  Negan said with a grin as he wiggled the handle of the gun he held against the head of Rick’s son.  When they left Negan and his men on the side of the road they had disarmed them hastily.  They hadn't searched for their vehicles.  They hadn't checked Dwight's body or that of the other dead Savior.  They were in too much of a hurry to put distance between themselves and Negan before the medication wore off.  They had chosen flight over fight, but now the fight had tracked them down.

Rick felt desperate.  “What do you want?”

“I want your blood.  If I can't get it from you,” Negan sneered, “I'm taking it from your boy.”

“You will not spill one drop of his blood,” Rick commanded.

Negan feigned offense.  “Rick, what kind of a monster do you think I am?  I don't want to hurt him.  In fact, I kind of like your boy.  He's spunky.  Must take after dear old Dad.  But you must understand, I can't let you get away with what you've done.  Someone has to pay.”

“We haven't done anything that you didn't bring on yourself,” Rick accused.  “You showed up at our front door.  You threatened us.  You hunted us down.”  Rick’s hand on his pistol was shaking, betraying the fear he was doing his best to swallow.  “Anything we’ve done to you and your people was done in self defense.  I showed mercy on you.  I could have killed every last one of you on the road back there, but I didn't.  I spared you.  That's your repayment right there.  That's the payment for the debt you think you're owed: your own life.”

Negan pressed his gun harder into Carl’s head.  “Rick, if you weren't such a self righteous son of a bitch you'd be able to see it from my point of view.  You think you're the white knight, the grand hero in your story.  But in my story you're the monster under the bed.  You're the thing that goes bump in the night.”

Rick shook his head at the megalomaniac before him.  “If you weren't such a self absorbed asshole you would be able to see it from my point of view.  You're nothing.  You're an insignificant little flea.  You're a parasite on this world, sucking up everyone else's will to live just to make yourself feel more important.  Tell me, what were you before all of this?”  Negan’s brow furrowed, but he didn't answer.  “You were a nobody.  That's my bet.”

Negan’s hand moved in slow motion as he spoke, mechanically cranking away from Carl and toward Rick.  The leader of the Alexandrians had struck a nerve.  “I was never a nobody.  I am an everybody.  Everybody is me.  We are all Negan.  Even you, you just don't realize it yet.”

Just as Rick thought Negan was about to fire his weapon the man lurched forward with a grunt, nearly falling to his knees.  His grip on Carl’s shoulder was all that kept him from hitting the ground. Blood trickled from his slicked back hairline down his face.  He licked it as it dripped past his mouth and the taste seemed to strip away all of his composure, all of his pompous showmanship, all of his delusions of grandeur.  By the time Rick made sense of what had just happened several Saviors had already pounced on Mulder and wrestled the bat out of his hand.

Negan’s precious Lucille had been left carelessly by the wayside.  No, not carelessly, Rick decided.  Arrogantly.  Mulder had seized it and had used the distraction of the conversation between Rick and Negan as an opportunity to take a swing.

But it wasn't enough.  Negan recovered quickly, returning the barrel of his gun to Carl’s temple.  He looked at Rick, but indicated toward Mulder, pinned to the ground, with a jerk of his head.  So, should I start with him then?  Is he the first to go?”

“I told you once before,” Rick snarled.  “You're not taking any of my people.”

Negan was beyond laughing, beyond grinning, beyond pretending to be in control of his own emotions.  “And I told you, they're not your people anymore.  Besides, I wasn't talking about taking him.  I was talking about killing him.”

Rick locked eyes with Mulder, pinned to the ground by four Saviors, helpless.  Negan continued.  “Yes, I think I’ll start with this one.  I haven’t decided what to do with that little redheaded doctor of yours yet.  That bitch deserves to die for what she did.  But I have a feeling she’ll prove useful to me, so I’ll come up with some other form of punishment for her.”

At the mention of Scully, Mulder lunged out toward Negan, but was quickly restrained by the men holding him.  Negan’s grin returned.  “She means something to you then, does she?” Negan asked of Mulder.  He didn’t respond, but if looks could kill Negan would have dropped dead on the spot.  “And I’ll bet that you mean something to her too.  So maybe killing you is a good enough punishment for her.  I get two for the price of one.”

Negan shifted his aim away from Carl and toward Mulder with that same slow motion, mechanical action.  Just as his finger began to squeeze the trigger the world seemed to slow to a crawl.  From Rick’s vantage point everything was moving underwater.  It was as though Rick could feel Negan’s sweat.  He could feel the tendons in Negan’s hand tightening as he prepared to fire.  Or was it Rick’s own finger on the trigger?  Was it his own sweat.  He couldn't tell anymore.  Maybe he was Negan afterall.

An incongruous whistle ripped through the silence past Rick’s left ear.  A crossbow bolt came sailing through the air, piercing Negan’s chest, missing his heart, but lodging itself deep in his lung.  He seemed to stay on his feet for an eternity, teetering between life and death, disbelieving, searching for one last remark to spit at his enemy.  The enormity of his entire being, his life, his power, hung in limbo as he contemplated that this could be his dying breath.  Blood sputtered forth from his mouth with a wheezing gasp.  It seemed impossible that such a driving force, such a super villain, could be struck down with a single well-aimed shot.  As he finally fell backward, Carl fell forward and out of harm’s way.  Rick turned to look over his left shoulder and found Daryl on the roof of the Winnebago, returned from Carol’s grave and taking aim at his next target.  Rick followed the second arrow with his eyes as it shot through the air and into the neck of one of the men holding Mulder to the ground.  Still, Rick couldn’t take it all in at full speed.  His mind was racing too fast or the world was moving too slow, he wasn’t sure which.

His gaze continued to wind around until he was looking over his right shoulder.  He saw the roll up door of the building flash open and was greeted by the sight of Abraham, Rosita, and Eugene, assault rifles in hand, opening fire on the mass of Saviors that stood before them.  The Alexandrians took cover behind the vehicles they had arrived in and began firing their weapons as well.  The war that they had tried to run from was here.  For all Rick’s planning and maneuvering, this inevitability had caught up with them.  The Saviors still had them outnumbered, but they were practically unarmed.  Still, they attempted to take cover and defend themselves as their blood was shed.

Rick suddenly realized he was standing stalk still in the middle of all this chaos with his pistol still extended toward the place where Negan once stood.  He couldn’t hear the shots being fired.  He didn’t feel the movement all around him.  He simply stood, trying to reconnect with the scene.  It was Michonne who finally grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the fray.  As her hand touched his the world came back up to speed as the two of them dove for cover.

The bloodbath was one sided thanks to the heavy weaponry of the Alexandrians.  As a dozen or so of Negan’s men lay bleeding in the dirt, the rest turned and fled.  Shots were fired after them, but in the end Rick called a cease fire.

“Let them go!” he called, one fist raised as a sign to hold their fire.  “They’re no threat to us anymore.”  Rick strode toward his enemy’s writhing body on the ground, standing over him as he had done on the road while Negan was drugged.  He leaned down and picked up the bat that lay nearby.  He examined it, Negan’s precious Lucille.  His weapon of choice.  The thing that had struck fear in the hearts of many and had likely taken the lives of more than a few.  It was now no more than a piece of wood wrapped in wire.  Without the man who wielded it, it was nothing.  Rick propped the bat over his own shoulder and leaned in close to address the dying man.

Negan spoke first.  “Just tell me one thing.  What's in that building?  What did you come here for?”  The words were whispered with laboring breaths, wet with blood.

Rick smiled.  Even on his deathbed this man remained fascinated with power, with control.  “I came here to start again.  And that's all you'll ever get to know about it.”

Negan was defeated.  His breaths were coming slower now.  “It costs you nothing to tell me what's in there.”

“Maybe not, but it costs you something to never know.  And I think that makes it worth it to me.”

The pool of blood spreading out around Negan’s body was growing.  He wasn't long for his world.  He would soon be nothing more than a phantom.  Yet he couldn't let go.  He clung to this world if only to try to antagonize Rick further.  “I will haunt you until the end of your days, Rick Grimes.  Every time you close your eyes, I'll be there.”

Rick let the bat swing like a pendulum, coming to rest right above Negan’s nose.  “Maybe you will haunt me.  But that's because you'll be nothing more than a ghost.”  He pushed the tip of Negan’s own weapon into the man’s flesh.  “You’re not the white knight of your story either.”

With that Rick raised Lucille high and brought her down hard on Negan’s skull.  One blow was all it took.  The man’s head split open like a ripe tomato.  The life was gone from him, but his last breath escaped his punctured lungs with a long slow hiss.  Looking down at his enemy’s ruined body it seemed impossible that he had been so powerful, that he had ruled an army, that he had played God for so long.  Now he was just a corpse, a mound of dead flesh.  He would return to dust.

Rick tossed Lucille onto the chest of the dead man and turned to walk away.  He was met by a very disappointed looking Morgan, scolding him with his eyes.  Morgan repeated his reasoning for letting the Saviors live.  “Death only brings about more death.”

Rick turned and looked over the bodies sprawled out before him and considered his friend’s sentiment.  He decided he no longer agreed.  “If he had killed Carl or Mulder I would have killed him regardless and I might have died in the process.  This way Carl lives, Mulder lives, I live.  Negan may be dead, but lives were spared here today.”  Morgan looked unconvinced.  Rick pressed on.  “You say death brings about more death.  There may have been a time when that was the case.  But I don’t think the world works that way anymore.  We’ve reached an endgame.  Death leads to death.  Life leads to death.  All that’s left on this planet is death.  This world needs to burn and start again.”  Morgan hung his head, finding some truth in Rick’s words.  “That’s why we’re leaving.”

As the sun threatened to peek over the horizon, Daryl rolled off the throttle and brought his bike to a stop just past a green sign with white lettering.  It read “Roxobel City Limit.”  Daryl felt “city” was an ambitious word for the place.  The sign didn't state the population.  It was probably unnecessary.  It looked like the type of sleepy little town where everyone knew everyone.

The town was shaped like a dogeared postcard and was just about as flat.  If it weren't for the trees and the scattered houses and buildings you could probably see straight through onto the next town.  There were no track homes here.  Every unique little house looked like an afterthought, randomly plunked down on a plot of dried grass.  All the homes were in a decrepit state now, but it was probably a very quaint place to live once.  The term one-stop-light town came to mind.  As Daryl gazed down the disintegrating road stretching out past overgrown yards and crumbling houses he figured this was probably a no-stop-light town.

The rest of the caravan had come to a halt behind him.  As he straddled his idling motorcycle, examining the place they had come to see, Rick, Abraham, and Mulder came out to stand alongside him.  The group had arrived at their destination.  The next part of their plan was a blur at best.

Daryl cut the engine.  “So, we’re here.  What’s next?”  He was feeling a little disenchanted with the place already.

Mulder’s excitement at being so close to their goal was evident on his face.  “We need to locate the facility.  The one I saw in New Mexico was a giant hangar.  But the ship itself would have fit in a decent sized warehouse.  We should look for something like that.”

Abraham looked stern.  “I probably don’t need to remind you that time is of the essence.”

Rick didn’t need a reminder.  “The whole town is only one square mile.  It can’t be that hard to find a building big enough to house this thing.”  Abraham looked up and down the road doubtfully.  Rick read between the lines.  “You think I should have killed him?”  It wasn’t a threat or a challenge, just an honest question.

Abraham wasn’t one to question Rick’s decisions.  He was a military man through and through.  He was used to accepting orders.  But still, he was anxious.  “I’m sure you had your reasons, Rick.  All I know is if I find a spider in my house I smash the thing.  I don’t wait for it to crawl into my bed at night and bite me in the ass.  I’m just saying we don’t have time to waste.”

“So let’s split up into teams.  We can cover more ground that way.”  Rick understood Abraham’s doubt.  He had suffered from the same uncertainty ever since he walked away from Negan on the roadside, leaving him and his men alive.  He felt he had done the right thing.  Why kill the man when all they needed was a couple hours to escape him forever?  Still, it was a loose end, an unknown.  All that meant was that they had to keep moving.  “Let’s park in the center of town and spread out from there.”

The caravan circled up in front of a place called Sandy Run Baptist Church near the middle of little Roxobel.  The marquis out front read “JUDGEMENT IS UPON US. REPENT.”  All of the sites chosen for the alien replica vehicles had been chosen for their sparse populations and their distance from the aluminum phosphide release locations.  That meant this tiny town would have been one of the last to experience the effects of the arcA trigger.  They would have watched the whole mess unfold on their TV screens until communication went dark.  They probably felt removed from it all.  They would have believed the outbreak was a big city problem.  Something that happens in far away places to people they would never meet.  It wouldn't have felt real until it arrived at their doorstep.

How long did the people of this community believe they were safe, that they might be passed over?  Was it weeks?  Months?  When did they get ripped out of their denial?  Did a walker stumble into this church one Sunday morning and take a bite out of the preacher?  It was just another piece of human history that would never get recorded.  Even if there were some record, who was left to see it.  Most species didn't get to bare witness to their own extinction.  Not for long anyway.

Rick was organizing search parties.  “I need four teams of three to spread out, North, South, East, West.  We’re looking for any structure big enough to hold a spacecraft.  Maybe a warehouse or a barn.  You find anything, radio back.”

Tara, Glenn, and Denise volunteered to go North.  Abraham, Eugene, and Rosita would go East.  Carl, Michonne, and Enid offered to head South.  Rick was proud of the willingness of his people to take action.  He bowed his head in thanks.   “Alright, I'll go West.  Who wants to come with me.”

“I'll go,” Morgan chimed in.

“How about you me and Daryl?” Rick asked.  He took a quick look around.  “Where is he?”  He spotted Daryl rummaging through the storage compartment in the side of the Winnebago.

Daryl found what he was looking for and turned to walk toward the group.  “ No.  I've got something else I need to do.”  He stalked right past Rick with a shovel in his hand.

Rick watched him go, concern creasing his forehead.  “He shouldn't go alone.”  He said it more to himself than anyone else.

Mulder spoke up.  “I'll go with him.”  He peeked in the same storage compartment and produced another shovel.  Then he turned and hurried past the rest of the group to catch up with Daryl as he disappeared around the corner of the church.

Rick watched them both go.  “I guess it's just you and me,” he said to Morgan.

“I'll go with you,” Scully volunteered.

Rick gave her an appreciative clap on the shoulder.  “Okay.”  He turned to Maggie.  “You stay here with the vehicles and everyone else.  You see anything that makes you uneasy, just call us on the radio.  Or fire your gun.  We’ll come running.”  With that the teams headed off in their respective directions.

Mulder caught up with Daryl when he was hopping the small fence that bordered the back of the church’s courtyard.  “Hey, wait up!” he called.  “Let me help you.”

Daryl didn't respond, didn't make eye contact.  He just kept walking.

Mulder tried to engage him.  “What's your plan?  Where are you heading?”

Daryl scrambled through a ditch and up onto the next road.  He looked left and right up and down the narrow street, planning his next move.  He pointed his shovel to his left, back toward where this road intersected the one they had taken to reach the church.  “That street sign back there.  It said Cemetery Road.  I'm going to find that cemetery.”  He turned right and began walking down the street.  Mulder went after him, following a few paces behind to give him the solitude he seemed to need at the moment.

A few hundred yards down the road Mulder paused, a building catching his attention.  It was an unmarked building, large, flat, and rectangular.  The wall facing the street was painted red with a small white door, no windows.  It had large roll up doors on one side and a contraption on the roof that hinted that the roof might be retractable.  It was plenty big enough to house an ARV like the one he had seen in New Mexico.  It was isolated, surrounded by trees.  It backed up to a set of train tracks and what looked like a whole lot of nothing beyond.

Daryl walked on.  Mulder was torn for a moment.  He felt a familiar pull.  He thought he could hear his sister’s voice inside his head whispering.  This is it.  This is where you're meant to be.  He took an involuntary step toward the building, then paused again.  The whispering seemed closer.  Fox, this is your destiny.  The pull was overwhelming.  He was so close.  But still he stayed frozen.  Finally he said aloud to the building, “Not yet.  I have to do something first.”  With that he shook off his indecision and ran to catch up with Daryl again.

The two men walked side by side in silence until, just as Daryl had expected, they came upon a cemetery.  Daryl strode purposefully through the opening in the picket fence surrounding the burial plots.  There was a gravel path that ran down the middle of the graveyard. The path parted as it came to an above ground mausoleum in the center.  An apparent place of honor for someone who was important once.  Gravemarkers peeked out of the tall yellow grass on either side of the path.  He spotted what he was looking for right away: a shady spot under a delicate little tree in the far corner of the yard.  It was far away from the road, not that anyone would likely be driving this road too often.  It was quiet.  It was serene.  It would be Carol’s final resting place.

Daryl thrust his shovel hard into the earth so that it would stand upright.  He looked at the spot he had picked out, trying to estimate the size grave he was going to need to dig.  Picturing her body lying in the grass proved too painful.  Instead he got down on the ground himself and lay on his back with the shovel at his feet.  The pale dawn sky looked gray through the tree’s leaves.  He closed his eyes against the pain, against the memories.  He couldn't allow himself to grieve just yet.  Time was running out.  He'd let himself mourn for her once they were safe.

He opened his eyes and found Mulder standing over him, silently observing.  Daryl reached up and touched a spot on the ground about six inches above his head.  “Can you mark this for me?”

Mulder pushed his shovel into the dirt at the point Daryl had indicated and then extended a hand to help his friend off the ground.  He accepted the help and stood to look at the job he needed to complete.

“You don't have to help me do this.”

“Yes I do,” Mulder replied, scooping out the first divot of grass and earth.

Daryl took hold of his own shovel and began digging from the opposite end.  “Wouldn't you rather be looking for the ship?  I don't think anyone wants to find that thing more than you do.”

Mulder thought of the building they had passed.  He could feel a chain connecting him to the structure, tethered deep inside him, trying to pull him in.  “They'll find it.  Right now this is more important.  This is where I'm meant to be.”

“You didn't even know Carol.  Why is this so important to you?”  Daryl was finding the physical labor of digging gave him an outlet for his emotions.  It made it easier to say her name out loud.

“She was important to you.  And I care about you.  So it's important to me.”

Daryl stopped digging for a moment and looked at Mulder.  He felt an overwhelming gratitude toward this man.  It was a feeling he didn't quite have words for.  He had never been good with words.  He settled for a simple, “Thank you.”  He returned to his digging.

When they had a well formed rectangle that was just about deep enough they heard the engines of the vehicles in their caravan come to life, Daryl's motorcycle included.  He briefly wondered who would be riding it.

“They must have found something,” Daryl observed in surprise.

He looked to Mulder who showed no sign of shock at all.  “Did you ever doubt me?” he asked with his signature smirk.

Daryl thought about it.  “You know, it just now hit me that this spaceship might be real.  I sort of felt like we were chasing a ghost.”

Mulder shook his head.  “We’re not chasing ghosts, we’re leaving them behind.”

The Winnebago came into view and parked on the road outside the cemetery.  The rest of the vehicles stopped short somewhere out of sight.  Mulder felt sure they were parked outside the red building with the little white door that had been calling to him.  That thought alone allowed the chain inside him to loosen its hold a little.  Soon enough he would be there.

Glenn and Tara emerged from the RV, gingerly carrying Carol’s lifeless body, wrapped in the shroud of a bedsheet.  The rest of the Alexandrians filed into the graveyard on foot.  This was it.  This was to be Carol’s funeral.  Her body was placed on the grass alongside the hole that had been dug for her.  Daryl knelt beside her.

“Do you want to say something?” Rick asked him.  Daryl silently shook his head.  He had always been a man of few words.  Rick would have to do the honors.

Rick glanced around at his community, his friends, his family.  As he prepared to speak, everyone moved in a little closer.  Carl removed his hat.  “We’re here to say goodbye to one of our family members.  Carol was a fighter.  She fought until her last breath.  She fought for what she believed in.  And she believed in all of you.”  Tears were forming in the eyes of many of the people in attendance.

Rick went on.  “Some of you might already know that I sent Carol away once.  I sent her away because she made a hard decision.  She made a choice that I was unable to make at the time.  I wasn’t strong enough then, but she was.  At that time I didn’t fully understand, but I came to realize she made that choice to protect us.  She took the lives of two people who she called friends because she felt it would save everyone else she loved.  She did it for the greater good.  I sent her away for it.  She didn’t fight me on it.  She understood my decision.  I just wish I had understood hers at the time.  But in the end she came back to us.  She never went far and wherever she went she was still trying to protect us.  She saved us all from some very bad people.  She rescued my daughter, Judith, and brought her back to me.  Even when I turned my back on her, she never turned her back on me.  And for that I will forever be in her debt.”

Rick paused, looking down at the peaceful body of one of his dearest friends.  “She’s gone now and I’m at a loss as to how to repay that debt.  But I think I know what she would have wanted.  She would have wanted me to keep you all safe.  To keep her family safe.  She would want to make sure that I never turned my back on any of you ever again.  I make that promise to her and I make that promise to you all now.  I will do everything I can to protect you all for as long as there is air in my lungs.  For as long as there is blood in my veins.  For as long as there is life in my body I will keep my family safe.”

He got down on one knee and placed his hand over Carol’s.  “I’m sorry I ever doubted you.  I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.  I will try every day to be even half as strong as you were.  Rest now.  Your watch is over.”  He kissed the back of her hand.

Rick stood upright and Glenn and Daryl moved in to gently lower her into the ground.

“Wait,” a woman’s voice called.  Daryl looked up to see Scully moving through the crowd.  She approached Carol and got down on her knees beside the woman she had only known for a brief time.  Scully reached up and unhooked her necklace.  She placed it around Carol’s neck and fastened the clasp.  She then straightened the small gold cross that hung there.  It was the cross she had given Carol to help disguise her weapon, her garrote, when she had gone with Dwight to meet Negan.  It was the cross she had given her for good luck, to help protect her.  And now it was the cross that would watch over her until the end of time.  Having made her small offering, Scully stepped back and allowed the two men to lower Carol into her last resting place.

As the team took turns burying her, each wanting to show their respects,  Carl and Enid crafted a makeshift gravemarker for her.  Two pickets from the cemetery’s fence were fashioned together into a cross.  Enid used her switchblade to carve her name into the wood.  Daryl used the back of the shovel to drive the cross into the ground at the head of the gravesite.  As everyone made their way back to the RV and back to where the other vehicles had been left, Daryl lingered.  He didn’t want to leave her.  He didn’t want this goodbye to be final.  As the last of his team made their way through the opening in the fence and back out onto the road, Daryl leaned in and kissed the cross right on the letters spelling out “Carol Peletier.”

Rick Grimes stood as still as a scarecrow in the middle of the road, frozen in a state of inaction.  He was only vaguely aware of the commotion buzzing all around him.  His people were retrieving their weapons, gathering the Saviors’ guns and spears, shuffling off into vehicles, trying to organize for their departure.  Negan sat on the ground several yards away, motionless from the shoulders down.  This stillness of his body was in stark contrast with the animated nature of his head and face.  Negan was yelling, screaming, spit flying off his lips.  The man was in a rage.

But as Rick stood, staring through the darkness toward his enemy, he couldn’t hear the man’s rant.  He couldn’t hear much of anything at all.  It was no more than white noise, a muffled twittering.  All of it was just a blur of buzzing nonsense.  He couldn’t focus on anything.  He couldn’t understand that he was a part of it all.

He knew he should be doing something.  There was an impulse growing inside of him to take action, to move forward, to lead.  Yet he couldn't make his feet take that first step.  He felt as helpless and immobile as Negan.  Was he in shock?  He had been through so many emotions in a very short period of time; grief, fear, defeat, relief..  Maybe his mind couldn't figure out how to feel just now.  Maybe he needed to feel nothing just now.

Through the muffled haze he heard his own name.  Someone was calling him back to the present.  But it sounded like it came from a great distance away.  “Rick.  Rick!” like screaming underwater.  It couldn’t draw him out of his fog.

“Dad!”

Rick snapped out of it, back to reality.  Carl stood before him.  “Dad, you have to decide.”  He sounded impatient, desperate.

“Decide?” Rick asked, still trying to focus on the scene playing out on the roadside.

Scully was there too.  Maybe she had been the one calling his name.  He couldn’t be sure.  She was telling him something important.  He tried to focus.  “They'll be numb from the injection site down.  It would normally last about two hours, but the medication is expired.  It might wear off sooner.”

“Dad, what should we do?”

“About him?”  Rick pointed to Negan, seated impotently on the ground, spewing something about how they were all going to pay for this.

“About all of them.”  Carl indicated all the Saviors sprawled out on the pavement, rendered limp by Scully’s injection of bupivacaine.  It was a spinal nerve block, usually used for emergency cesarean delivery of a baby.  Scully had repurposed it in the most genius way imaginable.  “Should we kill them?”

Rick suddenly understood what was being asked of him.  It was the same decision they had faced back in Alexandria: kill Negan and his army or run for the spaceship.  His people had made the decision for him last time.  They had decided to evacuate.  But that was when battling Negan meant risking their own lives.  Now it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.  Still, he felt unsure, hesitant.

He looked at the faces surrounding him, waiting for his orders.  Many people were already loaded into the caravan.  He was left standing in the road with Carl and Michonne by his side.  Scully stood in front of him, anxiously glancing over her shoulder at Negan.  Mulder and Daryl stood alongside her.  Morgan and Glenn stood behind Rick, also waiting for Rick’s reply.

Rick looked to Daryl, his right hand man, for guidance.  “What do you think?”

“Execute them.”  Daryl had no hesitation.  “All of them.”

“No.”  Glenn took a step forward to stand next to Rick.

“They killed Carol!”  Daryl’s grief had taken on the form of anger.

Glenn was respectful, but calm.  “No.  Dwight killed Carol and he's already dead because of it.  Carol was my family too, but she wouldn't have wanted this.  She and Tara went into Negan’s compound and they found good people, people they thought were worth saving.  Some of these men out here are good people who just fell in with the wrong leader.  You can't kill them for that.”

Daryl let out a frustrated sigh.  He knew Glenn was right, but that left him with no outlet for this rage that was threatening to boil over.

“Just him then.”  Rick raised his hand, thumb and forefinger pointed like a gun, right at Negan's head.

“Rick, you can't do that.”  Morgan was determined to talk him out of killing again.

Rick spun around to face him.  “Why shouldn't I?”

Morgan shook his head, his fierce eyes locked on Rick.  “Because killing is not the answer.”

Rick looked incredulous.  “You just killed Dwight yourself.  The freshest blood here is on your hands.”

“Don't you see?  Carol tried to kill Dwight, so he came back and killed her.  I killed Dwight for killing Carol and Negan tried to kill one of us as payback.  Death only brings about more death.  It's like blowing feathers into the wind.  They come right back to you.  You have the power to stop this cycle.  Just walk away, Rick.  Just walk away.”

Rick looked back over his shoulder at Negan, still issuing empty threats.  “Carol would have killed him.”

“But Carol’s dead.”  Morgan raised his hands in concession as Daryl took an aggressive step toward him.  “I'm sorry she’s gone, but the fact remains, you shouldn't take advice from a dead woman.”  Rick still looked unconvinced.  Morgan continued.  “Rick, you love asking people how many people they've killed, but I'm willing to bet you lost track of your own number a long time ago.  Let me ask you one of your own questions.  Why do you want to kill that man.”

Rick wore a guilty expression as he fumbled for an answer.  He had lost track of the number of people he had killed.  He had become numb to it.  “He tried to take our people.  He tried to kill one of our people.  Carol died on his orders.”

“So revenge, then?  That's your reason?” Morgan questioned.

“Isn't that reason enough?”  Rick felt it was.  He had killed men for a lot less.

“It's a fine reason, Rick, as long as you can live with yourself afterward..  But if your goal is to punish him by sending him to hell, then I invite you to take a look around.  This is hell on Earth.  Leave him here with the monsters.  He doesn't deserve to be put out of his misery.”

Rick closed his eyes.  This was a battle he and Morgan had been having for months.  Rick still didn't agree.  He didn't believe all life is precious as Morgan did.  He believed some life was evil and deserved to die.  But if he killed purely out of revenge then how could he be so sure he wasn't part of that evil?  Morgan was right.  Being left to walk this planet with the zombies was a fate worse than death.

He opened his eyes and turned to face Daryl.  He felt the pain of Carol’s loss worse than all of them.  Rick could walk away from his revenge, but he wouldn't ask Daryl to do the same.  Not if he didn't agree.  With his eyes, he silently asked Daryl what he wanted to do.

Daryl paced back and forth a few times, restless, like a caged animal.  He paused and looked at the pathetic sight of Negan, helpless on the asphalt.  Then he looked to Morgan, to the pleading look in the man’s eyes.  Finally he looked back to Rick, his leader, his friend.  He issued a long, labored breath.  He tried to push the rage out of his lungs.  “Screw him.  Let's go.”

With that Daryl marched off toward his motorcycle.  Mulder and Scully followed suit.  As Scully walked past Rick on her way to the car she placed a hand on his shoulder and reminded him, “Two hours, tops.”

Michonne and Carl also headed back to the convoy.  Michonne briefly placed a reassuring hand on the back of Rick’s neck as she walked by, letting him know she supported him.  He knew this was the right thing to do.  Rick was left standing in the road with Morgan and Glenn.  Morgan gave Rick a look of pride and satisfaction.  “You made the right choice.  Now we need to go.”

Rick looked over his shoulder at Negan once more.  “I need to do one more thing.”  He took a few long strides through the darkness to reach Negan’s spot on the pavement.  He placed his hands on his knees, leaning in a little too close for comfort to address his greatest enemy.  Hopefully this man would be Rick’s last enemy on Earth.

Negan growled, feeling betrayed by his own limp body.  “Was this your plan all along?  You lured us all the way out here just to dope us up and kill us?”

Rick shook his head.  “No.  The plan was to outrun you.  All this,” Rick indicated the lineup of powerless Saviors.  “All this was just an added bonus.”  He gave Negan a wicked grin, which only angered him further.  “And you're wrong about another thing.  I'm not going to kill you.”

For a second Negan thought he was kidding.  Then he realized Rick was serious and spat out a menacing laugh.  “You're dumber than I thought, Rick.  If you don't kill me right now then you've signed your own death warrant.”

“I told you already.  You're not taking any of my people and you're not killing anyone.  I could kill you right now, but I think leaving you alive to stew over your own mistakes is a much more fitting form of justice.”  Rick wanted Negan to understand that he had lost, that leaving him alive didn't mean Rick was admitting defeat.

Rick’s calm demeanor and exercise of control had the desired effect.  Negan couldn't stand the shift in power.  He couldn't stand being subjected to someone else’s whim..  “My only mistake was not killing that bitch, Carol, myself.”

That struck a nerve.  Without thinking Rick’s clenched fist ripped through the short distance between the two enemies.  As his knuckles made contact with Negan’s face a spout of blood shot forth from the man’s nose.  His head wrenched back.  Without the use of his arms he couldn't catch himself.  One well aimed punch and Negan was flat on his back, staring up at the moon through the tree branches.  His comment had been intended to set Rick off, to shift the control back to Negan’s side.  Negan felt a small surge of exhilaration as he realized he had made Rick lose his cool.  But it was a hollow victory given that he was now even more powerless than before.  He couldn’t even look Rick in the eye.

Negan was able to turn his head just enough to see Rick standing straight and turning to leave him there in the dust.  His fury returned.  He screamed after Rick.  “I’ll have your head for this, Rick Grimes!  I’ll have your undead head on a pike!”  When Rick didn’t react Negan tried one last tactic to assert some type of authority over the man who had rendered him so helpless.  “What’s in Roxobel, Rick?”

Rick noticeably flinched at the mention of the town’s name.

Negan smiled.  Rick had him beat, but as long as he could get a reaction out of the man who had bested him he felt like the victor.  That tiny flinch was enough to keep him going.  He would recover.  He would hunt down his nemesis and he would make him pay for what he had done.

Glenn saw Rick’s hesitation and became insistent.  “Rick, we need to go.  Now.”

Rick felt the urgency.  He needed to get his crew on the road.  But he found he couldn’t move.  He couldn’t take one step further from Negan.  He was frozen.

Negan repeated, “What’s in Roxobel?  Why are you so dead set on getting there?”  His taunting was interrupted by the familiar snarling hiss of an approaching walker.  Negan’s blood went cold as the full impact of his vulnerability sunk in.  He and his men were sitting ducks.

Rick marched back and stood over Negan, his face framed in a halo of moonlight.  “You’re going to forget about Roxobel.”  The walker was approaching out of the trees.  “You’re not going to follow us.”  The beast marched closer.  “You’re not going to search for us.”  Closer.  “You’re never going to set foot in Roxbel.”  The corpse was only a few yards away.  “You’re going to go back to where you came from with your tail between your legs and you’re going to forget you ever knew the name Rick Grimes.”

Negan couldn’t answer, couldn’t give Rick the satisfaction, but he was in no position to argue.  His bargaining chips were all long gone.  Rick took his silence as agreement.  As the monster arrived within arms reach he raised his gun and fired a single bullet right through the its forehead.  As it began to fall back, Rick reached out and caught the walker by the shredded collar of its filthy shirt, pulling the now lifeless body forward.  It landed with a sickening thud right on top of Negan’s useless body.

“I just need a vial and a syringe.  They’re in the RV.”  Negan nodded and followed Scully into the Winnebago, still suspecting some sort of trap.  As Scully pulled open the door she had a sudden moment of doubt.  What if the cure wasn’t real?  What if it didn’t work?  What if Carol had actually turned while they all stood outside and was waiting to feast on the two of them?

But that didn’t happen.  Scully pulled open the door and stepped inside to find Carol laying peacefully on the bench near the back of the vehicle.  If it weren’t for the blood covering her torso, it would have looked as though she was just sleeping.

Carol’s presence actually proved a useful distraction for Negan as Scully rummaged through the crates that had been packed in alongside all the passengers.  She needed to find the boxes from the infirmary.  Negan couldn’t take his eyes off the deceased woman, wanting to confirm that she was still, in fact, dead.  It gave him hope that this cure was real to see the first Alexandrian he had ever met resting in peace.  But he knew that could all be a lie.  She could still turn.  It proved nothing.  In his mind he relived the brief experiences he’d had with this woman.  She had bested him once, but clearly he had the last laugh.  He would have liked to see her die, to see the fear in her eyes when she realized he had come for her, that she had lost.  But it didn’t matter.  What mattered was that she was dead.  He had won.

He was snapped out of his reverie by Scully.  “Okay, I’ve got it.”  In her hands she clutched not one vial, but a black canvas bag filled with vials.  She also had a box of syringes tucked under her arm.  She pushed past him and stepped back onto the pavement.

Negan trailed after her, once again feeling like he had lost control of the situation.  “What’s all that?”

Scully gave him a confused look.  “What do you mean?  This is the cure.  This is what you wanted.”

“You haven’t proven anything yet, sister,” he snarled.

She shot him a confident smile, which only annoyed him further.  “I will.”  She set her bag down near where Rick still stood, clearly anxious for this whole altercation to be over.  As she loaded up one of the syringes with some of the clear fluid from one of the vials, she was struck by what a strong leader Rick was.  Of course she had seen him in action.  She had seen him lead his people on this journey.  She had seen the way he inspired people.  But now she realized he had something a lot of leaders don’t have.  He had faith in his people.  He must have known she had some sort of a plan, although she had no way of communicating that to him.  He had simply allowed her to take over the negotiations, fully trusting that she knew what she was doing.  It showed he had faith in her, that she was truly one of his people.

Scully tried to give Rick a reassuring look as she turned to approach Dwight.  He was being held down by the boots of four Saviors.  He had awakened weak, as most walkers did.  But he was gaining strength.  She looked down at the corpse before her, her next patient.  She turned to Negan by her side.  “Before I do this, do you accept the deal?”

“Your deal?” Negan scoffed.

“Yes, my deal.  The only deal.  If this works, if he drops dead, then we trade.  You get the cure.  We all get to leave.  Alive.”

He stood up a little taller and looked down his nose at her.  He wanted this cure.  He wanted to possess it, to feel it coursing through his veins.  He wanted to control it.  But he couldn’t let her see how badly he craved it.  He couldn’t give her that satisfaction.  It wasn’t in his nature.  “We’ll see if this works first.  Then we’ll talk.”

“No.”  Scully was firm.  “You agree right now.  If this works on Dwight you agree to accept the cure and let us go.  Otherwise Rick is going to smash all those vials and the cure will be off the table.”

He held her gaze, locked in a staring contest, each of them unwilling to blink.  Negan lost.  He looked away, his head involuntarily swiveling to see the bag of glass vials resting dangerously close to Rick’s boots.  Scully knew in that moment that she had him.  He would agree to anything to possess her DNA.  “Deal,” he muttered under his breath.

She wanted to make him repeat it, to say it like he meant it.  But she thought she better quit while she was ahead.  “Good.  Now,” Scully said, drawing his attention away from the bag.  “I’m going to need you to hold him very still.”

Negan circled around Dwight’s body and crouched over his head.  A boot on either shoulder kept him from lunging too close, but Negan had to hold him perfectly still.  He looked into the face of the man who had been an awful lot of trouble to him.  Negan remembered the moment he had given Dwight his scar.  He had told him at that time that he would wear his mistake until his death.  Negan hadn’t realized at that time how soon his death would come.  He readied himself and then quickly grabbed Dwight on either side of his face, holding him firmly in place.

Scully kneeled down beside him, her pulse quickening as she prayed this would work.  She pulled on a latex glove, more out of habit than for sanitary reasons.  Sanitation was a joke in this world.  She dug into his eye socket and pulled out the bullet, revealing blood that was already starting to congeal and a tiny spot of familiar pinkish grey.  She could see his brain.  Sure enough, it was intact.  The bullet had been stopped by a bone fragment just shy of that soft spot that would have ended his misery then and there.

She demanded more light.  She almost felt like she was in an operating room again, requesting a scalpel from an assistant and speaking notes into her audio recorder.  Someone came forth with a flashlight and pointed it into Dwight’s gaping wound.  Scully leaned in close and, with great care, inserted the tiniest bit of the tip of the syringe into Dwight’s brain.  She was careful not to puncture the tissue too violently.  Otherwise it would prove nothing.  It would be no different than stabbing him with a knife.  She needed to keep the brain protected long enough for the contents of her needle to do its work.  The corpse hissed and protested at the poking and prodding, but she was able to squeeze the clear liquid into his brain and it seemed to absorb.  Scully withdrew the needle and stood up.  “That should do it,” she declared.

Negan let go of Dwight’s face and jumped back.  His face fell in disappointment as he watched Dwight continue to thrash against his captors.  “It didn’t work.”  He looked to Scully.  “You lied.”  He spit the accusation at her with such venom she thought he might strike her.  But she stood her ground.

“Patience,” she told him, “is a virtue.”

Patience was not Negan’s strong suit.  They waited in an impossibly tense silence.  Scully swore she could hear the beating hearts of everyone surrounding the undead Dwight.  Her own pulse pounded in her ears and sweat dotted her palms even though the night had gone cold.  It all came down to this.  Just as she was starting to suspect that her plan may have failed, silence fell.  Dwight let out one last low growl that faded into nothingness.  Nothing moved.  No one spoke.  It was a perfect absence of sound.

Scully breathed a small sigh of relief and then addressed Negan.  He had agreed to her deal, now that she had proven herself she would impose her terms.  “Satisfied?”  She didn’t give him time to answer.  “Good.  Here’s what’s going to happen.  Me and my fellow doctor are going to administer arcB to each of you right here, right now.  You’ll have to sit very still for five to ten minutes so it can be absorbed by your system.  After that you can take all of it that’s left over.  You can take one of our microscopes.  I’ll show you how to harvest the DNA from yourself and how to administer it to anyone else you see fit.  Then we go our separate ways.”

Negan didn’t like her calling the shots, but he felt like that was a pill he had to swallow for now.  She had proven her injection worked.  He believed.  Now he needed this power.  He needed the vials she possessed and the knowledge she was going to share.  But he couldn’t just let her bark orders at him.  His pride wouldn’t allow that.  His ego wouldn’t allow that.  “If we all have to sit still you’re all going to have to do the same.  I want every one but the doctors face down on the ground.  No funny business.”

Scully nodded her agreement.  The Alexandrians all lined up along the roadside away from the vehicles.  They were stripped of their weapons before they deposited themselves on the ground, bellies to the pavement.  Maggie alone was allowed to stay seated with Judith on her lap and William in her arms.  Likewise, the Saviors all lined up to receive a dose of the miraculous cure.  Negan opted to receive his dose last.  Scully doubted he was trying to be polite.  He most likely wanted to make sure Scully wasn’t trying to pull a fast one.

“Now remember,” Scully said to Denise.  “It has to be injected between the C2 and C3 vertebrae.”  Denise nodded, although she had no idea what Scully was planning.  She knew as well as everybody else that they had injected all the Alexandrians in the arm and no one had to sit still for ten minutes.  But she trusted Scully and she wasn’t going to let her curiosity betray her.

Negan’s curiosity, however, was getting the better of him.  “How do you know which vertebrae to hit.”  He needed to know how to do this if he was going to wield the full power of the cure.

“I’ll show you.  You can do the first injection.”  Scully took on the tone she used to use when training med students.  She knew he had no training in this, so she would make it as simple as she could.  Negan selected the first Savior up to bat and he sat on the ground with his back to Scully and Negan.  Scully showed him how to push on the spine, to count the protruding vertebrae, the angle at which to insert the needle.  Negan filled a syringe with 10ml of the clear solution and injected it into his fellow man.  The Savior gave a sharp inhale when the needle pierced his skin, but was otherwise unaffected.  When Negan was done Scully gave the man a pat on the shoulder and told him, “Sit still and relax.  Let the DNA do its job.”

Denise and Scully took over and, two by two, administered injections to the nearly 50 Saviors in this army.  Negan was last.

“Are you ready?” Scully asked.

Negan looked at his men seated on the ground, some laying down, all looking very calm and serene.  That’s the power of this cure, he thought to himself.  It’s peace of mind in a bottle.  And that would be why everyone was going to want what he had.  He gave Scully a curt nod.  “Let’s do this.”

She indicated for him to take a seat.  She filled a syringe just for him, adding an extra 5ml just for good measure.  “This might sting a little,” she warned as she pushed on his neck, counting his vertebrae.  As she carefully inserted the needle into his spine and depressed the plunger she caught sight of the nervous look she was getting from Denise.  She quickly looked away.

Scully circled around and crouched on the ground in front of Negan.  “How do you feel?”

“Fine,” was all he offered as a response.

She wanted to keep him talking.  “Just out of curiosity, what will you do with the cure?  Will you give it to the rest of your people?”

“All of them who earn it.”  Negan was a fair man.  He prided himself on that.  Loyalty earned rewards with him just as disobedience earned punishment.

“And these men,” Scully continued, looking at the Saviors who were now mostly all lying down.  “Have they all earned it?”

Negan didn’t look at them.  “They’re here, aren’t they?  They followed me this far.  They’ve done as I’ve asked.  They’ve earned it.”

“I supposed they have.”  Scully mentally ticked off seconds in her head.  She leaned in closer so she could be sure he would see nothing but her eyes peering back into his.  “Tell me, Negan, now how do you feel?”

“Fine,” he uttered once more.

Scully gave him a small smile and a little pat on the cheek.  “Good.  Just relax.”  She set the vial at his feet and stood to walk away from him, catching Denise by the elbow and pointing her back toward the Alexandrians.

Negan felt good.  He felt relaxed.  He wondered if this is what alien DNA was supposed to feel like.  He rolled his head around, letting the tension in his neck release.  As he rolled it forward his eyes fell upon his own lap.  The needle Scully had used for his injection was stuck in his thigh, right through his pants.  He couldn’t make any sense of it.  He didn’t feel it.  Why didn’t he feel it?  His eyes then shot to the vial she had set before him.  In the dim light he tried to read the print on the label.  It read “bupivacaine.”  The word meant nothing to him.  He tried to reach for it, but found he couldn’t.  He couldn’t control his limbs, couldn’t feel anything from the neck down.

He looked up and saw Scully helping Rick off the ground, whispering something to him in hushed tones.  “What have you done?” he called after her.

Scully looked back at him, but didn’t answer his question.  Rage bubbled up inside him like black tar, threatening to take over his whole being.  He asked again, louder this time, “What have you done?”

She turned and walked back to Negan.  She crouched in front of him again, knowing full well he would reach out and tear her to pieces if only he had the use of his arms.  “I gave you an epidural from hell.  That’s what I’ve done.”

He searched her eyes and finally declared, “There never was a cure, was there?”

“Bring her to me.”  It came out as little more than a whisper.  But in the silence of the standoff everyone heard Negan’s words.  The Savior holding Scully hostage ushered her forward, but she walked willingly, more angry than afraid.

The idea of a cure washed over him.  It was something he’d spent a lot of time thinking about.  For a time Negan thought a cure would mean the end of his newfound world.  The outbreak had given him power, authority.  It had given him a chance to show what he was made of.  In the world before he was no one of any consequence.  He was just another pawn.  He commanded no one.  He just survived day-to-day life in a time when survival meant nothing.

But then the world turned and left him here.  He was built for this.  This was his world now.  He owned it and all the people left in it.  He knew how to survive in this new time when survival suddenly meant everything.

In a way he feared a cure.  He couldn’t go back to the way things were.  He couldn’t go back to the world before.  He didn’t fear death.  He didn’t even fear being undead.  He sometimes pictured himself as one of the roamers, still running around creating mayhem even after his consciousness was long gone.  He liked to imagine he feared nothing, that he was immune to the terror he loved so much to strike in others.  There was nothing that made him tremble in his boots.  But if he were being truly honest with himself, Negan was afraid of falling from command.  There was no worse fate he could imagine than being controlled by someone else.  He’d rather die than watch someone else rise to power.

But the cure was power.  If this woman was telling the truth and could give the cure to him, that was power.  That was invincibility.  That was a bargaining chip he had never been able to play.  And now he very badly wanted to possess it.

He allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to hold the cure in his hands; to be able to give it or take it away.  How quickly would people bend to his will if they knew he had the ability to cure them, to rid them of this cancer that had infected everyone.

If the tables were turned, if he had the cure and Rick didn’t, this whole altercation would have gone down a lot differently.  It wouldn’t have come to this roadside showdown.  No, Rick would have submitted like a good little puppy dog.  He would have been brought to heel.  But that wasn’t the case.  He didn’t hold that power yet.  However, if this woman was telling the truth, if the cure was real, he would have it soon enough.  He wouldn’t get to exercise that power over Rick, which was a shame.  But there would always be another group of wayward souls to bend to his will.  There would always be another Rick Grimes.

She stood before him now, big glassy eyes staring up at him with such fire, such hate.  The tears she had shed left grimy trails down her cheeks.  But the tears were dry now.  Oh yes, she was a fiery one alright.  She wouldn’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting another tear fall.  She would want to appear strong, to at least be in control of her emotions.  That was fine.  He could let her have that small victory.  Afterall, it was just about the only thing she could exercise control over at this moment.  He wished he could do the same.  He wished he hadn’t betrayed his interest in her cure.  He knew he lost that battle by summoning her to stand here in front of him.  But it didn’t matter.  If what she said was true and if the cure was something she could give to him, then no show of weakness would matter.  His power would increase ten fold.  Soon enough.

“So, my little martyr” he spat, sizing her up.  “You claim there’s a cure?  You claim you have proof?  Let’s see it.”

“Let’s be clear.”  Her voice was calm but there was heat behind her eyes.  She was incensed.  “I’m not your little martyr.  I’m not your anything.”

A witty remark was on the tip of Negan’s tongue, but he swallowed it.  He needed to hear what she had to say.  He stood, motionless, waiting for her to continue.

Scully waited just long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable.  Then she went on.  “There is a cure.  It’s in my DNA.”  She was still deciding in the back of her mind how much to reveal.  She needed him to believe her, but she was unwilling to show her whole hand.  “You have one half of a gene pairing in your DNA.  I have both halves.  If I give you the other half you will be cured.”  She waited, deciding to let him ask questions.  She didn’t want to volunteer too much.

Negan looked to Rick, thinking he might be easier to read than the woman before him.  Rick’s face gave away nothing.  He looked back to Scully.  “And you’re the only one with this DNA?”

“No, I’ve given the missing gene to everyone in Alexandria.  They’re all cured.  But it’s been in my DNA the longest.  It’s had a chance to replicate, which means I’m the best candidate for harvesting the DNA to give to others.”  Somewhere in the middle of the pack Enid shuddered and glanced at Carl.  She was hearing this information for the first time.

“Why should I believe you?” Negan snapped.  He felt flustered by the way he couldn’t read her.  He wanted to look into her face and know that she was lying.  But when he peered into those eyes he saw no lie.  Either this woman was telling the truth or she had the best poker face he had ever seen.  Still, he wasn’t going to just take her at her word.

“I have proof, if you’ll let me get it.  It’s in the car.”

Negan hesitated.  This reeked of a trap.  But his curiosity won out.  With a tilt of his head he indicated for her to proceed to the vehicle.  He followed her close behind and was flanked by two other Saviors.  Scully opened the door and leaned into the back of the car in which she had been riding.  Mulder still held the documents precious and refused to let them be stowed in the trunk.  She grabbed a marked folder out of the middle of the stack.  It contained the documents about the alien landing, the government experiments, the effects of arcA and arcB.  She was careful to leave behind all the documents relating to the government’s plan to evacuate Earth as well as the possible existence of the ARVs.  That much she could never let Negan know.

As she clutched the folder her hand grazed a handgun that had been tucked under the front seat.  The cold steel sent a chill up her arm.  An image flashed through her mind of grabbing the gun, turning, and firing.  With the element of surprise she could surely kill the man holding them all captive.  But how many more seconds would she live before his men turned on her, turned on all of them.  It would be a bloodbath.  No.  That wasn’t how this would play out.  She had a plan.  She just had to pull it off.

She closed her eyes and pushed the thought of the gun to the corner of her mind.  She turned and handed the folder to Negan.  She wasn’t sure what kind of proof he was expecting, but apparently he wasn’t expecting a stack of paperwork.  He cocked an eyebrow and asked, “What the hell is this?”

“That’s our proof,” Scully replied, extending the folder a little closer to him.  He still didn’t take it from her.  She pulled it back.  “Would you like me to read it to you?”  Her purposely condescending tone was enough to get him to snatch the papers from her hand.

Negan began flipping through the folder, scanning pages rather than reading them.  He huffed as he turned each page, probably annoyed that she had seemingly given him a homework assignment.  Then he paused.  Something had caught his eye.  She couldn’t be sure, but Scully was willing to bet it was an alien autopsy photo.  He spun the folder this way and that, trying to make sense of what he was looking at.  Then she saw the ideas start to click into place in his head.

“The DNA is…”  He trailed off.

“Alien DNA.”  Scully finished for him.  This was it.  He was either going to believe her or he was going to call her a quack and likely kill them all.  She held her breath.

He asked, “Aliens?  From outerspace?”  Scully nodded, still not breathing.  Negan lowered the folder and took a step back to see her in full view.  “Who are you?”

Scully exhaled.  She had hooked him.  She knew it.  Now she just had to keep him on the line.  She explained that she was an FBI agent and a doctor.  She told him about the X-files and the sort of work they had done.  She explained about the alien lifeform discovered after the crash in Roswell.  She gave him an overview of the experiments, the unwilling test subjects, the alien-human hybrids.  She told him about the discovery of arcA and its response to aluminum-phosphide gas.  She described to him how arcA and arcB work together to prevent the shutdown of the immune system.  She carefully left out the information about arcB being necessary to survive the atmosphere of the alien planet which they were trying to reach.  She explained to him how she could capture the alien DNA from her own blood, how she could inject it into Negan and his men, how he could then harvest his own DNA and give it to others as he saw fit.  By the end of her explanation they were both sitting on the ground with the papers spread out in front of them.  The moon had risen higher in the sky to illuminate the patch of road they occupied.

She looked around at the group who had listened with rapt attention to her every word.  She had definitely convinced most of the Saviors.  The question was, had she convinced Negan?  She waited for him to respond.

“Is this it?” he finally asked.  Scully’s heart skipped a beat.  Had she failed?  Did he not believe?  She didn’t answer right away, waiting for him to elaborate on his question.  He did.  “Is this all your proof?  Just a bunch of papers?”  He sounded angry, insulted.

Scully examined him, his eyes, his body language, the look of hope mixed with skepticism on his face.  To her horror she saw a little bit of herself in him.  He was in the state of mind she had often found herself in back in her X-files days.  He was teetering on the edge between wanting to believe and believing.  She needed something to push him over the edge, to make a believer out of him.

“You want something more concrete?”  He didn’t respond.  His gaze drilled into her, waiting for her to offer him something more.  Her mind was whirring like a well oiled machine.  She had to come up with something.  An idea sprang to mind.  “Carol.”

“Carol?” Negan questioned.

“Dwight killed her.”

The slight tick in his jaw told her that he hadn’t known that fact.  She had assumed he had already been waiting in the darkness, watching them.  Maybe he was still approaching when Carol met her demise.  Maybe he simply hadn’t paid attention.  Whatever the case, he was surprised, but he tried not to let it show.

He quickly covered his stunned look with one of annoyance.  “And?”

“And he stabbed her with a spear through the abdomen.”  Scully could tell he still wasn’t understanding what she was getting at.  “Nothing ever pierced her brain, but she has the cure.  She has the arcB genome so she won’t turn.  You could go look at her right now if you want.  She hasn’t turned.”

Negan looked over his shoulder at the puddle of blood next to Dwight’s body and thought it over.  “No.  That’s not proof.  I’ve seen it take as much as two days for someone to turn.  I have no intention of waiting on the side of the road here until Tuesday to see if she wakes up hungry.”  His voice was taking on its original tone of power and control.  He had spent too long listening to her talk, admitting she knew something he didn’t.  It didn’t come naturally to him.  He was starting to reject her explanation simply because it would put him back control.  If he could declare all her proof to be nothing more than lies, then he took away her last bit of leverage.

She was about to lose him.

As her mind searched for another way to prove herself to him, a stirring came from the crowd behind Negan.  All the Saviors and all the Alexandrians had been so quiet  through her entire explanation it was hard to believe there were upwards of 70 people standing on the road in the still night air.  The stirring came as a shuffling of feet followed by a hissing growl.  It was a sound they all knew far too well.  There was a walker in their midst.

Negan and Scully both lept to their feet and the sea of bystanders parted to reveal a writhing mass on the pavement.  In the darkness it was hard to focus, to see what caused the commotion.  Then it suddenly became clear.  It was Dwight, returned from the dead, pinned under the other recently departed Savior.  His feet kicked and his arms flailed, fingernails scraping the pavement.  His apparently intact brain was no more than a ball of animal instinct, not understanding what force kept him from reaching his prey.

Finally his fingers gained purchase and he sat upright, rolling the dead Savior onto his lap.  As he sat up the pool of blood that had filled his eye socket drained down his face in a river of red.  In the faint light Scully could catch a small glint of moonlight off of the bullet that was still lodged in his face.  It had been enough to kill him, but just as Carl had feared, it hadn’t reached his brain.

A spear toting Savior moved in to eliminate the threat.  As he drew back his weapon, ready to strike, Negan called out, “Wait!”  The spear stopped  in midair.  Everyone froze except for the body that once belonged to Dwight, still scrambling to get out from under the corpse that detained him.

A cheshire cat grin spread across Negan’s face as he repeated in a whisper, “Wait.”  He spun around to face Scully.  “This is your chance to prove yourself, sweetheart”

Scully’s instinct was to insist she was not his sweetheart, but she didn’t want to risk losing him when she felt he was so close to believing, to accepting her bargain.  Instead she focused on the challenge he was issuing.  “What do you want me to do?”  The look in his eye told her he was himself once more.  He had found the sense of control he so badly needed in order to feed his ego.  He was about to start barking orders and making demands.

“Prove your cure works.  Cure my recently deceased friend here.”  He extended his bat to indicate Dwight without breaking eye contact with Scully.

She looked over his shoulder at Dwight, her eyes wide, her mouth agape.  Surely he couldn’t be serious.  Perhaps he just didn’t understand.  “It doesn’t work that way.  This cure, this genome, it can’t bring the dead back to life.”

“But it should stop him, shouldn’t it?”  It wasn’t much of a question, more of an insistence.  Scully understood.  This was the challenge he was giving her.  She had to use Dwight to prove her cure was real.

“Well,” she said, stepping a little closer to Dwight, examining him.  “DNA can only bond with living tissue.  The only part of him that’s still technically living is his brain.  I would have to inject it directly into his brain tissue.”

“And you have the DNA ready, on hand?” he asked.

She didn’t hesitate for split second.  “Yes.”  It was the first boldfaced lie she had told him.  She had withheld some evidence from him.  But up to that point everything she had revealed had been the truth.  The fact was that she had used every last sample of arcB on her comrades before they had left Alexandria.  There wasn’t a single vial left.  The rest of her group knew this.  She braced herself, waiting for one of them to flinch, to give away her falsehood.  No one did.

The bullet had struck Dwight through the eye.  Carl crouched over him, peering into the crater in the man’s face.  His hand automatically went to the bandage over his own eye.  He knew how lucky he had been to have survived being shot in the face.  When Enid’s boyfriend, Ron, had tried to kill him the bullet had hit him in his right eye and blown out through the side of the eye socket.  It never touched his brain and Denise had been able to stop the bleeding.  She had put him back together again as best she could.  He had survived.  He still wore the bandage even though he had healed as much as he ever would.  The scar tissue encompassed much of the upper right portion of his face.  There was still some exposed bone, but it didn’t cause him pain.  He just couldn’t stand to look at it.  He couldn’t stand the way other people avoided looking at him.  So he kept it wrapped up.

Now he looked into Dwight’s bloodied eye socket and was struck by how much it felt like looking in a mirror.  Morgan had shot him in his left eye.  A lake of blood welled up in the resulting hole.  That side of his face also held the large scar from a very bad burn.  Scar tissue was unlike normal skin.  It was tougher, more leathery.  Dwight’s scar tissue peeled away from the bullet hole more cleanly than it would have if the wound had been on the other side of his face.  The edges were smooth.  They pulled away from the wound like the scar was trying to escape the blood and gore.  It was as if that small piece of him had seen enough violence and was trying to leave.

Dwight was very much dead.  But Carl knew from personal experience that this gunshot wound may not have pierced his brain.  Until he knew for sure the brain was destroyed, there was always a chance Dwight could turn.  Carl couldn’t take that risk.

He tightened his grip on the machete in his right hand.  His eyes darted to the pool of blood and the spear that lay just a few feet away.  Knowing that blood belonged to Carol filled him with fury.  Carl had met Carol back when he still thought his father was dead.  He had been a kid at the time.  She had helped take care of him, watch over him.  Carol had become his family and now this man had taken her from him.  He suddenly wished he had been the one to pull the trigger.  He wished he could have ended Dwight’s life.  But he would settle for ending his second life as one of the undead.

Carl raised the machete overhead, savoring the brief moment where he could pretend that slicing into this man’s brain would make him feel better.  He knew it wouldn’t.  He would crack Dwight’s head open like a ripe coconut and it wouldn’t give him any satisfaction because it wouldn’t bring Carol back.  But for this moment, with his weapon held high, he would allow himself to make believe this would somehow fix everything.

Before he could bring the blade down into Dwight’s skull he was stopped by a sudden shout.  From the darkness behind him he heard a young woman’s voice cry, “Look out!”

Carl turned toward the voice and saw the business end of another Savior spear coming right for him.  He hit the ground and rolled out of the way just as the spear struck pavement.  He found himself sprawled out on top of Dwight’s chest while the angry face of another one of Negan’s men glared down at him.  The man reached for the spear again, but his hand stopped short.  His eyes bulged and he abruptly slumped over onto Carl’s lap, motionless.

Carl sat up and struggled to shove the heavy set man off of himself and saw there was a small, switchblade knife stuck in the base of his skull.  Carl knew that knife.  He looked up just as Enid leaned down to retrieve her blade from the Savior’s head.

“You okay?” she asked him.

Carl was in shock at her sudden appearance.  All he could manage to utter was, “How?”

Enid rolled the Savior off of Carl and offered him a hand up.  “What do you mean how?”

Questions raced through his mind and there was no way he could ask them all.  He started with a few.  “How did you find us?  How are you here?  Where have you been all this time?”

She rolled her eyes at him.  “Nice to see you too.  And what do you mean how did I find you?  You told me exactly where you were going.”  She produced the piece of map she had torn off of Deanna’s wall from her back pocket.  Carl recognized his own handwriting next to the tiny dot marking Roxobel, North Carolina.  He looked at the piece of paper and smiled, feeling validated that his message had worked.  She had returned to Alexandria and his clue had led her to them.  Now she had saved his life and she could be saved too.

“Don’t look so smug.”  She folded the map and tucked it back in her pocket.  She kicked the Savior she had just killed.  “These guys cracked your secret code before I could get there.  That’s how they found you too.”

Carl’s face fell.  Guilt flooded him like a dam breaking.  He had led the Saviors right to them.  He had told their pursuers exactly where they were heading.  It was his fault Carol was dead.  Enid noticed how pale he became as he felt all the blood drain out of his face.  She was worried he was going to faint.

“Hey, keep it together.  We need to warn everyone else.  Negan’s army is almost here.”

Carl was worried he was going to throw up, but he managed to turn and yell, “Dad!”

Rick and the rest of the Alexandrians had been trying to file back into their vehicles and make a hasty exit and hadn’t noticed the arrival of a second Savior or the sudden appearance of Enid.  At Carl’s call, Rick turned and rushed toward his son, fear sweeping over him like a wave.

“Dad,” Carl called again.  “They’re coming.  They’ll be here any minute.  We have to go.”  He wanted to confess right then and there, to tell his father that it was his fault that they had been followed.  His desire to bring Enid with them on this journey had cost Carol her life.  But if they didn’t get back on the road fast, Carol might not be the only loved one they would lose.

Rick took one look at the panic in his son’s eyes and knew that now was not the time for questions.  They had to move.  He turned and yelled to his people.  “We have to go.  Right now!  The Saviors are coming.  Negan is coming!”

Everyone began to jump into action, but before anyone could take more than a couple steps they all froze in their steps.  A man’s voice came to them through the darkness.  He cleared his throat flagrantly and then exclaimed, “Correction!  Negan is here!”

Rick’s blood turned cold and he felt the hairs on his neck stand up like the hackles of a dog.  The enemy had arrived.  He turned his gun toward the darkness and the rest of his crew did the same.  Carl and Enid hustled to stand alongside Rick and the rest of the Alexandrians moved in closer as well.

“Well, well, well,” Negan’s voice came again through the darkness.  He stepped forward into the faint moonlight that shone through the trees.  Immediately behind him was a wall of men, all armed, some with spears and knives, but most with guns.

Negan opened his arms wide, welcoming.  “The infamous Rick Grimes, I presume.”

Rick didn’t move, didn’t flinch.  He didn’t want to give anything away.

Negan looked him up and down.  “Oh yeah.  You’re him alright.  I’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble just to meet you.  The least you could have done is introduce yourself.”  He had stopped just a few paces past where Dwight lay with the other dead Savior draped over him.  He looked back at the carnage in that heap then looked to Rick again.  “You’re racking up quite a debt, Rick.  That makes seven of my people you’ve killed.  So, the way I see it, you owe me seven of your people in return.”

Rick could keep silent no longer.  He kept his pistol trained on Negan’s head.  “The way you see it is wrong.”

Negan laughed a deep, resounding laugh.  “You’ve got some balls, Rick.  I’ll give you that much.  I disagree.  The way I see it is not wrong.  The way I see it is fair.  You owe me seven people and I plan to collect, one way or another.  Why don’t you make this easier on yourself?  You’re outnumbered and outgunned.”

Rick glanced at the Saviors who stood armed and ready behind Negan.  It was hard to tell in the darkness, but it didn’t look like there were that many of them.  He was confident in the ability of his people.  They could win this battle.  “Are you sure about that?”  He tried to inject an edge of cockiness in his voice, although he didn’t quite feel it at the moment.

A slow grin spread across Negan’s face.  “Yes,” he hissed.  “I’m sure about that.”

From somewhere behind him Rick heard the sound of shotguns racking.  He didn’t need to turn around to know that they had been surrounded.  His stomach churned as he tried to think of a way out of this confrontation.  He had to kill Negan, he knew that.  But if he opened fire they would sustain casualties.  Even if they could defeat Negan’s men, they wouldn’t all survive.  There had to be another way.  He had to protect his people.

Negan took another step toward Rick and his men followed suit.  “Now, Rick, I know we’ve just met, but I’m assuming you’ve heard a lot about me.  You must know that I am a reasonable guy.  I’m a people person.”  His face took on that used car salesman grin and he gave Rick a little wink.  “I could kill you and all your people right now, exterminate the lot of you.  But I don’t want to do that.  You’re worth more to me alive than dead.  You’ve proven to me that you are survivors.  You are fighters.  I’ve got a lot of use for people like you.  So why don’t you go ahead and put the gun down?”

Rick saw Carl turn to look at him out of the corner of his eye.  He shook his head.  It was a signal to Carl, but Rick hoped Negan would take it as a simple no to his question.

“Come on, Rick.”  Negan went on.  “I’ve got two men here for every one of yours.  We’re all armed.  I understand you’re a good shot, but no one is that good.  Go ahead and put the gun down.  We’re just going to have a little talk.”

“Tell your men to lower their weapons first.  Then we can talk.”  Rick wanted to diffuse this situation somehow, but he couldn’t be the first to lower his gun.

“Okay, okay.  You heard the man’s request.”  Negan addressed his men without looking away from Rick.  “Go ahead and lower your weapons.  I expect Rick is an honorable man and that he’ll do the same.”  Negan’s men hesitated a moment, but then pointed their guns at the ground.  Rick scanned the wall of Saviors in front of him and saw no more weapons pointed in his direction.  He waited a beat, trying to assert some control over the situation.  Then he lowered his gun.  The rest of the Alexandrians slowly did the same.

“Alright.”  Negan looked satisfied.  “Now we can talk like men instead of savages.  But first we have a debt to settle.”

“You’re not taking my people.”  Rick would not back down.  His trigger finger was anxious to end this man, to carefully place a bullet right between his eyes and watch him fall to the ground before he knew what hit him.  But he had to think.  He had to be careful.  He had to keep his family alive.  He kept his gun pointed downward.

“Oh, Rick.”  Negan let out another bellowing laugh.  “You haven’t realized it yet.  They’re not your people anymore.  They’re all my people.”

“Like hell!” Daryl growled from over Rick’s shoulder, catching Negan’s attention.

Negan took a small side step to better see Daryl.  “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?”  He sized up Daryl and then let his eyes roam over the rest of the Alexandrians standing their ground.  Then his gaze locked back on Daryl.  “How did such a reckless bunch of people come to find each other?  Every last one of you is willing to fight to the death.  I could tell Rick was a crazy son of a bitch, but all the rest of you just keeping following him along.  Are you all as crazy as he is?”

Daryl never so much as blinked, but met his cold, hard stare.  With hatred in his voice he responded, “Damaged people tend to gravitate toward damaged people.”

For a moment Negan held his eye then he tilted his head back in laughter.  “Well ain’t that the goddamn truth!” he roared.  When he was done laughing he looked back to Rick again.  “Alright, Rick Grimes, here’s the deal.  And there’s only going to be one deal.  I’m going to pick seven of your people.  They’re coming with me.  If they don’t like it, I can kill them.  But like I said, they’re worth more to me alive than dead.  The rest of you are going to march on back to that little suburban village of yours and you’re going to start producing for me.  I want food, weapons, any sort of supplies you can get your hands on.  But here’s the thing.”  He could tell Rick had some retort for him.  He spoke quickly so as to not allow him a word in edgewise.  “I’m collecting on your debt with interest.  I’m taking seven of your people to make up for the seven you took from me.  The interest is I’m going to take one more and I’m going to kill that person, right here, right now.  And here’s the best part.”  Negan raised Lucille so the tip pointed straight toward Rick’s nose.  Rick resisted the urge to swat it away, but he also refused to look at the thing.  He looked Negan straight in the eye.  “You’re going to choose who it’s going to be.”

Rick shook his head and suppressed the instinct to raise his gun again.  “No.  That’s not how this is going down.  You’re not taking anyone, you’re not killing anyone, and we’re not going back to Alexandria.”

Negan cocked his head to one side and flipped his bat back over his shoulder.  “And why is that?  What could possibly be in some tiny little town in North Carolina that made you leave your little safe haven?”

Rick didn’t want to give anything away.  “It’s not a safe haven anymore.  Thanks to you.”

“But why Roxobel?”  Negan looked for any tell in Rick’s stone-cold stare.  He saw none.  “If you just wanted to run away from the big bad wolf, you could have run anywhere.  But you picked that place.  And from the looks of your map you picked some back up locations too.  So what’s the draw?  Why did that little town win?”

Rick had a lump in his throat that he badly wanted to swallow, but he wouldn’t.  He didn’t want to give Negan the satisfaction.  He didn’t want to give even the slightest appearance of being nervous, of being weak.

Negan huffed a small, sharp breath out of his nostrils.  “Fine.  Keep your secret, Rick.  But like I said, there will only be one deal.  I’ve already figured out who I’d like to take with me.  But since I’m a gentleman I’m going to let you pick first.  Who’s going to have the honor of meeting my lovely Lucille?”

Rick continued his steely stare, not backing down, not giving in.

“Okay, well I was afraid it might come to that.”  Negan whistled and before Rick realized what was happening his men moved in.  There was a gun pointed at the head of every Alexandrian.  It became painfully obvious that Negan’s math had been correct.  They were definitely outnumbered at least two to one.  “Alright, so either you pick or I pick.  But I don’t think you’re going to like my pick.”

Rick looked around, feeling defeated.  But he couldn’t let Negan feel he had won.  This man liked a challenge.  He liked to negotiate.  Rick just had to keep him talking.  “You think you know so much about me?  You tell me, who do you think I would pick?”

Negan chuckled.  “Don’t you see?  It doesn’t matter who I think you would pick.  It only matters who I think you wouldn’t pick.”  He stepped to his left and abruptly grabbed Carl by his shirt collar.  He yanked him a couple feet forward.  “This is your boy.”

It should have been a question, but it was a statement.  Rick was caught off guard.  In the split second while he wondered how Negan had known Carl was his son he had actually answered the question Negan was unwilling to ask.  Carol’s words rung in Rick’s mind.  She had felt like Negan saw right through her.  Rick was now left with the same naked sensation.  It felt raw.  He tried to shrug it off, but he couldn’t.  Of course Carl was his boy.  Of course Negan had known.  How foolish he had been to think he could keep anything from his enemy, his nemesis.

That wicked grin was present again on Negan’s face.  “Okay then.  You know who I choose.  It’s time to see if you will make your own choice instead.”  He lifted his bat and rested it against Carl’s shoulder.  He whispered, “On your knees boy.”

Something flashed through Rick’s mind.  Something Carol had said.  Something about Negan’s feelings about women and children.  But he couldn’t catch the thought.  It flew in and out and was gone.  It left him with the impression that Negan was bluffing.  There was no way he was actually going to kill Carl.  But then Rick saw Carl get to his knees.  He saw his son obey Negan’s orders.  He could almost hear some sort of audible winding occurring inside his own head before something snapped.  He had to protect his son.

“Me!” he yelled without meaning to.  “I choose myself.  Kill me.  Let the boy go.”

Negan’s head moved, but nothing else.  His fist still gripped Carl by the collar of his shirt.  His weapon was still cradled in the corner between the young man’s shoulder and neck.  But his head whipped quickly to the right to face Rick.

A harsh tsk, tsk sound escaped Negan’s lips.  “Rick, I’m sorry.  Did I forget to mention?  There’s one rule to this deal.  You have to choose, but you’re not allowed to choose yourself.  You see, you’re too valuable to me.  These people,” Negan said, his eyes scanning the furious crowd before him.  “These people listen to you.  No matter what I do they will keep listening to you.  If I kill you, they become unpredictable.  They become an unknown.  I don’t like unknowns.  I’m something of an expert on eliminating unknowns.  But if I keep you alive, if they see your stoic face, hear your inspiring words, they will do as you say.  All I have to do is make sure that you do as I say.  So I’m going to ask you one more time.  Who should I kill?”

From the middle of the crowd a woman’s voice called out.  “Me! If you have to kill someone, kill me.”

All heads turned to see who had spoken those words.  The eyes fell on Scully standing in the middle of the pack of Alexandrians, hands raised in surrender, silent tears streaming down her cheeks.

“No!” Mulder barked as he reached his hand toward her.  The Savior with a gun pressed against his temple leaned in harder to stop him from reaching her.

“Yes!” Scully protested.  “If you have to kill someone to justify whatever debt you think you’re owed, then take me.  But know this!”  She had captured Negan’s attentioned.  It was exactly what she had been counting on.  He was entirely enthralled.  He loosened his grip on Carl and didn’t even notice when he slipped away and dragged Enid back into the crowd.  The leader of the Saviors waited for Dana Scully to continue.

And she did.  “If you kill me you’re killing the cure.”  She paused and waited for the question she knew he would be unable to stop himself from asking, no matter how weak it made him appear.

And he asked, “What cure?”

“We have a cure.  To this.  To all of this.”  Scully swept her arms wide to indicate the world they lived in, the undead monsters that roamed the Earth, the fall of civilization, the end of humankind.

Negan didn’t believe.  “There is no cure.  I’ve seen things.  I’ve learned things.  There is no cure.”

“There wasn’t.”  Scully countered.  “Everyone believed there wasn’t.  But we have it.  And we have proof.  But now there’s a new deal on the table.”

Negan squinted at her, unsure.  He couldn’t believe what he was positive must be a lie.  Yet he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt her.  He wanted to believe what she said was true; that there was a cure.

Scully looked deep into his eyes, drawing him in.  Luring him.  “There will be only one deal.”  There was venom in her voice and it stung him.  He knew in that moment he would do anything to acquire the cure if what she said was true.

A smile spread across Rick’s lips as the crew crossed the border into North Carolina.  In a way it was a meaningless victory.  They still hadn’t arrived at their destination.  Negan was still presumably coming after them.  It wasn’t as if getting out of Virginia put them outside of Negan’s jurisdiction.  State lines were relatively meaningless at this point.  And Rick was pretty sure that Negan considered the whole world to be his jurisdiction.  Still, it felt good to cross that border.  It felt as though they had accomplished something.

He took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance down at his clothes.  He was covered in blood and filth.  He had ended the lives of three men since the sun came up and he was painted in their blood as a reminder.  He had handled several walkers.  He had their blood on him too.  Although he almost wouldn’t refer to it as blood.  It was something else, something thicker, like sludge.  It was like their blood was congealing in their veins as they stumbled around in a constant state of limbo, definitely not alive, but also not dead.  He could smell it on himself.  He smelled like death.  Even so, none of the blood he wore was his own and the death he smelled belonged to someone else.  That meant today was a good day.

The sun was inching down toward the horizon, casting Michonne in a backlit shadow as she sat in the passenger seat.  He felt compelled to say something to her.  He wanted her to know he couldn't have done this without her.  He couldn't have led his team on this journey unless he knew she was there to back him up.  As long as she believed in him he would be able to believe in himself.

Before he could form the words to express these thoughts he was interrupted by the click of the radio.  Glenn’s voice came over the airwaves.  “I'm running on fumes back here.  The engine’s chugging.  This car isn't going to make it.”

Rick raised his own radio to his mouth.  “Alright, let's pull over and rearrange the cargo.  We’ll have a tight squeeze the rest of the way, but we’re almost there.”

The caravan cruised to a slow halt and everyone got out to stretch their legs.  It had been a long and trying journey.  Rick looked around and could sense that morale was low.  But everyone pitched in anyway, unloading the trunk of Glenn’s car and putting the contents anywhere it might fit, negotiating who would ride with whom now that they would be down one vehicle.  They were a team and they acted like it, even at the end of a long day.  A sense of pride welled up inside him.

The sun disappeared behind the horizon and, just like that, dusk was upon them.  Rick had really been hoping to reach their destination before dark, but it appeared that ship had sailed.  It didn’t matter, really.  Traveling in the dark wasn’t that much more dangerous than traveling by daylight.  It gave them less visibility, but that was as much a disadvantage to their enemies as it was to them.  They just had to keep up their pace.  Especially since Negan knew their destination.

How had he known?  Rick had never heard of this tiny little town they were working so hard to reach.  He was sure Negan hadn’t either.  But that Savior, the one Rick had shot in the throat, he had said the name Roxobel.  He knew exactly where they were headed.  What clue had they left behind?  Rick may never know.  He just knew they had to get there before the Saviors.  And they couldn’t do that if they were sitting here on the side of the road.  He felt a sudden sense of urgency creeping into his bones.  He couldn’t sit still.  He began pacing the line of vehicles, checking their tires, just to have something to do.

As he reached the back of the row of cars he found Carol sitting on the side of the road leaned up against a tree.  She looked defeated, guilt ridden.  This was not the Carol he knew.  The Carol he knew was an unstoppable force of nature.  She did what needed to be done and never looked back.  He wasn’t sure why she was blaming herself for Negan’s actions.

“Hey,” he said, taking a seat next to her.  “You okay?”

Carol picked up a twig and proceeded to snap it into tiny bits.  “No, I’m not okay.”

“Is this about that girl, Amber?  You can’t blame yourself for that.  You tried to help her.  It’s not your fault Negan is a monster.”

She didn’t meet his eyes.  “It’s not just that.  It’s that I could have stopped all of this before it started.  Tara and I were alone in a room with that man.  He put a weapon in my hands.  At the time I thought it was an ego thing, but now I know it was a dare.  He was daring me to kill him in that moment.  And he knew I wouldn’t do it.  He knew it before I even knew it.  He saw right into me and armed me, knowing that I wouldn’t kill him.”

Rick’s face scrunched in confusion.  “But he didn’t see through you.  He saw what you wanted him to see.  You went in there pretending to be a non threat.  That was the whole plan.”

Carol shook off his attempts at reassurance.  “No, he saw right through all that.  He knew exactly who I was.  He barely even addressed Tara.  He decided from the second I walked into the room that I was the threat.  I was the challenge.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but he knew I was a killer.  He put that bat in my hands and dared me to bash his skull in.  And I choked.  I didn’t do it.  Now Amber and Mark are dead.  We’re homeless.  We can never go back to Alexandria.  We’re on the run and we’re putting our last hope on a flying saucer that may or may not exist.  If I had just swung that bat, none of this would have happened.”

“Hey,” Rick said, putting his arm around her shoulders.  “How many walkers have you killed?”

Carol rolled her eyes.  “What is this, an interview?”

Rick was insistent.  “How many walkers have you killed?”

“Dozens.  Maybe hundreds. I don’t know anymore.”

“And how many people have you killed?”

She finally looked him in the eye, reluctant to answer the question.

“How many?” he asked again.

“Seventeen.”  Her eyes went back to the ground.

Rick put a finger under her chin, encouraging her to look at him again.  “Why?”

She let out an exasperated sigh.  “That’s not an easy question.  There was a different reason for each of them.”

“Exactly!”  Rick looked triumphant in an almost fatherly way.

Carol finally cracked a small smile at his self-satisfaction.  “What do you mean ‘exactly’?”

“I mean you had a reason for each of them.  You have to know why you’re killing someone.  Otherwise there’s nothing separating us from the walkers.  As long as you know why you’re taking someone’s life, you’re not one of the monsters.  Negan put a weapon in your hand before you knew what he was capable of.  You couldn’t swing that bat because that would have made you the monster, not him.”

Carol turned her gaze skyward to ponder that thought.  Then she looked back to Rick, surprised by how much better he had made her feel.  “Thank you, Rick.  You're a good man.  You're a good leader.”

Rick gave her shoulder a squeeze.  “Come on.  We must be about ready to go.”  He stood and turned to offer her a hand up.

As she rose to her feet, Daryl approached.  “Tara said she'd drive your car.  You can ride on the bike with me since we’re short on space.”

Carol gave him a smile.  She felt gratitude in that moment.  She was grateful that in this world filled with beasts and demons she had managed to find this group of kind and caring souls.  She was truly grateful for each and every one of them.  As she opened her mouth to tell them as much her words were cut short.  All that escaped her lips was a short, sharp breath and then a gaping nothingness.  Rick and Daryl stood frozen in confusion for a moment, not understanding what was happening.  Then Carol’s hands raised ever so slightly, trying to make sense of the pain that ripped through her.  Only then did her companions notice the tip of the spear that protruded through her belly.

Blood quickly spread down the front of Carol’s shirt as she keeled forward, revealing Dwight's sinister face as he tightly gripped the other end of the spear behind her.  It was a face Rick had prayed he would never see again.  The faint moonlight reflected off the scar tissue covering the left side of his face, making him look inhuman.

As the realization of what just happened dawned on the two men they both raised their weapons, Rick’s pistol and Daryl's crossbow.  They fired simultaneously, but their ammunition found nothing but a void in the growing darkness.  Dwight was no longer there.  He had already been knocked onto his back.  Only then did Rick and Daryl register the loud crack they had heard just a split second before they had discharged their own weapons.  They turned to look over their shoulders to find Morgan standing a few paces behind them with a revolver in his trembling hand.

The group rushed forward, weapons drawn, at the sound of the commotion.  Daryl kneeled down and pulled Carol’s head into his lap.  She was still holding onto the last thread of life.  Every impulse in his body told him to pull out the spear, but he knew that would only cause her to bleed out that much faster.  He wanted to believe there was some way he could save her, some way he could put her back together.  But he could see by the distant look in her eyes that she was already fading.

“Don’t you leave me,” he choked out.  It came out as a whisper, although he felt like he was screaming.

Tears streamed down the sides of her face and onto her ears as she gazed up into the face of the man who had become family to her.  She and Daryl had shared a bond.  They had supported and protected each other.  They had helped one another grow into the warriors they had become.  But now she was a fallen warrior.  She reached up and placed one hand on his cheek.  “I’ll never leave you,” she whispered.  “I’m always with you.  You saved me from myself.  Stay strong.  I’m always with you.”

With those final words she slipped away.  Her body went limp, finally relaxed after a lifetime of tension, of battling demons day in and day out.  She finally relaxed and let out one last slow exhale.  Daryl squeezed his eyes shut and leaned in closer, pressing his forehead to hers.  The loss he felt was palpable.  It left a cavernous emptiness inside him.  She was unstoppable, indestructible.  How could she be gone?  He felt that as long as he held her close, faces pressed together, that she wasn’t really gone.  It was all a bad dream.  But when he opened his eyes he saw her empty expression.  He felt her body already growing cold from the loss of blood, the loss of life.  She was gone.  She had been taken from him and he would never be able to let that go.

He wriggled out from under her and slowly, carefully removed the spear from her body.  He rolled her onto her back and gingerly closed her eyes.  For just a moment he allowed himself to pretend she was sleeping.  But she would never wake from this sleep.  He knew that.  His hand reached for the blade at his hip automatically.  This is what they did for fallen comrades, for family, for friends.  They made sure none of them turned.  They made sure they could rest in peace.

As he pulled the knife from its sheath he felt a hand upon his shoulder.  He turned and found himself staring into Mulder’s piercing blue eyes.  His face was somber.  He hadn’t known Carol long, but he could sense the bond that these two shared.  He shook his head.

“You don’t have to do that.  She’s cured.”

Daryl turned back around to look at Carol’s resting form.  He realized Mulder was right.  It seemed so foreign now after living for years in this world where the dead returned to life.  She was already at peace and she would stay that way.  Forever.

He returned his knife to its place and scooped Carol up off the street.  She was so tiny, yet she had been so fierce.  With one arm under her shoulders and the other behind her knees he turned and carried her to the RV.  He would find a place for her, crowded as it might be.  He needed to bury her, to give her a final resting place.  But he knew they had no time for that now.  If Dwight had found them, the others wouldn’t be far behind.

Daryl guided his motorcycle through the back roads of Virginia, leading the parade of Alexandrians south.  He had been so relieved to lay eyes on his bike again.  Riding in cars always made him feel trapped.  If this was going to be the last road trip he ever made, he'd much rather be on this machine than inside a four-door cage.

Although now he was starting to feel like he was trapped in a cage of his own thoughts.  There were so many ways this escape plan could go wrong and he couldn't seem to stop them from rattling around in his head.

They had already doubled back twice.  Once for a fallen tree in the road.  A second time because the road had been washed away down the hillside.  It served as a reminder that the world was taking itself back.  Humans had spent centuries developing the land, building roads, structures, molding the landscape.  It wasn't natural.  It was all human invention for the purpose of convenience and comfort.  It seemed foolish now.  This planet allowed people to exist.  Not the other way around.  How arrogant was the human race to imagine they could control a force as great as nature?  Within a couple years all trace of human existence would likely be erased.  All that would be left of mankind would be their trash piles.  Just a bunch of rubble that would never decompose.  That's the human legacy that would be left behind: garbage.

Daryl shook his head, trying to stop that train of thought.  He needed to stay focused.  Doubling back meant they had to be very conservative with their gas.  If they ran out they would be sitting ducks.  Someone would have to trek out to the highway and see if any of the abandoned vehicles had any fuel left to siphon.  That was another thing.  How long would they be able to keep cars running if they stayed here.  At some point all the gas would be gone or would have gone bad.  It was like all the years of human invention were rolling backwards.  Everyone who was left on Earth would eventually return to caveman days.  Even now everyone was starting to behave like Neanderthals.

That brought his mind back to Negan.  Doubling back also meant the Saviors had a chance to catch up.  It was one more “if” that worried him.  What if Negan tracked them, caught up, what then?  Then it was time for war, but without the defenses of their walls.

He shook his head again.  He couldn't allow himself to follow that train of thought.  He couldn't think about the what ifs.  He needed to focus on the road in front of him.

Just as he regained his focus he rounded a turn and had to quickly stop his bike.  He grabbed a little too much front brake and nearly stood the machine on its nose.  As the motorcycle came to a halt he shifted to neutral and brought both feet to the ground.  He didn't dismount.  He leaned his elbows on the handlebars and cradled his face in his hands as the rest of his convoy pulled up and stopped behind him.

In the road ahead was another obstacle.  Mulder had asked him just the night before when was the last time he had seen an airplane.  At the time Daryl couldn’t remember.  But now he could say with complete certainty that he saw an airplane before him now.  Although this one wouldn’t be flying again any time soon.  A small two-man aircraft rested in the road ahead.  It  sat upside down with its wings stretching diagonally across the pavement.  The nearby trees looked scorched as though the plane may have started a small fire when it crashed.  But the foliage was already recovering.  Vines and branches from nearby shrubs stretched out over the wings and wound around the charred and crumpled body of the plane, spiraling up around the exposed landing gear and wing supports.

The windows into the cockpit were obscured with dirt and plant growth, but Daryl was willing to bet there was at least one walker inside.  The best hope for the pilot and any potential passenger was that they brained themselves on impact and didn’t turn.  But in Daryl’s experience very few people got the best they could hope for these days.

Daryl pressed his palms into his eyes, trying to rub away the sight of it, the frustration he felt, the impossibility of it all.  It didn't work.  The frustration remained, leaving a smoldering feeling in his gut.  He could hear the rest of the crew gathering behind him to see the obstruction for themselves.  He heard the now too familiar sound of Mulder unfolding his map.  The rustling of the paper made him want to rip it in half.  Instead he swallowed the feeling of defeat and dismounted his motorcycle, wheeling around to join his team in the next decision to be made.

Mulder spread the map on the hood of Rick’s car, leaning in close and tracing their current route backwards with his finger.  “A few miles back we passed what looked like some sort of fire road.  It’s not on the map, but it might connect back to this road somewhere up ahead.”  He still sounded so optimistic.  Nothing in this world could discourage him from getting to his spaceship.

Rick stood next to Mulder as if to look at the map with him, but his head was craned around toward the plane wreck.  He couldn’t take his eyes away from it, as if staring at it with contempt would make the vessel disappear.  In response to Mulder’s suggestion he muttered, “Yeah, maybe.”

Abraham slammed the door of the Winnebago and abruptly barked, “No!”  He caught everyone’s attention.  “No, we’re not turning around.  First of all, I can’t three-point turn this beast around on this backwoods road and I’m sure as hell not driving it in reverse for a couple miles.”  He slapped the RV.  “Second, I don’t know how your gas gauge is looking, but mine’s not looking too hot.  Besides that, I know no one wants to talk about it, but you’ve got to figure that douche waffle will be coming after us by now.  How many times can we turn around before he catches up?”

Rick looked around at his people gathering in the road.  He knew Abraham was expressing what they were all feeling.  They were on the simplest step of this mission.  All they were doing was driving.  They weren’t looking for an alien spacecraft yet or trying to navigate to a planet in a distant galaxy.  All they were doing was trying to reach an earthly destination that was only a couple hundred miles from their starting point.  Yet even this seemed to prove impossible.  What chance did they stand of ever reaching their goal?  But they couldn’t give up now.  They had to do something.  But what?

“Got any ideas?” Rick asked Abraham.

“We move it,” Abraham replied.

Rick’s eyes shot back to the destroyed aircraft.  “You want to move the plane?”

Abraham walked right up to the airplane, getting a good look at the size of it.  “It’s not much bigger than a car.  There’s a couple dozen of us.  All we have to do is get it far enough over that embankment that gravity does the rest.”

Rick walked up to stand beside him, both men assessing the task at hand.  Rick stepped toward the right edge of the road, looking down the slope on that side.  Then he turned to face Abraham again.  “Let’s do this.”

Rick rallied his troops and Michonne went to work first, slicing her sword through the binding roots and vines with ease.  Next up Rick, Abraham, and Daryl dug out as much dirt as the could from under the downhill side of the plane, trying to reduce the friction and resistance.  Down on their hands and knees with dirt working its way under their fingernails and sweat beading up in the humid Virginia air, it felt good to be doing something.  So much of their plan was left up to chance.  This was one small part where they could take back some control.

With the plane’s path cleared as much as possible, Alexandria’s biggest and brawniest gathered around the uphill side of the plane and readied themselves for a workout.  Rick looked at the dozen or so friends surrounding him, all lined up to make this seemingly impossible task seem possible.  Abraham was right.  The plane wasn't much larger than a car.  They were a team.  They were strong together.  They could do this.

Rick put both palms on the hull of the aircraft and waited for his friends to do the same.  “Ready?” he asked.  He was met with nods from his line up.  “Together, on three.  One, two, three.”

Everyone dug in their heels and pushed with all their might.  It moved.  Not a lot, but it definitely moved.  A few more Alexandrians stepped up and found a small piece of real estate to place their hands on the plane.  Rick knew they needed this.  They all needed this to work.  They needed this small win.

“Again, one, two, three.”  Again they pushed, grunting and sweating.  It moved a little more this time.  Even more members of the team stepped up.  If they couldn't find a spot to get a hand on the plane, they stood behind their friends to brace their feet, giving them something to push off of.  Rick grinned to see his community coming together like this, supporting one another, working together.  Nearly every man woman and child was now bracing for one more push.

“Let's go!  One, two, three!”  They heaved and pushed and sweated and pushed some more.  And suddenly they didn't have to push so hard.  And then they didn't have to push at all.

The plane let out a loud protest of creaks as it found the point of no return and began tilting downhill.  It slid and tipped, crashing through shrubs and underbrush as it went.  And then all at once it was silent.  The vessel came to rest with its body off the road.  One wing stuck up in the air at a 45 degree angle, partially hanging over the pavement.  But it was enough.  They would be able to pass through.

Even in their state of overexertion, Rick’s team of warriors let out an elated cheer.  They had done it.  Now they would be able to move forward.  The cheers died down until all that could be heard was the sound of the crew catching their breath.

That and the sound of a slow, delayed clap.

Rick turned and found a stranger among his people.  While he stood surrounded by his teammates, a man had approached and stood near their line of vehicles, just a few paces from Maggie who had stayed near the car where her baby slept.

The lone man stood, applauding their efforts.  He seemed so shockingly out of place that it took the team a moment to realize he didn't belong there.  But when they did, guns were drawn.  As Rick looked down his sights at the man, he thought he recognized him as a member of Dwight’s posse.  As if his own exposure and vulnerability suddenly dawned on him, the man jumped behind Maggie, wrapping an arm around her torso and pinning her arms to her side.  With his other hand he withdrew a gun and held it to her head.

Glenn cried out, “Maggie!”  But he stopped in his tracks as he saw Maggie give a barely perceptible shake of her head, fire raging behind her eyes.  His heart pounded in his chest, but he trusted her instincts.  He had to think.  He had to be smart.

The Savior spoke.  “I’d be careful with that gun if I were you, Chief.”  His mocking tone seemed out of place for someone so heavily outnumbered.

“Put the weapon down.”  Rick’s voice was calm and measured.  “Are you with him?”

The man replied, “ We’re all with him.  Even you.  You just don’t know it yet.”

Rick shook his head, arm still extended with his pistol, unflinching.  “No.  We’ll never be with him.”

“We’ll see about that.”  The man glanced into the car as baby William made a tiny sound in his sleep.  “Listen, no one has to get hurt here.  I’m just meant to detain you until he arrives.  He reckons you owe him some of your people.  He’s real anxious to meet you.”

“He won’t be taking any of my people.”  Rick found himself in this position again, waiting for a clear shot while a member of his family was threatened by one of Negan’s thugs.  But he would not let his fury betray him.  He kept his voice even.

“Negan’s a fair man.  He doesn’t need to take any of your fighters.  He’d settle for women and children.”  The man let out a soft chuckle.  “Maybe even babies.”

That was enough for Maggie.  Her life had been threatened many times over, but now she was a mother.  No one was going to threaten her child.  She kicked one foot back hard and fast, catching the man in the groin.  As he curled over and clutched himself she took the opportunity to grab his hand holding the gun.  She gripped him around the wrist and yanked up and out while bending forward and pitching her hips upward, causing the main to flip over her shoulder and land hard on his back.  It knocked the wind out of him.  As he hit the ground Maggie grabbed his gun and fired twice in quick succession, once into each of his hands.  She then placed the sole of her boot on his neck and leaned down to push the revolver squarely into his forehead.  She didn’t fire a third time.  Instead she looked to Rick, who had rushed forward with Glenn and  Michonne to make sure the intruder didn’t move a muscle.

She asked Rick, “Anything you want to ask him before I kill him?”

“Why do you have to kill him?”  It was Morgan, once again stepping forward from the back of the pack to argue against the death of another human being, no matter how vile.

Maggie growled at him.  “Because he threatened my son.”

Rick intervened.  “Morgan, this man is a scout.  If we let him go he’s going to run off and tell Negan exactly where we are and which way we’re heading.”

The bleeding man sputtered out a small laugh and said, “He already knows.”  Rick pointed his gun back at the grounded Savior.  “He already knows where you’re going.  All I’m supposed to do is stall you.”  He laughed again.  Rick leaned in close and Maggie removed her boot as he pointed his gun right under the man’s chin.  He stopped laughing.

“What’s your angle?  You think if you tell me he knows where we’re going I’ll spare you?  Or are you taunting me?”

The man let out an amused snicker.  “Mister Grimes, your reputation precedes you.  We both know you’re not going to spare me.  But I am curious.”  He lifted his head ever so slightly so he could look Rick in the eye.  “What the hell is in Roxobel, anyway?”

Without a second of hesitation Rick fired his pistol, not up through the man’s skull but directly into his throat.  Thick, dark blood poured out of him and he gasped for breath as he clutched his ruined esophagus with his wounded hands.  Rick took a step away and fired two more rounds into the man’s chest and he went limp.

Rick turned to face his people.  He knew they probably needed some sort of inspiring speech, some sentiment to keep them plugging forward.  But he just didn’t have it in him.  And they were out of time.

“Let’s go.  We need to keep moving.”

Solemnly everyone filed back into their vehicles, a silence hanging over them that no one dared to break.  One by one each of the engines in the convoy roared to life.  Daryl, sitting astride his motorcycle, looked over his shoulder to see that everyone was ready to carry on.  He fired up his bike and kicked it into gear, rolling out past the plane wreckage and continuing on their journey.

A short while  later Negan and his army arrived at the same spot in the road.  As their trucks and cars rolled to a stop Negan stepped out of the lead vehicle.  He examined the plane, the marks it had left on the pavement, the wing hanging precariously overhead.  He walked back several yards and squatted down to examined the blood on the concrete.  It was clearly fresh.  It still had that coppery smell.

Negan stood, some movement in the road just around the bend catching his eye.  It was a roamer.  He could just see its silhouette as it approached from the road ahead.  He stood his ground and allowed it to advance on him.  It’s shoulders hung to one side as it took slow, jarring steps toward him.  As it rounded the bend and was no longer backlit, Negan could see that this wasn’t just any roamer.  It was one of his scouts.

As it came near, the leader of the Saviors extended Lucille, pressing the end of the bat into the chest of the oncoming corpse, impeding its progress.  He examined the bullet wounds.  Rick Grimes was a smart man.  He knew he had to put a bullet in this guy’s head if he didn’t want him to turn.  So either he wanted to leave another calling card behind or this scout pissed him off enough that he wanted to let him turn.  Either way he was dead.

Negan spoke, more to himself than to the men who gathered around him.  “Five people.  He owes me five people now.”  He pushed the beast away from him with enough force that it staggered back a few steps.  As it regained its footing and lunged forward again Negan violently swung his bat, catching the former Savior on the side of the skull.  The impact was enough to end him.  Permanently.

“Well ain’t that some shit!”

Negan stood outside the fence surrounding Alexandria with one hand propping his favorite weapon, Lucille, over his shoulder and the other hand on his hip.  He shook his head, taking in the sight before him.  It wasn’t as if it were especially gruesome.  Gruesome didn’t bother Negan one bit.  It wasn’t as if it were a particularly devastating trap either.  He should know.  Negan was something of an expert on devastating traps.  No that wasn’t what impressed him about this message.  What impressed him was the fact that someone would have taken the time to annoy him.  The people who live here, or used to live here, put in some time and effort to give him this message.  It seemed to be their way of saying “screw you” while they were on their way out the door.

When Fisher hadn’t returned with his requested two Alexandrians, Negan had decided to enact Plan B.  It was time to take the fight to Rick Grimes’ doorstep.  He had assembled his troops and made the journey to Rick’s little town.  Upon their approach Negan had taken note of the wooden staff still lodged in the middle of the road.  But no head.  That was curious.  There was also quite a bit of blood on the asphalt.  Curiouser.

They had approached the fenceline with caution, not wanting to be taken by surprise.  He had sent his men to search the perimeter.  They had reported back.  There were no other ways in.  There were no guards in the towers.  Negan had stopped to listen.  All was quiet.  That’s when he had decided no one was home.

He had brought his army to Rick’s front door and that son of a bitch wasn’t even here.  Wouldn’t it be hilarious, he had thought, if Rick had hauled off and planned some sort of attack on Salvation while the population of Salvation was on their way here.  But no, he had dismissed that idea.  Rick would have wanted the home field advantage in this fight.  If he were putting up a fight he would have stayed here.  He would have been waiting for the Saviors when they arrived.

But he wasn’t putting up a fight.  He had run.  Rick Grimes and his band of Alexandrians had run off.  It was a shame, really.  Negan had big plans for this crew.  Fun plans.  Now if he wanted to have his fun, he’d have to track down Rick and his friends first.  But to do that he would need some clues from within the walls of Alexandria.  And to get inside the walls, he would have to get around Rick’s little parting gift.

Four people.  Rick had now cost Negan four of his people.  Which meant he was owed four people in return.  Fair is fair, after all.  And here in front of him were two of the people Rick had killed.  The truck was backed up to the only gate into Alexandria.  It was his own truck, Negan noted.  It was backed all the way up, touching the fence.  They would have to move the truck to open the gate, there was no doubt about that.  That had been the whole point of it, Rick’s point.  Negan would have to work to gain entry to this compound.  And it would be tricky work too.  Rick had made sure of it.

Propped up inside the cab of the truck were Fisher and his friend, dead.  Negan peered at their bodies through the windshield.  At least it looked like they had put up a fight.  Still, they were dead, very dead.  And they weren’t alone.  Crammed in among his two dead men were a couple of roamers, gesticulating like they’re prone to do when they see a meal nearby.  So to move the truck, Negan would first have to deal with the four corpses in the cab, two dead and two undead.  But apparently that wasn’t enough for Rick.  Although Mr. Grimes had been kind enough to leave the keys to the truck, to get to those keys Negan would have to deal with the three additional rotters that had been lashed to the exterior of the vehicle.  They were roped to one another and then tied around the truck in such a way that cutting one loose meant releasing the other two.  One blocked each of the two cab doors and the third stood in front of the grill.  Each one of them reaching for one of the tasty looking Saviors who now surrounded them.

Of course, this was nothing they couldn’t handle.  Negan had brought enough men to take down this entire town.  They would have no trouble dealing with these five living carcasses.  Five of them.  Negan thought about that as he took a step closer to the one blocking the hood.  He leaned in, just barely out of reach of the beast.  He laughed out loud, startling some of his men.  Five of them.  Rick had left him five roamers just like five fingers on a hand.  And this one here, this one was Rick’s middle finger.  Rick knew they’d be able to deal with this obstacle he had thrown in their way.  But he also knew it would be something they’d have to deal with.  He was making them work.

Negan laughed again.  “Hot damn!  I can’t wait to meet this crazy asshole.”

He spun around to face Dwight.  Dwight still looked sheepish.  He had failed.  He had let Carol and Tara get away.  He had allowed himself to be beaten, almost killed, by a couple of unarmed women.  In the process he had collected another scar.  A dark purple line was etched into his neck.  Negan’s eyes shot to the new blemish.  It would fade, but there would always be evidence of his failure.  He would wear that shame like a dog collar for the rest of his life.  Negan looked at Dwight’s face, examining the wound he had inflicted with his iron.  That was a much more impressive scar.  As he admired his workmanship he thought to himself that Dwight really ought to stop collecting scars.  It’s a bad habit.

“Well?” Negan asked him.  “Are you going to clean up this mess or what?”

Dwight didn’t respond to Negan, but began organizing his men.  He and two others, armed with spears, surrounded the truck.  On Dwight’s orders they each plunged their spears through the skulls of the rotten corpses outside the vehicle.  They fell limp, pulling the ropes that bound them taut.  Once that was taken care of some of the other men began untying the ropes and dragging the bodies out of the way.

Dwight grabbed the keys off the hood of the truck and approached the driver’s side door.  He rested his hand on the handle and one of the roamers inside pressed its face violently against the window.  Dwight’s lip curled up in disgust.  He had no interest in tangling with this creature.

Negan noticed his hesitation.  “Go on.  What are you waiting for?”

Dwight finally made eye contact with Negan.  “Can’t I just shoot it through the window?”

“Do you happen to know a good automobile glass repairman?”

Dwight pursed his lips.  He wasn’t sure why he had even asked the question.  He knew what the answer would be.  He pulled on the handle, flung the truck door wide open, and jumped back a few paces.  The rotter inside scrambled over Fisher’s bloated remains and spilled out onto the ground.  As it tried to find its footing Dwight stood over it and jammed his spear into its brain.  No sooner had he retracted the weapon than the second walker was struggling out of the cab of the pickup.  As with the first, this monster poured out of the cab like a wind up toy that was wound one too many times.  He hated that.  Dwight hated the way they moved, like some sort of energizer bunny.  Couldn’t they just stop?  All he wanted was for them to stop.  He pressed his eyes closed for a moment.

When he opened them this monster was crawling over Dwight’s spearing victim and was reaching for his ankle.  He raised his boot and brought it down hard on the thing’s head.  It didn’t stop.  He stomped it again.  It slowed down, but kept coming.  He spun his spear around so that the butt of it was pointed down.  He slammed it down onto the skull of the beast two, three, four times before it finally stopped moving.  But Dwight didn’t stop.  As the corpse lay prone on the ground he continued to pummel it with his spear handle.  When that didn’t make him feel any better he dropped to his knees and began pounding the thing with his fists.  He flipped the creature over and punched it in the face a couple more times.  It’s lifeless eyes stared back at him no matter how many times he hit the thing.  At least it had finally stopped moving.  Then he screamed, a primal yell right in the thing’s face.  It echoed through the silence that surrounded him.  Finally nothing moved.  Everything had stopped.

“Feel better?” Negan asked with a condescending tone.

Dwight continued to stare into the obliterated face of the roamer.  “Yeah.”  He stood and located the keys which he had dropped in his fit of rage.  He yanked Fisher out of the driver’s seat of the truck and climbed in.  He started the engine and gave it more gas than was needed.  The roar of the motor made him feel a little more manly.  It allowed him to forget that he had just thrown a hissy fit in front of all his comrades.  He put the truck in gear and pulled away from the gate, parking the vehicle on the side of the road.  Returning to the gate, he retrieved his spear, all the while trying to avoid Negan’s scrutinizing gaze.  It was unavoidable.  Dwight rolled the gate back and then the fence the way he had seen Rick do it when he had come to collect Carol and Tara.  He nearly stormed into Alexandria all by himself but then thought better of it.  He paused at the threshold of the small suburban town and turned to face Negan, waiting for an order.

“Please,” Negan said with exaggerated courtesy.  “After you.”

The army of Saviors swarmed into Alexandria, searching for any clue as to where the inhabitants had gone.  What they found was nothing.  Virtually nothing had been left behind.  No personal belongings, no scrap of food, no bottle of water, no weapons.  It was a ghost town.  Negan’s men ransacked every house, looking for a straggler.  Perhaps someone had been left behind and would know where everyone had gone.  But no, there was nothing here.

Negan was starting to get disappointed.  He had been looking forward to knocking down Rick’s door and making him realize who was really in charge.  The fact that Rick had turned tail and run off showed that he knew who was in charge.  But that didn’t come with the same sense of satisfaction.  No, he wanted to see the look on Rick’s face when he realized he was beaten.  He was starting to get especially grumpy about the whole situation when Dwight tracked him down.

“We might have found something.  There’s a map.  I think you’re going to want to see it.”

Negan stood in Deanna’s office.  He had never met Deanna.  He had know idea that he had driven past her remains in the grass on the side of the road as they had approached Alexandria.  But he could recognize someone’s headquarters when he saw it.  Yes, this was where Rick had made his plans.  And all that seemed to be left of those plans was a map with a bunch of red and white push pins in it.  It reminded Negan of little kids who put dots on a map for all the places they’ve visited.  But he was willing to bet Rick hadn’t visited any of these places.  These looked like destinations.  And two of them were marked.  Some place in New Mexico was marked with a pin and then it had a “X” right on top of it.  There was no way Rick was heading to New Mexico.  He seemed like a crazy bastard, but even he couldn’t be that crazy.

Negan stepped closer to the pin that had three small letters scrawled next to.  “J.S.S.”  What could that stand for?  He had no idea, but it didn’t matter much.  If this was all they had to go on then he knew where they had to go.

“Why would they run off to some little podunk town in North Carolina?” Negan wondered aloud.  “Of all places, why there?”

Dwight shrugged.  “Maybe one of them is from there?”

Negan leaned in so his nose nearly touched the pin.  “I don’t think anybody is from there.”

“So do you want to go after them?”  Dwight sounded indifferent, as if his tantrum earlier had taken all the fight out of him.

“Oh we’re going after them alright.”  Negan looked excited.  “You have to follow through on your goals, Dwight.”  He clapped his disgraced soldier on the back a little harder than would be considered friendly..  “Aim for the sky because, you never know, you might miss.”

She watched from the trees as the men filed out of Alexandria.  They look like school boys, she thought to herself.  A bunch of rowdy boys off to rough someone up for their lunch money.  She thought she heard one of them say something about going after them.  She would have to be smart about this.  She’d have to be stealthy and careful.  First she’d have to find out what they knew.  She waited for them to pile into their cars and trucks and head out the way they had come.  She waited until the engines died off in the distance.  Let them go, she thought.  She’d catch up with them again.  She always had so far.  She waited until she was sure she was very much alone and then she climbed down from her treetop perch.

As Enid set foot on Alexandria’s soil she felt like an intruder.  She had never intended to return to this place.  This was not her home.  But try as she might she couldn’t ignore the people she had left behind.  They were in danger.  She had caught onto that long ago.  Probably before any of them even knew who the Saviors were.  She tried to tell herself that it wasn’t her problem, that these people could fend for themselves.  But she couldn’t ignore it.  Being alone all the time gave her ample room to get lost in thought.  And her thoughts always drifted back to these people.

So she had tracked the Saviors, tried to gather information on them.  And now they had some information on where her friends had gone.  She needed to find out what their destination was.  She silently crept through the streets of Alexandria.  It was the only time she had ever seen it completely deserted.  One door stood open: Deanna’s door.  Enid let herself in and quickly searched the place.  Her attention soon fell on the same thing that had intrigued Negan.  A map.  Push pins.  Three letters written in Carl’s scrawling handwriting.

She whispered, “Just survive somehow.”

This was for her.  This was Carl’s parting message to her and now it was the Savior’s only clue as to where her friends had gone.  She hoped that wasn’t really where they went, that Carl had sent Negan and his men on a wild goose chase.  But she had a feeling she couldn’t be that lucky.  Dammit, Carl!  She had to go find out for herself.

She reached up and pulled the pin out of Roxobel, North Carolina.  She worked her fingers under the edge of the map and pulled.  She tore off about a third of the lower half of the United States.  No sense in leaving this here for someone else to find.

Daryl stood over Fisher’s mutilated form.  A couple of Alexandrians had carefully lifted Deanna’s body off of him and carried her to rest near what little remained of Amber.  The removal of her corpse from Fisher’s body had revealed purple blood, mangled flesh, and a leather strap strung diagonally across his chest.

Daryl crouched down and touched the worn leather with his fingertips, willing it to be what he hoped.  He rolled the dead man over and saw his most prized possession left in this world.  His crossbow.  He delicately slid the strap over Fisher’s head and cradled the weapon in his arms, letting Fisher flop gracelessly back onto the ground.

He removed one of the bolts and examined it, tail to tip.  Then his eyes shifted focus and fell on Fisher’s face, mouth agape, eyelids half open.  Daryl spun the bolt in his hand so that he gripped it tip pointed downward.  With more calmness than he felt he raised the arrow high and plunged it into the forehead of the Savior who lay before him.  He told himself he was doing it so the man wouldn't turn.  That it was for the safety of his people.  That it was the humane thing to do for Fisher himself.  But that wasn't all it was.  He needed to unleash the aggression he felt.  This man had taken things from him, tried to control him.  Daryl punctured his brain to make sure he didn't turn because it was the right thing to do, the safe thing to do.  But he withdrew the bolt and plunged it in a second time because this man had nearly killed Mulder.  He stabbed him a third time for Sasha and a fourth for Spencer.

He likely would have continued pulverizing the man’s face if it weren't for a hand placed gently on his shoulder.  Carol’s voice brought him out of his rage.  “It's done.”

Daryl didn't turn to look at her.  He looked up from Fisher’s bloody corpse toward Alexandria in the distance.  “It will never be done.”

He stood abruptly, slung his crossbow over his shoulder and strode away from her, from all of them, into the trees.  Carol moved to follow him but Rick stopped her.  “Give him a minute.”  Rick took in the sight of Spencer on the side of the road grieving over his mother’s body.  “We can give him a little time.”

Carol faced him.  “Rick, this trap was set up just for me.  I went to meet Negan so that I could find his weakness, but he found mine.  He knew I would stop for her.  He knew I would be distracted by this.  He knew it would give his men the advantage.”

Rick glanced from her guilt ridden face to the two dead bodies lying on the pavement.  “I don't know that I'd call that an advantage.”

Carol knew what he meant.  They had beaten this pair of Negan’s men.  They had won this standoff.  But that wasn't her point.  “I am our weakness, Rick.  I am the reason he’s coming for us.”

Rick holstered his gun and placed his hands on her shoulders, making sure he had her full attention.  “Carol, you are many things to this group.  You are a mother.  You are a friend.  You are a warrior.  But one thing you are not is a weakness.  Negan’s weakness is that he is craving this war.  He wants blood.  But we’re not going to give it to him.  We’re getting out of here.”

Carol wanted to argue, but her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an engine roaring to life.  The sound did not emanate from any of the vehicles in their caravan.  All the Alexandrians who were still standing in the street raised their weapons and faced the mechanical rumble.

Possibilities swirled through Rick’s mind.  Could it be there were more than just these two dead Saviors waiting to spring their trap?  How many might there be and what could their plan entail now that their friends had been killed?  He tried to steel himself for any inevitability.  Tried to prepare himself for the idea that this war may be unavoidable afterall.  His grip tightened on his gun, ready to fire.

Without warning a motorcycle emerged from the trees.  It was the bike Fisher had stolen from Daryl the day before, ridden by Daryl himself.  He looked suddenly calm, his anger subsided.  When he straddled a motorcycle he could forget all that was wrong with the world in that moment.

He bounded through the ditch at the edge of the road and pulled out onto the pavement, stopping his bike next to where Rick still stood with his pistol in a death grip.  “They got a truck stashed back there too, if you're interested.”  Daryl was nonchalant as if disfiguring a dead man’s face and storming off into the woods to find a motorcycle were everyday occurrences.

Rick stared at Daryl incredulously.  “How did you know it was out there.”  He indicated the bike with his gun.

Daryl shrugged.  “I didn't.  Figured they didn't plan on walking back to Negan.  I just hoped she’d be there.”  He caressed the battered, rusty tank of the machine.  “You want the truck?”

Rick surveyed their line of vehicles.  They were a little cramped, but they didn't know anything about the truck, what kind of shape it was in.  It might be more trouble than it was worth.  Then he scanned the road, his eyes landing on the two lifeless bodies.  Then he glanced back at Alexandria in the distance, a scheme forming in his mind.  “Yeah,” he nodded, returning his gaze to Daryl.  “Yeah, let's get the truck.”

After some effort Rick and Daryl stood once again near the gate of Alexandria, a place they thought they had seen for the last time.  This time they stood on the outside with the gate shut, admiring their handy work.

“Well, was it worth the trouble?” Daryl asked.

Rick cocked his head sideways, examining the scene.  “Sends a message, don't you think?”

Daryl nodded.  “I guess so.  I'm just not sure what Negan will think of it.”

Rick cracked a small smile.  “If we get out of here now we may have the good fortune of never finding out what he thinks of it.”

“Let's ride.”  Daryl swung his leg over his motorcycle and waited for Rick to climb on the back.  Rick took one final look at their last message to Negan and the Saviors.  He tossed the keys of the truck onto its hood and climbed aboard the back of Daryl's bike.  They rode out to catch up with their caravan.

Daryl pulled up alongside the car Rick was meant to be driving and he climbed off the bike.  Daryl pulled on ahead to lead their line of vehicles while Rick climbed into the driver’s seat next to Michonne.

She scanned him up and down.  He was bloody, but she had seen him much worse.  He did have a little of that death smell on him though.  “You good?” she queried.

Rick looked into her eyes, then over his shoulder at Carl in the backseat holding Judith on his lap.  “Yeah, I'm good.”

Michonne’s lips creeped into a smile.  She knew he meant it.  Rick returned the smile as he raised the radio to his mouth and pressed the button.  He held his eye contact with her as he said, “We’re good.  Let's go.”

It was a trap afterall.  The scream came as one loud burst that was quickly muffled.  It was a sound of shock and surprise, not terror.  There was very little that could scare this group anymore.  They had been through too much.  Most of the crew whipped around immediately to see what the commotion was about.  Others stepped out of the vehicles that had still be sitting in.  Carol, who still knelt on the ground, was the last one to peel her eyes away from Amber’s severed head to investigate the source of the shout.

While Carol had dealt with the discovery of Amber’s fate, Sasha and Spencer had made their way out of the last vehicle in their caravan..  Nearly every member of Alexandria stood in the road, observing Sasha and Spencer standing at the back of their pack.  They each stood with their hands raised in the air, still armed with their guns, but helpless to use them.  Each of them had a gun pressed hard against their temple.  Two Savior men held the pair captive, using them as human shields against the nearly two dozen Alexandrians with guns trained in their direction.

Rick’s first instinct was to issue a demand.  “You’re outnumbered.  Let them go!”

The man hiding behind Spencer chuckled.  “Who says we’re outnumbered.  Besides, we’re just here to talk.”

Daryl recognized the voice immediately.  He called out to Rick.  “Hey, these are the guys who jumped us yesterday.  He’s the one who took my bike.”

It was the man who had been weilding the crowbar the day before who now held Spencer hostage.  “Hello again,” he said with another laugh.  “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you so soon.”

Rick could only see one of the man’s eyes as he used Spencer for cover.  Rick looked into that eye, as he always did when faced with an enemy.  He was looking for the truth.  “No, you are outnumbered.  I’m willing to bet it’s just the two of you out here.  You want to talk?  Let’s talk.  Let go of my people and I’ll make sure you don’t suffer.”

“You must be the fabled Rick Grimes.”  The humor was still present in the man’s voice.  “I see you got Negan’s message.  The way he sees it, you cost him two of his people.  So now he’ll be taking two of yours.  I figure these two will do nicely.”

Spencer’s eyes were wide with fear while Sasha’s were wide with rage.  Spencer hadn’t been forced to survive outside the walls of Alexandria.  He hadn’t learned to defend himself the way many of Rick’s people had.  He also was unsure how loyal Rick truly was to him.  Would Rick hesitate to let him die if it meant saving the rest of his group?  Spencer wasn’t so sure.

Sasha, on the other hand, knew all too well how to defend herself.  When someone challenged her or threatened her, it didn’t make her afraid.  It made her angry.  She was fairly certain she could take out the punk holding her captive without too much trouble.  But she knew Rick would have a plan.  Rick always had a plan.  So she waited, fury bubbling up inside her, ready to fight back.

Rick addressed the apparent ringleader of the duo.  “You got a name?”

“The name’s Fisher.  Negan is itching to talk to you directly.  But like I said, I’m just here to collect.  Negan wants two of your people.  Dead or alive, that part is up to you.”

Rick didn’t take kindly to threats against his people.  His voice came out as a guttural growl.  “You’re not taking them.”

Fisher replied.  “You must admit, it’s only fair seeing as how you cost him two of his people.”

“He killed his own people,” Rick snapped back.  “That blood’s not on my hands.”

“Let’s agree to disagree.”  Fisher was clearly amused by this whole exchange.

Rick was clearly not.  “Why don’t you step out where I can see you.”  He just needed a clear shot.  One shot and this could all be over.  He had agonized over the decision of whether to stay or go.  He had let his people decide.  They had all opted to avoid the battle and save the bloodshed.  Now here they were yet again.  Blood would be spilled here today.  The question was whose blood it would be.

“That’s not going to happen.”  Fisher remained behind his hostage.  “What’s going to happen is we are going to back away with our two new friends here and you’re going to hold your fire while we do so.  If you want your friends to live, that’s the way it will have to go down.  Once we’re gone you’ll go back to that surburbia you call home and and wait for Negan to come talk to you.  Is that clear?”

Rick couldn’t let that happen.  None of the Alexandrians could let that happen.  But no one had a clear shot and no one was going to let Spencer or Sasha get hurt.  Rick’s mind raced, searching for a solution, trying to formulate a plan, praying for a miracle.

Fisher began to repeat his question.  “Is that clear?”  But the last word was overshadowed by a gurgling scream from his partner in crime.  The man holding Sasha at gunpoint suddenly released his grip as he yelled out in pain.  Sasha seized the opportunity.  She squatted down and spun around in a quick half circle, clipping him in the ankles with her leg.  He fell to the ground, dropping his gun which spun out of reach.  Fisher, who was so shocked as to what had just happened to his friend, lost his concentration for a mere second.  He swung his gun around in the direction of his partner, hoping to defend him from whatever had caused his screams.  In that second of distraction Spencer hit the ground and Rick never missed a beat.  He seized the opportunity to pull the trigger of his gun that was pointed exactly where Spencer had stood a mere moment before.  The bullet found its home in Fisher’s chest, knocking him backwards onto the ground, but not killing him.

With both men temporarily laid out on the road, the source of Fisher’s friend’s pain became evident.  As the whole of Alexandria had stood in the street, addressing the two Saviors who wished to control them, a lone walker had stumbled out of the trees and attacked him from behind.  He had been bitten in the back and was bleeding heavily.  He screamed as the walker fell on top of him while he lay face down on the pavement.

Rick ran a few paces forward and pulled the trigger of his gun once more, this time shooting Fisher’s partner in the head, putting him out of his misery.  He looked at Fisher on the ground, writhing in pain and clutching his chest where the gunshot wound created a growing red stain on his shirt.  Fisher couldn’t speak.  Most likely his lung had been punctured and he wasn’t getting any air.  Still he looked back into Rick’s eyes with ferocity, refusing to back down even though it was clear he was beaten.

Rick leaned over Fisher and snarled.  “I told you if you’d let them go I’d make sure you didn’t suffer.  You should have listened.”  He stood up straight and circled around Fisher’s friend to face the back of the walker who was now on top of him, feasting.  It was a small one.  Rick grabbed it from behind, hoisting it up from under its arm pits and then he quickly put the sole of his boot in its back, driving it in Fisher’s direction.  The walker apparently had no problem trading one meal for another and quickly bit into Fisher’s neck, spurting blood everywhere and causing him to find his voice as he cried out in agony.

Now covered in blood, Rick turned to face his people.  Everyone still had their weapons raised, waiting for confirmation that the threat was over; waiting for further instructions..  He saw Morgan’s face in the crowd, full of sadness and disappointment.

He spoke to Rick.  “This is it, Rick.  I may never be able to kill a person again.  You may think you can’t avoid killing.  But this is it.  If you let that man suffer like that, if you torture him, then you are Negan.  Plain and simple.”

Rick was filled with immediate regret.  Morgan was right and he knew it.  What good was it to let this man suffer when all they had to do was get past him and leave this place behind.  Why prolong his pain.  He swallowed hard against the lump of remorse that was forming in his throat and he gave Morgan a quick nod.  He pivoted to face Fisher again, to end him.

As he turned he heard Spencer, who had only managed to crawl a few paces away from the place where Fisher lay dying.  At first it sounded like Spencer had just cried or moaned, but suddenly Rick realized it wasn’t just a sound, it was a word.  Spencer had just said, “Mom.”

Rick’s eyes flashed to Fisher’s nearly dead body and the walker who gorged upon him.  It was a small woman, wiry and tenacious.  She looked up upon hearing Spencer’s cry.  It was almost as if some long dead synapse in her brain fired one last time.  As if there was a tiny spark of true human life left in there that had been waiting in reserve for this moment.  She looked up and saw her son.  The corpse of Deanna gazed upon her son.  And then she was gone again.  Whatever humanity had flashed through her for a split second disappeared, and she was once again nothing more than a flesh eating monster.

Rick felt his stomach turn over and he was afraid he might be sick.  She stood and began approaching Spencer like a cat that had just discovered more interesting prey.  Spencer scrambled backward, unable to find his footing.  Rick stepped in between them, catching Deanna’s attention.  As he stared into her rotting face, every moment he had ever shared with her flashed before his eyes.

The stream of images began with her questioning him in his interview to be accepted to Alexandria, treating him with human decency even though he probably acted more like a feral dog.  He saw her placing her trust in him, accepting him, giving him a position of authority.  She gave him a purpose and a tiny piece of his old life back.  He saw her huddled over her dying husband, who had been killed by one of her own people.  She had demanded that Rick kill her husband’s murderer and he had complied swiftly.  And then he saw her on her deathbed, making Rick promise to protect Spencer as if he were one of his own.  He had given her his word.  Never had he imagined that she would be the one he’d be protecting Spencer from.

She approached him, blood covering her mouth and hands, her eyes vacant.  He shoved her away and examined her tiny form, much more powerful in death than in life.  He couldn’t reconcile this creature with the woman he had known.  He knew by now that this was not the woman he had grown so fond of.  It was not the woman he had accepted as his comrade.  She was no longer Deanna.  She was nothing more than a shell.  Still, it never got any easier to look into the dead eyes of someone you once knew and shoot that person in the head.

Yet his promise to Deanna rang in his ears.  He must protect Spencer.  He must end her misery.  As she lunged once more toward him, with Spencer still on the ground, completely distraught, Rick did what he had to do.  He looked into Deanna’s hollow eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry.”  He raised his gun and pulled the trigger.  Deanna stumbled backward and landed on top of Fisher who had finally breathed his last breath.

“There's something out there alright.”  Rick squinted through the binoculars out into the pale morning light.  He stood on the platform of the East guard tower with Daryl by his side, trying to get a look at the place where the headlights had been spotted a few hours earlier.  “But what the hell is it?”

“Can't tell.”  Daryl rubbed his tired eyes.  He had been in the tower all night and was ready to get on with the evacuation of Alexandria.  “Did Denise and Scully get all the DNA they needed?”

Rick held his gaze leveled through the binoculars, intrigued and nervous about what awaited them at the end of the road.  “Yeah, they said they got enough.”

“You want to send a team out to check on that?”  Daryl gestured toward the object that sat in the middle of the road in the distance.  It was too small, too far away to make out what it was.  It wasn't a person or a walker.  It was too narrow and it had been completely motionless all this time.  There was no way of knowing unless they got closer.  Daryl still worried it was some sort of trap.

“No,” Rick said, finally lowering the binoculars.  “No, we all get our injections in the infirmary.  Then we all move out together.  Whatever’s out there, we’ll face it together.  That's when we’re strongest.”

The population of Alexandria lined up outside the infirmary.  Scully and Denise admitted two residents at a time for a quick injection in the arm.  It was such a simple thing.  One tiny stab of the needle meant the difference between becoming one of the walking dead or eventually passing into a peaceful nonexistence.  It was the difference between life and death on the alien planet to which they would journey.  But here on Earth it was just a tiny little poke and a bandaid.

Michonne and Carl waited in line with everyone else.  She gave him an appraising look.  She knew he wasn’t happy about abandoning his search for Enid and leaving her behind.  But he looked more accepting than he had the day before, which gave her some measure of relief.

“Hey,” she said, nudging him.  “You okay?”

Carl gave her a sideways glance and a half smile at her concern.  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“You still worried about Enid?  You know that girl is tough, right?  She knows how to take care of herself.  If she had wanted to be in this community she would have come back a long time ago.  Some people just need to be on their own.”

Carl looked out past the streets of Alexandria, along the top of the fence line, past the trees and beyond.  “I know she’s tough.  I just wish I could have said goodbye, you know?”

They had all lost enough people that Michonne knew very well the pain of not being able to say goodbye.  She pictured Enid in her mind.  “I don’t think she liked goodbyes much anyway.”

“I left her a message.”  There was a slight tone of defiance in his voice.

Michonne’s eyebrows knitted together in worry.  “What kind of message?”  They were trying to give the Saviors the slip.  They didn’t need to leave any clues behind.

“Don’t worry,” Carl tried to ease her worry.  “It’s something only she would understand.”

She knew better than to question what kind of message he had left.  It seemed like a simple enough question, but to Carl it would mean questioning his manhood.  He had been a boy when the outbreak started.  But there was no doubt that he was now a man.  The apocalypse had a way of forcing kids to grow up quickly.  Still, she knew he could be a little defensive about people treating him like a child.  So she dropped the subject.  The line shuffled forward.

Behind them, also waiting for arcB, Carol stood near Morgan.  This was one of the few times they had been on the same side of a decision.  They both agreed that leaving Alexandria was the better choice.  

Morgan had been through some things that the rest of the group had not.  He had met Rick in Atlanta, but they had gone their separate ways shortly after.  Rick went on to meet up with this band of people who had become his family.  Morgan had been largely alone.  He had slipped away into something that could not rightly be called reality.  He had become a cold hearted killer.  A murderer.  And it had driven him to the brink of insanity.  But he had come back.  Someone very important to him had brought him back from the brink and now he saw life in a whole new way.  He could not bring himself to kill anymore.  He couldn’t live with it any longer.

Carol was a fighter.  She would defend her people to the bitter end.  But she wasn’t one to go looking for a fight.  Every person she had ever killed, she did so to save people she loved.  She didn’t hesitate to step up for the good of her people.  Still, she was not a hunter.  She had struggled for the while with how to live with death on her conscience.  Ultimately she had decided that if one person’s death meant life for her people, then she could live with it.  But she would only kill in self defense or the defense of her loved ones.  She felt she could still justify a war with Negan as self defense.  But if there was an option to get out without a loss of life, then she was all for it.

Morgan wondered if she was turning over a new leaf.  “Can I ask you what made you change your mind about going to war with the Saviors?”

Carol was a little surprised by his question.  “I never wanted a war.  It just seemed like that might be the only option at first.”

“Wasn't that your idea?  You wanted to go learn about these people so that we could defeat them.  You wanted to kill them.”

“It wasn't like that.  I told you before, it's about protecting what's good in the world.  We’re good people, all of us.  Negan isn't.  If someone is going to try to hurt us then we need to stop them.  I don't think that's the same as wanting to kill them.”

Morgan thought about her justification.  He couldn't justify killing like that.  He couldn't sleep at night.  “I think Rick wanted to kill them.”

Carol searched the crowd for Rick.  He was nowhere to be seen, probably preparing for the journey.  “And what if he did?  Isn't wanting to kill them the same as wanting to survive?”

Morgan shook his head.  “I don't think so.  I don't think he kills to protect his own life.  I think he kills because a person’s existence is inconvenient to him.  If he thinks there's a chance someone might be a threat someday he wants to take them out before they have a chance.”

“Is that so wrong?”  Carol understood what Morgan was getting at.  But Rick was their leader.  He had to make the hard choices sometimes.  That's just the way it worked in the new world.

“It depends on whether or not he can live with it.  I think he's losing his humanity.  Maybe it's already gone.  I know he's been through some things.  It's changed him.  But somewhere along the way he started greeting everyone with goodbye.  That’s no way to live.  If we get out of this world and find a new home where we can be safe, I don't know if he'll be able to live with the things he’s done.”

“Those are his demons to live with.  You shouldn't worry yourself with that.”  Carol really tried to be understanding of Morgan’s views on death, on good and evil.  But she didn't think it was realistic in this world.  Luckily for both of them, if things went to plan they wouldn't be long for this world.

“He's my friend.  His demons are my demons.”

It was their turn to enter the infirmary and receive their injections.  Carol let the subject drop.  She just prayed they could get out of Alexandria before Negan’s people caught up with them.  Otherwise they would all have more demons to face.

After everyone had received their injections without incident the town assembled near the front gate.  A Winnebago and four cars were lined up along the interior of the fence, packed and loaded for their exit.  The houses had been cleared of anything that might be useful for the journey.  The pantry and the armory were bare.  The sun had fully emerged over the horizon.  It was time to go.

Rick addressed his people.  “The time has come.  We’re moving out.  Permanently.  I know that many of you have been out there.  You've had to defend yourself.  You've had to face monsters, both living and dead.  But some of you have rarely been outside these walls.  You've all had some amount of training.  But I need to impress upon you the importance of being prepared.  You cannot let fear take hold of you.  You have to be aware of your surroundings.  You have to be ready for whatever might try to come between us and our goal.  Do not hesitate to defend yourself or your comrades.  Take comfort in the fact that we are all here to protect each other.  We’re in this together.  This is the end of our time in Alexandria.  This is not the end of our time.”  He knew it must be all in his head, but he could swear he could feel the alien DNA tingling through his veins.  It felt foreign.  Yet somehow it felt right.  It gave him the confidence he needed.  He finally knew that they were doing the right thing.  “Let's roll out.”

Everyone moved forward to enter one of the vehicles that would carry them away from the home they had known for so long.  There was a nervous energy in the air that kept most everyone silent.

Abraham stood outside the Winnebago, ushering people in.  “Come on. Last call.  It'll be a tight squeeze, but we’ll all fit.  Nuts to butts, let’s go.”  With the majority of the population of Alexandria crammed into the RV, he climbed into the driver’s seat.  When everyone else was loaded up Rick, got behind the wheel of the first car with Michonne, Carl, Judith, and Morgan as his passengers.  Glenn sat behind the wheel of the second car, packed in with Maggie, their baby, Tara, and Denise.  The third car would be driven by Carol who was accompanied by Daryl, Mulder, and Scully.  The tail car was driven by Sasha, carrying Spencer as her copilot and a few other Alexandrians.  All vehicles were armed to the teeth.

Eugene, alone, stood at the gate waiting to let the caravan out of the town.  Abraham glanced at his side view mirror and got a thumbs up from Rick.  He called out his window to Eugene.  “Hit it!”

Eugene slid the wall back and then the gate, allowing a wide berth for all the vehicles to exit.  Abraham and the Winnebago pulled through first and stopped a little ways out, waiting for the rest of the crew.

Rick pulled his car up to the gate and stopped alongside Eugene.  “Hop in the RV and we’ll get going.”

Eugene was perplexed.  “But I need to shut the gate.”

Rick examined the gate and took a last look back at Alexandria.  “Leave it open.  We won't be coming back here.  No need to keep it secure.”

Eugene looked at the wide open gate and then at the town within.  It had been his job so many times to make sure this place was secured.  It felt wrong to leave it vulnerable like this.  But Rick had a point, they had no need to keep it locked up anymore.  He walked up to the door of the RV and let himself in.  The caravan rolled on down the road.

Abraham, being in the lead vehicle, had been given the job of keeping eyes on whatever awaited them where the road met the tree line.  There was no doubt there was something out there and everyone felt positive it was the Saviors who had left it there in the dark of night.  It was very likely some kind of trap.  Abraham was on high alert.

Rosita sat in the passenger seat next to him.  She could tell he was on edge.  “Hey,” she said, catching his attention but not his eye contact.  He continued to stare down the road.  “You okay?  You sure you don't want someone else to drive?”

Abraham shook his head.  “Nope, I’m just fine driving this hunk of junk.”

“Are you sure?  I know you're a terrible backseat driver, but I'll drive if you want me to.”  She was scanning his face, looking for some sign of a lightening mood.  What she saw was a widening of his eyes and the whitening of his knuckles as his grip on the steering wheel tightened.

“Holy hell!” he exclaimed.  Rosita returned her gaze toward the road as the Winnebago came to a halt.

About 50 yards out they saw what had been placed in the road the night before.  Rick’s voice came over the radio.  “What’s wrong?  Why are we stopping.”

Rosita couldn't take her eyes off the sight in front of her, but she managed to find the radio anyway.  She pressed the talk button and said, “I think you're going to want to see this for yourself.”

Rick climbed out of the car, as did Michonne, Glenn, and Carol.  As they came up alongside the RV, weapons drawn, they saw a sight that stopped them in their tracks.

It wasn't a trap, at least not as far as they could tell.  It was a message.  Driven into the road was a long wooden staff, probably a broom handle or something of the sort.  Sitting atop the staff was the head of a young woman, roughly sawed off at the neck.  There weren't any other marks on her head.  She didn't look beaten or abused.  She wasn't terribly bloody.  It looked as though she may have been beheaded while she was still alive.  Her milky dead eyes took in her visitors’ presence while her teeth gnashed wildly, craving the live meat she could smell.

Carol was the first to lower her gun.  She whispered a barely audible, “No.”

She was drowned out by a much louder cry from behind her.  Tara had made her way out of the car and had seen the reason for their unplanned stop.  She stumbled forward and nearly fell.  Glenn just barely caught her and she immediately vomited.

Glenn couldn't understand her extreme reaction.  It was definitely a gruesome sight, but he knew for a fact she had seen much worse.  “Tara,” he said, still holding her up.  “Tara, it's going to be okay.  We’ll take care of it.”

She regained her footing, but Glenn still held onto her, trying to comfort her.  “It is not going to be okay,” she cried out indignantly.  “You don't understand.  That's Amber.”  She turned to look at Carol, astonished that she didn't seem equally affected.  “That’s Amber!”

Glenn, Rick, and Michonne looked to Carol for an explanation.  Carol couldn't tear her eyes away from the disembodied head, but she managed to offer a soft spoken and brief answer to their unasked question.  “That's Amber.  That's the woman we tried to save.  We tried to help her escape Negan.”  It wasn't that Carol didn't feel repulsed, nauseous, grief stricken.  She just didn't let her emotions surface the same way.

Tara’s stomach heaved again, but she had nothing left to expel.  “I tried to help her.  She was the one.  I tried to help her and now she's dead.  He killed her because of me!”

Glenn's heart broke for her.  He knew why Tara had gone with Carol to the Saviors’ compound.  She felt she had something to atone for.  She thought she was doing the right thing.  Now she blamed herself for this poor girl’s fate.

Rick moved forward, pulling a knife from his belt as he approached the reanimated head.

“Wait,” Carol uttered from behind him.  Rick looked back at her over his shoulder.  “I should be the one.”

Rick knew her well.  The two of them had been together a long time.  Although it might not show on her face, Rick knew this hurt her.  It shook her to her core.  He understood why it had to be her.

Carol stepped forward and Rick placed his knife in her hand.  She approached Amber’s head slowly, imagining what she must have gone through leading up to the moment she was killed.  Did Negan do it himself or order someone else to end this girl’s life?  Did he make a big show of it as he had with Mark’s punishment?  Or was this kept quieter?  What was Mark’s fate?  She hoped she'd never find out.

Carol peered into Amber’s soulless eyes and whispered, “I'm sorry.”  She raised Rick’s knife and took care to sweep Amber’s hair back.  She pierced the severed head right behind the ear, bringing her to her final resting state.  Carol carefully lifted the head off of the staff and carried it with both hands at the base of the skull over to the side of the road.  She gently placed Amber’s head in the grass and closed her lifeless eyes.  Then she squeezed her own eyes shut and said a silent prayer.  It was a prayer for Amber’s soul, for Mark’s fate, for the fate of her own people.  It was a prayer that they could get out alive and never return to this nightmare.  It was a prayer for hope.

It was late afternoon by the time Rick was able to gather everyone together.  The population of Alexandria congregated in the street in front of the infirmary so that Scully could stay close to Mulder.  Rick stood on the porch gazing over his community, the people who relied on him for protection, guidance, leadership.

Many times before he had rallied his troops.  He had looked upon these faces and warned of some impossibly bleak scenario they would have to face.  He would reassure them, offer them a plan, a course of action.  He would convince them that he believed in them and that they should believe in themselves.  And that was true.  He firmly believed in the resilience of his team.  They were survivors.  They had a strong will to live and they would do whatever was required to protect themselves and the ones they loved.

But this was different.

He had always showed them plan he had in mind and convinced them of how it would help them survive.  Now he truly didn't know what to do.  Two paths lay before him.  Both were riddled with problems and dangers.  Both had the potential to cost lives.  Both had an undeniable chance of failure.  

Rick knew this community was looking to him for direction, but what he needed was direction from them.  He honestly didn't know which path to take.  He couldn't make this choice for them.  It was too big.  In many ways it was bigger than life and death.  This choice was about more than just surviving.  It was about a different kind of future.

He scanned the crowd looking into the eyes of Carol and Tara who had entered the viper’s nest and knew firsthand what kind of monster would be coming for them.  He saw Glenn and Maggie and their newborn baby who deserved some kind of future, something more than day to day survival, waiting for the next threat.  He saw Abraham and Eugene, two people with such different backgrounds who were brought together by the end of the world, each managing to survive in very different ways.  He saw Michonne, Carl, and Judith.  His family.  Michonne and Carl wouldn't let him make the wrong decision.  They were loyal and they supported him, but they were not followers.  They questioned his decisions and thought for themselves.  They would make sure he made the best choice.  But he still didn't know what that was.  He needed this group of people to tell him what that choice would be.

He began.  “Most of you have probably guessed why we’re here.  As you can see Carol and Tara have returned.  They brought us information about Negan and his men, the Saviors.  That's what they call themselves.  But as we all suspected they are not our Saviors.  They wanted what we have.  They wanted us to hand over the things that keep us alive and then they would come back for more.  They wanted to make us their employees, their servants.”  He took a long pause, trying to envision his people bowing to Negan’s demands.  He couldn't see it.  It never would have happened.  It always would have come down to a conflict of some sort, a war.

“But not anymore.  I don't think they want that from us anymore.  I think they want us exterminated.  They're going to be coming for us and there are a lot of them.  We’ll be outnumbered and maybe outgunned.  But we’ve faced that before.  I believe if we’re smart and prepared, we can defeat them.  We wouldn’t be allowed to leave a single one of them standing.  Our survival depends on their demise.”  He could see the apprehension and dismay spread through the crowd like a wave.  

“I do believe we can win this war.”  From the back of the crowd Morgan caught Rick’s eye.  “But there's another option.  We could leave.  We could pack up everything we own and proceed with the evacuation plan.  The Saviors could show up at our gates and find that no one is home.

“I'm not going to mislead you, it's an equally risky option.  We don't know if the spaceship is going to be there.  We don't know that it will be operational.  We have no guarantees.  The one guarantee we do have is that we can’t come back here.  The Saviors are coming.  If they come here and find Alexandria deserted, they will take it.  This place will not be our home anymore.  I can’t make this decision for you.  It’s too big for one person to decide.  It’s too final.  But we have to decide together.  It’s one option or the other and we have to all be on board.  It has to be unanimous.  We stay and we fight or we leave and we pray.”  Rick fell silent.  He needed to let this information sink in.  He needed to give them time to process, to decide for themselves what they thought was right.

Maggie was the first to speak.  “When do we have to decide?”

“Now,” Rick replied.  “We have to decide right now.  Negan and his men are coming.  We don’t know exactly when, but you can bet it will be soon.  Either we prep for battle or we prep to roll out.  Now.”

Maggie looked at the tiny baby cradled in her arms and looked into Glenn’s eyes.  One option meant protecting this helpless little lifeform from battle.  The other meant removing him from the protection of these walls.  She didn’t know what to do.  Glenn spoke on her behalf.  “Is this really it?  Two choices?  Don’t we have any other options?”

“I’m open to any suggestions you may have.”  Rick scanned the crowd.  Everyone was silent.  No one had any suggestions to give.

Eugene was next to speak up.  “I just want it to be known that whatever you all decide I am fully equipped and prepared to pilot that spacecraft.  I have thoroughly and studiously committed the related documentation to memory and I have full confidence in my ability to navigate that ship.”  Abraham gave a small scoff, leaving Eugene with a hurt look on his face, but he didn’t rise to the bait.

Abraham voiced his opinion.  “Either, or.  I’m with you, Rick.  If you want to stay I’ll be the first man at the front gate with an RPG over my shoulder.  If you want to leave I’ll drive the damn bus.  I would love to rid the world of this Negan bastard.  But I’d be equally happy to leave him standing around with his dick in his hand wondering where we ran off to.  You say the word.  I’m with you.”

“It’s not about what I want.”  Rick couldn’t emphasize enough how much he did not want to make this decision.  “It’s about what’s best for this group, for all of you.  We have to decide together.  Is it war or is it flight?”

Morgan had been gathering his thoughts.  He finally spoke.  “You and Negan, you’re the same.  Or at least you could be.”  Rick looked resistant, ready to blow off Morgan’s implication.  “You’re both killers.  You’re both quick to declare war.  But I know you.  I know who you used to be.  You’re still that man inside.  You’re still the man that once said ‘we don’t kill the living.’  You’re at a crossroads right now, Rick.  Right in this moment.  If you declare war on these people who you’ve never even met, then you are Negan.  You’re exactly the demon you make him out to be.  But maybe it doesn’t have to be like that.  Maybe it’s time you leave this place and give yourself a chance to be someone else.  Give yourself a chance to be the Rick Grimes that I met in Atlanta.  You’re not too far gone, Rick.  Not yet.”

Rick paced, unwilling to take a critical look at himself for fear that Morgan might be right.  Michonne had a thoughtful look in her eye when she said, “It comes down to life.  If we fight people will die.  Our people.  Their people.  Whether or not you value all lives the same doesn’t matter.  It could be any of us.  It could be all of us.  This has been our home for a long time now.  But I think that time is up.  We need to move on and give ourselves a chance to live.”

“But what about everyone else?” Carl interjected.  “We’re talking about a one way ticket.  We’re talking about leaving the planet and never coming back.  What about the people who aren’t standing here in the street with us right now?  Do we just condemn them this earth that’s trying to swallow us all up?  Do we leave them behind without ever saying goodbye?”

“Is this about Enid?”  Rick wanted to know.

“It’s not just about Enid.”  Carl was defensive.  “But yeah, it is.  She left knowing we were here if she was ever ready to come back.  I’ve seen signs of her out there.  She’s still close by.  What if she comes back here and the Saviors have taken over?  Can you imagine what they would do to her?  And she would never have any idea where we went.  She’d probably figure we were all dead.  How can we do that to her?  This was her home too.”

“This is home to all of us.”  Spencer moved forward from the back of the crowd.  “This is the home my parents built.  It’s their legacy.  These walls are all I have left of my father.  This community is all I have left of my mother.  We all have loved ones buried here.  We have to defend this.  We can’t just hand it over to them.  We have to stay.  We have to fight.”

“Sentimentality is a pretty stupid reason to die, if you ask me.”  Everyone was slightly startled by the sudden appearance of Mulder in the doorway of the infirmary.  His bloodshot eyes looked sunken in.  He was shirtless, bandaged, and covered in dirt and dried blood.  He leaned against the doorway because he wasn’t yet at full strength, but he clearly needed to address these people.  “If you leave, then yes you leave behind these houses, these walls, the buried bodies of people who meant something to you.  I’m not saying those things are worthless, I’m just asking you if it’s worth your life.”  Spencer didn’t want to hear what Mulder had to say, but he stood with his jaw clenched, reluctantly hearing him out.  “If you leave you lose your home.  If you stay you could lose your home and your life.  Even if you win the war you will have to get ready for the next one.  Ask yourself, how many more wars can you sustain?  Why not go where the wars can’t find you?

“We keep thinking of this as the end of the world.  It’s not.  The earth will live on indefinitely.  She is resilient.  This is just the end of mankind on earth.  We’ve gotten our walking papers.  This planet has made it clear we’re no longer welcome here.  So let’s go someplace where we can survive.  Let’s give ourselves a second chance at life.  Let’s not get ourselves killed because we want to hang on to some walls and some houses and some burial plots.  Sentimentality is a crutch.  And this crutch is broken.”

Everyone was quiet for a long time.  The tension rose from the crowd like steam off boiling water.  Every Alexandrian deciding for themselves between fight and flight.

Rick broke the silence.  “Why don't we take a vote.  If you think we should leave raise your hand.  Raise it high.”

Mulder’s hand shot up immediately, followed quickly by Morgan and Eugene.  As Rick scanned the crowd he saw more hands slowly rise into the air.  Carol raised her hand, then Tara.  Denise joined in.  After sharing a meaningful glance, Glenn and Maggie also raised their hands.  Michonne calmly stared deep into Rick’s eyes as she raised her hand high, leaving Carl looking heartbroken.

Soon every hand was in the air except Carl’s and Spencer’s.  Carl leaned in and quietly asked Michonne, “How can we leave her here?  If it was me out there would you leave?”

“She made a choice and she's been gone a long time.  We can't put the lives of all these people in jeopardy because of one girl who doesn't want to be found.”  She looked into Carl’s stubborn expression, willing her to take his side.  “How do you think she’d feel if she found out you stayed here and got yourself killed because you were worried about her.  What would Enid tell you to do right now?”

Carl jutted out his chin, wanting to argue but losing his resolve.  Slowly and with a sense of defeat he raised his hand in the air.

Spencer alone held both hands balled in tight fists at his sides.  He glared at Rick, resenting him for putting this decision on them.  Through gritted teeth he said, “You promised my mother that you would protect this place.”

Rick shook his head, vividly remembering his last conversation with Deanna.  “No.  I promised her I would protect these people.  That’s what she asked me to do.  She wanted me to protect her people just like my own.  She told me they’re all my people now.  And that’s exactly what I intend to do.  I will protect my people.  All of you.”

Spencer unclenched his fists.  He had no choice but to stand with these people, regardless of what that meant for his family’s legacy.  With ire in his eyes he slowly raised one hand into the air.