The stakes are life and death, and throughout the episode, the omnipresent weirdness of two apocalypses happening at once—the familiar zombies and the unfamiliar plague of locusts filling the background with cacophonous buzzing—add to the sense of unease. Catriona McKenzie’s direction leans into that nervous energy, with Aaron (Ross Marquand), Gabriel (Seth Gilliam), and Daryl (Norman Reedus) only able to communicate with terse whispers and knowing looks, and their enemies doing likewise as they plan to lead the three into an expected trap. Marquand, Gilliam, and Reedus do a commendable job of looking harried and exhausted throughout their scenes together; even before they’re getting into gunfights, the three look worn down simply from the plotting and counter-plotting they’re doing alongside the hard work of clearing houses of walkers and looking for weapons the three men know aren’t anywhere they’re looking.

The hunt for Leah, or Leah’s hunt for Maggie (Lauren Cohan), is no less suspenseful. It’s mostly quietly creeping around in the woods, deafened by the buzzing of locusts overhead and the moans of the interrupting dead as the two try desperately to track down and get the drop on the other one. Scenes like this can be difficult, as it’s easy to fail to hold interest when it’s just a single person wandering through the woods, but McKenzie, Cohan, and Collins are able to keep things nervy with more than a little help from Bear McCreary and Sam Ewing’s excellent, anxious score. The music does a lot of the heavy lifting to establish and maintain mood throughout; music is one of the underrated elements The Walking Dead does well and “Acts of God” is a prime example of how the soundtrack can really add to the proceedings.

Even when things aren’t immediately life-or-death, such as in The Commonwealth as Max (Margot Bingham) and Eugene (Josh McDermitt) try to gather evidence against the Milton administration, there’s no real respite from tension. Writer Nicole Mirante-Matthews has crafted this particular portion of the episode as something of a miniature Watergate, with Max sneaking records out of the office to deliver them to Kelly (Angel Theory) and Connie (Lauren Ridloff), AKA Woodward and Bernstein. They’re only barely scratching the surface of the Commonwealth’s corruption, and as the empire grows, so grows the problems at home for Milton and company.

The episode ends one of the subplots of the season in pretty explicit fashion, but the power struggle between Lance and Milton will only be growing as Commonwealth flags drop from the battlements surrounding Alexandria and Hilltop. The Milton regime finds itself struggling beneath the weight of its own secrets with its best problem-solver distracted with his own fiefdom. The very people that saved Alexandria and Hilltop from certain destruction time and time again are scattered and disorganized, but determined. For every success by the Commonwealth’s power structure, a potential defeat is created.

Lance is fighting to carve out an empire for himself using someone else’s resources. Pamela Milton is fighting to stay on top of an empire she created. The bulk of the people of The Commonwealth only want to preserve the status quo and their relatively cushy way of life. No one involved in the coming battle has as much to lose as our survivors, the people of Alexandria, Hilltop, and Oceanside. Their life was difficult without the help of the Commonwealth, but it was theirs. They were their own bosses, and they succeeded or failed on their own merits and by their own wits; jumping into bed with Lance was a necessary evil, but still an evil.