While zombie-Patrick is loose in the prison, he manages to make a meal of one of the residents before anyone is the wiser. So there are two zombies walking around by morning, and the day begins before anyone figures it out. But eventually panic sweeps the prison while a number of nameless residents go down, Rick has to kill his first walkers in some time, and Michonne's emergency reentry goes wrong, causing her to hurt herself and forcing Carl to fire his first shot since Rick confiscated his gun after the end of Season Three.
After the outbreak is contained and the cleanup work done (which includes Carol having to kill the pre-animated father of two of the girls, one of whom is that idiot walker-namer), Hershel and Dr. S. figure out that they may be facing an epidemic of pleurisy, a flu-on-steroids that can apparently kill in a day. So that's awesome.
While the gang figures out a quarantine situation, Karen comes down with the bug. Daryl tries to get Rick back into the captain's seat while burying the bodies, but soon they have a more immediate problem: concentrations of walkers at certain sections of the outer fence are starting to make it buckle. Rick reluctantly joins the fence crew, hoping it's not too late. Sasha discovers the dead rats indicating that someone's been feeding the things (and I think we know who), and Rick takes the reins at the moment of truth. He feeds the horde his entire squealing, bleeding piglet population -- which may or may not have been sick -- to draw them away from the fence while the crew shores it up, though it's clearly a bitter sacrifice.
Beth has to take care of both Michonne and baby Judith for a bit, and Michonne recoils from the infant as though it has flu-on-steroids. But then she ends up holding the baby close, so there's clearly some baby-related history there.
And Lizzie, the older of the two girls who just lost their father, breaks down when she sees that her favorite fence-walker has been killed. That chick's a mess, but after having a talk with her, Carol lets her have a knife anyway. That one's going to take some watching.
Carol asks Carl to continue to keep the secret of her "story time" sessions, which are of course spent training the kiddies on weapons. Instead, Carl reports it to Rick and advises him to let it continue, which Rick agrees to do. So look who's making decisions again whether he likes it or not. One of those decisions includes Rick returning Carl's gun and strapping his own back on. Well, his pig-farming days were over anyway.
Finally, Tyreese goes to visit Karen in quarantine, only to discover that she and a fellow sufferer have been killed, dragged out of the building, and immolated. It's a mystery who was behind it, but I think we can assume we're looking for a very committed germophobe.
It's the middle of the night with a full moon overhead, but the walkers at the outer fence aren't sleeping. And neither is someone else, who approaches from the inside of the fence. All we can see of this mystery figure are the two things he or she is holding: an illuminated flashlight (again with the plentiful batteries at the end of the world) and a live rat. The unseen figure holds the rat up to a gap in the chain-link fence, and a walker sucks its brains out. Well, I think we've just solved the mystery as to why the walkers have been concentrated in one area of the fence lately. But who would want them to build up enough to potentially push down that section? Well, not to give too much away, but we are likely to find out later that the rise of prison society has reestablished a rule that the zombie apocalypse should have killed: never attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by stupidity.
Also at night, Tyreese and Karen are canoodling in the prison library or maybe the warden's office, if the warden was a literate cuss. Karen senses that Tyreese isn't into it, and he confesses that he's thinking about losing Zach the day before. He soliloquizes about and how people who were once acquaintances are now as close as family. Then he gets self-conscious about talking too much and switches to singing, namely "I've Got You Under My Skin." Maybe a song with less macabre subject matter would be more appropriate under the circumstances. But after we get an oddly close look at Karen's distinctive rock paper scissors bracelet, and Tyreese makes a "your cell or mine" type overture, Karen demurs, saying if they start that they won't stop, and she's not ready. So for now they say goodnight.
Flashlight in hand, Karen makes her way through a prison corridor which seems free of walkers. She pauses to shake the last bit of juice out of the dying batteries. In the process, she happens to light up some kid art on a wall showing happy humans inside the fence and gray-hued walkers on the outside, one of the latter labeled "Nick." If you don't remember who Nick is, it'll come back to you later. Her stop is the bathroom, which of course is where we last saw the newly zombified Patrick at the end of last week's episode. He's fallen and he probably can get up, you know. She manages to survive the bathroom without having to face more than a couple of creepy noises and bullshit scares, then makes her way back to her own cell in D block, alone. I notice that in a homey touch, people's cell doorways have been hung with mismatched sheets for a minimum of privacy. Karen beds down on her bunk and falls asleep almost immediately, which is not to say that un-Patrick isn't up and about and following her after all. In fact, it follows her all the way to her doorway. But then it's distracted by the sound of a sleepy cough a few cells up the block and precedes that way instead. There, the Patrick-walker finds an older extra asleep on his bunk, and dispassionately chomps down on his neck. Arterial blood pumps out, but the victim never makes a sound, probably because un-Patrick started off with his larynx. Lucky for un-Patrick.
Cell block D is chaos, with a lot of non-speaking roles putting up a piss-poor defense until Rick, Daryl and Glenn roll in and take over the fighting and the evacuation. Several people have been turned already and Glenn kills one of them from off a guy who just got bit on the arm. Carol swoops into bring that guy into her cell and prepares for an emergency amputation, until she notices the gash on the back of his neck. So the good news is she won't be amputating anything.
By now the battle in block D is all but over and Tyreese reunites with Karen, who is watching a young mother sob over a blanket-covered bundle. Daryl and Glenn go upstairs to check the mezzanine level, and Glenn is grabbed by a zombie coming out of a sheet-covered cell. Daryl puts a crossbow bolt in the attacker's head and after helping Glenn up, identifies the body as that of Patrick. First in, last out.
Our heroes do the mopping up, which by necessity includes pre-killing Patrick's very last victim and Rick reluctantly entering one quiet cell with a clean knife and coming out with a bloody one. Carol is still kneeling over Ryan, the unfortunate fellow who still has his arm but is pretty much waiting to die. He asks Carol to look out for his daughters, Lizzie and Mica, which she agrees to do. She also tells him that they'll need to say goodbye to him. Taking right over, I see.
There's one last walker inside a locked cell, who comes up to the grate. Rick has less compunction about grabbing this one by the shirt and stabbing its face through the bars while Daryl watches. Then Rick opens the cell and some of the guys -- himself, Daryl, Hershel, a new character who goes by the name Dr. S. and former Army medic Bob -- gather around the bloody-faced body. Rick sees that the body has no bites or wounds and Dr. S. diagnoses that he died of pleurisy aspiration. "Choked to death on his own blood," Hershel translates. People always use phrases like "choked on his own blood" or "sitting in his own feces,", as though somebody else's would be better. I submit that it would not be. Whatever the case, Dr. S's diagnoses explains the blood trails on his face like the ones we saw on Patrick, which I thought was from bashing his face on the tile floor. Rick has also seen that blood-muzzle look on a walker outside the fence, and Daryl recognizes it from Patrick as well. Dr. S. explains that it's from lung pressure building up: "Like if you shake a soda can and pop the top, only imagine your eyes, ears, nose and throat are the top." Well, that sounds just lovely.
Bob wonders if this came from the walkers, but Dr. S. says stuff like this was around first. As for why the cell door was locked, Daryl explains that the guy used to sleepwalk. That seems like a trait that the zombie apocalypse would weed out of the population right away for several obvious reasons, but there you go. "How could somebody die in a day just from a cold?" Daryl wonders. I don't know about the others, but maybe Patrick got it from shaking hands with someone who had just licked his fingers, Daryl. Rick says the same thing happened to one of his pigs, plus the boar in the woods. Hershel says pigs and birds are standard vectors. "We need to do something about those hogs." Bob adds that contagion spreads among humans as well, in close quarters. "Doesn't get any closer than this." Hershel is the one to pronounce the bottom line: "All of us in here, we've all been exposed."
Carol leads the two girls, Lizzie and Mica, into the cell with their dad. Lizzie's the older one of the two, the one Carl caught calling walkers by name last week. Ryan's last words are to tell her to take care of her sister and when he expires forthwith, Carol starts to shoo the girls out so she can take care of the necessary follow-up. But when she draws her knife, Lizzie says she should do it. Carol lets her have the knife and tells her to get to it quickly. "Remember what I showed you." But Lizzie loses her nerve, and ends up getting comfort from her little sister, who tells her to look at the flowers on the shelf while Carol almost gently slides her knife through Ryan's temple. And that's the way they all became the Carol bunch.
Carl and Maggie are slowly and painfully helping Michonne back to the prison, until Carl sees Rick coming and runs into his arms, ignoring Rick's warning to stay back. Rick comforts him a bit before making him step back and Carl immediately confesses to using one of the guns. Michonne explains what happened at the gate and Maggie asks what happened inside. After that young mother walks by with her sad little bundle, Rick shares the current theory that Patrick got sick, died and attacked Block D. He hurriedly tells Carl he's sorry and they lost a lot of good people. He also hurries to assure Maggie that Glenn and Hershel are fine, but she should stay away from them for a while. As should they all. Rick doesn't offer Maggie an update on her sister Beth, but Maggie probably either figures Beth was safe in C block or doesn't care.
Over in the library, an impromptu council meeting is going on with Carol, Daryl, Sasha, Glen and Hershel. They're discussing quarantine possibilities for those who have been exposed, and Carol suggests moving the survivors from D block to A, which would be death row. No sooner have they agreed on this than they hear coughing from the hallway outside. Everyone gets up to check it out and see Tyreese and Karen on their way to his cell. Hershel puts the kibosh on that, and explains that anyone who was exposed needs to stay clear of C block, where baby Judith is. Tyreese and Karen start getting understandably worried that she has what killed Patrick, and Hershel tells them not to panic, but to stay away from each other until they figure it out. Given that Karen's already been coughing all over Tyreese that ship has probably sailed. Karen says that a guy named David From the Decatur Group has also been coughing, and Glenn is off to find him. Sasha leads Tyreese and Karen off, and Daryl says he'll get to work burying the dead. Hershel tells him to wear gloves and a mask while he's at it. Before leaving, he checks with Carol to make sure she's okay. She asks him the same thing. "Mmm-hmm," he says. "Gotta be." And then they don't make out, which I'm sure is only because he's just been exposed to zombie flu.
Carol finds Lizzie and Mica out by the fence and has some bad news for the former: "Honey, you're weak." Lizzie starts crying as Carol presses on, saying she lost her nerve and has to trust her gut and act fast every time. "He's dead," Lizzie sobs, staring through the fence. "Why'd they kill him?" she asks her sister. "Why'd they kill Nick?" Mica just looks at Lizzie and says, "You're so stupid." No argument here. Nick is, you may recall, the walker that Lizzie was calling by name through the fence yesterday, and now he's part of the pile currently rotting outside. Well, rotting motionlessly, that is. As Lizzie runs off, Mica explains to Carol, "She's messed up. She's not weak." Well, one of the girls will probably be okay, at least.
Rick comes out to where Daryl is digging graves while wearing work gloves and a dirty bandana over his face like an old-timey train robber. Which I guess is what passes for a hazmat suit these days. Daryl says he was glad Rick was in there, and tugs down the bandanna without stepping out of the grave to tell Rick he earned his time off and that none of them would be there without him. "You gonna help us figure this out?" Rick protests that he messed up too much and almost lost Carl, but Daryl says that when shit goes down, he sees Rick standing there with a shovel. I'm not really sure what that means, but I think Daryl means it as a compliment.
Just then Maggie screams out their names from across the yard and they come running, Daryl grabbing his crossbow as he goes. They reach a place where the fence is wobbling alarmingly under the pressure of the accumulating zombies, despite the efforts of the current fence crew. Rick hesitates, but he and Daryl soon join Maggie, Glenn, Sasha and Tyreese in quickly shoving sharp tools through undead faces. He pausing to look up at the top of the fence where the concertina wire is shaking hard, before getting into it with a vengeance.
Inside C block, Beth is wrapping Michonne's injured ankle while Judith plays with red Solo cups in the foreground. Beth doesn't want to hear a casualty list yet, and Michonne is more interested in beating herself up for screwing up anyway. She says Carl and Maggie could have gotten hurt saving her. "When you care about people, hurt is kind of part of the package," Beth says wisely. She asks if there were any kids, which there were, and wonders why there isn't a word like widows or orphans to describe people who lost a child. That might be hitting a nerve for Michonne, but not as much as Judith's sudden crying seems to. She reacts like it's a dentist drill until Beth scoops Judith up and hustles her out of the cell. Thanks, Beth. Please keep walking.
Out at the dog run, the battle through the fence is continuing. Maggie takes a bad step and refuses Glenn's help, saying they're not supposed to be around each other anyway. Like this isn't the most half-assed quarantine ever anyway. It's barely an eighth-tine. Sasha suddenly notices the pile of bloody rat corpses just inside the fence and wonders if someone's feeding the walkers, just before the fence starts threatening to topple on all of them from the zombies pressing against it. One of the creatures gets a few sections of its face sliced off in neat squares by the wire -- like the world's grossest apple slicer -- but with the fence's previously vertical poles at this section now leaning over almost 45 degrees, that's the least of their current problems. Even if it's the one that's going to stick with you.
After the ads, they give up trying to push the fence back upright and fall back. Sasha obviouses that the walkers are going to start coming over it, and Rick turns to look at his farm -- just twenty yards away beyond the inner fence -- and says, "Daryl, get the truck. I know what to do." Man's gotta save his farm, right? Right?
Carol finds Carl in the old anteroom making a marker for Patrick's grave, and asks if he tattled to Rick about the knife lessons she was giving the kiddies at story time yesterday. Carl hasn't yet, and Carol insists that she has to teach the kids survival skills, and she can't risk telling any parents because they might put a stop to it. "That's between you and them," Carl says, but Carol says it's between her and Carl, which is a shitty position to put the kid in. He isn't cool with lying to his dad, and she weasels that she isn't asking him, too. Carl knows better, though. Even season two Carl would have known better.
While doing modified crunches in her cell, Michonne remarks on the unconventional lullaby Beth is singing to Judith. When the baby suddenly spits up, Beth begs Michonne to take her, but Michonne refuses at first, and then reluctantly holds her like a ticking bomb so Beth can hurry off to go change. But after a few seconds of Judith's fussing, Michonne breaks down crying and holds the little ass-kicker tight. When Beth sees this upon her return, she leaves them to it. Maybe this way Michonne will be able to come up with a word to describe someone who loses a child, because this scene strongly suggests that whatever it's called, she's one of them.
Maggie and Tyreese open the front gate, and Daryl drives out Jeep out pulling a trailer that that's carrying both a large wooden box and a crouching Rick. That leaves Glenn and Sasha working the weakening fence alone. Daryl drives out to the part of the grounds just beyond the part of the fence the walkers are currently crowding. Many of them turn toward Rick, now standing on the back of the trailer behind the stopped Jeep. "Let's go!" Daryl yells. So Rick reaches into the box and hauls out a squalling, struggling piglet, slashes it up the side with his knife, drops it on the ground and tells Daryl to drive forward while the walkers fall upon it. See? Even zombies love bacon. A short distance further, Rick repeats the procedure with a second pig, while Glenn and Sasha get busy shoring up the outer fence with some handy lengths of telephone pole now that there's no weight against the other side. The third pig Rick sacrifices sprays its blood all over his face and the front of his shirt, and he looks completely wrecked as Daryl drives clear. I know he's mourning his dream of living out his days as a peaceful farmer, but for a guy who just solved two problems at once he really needs to cheer up.
Once again, Carol finds the girls at the inner fence, staring at a fresh new knot of walkers, this one of more manageable size. She tells Lizzie that those are walkers, that "Nick" was one. "You don't feel bad about that walker dying. You feel bad about your dad." Well, let's fucking hope so. With the zombies still snarling through the outer fence at them, Carol draws her knife and cuts a spray of flowers to put behind Lizzie's ear. Lizzie accepts the gesture, and tucks the knife into the sheath at her hip as well. Carol seems to think this is a victory. Whereas I think she just armed a moron.
Carl finds Rick out in the yard tearing down the hog pen. "Not this time," Rick says when Carl moves to help. Carl wonders if the pigs made them sick. "Or we made the pigs sick," Rick says, like he's the big expert after spending one night at the CDC once. He says they'll need to steer clear of the baby for a while, for her own protection, which I'm sure has nothing to do with not wanting to change diapers. And then Carl spills his secret: "Carol's been teaching the kids how to use weapons. How to kill. Their parents don't know and she doesn't want you to know." Rick doesn't say anything, so Carl advises Rick to let Carol carry on. He predicts Rick will say it isn't up to him, "but it can be." So once again, Rick is being pressured to make decisions, though I have to say that Carl is doing the right thing, being honest with his dad while trying to share the burden of the decision.