While traveling to Terminus, Carol and Tyreese and the girls discover a farmhouse that looks like being the perfect shelter for a while. Soon they're roasting pecans, drawing water from the well, and just generally settling into a kind of domestic bliss. The only problem is that stupid Lizzie still has this idea that walkers are cute pets. Carol's having to divide her time getting Mika to grow a pair and trying to stop Lizzie from getting herself killed, though the former task seems a lot more worthwhile to me. When Lizzie takes a field trip to feed mice to a trapped walker, Mika follows her and they both end up pursued by undead forest fire refugees. Upon fleeing safely back to the farm, Lizzie joins in the shooting, and Carol thinks she's all better. Carol is an idiot.
Because then Carol and Tyreese go deer hunting the day, leaving all three girls alone at the house. And when they come back, they discover that Lizzie has decided to prove her point about walkers…on Mika. Carol and Tyreese humor her about waiting for her sister to come back to life, but that's just so they can discuss their options. Really there's only one, and that's to put Lizzie down like the mad dog she is. Which is what Carol does.
Through all this, there's been a lot of talk about how doing what needs to be done changes you and the dead haunt the living and all that, and Tyreese trusting Carol, and a lot of tormented-conscience faces on the part of the latter. So after losing three girls in as many seasons, Carol figures she might as well confess to Tyreese that she killed Karen. Which is what Carol does. Tyreese responds with a real curveball: he forgives her, and they proceed toward Terminus together. I won't be the least bit surprised if it turns out Judith is orchestrating all of this.
It appears as though we're starting off tonight in the past again, because a kettle is on the stove's functioning gas ring, an old song is playing in the radio, and there are two blurry figures visible through the window cavorting in the yard. One's a laughing little girl constantly darting out of reach and the other is a…walker? Hard to tell when it's cavorting. Or maybe (and by "maybe" I mean "obviously") it's not cavorting at all and just trying to grab and eat Lizzie. Because come the fuck on, who else could it be but Lizzie? And thus ends the shortest teaser ever.
At night, Carol cradles Judith while Lizzie watches over the sleeping Tyreese and Mika, who are sacked out on the railroad tracks leading, presumably, to Terminus. Lizzie wonders if there will be kids there, and Carol figures there will be, if they have adults looking out for them the way the girls had Tyreese. Lizzie informs Carol that she saved Tyreese, back at the prison. Which I'm glad she mentioned, because it was a handy reminder of her one redeeming quality. Not that she even meant to hit Alisha in the head, but whatever. She also wonders if Carol had kids, and Carol says she had one. "What was she like?" Lizzie wonders. Dumb, and then missing, and then undead, and then just dead? In other words, Lizzie would have liked her. But Carol says that Sophia was sweet and didn't have a mean bone in her body. "Is that why she isn't here now?" asks Lizzie, who's got plenty. Carol says that's it, and that she misses Sophia every day. But she won't have to miss Lizzie because she's right here. Can we try missing her anyway? Just on a trial basis? Carol sends Lizzie to join the sleeping bundle of humans while she continues holding the sleeping Judith, and watches Tyreese wake up from a fever dream on the tracks. Did the dream involve the railroads suddenly working again?
The morning, Lizzie finds some tree sap for Carol to apply to the cot on Tyreese's arm, which is apparently now infected and making him feverish. They speculate on how far they are from Terminus, and Tyreese remarks on how tough Lizzie is. Carol explains to Tyreese what a complete idiot she is when it comes to the walkers, whereas Mika "doesn't have a mean bone in her body." In other words, Mika is doomed.
As they walk along the tracks later that day, Mika wonders how Tom Sawyer ends, since they never got to finish it at story time. Carol tells them, but I'll spare you the spoilers. Mika figures Carol is like the Widow Douglas, and she's like Huck, until Lizzie straightens her out, saying Mika is more like Tom and she, Lizzie, is more like Huck. Well, if those are the only options. I'm currently trying to imagine what Tom Sawyer would be if Becky Thatcher were like Lizzie. That would be some twisted fucking shit.
The girls wait out on the lawn while the adults mount the porch and bang on the door. Carol and Tyreese will go in and clear, while the girls stand guard outside. Or rather sit guard. Mika can tell that Lizzie is upset, but not because she's worried about Carol and Tyreese in the house, and not because there's a small grave in the yard, but because a walker is likely to get killed inside the house. Mika snaps at Lizzie that they're not people. "You're wrong. All of you," Lizzie says coldly. Mika is still insisting that they're just dead when one of the monsters comes out a side door and topples over the porch rail, just feet away from them. Lizzie spills to the ground with a protesting Judith in her lap, leaving just Mika to face the zombie with her gun. She wings it in the shoulder a couple of times before finally scoring a headshot, causing it to collapse at the feet of a screaming Lizzie. Carol and Tyreese come rushing out after it's all over, helping Lizzie to her feet. Carol hands Judith to Tyreese to take her up onto the porch, reminds Mika to lower the gun, and wonders why Lizzie is still so upset. "I don't want to say," Lizzie answers, which is all the answer anyone needs. Mika goes to her on a bench and apologizes for yelling at her, then reminds her to look at the flowers and count to calm herself down. Christ, these two are a time bomb.
That night, in the house, Carol and Lizzie crack pecans by the light of an oil lamp as Lizzie says she's trying to understand. Well Lizzie, there are a lot of nuts on that table, but the biggest one is sitting at it. Mika excitedly rushes in with a doll she found, announcing that she's going to name her "Griselda Gunderson." Sounds like a new cast member on Girls. Tyreese comes in with more good news, which is that they've got water, so all they need now is to bag a deer. "We'll get one," Carol promises. I assume she means she'll get it herself, because she's the only one of them who can shoot. Tyreese is suddenly overwhelmed by the domesticity of it all, and Mika tells him to relax…so he does, settling into an easy chair and even taking off his hat for possibly the first time since he's been on the show. Turns out he has hair. From her spot on the floor, Mika looks around at the cozy scene and says, "We should live here." Tyreese and Carol look at each other like it's not the craziest idea they ever heard.
The day, Carol fills a teakettle from a bucket and sets it on the stove. It looks like the same kettle from the opening scene, but it can't be because -- oh, wait, the gas and the pilot light are still on somehow, and the ring lights right up. And sure enough, Carol looks out the window and sees Lizzie playing tag with a zombie, just like in the teaser. So Carol rushes right out, ignoring Lizzie's protests as she turns her back on the monster and tries to protect it from Carol. Who shoves Lizzie aside, tackles the walker, and stabs it fatally in the forehead. Stupid Lizzie claims that it only wanted a friend and she was going to lead it away. Well, which is it? Carol says Lizzie could have died, like that's a bad thing, and Lizzie starts freaking out, screaming, "What if I killed you? What if I killed you?" She's still flipping shit when Tyreese comes to turn off the flame under the now-whistling kettle, and looks out the window to see Lizzie screaming at Carol over the body of the dead walker. Finally Lizzie settles down for a good cry over the body of her re-dead friend while Carol sits there all, What the actual, literal fuck?
Later, Carol and Mika are going out for a little hunt, with Mika carrying the rifle. The column of smoke is still there, and as Mika points out, the fact that it's black means the fire is still burning. She misses science class, except for the dissecting, and Carol points out she'll have to do worse than that these days. "I don't gotta," Mika says. Carol is saying she does, and is in the midst of politely explaining how her sister is a fucking idiot when she turns and spots a deer grazing at the edge of the woods. Carol lets Mika take the shot, but Mika can't pull the trigger, which is just as well because she was barely aiming the thing anyway. The deer wanders back into the trees while Carol gazes at Mika in undisguised disappointment. "We have peaches," Mika points out. Yeah, those make great jerky. Anyway, it could have been worse; look what happened last time Carl got too close to a deer.
Carol's conversation is with Tyreese as he's drawing water from the well. He suggests they stay here rather than going to Terminus, as Mika suggested. He knows the girls, and he knows and trusts Carol, "And I don't know if I can get that anywhere else." Well, there is something Tyreese doesn't know about Carol, and she's not about to tell him. As for the girls, well, just you wait.
Meanwhile, in this idyllic setting, Mika goes looking for Lizzie, and is just in time to see her disappear into the woods. Sure enough, she's brought a live rat in a shoebox to that walker they left stuck on the railroad tracks, and is feeding it to the thing like she used to through the prison fence, only this time there's no fence. Mika, gun in hand, finds Lizzie kneeling on the tracks just inches away from it. She insists to Lizzie that the walkers are bad, and they can't pretend any more like they did at the prison. Lizzie claims that she can "hear" them. I can hear this one too; it says, "Rahh, rehhhh gahh sxxknkx!" Mika says they want to kill her, but Lizzie says they only want to change her into one of them. "Maybe I should change," she says, reaching a hand out to the slavering jaws. "I could make you all understand." Go for it. See how that works out.
Just then a group of charred zombies, presumably from the forest fire, comes out of the trees after them. The girls go running up the tracks screaming for Carol. Back at the house, the adults drop their pails of water and go running for the wire fence, which the girls have just barely beaten the crispy critters to. They start scrambling through the fence, but Mika gets hung up and the nearest one grabs her leg. Mika tries to pull her free, but then doesn't have to because Carol blew the head off the one that grabbed Mika. Tyreese joins the shooting with none-too-deadly accuracy, and soon Mika and even Lizzie are squeezing off rounds at the approaching horrors. Eventually they're all taken down, and Carol proudly hugs Lizzie, saying, "You did it." Well, whoop-de-fucking doo.