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.