Driving right on by
Hershel is intubating a sick man in A Block, to buy the guy a few more hours in case Team Daryl comes back. Glenn and Sasha combined help him hold Henry(?) down, while barely awake themselves. Hershel decides this is a good time to pitch spaghetti night to the other council members, if they had spaghetti. It's a nice joke, but Sasha and Glenn are too tired to laugh. Hershel leaves Sasha to continue to pump air into Henry, and takes Glenn on his rounds, where discover one of the patients has died. Glenn is ready with his knife to put the patient down, but Hershel insists on bringing over a gurney, putting the dead man on it with Glenn's help, covering him, wheeling him out of everyone's sight, reading Scripture over him, and just barely putting him down as he turns. Glenn worries about what they'll do when patients on the upper floor die. Hershel is unfazed. Lizzie approaches Hershel, wondering what's going on, and Hershel directs her to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, telling her to read as much as she can before sundown. Incidentally, Carol was reading from Tom Sawyer during the storytime in the first episode.
Maggie checks in with Hershel at the glass/metal door to A Block, updating him that Beth is fine, asking just how long Hershel is going to be able to help people cheat death, then goes back to desperately putting zombies at the fence down, in a bunch that rivals the one before, when she sees a car approaching, and opens the front gate for Rick, back alone. At first, Rick dodges Maggie's question about Carol, but the he tensely tells her that Carol killed Karen and David, she confessed to him, and he sent her away because he couldn't trust her. Maggie, after some hesitation, accepts his decision, claims she would have wanted to send Carol away but probably wouldn't have been able to, and agrees to let Rick tell Hershel. Rick, in return, shushes her doubts about her own resolve, and tells her none of them can doubt themselves now (that wasn't the advice you gave Carol, douchebag!). Rick offers to help her at the fence once he's done talking to Hershel, delivering what he and Carol scavenged, and checking on Carl.
Carl is bored stiff in the admin building, with no one else getting sick and nothing going on inside. He offers to help Rick outside, but Rick wants him to stay put, hand out Fruit Rollups, and make sure the kids brush their teeth. Reminding his dad that one day, dad will have to let him
Look, old man, just kill us now
Another patient dies, Glenn is upstairs pumping air into Henry, and Sasha just wants to put him down in the cell, even if the rest of A Block, which has come out to see, can watch. Hershel tells everyone to go back to their cells. They mostly refuse, so Sasha helps Hershel, once again, with the gurney. This time, Hershel reads his Scripture and puts the patient down himself with the sheet still covering him. Then we see Rick enter. Hershel asks after Carol, and the scene ends.
Later, after their apparent heart to heart without one apparent comment on the Carol situation, we see Hershel and Rick talking over his insistence on staying in A Block to care for people who won't last another day. Hershel tells Rick about one of the dead men, and his love of John Steinbeck, the Depression-ear novelist. Hershel quotes Steinbeck, "A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ." Hershel wants to hide the unpleasant truth from A Block for as long as he can, even though he must know that A Block knows perfectly well what most of their fates are. Hershel tells Rick that this flu, this turn of the world, has come for a reason and as a test of God, and that he intends to pass it. Rick, with no counter argument, leaves Hershel to his work.
Hershel wanders back down the lines of cells, now realizing that Dr. S was right, people have collapsed on their beds, blood gushing down their faces. A boy has collapsed and his father closes himself in with the boy for his final minutes. He finally starts closing cell doors, but gets distracted from one by Sasha, unconscious in her cell. She comes to on the floor next to him, as he comforts her and gives her a saline drip for hydration. Sasha is almost resigned to die, telling Hershel she doesn't believe in luck, or fate, just numbers. Hershel's having none of this until he sees one of the patients whose door he didn't close approaching. The father from before emerges from the cell, shoots her but doesn't put her down, and then is bitten by his own son, emerging as a zombie, from behind him. Dear old dad goes down shooting, mostly by mistake as his own zombified son chews on his neck.
Rick and Maggie get to propping cut up tree trunks (when? everyone's been sick or gone for days) against the fence, talking a little about the risk Hershel is taking, and hacking off a zombie hand that almost gets Rick at the ankle. They hear shots from inside. Rick sends Maggie inside, and realizes he'll never brace the fences by himself. Notice: it's still pretty light outside in this shot- maybe late afternoon at the latest. But as we cut back to Hershel back in A Block, it's dark in A Block, with most of the light coming from Hershel's lantern as we see him scurry to Dr. S's cell for the gun and shells, only to find Dr. S has turned. Thankfully, Dr. S took his own medical advice and Hershel easily knifes him in the eye, opening the cell and finding what he needs.
Henry dies just as Glenn starts coughing blood and collapsing into delirium. As Henry turns, still wearing the intubation tube and bottle, Lizzie decides to coax zombie Henry along the upper cell block's balcony, luring him away, slowly from Glenn. Since Henry can't walk all that fast, Lizzie has until she dead ends or finds a way to stab Henry in the head before she's in trouble. But that's too easy. Lizzie stumbles, and Henry is on top of her, until Hershel literally grabs Henry and tosses him over the balcony, into the chain link net preventing former Death Row inmates from attempting suicide.
Some of Tom Sawyer's nerve but not all his brains
Maggie reaches A Block and uselessly swings her axe at the bulletproof glass. She goes around to try the other side of A Block.
Hershel locks Lizzie in with the another sick kid, and leads all the zombies to him on the upper balcony with a little noise, dispatching them with the shotgun. He finds Glenn who desperately needs... the tube and bottle on zombie Henry, thrashing around in the chain link net behind Hershel. Maggie reaches the other side, sees a window made of cheaper glass, and shoots it completely apart with one gunshot (architect's note: probably tempered glass, which shatters with no shards). She climbs into A Block, to find her dad wrestling with zombie Henry for the intubation stuff still attached to his face. Hershel tells Maggie not to shoot, or she'll risk damaging what Hershel's trying to get, but Maggie proves him wrong with perfect aim.
Probably not a good idea
Rick finally asks Carl for help putting posts against the fence, but it comes down just as they're getting started in the darkness outside (that was a quick sunset!), and they make a break for it, passing back into the prison yard via a guard tower. However, zombies are now about to come through the inner fence, and get access right up to the prison walls. So, Rick and Carl make it to the automatic weapons, stored outside in the humid, rainy, hot Southern climate but apparently still ready for any emergency. Rick conducts a five-second-training session so Carl now knows how to use an automatic rifle, and they meet the zombies now coming down the path towards them and the prison. Zombie heads pop open with blood as they collapse all over the path.
Maggie and Hershel rush to save Glenn with intubation as Lizzie looks on and asks the question of the week: "Is it over?" Hershel does his best to comfort her without yelling at her for rubbing her boot in blood and snot. Maggie sends her dad to bed. We see Hershel with the last book of the night, a Bible. But Hershel can't read it after closing Doctor S's eyes forever. He can only cry. Rick and Carl are finishing off zombie not quite dead yet (seriously, I expected someone to say "I'm not quite dead yet!" straight from Monty Python) as they see Team Daryl come back! We cut to Bob doing his job without fuck-ups for a change. Sasha rests in Tyrese's arms.
I'll just be over here having a nervous breakdown
The next morning, everyone's back (except Carol), relieved, and working to clean up the bodies, both from A Block and the prison yard. Daryl praises Hershel, who tells the group Glenn and Sasha survived the night. Really, the day and night were his. Up nearly 48 hours almost non-stop. And all those darned extra characters cluttering up the script are gone. What a relief! Rick puts off telling Daryl (literally) as he shares a fresh pea pod with Carl. Daryl asks Hershel where Carol is. Hershel tells Daryl to ask Rick. That drama will be for next week so we can leave the prison in peace, floating away on a long shot of the prison, the fence, the surrounding woods... and... UGH!! A red-headed asshole with a black trench coat and an eye-patch. The ominous music playing is from his cat and mouse game with Andrea in the warehouse last season. Do we know who was feeding the zombies at the fence now?!?!?!?! Will we ever?
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