We start with a flashback, of Carol's Adventures in Exile, starting right after she drives away in the USS Pardon Our Dust. She finds a secluded spot to cry over the loss of Lizzie and Mika, and maybe even Darryl, but a zombie just can't mind his own business, and Carol drives away to avoid its gossiping. She finds safe shelter for the night, and looks to be settling in the next day. Has she picked this spot on purpose? Because the window over the kitchen sink faces the prison, and the window gives her a view of smoke rising in the distance. Does Carol just know the prison is that way? Because she wastes no time in the USS Pardon Our Dust, arriving at the prison before the fires started by Mitch's tank can burn out. She's greeted by the fiery doom of her friends.
We come back to almost present time, just after Carol and Darryl have left the group at the church to follow a car similar to the one that took Beth. Darryl tells Carol, briefly about Beth's kidnapping, and they are miraculously not spotted by their quarry. Carol wants to save fuel by running the driver off the road, and getting information. Darryl points out that they could get no information, and be left with no further leads. So, it's North on I-85, back into Atlanta they go.
After we get Beth, let's all go see a show!
Their quarry stops after entering the city, and Carol and Darryl spend some tense moments after seeing someone dressed as a cop get out of shotgun. So, in case there was still some mystery, they are definitely on Beth's trail. When the car ahead has cleared debris to continue on their way, Darryl finds out the hard way they're out of gas, and he and Carol make a run for it to a battered women's shelter nearby. As the show wants to constantly reiterate that Carol has survived an abusive husband, Darryl eventually gets it out of her that she stayed there once before the world turned, which is how she knew to direct him there.
They try to start a watch/sleep routine, but Darryl instead wants to know whether Carol would really have bolted in that car alone if he hadn't caught her earlier that night. Carol claims she was still undecided. It's like kids playing Truth and Dare at a sleepover, complete with bunk beds. Carol is saved from Truth by a knocking from somewhere in the shelter, which she and Darryl, after suspensefully approaching a door, find are zombies who died trapped in their rooms at the shelter. Carol immediately moves to put them down, but Darryl holds her back.
This isn't the first time people have been restrained from putting down zombies who wouldn't get them; Lizzie convinced Tyrese to leave a zombie trapped in train tracks be; Hershel persuaded Carl to leave alone a zombie slowly decaying into tree roots. Is this considered a mercy? Can any zombie really be considered harmless, especially if the person after you stumbles into it? Are characters coming to see zombies as flies, to be shooed away and only swatted if they persist?
Carol wakes up the next morning to a bright, sunlit space, and wonders where Darryl went. Until, from the window, she sees more smoke rising from a nearby roof. It's Darryl, burning the sheet-wrapped bodies he kept Carol from putting down the night before. She thanks him for doing it for her. Why did Darryl want to do it himself, and save Carol the trouble? Does Darryl worry that yet more zombie kills would erode what humanity she's trying to hold on to? Does Carol? The smoke, once again in Carol's life, rises past the windows of the other rooms in the shelter.
What? No S'mores?
We cut to another flashback; Carol is digging the graves for Lizzie and Mika, while Tyrese appears, with one of the girls wrapped in a sheet. Carol attention is lured to the distance by white smoke in the distance, proof that the nearby fire (presumably Beth and Darryl's), has burned itself out. It's smoke and grief for Carol at this point. All that's left of her girls is Lizzie's copy of Tom Sawyer, which Carol has, unpractically, stuffed into the top of her pack. Before venturing out into a zombie-infested Atlanta.
Knowing they'll find packs of zombies anytime, Darryl and Carol keep close to buildings, keeping quiet as they trot through the city streets. Darryl finds a building they can get a decent view from, to see what's around and if anything could lead them to Beth, and he sees a Skybridge from the parking structure they're crouched behind to the building. His plan involves lighting a paper pad on fire, and tossing it away from their path, where the growing fire will attract zombies, giving them a chance to scurry through the parking spaces and into the Skybridge. They get in clear, but as the door closes behind Carol, we see a head peeking out from a car behind, definitely interested in the Skybridge's visitors.
The Skybridge was occupied for a while. And it's difficult to figure out what killed its former occupants, who all turned either in sleeping bags or tents. Did they all sicken early, dying one by one and trapped where they died? Carol and Darryl don't wonder as they put down the ones in sleeping bags and dodge the squirming, growling tents. As they pass, we see, reflected in the Skybridge's window, a human face that's followed them into the Skybridge.
Darryl and Carol find an apartment from which they can get a view of nearby roads, looking for any sign of the car from last night. With a resting place, Carol tries to bring up Lizzie and Mika. Darryl doesn't seem terribly interested, and Carol can only tell them the girls are worse than gone. Tyrese has been mum about Lizzie and Mika, and the rest of the group still doesn't seem to know just how awful their fates were. Instead, she and Darryl talk about whether there's any chance they can just "start over" as people, But what does that even mean? Forget things traumatically etched on their memories? Tell themselves the past wasn't really so bad? Darryl never stopped trusting Carol, so it's not as if she has to regain his trust. Maybe not even knowing what they even mean prompts them instead to disagree about some abstract art in front of them.
They finally spy, using the rifle's scope, a van, abandoned on a nearby overpass, with familiar crosses on the back windows. They decide to get over there, about half a mile away, and check it out. Once again, they have to squeeze past some chained doors, and this time Carol's habit of putting the gun down before she can get through gets them caught at gunpoint by... Noah! Still limping from his escape from the hospital, but in new clothes. Which means that the timelines are merging, as this episode may take place 1-2 days after he and Beth escaped.
We left our wallets at home
Noah nervously holds Carol's rifle on them both, and demands Darryl's crossbow. Darryl is furious over losing his prized weapon, but neither think to wonder why one man needs weapons he can barely carry together. Instead, Noah leaves them with zombies emerging from the now ripped open tents. Carol and Darryl dispatch them quickly, and Carol whips out her hidden handgun and raises to fire on Noah, but Darryl manages to deflect her hand and the shot, angering Carol. They race out of the Skybridge after Noah, but he's out the other door and locked it behind him. Leaving Carol and Darryl to go back to the other building, and jimmy the elevator door to get back out.
Carol can't understand why Darryl didn't let her shoot the kid in the legs. Darryl insists that he's trying to keep Carol whole and human. Trying to get her to start over. As they argue, another book slides out of Carols' pack: a handbook on counseling childhood abuse victims. So, now we can see she's probably been abused since childhood. Darryl realizes that Carol's always been a survivor. And Carol's been hiding more pain than she lets on. Darryl seems less worried about surviving the day than Carol, telling her they'll find other weapons. For now, he just wants to check out the van they saw for clues. Carol comes out as an atheist, and then tells Darryl that she's in no hurry to find out for sure whether there's an afterlife.
She and Darryl cut it pretty close, arriving at the van but trailed by a decent sized herd of zombies following them. They ransack the thing, as it's perched on the edge of a overpass, railing busted off and the front fender hanging in the air. It must have crashed and been abandoned. Carol calls it off as she sees another pack closing in as well as the ones who followed them, but Darryl manages to grab a gurney on the side, seeing the initials of the hospital that owned it. Carol identifies it as Grady Memorial, but they have time for nothing else except trying to fight there way out of the mess of zombies. Carol runs out of bullets from her handgun, and Darryl quickly gets surrounded, and they both find themselves back in the van.
Obligatory awesome Darryl shot!
Neither has to tell the other the only way out of this. They just put on their seat belts, and slowly tip the van off the overpass. Neither looks particularly scared, neither screams, the fall is silent until the crash, with the van landing on its tires about 100 feet below. They barely have time to enjoy surviving when zombies falling from above crash into the top of the van, with loud bangs, one of them hitting the windshield. They stumble away, with Carol more hurt than Darryl.
Look at me, I'm a crash test dummy!
We see another fire. This one, Carol lit herself, as Karen and David burn. Carol watches them go, fire and smoke drifting up, out of the small courtyard at the prison. Was everyone really so busy at the fences that day that no one saw, or smelled the smoke? Nope, it seems as if Carol was the only one to see another version of herself consumed in flames.
Back in Atlanta, she and Darryl rest, and Darryl wants to see the wounds she sustained, probably from an impact with the seat belt, along her right collar bone. They're grisly, but she says she's had worse. From Ed? Darryl doesn't ask, and Carol points out that Grady Memorial isn't far from where they're resting. Darryl wants to find another perch to scope the place out. Carol goes along, although she seems more ready to storm the place. Darryl looks like he more wants rest for Carol than anything else.
They're next lookout spot is an office of some sort, where they see, on the floor, a zombie and a bloody machete. Was this a man who went down fighting? Darryl doesn't know, as he grabs his new weapon and quickly takes out the zombie. He and Carol decide to perch at a window with a view of the hospital, content to snack on chips left behind. They have their last discussion of Carol's past. She doesn't try to bring up the girls, or Karen and David, or Terminus. She just points out that she's been reinventing herself all along, but each attempt fails. Eventually, she has to become someone else. From battered homemaker to bashing in her dead husband's skull. From sharpshooter to nanny to camp director. From murderer to savior. From mother to gravedigger. From exile to Commando Carol. She doesn't get to stay one person very long. Each version of herself disappears, like smoke. Darryl, makes one last attempt to bring her back, telling her they ain't ashes yet.
We go back, one last time, to Commando Carol as she's left Terminus a ruin, smoking in the distance in the shot. She's tired. She's got people's weapons. She's got to get the zombie-gut-drenched poncho off. She ditches the poncho, and stumbles on, while Terminus' black smoke rises behind her. One more Carol gone.
A ruckus on their floor brings Carol back to Darryl and reality. They creep down shady halls to find one of Darryl's green arrows in a zombie's neck, pinning it to the wall. Darryl uses his new machete on the zombie's head before taking his arrow back. They hear gun fire. They realize the kid is nearby, and almost catch up when he sics yet another zombie on Carol. This one brings Carol to the ground, where it lands on her new injuries, and she needs Darryl's help to fight it off and get up. They trudge to where Noah is trying to move an enormous bookcase. Darryl traps him by slamming his body into the kid, and rolling out of the way when the kid and bookcase come down together.
Their former mugger is now pinned, and he begs for help. One's reminded of how Bob brought down a shelf of liquor on himself last season, and Darryl had to lose Zach getting Bob out. Darryl is probably reminded of it too, refusing to help despite Noah's urgent pleas. Even Carol calls him back after he's lit a cigarette, taken back his crossbow, and stalked off. We know Noah is a good guy, but he's stupidly run into people who rightfully hold a grudge against him, and it's only when a zombie gets through the door, falls on top of the bookcase, and almost gets Noah in the neck, does Darryl shoot an arrow in its head. Both help him out from under the bookcase, and Noah stumbles around, away from them as he goes right to the window, declaring they've got to get out.
Goddammit kid, why couldn't you be useful like four scenes ago?
Carol and Darryl don't disagree, but they're in no hurry until Noah tells them their gunshots will be heard by people from "the hospital". Instantly alert, they get Noah to finally give them what they've needed to know- Beth's inside, and was alive only days ago. When Noah is right and the hospital sends a station wagon to investigate, they flee, with Noah directing them to go next door before they're spotted.
Too late. Carol is out of the building before them, but Noah and Darryl get to the door only to see her hit square on by the station wagon. Accident? Or did they choose to "savenap" her? Darryl is ready to launch into action, and Noah can only call him down by telling him that she's being taken to a place where she'll be treated. She'll live if Darryl lets them take her. Darryl hates the idea, but doesn't have anything better. When Noah tells them they'll need people and guns to take the hospital, Darryl knows what to do. He and Noah use another fire distraction to find an abandoned truck, with which they drive right out of Atlanta. I think we all know they'll be back at the church that night.
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