Wildfire

"Wildfire" is the fifth episode of Season 1 of AMC's The Walking Dead. It originally aired on November 28, 2010 at 10/9c on AMC.

Plot Synopsis
The morning after the massacre at camp, Rick stares at the sunrise over Atlanta as he tries to reach Morgan on the walkie-talkie for the first time. "Morgan..." He starts "I don't know if you're out there. I don't know if you can hear me. Maybe you're listening right now. I hope so. I found others - my family, if you can believe it. My wife and son, they're alive. I wanted you to know that. There's something else you need to know. Atlanta isn't what we thought. It's not what they promised. The city is..." He pauses and then starts again "Do not enter the city. It belongs to the dead now." He tells Morgan to come find him, but to be careful, sharing that they were attacked at camp the night before. Telling Morgan to take care of his son, Duane, Rick signs off and promises he'll try him again tomorrow at dawn.

Andrea cradles Amy's body next to the RV. Lori tries to comfort her but has no success convincing her to let them "take" Amy, though she promises to be "as gentle as we can." Nearby, Daryl swings at dead walkers' heads with a pickaxe as Glenn and T-Dog throw bodies in a fire.

Rick, Lori, and Shane discuss how to handle Andrea, who hasn't moved from Amy's side all night. Amy needs to be dealt with, Shane says — "the same as the others." Rick tries to approach Andrea to "tell her how it is," but she pulls a gun on him. "I know how the safety works," she says flatly, and Rick backs off, apologizing. Daryl tells Rick to deal with Amy, calling her a "time bomb," as she could turn at any moment, but Lori insists they leave Andrea alone.

Morales and Daryl drag the body of a dead camper toward the fire, but Glenn stops them. "We don't burn them!" Glenn yells. "We bury them!" Frustrated and sweating from the heat, Daryl lashes out, accusing the group of reaping what they sow for leaving his brother for dead. He storms off.

Jacqui and Jim pile up bodies, and she notices blood on his shirt. He tries to convince her he just got some blood on him by moving bodies but she presses. "Please don't tell," he begs her, but Jacqui's too terrified not to. "A walker bit Jim," she announces, as Jim insists that he's fine, but he grabs a shovel to press the group away from him as they demand to see his stomach. T-Dog runs up behind him and grabs his arms as Daryl runs in and lifts his shirt, revealing a bite wound on his abdomen. "I'm okay," Jim says, with far less conviction.

"I say we put a pickaxe in his head," Daryl offers, stating the obvious: "The line's pretty clear; zero tolerance for walkers." The group is discussing what to do with Jim, but Rick refuses to kill the living. Rick thinks the Center for Disease Control, roughly 25 miles away inside Atlanta, might be able to help him, and suggests relocating there. Shane thinks the army base Fort Benning — 100 miles in the opposite direction — is a safer bet. Both places would provide food and shelter if up and running. But Rick believes Fort Benning got overrun like every other military cordon they've seen. He says the CDC would be Jim's best chance, and points out that in the event of a nuclear disaster or a terrorist attack, they'd protect the CDC at all costs. "If there's any form of government left," he says. "It'd be there."

Daryl heads toward Jim with his Miner pick and tries to take a swing, but Rick points his gun at Daryl's head. "We don't kill the living," Rick says, but Daryl snaps back, saying, "Funny, coming from a guy who just put a gun to my head." Shane steps between Daryl and Jim, agreeing with Rick, and Daryl throws down his pick. Rick moves Jim inside the bedroom of the RV.

Dale sits beside Andrea to pay his respects for Amy's death. He tells her about his wife's battle with cancer, how he dragged her to every specialist even though she'd accepted her fate. Her death left him feeling angry and cheated. "Since she passed," he says, "You girls were the first people that I cared anything for."

Andrea smiles and pulls out the mermaid necklace, wrapped in pink tissue paper. Today would have been Amy's birthday. She tells Dale how guilty she feels for having missed so many of Amy's birthdays. "She'd call all excited. I always said that I'd make it home, and I really always meant to. But I never made it past that phone call," she says. Dale tells her not to add guilt to how hard things are for her already. Andrea clasps the mermaid necklace around Amy's neck and Dale leaves her alone again.

Nearby, Daryl continues to swing the pick into dead walkers' skulls. He raises the axe over Ed's head, but Carol stops him. "He's my husband," she says, taking the axe from Daryl's hands. Sobbing, she swings it down on Ed's skull repeatedly, taking out years of abuse in this final act to ensure he'd never reanimate. Daryl watches silently, cringing.

On the ground, Amy begins to stir, deep breaths growing from deep within her. Her hands and arms begin twitching on her stomach. She opens her eyes, which, though always blue, were suddenly an icy cool grey-blue, the pupils gone. Her eyes are bloodshot and she moans and paws at the air. She reaches for Andrea, grabbing at her hair as she pulls herself up, growling, and the group stands guard, grabbing their guns. Andrea apologizes to Amy for not being there. "I'm here now, Amy. I love you," she sobs, before she shoots her sister in the head.

Rick and Shane dig graves near the campsite. "If you'd been here looking after your own," Shane accuses Rick, "our losses might not have been so great." Rick counters that without the guns he brought back, the losses would have been a lot worse, maybe the entire camp.

Daryl believes they should burn all the bodies, but Lori insists they need time to mourn and bury their dead. "It's what people do," she says.

Jim is hallucinating inside the RV, his bite bleeding as he sees terrifying visions of the dead. The survivors stage a funeral, and Andrea resists Dale's attempts to help her drag Amy's body into one of the graves. "Are we safe now, Dad?" Carl asks Rick afterward, but he can't say that they are. "I won't leave again," he promises instead.

Privately, Rick asks Lori if she blames him for not being there when the camp was attacked, and to support his decision to head for the CDC. She doesn't blame him exactly — not like Shane does — but she doesn't know if she can follow him to the CDC on blind faith. "We're all terrified. Tell me something with certainty," Lori says.

"I love you. That's all I got," he tells her. It's all he can promise.

In the RV, Rick tells a feverish Jim they're going to get him help as Jim coughs blood into a bucket. Jim is delirious and asks Rick to watch the boat, insisting Amy's there and that Rick "said he would." Rick begins to wonder if saving Jim will be possible as he promises to watch the boat, while Jim nods gratefully.

Outside, Shane asks Lori to convince Rick the CDC is a bad decision, cautioning her about choosing her marriage over peoples' safety. "I think folks around here can make up their minds without bringing my marriage into it," Lori says. "It's a habit you need to break." Shane tells her that he'll add it to the list of habits he needs to break as Rick emerges from the RV. Shane tries backtracking, and Lori abruptly announces that they should follow Rick's plan. Shane's reaction seems to confirm to Rick that something went on between his wife and best friend while he was gone.

Rick, Shane, and Dale depart to sweep the forest for walkers. Alone, Shane tries to convince Rick to change his mind about the CDC. "I've gotta do what's best for my family. If it was your family, you'd feel differently," Rick says. This offends Shane. "I kept them safe," he snaps at Rick. "Looked out for them like they were my own." Rick tries to calm him down. "You're hearing it wrong," he says, as they're interrupted by a sound in the bush and draw their guns.

Rick walks forward, and from a distance, Shane's aim lands on Rick. He holds it there for just a few seconds, glaring, his breath heavy, but he hears a sound and his focus breaks. He drops the gun and then notices Dale's been watching him. "Jesus," whispers Dale. Shane shrugs it off, musing that they need to get reflective vests for the woods. Back at camp, Shane announces that he thinks they should trust Rick's instincts, and those that agree will be leaving for the CDC in the morning.

At dawn, Rick tries to reach Morgan to advise him of their new plan, telling him he needs him to be right about the CDC. He also adds that they will be leaving a map taped to a red car with their route drawn out for him and Duane to follow.

As the group is preparing to leave, Shane is giving instructions on how to stay with the caravan when Morales announces that his family won't be joining the group. They have family in Birmingham and want to be with their people. "I gotta do what's best for my family," he says.

Rick hands Morales a .357 with Shane's terse assumption that the rest of them will fare no better out there, anyway, and they part ways. Carl and Sophia hug the Morales' kids, Eliza and Louis, while Lori tearfully hugs Morales' wife, Miranda. Eliza gives her doll to Sophia and runs back to her family. The group leaves the campsite behind for good, Glenn with the map and Jim's fever worsening in the bedroom of the RV.

En route to the CDC, the RV's radiator hose bursts. While Shane and T-Dog drive ahead to find replacement parts, Rick checks on Jim, who is in agony. "My bones are like glass. Every little bump - this ride's killing me. Leave me here," Jim says. "I'm done." Rick suggests he's delirious, but Jim insists his head is clear: "I want to be with my family," he says.

Outside, Dale advocates respecting Jim's wishes. Lori agrees, and the group carries Jim to a nearby tree. Jacqui gives him a soft kiss on the cheek. "Thanks for fightin' for us," Dale tells Jim as the group departs, tearfully leaving him behind.

Elsewhere, a video monitor crackles to life. An unshaven man, Dr. Jenner, speaks into the camera. "It's day 194 since Wildfire was declared," he says. "And 63 days since the disease abruptly went global. There is no clinical progress to report." He says he finally figured out how to shut down the scrubbers in the east sector of the building to save power, and he admits he's been feeling off-kilter lately, thanks to living underground and sleeping odd hours.

In a bio-hazard suit and with classical music playing, Jenner passes through an airlock into a laboratory. He opens a tissue sample labeled TS-19 and begins an experiment. He takes a nap inside his safety suit while he waits for the sample to be ready for examination.

Reaching for a beaker, he accidentally knocks corrosive fluid on the tissue sample inside a petri dish. An alarm sounds as a voice over a loudspeaker alerts Jenner to toxic quality air, and he runs to a decontamination chamber and disrobes. From the safety of the airlock, Jenner watches helplessly as the lab, and all of the remaining TS-19 samples, are engulfed in flames — an automatic safety protocol.

Later, a drunken Jenner speaks into the monitor: "The TS-19 samples are gone. The tragedy of their loss cannot be overstated," he laments, musing that he's sure there's no one listening on the other end of his transmission anymore, which saves him any embarrassment because he might kill himself in the morning.

Rick's caravan approaches the CDC with the sun setting, where hundreds of bodies lay dead on the ground. Another U.S. Military cordon was overrun. The group quietly approaches the building, which is locked and shuttered. From inside, Jenner's proximity alarm sounds. Stunned, he watches the group's approach via security monitor.

Outside, walkers begin to take notice of the survivors. Panicking, Shane suggests they can still turn around and head for Fort Benning. But Andrea points out they're out of gas and have no food, and would never make it. Lori demands a plan and Rick insists they'll figure something out as the sun sets. Jenner begs them to leave.

Rick catches sight of the security camera's movement and slams his fists against the metal shutters, screaming, "If you don't let us in, you're killing us!" The group yells at Rick, with people crying as he continues to scream. Shane drags him away. But suddenly the shutters open, drowning the survivors in light.

Co-Stars

 * Melissa McBride as Carol Peletier
 * Jeryl Prescott Sales as Jacqui
 * IronE Singleton as T-Dog
 * Adam Minarovich as Ed Peletier
 * Madison Lintz as Sophia Peletier
 * Maddie Lomax as Eliza Morales
 * Viviana Chavez-Vega as Miranda Morales

Uncredited

 * Noah Lomax as Louis Morales
 * Orlando Vargas as Camp Survivor
 * Andrew S. McMillan as CDC Walker
 * Chance Bartels as Walker
 * Lauren Henneberg as Walker
 * Ryan Kightlinger, Stephen M. Phillips, Joe Hernandez, Tony Gowell, Marty Brotzge as Walkers

Deaths

 * Ed Peletier (Before Reanimation)
 * Amy (Zombified)
 * Jim
 * 13 unnamed camp survivors of Atlanta (Before Reanimation)

Trivia

 * First appearance of Edwin Jenner.
 * First appearance of Vi.
 * Last appearance of Jim.
 * Last appearance of Amy. (Zombified)
 * Frank Darabont said, "We're in Atlanta and the CDC is based in Atlanta. Why wouldn't they at least pop by?"
 * Ugo.com makes 16 comparisons between the Comic Series and the episode.
 * It is established in this episode that it's been six and a half months since the zombie outbreak began.
 * The name of the episode title, "Wildfire," refers to the name of the virus study given by the CDC. The origins of its name could be due to the fact that in one of Dr. Edwin Jenner's video logs, he explains that the infection spreads like a wildfire.
 * Wildfire is a reference to the secret government biological lab in the Andromeda Strain.

Goofs/Errors

 * When Andrea is sitting by her sister's body, and Rick goes over to talk to her, she draws a handgun on him. She visibly doesn't cock the gun as she draws it, but the racking of the slide is still heard.
 * When Andrea is sitting by Amy's deceased body before she reanimates, you can clearly see Amy breathing.