Infected

"Infected" is the second episode of Season 4 of AMC's The Walking Dead. It aired on October 20, 2013 at 9/8c on AMC.

Plot Synopsis
Late at night, a mysterious figure is shown feeding a rat to the fence walkers. The scene then swaps to Tyreese and Karen in their cell, overlooking their lives and then Tyreese begins singing to her. Karen then roams out of the cell and into the showers, where she hears movement but finds nothing. After she exits, a zombified Patrick rises out of the shower, undetected. He exits the showers and follows her back to the cell block. He stops at Karen's room, but is distracted by the coughing of another person and wanders into his cell and proceeds to bite the man's throat, preventing him from calling out for help.

After Patrick is done devouring the man, the latter soon awakens as a walker. Rick and Carl head out to tend to the pigs and Carl asks if he can help with the fence cleaners, but Rick shuts the idea down. Carl apologizes and assures Rick that he is trying to live normally and asks if he can have his gun back. Before Rick can answer, they hear gunshots. Mika and Lizzie run out of Cell Block D, screaming for help. A horde of walkers have attacked from within and have killed several people. Michonne, who was heading out on a supply run, is alerted of the chaos but gets trapped in the prison gates with two walkers. The walkers overpower her, but Carl kills one of them; the other one is kicked off by Michonne and shot by Maggie. Michonne accidentally cuts herself on one of the snares, but is helped up by Maggie and Carl. In the cell block, the group clears out the walkers. Carol assists Ryan Samuels into a cell after he is bitten on the arm and prepares to amputate it, before realizing that he has been bitten on the back of his neck as well. After the threat temporarily clears out, Daryl and Rick comb the area, searching for any lifeless people to mercifully put-down, when Glenn gets attacked by a walker. Daryl is able to shoot it in the head, and realizes that it was Patrick. Rick is initially hesistant about putting the people down, coming out of the first cell shaken and in a daze. Another bloody-eyed walker, Charlie, emerges from a cell and is put down by Rick. They realize that since Charlie locked himself in his cell due to his sleepwalking, there was no way that he could have been bitten.

Rick, Hershel, Dr. Subramanian, Daryl and Bob gather around Charlie's body, noting that he has no bites or scratches. Subramanian recognizes the blood pouring out of Charlie's orifices as an indicator of disease, and Rick mentions Patrick, the bloody-eyed walker, Violet, and the sick boar he encountered. Glenn suggests that it's a new walker disease, but Subramanian says that he saw cases like this pre-apocalypse. Subramanian explains that diseases like the one that killed Patrick were spread by pigs and birds in the old days and thrive in close quarters, like the cell block. They conclude that everyone in the cell block could be infected by the flu.

Ryan realizes that he is dying, and asks Carol to take care of Lizzie and Mika for him as if they were her own. Carol agrees, but tells him that he has to let them say goodbye to him, before she kills him. As Lizzie and Mika say goodbye, Carol tells them what she has to do but Lizzie volunteers to do it instead. At the last minute, she is unable to stab her father in the head and turns away crying, as Carol takes back the knife and does it herself.

Carol, Hershel, Daryl, Sasha and Glenn think of what to do with the people who might have been infected, including a suggestion to quarantine them in Cell Block A, death row. They then hear coughing outside the room. It's shown to be coming from Karen, who was walking by with Tyreese. She is told that she must be quarantined in the Tombs while they find out what the cause is. Sasha (as well as Karen herself) calms Tyreese, saying that it's necessary. As she leaves, Karen also mentions that David was coughing as well. Carl and Maggie are carrying Michonne back inside when Rick approaches them. He tells them what happened and assures Maggie that Hershel and Beth are fine. He says that they must stay away from him for now, due to possibly being infected.

Beth is seen dressing Michonne's wound when the latter says that she made a mistake of letting the two walkers get the better of her. She bitterly says that Maggie and Carl should have left her. Beth says ''now THAT is foolish. People getting hurt is part of living with a group''. She muses about those who died, wondering what you call a parent who's lost a child. Michonne begins to tear up but composes herself immediately and Beth doesn't notice. Later, she asks Michonne to hold Judith while she cleans up the mess Judith made on her. Michonne looks at Judith with indifference, but then loses control and weeps while holding Judith close (hinting that something horrible might've happened in her past).

Carol goes to talk to Mika and Lizzie, as they stand by the fence. She turns to Lizzie and tells her that Ryan asked her to take care of them and says bluntly that Lizzie is weak, and that in this world she can't be. Lizzie begins crying that 'they killed him', and Carol realizes that she is referring to Nick, the walker she named in the previous episode. Lizzie runs away and Mika explains that Lizzie isn't weak, 'she's funny in the head'.

Daryl is digging graves for those who died when Rick comes by to help. Daryl tells Rick that he's earned his time away from being in a leader position, when Maggie screams for them to follow her; it's shown that a massive group of walkers, drawn by the gunfire from earlier, are converging at a portion of the fence that is about to give way. Despite the efforts of them, Glenn, Sasha and a few others, there are just too many. Sasha points out the carcasses of several dead rats near the walls, suggesting that someone's been luring the walkers to the fence and why they are clustering together instead of spreading out. Rick, getting an idea on what to do, tells Daryl to get one of the trucks. The two lead the walkers a few meters away and Rick pulls out one of the piglets; he then cuts it on the back and leaves it for the walkers to devour. They repeat this several times before the walkers are a safe distance away. Rick appears to be crying as he kills each piglet, and is significantly affected when the last piglet's blood splatters all over his face.

Meanwhile, Carol finds Lizzie and Mika near the fence looking at walkers again. Carol assures her that she needs to be strong in letting her father go and not to run away from her fear of the walkers but to face them. She puts a flower in Lizzie's hair. Lizzie takes the knife from Carol's hand, and puts it in her belt.

Carl finds his father burning up the pig pen. Rick explains that they either got the virus from the pigs or that we infected them. He tells Carl that they need to stay away from Judith for a while to protect her from possibly being infected. Carl then tells Rick about Carol teaching the kids how to use knives, but asks that Rick not confront her, as he believes she is right in doing so. Rick promises not to. He then pulls out his gun and holster, as well as handing Carl his gun back. He lights a match and burns the pigpen; then, Rick takes off his bloody shirt and throws that into the fire as well. Tyreese is seen going to Karen's isolated cell in the tombs with some flowers, only to find her missing. He notices a trail of blood leading down the hallway; following it, he arrives outside where he sees the burnt and charred corpses of both Karen and David; Karen recognizable by her bracelet.

Co-Stars

 * Kennedy Brice as Molly.
 * Brandon Carroll as David.
 * Luke Donaldson as Luke.
 * Victor McCay as Ryan Samuels.

Uncredited

 * Unknown as Charlie
 * Adelaide and Eliza Cornwell as Judith Grimes.
 * Unknown as Nick.
 * Andrew as unnamed prison survivor.

Deaths

 * 9 Unnamed Survivors
 * Charlie
 * Patrick (Zombified)
 * Ryan Samuels
 * Piglets
 * David
 * Karen

Trivia

 * First (and last) appearance of Charlie.
 * Last appearance of Patrick. (Zombified)
 * Last appearance of Ryan Samuels.
 * Last appearance of David.
 * Last appearance of Karen.
 * This episode has the most walker related deaths in Rick's group of any other episodes with 13-14.
 * This episode features the second most deaths of the most characters in the TV Series, with a total of 13-14 characters deaths, the most being "Welcome to the Tombs", with 27 deaths.
 * The scene where Ryan asks Carol to watch over his kids after he is gone, is similar the same scene from the comics. But in the comics it is Allen who asks Andrea to watch over his twins.