The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 13: Beside the Dying Fire

The episode starts out back in Atlanta, where walkers are eating a dog. When the helicopter flies overhead, gets their attention, and they follow it. The walkers head out of the city and keep gathering more of their number as they continue moving. The herd piles up at a wooden fence and the weight of their numbers breaks it and they stumble through.

Eventually, the walkers head down the highway and enter the woods, where Shane's gunfire draws their attention.

Rick and Carl are heading back from the woods where they both killed Shane. Carl asks Rick about what happened, assuming that Shane was bit by a walker and that is what killed him. Rick is struggling to tell him what happened, and that's when they notice a huge herd of walkers headed their way.

Panicked, they run to the barn and shut the door before they catch up with them. Rick decides to set the barn on fire to catch the herd's attention, and makes Carl climb up into the hayloft. Rick opens the door, screams at the walkers to get them to rush in, and has Carl toss the open lighter down onto the hay, where walkers begin to burn. Rick and Carl head over to the opening of the loft, and try to see what is going on at the farm house.

Daryl is on Merle's motorbike, he drives up to Jimmy, who is in the RV and tells him to drive up to the barn-- he believes that Rick or Carl set it on fire. Jimmy drives up, sees Carl and Rick, who run out on the overhang roof of the barn and onto the RV.

Jimmy runs over to the side door of the RV, just as a crowd of walkers rip open the door and swarm him and eat him alive. Yikes.

Watch Jimmy's demise!


Rick and Carl get down from the RV and run towards the farmhouse.

Lori can't find Carl, and refuses to leave without him. Carol is begging her to go and they try to get Hershel to run, but he stands steadfast and fires on the walkers as they head for the farm house. Carol gets Patricia and Beth and they make a run for it with Andrea.

Unfortunately, walkers have made it through the woods, around to the front of the farmhouse. Carol and Andrea get cut off from Patricia and Beth. Andrea fires on a walker and it falls on her. Lori catches up with Beth and Patricia, just as Patricia is attacked and killed by walkers. Beth was running with her and holding her hand as they ran- Beth cannot pull  her hand away from Patricia as she is eaten alive.

Lori helps her rip her hand out of Patricia's death grip and they run for the truck as T-Dog pulls up and lets them get in and then he drives off as they make their escape.

Glenn and Maggie went to Shane's car and were driving around with T-Dog, Jimmy and Daryl. When they are overrun, Glenn tells her to drive- leave the farm. (He always makes the right decision.)

Hershel backs away from the walker herd, firing as he goes. He stops to add more ammo to his weapon, and a walker steps up behind him.. Just when it looks like Hershel is going to die, Rick steps up and kills the walker. He and Carl get Hershel to run and they head for his truck and get off the farm.

Daryl is sitting on his bike on the road, near the farm house, waiting. He hears Carol scream and drives over to save her. He picks her up and they make their escape.

Andrea is left behind, as it looked like she fell to the walkers. She ends up running through the woods, hounded by the walkers for hours. 

Rick decides to go back to the highway where they left supplies for Sophia, hoping that the others would head over there as well. Carl wants to go back and get his mom. Rick knows that going back to the farm is suicidal and refuses to let him go. Hershel tells him that he can leave with Carl to protect him, to keep his son safe, as that is the only thing that matters now. Rick tells him that he's a man of god and he should have a little faith. Hershel replies saying that the bible talks about the Lord resurrecting the dead, but walkers was not what he had in mind when he read it. 

Maggie is driving Shane's car and freaking out. Glenn tells her to go to the highway, as that is the most likely place that everyone would go to meet up. She doesn't want to go and is on the verge of becoming hysterical. Glenn tells her to move over and he takes the wheel. He tells her that everything will be fine, reassures her that her dad and sister and the other made it out alive. But she won't listen, so he confesses his love for her. She calms down and lets him go to the highway, because she trusts him.

Just when Rick is about to tell Carl that they really ought to leave and get somewhere safe Daryl pulls up on Merle's bike with Carol riding behind him. Then Glenn and Maggie, and T-Dog, Lori and Beth pull up. Relieved, Carl and Rick run to Lori and have a tearful reunion.

Lori asks where Shane is and Rick tells her that he didn't make it. Jimmy was eaten in the RV and Patricia fell when she and Beth made a run for it away from the farm. But, the core group is still alive.

They drive away and eventually, Hershel's truck runs out of gas. Rick honks the horn and they all stop and get out. He tells them that they can't go any further and will need to forage for some gas in the morning. 

Rick tells them that Shane planned all along to kill Randall, that he took him out into the woods and lured them out there. Daryl brings up that Randall had his neck snapped and that he was a walker. He wasn't bit, he was killed and came back. 

Rick then reveals what Dr. Jenner whispered into his ear as they left the CDC: They are all infected with the walker virus. 

"Eveyone's infected."

Glenn is angry that Rick kept such an important thing from them.

Rick wasn't sure if it was the truth or not. Dr. Jenner was quite insane and at the time, he was ready to blow them all up. But when Shane was killed and  he rose up and became a walker, he then knew it was true and that is why he decided to tell them now. He wanted to make sure that it was true before he said anything because he didn't want them to panic.

Lori asks about what happened to Shane and Rick tells her that he planned to kill him-- he let Randall out, killed him and then led him further away from the farm house. He knew that Shane was going to kill him, but he just let him keep leading him through the woods. He finally had enough and he let Shane push him. He confesses to her that he killed him. Shane became a walker and Carl put him down.

Lori, upset by this, looks like she is about to throw up. She pushes Rick away and runs off-- clearly angry at him. (But seriously, she asked him to kill him. She asked Rick to kill to protect her and Carl and told him that Shane wants them for himself. That anger is unfounded and really, I think it's because she mad at herself. Lori pushed Shane to go to such desperate lengths because she made it seem that Shane still had a chance with her, because she admitted that she wasn't sure who the father of her baby is. Ugh! If she had just kept her mouth shut, things may not have happened the way they did.)

Meanwhile, Andrea is still running for her life from the walkers. She runs out of bullets and uses her gun to bash a walker's head in after throwing it against a tree

She kills one walker with her knife and then falls and crawls backwards away from another walker. Just when it looks like she is about to be killed, a sword cuts the walker's head off. Andrea sits there, stunned to see a woman standing there leading two armless walkers on chains. This is the first appearance of Michonne.

Michonne- The Walking Dead comic vs. TV show

Watch Michonne rescue Andrea!


Rick's group decides to make camp near the road, at the remains of an old stone building (only half of the foundation walls remain) and make a fire.

Back at the fire Carol asks Daryl why they are sticking around after what Rick did. Daryl thinks that he's still a good man and doesn't see any need to leave the group and run off with her. Carol wants to be with an honorable man and Daryl tells her that he is an honorable man.

Maggie wants to leave with Glenn to go somewhere safe.

Rick, fed up with everything, tells them exactly what happened; that he killed Shane to protect them. They all knew what he was like and what he was capable of-- he did it to keep them all safe.

Rick believes that there has to be somewhere out there that they can hunker down and be safe, and somehow manage to live. Maybe it's just a pipe dream, but he refuses to give up. He tells Carol that if she or anyone else doesn't like it, they can just go ahead and leave. But if they decide to stay, it isn't a democracy anymore. It's his way or the highway.

As the camera pans out, a huge prison looms on the horizon- gearing up for the events that will occur in Season 3 with The Governor.
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