Fear the Walking Dead came back to television this weekend after a several month hiatus. This episode follows Nick on his journey after leaving his family.
Nick wakes in the house. A female worker and her son are getting ready to leave. They’re going south to find family and invite Nick to come. He turns them down. He wants to go north to find others who think like Celia. The woman gives him supplies before leaving. Nick starts the arduous trip to the city.
He flashes back to rehab. A female resident listens as he practices a speech to his father. He’s upset because his dad isn’t there for him.
Nick comes across a home. Is it empty? It appears to be. He settles in and builds a campfire. As he sleeps, someone sneaks up with a baseball bat. It’s a woman with a child. She screams and strikes him with the bat several times while he tries to calm her. He gets run off without being able to grab his bag of supplies. How will he survive?
He wanders down the highway in the hot sun. He finds a partial bottle of water and a radio in a walker’s car and snatches them without being bit. He hears a vehicle approaching and hides. Three men step out of a jeep and stab a walker in the head.
Nick’s radio goes off and he runs. The men shoot at him. He runs across mostly open terrain. Will he be hit? He manages to elude them in a field of trees. That was a close call! He’s forced to walk across open fields instead of following the highway.
Nick steps on a cactus, then realizes it might have water inside. He kicks the top off of one and breaks it open using his shirt. Nothing comes out. He cracks it open with a rock and eats the insides instead. They taste terrible and he ends up vomiting. We hope he hasn’t been poisoned. He recovers. He’s so desperate for water that he drinks his own urine.
The landscape is freezing at night. Nick has another flashback. He and his rehab partner get visits from their parents. Maddie tells him that his father passed away in an accident coming home. Nick is devastated.
Nick wakes up to two dogs attacking him. He fights them off with a rock, but they come back and grab his leg. He’s forced to hide on top of an abandoned vehicle while they nip at his heels. A horde of walkers appears and the dogs take them down one by one until they’re overwhelmed. The walkers eat the dogs.
The walkers discover Nick on the van. He starts to pray. Suddenly we hear a car horn and gunshots. The walkers turn and walk towards the noise. Who has come to his rescue? Nick jumps down and hobbles to the dead dogs. He eats a bit, then steals a belt from an incapacitated walker. He uses it to tie up his leg.
Nick follows the horde of walkers, posing as one of them. He begins to hallucinate that the walkers are speaking to him. Is it a left over side effect of the cactus? Maybe too much blood loss? He thinks he sees his friend from rehab, but on second glance, it isn’t her. What’s wrong with him?
The horde follows the highway, getting ever closer to Tijuana. The jeep of men appears again. They start shooting down the walkers. Can Nick get away? The lead shooter notices Nick, but is slow to reload his gun. He’s attacked and bitten as is one other member of his team. The third man escapes in the vehicle. Nick continues to travel in the horde.
Two more men and a woman, Luciana, see Nick. He collapses. The men want to go to him, but she refuses. Nick has another flashback. This time to the abandoned church where he and his friend are shooting heroin.
He wakes to rain. He drinks in as much as he can. Finally, he catches a break.
Nick hobbles into a housing complex. He’s seriously hurt from the dog attack and can barely walk. He wanders into a convenience store and searches for food. Everything’s been taken.
He then enters a shed where he finds duct tape. He uses it to create a bandage for his leg. Luciana finds him. She tells him it will make it worse. The men ask if he’s infected. He tells them it was a dog. They give him water and beckon him to follow.
A man examines Nick’s leg. He cleans the wound and Nick winces in pain. The man asks Nick why he’s come all this way. He says he wants to be where the dead aren’t monsters. The man opens the doors to a large community full of men, women and children. Has Nick found a home? He smiles.