The Walking Dead

S1 The Walking Dead Chapter 1: Days Gone Bye

Running low on gas on a deserted Georgia highway, Sheriff's Deputy, Rick Grimes drives his police cruiser past overturned and damaged cars toward a gas station. Rick's vehicle is blocked by abandoned vehicles and tents; the remnants of what appears to be a makeshift campsite. Various corpses and garbage are seen throughout; a handmade sign hanging at the station reads "NO GAS".

As Rick searches, he hears something and ducks down, glimpsing the slippered feet of a little girl on the other side of a car as she picks up a teddy bear on the ground. He stands up, walks closer, and calls to her until slowly she turns around to face him. Her lips and right cheek have been torn away, exposing raw teeth and muscle. Rick's face falls as she starts toward him, growling. She approaches faster and he steps backwards, draws his gun, and shoots her in the head.

The next scene flashes back to before the apocalypse, with Rick and his partner and best friend, Shane Walsh, eating hamburgers and fries in their cruiser while they joke about the differences between men and women. When the conversation turns to Rick's wife, Lori, he turns somber. He shares that they've been fighting lately, and says that Lori accused him that morning of not caring about his family in front of their son, Carl. "The difference between men and women?" Rick muses. "I would never say something that cruel to her, especially not in front of Carl."

Suddenly the cruiser's radio cracks to life, an APB from neighboring Linden County reports a high-speed pursuit in progress involving two armed suspects. Rick and Shane dump their food and rush to the scene, where they lay down a spike strip and meet up with their co-workers, Lambert Kendal and Leon Basset. As they all wait for the car, the youngest officer, Basset, muses about their chances of getting on a police chase reality show. Rick tells him to focus, and worry about having a round in his gun chamber and the safety off. Basset sheepishly checks his gun while Shane suggests that it would be "kinda cool gettin' on one of them shows."

The car approaches, pursued by two more cruisers containing the Linden County Sheriff's Department officers. The vintage car with the suspects inside speeds over the spike strip, shredding the tires. The driver loses control and the vehicle flips off the road, rolling several times before coming to a rough stop upside down in a field. "Holy shit," mutters Shane, his gun cocked as the officers descend on the vehicle.

Rick carefully approaches the overturned car. A man emerges from the vehicle and immediately starts shooting at the officers. Rick yells at him to drop his gun, but the man shoots directly at Rick and hits him in the chest. Shane kills the gunman as Rick falls to the ground. A second man emerges from the vehicle brandishing a rifle, but one of the Linden County officers shoots him in the chest and kills him. "I'm alright!" Rick shouts, winded, the gunman having shot his Kevlar vest. Shane approaches Rick as he pulls himself off the ground.

"Shane, you do not tell Lori that happened! Ever!" Rick commands Shane after the firefight. His back turned, he fails to notice a third gunman crawling free from the overturned vehicle. The man fires and hits Rick in the side, where his vest does not protect him. He falls to the ground bleeding, and Shane kills the third man before rushing to Rick's aid. He commands Rick to stay with him, barking at Leon to call an ambulance.

Shane delivers flowers to Rick in the hospital, but Rick isn't fully conscious. Sometime later, Rick awakens and responds to Shane's presence, but quickly discovers that Shane is no longer there. The flowers have wilted and died, the beep of the machines has stopped, and the clock has stopped; the room is empty. Weak, dehydrated and alone, Rick pulls himself out of bed, flops onto the floor and calls out for help - but no one comes.

He stumbles into the bathroom, guzzling water directly from the tap before he heads for the door. He opens the door into a gurney that blocks the entrance to his room, but he pushes it aside and continues. The hallway is dark and disheveled, with lights flickering and wires hanging from the ceiling. He goes to the nurse's station and tries the phone: it's dead. He finds a set of matches and strikes one, looking for anything else worth taking from behind the desk.