The Walking Dead

S1 The Walking Dead Chapter 1: Days Gone Bye

A flickering light draws his attention, and through a doorway, Rick sees the ravaged body of a nurse missing most of her skin. His eyes can't believe what he's seeing and he backs away, confused and afraid. Further down the hall, the walls are covered in blood and riddled with bullet holes. A double door leading into the cafeteria has been chained shut, a message scrawled across in black paint: "DON'T OPEN/DEAD INSIDE." A woman's hands, her fingernails dirty and broken, reach through the cracks and fiddle with the padlock and chains. Terrified, Rick stumbles backwards.

He tries the elevator but it's dead, so he exits through a heavy door into a dark stairwell that reeks of rotting flesh. He chokes on the smell as he lumbers down the stairs, lighting matches until he finds the exit.

A door opens to the back of the hospital and the loading bay. When Rick's eyes adjust to the sunlight he sees hundreds of decayed, rancid, fly-covered bodies wrapped in sheets and arranged in rows and piles. He leaves the hospital and stumbles up a hill. There's a military helicopter, sandbags, and other signs of a military cordon, but everything has been abandoned.

He wanders down the road in his hospital gown, spotting an overturned bicycle in a park. As he reaches for it, a mutilated woman - badly decayed, her legs and lips missing - turns and reaches for him, pathetically moaning in hunger. Startled, Rick falls over but regains himself a moment later, mounts the bike, and hastily speeds away.

Rick arrives at his home to find the front door ajar and the house deserted. Sobbing on the floor, he calls out for Lori and Carl, questioning if any of this is real or if he's dreaming. He heads back outside the house and sits on the steps, then spots a man stumbling down the road and slowly lifts his hand to wave and get his attention. But a young boy creeps up from behind and hits Rick across the face with a shovel. "Carl, I found you", Rick mutters.

"Daddy I got this sumbitch! I'm gonna smack him dead!" the boy screams. The boy's father, Morgan Jones, approaches the stumbling man and shoots him in the head, then walks toward Rick and points the gun in his face. "What's that bandage for?" Morgan asks him, cocking the gun and telling him, "You tell me, or I will kill you." Rick passes out.

He wakes up with his arms and legs tied to a bed. Morgan's son, Duane, stands guard with a baseball bat. "Did you get bit?" Morgan asks Rick stiffly, having changed his bandages though Rick's gun-shot wound has mostly healed. "Just shot, as far as I know," Rick says. Morgan checks his forehead and says if he had "the fever" it would have killed him by now, so he sets him free of the bedposts with a switchblade and offers him a seat at their dinner table. They have canned beans. Rick recognizes the home they're in as his neighbors', Fred and Cindy Drake's, forcing Morgan to admit, "It was empty when we got here." He tells Rick not to look out the window because 'they will see the light', and begins to explain the story of the Outbreak and the following months to a confused and disoriented Rick for the first time.

"I never should have fired that gun today," Morgan says. "The sound draws 'em. Now they're all over the street." Rick accuses Morgan of shooting a man in cold blood. "It was a walker," Morgan corrects. He adds that they get more active after dark sometimes.

Before they begin eating dinner, Duane insists that his father give a blessing. "Lord, please watch over us in these crazy days," Morgan says, and proceeds to explain to Rick that the man he shot would have tried to eat them. "One thing I do know, don't you get bit," Morgan says. Bites kill, he explains, and then you become one of them. "The fever burns you out. But then after a while... you come back."

"Seen it happen," Duane adds solemnly. The trio talk about Rick's son, Carl, and Rick satisfies a lingering curiosity shared by Duane and Morgan as to what line of work would put someone in a position to be shot at. "Sheriff's deputy," Rick remarks. Morgan smiles and says, "Duane thought you were a bank robber."