The Walking Dead Recap With Spoilers: No Sanctuary

The episode opens in flashback: the Terminians are huddled in a dark room, listening to screams [...]

By Russ Burlingame

The episode opens in flashback: the Terminians are huddled in a dark room, listening to screams outside. Gareth maintains that they were trying to do something good, but another man in the room with him says that they never should have put up the signs and that they were trying to be human beings, which was a mistake.

Cut to now, when Abraham is holding court, telling the group about a previous time he was locked up and got out after telling his captors about his mission to DC to stop the outbreak.

Meanwhile, the group is doing their best to make weapons out of their clothes and whatever else they can find at their disposal in the railroad car. Outside, there are shouts and shots. The group plots to attack the Terminians when they enter, but they drop a tear gas grenade inside the car from above first, and drag the survivors out.

After Rick is kicked in the face, he briefly loses consciousness and awakens in an area where Terminians are cutting up a cadaver. He, Daryl, Bob and Glenn are zip-tied, gagged and hung over a trough. Behind them, men sharpen tools and one Terminian menacingly waves around an aluminum baseball bat.

On the end, one man who isn't part of Rick's group is panicky; they beat him in the back of the head with the bat, then slice his throat. They do the same to three more men from the other train car, finally reaching Glenn. They stop to do some accounting -- the bullets, the number of bodies from each train car -- and Bob starts trying to plead their case, his gag removed as he grunted and shouted at Gareth. He tells Gareth about the trip to Washington, but Gareth doesn't want to hear it. He kneels to talk to the group, looking square at Rick. He asked Rick about the bag he buried in the woods; Rick won't tell him anything. Gareth holds a blade to Bob's throat, and eventually Rick relents, telling Gareth that he plans on using the weapons to kill him.

Before he leaves, he gives his people two hours to get the group killed and get Terminus back to "public face." Just as the big man with the bat is about to swing at Glenn, though, the person on the other end of the radio is non-responsive and an explosion rocks the building.

On the tracks near Terminus, Carol tells Tyreese that she'll leave once she gets the two of them to safety. They're approached from behind by a badly-disfigured walker, which Carol takes out with a knife to the head after Tyreese says he can't do it. A small herd starts following them, and they run from it, hiding behind a mound of dirt rather than staying to fight. They're surprised to hear machine gun fire, though, which draws off the walkers. Tyreese figures out that the gunfire probably came from Terminus, and Carol says that she still wants to get answers.

Outside of a small cabin in the woods, one of the Terminians is setting up fireworks. He talks about not trusting "the chick with the sword" and calling dibs on "the kid's hat" after he's dead. His call is cut short when Carol and Tyreese arrive and identify themselves as friends with the chick with the sword and the kid in the hat.

Cut forward a few minutes, and they've got him tied up inside the shack. He claims that they're only holding Carl and Michonne, and that they were only defending themselves, but Carol isn't buying it.

The man tells her that groups of people set off charges in all different directions to confuse the walkers, drawing them away from Terminus -- he tells her that's good for other survivors, too. She disagrees, saying that there's a herd headed for Terminus now, and she needs the walkers to help her. She leaves him tied up in the shack and leaves to go "kill people," in spite of the man's warnings that she'll be spotted if she even makes it that far.

Tyreese stays behind with the baby and the hostage.

In the woods, Carol covers herself in walker guts to mask her smell.

Back in the cabin, the man tries to engage Tyreese in conversation about Judith and Carol. Tyreese is clearly uneasy. The man says that he doesn't have friends anymore, just a-holes he survives with. He laments the loss of civilization. He tells Tyreese that saving a baby in this world is like saving an anchor when you're stuck without a boat in the middle of the ocean. He susses out that Tyreese is a "good guy" who has lived behind walls. He tells Tyreese that being a good guy will kill both him and the baby if he doesn't get in the car and go. He asks why Tyreese hasn't killed him yet, and tells him to take the car and go -- that he doesn't want to do this today.

Carol, covered in guts and moving as quietly as she can, makes her way toward Terminus, hearing the train car doors slam shut. She sees them dragging Rick and the other survivors into custody and stops with her rifle, watching through the scopes as Terminians take out walkers one at a time. She sees a fuel tank and then sees a herd starting to move in on the compound, scaring off the Terminians. She sets up one of the fireworks near the fence line and continues to watch the walkers.

Shooting a hole in the gas tank, she lights up the firework and covers her ears, blasting the tank and a bunch of walkers into the sky, tand taking out a chunk of the fence and setting a building on fire with it.

In the cabin, Tyreese sees a big black cloud of smoke, which he tells the man is probably Terminus. The man starts speculating about who's going to die, and when Tyreese tells him nobody has to die today, the man tells him that if he believes that, it's definitely going to be him and Judith, even if Terminus burns to the ground. In the "butcher shop" room, Gareth leaves to see what's happening and leaves the killers behind, telling them to stay put until he knows what's happening. They start to say they have a job to do, and Rick grasps at a shiv he made out of wood while stuck in the rail car.

Outside, Mary from Terminus is on the ground, watching flaming walkers skulk toward her as panic grows. One Terminian is killed and more are running in panic while Carol, having infiltrated the walkers, makes her way in.

Inside the butcher room, the Terminians are arguing when Rick stabs and kills them both.

Back in the railcar, most of the group is still locked in and wondering what's happening.

Eugene theorizes that there's nobody outside to open the door and starts trying to use a shell casing to compromise it from the inside. Carl tells them to wait for Rick, and Maggie agrees, saying they need to prepare to fight their way out with the rest of the group. She uses the chain from Hershel's watch to start sawing off more wood for a shiv.

Outside, walkers are killing Terminians with impunity while one or two work their way toward the rail car door. As snipers start trying to take out walkers, Carol breaks away from the pack and takes out one or two snipers, making things worse for Terminus. When she's spotted by some walkers, though, she has to close a door and hide inside of a building.

Back in the butchering area, Rick and his group debate what's happening. As they make their way out of the holding area, Rick tells his people to kill any Terminians they see. There are body parts hanging everywhere, including full, emaciated-looking torsos on butcher's hooks.

The group scavenges some better weapons and start scouting out the train cars. Rick says that they could move past a group of walkers trying to infiltrate one of the cars that isn't theirs, but Glenn tells him that they have to be the people who are willing to save the people in the car. They open the door, kill a number of walkers and open the car doors. A man runs out with long hair and a beard, ranting and attacking Glenn. Ultimately Rick lets a walker get the man, and then their group hides behind the open car to keep the walkers from seeing them.

Inside the place where she ducked for cover, Carol finds a room full of people's personal effects -- including Daryl's crossbow on a table of weapons. She takes it and goes.

Outside, the Terminians are starting to make some headway against the walkers but it's a bad scene for Rick's group no matter where they look. Rick hides behind a car, watching a group of Terminians shooting off automatic weapons, and takes out the one at back, stealing his gun and mowing down the ones ahead of him. As walkers continue to move through the area, eating the injured, it clears up a path for Rick and company.

Carol enters the "chapel" seen briefly at the end of last year, and is held at gunpoint by Mary, who tells her to drop her weapons and turn around; that she watns to see her face. Carol drops some of her weapons, but turns and fires at Mary, resulitng in the two of them fighting. Ultimately Mary tries to go after her with a candlestick, but Carol has a gun trained on her. She explains that the signs were once real but that people came and took the place, raping and killing, and the Terminians fought back. "You're the butcher, or you're the cattle," she says. Carol asks where Rick's group are, and when Mary doesn't answer right away, she shoots her in the knee. Mary tells her to point the gun at her head, and then laughs, saying that she "could have been one of us." Carol challenges her, and Mary says that Terminus became what it had to be so that they could survive. "We're sitll here," she says. Carol tells her that she isn't, and neither is Carol, and then Carol lets walkers in to consume Mary, leavin in peace since she's covered in guts.

Tyreese watches walkers through the window, and the man in the shack uses his momentary distraction to take Judith hostage and force him to leave his weapons. The man tells Tyreese to go outside or he'll kill the baby. Tyreese goes.

Inside, the man radios to Terminus, but gets no response. The sounds outside go quiet suddenly. The man turns to Judith, looking at her, then goes to the door with a knife in his hand, only to be tackled to the ground and beaten savagely by Tyreese, who holds the knife to his throat. Outside, the walkers have been impaled on the fence and generally beaten and mauled.

In the car, the group is making weapons and Sasha asks Eugene about the cure. He'll say only that it's classified. They challenge him, but he says that even if he told them everything that he possibly could, the cure would still die with him. Abraham says he won't let that happen.

The rest of the group remains confident they'll get out of the situation, but those who weren't traveling with Abraham say they just want to hear what he has to say. Eugene tells him that he was part of a project that was fighting viral warfare, WITH viral warfare. He says that he knows how to kill every living person on the planet, and that he believes witha slight tweak, they can instead kill the dead.

Rick comes and opens the door, leading the group out in to a hail of bullets, fire and walkers. Rick's group starts to make their way over the fence, and Rick fires off a shot at Gareth when he sees him on top of a roof. The "butcher" from earlier is among the walkers, which overrun the burning Terminus as Rick and company escape to the woods and find the bag he buried. he says that the Terminians don't get to live. Glenn objects, but Rick says it isn't over until they're all dead.

Everyone else objects, saying that the group will run or die, but before anything else can be said, they're joined by Carol (she and Daryl embrace gleefully). Rick approaches her, asking if she was the one that saved them. She hugs him, crying, and tells him that he has to come with her.

Carol and Daryl lead the group out to the shack in the woods, where a tearful Rick is finally reunited with Judith and Tyreese with Sasha.

Carol asks Tyreese what happened and Tyreese tells her the story, explaining that the man inside is very dead. Rick doesn't know whether the fire at Terminus is stil burning, but knows they have to get far away from it. They all get on the tracks headed in the opposite direction as last year, Rick defacing a Terminus sign along the way to say "No Sanctuary."

Cut back to the past, when Mary is thrown into a dark room and then another woman dragged out. The Terminians are being terrorized, and Gareth has plans to take the Terminus back, saying that you're either the butcher or the cattle.

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