In the rain, Althea is lifelessly carried by a mysterious character. Her hands are tied when she comes to. The black suit soldier is nearby spreading a powder on a walker before lighting it on fire. Althea grabs her bag and runs away but her boot gets stuck in the mud as the soldier starts chasing her. She goes on without it. She ultimately falls down a hill where she gets her camera out of the bag before continuing her sprint. When she finds herself surrounded by walkers, the soldier rescues her before drawing on her. Althea knocks the helmet off the soldier revealing a woman who demands the camera.
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Fear the Walking Dead‘s opening logos play.
Later, Althea is trying to free herself in the back seat of a truck which is surrounded by a barbed wire fence. She ultimately lures a walker through the fence and uses the barbed wire it drags her way to cut the ties and the door to smash the walker.
She gets curious and finds the helicopter. It is out of gas. She radios for Morgan and Alicia but a man radios back calling for “Ground 17.” She tells him “the lead was KIA” and the package has been secured. “I can be inbound within 72 hours,” she says, pointing out she has to get a gas. The man is sending a “reclamation team.” The woman wants a tape from Althea but Althea wants answers.
Continued
The woman and Althea work together at the truck to pack supplies. They’re going to head out to a “fuel drop” to get gas for the chopper.
As they drive, Althea asks questions and gets no answers. “I’m just gonna call you ‘Happy.’” The woman wants to know why any of it matters. “When we’re gone, our stories will be all that’s left,” Althea says. The road is blocked by a walker falling off a cliff. The woman gets out to kill them. She offers her jacket to prevent Althea from getting bit. While they’re killing walkers, rocks fall on the truck. Althea makes a desperate rescue of her camera while the mystery woman grabs her equipment. A walker tries to bite Althea’s arm, reaching up from the rubble, and is rejected by the protective coat.
The woman finds a tape in Althea’s bag called “The Bog #7” and watches it. Althea is reporting on how the National Guard is coming in from the “east bridge” and the word is “the army is mobilizing, too.” Gun shots ring out as the National Guard and Army shoot at each other. She apologizes to “Jesse” and says she should have . stayed. He was her brother and she never got to say goodbye, so the story is all that’s left.
Althea asks the woman why she killed her partner but there is no response. She tells Al she should be afraid of the people in black uniforms. “We are a force who are not living for ourselves or for now,” she says. “You have your stories, already making every day the past. We have the future.”
Continued
Althea and the woman continue on their journey to retrieve gas. They ultimately post up for the night and talk about their common lives before the fall. “That’s why I killed him,” she says. “I was doing my job. I didn’t mean to piss on yours. Stories matter. Some things matter more to me, that’s all.” Their tent is elevated and hanging from trees.
The next day, they begin to scaled the cliff nearby, complete with a dead and reanimated mountain climber hanging from the mountain. When the new woman falls, Althea has to kill the walker and attach to its line to keep them safely attached to the mountain.
Finally, the woman starts to open up. “We were doing what we always do,” she says. “Go get supplies. Get in, get out.” The supplies were for purifying water. Beckett, her co-pilot, was afraid of ending up like “them” and he did. He had a key on him all the time, it was for a cabin he would always talk about which allowed visitors to see “all the way to the end of creation.” The woman throws the key off the cliff. She explains that no one walks away, “let alone with the maps he carried.” They fired at each other and she won the gunfight. She won’t kill Althea because she needs “that tape” but ultimately will have to kill her for operational security.
Continued
On a makeshift helipad, a walker in mountain climber gear gets tripped up as the woman approach. Althea finally gets the best of her and takes the gun. Althea is going to leave the woman behind and head out. She is warned to steer clear of the helicopter because the reclamation team is coming — and she should delete the tape with Beckett’s information on it.
“It’s bigger than me,” the woman explains at night. “Right now, it’s the only thing that matters.” Althea wants to see this place. “You don’t wanna go there,” the woman claims. “If someone finds the tape, if they figure out how to read the map, it makes what we have, what we’re working towards, vulnerable. I need you to give me the tape…This is about the future and rebuilding what we all once had. I will die here if I have to…If you do not destroy the tape, the Beckett’s death, my death, it might amount to anything. You want your brother’s death to mean something? You want stories to matter? You have to make sure there’s people around to hear them one day.” Althea is finally willing to show her where the tape is.
They ultimately bond over a beer. “Everything’s so ugly nowadays,” Althea says. “This is nice.”
Contnued
In the morning, the woman has her gun back and wakes up Althea to get moving. They head off for the tape which Althea put on one of the dead. The woman uses gunpowder and a match to get rid of the tape when Althea hands it to her. “The tape was only part of the story,” the woman tells her. “The mission… No one can know anything. No one can see us.” She demands Althea turn around. When she does, the woman puts a gun to her head. Althea hands her The Bog #7 tape and asks her to make sure that story matters.
“I want you to live,” the woman says. “Don’t chase this story. Do not try to find me. I hope you get back to your friends and that you can all get home somehow.”
And, finally: “My name is Isabelle. I’m from Indiana and I got to see the prettiest thing I’ve seen since the end of everything.”
She goes in for a kiss on Althea and the two share the moment by the river before parting ways at the treeline. The woman puts down the two canisters of gas and kills three walkers, fulfilling the moment which Dylan and Annie saw in last week’s episode.
Moments loaded, she fuels up the helicopter and radios to her people. She is taking off “with the payload” and the site is “buttoned up.” Everything is according to protocol.
Meanwhile, Althea watches the helicopter take off before using the radio to reach out to Morgan. Moments later, she is reunited with him and Alicia in the woods. She lies when they ask what happened before meeting all of the kids. ‘Cefzek-Rogaki,” she tells them. “It’s my last name. I had two parents will Polish names who insisted on double barreling.”
