The date is August 27, 2010: the day the world ended. Before she was Madame Genet, leader of France’s Pouvoir Du Vivant, she was Marion Genet (Anne Charrier), a janitor at the Louvre in Paris. Marion and Sabine (Tatiana Gousseff) are set to walk out as part of a national strike for health care rights, but they’re quarantined inside the museum during the early hours of the outbreak. The Louvre Pyramid becomes a prison as Marion watches her husband torn apart by the flesh-eating infected that the darkened City of Lights will come to fear as les affamès — the hungry ones.
In the present, Carol (Melissa McBride) meets the eyes of the Mona Lisa at Maison Mère, the Pouvoir base in Paris. The American claims to be a tourist stranded in Paris when the world fell, and so she’s welcomed to Maison Mère by Madame Genet. Carol and her new friend, Rèmy (François Perache), are assigned their duties in the kitchen and the stables, but they have ulterior motives: Carol hopes to find her friend Daryl (Norman Reedus), and Rèmy hopes to find his husband, Julien. They learn that the Pouvoir is preparing an attack on l‘Union de l’Espoir, but Genet doesn’t know where the Union of Hope is hiding out.
Carol and Rèmy witness chained prisoners being marched into a tunnel that leads to the Atelier, the workshop of Dr. Lafleur (François Delaive). The voyeurs watch as the prisoners are gunned down and injected with 20 milligrams of a yellow-green liquid, with Lafleur instructing his scientists to record their transition times. “There have been rumors of experiments. Some say that’s where the burners came from,” Rèmy says of the brûlant, acid-blooded walkers with a burning touch. “Mistake that got loose.”
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The test subjects seize and quickly reanimate as agitated zombies with blackened pupils and bulging red veins. When Rèmy points out that Genet is trying to make a stronger breed of walkers, Carol remarks with burning sarcasm: “Oh, great. That’s just what the world needs.” These test subjects are too amped up, so Dr. Lafleur determines they must dial down the dosage if they’re to have soldiers they can control. Fearing that Daryl and Julien will become Genet’s test subjects, Carol and Rèmy agree to split up to find them first.
Meanwhile, at the Nest at Mont-Saint-Michel, Normandy, Sylvie (Laïka Blanc-Francard) prays for God to protect Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi). She’s been taken prisoner by Losang (Joel de la Fuente) to prevent her interference with the ceremony that the Union believes will prove Laurent is immune to the bite of les affamès. Sylvie escapes, but as she tries to warn the people of the Nest that they’re going to kill Laurent, the nun is sent over the edge down to the courtyard below — and dies from the fall. Rather than eulogize Sylvie in death, Losang says, “Her faith was weak.”
At the edge of the Nest, Isabelle (Clémence Poésy) asks Daryl if she’ll like Ohio when she goes with him to America. Daryl tells her the winters are cold and the summers are nice, and that they have fireflies. As Fallou (Eriq Ebouaney) leads Daryl and Isabelle into the fortified abbey, they must hurry: Losang gets Laurent ready to step into his “spiritual role” as the prophesied messiah who will deliver them from the bite of the hungry ones. He slips a powder into Laurent’s tea and tells the boy that the Union awaits to greet their savior.
Losang tells the gathered faithful from across France, Germany, and Spain that they’ve come as pilgrims to be part of the Nest “out of a shared belief of faith in what is yet to come.” Jacinta (Nassima Benchicou), clad in ceremonial robes, brings the drugged Laurent to the courtyard as guards wrangle a hooded walker.
“We’ve had to be patient to prove that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, a future where we will no longer be vulnerable to the bite of the hungry ones. Now is the time to cast that aside and to embrace hope, to celebrate the inspiring power of our unity and love,” the hypocrite preaches. “We are all human, and even les affamés, lost to us, carry with them the memory of love. So who better to confirm our faith in Laurent than someone we’ve just lost, but who loved him dearly? And now her love will deliver us all.”
It’s a zombified Sylvie, who will have the “honor” of biting Laurent to prove to the Union that the boy can’t be turned. Before Slyvie can bite Laurent, Daryl fires a bolt into the crowd, and Losang gets away in the ensuing chaos. Daryl, Isabelle, and Fallou lead Laurent out the way they came, but it’s going to take both Isabelle and Fallou to get the lethargic teen over and down the wall. Daryl gets through the haze and instructs Laurent to lead them to their hideout at a cave in the woods. If he doesn’t make it back, he’ll come find them. Daryl shoots, stabs, and strangles his way through the tower as Isabelle and Fallou get Laurent to freedom, but he’s cornered on a narrow stairway and captured.
Meanwhile, at Maison Mère, Carol asks around about the American named Dixon. Codron (Romain Levi), beaten and bloodied after being interrogated about the location of the Nest, hears the name and scoffs. “I had him, and I let him go,” says Genet’s former Guerrier, who had his fingers severed as punishment. Carol convinces Codron to tell her where she can find her “brother” and “the only family I have left.” Codron relents, telling Carol about the island fortress on the Normandy coast. But she must hurry: if Genet finds Dixon first, he’s a dead man. Carol relays this intel to Rèmy and learns that Daryl must be at Mont-Saint-Michel a few hours drive away. She can’t convince him to leave Maison Mère without Julien, so Rèmy sobs after hugging Carol goodbye.
At the abbey, Daryl is Losang’s prisoner. The monk hoped that the Union could convince Daryl to share their faith in Laurent, but he pities the American “living without a semblance of faith.” Calling Daryl “a man alone” with “nothing to cling to,” Losang says, “Perhaps it’s easy to reject faith when you live only for yourself.” Losang is firm in his belief that Laurent will not succumb to the bite, and that the ceremony — a “public display of his light” — will restore the beliefs of those who have started to lose faith in l‘Union de l’Espoir. “Only by risking everything can we find the true meaning of faith,” Losang says. When Daryl asks what happens if he’s wrong about Laurent being their savior, he responds: “If I’m wrong? There would be no point in going on.”
Back at Maison Mère, Sabine catches Carol trying to escape with a stolen horse. Rèmy, reunited with Julien, saved his husband by giving up Carol and the location of the Nest. Genet explains to Carol that Dr. Lafleur’s research tests are to create “a new sub-type of affamè.” These Ampers are “more directable warriors” than her human Guerrier, and they will “help bring peace back to the world” as Genet establishes France’s Sixth Republic for the people.
Carol confesses the truth: that she flew from America two days ago. As Carol tells it, “I manipulated an innocent man into letting me fly in his plane under the false pretense of looking for my daughter. We had to stop in Greenland, where he was almost used as a sperm donor, and I was nearly murdered by insane environmentalists.” As for why Carol came from America to France to find Daryl Dixon, she says: “I came here to kill him.” Genet can understand Carol’s raison d’être for wanting Daryl dead, as their goals align: Genet has been after the American who sabotaged three years of research during a mutiny aboard the ship that transported him to France.
Genet tells Carol that Dixon aligned himself with a group of religious zealots, and she’s helped the Pouvoir locate their headquarters at the Nest — the one that Codron told her about. Handing over the pocket watch that Losang gave to Azlan, Genet says she’s organizing a convoy to Mont-Saint-Michel. “You want to kill Dixon yourself? I will take you to him.”
As the convoy passes the Louvre, Genet recaps her background as a janitor who would “sweep the floors of galleries full of religious paintings and wonder why the greatest artists felt compelled to depict the same violent imagery over and over again.”
“When the les affamès came, we were locked in for a week. It was there that the paintings began to make sense to me. There was one in particular. Le Deluge. A desperate family hangs in peril over a raging flood. And I realized all these scenes of apocalypse, they want to make sense of the chaos and destruction that humanity brings upon itself. The fantasy that there’s a higher power that can make things better. Prayers didn’t help us. Not then and not now.” Carol counters that everyone needs hope, but Genet says, “Religion is not about hope. It’s about control.” And l’Union de l’Espoir, she adds, “Thinks we, the masses, the small and unseen, are stupid. That their fairy tales can control us.” And that is why they must snuff out whatever flickering hope the Union has.
At the cave hideout, Fallou tells Laurent that there’s no sign of Daryl or his aunt Isabelle. The boy blames himself for Sylvie’s death and potentially Isabelle’s because of a “made up story” that made him feel special. “You are special,” Fallou tells him. “Some things are true because you believe them. The truth is in the way believing makes it easier to live.” When Laurent says that belief wouldn’t make him survive a zombie’s bite, he tells him that they all believed Losang. “Not Daryl,” Laurent remarks. “He never believed.”
The Nest, once thought to be their haven, has become Daryl and Isabelle’s prison. The amours are chained on opposite walls of a shower as they commiserate. Daryl believes they’ll get out of this — somehow — and catch up with Fallou and Laurent. She tells him to tell her a story so she can hear his voice, so Daryl unspools a tale about a guy who left home looking for something. He found himself far, far away from home, and he couldn’t get back. That’s all he ever cared about — getting back. He didn’t care about anything or anyone. Then one day, something changed.
”‘Day-pay-ee-zon,’” Daryl says, reciting the French word she taught him: Dépaysant, that thing that makes you look at things a different way. She then asks him about the fireflies, which he says are “like little Tinker Bells.” In French, the fairy is Fèe clochette, who saves Peter Pan.
Daryl tells her that Laurent will like it in America. He can go to school and be a normal kid. And what will she do? “We can do whatever you want. We can sleep late. Take long walks, and watch the sun go down by the river,” he tells her. She says it sounds like a dream — and reaches around the corner to take his handcuffed palm in hers. In French, says: “Je t’aime.” I love you.
Outside the Nest, Genet’s Guerrier have gathered on the beach. Losang comes and retrieves Isabelle despite Daryl’s protests that she doesn’t know where Laurent is. Daryl tells Losang that Laurent is in Provence, but the ploy doesn’t work. “Isabelle has always had an open mind and heart,” Losang says to Daryl. “You, sadly, are beyond hope.” As Isabelle is dragged away, Daryl yells after her.
On the beach, Genet rallies the troops. Addressing them in French, she tells the Guerrier that they are about to become here “most devoted, the most ferocious, and the most fearless Pouvoir fighting unit.” Years of research have brought them to this day. “You will be making the noblest sacrifice as we crush the Union’s tyranny of false hope,” Genet proclaims. “In the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity. You will be remembered as heroes. Always.”
Carol’s high-school French can’t decipher what she’s saying, but she’s clued into what is about to happen as Dr. Lafleur prepares guns with the Amper serum. Genet confirms that she’s turning her Guerrier into les affamè for the greater good. “We’re ready. The question is, are you?” she asks Carol. “I’m giving you what you asked for. You’re gonna kill your friend.”
So ends chapter three in The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon — The Book of Carol. Stay tuned to ComicBook/TWD (and find us on Facebook) for more Walking Dead coverage.
