The Walking Dead Episode 2.05 Chupacabra

In a flashback to the outset of the apocalypse, Shane, Lori and Carl sit in gridlocked traffic en route to Atlanta. Carl plays checkers with Sophia. Ed and Carol are parked nearby.

Carl remarks that he's hungry and Carol offers to share their rations, but Ed angrily stops her.

Shane and Lori walk up the road to see what's happening. Military helicopters streak overhead and bomb the city. Shane holds Lori as Atlanta burns.

Back in the present, Lori wakes to find Carol hanging laundry. Carol tells Lori she'd like to organize a dinner to thank Hershel for his hospitality. She asks Lori to extend the invitation as the survivors' "unofficial first lady."

Rick, meanwhile, is organizing search parties for the day. Jimmy asks to go along, claiming to have Herhsel's consent. Daryl plans to borrow a horse and scout the area from a ridge.

"Maybe you'll see your chupacabra up there," T-Dog jokes, referring to a story Daryl once told about seeing the mythical creature while on a squirrel hunt.

Glenn is sitting on the porch when Maggie exits the house. He propositions her, but she brushes him off. "I don't even know if I like you," she says.

Patrolling the woods, Rick reminisces about Shane's past romantic conquests. Shane plays along, but soon goes quiet. "It's hard enough accepting what's happened without digging up the past," he says.

"What are we doing?" Shane asks, arguing that Rick is spreading the group thin looking for Sophia, who is likely dead. "I'm tryin' to save lives here and you're out saving cats from trees," he says.

Meanwhile, Daryl reaches a ravine where he spots a doll lying in the creek bed. It's Sophia's, but she's nowhere to be found.

Daryl moves on. When he comes upon a snake his horse bucks, throwing him into the ravine, where he impales himself on one of his arrows.

Daryl cuts off his shirt sleeves to wrap around his waist, securing the arrow as best he can. He then starts climbing toward the ridge. Half way to the top, he slips and tumbles back down, knocking himself unconscious.

Back at the farm, Glenn confronts Lori about the pregnancy test. "You can't tell anybody," Lori pleads as Rick approaches. "You haven't told him yet?" Glenn asks.

Rick pulls Lori aside and relays his conversation with Shane. "Maybe I'm holdin' on to a way of thinking that doesn't make sense any more," he allows. Rick's making the best decisions he can, Lori assures.

Beth interrupts to tell Rick that Herhsel wants to talk: Daryl took a horse without permission, and Jimmy did not have Hershel's blessing to join the search. "I'll control my people," Hershel says. "You control yours."

Back in the forest, Daryl has a vision of Merle, who mocks him for integrating with the others - "bunch of pansy asses, n-----s, democrats" - and accuses Daryl of abandoning him. "Ain't nobody ever gonna care about you except for me," he says, kicking at Daryl, who wakes to find a walker grabbing him.

Daryl kills the walker, then pulls the arrow from his side and shoots a second walker. Afterward he guts and eats a raw squirrel, then fashions a necklace out of the walkers' ears before attempting to climb the ravine once again.

As he nears the ridge, Daryl's Merle hallucination returns, mocking him. Daryl tries to brush him off as a fantasy. "I'm as real as your chupacabra," Merle insists. Incensed, Daryl reaches the top, where Merle has disappeared.

In the farmhouse, Maggie is setting the table for dinner. Hershel lectures her about setting boundaries with Rick's people. "What's going on with you and the Asian boy?" he asks. Maggie insists she's too old to be having this conversation, but he warns her not to get too close as the group won't be around forever.

Meanwhile in the RV, Glenn asks Dale for advice about women: Lori is acting strangely, as is Maggie. Glenn admits to sleeping with Maggie, much to Dale's chagrin.

On the roof, Andrea sits guard with the rifle. A figure emerges from the forest, bloody and limping. Thinking it's a walker, Andrea trains her rifle scope on the figure as Rick, Shane, T-Dog and Glenn run toward it. They are shocked to discover it's actually Daryl. Andrea fires, grazing Daryl in the temple, before she realizes who it is.

Later, Hershel tends to Daryl's wounds. "It's a wonder you people have survived this long," he tells Rick.

Outside, Shane again challenges Rick to give up the search. Rick argues they need to keep looking, especially now that Daryl found the doll. Shane appeals to Lori, who argues that giving up on Sophia is the easy choice - not the hard one.

"All I care about now in this world is you and Carl," Shane tells her. "I'll do whatever it takes to keep the two of you safe." Disappointed in him, Lori warns that she and her son are no longer his problem, or his excuse.

Outside, Dale comforts a distraught Andrea: "Don't be so hard on yourself," he tells her. "We've all wanted to shoot Daryl."

The nice dinner Carol planned is uncomfortably tense following the days events, but Maggie slips Glenn a note: "Tonight. Where?" A stern look from Hershel prevents her from reading Glenn's response.

Carol brings Daryl a tray of food, thanking him for "doing more for my little girl today than her own daddy ever did his whole life." Daryl demurs: he didn't do anything Rick or Shane wouldn't have done. "I know," Carol says. "You're every bit as good as them."

After dinner, Maggie unfolds Glenn's note to discover he plans to meet her in the barn's hayloft. She sprints to stop him, but it's too late.

Glenn climbs the hayloft and peers into the barn, where a group of walkers is corralled. Terrified, he runs into Maggie. "You weren't supposed to see this," she says.