Cold Storage
The morning after Atlanta was firebombed by the U.S. Military, a survivor named Chase wakes up at his shelter on top of a building to find a fellow survivor, Harris, telling him about how he won the lottery and can't redeem the ticket. Chase asks how long he was out, and Harris replies that he was only asleep for a couple minutes. After discussing some recent activities regarding the National Guard, the duo hears pounding at a nearby access door, indicating that they'll need to leave. Harris directs Chase to the edge of the roof and they look across the street towards a Self-Storage facility. Harris reasons that they'll be able to forage for supplies inside, but Chase suggests that their evacuation plan requires them to get to a "caravan" that's leaving the following morning.
The pair exit through a service door down to ground level and begin to walk through an alley, pausing to look at bombed-out cars and posters of missing children. Harris stops to rifle through some supplies left by a vehicle and makes light of the situation, but he is attacked by walkers. Chase yells for him to look out, but Harris is quickly bitten and killed by a pair of walkers.
Forced to flee, Chase runs without his supplies and makes it to the Self-Storage facility, busting open a door lock to get inside. A trio of walkers pursue him as he hides inside a nearby storage locker, with the walkers attempting to force the shutter up. Just when it seems hope is lost, an unseen figure shoots and kills all three walkers. The individual, known as B.J., orders Chase to exit the locker with his hands up.
In the corridor, B.J. orders Chase to leave, but the latter negotiates a deal - he'll help B.J. restart several generators within the facility, which are in areas with walkers, in exchange for one of the facility's transport trucks. B.J. leads Chase on a short tour of the facility and directs him to a storage locker, filled with "some police officer's old stuff". Inside the locker, Chase finds a box of belongings from... Rick Grimes, with various photos of his career as a sheriff and family photos before he grabs a shirt from the box and leaves.
Chase walks up to the security office and finds B.J. laughing at old surveillance footage of survivors getting caught by and Devoured by the Horde outside the storage facility. Chase and B.J. have a conversation about some of the events happening in the world, with the former claiming that China had indicated they were working on a cure for the virus and that he is going to find his sister in Cynthiana, Kentucky so that they can travel to a supposed safe zone in Washington, D.C. B.J. indicates that Chase should be more realistic, rationalizing that the Zombie Apocalypse happened for a reason — so that The Chosen People left behind could be "humbled" by the experience and make something new for society.
Chase heads out to restart the generators for B.J., and makes it to a darkened generator room in an upper floor of the building. While attempting to restart the generator, one of the former employees, who died and reanimated, attacks him. Using his crowbar, Chase dispatches the worker and successfully restarts the power before returning to B.J., who is cooking burgers near one of the facility's docking ramps. Chase tells him he dispatched one of the workers he sees as a photo on the employee roster, but asks where the sole female employee is. B.J. looks cagey while telling him that she ran and is probably with her boyfriend somewhere.
Afterwards, Chase helps B.J. load the walker corpses onto a trolley and wheel it out to the loading dock. Outside, he's shocked when he discovers that B.J. has been throwing the corpses of people who haven't turned into a dumpster, indicating that he's been using them for his own means. Claiming that He Knows Too Much, B.J. shoots Chase in the head, causing him to fall back into the dumpster, before he slams the loading dock shut...
…except it's revealed soon after that B.J. barely missed Chase's head, and he wakes up soon after in the dumpster. Realizing that B.J. betrayed him, Chase gets out of the dumpster and begins to make his way down the alley towards the front entrance of the facility. He encounters the zombified Harris, and uses a brick to bash Harris' brains in before grabbing the machete the latter was still carrying with him. He makes it to a nearby door and gets back into the facility, pausing to grab a weapon and look at the security monitors. While looking for B.J., he finds him walking out of one of the storage units, Room #323, while struggling to put his shirt back on.
Making his way to the upper floor, Chase accesses #323 and discovers a woman being held inside — Kelly, the still-alive female employee. After telling her he's not going to hurt her, Kelly tells him that B.J. has gone insane and using her as a sex slave. He pledges to get revenge and tells her to get her clothes on before they start hunting for B.J. Seeing the duo through the monitors in the security office, B.J. arms his revolver and announces over the intercom that he's going to kill him for good.
The duo makes it to the loading dock, but are confronted by B.J., who orders Chase to leave and let Kelly with him. Kelly begs Chase to shoot him, while B.J. counters that Kelly has no idea about the world outside, and that she's safer with him. When B.J. moves forward to confront Chase directly, though, Kelly beheads B.J. and escapes with Chase. They make it to one of the transport trucks and Chase tells her that they'll head towards Cynthiana...
As the truck drives off, walkers enter through the loading dock and swarm the facility. It's revealed that Kelly left B.J.'s decapitated head in the security office, where he watches the walkers on the monitors...
Tropes:
- Boom, Headshot!: Averted. B.J. shoots Chase in the head because He Knows Too Much, but the bullet barely misses his head as he falls into the pile of corpses outside the facility.
- Censored Child Death: Chase and Harris come across a missing person wall that has a note from a survivor asking if anyone has seen "her babies", with pictures of five children underneath. At the bottom, a word (scrawled in blood) reads "YES".
- Chekhov's Gunman: After Harris is killed by a pair of walkers, Chase later finds him in the alley outside the facility when he's betrayed by B.J., and recovers Harris' machete, which he uses to great effect to re-enter the facility.
- The Chosen People: B.J. claims that the survivors of the apocalypse have been spared for a reason — to watch society come "tumbling down" while becoming more humble from the experience.
- Continuity Nod: One of the pictures in Rick's old storage locker is the same one Carl and Michonne recovered from the bar during the scavenging mission in King County.
- Crazy Survivalist: If it wasn't already apparent from his first appearance, B.J. has undergone Sanity Slippage, executed all his co-workers (save for Kelly) and uses Chase to accomplish his own goals before shooting him in the heads (or so he thinks).
- Deadpan Snarker: Based on the little we see of him, Harris has a snarky remark for everything.
- The Dog Bites Back: After being held captive by B.J. in a locked storage room, she uses the machete Chase gives her to decapitate B.J. and give him a Fate Worse than Death.
- Duct Tape for Everything: Chase duct-tapes the machete he recovers from Harris to an assault rifle owned by B.J., for use as a hybrid melee/ranged weapon.
- False Friend: B.J. acts cheerful and friendly towards Chase after their initial hostile introduction, promising to give him a truck if he helps restore power. Once he has no more use for Chase, he shoots him in the head and leaves him for dead.
- Fate Worse than Death: In revenge for his depravity towards her, Kelly leaves B.J.'s severed head in the security office, where it reanimates and is forced to watch the walkers swarming the storage facility.
- He Knows Too Much: Chase discovers that B.J. has betrayed and killed his former co-workers (with the exception of Kelly), causing the latter to betray and kill him (or so he thinks) at the loading dock outside the facility.
- Irony: The webisodes begin with Harris walking up to Chase and telling him that he won $5,000 on a scratch ticket he decided to play, but can't redeem it because of the Zombie Apocalypse.
- It Gets Easier: Said verbatim by Harris to Chase in the first part, after the former pulls a crowbar out of a walker's head.
- Jerkass:
- Machete Mayhem: Harris, Chase and Kelly use a machete at various points throughout the webisodes, with the latter delivering the Coup de Grâce to B.J. during the final confrontation with Chase.
- Porn Stash: B.J. claims that he has more porn than he knows what to do with:Straight, gay, bi, dog, cat... whatever you like, let me know. I'll make you a gift bag.
- Sanity Slippage: It becomes clear that the Zombie Apocalypse has only increased B.J.'s penchant for violence, as Kelly tells Chase that B.J. admitted he'd been wanting to kill his fellow employees at the facility for years, and has now become distrustful and paranoid towards everyone else.
- Sex Dressed: Chase sees security footage of B.J. leaving the room where Kelly is being kept captive and struggling to put his shirt back on.
- Shout-Out: The second webisode's title, "Keys to the Kingdom", and a line of associated dialogue reference a scene from Dawn of the Dead (1978), when two characters say the same line after finding a keyring for the control room of the mall they're holed up in.
- Too Dumb to Live: During the final confrontation with Chase, B.J. learns that turning his back on the woman he repeatedly raped while she is holding a machete is a bad idea.
- Unusual Euphemism: Invoked by B.J. when he tries to pretend he doesn't know where Kelly is:She's probably with her boyfriend, or maybe one of those things got her... either way, she's being eaten.
