Torn Apart
At the onset of the apocalypse, a single mother named Hannah wakes up in her vehicle, having slumped against the wheel and laying on the horn. Realizing that she's been involved in a car crash, she looks back only to discover that her children, Billy and Jamie, have fled the vehicle. Crawling out of the wreckage, she begins calling to them, only to realize that her neighbourhood has become a disaster zone — vehicles have been abandoned, a corpse is lying on the ground near her and no one will respond to her cries for help.
As she begins to run through the neighbourhood, she turns a corner and discovers a pair of walkers eating a corpse. Thinking that they're still people, she is shocked when one turns around and reveals its decaying face. Hannah freaks out and runs to a nearby house, with the single walker pursuing her. After attempting to crawl through the dog door, she is surprised when her ex-husband, Andrew appears, leveling a shotgun at her before aiming upwards and killing the walker.
Inside the house, which is revealed to belong to Andrew, Hannah is reunited with her children and reveals that her car crashed after she swerved to avoid "some people", who she now realizes were the undead. She asks where Andrew's current wife, Judy, is, but he avoids the question and offers to bandage the head wound she sustained in the crash.
As he dresses the wound, Andrew tells her that the Zombie Apocalypse is happening "everywhere", and that his neighbour claimed that it was the work of terrorists. When Billy arrives to ask if he can play fetch the family dog, Andrew snaps at him and tells him to put the ball away because 'Max doesn't want to play.' Billy sets the ball and glove he was in the living room and walks off, passing a carpet with a bloodstain on it that begins to stir...
Several hours beforehand, Judy is walkking back from a grocery store carrying a load of groceries when he realizes It's Quiet… Too Quiet. She looks around and sees abandoned cars and no one around her, then passes a vehicle to find a woman lying dead outside a stopped vehicle. As Liza stops to check her pulse and administer CPR, the woman reanimates as a walker and chomps her on the mouth, causing her to get infected. At the same time, Andrew is rooting through his neighbor, Mike Wheeler's basement looking for guns when the latter appears and asks what he's doing. Andrew tells him he needs a gun to put down Max, who was attacked and slashed open by a walker. Mike mocks him for his previous holier-than-thou attitude towards him, then says they have bigger things to worry about. He shows off a wound on his leg, indicating that he was slashed by a walker. He claims that the CDC has indicated they are working on a cure, and that his wife and family died while they were celebrating his birthday earlier in the day. He then tells Andrew that while he shot and killed his wife, he didn't have it in him to kill his kids, and they have reanimated as walkers.
Mike indicates that he wants Andrew to shoot him, along with his infected dog and the two kids, and save the rest of the ammunition for himself. Andrew reluctantly carries out Mike's final request, then goes back to his house and washes his bloody hands while struggling not to cry. Soon after, he hears banging at the door and heads out of his kitchen, holding the shotgun. He notices that the front door is ajar and a blood trail is running through the living room, only to be surprised when a walker appears behind him. He spins and fires, revealing Judy has already died and reanimated. Thinking he killed her, he breaks down and cries before covering her body with a carpet in the living room.
Back in the present, Hannah laments the state of the world and tells Andrew she wishes she could go back to how things were before. In the dining room, Billy and Jamie are sitting at the kitchen table listening to a police siren in the distance and arguing about where Max is when the reanimated Judy stirs. Billy tries to scream, but Jamie covers his mouth and they hide under the kitchen table. As the undead Judy turns, the kids hide in the nearby kitchen pantry, but the walker notices and moves towards them, causing them to scream. Just when it seems like Judy will attack them, Hannah runs up with a fire axe in hand and hits Judy in the head with the weapon, putting her down for good.
As Hannah consoles the kids, Andrew tells them they need to get out of the neighborhood, and suggests heading to Atlanta to find other survivors. Jamie says that there's a pickup truck outside the next door neighbor's house that the group could use to escape, and Andrew says he knows where to get the keys for it. When he goes to the neighbor's house to get them, though, he is besieged and set upon by a group of walkers, who devour him.
Some time after, a military helicopter flies above the neighborhood and orders all surviving residents to get to an evacuation point, which will bring them to a refugee center in Atlanta. Sitting on the couch holding the kids, Hannah realizes it may be the only chance they have to escape, and tells them that they'll need to run if they want to make it. When Jamie asks where their dad is, Hannah avoids the question and grabs a handgun and supplies he left for her before they leave the house.
Outside, Hannah and the kids exit the house and are surprised to find walkers all around the street. They begin running in fear as the walkers turn to face them and begin to pursue. As they run through the streets, Hannah notices a vehicle and stops to check it after she notices keys in the ignition. However, she is surprised by a walker sitting in the backseat and is bitten on the arm before she shoots it in the head with the handgun.
Realizing that she may not make it, and after seeing walkers begin to close in on them, she hands Jamie the handgun and orders her and Billy to run to the evacuation point as fast as they can. After telling them she loves them, they flee as fast as they can, while the walkers close the distance and begin to devour Hannah, tearing open her stomach...
Time passes, and the undead Hannah awakens, having been bisected. After some time taking in her surroundings, she begins to crawl away towards a nearby park...
Tropes:
- All There in the Manual: The series explains how Hannah ended up becoming half of herself, and how she ended up being mistaken for the "bicycle walker" by Rick in the pilot episode.
- And I Must Scream: Hannah is reduced to only her upper half, having been eaten from the stomach downwards by a pack of walkers. She reanimates soon after, and begins crawling slowly towards the park where she'll meet a police officer months later...
- Ascended Extra: Hannah went from a one-shot walker in the pilot episode to the protagonist of her own webisode series.
- Book Ends: "Everything dies... it's God's plan."
- Canon Immigrant: Calloway, one of the walkers that devours Hannah at the end of the webisodes, later appears as one of the zombies attacking Shane and Otis at the school in "Bloodletting" and "Save The Last One". Notably, Calloway (who is only identified by his namebadge and credit in the episodes) is one of only two walkers from the webisodes to make their way into the main series.
- Creepy Child: It's not clear if she's only lapsed into this or hit the Despair Event Horizon, but Jamie's disturbing reassurance to Billy that "everything dies" doesn't seem like very comforting big sister behavior.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Hannah is, well... torn apart, and ends up bisected and undead, futilely crawling around until she's eventually discovered by Rick in the pilot episode.
- Damned by Faint Praise: Mike's last words to Andrew:I never did like you... until now.
- Despair Event Horizon: Implied, as Jamie recites Hannah's Arc Words ("Everything dies... it's God's plan.") before running away with her brother and leaving their mother behind as she allows herself to be eaten by walkers.
- Devoured by the Horde: Andrew and Hannah meet this fate by the end of the episode.
- Doomed by Canon: Promos for the webisodes made it clear that the fate of the "bicycle walker" would be explained, putting Hannah squarely into this trope.
- Downer Ending: Nearly everyone seen in the webisode is dead, with the exception of Hannah's kids, who are last seen being told by her to run to the evacuation point. Given that said evacuation point (the refugee center) is later seen going up in flames — along with the rest of downtown Atlanta — in the main series, their fates don't look promising.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Like the first season, the webisodes show the first walker Hannah encounters practically run as it chases her down the street to Andrew's house.
- The undead Judy also displays enough intelligence not just to make it back to her own home and open the door, but knock over a wedding photo of herself and Andrew before the latter dispatches her.
- Eaten Alive: Andrew and Hannah.
- Failed a Spot Check: Hannah fails to notice the walker sitting in the back seat of a car she tries to use to escape, and pays for it by being bitten on the arm, prompting her decision to perform a Heroic Sacrifice.
- Fan Disservice: As a final act of indignity, the bisected Hannah is left with her blouse ripped open, displaying her decaying chest.
- Fatal Family Photo: Both before and after Andrew shoots the undead Judy, photos of her and Andrew's life as a married couple are seen.
- Ghost City: Played with. It's implied that the speed of the virus took out most of the residents in residential Georgia in minutes, as Judy is walking home blissfully unaware that anything is wrong until she finally notices that her entire neighbourhood has been abandoned.
- Gorn: In contrast to the majority of the episode, which consists of discretion shots, the horde graphically tears Hannah apart, with the walkers seen ripping her stomach open and eating her organs.
- Gutted Like a Fish: Hannah, by the horde.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Hannah lets herself be Devoured by the Horde to give her kids a chance to escape and reach the evacuation zone.
- It Can Think: Implied with Judy, who apparently retained enough awareness of her former self to make it back to her home and open the door before Andrew shoots her.
- Kill the Ones You Love: Mike was forced to do this to his wife; he can't bring himself to do it for his kids.
- How We Got Here: The webisodes explain the origin of the "bicycle walker", who Rick encounters in the pilot episode after he flees from the hospital.
- Named by the Adaptation: Whereas the comics never explained who the "bicycle walker" was, the webisodes give her a backstory and explanation for her circumstances.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Judy sees a woman, seemingly unconscious, laying on the street and attempts to perform mouth-to-mouth CPR on her. Unfortunately, the woman turns into a walker during this which leads to her being bitten on the tongue.
- No Help Is Coming: Played with, if the main series is taken into account. Hannah rushes with her kids to reach an evacuation point, which will bring survivors to a refugee center, after a military helicopter begins broadcasting overhead. In the main series, we find out in the area where the center would be, in downtown Atlanta, was firebombed by the military during Operation Cobalt.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The first installment begins with Hannah freaking out when she discovers that her children have fled the vehicle they were in after it crashed. Later, Mike tells Andrew that he had to deal with his wife and children getting infected and dying during his 50th birthday party.
- Room Full of Zombies: Andrew's ultimate fate, after he tries to retrieve the keys to a pickup truck from his neighbor's basement.
- Too Dumb to Live: Andrew goes into a neighbor's basement, with no flashlight and no light source, during a Zombie Apocalypse. It shouldn't be a surprise that he's besieged and Eaten Alive by walkers.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Jamie and Billy are last seen fleeing towards the evacuation point after Hannah tells them to run. It's unknown if they ever reached the evac zone, though the place they were supposed to be evacuated to (the refugee center) fell anyway, as seen in the flashback from "Chupacabra" (Operation Cobalt).
- Working with the Ex: Briefly, as Hannah works with her ex-husband, Andrew, to secure supplies after his then-current wife, Judy, dies and is locked in the garage.
