Police officer Rick Grimes leads a group of survivors in a world overrun by zombies.
TS-19
The pre-credit sequence is a flashback to the hospital where Rick Grimes was convalescing in a coma after his gunshot wound. His partner Shane was trying to get him out when the outbreak hits the hospital. Shane observes military personnel executing the patients, medical staff and walkers roaming the halls. He initially tries to carry Rick out, but Rick is attached to life support equipment. A soldier opens the door to the room, but Shane hides, and the comatose Rick is left alone. When the hospital loses power due to an explosion, the life support goes off. Shane checks Rick's heartbeat. Distraught, he exits into the hall. With walkers coming in from one side, and soldiers executing people on the another, Shane closes Rick's door and blocks it with a bed before making his escape.
Following the credits, the survivors have just been let into the CDC headquarters. They are confronted by Dr. Jenner, armed with an automatic rifle, who asks if any of them are infected and insists on a blood test as the price of entry. The survivors revel in the luxury of bountiful food, wine, and hot showers. During dinner Dr. Jenner sits off by himself, but answers their questions. Many of the CDC staff left early in the outbreak to look for their families, and that later — after the military cordon had been overrun — most of the rest committed suicide, leaving Jenner as the only researcher in the entire facility. He controls the facility by voice command to a central computer. Shane, drunk, confronts Lori to explain his actions, professes his love for her, and begins to force himself on her before she scratches his neck. Lori again accuses him of telling her long ago that Rick, her husband, had died at the hospital. Shane whines that he thought Rick had died, and that it was so dangerous at the hospital he had no chance to rescue Rick.
The next morning, Jenner shows the group clinical results from test subject 19 (TS-19), a person who was bitten by a walker and volunteered to be observed for research purposes as the infection took over. The time-lapse MRI video shows the disease attacking the subject's brain in a meningitis-like fashion, ultimately killing the victim, and then restarting the brainstem a few hours later to reanimate the body, but controlled by only basic urges. Jenner explains that the brain stem reanimates anywhere from a few minutes to 9 hours after death. Jenner states that the "Person you knew, is gone. There is nothing left of them." The frontal cortex and all other parts of the brain that make a person who they are, are dead. This helps cement the knowledge that the walkers are indeed "The Walking Dead" and nothing that made up the individual before remains.
Jenner reveals that a similar fate probably met all the other research facilities in the world. "The French" had come the closest to finding a cure for the plague, before all communication was lost. No one knows what the plague really is. The others are shocked to learn that there is probably no civilization left anywhere in the world, and are devastated. Jenner then reveals that the facility will run out of power in about an hour, at which time automatic decontamination procedures will commence. The group confirms that the last gasoline tank is running dry, as the power begins to go off. Since the facility was designed to isolate unimaginably dangerous diseases, if it can't power itself it automatically destroys everything inside so that no diseases will get out. "The air will burn" and an incredibly powerful explosion will destroy everything. As they confront Jenner about their fate, Jenner seals them in the main room underground, and tells them that the decontamination procedure will mean the destruction of everything inside the facility — offering an instant and painless death to everyone inside. It also is revealed that TS-19 was his wife, the facility's head researcher, and a brilliant woman.
Rick and Lori plead for the doors to be opened; Daryl and Shane try to go after Jenner and force him to open the doors. He relents because they know if they kill him they will not get the combination to open the doors then all of them would indeed die. Finally, with less than five minutes remaining, Jenner opens the doors after Rick's pleading with him to let them at least "try" to overcome this tragedy and not be forced to die. Two of the survivors, Jacqui and Andrea, choose to stay behind, but Dale refuses to leave without Andrea. Before Grimes leaves, Jenner (who had already decided to stay behind) whispers something to him. The rest of the group heads for the exits, using a grenade (Rick had taken as an afterthought from the tank in Atlanta) to blow out one of the front windows, and fight their way to their vehicles through several walkers. Andrea and Dale emerge from the building moments before the building detonates; Jacqui stays inside with Dr. Jenner. As the episode ends, the survivors form a vehicular convoy and leave the area, heading to an army fort they hope will still be operational, while a massive column of smoke and flame marks the place where the CDC building had stood.
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