Fear the Walking Dead 404 recap: Buried

How will the group carry on without Nick? Here’s what happens in Fear the Walking Dead season 4 episode 4, “Buried.”

We start out this week with the SWAT van going down the road. Luciana is reliving the moment she had to put Nick down before he turned. Alicia was the one who killed Ennis. Strand covered Nick’s body with his coat.

Strand tells Al that he wants to get this over with. She says they can wait. Nick’s body is on the floor of the van. She starts out with “How did you end up here?” and he struggles to find words. Luciana says that there was a point when they could have stopped it all from happening. They’re going to start there.

Cue the credits. This week it’s the same scene, but the image glitches as if seen through the lens of a video camera.

Luciana starts to tell the story. She flashes back to seeing the Vultures pull up with more food while the ballpark is stretching out their rations by adding cattle feed to their food. (Strand adds that cattle feed is definitely “an acquired taste”) In the flashback, Strand offers to give Luciana some syrup but she says to save it. Madison says that she has been studying the maps and has some ideas about new places to scout.

Strand says that going on runs was their first mistake. In his flashback we see Strand and Cole in a nursery. Cole says he went to Texas A&M and studied plants so he can help figure out what they could eat. He’s trying to get to know Strand, who resists his advances. Al asks him if he was afraid of Cole’s advances, but he wasn’t. Back in the past, a group of Infected emerges from the back of the nursery and Strand fights them off. One of them gets too close to Cole, who ends up getting stuck with a bunch of cactus needles.

Nick and Luciana end up at another spot: The library. Luciana doesn’t think the library will have food. She admits to Al that she only went because she wanted to make Nick happy. As they go inside, Nick looks around and then takes a poster with a cat on a rope. “Hang in there” the poster says. He is looking for books for the library he has planned at the ballpark. Luciana realizes that he’s doing this for Charlie. Luciana knows how Charlie felt because that’s how she felt at the Colonia, and she knows that Nick’s way won’t help her. Al asks how she knows it. Luciana notes that Charlie killed Nick.

John is driving and he tells Morgan he was a police officer. He says he knew a guy on the force who used to drink a bottle of whisky every night, but then after a close call everything changed. John says that it takes more than that to change, and he guesses that Morgan will leave as soon as they bury Nick. He tells John he’s going to find the woman he’s looking for. He wants her to meet them. Morgan admits he’s going to leave once Nick is buried. He’s better off alone.

Al tells Alicia they can stop if it’s too much. Alicia isn’t stopping, though. She tells a story about her trip to an old water park with Naomi. They both used to enjoy water parks and their churros. The two women find a nice car that Naomi says has a big gas tank. No keys, though. Alicia asks how she knows about cars, and Naomi admits she doesn’t really know that much. They continue on and see that people were living in the park until their fences were destroyed. There are bodies all over, and the water is putrid. It’s creepy seeing the theme park’s happy signage, with Infected walking around. They kill the ones walking around, and then the spot a house built on top of one of the slides. It’s barricaded with heaps of garbage. They make their way to the top of the slide, discussing the numbers of churros they had eaten.

Strand continues his story. He says there was a reason he and Cole never went on a run. He tells Cole he actually does like him, and he shows him the piece of cement that reminds him of the stuff he has done. It’s not just a piece of rock.

Al asks Alicia if going on the run with Naomi brought them closer together. It did, because they were the only ones still alive. As they made their way through the putrid water, the Infected chase them. Alicia loses her knife as she jumps onto the slide. The Infected gather at the mouth of the slide and wait for them. They walk up the water slide. It’s slippery, but they make it to the top and find a little living area full of weapons and coolers. One of the Infected pops out and Naomi falls backward into the giant toilet slide, where Infected are gathered in the opening. Alicia soon follows, but she has a pipe that she uses to kill them. Al asks about the pipe, because Alicia still has it. She sharpened it to a point “later.”

As the women go back to the little house, they find medical equipment. Naomi says they need as much as they can grab. While she packs, Naomi tells Alicia to check the surrounding area with the binoculars. But when Alicia turns around, Naomi is gone. Al asks if she ran. “We’re all running,” Strand says.

Cole and Strand arrive at a junkyard and Strand reveals that he has been storing stuff in a car. There’s enough for two people for a month. Cole says that there are people who need food at the ballpark. Strand says that this is what he used to do, and he wants to survive. If Cole wants to know him, this is who he is. Cole says he can’t do what Strand proposes. Strand isn’t surprised. Cole takes the car to drive himself back.

Al asks if Strand thinks it’s all his fault. Alicia says he wasn’t the only one who thought about leaving.

Naomi runs to the car and starts to drive away, but then the car stops. It’s out of gas. Alicia walks up and says this is the second time Naomi has tried to run. Naomi says she can’t do it again. She can’t try to keep “this” going. Alicia reveals she went off on her own once and realized it wasn’t where she wanted to be. She goes off to find gas.

Luciana also thought about leaving. They all did. She tells Nick that they have to go, but he keeps looking. They find an Infected tied up with a bunch of bloody books. Once he’s dead, Nick sees that he cut his wrists. Luciana finds a map of the area and grabs it. As they leave, she and Nick argue about staying in the area. She proposes that they leave and go to the first place their find on the map. Al asks what page it opened to, wondering if that’s how they ended up here. Luciana says she never should have opened the book.

Madison works on her maps and looks out over the parking lot, looking for her people to come back. Mel waves at her and points to the radio. She calls him, and he asks her for some relish. She walks out, and he thinks they used up the condiments already because they mask the taste of what they don’t want to eat. He asks where they are going, and he mentions that her people might not come back. She doesn’t think that at all. He tells her where he came from before the bus. His family’s ranch was nice, until some wildfires hit. She interrupts, saying she knows how it ends. No one would listen to him, so they left. She says her offer still stands. They can all live peacefully together, and he says that’s why the ballpark would fall. His offer still stands, too, but she got the story wrong: He convinced his people to stay there, and when the fires got close they left. He could hear them dying.

Al realizes that day was so important because it marks the day they all decided to leave the stadium.

Luciana has her map, Strand’s car is packed. Naomi tells Alicia about her time in the ER and ICU. She knows how you can tell who will last. She insists that they talk to Madison because this won’t last. Alicia says she will talk to her.

Strand says Al is wrong about that day. That’s not how it happened. 

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Madison runs out to find Cole in an empty car. The gate opens and Strand drives in with his supplies. Al asks why he came back. Strand says he got a reminder of what he could lose again if he left. Al asks what the reaction was to his escape plan. Madison is thrilled by their findings, but he admits that he didn’t tell her the truth about it.

Al asks about the map, and Luciana says they were looking North. But Nick has an idea. They return with the map and he wants to go out farther than before. There’s a meat plant where they can get seeds and fertilizer to rebuild their crops.

Alicia finds Madison and says they need to talk. She brings Naomi back to talk to her. Madison likes the new car, and Naomi says that they need to build an infirmary.

Al presses for more information and they all reveal that they should have left. They should have done what they were going to do instead of returning to the stadium. If they had, Nick would be alive. Al puts down the camera and sighs.

The van rolls to a stop and they all get out. John asks if this is the place, and Strand says it is. They start digging, and John wants to know why they picked this empty field. They dig, and then they reveal a cache of weapons and supplies. Al feels betrayed but Strand says they answered her questions. They have a map of where Ennis was going. Alicia says they still have a lot of story to tell. Strand says that this is a chance to see how this ends. John tells Al not to take them, but Al tells them to load it all up. Morgan wants to know what they’re going to do with Nick, and they’re going to bury him in the field. Morgan proposes a better spot since he liked growing things. They bury him under a tree and pause to pay their respects. Morgan lays some bluebonnets on the grave, and then they go back to the truck.

John watches as they load up. He spots a backpack that belonged to Laura.

We return to the ballpark, where Naomi unpacks her bag. She has the gun packed carefully in her bag.

John finds the gun and realizes that Laura’s real name was Naomi. Luciana says that Naomi didn’t make it out of the stadium when things went wrong. “She’s dead,” Luciana says. He doesn’t believe her. Strand says that the story ended with John getting hurt. Alicia says the Vultures did it and they will end it. Morgan tries to talk to him, but he needs a moment. Al goes to him and says she’ll find out what happened. She promises to come back for him. Morgan is going to stay with him.

The SWAT van drives off, leaving the two men on the road in the middle of the night. Morgan tells John he’s sorry for his loss. John says Morgan was right and that they’re always on their own.

Fear the Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9pm on AMC.