Fear The Walking Dead theory: Alicia is NOT infected

The first half of season seven of Fear The Walking Dead built to a massive revelation to everyone in the show and the viewers. Alicia has become infected with the zombie virus. But, what if she ISN’T infected?

The midseason finale took us through Alicia’s days immediately following her imprisonment in the Franklin Hotel’s nuclear bunker by Teddy Maddox. From her first moments of being left at the bunker (Wherein she was nearly fed to a walker by Teddy’s loyalists). Then up to the point where she exiled her only real friend inside the bunker, Will, after he failed to carry out her request to be put down in the event her condition took a turn for the worse.

In between, we saw Alicia (With Will’s help) attempt to use the walker of Will’s boss, Senator Elias Vasquez, to try to find an escape route out of the bunker and to a mysterious location the U.S. government had created to try to rebuild the nation from after a major disaster. This process revolved around using the senator’s walker to follow a rat out of the drainage tunnels beneath the bunker back to the outside world.

However, in the midst of this, Teddy launched his nuclear strike. The resulting tremors caused Alicia and Will to be separated and trapped inside the tunnel, with nothing but a bit of rubble separating Alicia from the senator. While trying to communicate with Will through the cave-in separating them, she was bitten on the left wrist by the senator and forced to amputate her arm up to the elbow. When she awoke days later from her fever, she remained ill, her arm slowly drained of pus.

Fear The Walking Dead Theory: Alicia is infected, but NOT with the zombie virus.

As was obvious to anyone who saw the Fear The Walking Dead midseason finale, Alicia was sick. She looked pale, tired, feverish, and her arm took weeks to be drained of all the fluid collecting in it; To assume her not sick would be foolish.

However, it’s been a long time since she was bitten, hasn’t it? If we were to assume she’s infected, it would mean she’s fought off the virus longer than anyone we’ve seen in the Walking Dead universe.

Off the top of my head, the longest stretch I can remember anyone going from bite to infection was maybe a day and a half. If you recall, in the first season of The Walking Dead, one of the original Atlanta survivors, Jim, was bitten on the ribs by a walker during the attack, which resulted in the deaths of Ed (Carol’s husband) and Amy (Andrea’s sister). The following episode covered the aftermath, not only the morning after the attack but the rest of that day and into the afternoon of the next day. That is, if we’re being generous, thirty-six hours from bite to death.

Now, let’s seriously take a step back and look at how long it’s been since Alicia was bitten, using our best metric: Will. According to Will in the first episode, “The Beacon,” he had been exiled from the Franklin for over fifty days, and he had been maintaining vigil over Alicia for close to a week, assuming Alicia is infected, she would have been so for two months.

No one has been infected for that long without turning. You could argue that she might be developing an immunity to the virus, but this would seem unlikely, as she is clearly not holding up very well and convinced that she’s going to die in a matter of days.

What I think is more likely is the very thing that Will suggested. With Alicia having to amputate her arm inside a dirty, dusty, rat-infested drainage tunnel surrounded by rubble and using a reasonably dirty gun shroud to carry out the deed, she caught an infection from either the environment she had to do the amputation in or the tool she had to do the amputation with. While both could easily be fatal and take a long time to fight off if untreated, neither are the zombie virus. I think that if she can get antibiotics or more skilled medical treatment, she could recover, assuming she doesn’t get herself killed fighting Strand first.

But, what do you think? Do you think Alicia is still infected with the zombie virus, or do you think she cut off her arm in time? Do you think that Alicia is infected with some other disease that, while lethal, is not incurable? I’m curious to hear! And, if you enjoyed this and want to learn how to stay alive in a zombie apocalypse, why not pick up a copy of my book, The Rules: A Guide To Surviving The Zombie Apocalypse! You can also get it at Amazon here, on iTunes here!