The Walking Dead – One More

By: Kelly Kearney

In the third of the six bonus episodes of The Walking Dead finds Aaron and Gabriel teaming up for a food and supply run. Apparently, when the Whisperers and their horde went over the cliff in 10B they must have taken all the available wildlife with them because now our survivors are forced to go out further past their community boundaries for anything they can find. After two weeks of searching and still coming up empty, Aaron and Gabe come upon a warehouse where they not only find food and shelter but the meaning of their continued existences in this world.

Maggie’s Map

Having hunted and searched through every bit of land surrounding Alexandria, Aaron (Ross Marquand) and Gabe (Seth Gilliam) follow a map given to them by Maggie that points out places beyond the community boundaries. If there is any food or supplies left in the region, the map might lead them to it. After two weeks of checking out each point Maggie highlighted, they still have not had any luck. It’s just one ransacked car, burnt down house or empty store after another and the disappointment and the exhaustion is painfully revealed on their faces. If there is beauty left in this world it is hidden beneath the blood splatter of every battle they have embarked on and, unfortunately, this search is no different. Standing in a meadow of flowers dripping in gore, Gabe winds up a kitchen timer and tosses it into the overgrown landscape like a ticking bomb. The ringing wakes the dead (do zombies even sleep?) and the two men easily dispose of the pack like cockroaches under a heavy boot. The dead are still a threat but far more manageable now that they are less in numbers and rotting faster than garbage on a hot Summer day. Exhaustion is an understatement and, after two fruitless weeks of searching, Aaron is over it. All he wants to do is hug his daughter, Gracie, but there is no rest for the wicked and according to Gabe, the wicked are all that’s left on Earth.

After a brief disagreement over whether or not to give up, Gabriel (who is still faithfully following Maggie’s map) walks directly into a filthy walker who tosses him into a mud pit. Dripping in grime and the map ruined, they have no choice but to try and follow their footsteps back to the path home. Cue the rainstorm and any hope of following their tracks goes right out the window. Luckily, they spot a mysterious warehouse that was never mentioned on the map. Without any other options and the night quickly catching up to them, Aaron and Gabe head to the would-be shelter hoping it is not only a safe place to rest but might be the jackpot of food and supplies they have been looking for.

Food, drink and Deep Conversations

After climbing on the roof looking for entrance inside, Gabe spots a horrific scene of dead bodies tied up and two cuddling together next to a hand painted sign that reads “SAVE US.” Eventually, the two make it inside the warehouse where they immediately notice some signs of life. Scattered among the empty boxes and rotten food, Gabe finds a Bible with missing pages, just as Aaron hears a rustling behind an inside door. While Gabe is glancing through the Bible, Aaron takes off to check out the ruckus, assuming it is a walker trying to get out. When he lets out a high-pitched scream, Gabe runs to find him and cannot help himself from laughing when he sees his traveling mate standing over a freshly slaughtered wild boar. Sure, Aaron screamed like a schoolgirl, but at least they found themselves a bacon dinner! And that’s not all, they must have hit a lucky streak because Gabriel finds a $2,000 bottle of whiskey in one of the boxes. After the two weeks they have had, the men have earned a night of food and drinking and they are not about to let either go to waste. Gabriel takes it upon himself to show Aaron the finer points of whiskey sniffing and slurping and then they embark on some good old-fashioned drinking and gambling. The cards are out and after a few hours the bottle is empty. They haven’t had a stress-free fun night like this since…Well…maybe since the turn. Blowing off steam was exactly what the doctor ordered. Their mood is a joyous one.

After a few hours of pickling their brains on the Kentucky’s liquid gold, they settle in for a late-night conversation on faith and why it’s pointless in this new world. Always hopeful, Aaron does not allow Gabe’s negativity to get him down since he assumes things will return to their pre-Whisperer normal soon enough. Gabe laughs that off because everything has changed since that bald headed skin freak entered their realm. His faith has been destroyed and Aaron wonders if maybe that’s due to the preacher suffering from some kind of post-war PTSD. He tries convincing The Father that he needs to return to his holy calling because people still need reminding that there is goodness left in the world. Gabe does not see it that way and is done with salvation, claiming “evil people aren’t the exception to the rule; they are the rule.” For him, there is no point in trying to save those who were never meant to be saved. On that depressing note, Aaron heads outside to break the proverbial seal, while Gabriel falls into a blissfully drunken slumber. When he wakes, he finds Aaron gone but he isn’t alone. A man (Robert Patrick) dressed in a hooded cloak glares at him from the back of the warehouse. Where is Aaron, who is this man and what does he want? We quickly find out that the warehouse is his hideout and that dinner and whiskey Aaron and Gabe feasted on belonged to him! Holding a gun on Gabriel he orders him to take a seat. He tells him that he not only spied on them all night, but that he isn’t interested in whatever fatherly advice the preacher has for him. In fact, he admits that he has been using The Bible pages as toilet paper – that is how much he cares about the word of God. Slightly offended by that DIY hack, Gabe tells him that he might learn something if he reads it, but the mystery man says he has read it and that is why he wipes his backside with it. It looks like the faithless preacher just met his faithless match!

Let’s Play a Game

After a night of listening to their drunken debates over good and evil, the man decides to prove Gabe right about this world; it wasn’t made for the decent but abandoned and left to the wicked. He drags a tied-up Aaron from another room and sits him across the table from Gabe. Pulling out a six-chamber gun along with one bullet, the man loads the weapon and tells his two hostages the rules of the game. They can pull the trigger on themselves or they can aim it at each other, but only one of them is going home alive. A little Russian Roulette will force them to see that mankind is evil and it thrives in this kill or be killed world.

After three intense rounds of both men pulling the trigger on themselves, Aaron asks their captor why they are being put through this. They are good people, family actually, and not murderers or thieves. They cannot be forced to turn on each other. Family is a triggering word for this man and it prompts him to tell them his own story of “family” and what his brother did to him. He started the turn with his brother and his family, but things went south when that brother tried to stab him over some food. He wears the scar on his face to prove that loyalty doesn’t exist in this world. Gabriel, who assumes the dead couple he saw on the roof were his brother and his family, confronts him over how he handled the sibling dispute. There is no justification for murdering your own blood, but I guess you had to be there because this ticks the already angry man off. He orders Aaron to pull the trigger and finish the next round of the deadly game, but when he cocks the gun they all hear the chamber load with the bullet. The next shot will be a deadly one and now Aaron is faced with the choice of never seeing his daughter again or killing Gabriel. Screaming, he holds the gun to his own head, knowing that there is no turning back. Just as he is about to end his own life the man stops Aaron from committing suicide. The man is outraged over his captives proving him wrong and that is when Gabe pleads with him to “remember who you were” before the turn made him into a desperate killer. Gabriel explains that they have come across others like him, desperate, hungry, angry at a world that made killing as common place as a shot of whiskey after a hard day. This world has broken even the best people, even preachers, but there is still hope and their community is proof of it. Good still exists in this world and there could be a place in their home for this man. This revelation seems to calm the man down. He cuts Aaron loose from his wrist binds and turns to Gabe and says “Mays…my name is Mays.” As he turns his head to address a now freed Aaron, Gabe comes out of nowhere and strikes Mays down with Aaron’s metal arm! Blood sprays them both on the face as Mays falls to the floor dead. So much for that goodness still existing in the world! Aaron is stunned, but Gabe just shrugs off the murder as something that had to be done to ensure the safety of their own family back home. Unfortunately, for Father Executioner, he judged the entire brother situation all wrong because Mays’s brother is still alive! They figure this out when they search the warehouse for any other supplies they can bring home.

Coming upon a trap door they open it to find it leads to a secret room where Mays must have hidden during their bacon dinner. In that secret room they find Mays’ twin brother (Robert Patrick) chained to a pipe and staring at his rotting wife and child. Offering their help, they try to free the disheveled man, but the crazed hostage manages to steal Mays’ gun from Gabe and turning it on himself. One shot from the chamber Aaron loaded and the brother falls to the ground dead. The twins came into the world together and they left it together. His death bookends an entire day of deadly self-reflection and the two leave the warehouse, passing by a photo of the twins taken in happier times. Once outside they spot a water tower not far off in the distance. It’s another check point from Maggie’s map, but after the night they had, are they up for more searching? Aaron, who was ready to go home before they entered the warehouse turns to Gabe and asks, “One more?” He nods and the two men head towards the tower with renewed hope for a successful scavenger hunt in this barren wasteland run by the dead.