Chupacabra

"Chupacabra" is the fifth episode of Season 2 of The Walking Dead.

Plot Synopsis
Shortly after the Outbreak, in the day that the military abandoned the students in the middle of a zombie attack, Diana escapes into the middle of the woods with her boyfriend and her best friend, Inês. Cristina is frozen in fear, crying. Alexis grabs her and tells that they need to go as she says that the walkers were eating her boyfriend. Fábio quickly helps Alexis and takes them with him, Diana and Inês.

After running in the middle of the woods for a while, they get lost and Inês starts breathing heavilly. Diana sits her down behind a tree to get her to calm down as a walker appears behind them. Suddenly, someone shoots the walker who almost bit Cristina, who is supposed to be Otis, even though it is not shown.

In the present, at Greene Farm, Cristina wakes up late in her room, instantly feeling guilty about it. She joins Cassandra outside who has already started the chores, and Cassandra asks if she's feeling alright and Cristina tells her that she's fine.

Cassandra asks Cristina if she'd help her prepare the evening meal for Hershel and his family to thank them for taking in the survivors. It's something else to keep her mind occupied with Ana still missing, she admits.

Meanwhile, Daniel is preparing the search grid with Paquete, Gonçalo, Kiko, and Johanne. Jimmy, Beth Greene’s boyfriend, offers to search with them because he says he knows the area well, saying that Hershel said it was okay. But he doesn't have a gun, and Paquete says he'll be useless until he joins the group for gun training, so Kiko offers for him to go with him. Gonçalo plans to set out on horseback alone to look for Ana, believing he can spot her better from the ridge.

Kiko jokes that today might be the day that Gonçalo will see his chupacabra, and while Jimmy chokes down a laugh, Johanne fills Daniel in on the time Gonçalo said he saw a chupacabra - one of the first stories about himself that he revealed to the Atlanta survivors. "You believe in a bloodsucking dog?" Daniel asks, and Gonçalo shoots back, "Do you believe in dead people walking around?"

Before heading into the woods to search for Ana, Kiko discuss with Maggie what happened at the pharmacy. Maggie admits that she doesn't like him, explaining that she was just feeling lonely. and tells Kiko to leave her alone as she walks away.

While searching for Ana, Paquete tells Johanne that the group should move, because he thinks that the group won't find Ana, believing that she's already dead. "Ana, alive or dead, only matters to the degree in which she doesn't drag the rest of us down," he says, reminding her that Sophia almost died, and Otis did die, as they accidentally wander into Daniel's search grid on their thankless search.

Gonçalo is riding one of Hershel's horses through the woods when he spots something by the water. He parks the horse and climbs down, finding Ana's doll, tattered and wet, against a log. He calls Ana's name, to no avail.

Taking the doll with him, he gets back on the horse and continues through the woods.

At the farm, Kiko, who had already returned with Jimmy and no clues about Ana, confronts Cristina at the tents and confirms she's pregnant. She begs him not to tell anyone. Kiko is stunned that she hasn't told her friends yet, and asks her who's the father, as she replies that it's her former boyfriend.

Daniel returns from the woods without Ana. Beth goes to him to tell Daniel that her father, Hershel, wants to speak with him.

Daniel finds Hershel by the generator, and he informs Daniel that Gonçalo took one of his horses without consent, and Daniel informs him that he took Jimmy at his word when he said that Hershel was fine with him going out into the woods that day - but Hershel hadn't consented to that, either. Daniel concedes that they need to work on their communication, and Hershel requests he keep it simple: "I'll control my people, you control yours."

Cristina, Leandra, Cassandra, Beth, and Patricia work to cook dinner in the farmhouse kitchen. Cassandra says she never thought she'd be so happy to see a potato, while Leandra notes she's just thrilled not to be roasting squirrels over a fire again tonight. But their presence in the kitchen irritates Hershel.

He tells Maggie, who's setting the table, that he thinks they need to set clear boundaries with Daniel's people, and she says she doesn’t understand why it’s a problem. "It's just dinner," she shrugs. Disconcerted, he asks about Kiko. She tells him she has nothing with Kiko, and she asks him not to make her chase him around like he does with Beth and Jimmy. She replies that she's not 16, and he doesn't need to chase her around. He tells her not to get close to him, reminding her that the survivors won't be around forever and she tells him that she doesn't care about Kiko.

Paquete heads inside the RV, where he finds Kiko. Kiko asks if Paquete thinks Cassandra's on her period, as Paquete tries to make him keep his voice down. Kiko tells him that all the women are acting weird around camp, and that he read somewhere once that when women spend a lot of time together, their cycles line up. Paquete, forces him to back up. "Who else is acting weird?" he asks.

"Maggie," Kiko replies, "Man, we had sex! And now she's acting all weird like nothing ever happened," adding, "And I don't even want to know what's going on with Cristina." Paquete congratulates him for having sex with Maggie and then asks him why he thinks Cristina is acting weird.

Later, Kiko, who was on watch with a rifle, spots a lone walker emerging from the woods. He peers through a pair of binoculars, as the sun's reflection beams off the glass.

Daniel orders him to put the gun down, and Paquete tells Kiko, "You best let us handle this." Daniel tells the group that Hershel wants to deal with walkers on his land but Paquete and Fábio grab weapons and run towards the woods. Daniel follows, brandishing his gun, but when the men come upon the supposed walker, they realize that it's Gonçalo, covered in dirt, revealing that the horse ran away.

Staring down the group, Gonçalo tells Daniel to put his gun down. Daniel lowers his gun but Kiko takes his shot from the top of the RV, luckily missing Gonçalo.

Cassandra, Cristina, Leandra, Carina, Caramelo, Bruno, Cristiana, Mariana, Ruth and Hershel's family run screaming from the farmhouse at the sound of the gunshot, demanding to know what's going on. Kiko runs towards the group in the field, pleading that Gonçalo's not dead. As he gets there Gonçalo tells him that he was lucky "you're a really bad shooter". Gonçalo shows the doll he found to the group. Daniel doesn't know for sure if it was a sign of hope or rejection.

Hershel's still annoyed that Gonçalo took his horse, which is now missing. "She must have dropped it crossing the creek somewhere," Gonçalo reasons about the doll, cutting their search grid in half and giving Daniel hope. Paquete, though, thinks that the doll is no sign that Ana's still alive, but Daniel doesn't want to hear it.

Johanne hears them, and when Daniel walks off, Paquete defends himself to her. "I'm not out to be a hard case. Just being realistic. He's gotta start making the tough calls if he's now the new leader of this group."

Johanne says she may not agree with all of Daniel's choices, but she respects his choices. Paquete says that all he cares about now is her, so he doesn't care if he's not thinking about the needs of others, even if it means abandoning a lost child. Disgusted, Johanne stalks off.

That evening as Sophia sleeps, recovering from her injuries, Johanne sits alone at his bedside. Cristina enters the room to tell her dinner's ready, not at all surprised to find her crying in the world they live in. She doesn't pry, and Johanne wipes away her tears to had down for dinner.

The two groups sit down to a silent, awkward dinner, and Kiko tries to cut the tension asking if anyone knows how to play guitar because of the one he found at the traffic snarl. "Otis did," Patricia says softly, and the silence drones on.

Maggie passes Kiko a note under the table. "Tonight where?" it reads, and he looks up, smiling at her. He excitedly scrawls something on the paper, which can be heard throughout the dining room as no one says a word to one another. Hershel looks on disapprovingly.

Beth and Maggie are cleaning dishes after dinner, and Maggie sneaks away to read Kiko's note. "Ever done it in a hayloft?" it says, and Maggie's eyes go wide. Kiko is at the barn with a flashlight and a sleeping bag, finding the barn door chained and padlocked. He walks around the barn and finds a ladder into the hayloft, while Maggie runs desperately towards the barn.

Once inside the barn, Kiko catches a whiff of a rancid smell, and shines his flashlight towards the barn floor when he hears the familiar growls. There are dozens of walkers below, reaching up for him hungrily. He runs fearfully for the door and right into Maggie, who says regretfully, "You weren't supposed to see this."

Deaths

 * None

Trivia

 * The name of the episode, "Chupacabra," may refer to the fact that on his first night in the camp outside of Atlanta, Gonçalo claims he once saw a chupacabra while hunting.
 * This Cover features Gonçalo.
 * It's the first cover where Gonçalo appears alone.
 * This cover might have been used to match with the name of the episode wich is also about Gonçalo. It may also be about Gonçalo's search for Ana.
 * This episode was filmed at the Cochran Mill Nature Center, in Palmetto, Georgia.