Z Nation: Fracking Zombies Recap

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Z Nation: Fracking Zombies (1×02)

Synopsis: That’s not an oil refinery, that’s a zombie factory!

Rating: ★★★★☆

We pick back up with Citizen Z, who is frantically trying to get in touch with the California lab that Murphy and the rest of the gang are headed towards. Unfortunately, they’ve been breached by zombies and his choices are to save the people, but lose all the data on the vaccine… which he ultimately appears to do. After he fries the data, Citizen Z can’t get in touch with Mount Wilson or Delta Xray Delta and is starting to lose it when he notices a dog sled outside the facility.

The rolling caravan is on the move, but they’re catching up with their own problems – they’re running out of gas and the cars in the area have already been picked over. Some bikers roll by and Cassandra does her best to look inconspicuous. We learn the mysterious sniper boy’s name is Ten Thousand – named himself for how many zombies he’s going to kill – and when he’s done with that mission, he’ll be Jeff. One of the bikers from earlier, Travis, is in the cars that they’re scavenging from. He tells them his bike was taken and offers them the place where the caravan can fill up, a refinery that was overrun on day one, so there’s definitely gas there.

Citizen Z heads out into the snow to check out the dog sled, only to find it’s unmoving, but he does manage to find one of the dogs still alive! He brings in the dog, but also finds a zombie dog managed to get in as well. The real dog gets away and he fails to shoot the zombie dog – both run off and Z goes after them.

When they pull up to the refinery, it’s definitely overrun and we get a “fracking zombies” line. There’s a loud bang that’s happening somewhere and drawing the zombies in. While they’re devising a plan, Cassandra informs them that zombies like high pitched, musical sounds, and shows them with a musical box jingle on a necklace. This makes Cassandra the decoy and Travis her assistant while they fill up an entire tanker’s worth of gas to get all the way to California. For safety and protection, Murphy and Doc get in the car and keep their distance.

Travis refers to Cassandra as Sunshine and mentions a mysterious Tobias and the family. He’s been tasked with bringing her back, but she’s already doing her best to get him eaten by zombies and away from her. Meanwhile Addy and Mack are tasked with stopping the sound, ultimately having to sacrifice Addy’s bat to stop the machine from making noise. They notice that, as the zombies get to the top where the sound is coming from, they fall down a shaft into the oil and the tank is literally full of zombies.

Meanwhile, Murphy and Doc are still hanging out in the SUV playing cards. He lies to Doc and tells him he volunteered to get the treatment, with flashbacks to his panicking before the procedure. He got the vaccine and then he got bitten and says he blacked out, so he doesn’t remember any of it and Hammond “rescued” him and they’ve been on the run. But when some stray zombies start to walk by the vehicle, he begins to panic, drawing more attention to the both of them. Doc ends up getting out of the car to kill the zombies so Murphy will chill the hell out about them just kind of minding their own business out there.

Cassandra is listening to Travis hatch a plan to take the tanker once it’s finished being filled up and go home to the family. He threatens to tell Garnett’s group ‘what she is.’ Meanwhile, the oil soaked zombies start falling out of the tank and heading towards Garnett and Warren, who can’t get the hose off of the tanker.

Doc is outside of the SUV killing zombies, with a little help from 10K and a slingshot, but it’s not enough for Murphy. He panics enough to climb into the driver’s seat and take off in the SUV in a frantic attempt to get the zombies off the car. He ends up crashing near Garnett and Warren, who are forced to abandon the tanker due to his stupidity.

Running from Travis, Cassandra hits a dead end and he tases her. Hinting at her past, she reminds him that she’s used to being tased and ends up kicking him from off of the rigging to the ground, where he’s attacked by zombies. She also drops her music box necklace with it, which seems like a terrible waste.

At Camp Northern Light, Citizen Z is crawling through the camp and continually failing to shoot the zombie dog. As the situation grows dire and the zombie dog attacks the healthy one, he has no choice but to man up and kill it. Finally.

The sparks from Murphy’s car crash ignite some gas and the whole tanker ends up exploding, making all of their efforts wasted. However, it does throw up the signal to Citizen Z who manages to get back in touch with them and updates them on the status of Mount Wilson. Delta Xray Delta is back on, they just have to go west until they hit the ocean.

Another explosion brings Addy’s bat conveniently back to her just before they leave the scene, 10K running up with a few cans of gas and saving the day just that little bit. They clear out before two bikers show up and give Travis mercy, noticing the necklace. This is not the last time we’ll see them, I’m sure.

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