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The Walkers in Skin, Episode 08.5

A session of The Walkers in Skin that was played but never recorded, in which the team finds horses, calls in the National Guard and retakes the Roosevelt police station.
Arc The Walkers in Skin
Episode "08.5" (played between episodes 08 and 09)
Setting Ballard and Roosevelt, Utah
In-fiction date November 1992, between the morning of Walkers 08 and the evening of Walkers 09
Previous Walkers 08
Next Walkers 09

Unrecorded session

This session was played but never recorded. No recording of it exists, so there are no quotes and no dice results. What happened in it is known only from Walkers 09: Andre's recap at the start of that episode, and things the players and their characters say later in it. See Lost episodes.

Synopsis

Walkers 08 ended with the team cut off: phones and power out, every car in Roosevelt stolen, and the only road held by armed impostors at the bridge blockade. Walkers 09 opens with the team riding in a National Guard convoy toward the community center. This session covered everything in between. (Walkers 08, Walkers 09)

What later episodes establish

Andre's recap

At the start of Walkers 09, Andre recaps the session in order. (Walkers 09)

  • The team "went and got some horses" so that they could get around the roadblock.
  • They took a generator to the radio station and called the National Guard.
  • They met the Guard, on horseback, outside town.
  • They rode back and fought their way through "the road barricade in between Ballard and Roosevelt".
  • They breached and cleared the Roosevelt police station.
  • The session ended with a plan to go back to the community center "to find out what's going on".

Details mentioned during Walkers 09

  • The X marks. The team marked themselves with X's so that they could be told from copies. When Zack asks, "Did we put X's on ourselves?", the whole table confirms it. (Walkers 09)
  • The Guard. The detachment is led by the major and travels in Humvees and APCs. The team had warned the Guard about the ranch phenomenon only in passing: Rita recalls "an offhand comment" that they should keep the horses, and the major still needs the lifting of vehicles explained to him in the finale. (Walkers 09)
  • Riders. People from Bigelow's ranch ride with the convoy on horseback, Walt "Coyote" Murphy among them. Huell Kendrick and "Andrew" shared a horse ("We rode a horse together, Howard"), and "Andrew" rode in the major's Humvee for "the confrontation". (Walkers 09)
  • The police station. Something escaped through a window while the team was clearing the station. In the finale Kurt works out what it was: "Oh, you're what escaped through the window." Donald McManley, his interns and a handful of Guardsmen were left at the station, where the Guardsmen helped with autopsies; the team collects them at the end of the finale. (Walkers 09)
  • Injuries. Huell came out of the session badly hurt. In the finale Zack finds he is unstable and one harm from dying because of "injuries last time". (Walkers 09)

The two Andrews

The Andrew who rode with the team in this session was the replica that Rita had been secretly playing since the end of the gym scene in Walkers 07. It wore an X like everyone else, and at the start of the finale the other characters still trust it. By then its bruises have worsened and its skin has an unhealthy cast. (Walkers 07, Walkers 09)

The real Andrew, who revived in the police station morgue at the end of Walkers 08, was absent throughout. By his own account in the finale he woke to find the station "full of cops", knew they were not real ones, and broke out; he was the thing that escaped through the window. He then spent an afternoon explaining his situation to Nancy the goose. Andre puts his absence from the team at about two days. (Walkers 08, Walkers 09)

Not established

  • Where the horses came from. In Walkers 03 Walt says the ranch keeps none: "Strictly ATVs." (Walkers 03)
  • Which barricade the team broke. Andre's recap places it between Ballard and Roosevelt; the blockade seen in Walkers 08 was at a bridge on the road out of Roosevelt toward Bridgeland. (Walkers 08, Walkers 09)
  • How the fights at the barricade and the station went, and what became of Yusuf Ansari, who was last seen wounded at the station in Walkers 08. (Walkers 08)
  • Who took the battery from Huell's walkie-talkie, which he finds missing at the start of Walkers 09. (Walkers 09)

Continuity