no chance anyone's still living

Natalie and Shoshanna venture into the city and encounter more than they bargained for.

Written by Naomi Alderman.

Scenes

Scene summaries may contain spoilers
1
Natalie finds the lights and you get a better look at the city. You can see about 60 damaged houses with fake gardens. It's not what anyone expected. Natalie and Shoshanna go down the steps and see a looming figure at one of the house windows. But they aren't moving. Natalie moves a bit closer and realises that it's a wooden cut-out. Maybe it's a shooting range? The cut-out may not be real, but the zombies are.
2
Natalie says that she gets little flashes of memory, and sometimes the tree half-tells her what to do, but it isn't clear cut. James's memories would have more information, but accessing them risks him finding out where they are. They approach a likely looking building, but Shoshanna activates a trip wire, and a computer voice tells you there's five minutes and counting.
3
The building doesn't have doors or windows, but has an opening on the roof. There's only one minute left on the countdown. To make things worse, the zombies are approaching. The voice tells you to put on night vision goggles and counts down from ten. The lights go out. Natalie feels a tattered hand brush her own.
4
Natalie is all alone in the darkness. Zombies are not part of the shared empathy of all living things. Natalie is terrified, feeling trapped. She has shared dreams like this with the tree. For a moment, she is elsewhere, sitting the back of an aircraft. But then she is alone once more, like she was when her dad died in the first wave of zombie attacks. She runs.
5
Alexander manages to speak to Natalie. They're all heading north and closer together, closer to the tree. Alexander did PhD work on survivalism in Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. They train in cities like the one Natalie is in so he knows the rough layout. He directs Natalie to a window on one of the buildings to find a set of coded dots beneath the window frame. They're for instructors to find their way in night drills. Alexander should be able to guide her to the light switch.
6
Natalie finds the switches and ends the training exercise with Alexander's help. The lights return, but they are both tired. Shoshanna interrupts to take out a zombie. Get what you need and get out.
7
Inside the building, there is a steel crate. Natalie and Shoshanna open the crate and find hundreds of CIA files about people they believed were "sensitive", and how they set up contests to give music festival tickets to those people. Natalie recognises some of the people and knows that James killed some of them. Shoshanna finds James's CIA file, and the file of Targeting Office Styles. James's sensitivity rating is a perfect 10 out of 10.

Credits

Cast listings may contain spoilers
Crew
Writer
Naomi Alderman, Ishmael Hope & Rebecca Levene
Director
Ella Watts
Sound Designer
Matt Part
Series Created By
Naomi Alderman