‘Fear the Walking Dead’ recap: No escape from zombies, even at sea

With the commencement of Operation Cobalt, the military’s scorched-earth offensive for containing the zombie apocalypse, the Los Angeles Basin is firebombed into a hellscape on “Monster” (Episode 201), the Season 2 premiere of AMC’s “Fear the Walking Dead.”

Escaping to the sea offers civilians some hope for survival. But as Madison Clark (Kim Dickens), her boyfriend Travis Manawa (Cliff Curtis) and their blended families soon realize, the Pacific Ocean teems with its own kind of peril.

Think snakes on a plane are scary? How about zombies in the water?

Travis and Maddie are alive because her teenage son Nick (Frank Dillane) teamed up with Victor Strand (Colman Domingo), the mysterious skipper of “Abigail,” a multimillion-dollar yacht anchored off an oceanfront mansion.

Cold-hearted and calculating, Strand values Nick for his ability to function amid chaos – a survival skill he acquired as a heroin addict.

Also allowed on board the yacht by Strand are Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey), Nick’s high-achieving younger sister; and Chris (Lorenzo James Henrie), the rebellious son of Travis and his ex-wife, Liza Ortiz (Elizabeth Rodriguez).

Liza, tragically, was killed by Travis – at her insistence – after she was attacked by a “walker” in the Season 1 finale. Now Chris grieves over his mother’s body and bitterly accuses his father of murder.

Filling out the “Abigail” crew are Daniel Salazar (Rubén Blades), a torturer during El Salvador’s civil war who later became an East L.A. barber; and his adult daughter Ofelia (Mercedes Mason), who’s nursing a shoulder wound after being shot by an Army national guardsman.

As they sail south toward San Diego – where Marines possibly beat back the zombie invasion – Nick wonders if there’s a backup plan.

“I don’t know,” Strand dismissively replies. “The whole world is ‘I don’t know’ right now. You should be used to that.”

What they do know is that the U.S. Coast Guard can no longer perform rescues – not by land, sea nor air.

“There’s nothing,” a spokesman laments on a radio broadcast. “Forgive us.”

Maddie, meanwhile, wants to stop the yacht and assist everyone possible. Travis is fiercely opposed, however, emphasizing that distressed boaters could be infected with a lethal, rapidly spreading virus.

“We got an old man, a hurt woman, scared kids and a corpse,” Travis exclaims. “We’re no good to anyone if we can’t take care of our own family. That’s what we have to hold onto, Maddie!”

While Daniel catches an eel for dinner, Alicia strikes up a conversation via CB radio. A young man calling himself “Jack,” who claims he’s on a leaky fishing boat, manipulates Alicia into revealing she gets drinkable water from a desalinization system.

“Now that is pretty swag, man! You must be rich,” he enthuses. “So do you think you guys could make Hawaii?”

Strand flies into a rage when he learns Alicia may have given away their location to predators.

“This isn’t a game,” he yells at Alicia. “It’s mob rule on land. You think it’s any better out here?”

“She’s trying to help those who don’t matter to us,” Strand tells Nick later. “She made a mistake we can’t afford. Everyone here needs to contribute. Or at the very least not compromise.”

Alicia regrets her naiveté when she spots a bullet-ridden boat drifting nearby. Surrounding the stricken craft are submerged zombies, as Nick and Chris discover to their horror by diving into the ocean.

“We should be leaving now,” Strand insists when his surface radar detects a rapidly approaching vessel.

It could be harmless sailors. Or maybe it’s Jack and his pirate buddies.

“Whoever did that,” Maddie says, pointing at the crippled boat, “they’re coming back.”