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The Summer Service

The Summer Service is the second arc of PITF, in which the Paranatural Incident Task Force is sent to a Massachusetts fishing town to find a vanished survey team and finds a church that serves worms in its communion wine, a burning thing in the sea, and somebody else's war.
Setting Marblehead, Massachusetts
Episodes Seven sessions: five recorded (01, 03, 04, 05, 06) and two unrecorded (02 and "05.5"). The case opens in the last third of Radford Horror 08.
In-fiction dates June 1992; a few days in town, ending as a tropical storm makes landfall
Main threat The Sons of Adam and the worms; the angel thing
Previous arc The Radford Horror
Next arc The Things in Appalachia

Overview

Fresh from Radford, the task force receives a file on eight missing people. An unexplained offshore explosion had blown out windows in Marblehead and sickened residents, and an EPA and Geological Survey field team sent to look for a seabed gas leak had vanished after a couple of days. The agents check into the Ram and Arms Inn, are handed the Sons of Adam Bible, and find the survey team's journal, which describes symptoms like mild nerve-agent poisoning. (Radford Horror 08)

The first day in town produces a severed arm in the surf, a bag of impossibly hard crystal marbles on the desk of the clerk Jester, and an evening service at which the unnaturally fit preacher Amos Shaw serves fishy communion wine. Huell Kendrick drinks his. Separately, Kurt Larson learns that FBI counterintelligence is watching the Biz. (Summer Service 01)

From there the case splits in two. Offshore, in a session that was played but never recorded, the team dives to a sunken stealth vessel and hides from a humming ring of lights. (Summer Service 02) Onshore, Huell stops sleeping and grows visibly fitter, a body's worth of blood turns up in the preacher's house, and Donald McManley puts the wine under a microscope and finds it swimming with worms. Andrew Howard is visited in a dream by a dead gray man who asks whether he can order a nuclear strike. The survey team's trail ends in a lighthouse basement set up for interrogation. (Summer Service 03)

Kurt answers the thing in the water by calling in a favor and receiving a Davy Crockett tactical nuclear launcher, which is bolted to the Biz's Buick. The Biz, for his part, is quietly trading messages with Russian intelligence. The town's Board of Selectmen turns out to be the church under another name: glowing, bloating, and sure that Satan is to blame. (Summer Service 04)

As the storm cuts the town off, the team finds the missing selectman Arnold Weathers and his dog reduced to sacks of worms, and is driven out of its hotel at four in the morning by an armed congregation and the local police. (Summer Service 05) After a second unrecorded session, the finale puts the agents on a flooded freeway between a convoy of the infected and the creature from the sea, with a nameless ally on the radio and one nuclear round. (Summer Service 06)

Episodes

Episode Summary
Summer Service 01 The team interviews the town, finds a severed arm, steals a marble and attends the nine o'clock service; Kurt catches a counterintelligence agent watching the Biz.
Summer Service 02 (unrecorded) A submarine dive to the stealth wreck and a first encounter with the angel thing; Kurt is poisoned by the nerve agent. Played but never recorded; known from the briefing in Summer Service 03.
Summer Service 03 Huell finds the murder house, Andrew dreams of the gray man, the wine is found to hold worms, and the lighthouse gives up the scientists' journal.
Summer Service 04 Kurt receives a tactical nuke, the Biz decodes a Russian message, and the team meets the Board of Selectmen.
Summer Service 05 The fight with Puddles and Arnold Weathers; the church and police besiege the hotel and the team escapes in McManley's RV.
Summer Service 05.5 (unrecorded) The scientists are found alive, the team loses its car and steals another, and the chase toward the nuclear plant begins. Played but never recorded; known from remarks in Summer Service 06.
Summer Service 06 The radio contact, the death of Jester, the nuclear shot, the death of the angel thing, and the cover story.

Principal cast

The task force

Allies and the Bureau

Marblehead

See also minor characters of The Summer Service.

Monsters

See also minor monsters and entities.

Key locations

How it ended

The convoy of infected townspeople broke itself against the defenses of the nuclear plant. Huell fired the Davy Crockett into the angel thing as it rose from the sea; it survived, and Andrew killed it with the flashlight weapon at a range of about twenty feet. Its death released more radiation than the bomb. Jester, who had been driving the team's stolen FBI car in the convoy until it stuck in a dip, bit Huell and died under the wheels of the car the agents were driving. The radio contact left a canister of anti-worm agent on the road, which the agents passed to the National Guard. The Guard sealed the town and began distributing deworming medicine, with the warning that some of the infected would not survive it. Big Bill ordered the affair reported as terrorism. All four agents ended the arc alive in a medical tent, sick or shaken. (Summer Service 06)

The missing scientists were found alive in the unrecorded session before the finale; Kurt later testifies that they had been "kidnapped and held hostage". (Summer Service 06, Appalachia 01)

A few months later the EPA and the NRC had been called in to clean up, the team's car and equipment remained impounded, the rest of the government had been given a version in which a cult with a rogue Soviet nuclear device attacked the plant, and Kurt was testifying to a House subcommittee. (Appalachia 01)

Left unresolved

More on these at Unresolved mysteries.

Trivia

  • Two sessions of this arc were played but never recorded; see Lost episodes.
  • The briefing in Radford Horror 08 dates the explosion "about a month ago"; Briggs, in Summer Service 01, says "about a week and a half ago". (Radford Horror 08, Summer Service 01)
  • The innkeeper of the Ram and Arms Inn in Radford Horror 08 and Jester in Summer Service 01 share the "Crypt Keeper haircut" and the 6 a.m. fish breakfast. The episodes strongly imply that they are the same man, but never state it outright. (Radford Horror 08, Summer Service 01)
  • The Ram and Arms Inn and the Sons of Adam are named when the case opens; from then on they are usually just "the hotel" and "the church". (Radford Horror 08)
  • The warhead's yield is 0.2 kilotons according to its manual and "half a kiloton" when Andre restates it in the finale. (Summer Service 04, Summer Service 06)
  • The submarine in the finale's cold open is the USS Oklahoma City. Big Bill later says "we lost one of our submarines", without naming it. (Summer Service 06)