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The Walkers in Skin, Episode 04

A night patrol produces a coyote on two legs, a carbonized crow and two stoned teenagers; then the rental car vanishes straight upward and comes back flat in the next town.
Arc The Walkers in Skin
Episode 04
Setting Sherman Ranch; Roosevelt, Utah
In-fiction date The night after Walkers 03 and the following day
Players present Andre (GM), Rita, Dante, Ezra, Zack
Previous Walkers 03
Next Walkers 05

Synopsis

On the way to and during the 1 a.m. patrol, Kurt Larson is stalked by an upright coyote, Andrew Howard finds a crow burned to charcoal in the pig pen, and the team frightens two Ballard teenagers out of the barn. When they get back, the Plymouth Voyager is gone, with no tracks leaving. It turns up the next morning in Roosevelt, a foot thick and fused into the road. The team acquires a loaner squad car called Betsy, loses a jacket to the goose, wins the exhumation order through Big Bill, and orders ground-penetrating radar and a bomb collar. (Walkers 04)

Plot

"Parlez-vous français?"

With an hour to go before the patrol, Kurt walks to the big house to compare its instrument records with the substation pop and the car's sideways slide. A curt doorman says Bigelow is asleep. Walking back, Kurt realizes he is being followed. A Preparedness roll (8 on the dice, 11 with Sharp) puts a wad of baloney in his pocket. He throws it and turns: a coyote is standing on two legs, eyes glinting. He asks it "Parlez-vous français?" as a verbal flashbang. It stares, then runs, dropping to all fours as it speeds up. Nancy the goose scuttles out and takes the baloney. Soon afterwards the Voyager's alarm goes off with nothing near it. (Walkers 04)

The patrol

Walt "Coyote" Murphy collects them in his Jeep and falls in love with Kurt's P90. Andrew, watching the sky, sees something small drop into the pig pen. His Investigate a Mystery is a 9: it is a crow burned to a crisp, feathers crumbling, eyes burst, bones cracked by heat. It fell with no sound and no flash. Walt suggests ball lightning; Andrew cites the 1957 Levelland case, and half an hour of UFO talk moves Walt from suspicion to grudging respect. The crow goes into a dog-waste bag for Donald McManley. (Walkers 04)

The Biz spots a figure with a glint near the barn. Kurt and Huell Kendrick go in through a loose chain; Kurt's Read a Bad Situation (9) finds two extremely stoned teenagers behind the equipment. The glint was a holographic snap bracelet. Walt recognizes Harrison; the silent one is Marshall Crichton. They came on a dare to look for ghosts or aliens. Harrison describes the tiny Ballard High School (about sixty students, an eye-watering smell this semester). Kurt confiscates their terrible weed, comes back with good weed, and a Manipulate Someone (10) scares Harrison into taking it. Walt: "You guys are the weirdest fucking cops I've ever met." (Walkers 04)

The vanishing car

Back at the guest double-wide the Voyager is gone. One set of tire tracks leads in; none lead out. Huell's Investigate a Mystery is a 10: the car most likely went straight up, and the ground where it stood is about 200 degrees. Walt offers a junkyard magnet crane, a skyhook, a helicopter with a long cable, anything but "moon man talk". Around 3 a.m. Huell phones McManley ("I think there's aliens and shit. You should be over here") and hangs up. (Walkers 04)

About 10 a.m. Andrew's pager goes off. Hertz reports the car is blocking East Lagoon Street in Roosevelt. Andrew: "It got unabducted." At the big house the Ponytail Lady has cued the camera tape (Bigelow's recordings): a gray patch seems to rise, unconvincingly. Radar saw nothing, but the electromagnetic meters "went nuts", and the earlier substation pop and car slide match spikes too. Before they leave, Nancy gets into the double-wide and Huell shuts her inside (Act Under Pressure, a 12). The guard lends them dusty road bikes. Huell cannot ride one; double sixes on Act Under Pressure, even at -1, let him fake it for almost a mile and a half before he falls. This is the vanishing car. (Walkers 04)

Roosevelt

The Voyager is pancaked about a foot thick and fused into a slight crater in the roadway. Officer Hernandez of the Roosevelt Police Department assumes vandals with a roller crusher and will check junkyards. He waives the tickets after a glance at Andrew's ID and arranges a loaner: Betsy, an old squad car that makes cartoon putt-putt noises. Five officers with jacks and two-by-fours cannot lever the wreck free. Huell's Help Out is double sixes again, a 15, and he lifts it with his back; ten to twenty percent of the car stays in the asphalt. Kurt's stilts, which he had "since Vietnam", went with the car; Betsy's trunk holds Cats costumes and a replacement pair. (Walkers 04)

Goose, judge and fixers

The goose is still shut in the double-wide. In "Operation Get Goose Out" she drops onto Andrew's head from above the door, and his pendant repels the first strike. Kurt pries her off with the stilts (a 9), and the price is that she escapes with Andrew's jacket. The house is wrecked. (Walkers 04)

Andrew spends hours on the phone over the exhumation. His Manipulate Someone (7) cannot move a judge with religious objections, so he calls Big Bill, who talks to the judge for twenty minutes; the judge calls back sounding shaken. The exhumation is set for the day after tomorrow. As a plan B, the Biz uses his Fixer move twice, rolling 12 both times. Drebin, a Salt Lake City dealer in search equipment and a friend of his ex-wife's brother (he is not named until Walkers 05), will rent them ground-penetrating radar for about $800 and deliver it tomorrow. Hooster, a DC informant on parole and "criminal MacGyver", agrees to build a bomb collar so long as no dog is involved, supply thermite, and sell a net gun for the goose. His price is an invitation to the policeman's ball and help with parking tickets. Andrew retires to the bathroom so as not to be part of the conversation. (Walkers 04)

Cold open and framing

A pale, morbidly obese man in a wife beater walks through the desert with a shovel to a trailer. He passes a large cross and a mirror in the entryway, takes something from the fridge and sits in a recliner. A human-shaped figure wrapped in something shiny is propped in the other chair. He lifts a plate of Jell-O to his chin, and fine gray tendrils spool out of his mouth onto it while his dead eyes watch the muted TV. "We cut to credits." The man is later identified as Doug. (Walkers 04)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters and entities

Locations

Items

Revelations

  • The team has now seen a coyote walk upright. (Walkers 04)
  • Something can lift a car straight up without sound, leave the ground at 200 degrees, and return the car crushed miles away. Radar shows nothing; the electromagnetic meters spike. (Walkers 04)
  • The spikes also line up with the earlier substation pop and the sideways slide, though the data is noisy. See the ranch phenomenon. (Walkers 04)
  • The cold open shows a man feeding on Jell-O through tendrils, the first of the sugar clues to be tied to a body. (Walkers 04)

Open threads

  • What the coyote, the crow and the car have to do with each other. (Walkers 04)
  • The smell at Ballard's school, and Marshall's refusal to say why he came. (Walkers 04)
  • The exhumation in two days; the radar tomorrow. (Walkers 04)
  • Hooster's package in the mail, and the favors the Biz now owes him. (Walkers 04)
  • The goose has Andrew's jacket. (Walkers 04)

Memorable quotes

Quote

"Parlez-vous français?" (Dante, as Kurt, to a coyote standing on two legs)

Quote

"I've seen dogs on their hind legs before, and also I've nuked a monster before." (Zack, as Huell)

Quote

"Anyway, our car's back. It got unabducted." (Rita, as Andrew)

Quote

"We cannot have you recruiting high schoolers out of every case that we do. The Spud Hut one and now this one? No." (Rita, as Andrew)

Quote

"You can't do that. That's showing weak. Now it knows you're weak." (Andre, as Walt, on the jacket)

Quote

"You're the nicest guy I've ever been arrested by." (Andre, as Hooster)

Table notes

  • "Half-Gallon Howard", coined in the bar last episode, has been used about five times in one in-fiction evening. (Walkers 04)
  • Zack rolls double sixes twice (faking the bike ride, and the 15 that lifts the car), and Ezra gets 12 twice on Fixer ("I have plus three to Charm, though"). Huell's one failure, a 6 at the wreck, earns experience. See Game mechanics. (Walkers 04)
  • Zack rules, for humor, that Huell cannot ride a bicycle. (Walkers 04)
  • "We are not being very good with rentals lately." (Walkers 04)
  • Dante stops to ask whether Utah had a stand-your-ground law yet in the early 1990s. (Walkers 04)
  • Rita mishears East Lagoon Street as "the Goon". (Walkers 04)

Continuity