Skip to content

The Walkers in Skin, Episode 06

The junkyard owner's confession falls apart, Ballard turns out to be emptying, City Hall has a refrigerator full of sugar, and something at the ranch fires sheet metal into the sky toward Roosevelt.
Arc The Walkers in Skin
Episode 06
Setting Roosevelt, Utah; Ballard, Utah; Sherman Ranch
In-fiction date 1992; one day, from about lunchtime to evening
Players present Andre (GM), Rita, Dante, Ezra, Zack
Previous Walkers 05
Next Walkers 07

Synopsis

Kurt Larson gets Yusuf Ansari to admit that he never touched the car and confessed under threat. The radar says there is something solid in Shelly Wilmarth's coffin. Ballard City Hall has been empty for days, and its padlocked fridge is stacked with sugar. Sheriff McDermish reports half the high school missing, hands Kurt a shotgun and leaves the state. Huell Kendrick is lured to a meeting that never happens and bitten by a stranger; Andrew Howard finds a note summoning him, alone, to the school gym at 1 a.m. At dusk the team discovers the beam. (Walkers 06)

Plot

"I crush the car"

The team collects the Biz from the dentist, still numb. On the way Andrew suddenly remembers a dream from before he woke in the refrigerator: taking out the trash at his DC apartment, he found himself, naked, eating garbage, and the naked self chased him into the desert, smiling. (Walkers 06)

At the Roosevelt police station the interrogation room is also the lunchroom and smells of ham; a hungover officer named Carl microwaves Canadian bacon and says only "Ham." Yusuf Ansari, the junkyard owner, repeats "No immigration. I crush the car." He cannot say what kind of car it was, and agrees with whatever the Biz suggests. Kurt's Manipulate Someone is a 10. Yusuf admits he did nothing: his crusher cannot flatten a car that far, his magnetic crane does not move, and the police offered him a $10,000 fine and no immigration trouble if he confessed. His alibi is a half-hour landline call to his cousin and that night's Jeopardy!. Learning that Kurt is CIA, he groans, "Not the CIA. Not again." He agrees to owe the team a favor. Kurt phones Diane to have the call verified; she asks, "Any ape men?" (Walkers 06)

While this goes on, Huell is paged from an unknown number. A man's voice says he has something Huell should see about "your colleague": come to the grocery store in town in an hour, alone, to the little room in the back. (Walkers 06)

The grave and City Hall

At the churchyard cemetery the ground-penetrating radar will not start, although Kurt follows the start-up instructions exactly (Act Under Pressure, 11). His Investigate a Mystery (10) finds thick wire bundles on the underside chewed through by teeth, in a spot that cannot be reached while the machine stands upright, as it had been left. Huell repairs it with gum-wrapper foil (double sixes, an 11 after modifiers). Over the grave the radar shows something solid in the coffin, at about 85% confidence. (Walkers 06)

Looking for survey records that might show an entrance to the cavern, the team walks to City Hall, a converted double-wide. As they approach, Huell's Read a Bad Situation is a 5: a growing dread he cannot place. Nobody answers. Kurt snaps a pick in the cheap lock (Act Under Pressure, 6, which marks experience and levels him up), fishes the broken end out on a second roll of 10, and shoulders the door. Inside, fans and a radio are running and everything is under dust. Nobody has been here for days. Huell finds the keys to a padlocked refrigerator: bags of coarse white granules stacked floor to ceiling. Kurt tastes it. It is sugar. Andrew's search (an 11) turns up a desk heaped with copies of the New York Post that stop abruptly about three months ago, buried in hundreds of Tootsie Roll wrappers. It is the mayor's desk; the other well-used one belongs to Deborah Wells. (Walkers 06)

Mayor Wilford Hiram's Cadillac pulls up. The team claims the door was open; the Biz's Manipulate Someone is a 7, and the mayor is cold and unconvinced. He says the geological records were lost in a fire, crunches lemon candies ("Special order. They're from Spain."), and locks up behind them. Huell's second Read a Bad Situation is double ones. Andrew proposes that the mayor has been replaced by a sugar-eating Scandinavian tooth troll. See sugar clues. (Walkers 06)

The sheriff leaves

Sheriff McDermish, chain-smoking on his porch, lays out the disappearances: a county spot-check found more than half the high school absent, while the school's own records show nothing; parents do not answer; houses have stood empty for days; the diner has three customers where there would usually be ten or fifteen. Most of the absent are Mormon. He gives Kurt a list of names and a Remington 870, then tells his son to get his backpack. From the sheriff's phone Kurt asks Big Bill to put the Utah National Guard on standby. Bill, already buried in "the political stuff", agrees and asks them not to need it. The sheriff, relieved that "the professionals are on it", drives off vowing not to stop until he is out of the state. (Walkers 06)

The meeting that wasn't

Huell borrows Kurt's P90 and goes to the general store alone; Andre removes the other players from the call. In the alley a ragged man asks for a dollar, then lunges. Huell's Kick Some Ass is double ones. The man bites his wrist, shouts "Pig!", takes the dollar and runs. The clerk bandages him and says, "we don't got homeless in Ballard." Huell searches the back room (Investigate a Mystery, 6) and waits half an hour. Nobody comes, and the pager number is unlisted. He walks back to the ranch. (Walkers 06)

The note and the beam

At the double-wide Andrew shows the others a note he found in his bed. It says some of his friends "aren't who you think", that its writer knows he is not one of them because "you have angels", and that he should come to the school gym at 1 a.m. without the others. He decides to go; the team will drop him partway and wait within earshot. (Walkers 06)

A rattling draws them outside. A sheet of metal in the yard fence is shaking violently, with a faintly glowing vertical line through it. Huell pokes the line with a stick and lights a cigarette from it; his hand burns on both sides. A second sheet held over the line is ripped skyward. Huell's fourth Read a Bad Situation, an 11, shows dust hanging along a curved invisible arc with the clouds stretched along it. A penny is barely deflected; Kurt's broken watch rockets away. Their eyes begin to hurt. Kurt: "Guys, I think we're being microwaved." Then there is an electric pop and the dust falls. Andrew: "They just turned their thing off." The arc points toward town, in line with Roosevelt. (Walkers 06)

Cold open and framing

A woman arrives at a desert trailer, takes the spare key from under a ceramic frog, and finds the cabinets full of Jell-O packages and the fridge full of Jell-O plates. "What the fuck, Doug." A human-shaped figure wrapped in black garbage bags sits in a chair. The screen door slams. Doug, his eyes flat black like a shark's, lifts her and kisses her, and gray tendrils pour from his mouth into hers. Cut to credits. Andre closes the session on Kurt wondering whether "that's what happened to the car", "and then we got to the closing credits." (Walkers 06)

Player characters

NPCs

Monsters and entities

Locations

Items

Revelations

Open threads

Memorable quotes

Quote

"Ham." (Andre, as Carl)

Quote

"Not the CIA. Not again." (Andre, as Yusuf Ansari)

Quote

"Listen, it's always nice to be owed a favor by a guy with a car crusher. You just don't know when it'll come up, but real nice when you can get it." (Dante, as Kurt)

Quote

"I am so goddamn glad the professionals are on it. Give 'em hell, son. [...] Whatever the fuck they are." (Andre, as Sheriff McDermish)

Quote

"Listen, Howard, I like you. But if that moth thing is real, God had better goddamn be real." (Ezra, as the Biz)

Quote

"Guys, I think we're being microwaved. I think we need to get out of here." (Dante, as Kurt)

Table notes

  • Zack's dice are dreadful: three failed Read a Bad Situation rolls (5, 3, 5), a failed Kick Some Ass on double ones and a failed Investigate a Mystery (6). The one 11 is the roll that reveals the arc. See Game mechanics. (Walkers 06)
  • Andre sends the pager message to Zack privately and clears the call for Huell's solo scene. (Walkers 06)
  • At the cemetery Rita asks whether to roll to remember the radar instructions "as an individual with my own brain, or with Andrew Howard's fake one?" Andre answers, "As an individual with your own brain." The joke is about the weeks since the previous session, not about a double. (Walkers 06)
  • Ham becomes the episode's running joke, from Carl to the clerk's offer of "ham or something". (Walkers 06)
  • Zack: "Why are there bedrooms in the courthouse?" Andre: "Because it used to be a double-wide." (Walkers 06)
  • Andre confirms out of character that the ranch is Sherman Ranch before its renaming, and that Bigelow is the real person. (Walkers 06)
  • Everyone has "a share of the ape gold" from Georgia. Ezra announces that if the Biz dies, his next character is an Australian bush pilot. (Walkers 06)

Continuity

  • The mayor is not named in this episode. He introduced himself as Wilford Hiram in Walkers 05, where his rings cut Andrew's hand during a handshake. (Walkers 05)
  • The Biz's remark about "that moth thing" refers to the Radford Moth. (Walkers 06)
  • Andrew's dream of a naked double is the only sign of a second Andrew in this episode, and the Andrew seen here is the original throughout. The double appears in person at the gym in Walkers 07; from the end of that scene Rita secretly plays a replica, and the real Andrew returns in Walkers 09. (Walkers 07, Walkers 09)
  • The note is the bait for the gym meeting in Walkers 07. In that episode Andre tells Rita that the mayor's ring cut in Walkers 05 and the stranger's bite on Huell here were how the skinwalkers took the tissue to copy them; the copy of Huell surfaces in the cold opens of Walkers 07 and Walkers 09. (Walkers 07, Walkers 09)
  • The National Guard, put on standby here, arrives in the unrecorded Walkers 08.5 and fights in Walkers 09. (Walkers 09)
  • Yusuf Ansari is next seen in Walkers 08, still in the Roosevelt cells. (Walkers 08)