Flooded freeway and marsh¶
The flooded freeway and marsh is the stretch of storm-drowned road and wetland leading to the Marblehead-area nuclear power plant, where Jester dies, Huell fires the Davy Crockett and the angel thing burns out in a radioactive crater.
| Type | Location (highway and wetland) |
| Region | Outside Marblehead, Massachusetts, about a mile from the shore and the nuclear power plant fence |
| First appearance | Summer Service 06 |
Description¶
In the finale the rain is so heavy that the time of day is hard to judge, though the party calls it mid to late afternoon. Roads are flooded to the wheel wells, convoy cars flood out and are abandoned, and for the last quarter mile to the plant fence the Guard convoy has to leave the freeway and cross marsh. The party's car cannot follow (Summer Service 06). The weather is the aftermath of Tropical Storm Andrew 2.
History of events there¶
Summer Service 06¶
- The angel thing turns back. The glowing angel thing, trenching the ground toward the team, stops, lets out a long fluting cry and returns to the sea. A mystery voice on the pocket radio, the radio contact, tells Kurt that the earlier explosion (a claymore the team set off on a truck) "pissed it off". The radio contact says they have something for it but it must be fired from the air, and the storm has grounded that option. The plan is to let the convoy engage plant security so the creature comes out to help, then take a long shot with the Davy Crockett.
- Jester. The team sees its own stolen FBI car lagging in a water-filled depression with one occupant. They decide to jump it ("We're the cops"). The driver is Jester, who screams "It's you, Toothbrush Man!" and bites Huell's neck through the window. Andrew swerves to scrape him off against the stuck car, Huell leans out, Jester slams into its windshield, and Andrew backs the team's car over him; he dies spewing blood, bile and worms.
- Lesson and shot. In the back seat Kurt teaches the others to fire the Davy Crockett. Andrew bogs the car in the mud, and Huell frees it with Kurt's steel plate. The convoy rams the fence, the ground drops six inches and pops dozens of tires, and pop-up machine guns shred it. A light rises from the ocean. Huell wins rock-paper-scissors for the honour of firing, burns a Luck point to turn a mixed result into a success and fires the W54 warhead into the light.
- The creature dies. The shockwave flattens the fence and silences the guns, and a pillar of fire rises, but the creature survives and comes straight for the team. It strips a line through an abandoned car and circles. Andrew leans out with the flashlight weapon, lands a solid hit, burns his hand, and the creature spirals into the earth about twenty feet from the car. As it dies it sprouts legs from every kind of animal (Zack saw a panda) and ends as a white-hot pillar of flame in a crater.
- Radiation. Kurt rolls Sharp 11 and notices the Geiger counter in the abandoned car's trunk going wild. The radiation spiked when the creature died, not at the nuke. The team abandons its radioactive gear, including the Geiger counter, and takes a Ford Pinto with a lift kit and painted flames, one of the cars that made it through the flooding, to drive off. Near the crater the contact leaves "a little present on the road", a half-empty metal canister, the anti-worm agent canister.
Quote
"Eh, fuck samples, we're not scientists." Dante (as Kurt), declining to take samples from the crater. (Summer Service 06)
Notable places within¶
- The crater. Where the creature died. Gear left near it is radioactive.
- The fence and plant approach. Covered on the nuclear power plant page.