View source for The Crawling Chaos

[[XCOM:_Gray_Dawn#Recaps]]<br>
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When we last left off...

Game #16 9/06/14

Days 17-18

The Crawling Chaos

The group is in the small coastal town of Westport, investigating its unusual lack of activity.  They have discovered that horrifically mutated denizens of the deep have taken residence here and driven the population out.  This exodus did not come without loss; in many places throughout the town they have found evidence of firefights and valiant last stands.  Bloodstains mark the pavement, the sidewalks and the linoleum tiles of convenience stores.  There are no corpses to be found, no evidence other than visceral splashes and spent shell cases to tell the tales of horror that visited this sleepy tourist attraction.  The investigators from Elma can only imagine that in the midst of the chaos that wrought these terminal canvasses, the lucky few who managed to flee could not possibly have escaped with the bodies of all those who contributed to the silent testament of blood that Westport has become.  Something made off with those left behind.  The fallen were disposed of...somehow.

The group deals with the shock of being attacked by a group of giant crabs clambering silently up the pilings of the marina.  They realize that being near the water puts them at grave risk because under the charcoal darkness of the lapping waves monsters lurk; swarming hordes that would surely turn all of them into nothing more than another tableau of rust-colored stains on the pavement if they are not careful.  Rather than tempt fate, they have chosen to say good-bye to this abattoir, waiting only for support personnel from Elma to help facilitate their airborne exfiltration.

While they wait, they take a quick survey of their situation and their recent accomplishments.  They have recovered two submersible ROVs from a salvage vessel on the marina, but they find that the control devices for them are missing.  Marie could kludge together something that would allow them to control the submersibles from a laptop, but that programming task would take a few hours at the very least, and it would be well after dark before she was done.  AJ spots an office across the street from the docks that shares the name on the salvage company.  He goes to investigate.

The salvage offices have been broken into, and the mounting evidence suggests that one of the mutant squid was poking around in here.  Behind a bookshelf in the back of the small office is a hidden vault door.  Marie is drawn to the locked door like a moth to a porch light, and starts to tinker with it.  When she does, a speaker in the room crackles to life, and a voice comes over it gently inquiring what she's up to.

The voice belongs to one "Captain" Scotty Watson, formerly of the United States Merchant Marine, and currently chilling out in the walk-in-vault-turned-panic-room in his offices.  He claims to have been here in Westport since the sweeps and says that he has potentially useful information that he is willing to trade.  He requests the meager price of a case of Red Man chewing tobacco, which is easily obtained from a nearby convenience store.  When the group goes a little bit out of their way to appease him, Captain Watson becomes quite the team player.  He would very much like to leave Westport with them, but there is at least one situation that he cannot in good conscience abandon, and asks for their help to resolve.
In one of the beachfront condos, he knows there are a couple of kids holed up.  He says one of them must have been a boy scout or something, because he has been communicating with the kid via Morse code over flashlights.  The problem here is that the sun has very nearly set, and the crabs will soon be out.  The team makes contact with the kids, and stages a daring rescue.  Using a spear gun from Scotty's boat, AJ shoots up a zip line for the two teenagers to abseil down to safety.  Marie moves to the beach-side corner to keep an eye on the waterfront, only to find hundreds of crabs coming ashore.  Her blood runs cold at the sight of a carpet of undulating, barnacled carapaces.  She grabs a propane tank from a nearby barbecue and sets it up in the choke point between the two condos, then high-tails it out.  Unsure of her ability to hit the tank with her rifle, AJ switches from child-rescuer to propane igniter...just as the second of the two kids comes down the line.  Without AJ to catch him, he lands hard and sprains his ankle.  AJ does manage to touch off the propane tank, which drives back the horde of crustaceans, and the group makes their getaway, seeking refuge in the Coast Guard station.  With its brick construction, they think it may be the best place for them to hole up.

The sun looms near the horizon, the demarcation between life and death; silence and crawling terror.  Help should be here by now, but it has not come.  They try and contact Sergeant Carville on their cell phones, but connection cannot be made.  They know the route he planned to take, so Doug sends his scout drone to follow the highway and see if he can find them.

On SR 105, eight miles east of the Shoalwater Bay Casino, Doug finds a humvee immobile on the side of the road.  He sees Carville scanning vigilantly with his rifle, while two others hide in the relative safety of the lightly armored vehicle.  The short bridge to the east spanning North River has been cut with explosives.  Doug swoops his drone in and makes contact, learning the story of what happened here.

Just as they passed the bridge, it was blown behind them.  They came under attack by small arms fire.  Carville stopped the vehicle and retaliated, dispatching the ambushers.  When he tried to start the humvee up again, the engine stalled out.  As best as he can determine, it looks as though someone dumped water in the fuel tank of his vehicle.  The last place anyone would have had the opportunity to commit such villainy was back in Elma before they departed, which raises further questions that can only be answered later.  For the time being, the team in Westport cannot leave their comrades stranded on the highway.  They now have the additional task of getting their backup to them.

The Coast Guard station still has its HH-65 Dolphin helicopter, which they hope to use to pick up Carville, Dave Munroe and Bob Easton and bring them to Westport.  At the very least, if this place kills them, they will all die together.

This plan, however, faces a hurdle when they find that the helicopter is out of fuel, and the nearby tanks are empty.  With darkness closing in and the swarms of mutant crabs possibly lurking around every corner, the group must stay on the move if they venture from the safety of the Coast Guard station. Their attention is drawn back to the airport, their initial insertion point.  There has to be fuel there.  Doug and Brock go to the airstrip and find what they need.  Doug also decides to check on their plane, only to find that some of its tires have been flattened!  When he goes to investigate, he is shot in the neck by a sniper.

The rest of the group is heading to the airfield in the pickup they scavenged from the squid-infested gas station.  In the distance, in the dark, Fayth sees the muzzle flash from the weapon that has wounded her brother.  She cuts loose a burst from extreme range.  No further flashes come from the sniper's position out in the tall grass north of the airstrip.  Brock sprints out to close the distance.  Doug recovers from the attack; fortunately it is only a light wound, and his surprising toughness saves his bacon today.  When the pickup screeches to a halt a few seconds later, Fayth thankfully finds that her brother is not in mortal danger.  He is even able to command his scout drone to backup Brock while Fayth tends his wound.

Doug sees, through the eyes of the drone, Brock closing in on the sniper.  He is a skinhead, dressed in what they have come to recognize as Aryan-chic.  The man was armed with a suppressed .22 rifle, probably what flattened the tires of their airplane, and undoubtedly what wounded Doug.  The sniper has suffered a severe wound to his arm from Fayth's attack.  Taking matters into his own hands while no one is nearby to object, Brock vindictively snaps both of the sniper's thumbs, trusses him up and tosses him over his shoulder to bring him back to the group.  If and when he regains consciousness, they may want to interrogate this prisoner.

Meanwhile, the team rapidly gets the tires on their plane repaired, and refuel the Dolphin.  Using the CG helicopter, they are able to provide pickup for Carville, Doug and Bob.  With the whole team all together and with the requisite number of aircraft pilots, they say good-bye to Westport for now, heading back for Elma.

The task still remains of recovering the meteor that struck the SR 105 bridge.  The Eggheads are interested in it because it may be the only intact meteor sample available, and with it they might be able to learn whether the meteors really are the source of the mutagenic.  If it is, they hope to study it and possibly find a way to neutralize the mutant threat.  Scotty knows that the CG was trying to raise the thing, and would like to see the task completed, as well; some of the Coasties were close friends of his, and he wants to see their deaths as something other than a total waste.  One bit of intel he shares with them is that the "squiddies" are susceptible to electric shocks.  If they can find a way to electrify the water near their work area, they may be able to get to the meteor in relative safety.  The crabs are also nocturnal, so if they work during the day, they will likely be able to avoid them, as well.

The body of water the meteor is in is nearly 500 feet across, though.  AJ wants to make some kind of a physical net up and downstream to pen out the squids.  What he could really use is a fuck-ton of chain-link fence that they can hook juice up to.  After scratching their heads for a while trying to figure out where they are going to get nearly a quarter mile of fencing, Brock exclaims, "I know where we can get a bunch of fencing!"

He and AJ lock eyes, and in unison, they cry out, "The fucking Prison!"  They quickly draw up a plan, gather a workforce from local volunteers, and set out at dawn to gather supplies and begin to set up their defenses.

Doug is not involved in these preparations, though.  As so often is the case, he is much more interested in being the eyes where no one expects him to look.  Using drones to keep watch over Westport during the night, he hopes to learn something of the patterns of crab and squid activity that may help them in the coming day.  One unexpected thing he sees is "The Diver," the bogeyman that Scotty had mentioned seeing earlier.  This entity is spotted by one of his drones coming out of the water near the sunken CG boat, wandering around with a swarm of crabs in tow, and going back out beneath the waves.  Who this is and what it means for their recovery efforts remains to be seen.