Caroline Valo check is on her way to work.
Where does Caroline work right now?
Well, unfortunately, she was just reassigned to a shithole known as Boggy Depot.
She had to look that up a couple times to make sure it was real.
On account that it doesn't sound real.
But sure as shit, she's gonna make something of it.
How long have you been on the job?
Well, this particular position, well, since I clocked in grabbing bagels and coffee this morning.
Yeah, you have four coffees, two coffees, like how many coffees you've taken?
Oh yeah, think it's full tray.
Only two of them are spoken for, but we sure will need them throughout the day.
I'm imagining you're reflecting on the project ahead of you as you're driving to the station.
The sun is starting to rise in front of you and you're on your way out there.
What are you trying to accomplish out here?
I don't know if you're familiar with the term polishing a turd, but that seems to be what we have been set to task on.
there is something of a turd in front of us.
The confines of Boggy Depot State Park.
I don't know if you've looked at the numbers recently, but they are not good.
and if we want to procure any more funding or any more interest at all, we're going to have to do something about this.
Stain on a toke.
you have quite the task ahead of you turning a turd into a diamond.
Gonna have to squeeze really hard to get that done because this park does not see a lot of visitors.
Heat and pressure, heat and pressure.
Exactly, heat and pressure.
You roll up and you're driving under a canopy of oak and that familiar swamp smell enters your nose.
In the morning, it's not as bad as when the heat is baking it.
And you see Ranger McKell's truck parked out there and in front of it, his headlights are still on illuminating an empty car park where
He used to have some ATVs and he's pacing back and forth.
Yeah, under my seat, I pull out a tissue box that's full of like hospital shoe liners.
I slip them on over my wedges.
On account of the mud out here is as dirty as it smells.
With a nose scrunched up as high as it can go, I sidle out of my sedan and I give a friendly morning wave, very neighborly.
coffee and bagels ready for Ranger McKell.
Now the day has only just begun and already you look out of sorts.
How might this have come to be?
Well, I don't know, I just got here and the ATVs are gone.
No, no, no that will not do she looks down at her gold little watch and says There's not but seven hours until the contractors are scheduled to be here.
What on earth do you mean by that?
I mean, they're fucking gone.
That's what I mean.
I mean, look, and he opens his arms up, points to the empty car park, and yeah, you see some tracks rolling out of there.
he grabs his hair he's already sweating pulls his hair back and just squeezes his own head and then starts to grab his elbows very nervously.
Okay, right.
Well, look, we have put an unconscionable portion of our miniscule budget on the line for this.
We are not going to squander it today, so we need to figure it out.
gonna get fired, what do mean figure it out?
Like, this is our ass.
no, I know.
Which is why they cannot find us in such a state.
So how are we going to recoup what we seem to have just lost?
Can you roll a persuade?
No, no, theoretically I was built for this.
Um, that's a 45, which is plenty low.
you can tell he's getting activated and would be useless to you if he were in such an emotional state and you coax him out of it.
You see him calming down just knowing that he has some help and he's not alone out here.
Yeah, we are not both going to sync today, not on this first day.
We need to make a good impression.
You're part of that.
Okay, let's retrace our steps.
Last time we used the ATVs, last person we saw skulking around the ATVs, usual suspects.
What are we working with?
I just, I fucking knew it when they were out here.
They said they were making a video or something about Bird and the keys weren't missing right after that.
I didn't think anything of it.
Thought I might've left them home, but I could swore I had seen them earlier.
I just, I know it was that fucking video crew that came out here.
There's no fuckin' birds in this neck of the woods.
What on earth are they talkin' about?
Okay, that does sound like the red-handed bandits that we oughta be chasin' down.
Do you have any idea where they might be?
Shit.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I do.
When I was driving in two mornings ago, I could have swore I saw their truck parked at the old Stardust.
Hmm, what a shithole.
All right, you got a description of this truck.
I think it's probably best if you go checking out the known park entrances, canvassing, some such, just like your daily rounds.
if you get any whiff of them, you give me a call.
But in the meantime, I'm gonna go shake down the stardust and see if I can't worm my way into one of those rooms.
Yeah, it was a big black Chevy truck.
Nice one, V8.
They could have, if they had a trailer, they could have taken them, but I'm gonna, yeah, notes around here and see if I can find them.
Maybe they're still out here.
Okay, I think Caroline is going to walk back to where the ATVs had been parked and driven and she's going to take a cursory look to see if there is any indication that they were
driven off the property or if they were perhaps loaded into a trailer or some such.
Yeah, go ahead and give me a search.
43, which is less than a 50.
So all right.
you search around and you see it's apparent that they drove these into the swamp.
They did nothing to cover their tracks.
It looks like they went out the main road that they would have drove in at first.
Okay, well they may be proficient thieves, but these biscuits are only half-baked.
It seems they took off that way.
Maybe start your search in that direction.
I'm sure we can converge on them before appointment time.
Well, I hope so because like I said, I don't want to get fired.
I like this job, so.
Yeah, and she will come over and comfort him, you know, kind of like breathing with him, putting her hand on her on his shoulder.
And she's going to say, look, now I'm the only one who knows this.
We can't keep it under wraps for more than, I don't know, four or five days, but we got plenty of time.
So all we need to do right now is breathe, breathe.
That's it.
Yeah, he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a second.
He's like, thank you, Caroline, thank you.
I know you're new and this probably is a, well, shitty job for you, but it's all I got and I appreciate you understanding that.
Yeah, well, let's go make something of it together.
And she will clap him on the shoulder and she is going to march straight back to her sedan, pull its red polished door open and slip on inside.
Yeah, you roll out and you're going straight to the Stardust.
Yeah, yeah, she is looking for a managerial office, someone who would know the room occupants.
It is a shithole, you're right.
And you know that the bottom floor has the office where the cashier or manager, whatever it would be at this motel is, and you open it and there's just a bell there.
No one's there though.
Yeah, well I will wander on over and I will give a little peek behind the counter, see if there is an obvious place where keys are hung on a rack and if it sounds like there is
anybody skulking about in the back.
Yeah, go ahead and give me alertness.
which is not great but it is a critical success in this case
Yeah, I mean, that's the one or two critical, one of the two critical successes you could have got.
yeah, you just quietly listen and you hear a TV humming, maybe in a back room, there's a door there that's shut
Your guess is that right over the counter about hip height is where the keys are hung.
And in fact, you can see a reflection in a turned off TV behind the counter of some keys hanging there.
Is there a key for each room?
Give me a luck roll.
33
There is a key for each room, but there is a unmarked key that looks similar to the other ones with no tag from it that is hung a distance away.
little bit of a master skeleton key perhaps.
I will snag that one and pocket it and maybe just quickly scan for a ledger to see if there were any notes taken about who has booked into which rooms recently.
Yeah, there is a ledger there and you go through it.
There haven't been a lot of guests here You see entries for a Jeremiah, a Janine and George.
No last names, just those.
Mm-hmm, couple of hoodlum names if I ever heard one.
Yeah, I think that is a cluster of names similar to the group that Mikkel had suggested.
They sound like a crew.
So I will wander on out into the annex and see if I can't pinpoint their locations.
Yeah, from the the receipt book that you found, you know that one of them had a room on the bottom floor and two had a rooms on the top floor or the second floor.
Okay, yeah.
I'll have a look at the top floor rooms first.
On account of maybe there are a few eyes on them.
Yeah, you get to 201 and open the door and there are candy wrappers and chip bags, not messily thrown around, but just sitting all over the bed, some in the trash, like somebody
in here feasted on junk food.
Hmm, my my, did a raccoon get in here?
Alright, I will have a cursory glance around, But...
I suppose I am looking for personal belongings, place where people would keep important materials, anything that may have been left behind.
There is nothing that you can see in the trash though.
You do find some pretty dirty, like a dirty undergarment, like a, almost like a white tank top that's torn, that has mud all over it and maybe blood.
Hmm
Alright, well this poor unfortunate soul has not had a nice time in Boggy Depot.
I can see we have that in common.
I will carry on to the next room.
Yeah, roll your search for these two.
With enough time, you will be able to find everything, but we'll do a roll to see how quickly you can.
Yeah, uh, 43.
That is okay.
The next room is pristinely organized.
Like you get in there and it looks like no one has touched it.
There's some indents in the bed where people have sat.
It looks like somebody made the bed meticulously.
And as you're searching around.
hunting through things, there's nothing to be found.
But you do get to the toilet.
Maybe you have to piss, I don't know, right?
But you open the toilet and there it is taped to the inside of the toilet seat is a bubble wrap envelope that has a lump in it.
my, my, what on earth are we doing here?
I will take a pocket square out of my floral purple patterned suit coat and I will consign myself to the idea that I will be parting ways with this when I am done, but I will
sacrifice it to the greater good and I will peel that bubble wrapped container off.
with that satisfying comes off of the tape that was used to fix it there.
And yeah, it's a letter and it's being sent to the East coast, Virginia.
Yeah.
Okay, well, it may be a federal crime if you get caught, but I do not intend to, so I will go ahead and read that letter.
I'm very curious as to who it was destined for.
you rip it open and read it.
And it seems like somebody is writing it to their grandmother.
And all it says is, grandma, I love you.
Here's this, you know what to do.
Very cryptic.
that sweet?
How did grandma earn a place of honor like the toilet?
I may never want to know.
Is there any other information as to the sender, as to the information they were trying to get across?
It is initialed RD on the bottom and
the address line, it's to somebody in, your guess is the suburbs, a suburb in Virginia, maybe around Baltimore, but it is addressed to Elaine Dwyer.
What a lovely name.
Sorry, so beyond the brief message, was there some sort of payload that was intended to be along with it?
Yeah, you see a roll of film, Kodak.
inside the envelope you find a hastily scrawled note it looks like they're just these strange symbols and some notes about a ritual and then some phonetic gibberish around it
that has the word song below it
Montugante, Bonante.
Now, what on earth were they getting into over here?
I'm gonna need a translator, but I wouldn't even know where to begin.
most curious.
We got an RD.
Thank you very much, RD.
you are my angel today.
I will have another look around the room.
looking for, this seemed to be like a point of congregation, perhaps, multiple people sharing this room.
So, I'm curious to see if there is anything in that communal space.
And then I suppose I will go check the third room just to be thorough.
Yeah, it looks fairly cleaned up.
it's not like they had housekeeping that did it, but whoever was staying in this room seemed to be very particular about how they kept their things.
So like the bed looks remade, even though there's some dents from somebody sitting on it.
There's no actual items.
The trashes are empty.
It seems to be possum proof, raccoon proof in here.
Hmm, alright.
yeah, to the bottom floor we go.
m
Go ahead and roll your human for the bottom floor.
My my my.
Boy the 40s are good to me today, 42.
you get in here and it is another room that looks like it's been cleaned up.
There's something about how the furniture is arranged though.
It looks like whoever was in here was arranging every seat to be facing the door.
It still looks nice, but...
there's a strange feng shui as you enter that gives you the sense of paranoia, like everything's facing the door.
And in fact, there's one of the seats a little too close to the window angled toward the door, or excuse me, angled toward the window.
Yeah, I think I bristled for a moment, like the hair on my forearm stands up underneath my silk shirt to the point where I realized that if this person were here waiting, they would
have been waiting for me.
And I imagine just the chemical reaction that would have been set off in their head when they heard a lock clicking when it shouldn't have been clicking.
and I count my lucky stars for today.
Yeah, you can roll your sand for that.
Thank you.
I will make sure to narrate more vaguely in the future 47 40 be my lucky number
Yeah, no sand loss.
I guess you get the first signal that something bigger is happening here.
Yeah, I think we were playing childhood games, breaking in here before.
There was no, it was small potatoes.
But the trail it is that I find myself on perhaps is a little more fraught than I realized putting two and two together.
Yeah.
I would like to look through this room as well, but I think I am doing so hurriedly so as not to be discovered upon this resident's return.
Yeah, so go ahead and roll a search then since it's rushed.
Yeah, 91, not so good.
Yeah, nothing comes up specific.
You do notice there are some just like metal shavings by one of the chairs at the feet of it.
Like somebody was sitting there with a knife doing something to metal, but that's about it.
curious, mildly intimidating, all the more reason to get the hell out of here.
I did not find what I came for.
Perhaps I found something better.
cannot be sure until I understand what it is I am in possession of.
I think I will leave a small recording device, a bug, in the bathroom of the fastidious person.
whose grandmother's letter I have poached.
I'm not sure if it will be safe to return to retrieve such a thing, but it may prove fruitful.
Yeah, let's see here.
Go ahead and...
think here.
Give me a intelligence roll.
Yeah, all right.
And then, yeah, that's enough, yeah.
16.
Any old person could do that.
you look and you're like, this idiot hid this thing in the toilet.
I found it, no problem.
There's two things people need to do, eat and piss.
And he didn't think of that.
So you are able to find a good hiding spot for it.
And you set it to flip on when sound enters the room.
Mm-hmm.
I blow it a little kiss as I exit the room.
I make sure to leave the door just cracked as I found it uh into the bathroom.
Yeah.
Where to next?
Well, I may not have seen everything that Atoka has to offer, but I have to imagine that they have a one-hour photo, some such.
Something to turn this roll into beautiful black and whites.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know where to go, right downtown.
Vroom vroom, let's go.
It's in the back of a pharmacy and there is a bright eyed gentleman there who is probably in his 50s, has dark rimmed glasses, little hefty around the waistline and he's got a big
guffawing laugh.
You hear him bullshitting with one of the pharmacy workers and you approach and he gives you a look.
that is a disguised, lettrous stare.
Well hello sugar, good morning to ya.
Yeah, there's almost like an uncomfortable inhale, like a sound when he sees you and you speak to him and he says, well, hello, darling.
Need something developed?
I sure do.
All I can think of is when Ryan made me feel weird for making a joke when he said developing fluids and now this guy is like developing fluids around his mouth.
It's like I fucking knew there was something weird about that.
Yeah.
Well, it's unlike me.
to be needing something of a rush order, but I'm afraid I simply cannot wait to have this role developed, and it is the only one I've got.
Would you be able to put your best man on the case?
There's an extra, oh gosh, who on earth?
Grant is on the 50, right?
There's an extra grant in there for you if you're able to make it happen under 30.
An extra grant, huh?
Yes ma'am.
And please, don't call me miss.
My name is Caroline.
Oh, nice to meet your acquaintance, Caroline.
I see you bring a lot of sugar with you.
May I ask what you're developing this for?
Or are you paying me not to ask?
Well, I am late for my nephew's birthday party.
And I was supposed to do these a week ago.
I told his mother I would have them.
And it's a little embarrassing to show up empty handed.
So I'm hoping you could maybe help me smooth this over.
He takes the film from you and he says, oh yeah, yeah.
Kind of pulls out his collar and walks back to the photo scanner.
You see him start fiddling with it, feeding it into a machine.
They don't do it by hand even in the 90s.
So he has a special scanner and he sets it to start scanning the film and printing it.
I'm assuming you want doubles and he throws you a wink.
You read my mind.
Yeah.
where are you from, miss?
I haven't seen you around.
No, no, I am new to town.
A lovely place, uh thankful to be here.
I've just been stationed over at Boggy Depot State Park where I will be nestling in uh and trying to make something of that place.
You'll be sure to swing on by if ever you need to stretch your legs.
Yeah, he looks down at his legs.
He's probably pre-diabetic.
He's like, oh, I sure will make my way out there.
I used to go there when I was younger.
It's a small little park, kind of podunk place, but you...
Hodunk, that is the word, isn't it?
Yes.
Ma'am, he tells you to come in close.
I have a little secret.
Everything around here is podunk.
I think, in fact, think Otoka made that fucking term podunk.
Yeah, I think somebody told me that a toka is chock-tah for po-dunk.
He cracks up, does some guffawing, pretty charismatic guy.
Goofy to say the least, you just hanging out at the counter or you're gonna do something else.
I will, very much keep an eye on that roll of film uh as it is being processed.
I want to make sure that I get back the prints that are associated with it.
but I do not want to betray, my desperation.
And so I will probably, you know, when the conversation cools off a little bit, I will walk the aisles.
but, chance and glance is back as often as I need.
he continues to print them.
You're walking around, typical Rite Aid fare.
the, you you check back in at the counter.
He is putting the photos in a sleeve.
and loading them into two different folders for you.
He pulls the negatives and puts that in an envelope as well.
And he kind of comes over to you shaking his head.
He's like, you said this is for your nephew?
Well, unless I got the rolls mixed up, which would be a huge debacle on a daylight today.
He looks at you serious.
He's like, okay.
Well, here you go, ma'am.
And then slides it over to you.
Yeah, she thinks twice before correcting him to Caroline once more, but something about the gravity in his voice has turned her mind to other things, and she will thank him
profusely, make good on her promise of the 50, and then she will scuttle her way back to the vehicle to furiously snap open that envelope.
Yeah, there are a lot of blanks at first, just blank pictures.
And you get through them, you see a picture of what looks like to be Boggy Depot, Swamp Land.
It seems like they were taking a picture of a footprint or something.
And there's a picture of a church from the outside.
That's fine and dandy.
You're like, okay, so they've been out here for a little bit.
Then you see a picture of a severed finger on the bed.
It's strange looking.
The nail is not normal, but who knows how old and rotten it is.
Go ahead and enroll Sanity for Violence.
Yeah.
89, not so good.
Not what I was expecting either.
oh
Yeah.
So do you want to project?
Yeah, I think I do.
I'm thinking of my mama and all the advice that she has given me over the years.
It has served me very well.
And, you know, she has certainly helped me to navigate the avenues that I ought not have been in, but it weren't without warnings.
And so, you know, the stern notion of like, well, you know, sometimes you just get what's coming to you.
Maybe you ought not have looked.
It kind of bites deep into me today.
Yeah, go ahead and roll a D4 for the projection and then give me a D4 for the sand loss.
Four for the projection, three for the sand loss.
Okay, so you still take four off your willpower and your bond regardless, but ah you do not take any sand loss.
You still flipping through those or you stopping there?
absolutely not.
I am flipping faster, if anything.
the next picture there's a few pictures of the finger I should say and then the next one is the top of a strange metal cylinder and then the next picture after that is
three circles in the bottom of a cylinder.
And then the one after that is a wider view of it.
And what you see is glass fused to metal around a cylinder and inside there is a for lack of a better term mummified looking brain suspended in the middle of this.
It's something that you think you would have seen in a science class, but there's something alien about it to you.
Go ahead and roll sanity again from the unnatural.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, 36, okay this time.
you followed the rabbit in the hole and you got your little taste and you can stomach what's next, right?
think maybe even the true crime books that I've been reading are shielding me from any sort of unnatural conspiracy at this point.
I think to myself, based on the clean and fastidious nature of that room, that man sure could be a serial killer.
It is quite possible that this is one of his deeds and he has taken a trophy to remember his act by.
you're not sure what to make of it.
Ranger McKell could be in some trouble looking through these and you get through some pictures of what looks to be a scroll of some type, just a long piece of paper.
There's strange writing on it.
I'm assuming Caroline hasn't encountered Hebrew in her time.
Absolutely not, but I think she is going to look for any phonetical similarities between the writings in the toilet and those on the photo.
Yeah, when she's, you pull out the notes when you start seeing the pictures of the scroll.
The text before but has been adapted and changed in strange ways and it gets more and more chaotic.
And you do start seeing some of the same symbols that were scrawled on this note from RD and the text that they have photos of.
And most of the rest of the pictures of this 36 roll of film are of different portions of that
R.D.R.D.R.D.
What on earth were you cooking up down here?
Okay, I don't know what it is that I have stumbled upon, but I feel uncomfortable as though these people may be armed and dangerous.
I would very much like to get to the bottom of what it were that they were.
skulking about for, why it was they felt the need to steal these ATVs to begin with, but well a swamp seems like a perfect place to hide a body if I'm being perfectly honest and
so waiting out there to confront them by my little lonesome does not seem entirely prudent.
I think I would like to place a call
to someone back home to see if they might be able to procure me an insurance policy of sorts.
Yeah, hard to say what to call him exactly.
Cassius King is the first number in my speed dial and he is absolutely who I am calling in this occasion.
Yeah, and you go to a payphone or like, what do you?
Yeah, I think a payphone is called for.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and tell me about Cassius.
Yeah, Cassius is a long time friend and confidant and so much more than that.
He keeps me in good supply when times are hard of a multitude of things.
And he's a man who knows how to get stuff done.
So I think I will trust him implicitly to handle this with the care that it deserves.
Yeah.
And is he a toka or where does he hail from?
Yeah.
No, he's down in the bayou, down in Louisiana.
That is my hometown most of the time.
yeah, he doesn't necessarily stick around in one place.
A bit of a nomad, as it were.
ring, ring, Shit, hello?
Cassius.
Pleasure to hear that silky voice of yours.
Baby, baby, baby, how are you?
I'm in a bit of a pickle.
Or I'm about to be or I could be, but I don't want to be.
Which is why I called you.
And what can I do for you, baby?
Well, I got my hot little hands on something that ain't never should have seen the light of day.
And I can imagine a number of interested parties would be clamoring for it if they had the right context and know how.
And I'm inclined to hold on to it.
But you know, the people that I'm going to see,
I'm not sure if they'll be so pleased to see me if you know what I mean.
And so I need a bit of an insurance policy.
If perhaps I overnight these to you, you could have them on a dead man's switch to drop them to the, well, some of the contacts you have.
Didn't you have a cousin that worked for the newspaper?
Yeah, I got some cousin who works for the newspaper.
But hey, honey, honey, back up.
Are you in any danger?
I wouldn't want anything happening to that sweet little ass of yours.
Well, I mean, you can't play if you don't put skin in the game.
You know what I'm saying?
Look, all I know is I'm here on this assignment in this hellhole day number one and into my lap falls an opportunity to never have to mention the name of Toca again.
I couldn't be more delighted.
honey.
Yeah, I know.
I just has to ask.
You know how it is.
Yeah, well, you do goodbye me and I do goodbye you.
That's the way it's always gonna be.
have I ever not?
That's what I'm saying.
That's why you're my first and only call.
I just need you to know that if I don't call back by Friday, you need to drop this into your cousin's hand or whoever you think would pick up a story like this.
On account of the world needs to know what I done found.
I am so curious.
You're being very vague and it is pushing all my buttons.
So you're going to send me this and then if I don't hear from you when?
Bye Friday!
Friday.
Okay.
Now, you know I don't go off the calendar very well, so let me write this down.
Can I get some PIN?
Yeah, you're gonna wanna write this down.
and then he grabs a pen he's like thank you thank you and writes it down it's like baby you know what I got one of these things called a DVD player have you ever heard of them?
Sure, honey.
You are with the times.
I got Scarface on DVD.
When you coming back?
When you coming down?
Honey, that sounds like a date.
Scarface, you know that's my favorite.
Yeah, well, you know, it depends how this turns out.
Could be tomorrow, could be in a month, could be never, depending on how this package turns out.
Well, you never know.
I know the game.
I know the game more than anybody.
You know that.
But hey, you stay safe out there.
I always intend to.
I don't want to have to come down there with Tito, James, and Taco and fuck some people up.
No, no, they don't want that neither.
And I'm going to make sure that they know they don't want that.
Which is why we're going to try the nice route first.
We always try the nice route first, don't we?
That's how you friends, baby.
Mm-hmm, catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Indeed.
Well, can't say I'm not worried about you, but I trust you.
I know you're capable.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
Okay, well, let me know if I need to bring the guns.
Yeah, it's nice to hear your voice.
Always nice to hear your voice, baby.
So from here, what would Caroline do?
Yeah, I think she is inclined to go touch base with Rangel McHale.
He seemed to be not altogether directed in his focus, making sure that he is still on course, seeing if there's anything that he has seen.
Otherwise, well, I'm not going to go traipsing out into that swamp.
I don't have shoes for that.
But I think I would.
post up at the next best spot to try and intercept our interlopers.
you drive back to Boggy Depot State Park and there is a interchange between turning into the park and then one that goes straight into trails.
Ranger McKell is standing at that junction, leaning against his pickup truck.
And as you drive in, he waves you down.
Well hey there sweetheart, aren't you a friendly face?
Yes, yes, um, hey, I found their truck.
It's just right down here.
I haven't found any of the quads yet, but I'm about to head out into the swamp to go find them because the tracks are right here.
Well, all right.
I'm not on keys too.
You were right about the Stardust, that had to be them.
They didn't leave many traces of themselves.
I'm not really sure who they are just yet.
Say, would you consider them to be dangerous people?
I mean the lady, I forgot her name, she was really friendly.
We talked about the ATVs for some time and I mean she spilled coffee on me but you know, accidents are accidents.
I mean there was a small wiry old guy and he kinda was strange.
The other one just looked like a dork so I didn't seem dangerous.
They had a lot of gear with them though and they said it was camera stuff.
I like why the fuck would they take my ATVs though?
Just like, do not understand what's going on here.
Bird hunters, I will never understand that hobby.
Okay, well, if you are intent to go out into the swamp, you're doing God's work, but I just want you to be extra careful.
Something about their room gave me the heebie-jeebies and I wouldn't want that to brush off on you.
If it's all the same with you, I think I'll wait here at the trailhead just in case they come running back, make sure we split the difference.
How's that sound?
Yeah, I mean if they're dangerous, you you shouldn't wait here.
well, I might not look like I have teeth, but I bite.
And she will just pull the little snub nose out of her clutch, make sure that he knows that, you know, she can handle herself.
And she closes it back up with a crisp little snap and a tap tap on the outside.
Probably not the first time that she has brandished that.
Yeah, that reminds him he opens his truck door, leans over to the glove box and you see him bend over, half of his ass is showing, these pants are too big for him, and he pulls
out a pistol of his own and says, well, I guess I should go look for it, right?
You think we should call the cops or anything?
If you call the cops, they're gonna report this to your superiors and all of a sudden all of our dirty laundry is out in the open.
Shit.
I'm sorry, I'm not thinking Caroline.
I'm so fucking stressed out by this.
Look, I don't think you should put yourself out any further than you have to.
Be safe.
Don't do anything rash or stupid.
You make sure you're back here by nightfall.
We'll begin again tomorrow if we have to.
Okay, again, I appreciate you, so I don't know what I'd do without you.
Right, right.
And she has been kind of trying to calm him and also nervously checking her watch because three o'clock is coming up and we still do not have a way to get the contractors out to
the site where we are going to be surveying.
But she's trying not to make that Ranger McKell's problem.
That's in her head for now.
Yeah, he sets off, you see him disappear into the canopy of the swamp.
Just has his pistol on his side and walks into God only knows what.
And there you wait.
Yeah, I think I say a little prayer for him.
It doesn't really mean anything to me, but it seems like the right thing to do.
On account he's a good boy.
He is a good boy.
Anything else you wanna cover is that feel that's good.
I suppose in between the phone call and here I would have posted a bubble-wrapped envelope of my own overnight airdrop to wherever Cassius said he was at the time.
There's a trailer park where his mama stays, safest place like a PO box for him.
But other than that, I think I am simply going to open up a little spread of cheese and crackers and grapes on the hood of that pickup truck, because it's going to be a long day
and there is not much to look at out here.
I am painfully aware.
Yeah, you open the spread, you have a little picnic as you wait.
Hmm.
Mm-mm-mm.