The Complete Episode Guide to Tremors: The Series

 These texts have all been taken from the Episode Guide to Tremors (2003) that was originally published on SciFi.com/tremors in 2002. That website is long gone, but it can still be accesed via the Internet Archive. We assumed it would be more convenient to just have all of it right here, on one easily accessible page.
 We have preserved the original images and text presentation.

• Feeding Frenzy
• Shriek and Destroy
• Blast from the Past
• Hit and Run
• Project 4-12
• Ghost Dance
• Night of the Shriekers
• A Little Paranoia Among the Friends
• Flora or Fauna
• Graboid Rights
• Water Hazard
• The Sounds of Silence
• The Key

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

When my geo-phone net sounded the alarm, I deployed to the entrance of Perfection Valley and found our local Graboid, El Blanco, menacing an adult caucasian male named Tyler Reed. Mr. Reed informed me that El Blanco had just snagged himself a backpacker. (Damn it, how many times do we have to warn tourists not to wander around the valley without safety equipment?) One concussion grenade later, El Blanco had vamoosed and our newest neighbor was hitching a ride into town with me.

At Chang's Market, Tyler told us he'd bought Desert Jack's Tours. Jodi Chang and I gave him the normal safety briefing and Graboid-detection gear. Then El Blanco arrived to give him a training exercise.

El Blanco's unusually aggressive behavior was triggering my brain's early-warning system. Next morning, doing recon, I found one dirtbike track and seven dead, half-eaten burros. They couldn't talk, but they didn't have to. Those burros told me our not-so-friendly neighborhood Graboid was in an unnatural feeding frenzy.

Then Rosalita radioed in, screaming that El Blanco was attacking her ranch. Jodi and Tyler extracted her safely, and Tyler brought her to my place. As they arrived, I saw a metallic gleam in the distance, and my equipment went on the fritz. When El Blanco charged us, we had to fall back to my bunker.

After that incident, we headed to Chang's Market for a war council. We were all there, even our blustering compadre Agent Twitchell, when El Blanco burst through the floor and commenced wreaking more havoc.

Before I could shoot him, I glanced out the window and spotted the same metallic gleam I'd seen earlier. I sighted the target, acquired, fired. Scored a direct hit. With the gleaming device reduced to a smoking ruin, El Blanco excused himself to parts unknown.

Tyler and I drove out to investigate the device I'd fragged, and we spotted a dirt-biker speeding away. We pursued him. When we caught up to him, he pulled a gun on us. Tyler, showing a decent instinct for tactics, distracted him and secured the weapon. The biker hopped back on his wheels and fled into a dead-end box canyon.

We never caught the biker — but only because El Blanco found him first. All we discovered was a gnawed-up bike and a jittery Melvin Plug. Melvin, ever the consummate capitalist turd, maintained his innocence, but I'm sure he hired the biker to torment El Blanco with the device. Said device provoked El Blanco to kill, which Melvin hoped would provoke us to kill El Blanco. Then Melvin could turn Perfection Valley into the strip mall of his dreams. With the device destroyed, Melvin was outta luck.

So all's quiet at this hour. I gotta say, I'm never thrilled when someone new clutters up Perfection, but Tyler seems to have a good head on his shoulders. I just hope his daredevil attitude doesn't get him turned into Graboid-chow.

---

Melvin Plug . . . . . . ROBERT JAYNE
Harlowe Winnemuca . . . . . . BRANSCOMBE RICHMOND
Backpacker . . . . . . ZACK GRAKAL
Biker . . . . . . WILLIAM COWART

Written by . . . . . . S.S. WILSON &
BRENT MADDOCK &
NANCY ROBERTS
Directed by . . . . . . BRADFORD MAY

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

When Juniper, Ariz., faced a Shrieker stampede, Twitchell ordered me and Tyler to handle the situation — or else he'd kick everyone out of Perfection for good. Regardless, I wouldn't have obeyed (after all, it would take a truly massive military force even to make me uncomfortable, never mind drive me out of my home valley), except that Tyler secured from Twitch some worthwhile concessions to our quality of life and liberty in exchange for our help.

Before we left, Jodi asked Tyler to bring along her video camera and shoot footage she could use in a new home-movie to sell to tourists. I wasn't thrilled about that idea, but (unlike certain government agents) I still consider this to be a free country.

We arrived in the middle of Juniper's annual "Pioneer Days" festival. While Tyler befriended a local baseball player named George Meadows, I used satellite tracking to identify two groups of Shriekers some distance away. We rolled out to intercept the herds ASAP.

Our first confrontation with the Shriekers was a textbook engagement: We lured them into a close-quarters ambush, opened fire, and cut them down.

We'd have taken the other group, too, if Bill McClane of the Fish and Wildlife Service hadn't interfered. After proclaiming himself an expert hunter, he sent us "amateurs" back to the Pioneer Days barbecue while he handled the second batch of Shriekers all by his lonesome.

I suppressed my rage by engaging in a pleasant distraction: I chatted up Courtney (a.k.a. Miss Pioneer Days) about a locally famous gun collection. Just as the conversation was getting interesting, that numbskull McClane returned. He proudly announced that he'd killed all the Shriekers but one, which he'd locked into a building at a feed-and-grain lot.

Yes, a feed and grain lot. Where the Shrieker (a self-replicating creature) could eat enough to start reproducing exponentially.

Sure enough, at the lot we found a ragged hole in the now-empty building and the gruesome remains of two cops, Piper and Rinks, who McClane had left on guard. We couldn't guess how many Shriekers had been spawned by McClane's ignorance. With the bureaucratic blockhead in tow, we followed the Shriekers' tracks.

We cornered the enormous pack of ravenous predators at a water-treatment plant, where the Shriekers quickly outsmarted and killed McClane. Then Tyler lured them into a shed. We ripped the building to pieces with the last of our ammo, but when we opened the shed's door we discovered that almost all the Shriekers had escaped through an underground pipe — a pipe that led directly to the fairgrounds.

We were fresh out of government-issued ammo, and the people of Juniper were about to be out of time and out of luck.

Tyler sped back to the fairgrounds and started an evacuation, but the Shriekers arrived too quickly. Tyler grabbed a slab of roasting meat off the barbecue spit, lashed it to his car, rounded up Twitch, and drove away (fast enough to stay ahead of the Shriekers but slow enough to let them stay on his tail). The Shriekers eagerly followed the meat's heat signature as Tyler led them into the ambush I was about to set:

I raced to the local gun-collector's residence. No one was home, so as Tyler and Twitchell arrived (leaving the meat down the road to stall the Shriekers), I broke into the house. Unfortunately, the famed gun collection consisted of single-shot antiques. The three of us could never hold off the Shriekers with these Civil War-era muskets.

Luckily, Tyler's friend George showed up to help — and brought his entire baseball team with him. I issued weapons, musket balls and gunpowder to the men. With only seconds to spare, I taught them how to load the weapons. I directed them to stand in two ranks, fire on my command, then drop back to reload while the other rank fires. Moments later the Shriekers swarmed our position, only to face a firing line as deadly as those of Gettysburg and Antietam.

As I'd predicted, we won the day. As I'd further predicted, Twitchell stole all the credit. But thanks to Jodi's insistence that we videotape our entire adventure, the truth may yet set us free from Twitchell's meddlesome mediocrity....

---

Bill McClane . . . . . . PAT SKIPPER
Mayor . . . . . . TOM HANSON
George Meadows . . . . . . WILLIAM O'LEARY
Worker . . . . . . HOSEA SIMMONS
Jerry Rinks . . . . . . STEPHEN WALTERS
Courtney . . . . . . ALISON MacINNIS
Boyfriend . . . . . . CLAYTON BLOCKER
Pick-up Driver . . . . . . JEFF KELLY
Farmer's Wife . . . . . . TONI CAFARO


Written by . . . . . . BRENT MADDOCK & S.S. WILSON
Directed by . . . . . . JACK SHOLDER

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

When body parts started cropping up around Perfection, I was forced to bring my inaugural class of survival students in from the field while we investigated this latest danger.

The sulfurous odor I smelled at one of the crime scenes told me what our perpetrator was. Rosalita's report of an attack that she'd barely survived only confirmed it: We were dealing with an AssBlaster.

It was up to Tyler and me to hunt the beast down before it laid a Graboid egg and gave El Blanco a hunting partner. Though I was reluctant to leave my students in less-experienced hands, Jodi insisted they'd be fine with Rosalita and Nancy.

Outside town, Tyler and I lured the AssBlaster to the heat of my truck's engine. Just as I lined up the kill shot, I got an urgent call from Jodi. Two men, Brock and Mead, had arrived. They worked for those overdressed Vegas magicians, Sigmund and Ray, who'd paid Nancy many thousands of greenbacks for the live AssBlaster she'd caught a few years ago.

It was this same, very valuable AssBlaster — callsign Messerschmitt — that had broken loose (after some black-market thugs botched their attempt to steal it). The creature had returned here, to its roots in Perfection. Nancy blamed herself for the deaths the creature had caused; she felt it was her fault for selling the creature instead of killing it. I told her she'd done nothing wrong, but I'm not sure she believed me.

To recapture the creature, Tyler and I set out a grill and a bunch of military MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). Theoretically, the AssBlaster would approach the heat source, eat the food, and lapse into a well-documented dormant state we like to call a "food coma."

The AssBlaster showed up, all right — but it rejected the food. Worse, Brock and Mead's tranquilizer gun didn't work, because their drugs were burned off by the monster's extremely high body temperature. We barely escaped the encounter without casualties.

Back at Chang's Market, Brock and Mead explained that the AssBlaster had rejected my MREs because Sigmund and Ray had spoiled the creature with a steady diet of fancy-shmancy French food. I filed this bit of overdue intelligence under "failure to communicate."

Nancy cooked up a French dinner with all the trimmings, which we put out in the middle of the street — a veritable AssBlaster smorgasbord. That wanna-be bird, however, used its wanna-be bird brain. It could tell that the food on the ground was bait for a trap, so it kept its distance.

Hoping it wouldn't realize that airborne food was equally dangerous, we baited a hook with a chunk of steak au poivre, attached it to a modified hang-glider, and started towing the apparatus behind my truck. The AssBlaster zoomed in, bit into the flying meat, and lodged the hook in its jaw. Then we faced the hazardous task of reeling in our catch. My survival-school students helped save the day by netting the beast with the macramé hammocks they'd made at Nancy's place (don't ask...please).

Messershmitt went home to his two daddies, and my survivalists went home with big heads and stomachs full of Nancy's cooking. I know it looks like a happy ending, but it's not: The AssBlaster lives to kill another day, and my students think that basket-weaving will save them in the high desert. Am I the only one who thinks this is completely FUBAR?

---

Mosley . . . . . . DAVID DOTY
Rosser . . . . . . STUART FRATKIN
Mead . . . . . . HARRISON PAGE
Brock . . . . . . GARY WEEKS


Story by . . . . . . S.S. WILSON & BRENT MADDOCK and BABS GREYHOSKY
Teleplay by . . . . . . BABS GREYHOSKY
Directed by . . . . . . MICHAEL SHAPIRO

From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

Recently, a guest on Tyler's tour violated protocol by jumping off the jeep; the numbskull nearly got gnawed by El Blanco. Because of that incident, Twitchell wanted to shut down Tyler's tour business. I talked to our local federale, and he agreed to let the tours continue — in exchange for my promise to close my survival school if I couldn't keep El Blanco from attacking Tyler's customers.

Soon afterward, two Vegas lowlifes, Frank and Max, rolled into town and bought all the seats on Tyler's tour. Frank didn't believe that Graboids existed, and his buddy Max wanted to show him proof. When Tyler couldn't scare up El Blanco for them, they angrily drove off into the wilderness on their own.

Tyler tried to follow them and keep them safe, but they had too much of a head-start. Instead, Tyler found me. I was busy conditioning El Blanco — with a strict regimen of negative reinforcement — to avoid the sound of Tyler's tour jeep, so I sent Tyler on his way so as not to bias my experiment.

Tyler kept searching for the missing duo until long after sunset. Then Frank stumbled alone into Chang's Market. He was in shock. He said that El Blanco had eaten Max.

That evening, Frank kept his phone calls secret, and he seemed pretty worked up about a lost key. Something shady was going on. Rosalita concluded that Frank had "whacked" Max for the mob and was trying to pin the blame on El Blanco. I doubted that version of events, but even I grew suspicious when Frank lied about "getting some rest," slipped out a back door and fled in his truck.

By the next morning I hadn't tracked him down, but I'd found the car that had met him. Its trunk was crammed with instructions on killing Graboids. Frank and his new mystery buddy were out to murder El Blanco.

We moved fast. Because the hostiles were luring El Blanco with noise, I used the seismo scanner to follow the Graboid to their location.

When the shooting started, I ordered Tyler to lure El Blanco to safety while I dealt with Max and his pal. Unfortunately, thanks to my Pavlovian conditioning, El Blanco refused to follow Tyler's jeep. It was up to me to lead the beast away on foot.

El Blanco followed me with a vengeance, and the hostiles, with their harpoon, targeted the Great White Graboid. Then the worm turned — against his hunters. Frank watched his amigo segunda die in the Graboid's maw.

I tossed a concussion grenade. In response, El Blanco retreated, trailing the harpoon cable, which he'd swallowed along with Frank's new pal. Frank's ankle got entangled in the slack cable. The Graboid dragged him out of sight. Tyler and I later found one of Frank's boots and a set of footprints, so for now we're assuming that he escaped.

I still wonder what motivated Frank to go after El Blanco. I doubt it was vengeance; Frank seemed like too lazy and cowardly a lowlife to risk his neck over a point of honor. I'm convinced he needed El Blanco dead for another reason. Unfortunately, unless I can determine what that reason is, I have to expect that Perfection Valley hasn't seen the last of him....

---

Frank . . . . . . NICHOLAS TURTURRO
Max . . . . . . TROY WINBUSH
Kinney . . . . . . MICHAEL ROOKER
Large Tourist . . . . . . JASON D. SMITH
Reporter . . . . . . PAMELA DAVIS


Written by . . . . . . CHRISTOPHER SILBER
Directed by . . . . . . P. J. PESCE

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

I knew something was wrong with Cletus Poffenberger when I found him wandering in the desert. Like the mad scientist he is, he was raving about a monster on the loose.

When Rosalita's hired hand Harlow was attacked by a mysterious creature, we realized that Cletus wasn't kidding around. Harlow said the beast resembled a giant porcupine with a rhino's horn, so it wasn't a member of the Graboid family.

Cletus and I set out to hunt down the creature, which Cletus called "4-12" — in a tone of voice most people reserve for chihuahuas named Munchkin.

While we searched, Cletus revealed that, 30 years back, he'd worked as a biochemist in a top-secret compartmentalized skunkworks laboratory buried in the desert near Perfection. The lab was run by the Proudfoot Corporation for the good ol' federal government.

Cletus's project was 4-12, a killing machine intended for use in the Vietnam War. After creating a DNA-splicing chemical called MixMaster, Cletus blended the genes of several dangerous animals to design his monstrous masterpiece.

When the feds decided to disappear the lab, Cletus fled with his baby, 4-12. The two of them had been living as pals in the desert ever since.

Supposedly, 4-12 was docile as long as Cletus fed it a certain type of cactus bud. Since Cletus hadn't been able to locate any cactus Prozac lately, 4-12 was off its meds and on a rampage.

While Cletus was spilling his guts (so to speak), 4-12 was lunching on the guts of a Road Hog who'd pulled into town. After some strategic maneuvering, Tyler, Jodi, Nancy, Rosalita, Harlow, Cletus and I reconvened at the scene of that assault. 4-12 was absent, but I deduced that it was combing the area in a standard military search pattern, as it'd been bred to do.

Sure enough, it returned right on schedule. Instead of heading straight for me and my gun, however, it ID'd a juicier target of opportunity — Chang's Market, where the others were hiding.

No one was killed, and the market only ended up with one significant hole in the wall. I've seen worse. The women fled to safety; we men nearly got pinned down.

Just in time, El Blanco arrived and swallowed 4-12 whole. A regrettable instance of premature celebration transpired before the Great White Graboid vomited 4-12 back up — alive and intact.

Tyler, Cletus, Harlow and I made a tactical retreat to Tyler's shed. We had mere moments before 4-12 broke in. While Cletus tried to negotiate with it (he's a mad scientist, remember), the rest of us got busy. We jury-rigged a passable flame-thrower just in time. Big, bad 4-12 came through the wall and got himself a faceful of Nevada napalm.

With 4-12 fried, Cletus faces an even lonelier existence than he'd had before. But I think he'll be fine; living without a companion — be it a mutant porcupine or a wife — builds character, and forces a man to improve himself, body, mind and soul.

Witness my sterling example, if you will.

---

Harlow Winnemuca . . . . . . BRANSCOMBE RICHMOND
Cletus Poffenberger . . . . . . CHRISTOPHER LLOYD
Road Hog . . . . . . LORIN McCRALEY


Written by . . . . . . JOHN SCHULIAN
Directed by . . . . . . CHUCK BOWMAN

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

In the old mine shaft just outside of town, Rosalita and her hired hand Harlow found a cave explorer whose arm had been shriveled dry by a glowing green cloud. When they told the rest of us about it, my neighbors all immediately jumped to the conclusion that we had a ghost on our hands. I knew better.

Fact: Ghosts don't exist. Fact: There was almost certainly an abandoned, top-secret, underground government lab near there. Put those facts together and it's pretty obvious that the green mist killing people in the mine had to be a government project run amok.

As usual, everyone said I was crazy.

Then Agent Twitchell showed up. Our friendly government toady was supposed to investigate the mine for what his superiors called a "methane leak." (I believed that story just as much as I believe in ghosts.) Tyler and I went with him. We found no methane, just two more dead people whose bodies had been drained dry — an air shaft leading to the aforementioned "nonexistent" government lab.

Then the glowing green mist cornered us. Playing a hunch — based on the available evidence — I saved us by emptying my canteen onto the ground nearby. The mist sucked up the liquid the same way it had drained its victims dry.

We escaped back to town, where a couple of real spooks arrived: two EPA agents named Fallon and Wilhelm. They wouldn't tell us anything, so Tyler and I secretly followed them to the mine. The mist had come outside and gotten bigger. The spooks sprayed it with an antibacterial agent, but it barreled ahead and killed Wilhelm.

Fallon hightailed it out of there. Tyler and I roadblocked him and demanded he give us information instead of excuses. Since we already knew the mist was a water-devouring bacteria developed by the government, Fallon stopped denying it. He confessed that the mist must've gotten loose in the abandoned lab and mutated by rubbing shoulders with its top-secret chemical neighbors.

Now the big green gasball was heading straight for us. To the thirsty cloud, Perfection's giant water tank smelled like a feast.

Have I ever mentioned that Uncle Sam is a blockhead? To stop the bacteria, the government decided to napalm our entire town. How exactly did these rocket scientists plan to explain why they used a napalm strike to fix a "methane leak"? This is our tax dollars at work. Be afraid, be very afraid.

We were about to lose Perfection. Obviously, it was up to us to come up with a solution that was cheap, sane and crafted from handy spare parts and common household items.

So, with some duct tape, an old industrial wet vacuum and my truck, we built a machine that would suck the bacteria into an airtight container helpfully provided by Fallon, who still didn't really believe our plan would work, even though he hoped it would.

Jodi and Rosalita enlisted El Blanco to stall the National Guard troops coming to evacuate us. That gave Tyler just enough time for some extreme housecleaning. After the wetvac sucked up all the bacteria, the government slapped a "methane" label on the canister and drove off with it into the sunset.

And now life is back to we passes for normal in Perfection. It might not always be safe or fun, but it beats fighting traffic and paying five dollars for "gourmet" coffee.

---

Harlow Winnemuca . . . . . . BRANSCOMBE RICHMOND
Cletus Poffenberger . . . . . . CHRISTOPHER LLOYD
Fallon . . . . . . MICHAEL HARNEY
Wilhelm . . . . . . JAMIE McSHANE
Lynch . . . . . . GREG COLLINS
Captain Drake . . . . . . RANDY MULKEY
John Draper . . . . . . KEVIN OTTO


Written by . . . . . . S.S. WILSON &
BRENT MADDOCK
Directed by . . . . . . WHITNEY RANSICK

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

If I hadn't been constantly vigilant, I would never have discovered that a Dr. Megan Flint was running a government-funded Shrieker finishing school right here in Perfection Valley.

She was trying make Shriekers into docile SAR (that's Search and Rescue) animals. As long as the electro-gizmos she'd implanted in the creatures' brains were working, her three Shriekers would be nice as hamsters.

Mother Nature picked that very night to show Dr. Flint who was boss. A massive lightning storm knocked out the power generators at Dr. Flint's camp. Out came the Shriekers to have themselves a smorgasbord.

By the time Twitchell and I got up there the next day, the only survivors were Dr. Flint and her adviser, Dr. Baynes. Most of her people were dead; a couple were missing, including her tech-support specialist, Otto.

With Shriekers on the rampage, Perfection's citizenry gathered in my underground bunker for safety. Infrared satellite imaging showed me that the Shriekers were multiplying: There were already forty of them.

It was time to take the offensive. At nightfall, we lit a fire outside. When the first group of the creatures arrived, baited by the heat, Rosalita, Tyler and I blasted them to pieces.

Soon afterward, Otto called in. Dr. Flint told him to head for our location ASAP. If he could bring us a backup Behavioral Modification Unit, Dr. Flint claimed she could regain control over her creatures.

A second group of Shriekers showed up before Otto did, so we killed them, too. Desperate to stop us from destroying all of her precious animals, Dr. Flint ignited my main ammo supply. Of all the—! I can't believe she was so reckless! It's amazing no one died.

Jodi, Twitch and Nancy took shelter in my safe room, where I store my extra ammo. Problem was, the door got jammed — so they were trapped, and I couldn't re-load my guns.

When Otto arrived, our non compos mentis doctor rushed outside to put her plan into action. Her electronics must've failed her, because she and Otto ended up as Shrieker chow.

Now the Shriekers started digging down into my compound. Desperate measures being required, I told the group in the safe room how to build a bomb. While Tyler fought off the Shrieker incursion through the roof, we prepared to blast open the safe room's door.

Then the Shriekers abandoned their direct assault on my roof, and tried to sneak up my escape hatch instead. The escape hatch, however, led straight to the safe room. Jodi, Nancy and Twitchell got a scare, but the Shriekers got blown to smithereens by the bomb.

We could finally breathe a sigh of relief — as long as we didn't mind the stench of burnt Shrieker guts.

---

Dr. Megan Flint . . . . . . MELINDA CLARKE
Dr. Harold Baynes . . . . . . MATT MALLOY
Karl Hartung . . . . . . PATRICK ST. ESPRIT
Otto Thurman . . . . . . TOM McCAFFERTY
Tourist . . . . . . KAREN GORDON


Story by . . . . . . JOHN SCHULIAN
Teleplay by . . . . . . JOHN SCHULIAN and BRENT MADDOCK & S.S. WILSON
Directed by . . . . . . P.J. PESCE

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

When Twitchell dispatched me and Tyler to investigate possible Graboid activity near Toluca, N.M., I prepared to inaugurate my new Barrett 50-caliber rifle against a live Caederus americana.

But Twitch had tasked us to a 100-percent certifiable nuthouse of a town. Egged on by a radio talk-show host named Cecil Carr, Toluca's citizens all believed that their missing loved ones had been abducted by aliens, not eaten by a Graboid. To talk to these aliens, Carr had even built a device called an "Intergalactic Communicator," a.k.a. an IGC, out in the desert.

The Tolucans promptly decided that Tyler and I were federal agents trying to cover up the aliens for the government. I've never been so insulted in all my life.

That night, someone hurled a rock bearing a death threat through our hotel-room window. The next day, Deputy Sheriff Garcia himself sabotaged the Graboid-monitoring geophone network that we'd painstakingly installed the previous day.

Tyler and I pursued the hunt anyway. Sure enough, we encountered a Graboid near the IGC. But it acted crazy too, ignoring my standard lures. Instead, it went after Deputy Garcia, who was changing the IGC's battery. After Garcia refused to heed our warnings, the Graboid attacked — and bit Garcia in half.

Naturally, the deranged Tolucans accused us of murdering Garcia to create more false evidence for the government cover-up. We had no equipment and were facing a Graboid as bonkers as the people it was eating; I was ready to withdraw to saner ground.

Then Tyler and I noticed that every victim had vanished near the IGC. The Graboid must have learned to associate the device's low-frequency vibrations with human presence. The creature fed there — and only there — which explained why it had ignored my lures. I was certain that if we turned off the IGC my standard hunting tactics would work.

But some civic-minded Tolucan had slashed the tires of my power wagon. By the time we reached the IGC's location, the device was gone. Carr had moved his Graboid homing beacon, and no one would tell us where he'd gone.

In response, Tyler initiated a disturbingly brilliant psychological op. He "confessed" that we were government agents engaged in a cover-up: The Graboid was a murderous space alien, and we had to stop it. Why that "fact" made the Graboid more believable to them I can't understand, but it worked. The Tolucans revealed that Carr had moved the IGC to an old meteor crater to await the abductees' return. In other words, Carr and the fools with him were in terrible danger.

At the crater, Carr wouldn't let us approach the IGC, let alone turn it off. That's when the worm grabbed my leg. In a moment I'll curse forevermore, I dropped my Barrett 50 before I had a chance to fire its inaugural shot.

Tyler picked up my weapon and took down the Graboid. Cecil and the others thanked us "G-Men" for telling them the "truth," and that was that.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad Tyler acted quickly; he probably saved my life. It's just that, after all my long months of waiting for the Barrett's maiden voyage ... I can't believe she sailed first with Tyler.

---

Red Landers . . . . . . JOEL McKINNON MILLER
Rosie Landers . . . . . . AUDREY WASILEWSKI
Cecil Carr . . . . . . ARMIN SHIMERMAN
Manny Garcia . . . . . . SAL LOPEZ
Sheriff Tucker . . . . . . GREG FITZPATRICK
Kevin . . . . . . JAMES WHITSON

Written by . . . . . . BABS GREYHOSKY
Directed by . . . . . . MICHAEL GROSSMAN

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

While foraging to supply my survival-school menu, I crossed paths with Tyler, who was giving an over-enthusiastic tourist named Larry a pricey private tour.

Little did we suspect that the latest spawn of MixMaster — that diabolical government concoction that mingles any non-human DNA it can find — had already claimed two more victims.

We did, however, notice suspicious seismic activity on Tyler's monitor. We ditched Larry and checked it out. That's how we met federal employee Dr. Casey Mathews and two of her assistants, Pete and Roger, who were drilling for soil samples. Dr. Mathews (if that's even her real name) admitted that she was studying Mix Master's effects on the valley's ecosystem.

Tyler stayed to chat (or, more accurately, flirt) with Dr. Mathews. Consequently, he was present when she discovered the aforementioned fatalities: They stumbled upon the gory skeletons of two more of her assistants, who had been in the field since morning but had failed to check in.

Naturally, I called in Cletus Poffenberger. Yes, he's a former federal scientist, but he's the only one I remotely trust. Working with Dr. Mathews, he discovered that the substance that had killed the two men was an organic acid.

It took the death of Pete, not to mention hours of painstaking investigation, before we understood what we were facing. The field where the scientists had died was home to a new plant-animal hybrid, like a reptilian fungus — obviously a product of Mix Master's DNA-blending ability. This hybrid had spread over nearly four acres, poking up to just below the ground with sacs that, when jarred, sprayed deadly acid.

We had to kill this thing quickly.

The tap root — the hybrid's command-and-control center, so to speak — wasn't hard to locate. Injecting it with poison would kill the whole structure. The challenge lay in reaching the tap root, because it was surrounded by a minefield of acid sacs strong enough to slag the tires off a car.

Worse, we soon learned that we were running out of time. When the outdoor temperature reached 81 degrees, the heat would trigger the hybrid to release millions of spores. Once those got loose, the wind would spread seeds for baby acid-plant hybrids far and wide.

As usual, it fell to me to devise a plan. As the temperature rose, we sent Larry the rubbernecker to Jodi Chang's to buy supplies for the poison. Then we mobilized at the field, where I jury-rigged a one-man hot air balloon to fly Tyler over the minefield to the tap root.

The operation was nearly a disaster, but Tyler's a good soldier — he kept a cool head. He finally reached the tap root and shot it full of poison. Even Larry proved useful for a split second, when he leaped to cover an erupting spore pod with his jacket. We'd killed Mix Master's latest spawn.

Nonetheless, in the interests of preparedness, I'm now war-gaming scenarios, though I'm hard-pressed to say which would be worse: Another such hybrid taking over all of Perfection Valley, or that irritating monsterazzi Larry deciding to move in.

---

Cletus Poffenberger . . . . . . CHRISTOPHER LLOYD
Larry Norvel . . . . . . J. D. WALSH
Dr. Casey Mathews . . . . . . SARAH RAFFERTY
Roger Garret . . . . . . RICHARD BIGGS
Pete Norris . . . . . . DANNY HITT
Carl Ludwig . . . . . . GEORGE WOODS
Robert Wexler . . . . . . MARIA SOTO

Written by . . . . . . BRENT MADDOCK & S.S. WILSON
Directed by . . . . . . CHUCK BOWMAN

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

Perfection suffered an invasion recently. Nope, not by Shriekers, and negative on the touristas.

We got invaded by NEWDO (that's the Nevada Environmental and Wildlife Defense Organization, for that one weenie among you who cares). These protesters swarmed our town, yelping that our presence was harming El Blanco, insisting they wouldn't leave till we Perfectionites moved away. Their leaders were a show-off named Chad Ranston and his girlfriend Mindy: the college-age daughter of our neighbor Nancy Sterngood.

Mindy grew up here and should have known better. But she'd been swayed by the fact that Chad had done "research" and collected "evidence" from one Dr. Ellie Bergen that backed up his claims. He even persuaded Nancy to host his H.Q. at her house. When reports came in that El Blanco was behaving abnormally, Chad smirked and said, "I told you so." It almost looked like the protesters had a case.

Behind the scenes, though, Chad screwed up big-time. Someone let out all Rosalita's cattle and vandalized my compound. That made it war.

I went out to observe El Blanco for myself. He seemed ill, so I collected a sample of his bodily fluids and brought it to Dr. Casey Mathews for analysis.

Meanwhile, Rosalita told Mindy about NEWDO's acts of vandalism. Mindy didn't believe a word of it — she still believed that Chad and his secretive sidekick, Ray, were warm-n-fuzzy folks.

Yeah, right. Just as Dr. Mathews and I were studying the fluid sample, Ray blew up some of the doc's equipment. When he fled, El Blanco attacked and ate him. At the scene, I found a powdery substance that Ray had been carrying; I assumed it was homemade explosive. Dr. Mathews put it under her microscope for further analysis.

Back in town, Chad delivered a smarmy eulogy for his friend — straight to reporter Kelly Lewis' TV cameras. I seized the moment to emphasize the fact that Ray had died committing a crime. Chad denied it, but at least one person took me seriously: Mindy.

Mindy confronted Chad. He gave her a line of condescending bullcrap justifying Ray's sabotage. She wasn't impressed.

Then Dr. Mathews arrived with a disturbing update: The substance that Ray had been carrying wasn't an explosive; it was a deadly toxin. Ray had been poisoning El Blanco. That explained the Graboid's strange behavior.

On cue, El Blanco burst into the center of town. He was near death, but he still damned near killed Chad. (I wouldn't have shed a tear if he had.) I accused Chad of masterminding the poison scheme, and Agent Twitchell had him arrested on the spot. Chad, however, denied knowing anything about it. For the first time, I almost believed the guy.

Mindy then realized the truth: It was Dr. Bergen, not Chad, who'd ordered Ray to poison El Blanco in order to make her fake "research" results come true.

Exposed, Dr. Bergen confessed. She told us how to make an antidote for the poison. We got busy. Time was short, but we finished. We sealed the antidote into a plastic bag, and Mindy pitched it perfectly into the Graboid's maw.

I reckoned it was high time to get that girl back to her college softball team. Once NEWDO cleared out, we did exactly that.

---

Mindy Sterngood . . . . . . TINSLEY GRIMES
Dr. Casey Mathews . . . . . . SARAH RAFFERTY
Chad Ranston . . . . . . JEFFREY JOHNSON
Dr. Ellie Bergen . . . . . . REBECCA McFARLAND
Ray . . . . . . DAVID J. WRIGHT
Kelly Lewis . . . . . . HEATHER SIMPSON
Protestor #1 . . . . . . TREVOR DAVID

Written by . . . . . . CHRISTOPHER SILBER
Directed by . . . . . . P.J. PESCE

 From the Survival Journal of Burt Gummer

I rolled back into town not a day too soon.

Recently, in a moment of financial desperation, Rosalita accepted an offer to work for that turd Melvin Plug over in neighboring Bixby at his new housing development, The Oasis. While Melvin was showing her the property's extravagant artificial "lagoon," the two discovered one of his workers floating in that glorified pond — with his head chewed off.

While Melvin agonized over the possible delay of his grand opening, Rosalita spotted some mysterious tracks and picked up a strange piece of shell. She urged Melvin to call in Tyler, then she took the shell fragment to that federalisimo scientist Dr. Casey Matthews for further study.

Tyler went out to the pond that night to begin investigating. There, he met two cops who were probing the water for clues. The next instant, a creature attacked from the pond. Tyler tried to rescue both men, but nearly got himself killed.

Bixby's Sheriff Boggs, who wasn't interested in hearing a story about the creature from the crap lagoon, arrested Tyler on suspicion of murdering the two deputies.

In jail, Tyler met another one of Melvin's employees. (Yep, that's the kind of quality worker Melvin attracts.) This drunk had trucked-in the water for Melvin's lagoon — after stealing it from a spring in Perfection Valley.

The next morning, I convinced Sheriff Boggs to release Tyler into my supervision. Then I tried to enlighten Perfection's NASCAR nitwit about his poor decisions: First, he hadn't called me; second, he hadn't called me; and last, he hadn't called me. He didn't take my constructive criticism well at all. Fine, I figured. If he wants to handle this without my help, so be it.

By this point Dr. Mathews had discovered that the shell fragment from Melvin's über-pond contained both ancient DNA belonging to a giant prehistoric shrimp — and MixMaster, that government chemical that does misbegotten things with non-human DNA; I'd encountered it before. MixMaster had apparently regressed the DNA of one of the tiny brine shrimp in our local springs. When Melvin's goon stole the water, the altered creature came along to The Oasis, where it grew huge.

Learning this, Melvin decided he didn't want his development held up by scientific attempts to study killer crustaceans. He dumped diesel fuel into his pond to kill the creature.

Undeterred, the shrimp escaped overland into the aqueduct. If it swam from there into the reservoir, it could vanish off the proverbial radar and spread MixMaster throughout Nevada — and, all too quickly, the world.

Tyler, Twitchell and Sheriff Boggs raced to the aqueduct. They had to trap the creature without making it bleed (which would contaminate the water with MixMaster).

Tyler borrowed from Rosalita a truckload of portable fencing, which he erected as a submerged barrier across the aqueduct. As the creature drew closer, Twitchell ordered a vanload of dry ice rushed to the site.

Once the creature arrived, Twitchell sacrificed his car by driving it into the water, trapping the shrimp between the vehicle and the fence. (Tyler swears Mr. Red-Tape Bureaucrat really did this. I'm skeptical.)

The group then dumped dry ice into the aqueduct until the trapped shrimp froze to death. The world was safe for another day (give or take).

Later, I buried the hatchet with Tyler. I conceded that perhaps I'd been a bit too harsh ... this time.

Rosalita remained worried about her financial situation until Tyler observed that she was one of very few people who knew that Melvin had stolen federally protected water for his housing project. Rosalita went straight out to visit Melvin. I don't know what she told him, but I know she came home with a hefty check.

"Blackmail" is such an ugly word ... but it beats "bankrupt" any day.

---

Harlow Winnemucca . . . . . . BRANSCOMBE RICHARD
Dr. Casey Mathews . . . . . . SARAH RAFFERTY
Melvin Plug . . . . . . ROBERT JAYNE
Roger Garret . . . . . . RICHARD BIGGS
Sheriff Boggs . . . . . . JIM BEAVER
Deputy Mack . . . . . . BART JOHNSON
Dwayne . . . . . . DUANE DANIELS
Orville James . . . . . . DON SWAYZE
Owner . . . . . . ROBERT MARINACCIO
Security Guard . . . . . . JARED AAKER

Written by . . . . . . NANCY ROBERTS
Directed by . . . . . . CHUCK BOWMAN

 Letter to Burt Gummer from Tyler Reed

Hi, Burt.

Since you ordered me to keep a "precise log of local occurrences" while you're in Idaho buying a secondhand military periscope —

Okay, that last sentence is weird enough by itself. But there's more.

Dr. Donna Debevic, an animal-communications expert, came to Perfection Valley to record El Blanco's vocalizations. She nearly ended up studying them from inside his stomach — until she monitored an underground screeching noise that drove off the Graboid. The noise also fouled up our tracking equipment. (I'll give you the repair receipts when you get back.)

Because Donna's truck had a flat, I gave her a lift back to town. At Chang's, we met our favorite groupie, Larry Norvel. Seems he's decided to move here. (Deep breaths, Burt. Stay calm.)

Donna concluded that the mysterious screeching noise wasn't from another Graboid. Which is a shame, 'cause we know how to handle Graboids. Twitchell arrived on the scene, then Larry pointed out that our monitors were now showing five mysterious blotches traveling underground. Another malfunction? Or big bad trouble? This is Perfection: Of course it was trouble.

Donna guessed that we were dealing with underground insect-swarms. Their screeching reminded her specifically of cicadas.

Then Rosalita arrived, and she was freaked out. While we'd been studying the problem, she'd nearly been killed when a swarm of bugs attacked one of her sheds.

While Larry was trying to weasel into Jodi and Nancy's good graces in Perfection, the rest of us checked out the sawdust remains of Rosalita's shed. Donna mentioned that the devastation seemed like the work of termites. Naturally, I thought of MixMaster, the DNA-blending chemical that coats this valley like algae on a public swimming pool.

Well, I was right. (Please, Burt, contain your surprise.) Our DNA analysis of one of the dead bugs revealed that it was part termite, part cicada and part maggot. Great. "Part maggot" meant the critter didn't just eat wood — it ate flesh.

Sure enough, a swarm found Twitch and nearly chowed down on Mr. Interior's exterior. Much as the guy's a pest himself, I'm glad I arrived in time to save him.

A couple of road workers Twitch had been trying to warn weren't so lucky. We found them dead, gnawed down to bone by the bugs.

Everyone gathered back in town. It was time to circle the wagons — or run for the hills. Swarms of ravenous bugs were converging on us. We were nearly surrounded.

Donna, Larry and I NASCAR'd it out to Donna's abandoned pickup and scanned through her insect mix tapes. She had recordings of termite mating noises — Barry White for bugs. We pumped up the jams on Larry's hundred-amp car speakers and drove back toward town.

The bugs had blanketed Chang's, with our friends trapped inside. Hearing the mating calls, though, the screeching swarm fell silent and started following Larry's car.

We lured the swarm to the road-work area. I laid down some new tar, Larry lured the bugs onto it, and Donna doused the whole sticky mess in gasoline.

Nothing left after that but the victory bonfire. (Please, Burt, no applause — just throw money.)

Let me know if you need a hand hooking up that periscope. — Tyler

(P.S. — You're out of tabasco sauce. Sorry. My bad.)

---

Larry Norvel . . . . . . J.D. WALSH
Donna Debevic . . . . . . JOAN McMURTREY
Darryl . . . . . . SCOTT BENEFIEL
Bud . . . . . . DARRIN LONG

Written by . . . . . . BABS GREYHOSKY
Directed by . . . . . . MICHAEL SHAPIRO

 Excerpt from the unpublished autobiography From NASCAR to Nowhere: The True Story of Tyler Reed, by Tyler Reed

It was an ordinary day in Perfection: Burt was in Montana, Nancy was brainstorming a new Graboid souvenir, Jodi was busy at Chang's, I was fixing Rosalita's truck, and Larry was running around town claiming that an "invisibat" had attacked him in the abandoned Jessup barn.

Since we were all busy and Rosalita had no intention of helping King Geek track down an invisible bat, the new guy was on his own.

Then a lovely lady named Dolores lured me out from underneath Rosalita's truck. She paid extra for a special Graboid tour, so I wasn't complaining, even when she asked some funky questions about how long El Blanco waits before taking a dump.

That night at Chang's, Larry surprised a guy trying to steal Jodi's big seismo-monitor. The guy pulled a gun and locked Larry in the freezer.

When Larry described the robber the next morning, I got worried. I was sure the perp was Frank — a loser wannabe-gangster from Vegas. A while back, he'd stirred up some big problems after El Blanco ate his friend Max.

Frank had a reason to hate our albino Graboid, and now he had a seismo-monitor with which to track him. Rosalita and I jumped in her truck and headed out to check up on El Blanco.

When we found El Blanco he was lying on the ground, unconscious. There was no sign of Frank, but we didn't dare leave El Blanco alone. Whoever had attacked our Graboid obviously wasn't finished.

Twitchell brought in a couple of experts, who decided to truck El Blanco to my garage so they could set up their fancy equipment and tell us what had happened to him.

Once we loaded El Blanco onto Rosalita's flatbed truck, Twitch and his posse set off for town. Rosalita and I were about to get in the truck and follow with the Graboid, when Frank and Dolores appeared and stuck guns in our faces. We were being hijacked.

They took us to the old Jessup barn, then ordered me to cut open El Blanco with a chainsaw. That, along with Dolores's questions on my tour, told me that they were looking for something El Blanco had swallowed. Maybe Frank's dead partner had been wearing some kind of valuable doo-dad when he got eaten. Whatever. I had bigger problems: If I didn't kill El Blanco, Frank and Dolores would kill me and Rosalita.

Then I saw Larry, hiding up in the rafters where he'd been trying to snare his invisibat. While I stalled Frank, Larry stealthily grabbed the weird gun that Frank and Dolores had brought along.

The gun didn't shoot bullets but sound waves. It's probably what they'd used to incapacitate El Blanco. More important, when the dust settled in the barn, I was using Frank as a human shield while Dolores aimed a shotgun at us.

Frank must've been bummed to realize that his girlfriend was perfectly willing to kill him to get at me. I know I sure was.

Then Larry lured his invisibat into Dolores's face. She staggered backward, El Blanco ate her, Frank ran away, and everything was cool once more.

The big question now is, who gets the credit for the save? Forced to choose between singing the praises of El Blanco, Larry or the Invisibat, I have to be honest — I'm leaning toward the bat.

---

Larry Norvel . . . . . . J.D. WALSH
Frank . . . . . . NICHOLAS TURTURRO
Dolores . . . . . . VIVICA A. FOX
Helmut Krause . . . . . . RICHARD RIEHLE
Dr. Gil Towne . . . . . . DAVID GRANT WRIGHT
Accountant . . . . . . MICHAEL ALBALA

Story by . . . . . . JOHN SCHULIAN and CHRISTOPHER SILBER and BRENT MADDOCK & S.S. WILSON
Teleplay by . . . . . . JOHN SCHULIAN and
CHRISTOPHER SILBER and BRENT MADDOCK
Directed by . . . . . . P.J. PESCE

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