Baton Rouge

Baton Rouge is the operational base for the final push against the sliggers moving up the Mississippi River, and the place where the danger of the river campaign breaches the boundary between field operation and ordinary shelter. Ron Tully’s team arrives to coordinate with troops sweeping north; a sligger then smashes through a hotel-room window, making the city’s proximity to the water an immediate threat. After a nest is destroyed nearby, the search continues north without finding another, and the infestation’s advance along this stretch of the river is judged stopped.

Setting and strategic position

The team reaches Baton Rouge just after noon, following Highway 10 past shopping centers and residential neighborhoods into downtown. Its base is the Hilton Baton Rouge, just off the Mississippi River. Andy Carlyle has booked two rooms so the group can stay close to the area under search: Ron and Andy share one, while Josh Moody and Denise Baddington take the other. The arrangements are practical, but the river’s nearness also defines the risk. The sliggers’ movement through connected waterways has made the Mississippi a route of expansion and a place where nests must be found and destroyed.

Baton Rouge occupies a significant position in the search because the investigation has traced reports of the creatures westward along the Gulf of Mexico. Port Arthur, Texas, is the westernmost reported location so far, while the team is concerned that the Mississippi could carry the spread farther inland. Ron prefers to go to Louisiana and investigate the river rather than divert his team to Texas. The proposed response divides the troops into three groups: one for Port Arthur, one to continue west from Florida, and one to reach the Mississippi and follow the creatures’ trail upriver. Baton Rouge thus belongs to a coordinated, multi-directional campaign, not an isolated local response.

The river sweep

From the hotel, the group crosses railroad tracks to a grassy bluff overlooking the Mississippi. The Army Reserve has not yet reached them, but they can see activity about two miles to the south. Ron observes that the creatures are numerous and present on both sides of the river, an encouraging sign for the search because the advancing force is encountering the infestation along its corridor. The team returns to the hotel, collects its SUV, and drives south to join the troops.

At the line of sweepers, Ron identifies himself as being with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and explains that his team is there to report back to the U.S. Department of the Interior. The soldiers say they have found and destroyed five nests over the previous eight miles and killed dozens of sliggers. They also warn that the animals are difficult to kill without high-caliber weapons or a shotgun at close range. The report establishes the scale and danger of the operation: the sweep is making progress, but each nest represents a real obstacle rather than a simple mark on a map.

The hotel-room attack

That night, after Josh and Denise have returned to their ground-floor room and gone to bed, a noise at the window interrupts their evening. Josh sees a dark shape beyond the glass; then the pane shatters as a sligger strikes it and breaks into the room. The animal lands between Josh and the chair where he left his gun, placing him at an immediate disadvantage. Its entry turns the hotel from a convenient base beside the search area into an exposed point on the creatures’ route.

The narrative offers a likely explanation, rather than a confirmed account of the animal’s path: Josh thinks it may have come out of the river, climbed the bluff, and crossed the street, attracted by the light in the ground-floor room. The possibility connects the attack directly to Baton Rouge’s geography. The same closeness to the river that lets the team reach the search quickly also leaves the hotel vulnerable to a creature emerging from the water. The attack makes clear that the campaign’s frontline is not confined to the soldiers’ sweep; a sligger can reach the place where the investigators are trying to rest.

Containment and significance

Four days after the hotel-room breach, the Army Reserve troops locate and destroy a nest near the Mississippi. Ron’s team continues north with them, searching as the troops advance. They reach St. Francisville without finding another nest, and the searchers become convinced that the spread has been stopped. In his assessment, Ron records the creatures’ asexual reproduction and rapid adaptation to different environments, along with the importance of disposing of exterminated animals without leaving remains that could contaminate the ecosystem and mutate other animals.

The search north from Baton Rouge covers forty more miles of waterways without a single new monster being found. That result gives the city a double significance: it is the site of a close-range incursion into the team’s hotel, but also the point from which a concentrated river search helps establish that the advance has been contained. The local outcome does not erase the danger witnessed there. Instead, the destroyed nest and the empty stretch beyond it show how the campaign turns a frightening breach into a testable question: whether the creatures are still moving upriver.