Jacksonville

Jacksonville, North Carolina, is the setting label for the team’s arrival at Camp Lejeune and its inspection of a dead Sligger at the base’s Naval Medical Center. The chapter connects the coastal outbreak to a secured medical facility, where the creature’s remains provide a concrete object of investigation.

Setting and Narrative Frame

The chapter opens under the heading “JACKSONVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA,” then places the visitors at Camp Lejeune. The evidence locates the principal action on the Marine Corps base, not in Jacksonville’s streets: the team enters through the main gate after clearance orders are verified and is taken to a Navy-run building on the grounds.

Camp Lejeune and the Medical Center

First Lieutenant Santos Gomez greets the team at the gate beside a sand-colored Humvee and escorts them across the base. Camp Lejeune is described as an enormous Marine Corps installation with live-fire ranges, tactical landing zones, and beaches used for amphibious assault drills. Ron Tully follows the Humvee down Brewster Boulevard to the Naval Medical Center, where the group parks and proceeds inside.

The visitors take an elevator to the second floor, walk along a white-tile hallway, and pass through a sequence of doors into an isolation room. This controlled route—from verified entry to an isolated examination space—shifts the investigation from scattered coastal reports toward direct examination of physical evidence.

The Emerald Isle Specimen

An intense rotten-egg odor fills the room. Josh Moody and Denise Baddington recognize it as the sulfuric stench associated with Sliggers; in the center, an examination table holds the dead animal from Emerald Isle. The specimen’s presence links the Jacksonville chapter setting to the wider coastal search while making the creature’s remains available for close inspection.

Jacksonville’s significance here is therefore institutional and investigative rather than urban: the heading situates the team in North Carolina, while Camp Lejeune’s medical facilities provide a secure setting for confronting evidence from the outbreak. The scene’s movement into isolation does not resolve the threat, but brings the investigation closer to the animal itself.