St. Francisville

St. Francisville is the northernmost point reached by Ron Tully’s team during its search along the Mississippi River, and the place where the team judged that the creatures’ spread upriver had been halted. Its importance lies less in a local attack than in the change it marks: a dangerous, expanding search becomes a report of containment.

Search and Turning Point

Four days after Sliggers broke into a hotel room in Baton Rouge, Army Reserve troops found and destroyed a nest near the Mississippi River at the edge of the city. Ron’s team continued north with the sweeping troops. They found no further nests, and by the time the search reached St. Francisville, the team was convinced that the spread had stopped.

The conclusion followed a substantial negative search. After locating the Baton Rouge nest, the searchers covered forty more miles of waterways without finding a single monster. St. Francisville therefore marks not the discovery of another infestation, but the point at which the lack of new nests became persuasive evidence that this route of expansion had been checked.

Ron’s Report

Ron stayed in a motel room in St. Francisville and used its Wi-Fi to send his final report to his federal employers at the U.S. Department of the Interior. The laptop’s light fell across his face as he summarized four weeks of his team’s actions and findings. His account included the Sliggers’ ability to reproduce asexually, their rapid adaptation to different environments, and the clean destruction of located creatures, with no remains left to contaminate the ecosystem and mutate its animals.

He reported that the spread up the Mississippi had been eliminated: since the Baton Rouge nest was found, searchers had scoured forty additional miles of waterways without discovering another monster. Reports from the Gulf of Mexico were also improving, with federal and local authorities encountering Sliggers less often. Based on the manpower deployed, Ron estimated that the remaining creatures could be destroyed in a short time, making eradication appear close.

Significance

St. Francisville gives the larger campaign a concrete measure of progress. The team’s confidence rests on a sequence of actions and results—the Baton Rouge nest’s destruction, continued searches northward, and forty miles without another sighting—rather than on the claim that all Sliggers had already been eliminated. Ron’s report preserves that distinction while presenting the stopped river spread and declining Gulf Coast encounters as grounds for cautious optimism.