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Stampede! Wake up Earl! Wake up! Get outta the way! Stampede!
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Shriek and Destroy is the second episode of Tremors: The Series. Burt makes a deal with Twitchell to get any guns he wants to hunt Shriekers in Juniper, Arizona. They soon get help from a fish and wildlife agent, Bill McClane.
In Universe Perspective[]
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....
Plot[]
Burt and Tyler are contracted by Twitchell to go to Juniper, Arizona and eradicate a herd of Shriekers that has appeared. But the Fish and Wildlife Service make matters worse when they imprison a Shrieker in a grain mill, and the creatures begin to multiply after eating all the grain in the mill and run amok in the town's Pioneer Day festival. Burt and Tyler run out of bullets, and head to a house holding a "famous" gun collection, but it turns out to be civil war muskets. When the local baseball team shows up, Burt organizes them into a firing squad that successfully kills all the Shriekers.
Trivia[]
- Twitchell mentions that Burt has killed over 300 Shriekers down in Argentina.
This is a reference to the opening scene of Tremors 3, where he used an anti-aircraft gun to massacre a large swarm of Shriekers.
Cast[]
| Michael Gross | Burt Gummer |
| Victor Browne | Tyler Reed |
| Pat Skipper | Bill McClane |
| Dean Norris | W.D. Twitchell |
| William O'Leary | George Meadows |
| Alison Maclnnis | Courtney |
| Tom Hanson | Mayor Tom Dillion |
| Lela Lee | Jodi Chang |
| Marcia Strassman | Nancy Sterngood |
| Clayton Blocker | Courtney's Boyfriend |
| Gladys Jimenez | Rosalita Sanchez |
| Hosea Simmons | Water Treatment Plant Worker |
| Stephen Walters | Officer Jerry Rinks |
| Toni Cafaro | Farmer's Wife |
| Jeffrey Scott Kelly | Pick-up Driver |
| Matthew Reidy | Rancher |