Crossroads

Episode 319(053) - Apr 22 1998

While Blair tries to help the captain fix a computer snafoo, Jim enters the office and uncharacteristically asks Simon for a week off. The request takes Jim's friends by surprise -- Blair thinks there is something wrong while Simon thinks Jim is trying to keep a choice fishing spot to himself. Jim manages to escape alone while Blair and Simon are distracted by a computer virus but eventually Simon convinces Blair that they should track Jim down.

Jim drives out to the sleepy little hollow of Clayton Falls and finds the town much changed since his last visit. The gas station owner says that an ecological protection order and a mill closure has left the town almost deserted. Apart from the train station, a diner and the old inn, he calls it a "crossroads to nowhere" and laughs at the fact that a "city" boy like Jim is still drinking his bottled water in the country. When Jim tries to get a room at the inn, the new owner, Wilton Fisker, tells him the place is closed for repair, but offers Jim a free bunk on a couch in the lobby.

Simon and Blair use credit card usage and gas receipts to track Jim to Clayton Falls and surprise him the next morning asleep on the lobby couch. Frustrated that they followed him, Jim tries again to explain that he used to live alone and work alone and wants a little time to himself. Jim says that although Blair has made the Sentinel thing work, he is always in Jim's face, observing. Hurt, Blair makes a half-hearted offer to move into an apartment that has opened up below them, and Simon starts to accuse Blair of using Jim as a lab rat. Jim then tells his captain that he in turn treats him like his full-time pit bull and Blair glares at Simon. But Jim says he just wants a break. As Simon and Blair begin to skulk off, Jim admits that he loves them and doesn't want them to go away mad, so they all agree to share breakfast at the local diner.

At the diner Blair crunches on ice impatiently while waiting for their food to arrive, but the waitress suddenly collapses with stomach cramps, followed quickly by other patrons at the diner. The payphone Blair tries to use is out of order and they are also out of cell phone range. When a Doctor Linda Conway arrives, she confesses she is only a vet filling in since the last of the town's doctors moved away and she insists that the patients need to get to a real doctor. The nearest hospital at Gifford County is an hour away so Jim, Simon and Blair offer to take the affected there by car. But on the way they are stopped by a military convoy and a Colonel Garner who says they have been deployed to contain an outbreak of a highly contagious disease and that Jim, Blair and Simon are now under quarantine. Their radios are confiscated and they are escorted back to Clayton Falls where more and more towns folk are falling ill.

They suspect a cover up, especially when it is apparent that the military took out the phone lines and Jim tries to question Garner, who says the media blackout is to prevent panicking the population. He says a monkey infected with a deadly mutant strain of airborne virus similar to Ebola caused the outbreak. Although they say the monkey was caught, an antiserum is timely to produce, but they are treating the townsfolk with an innoculant. When Jim offers their services Garner again tells him to stay out of it.

Simon and Conway are speculating on the fact that they have not been issued with gas masks like the military and Jim and Blair join them to reveal that they can't find a phone or a straight answer anywhere. Fisker overhears their conversation and says he knows where they can find an old short-wave radio. Jim and Blair go to investigate, but all the tubes are gone. Suddenly Blair collapses in pain, and as he is carted off to the makeshift casualty tent, Jim tells the officer in charge that it has now become personal.

Jim sees that the patients are being treated with a serum and asks Conway to keep an eye on Blair while he and Simon try to get to the bottom of the problem, specifically why Blair and the townspeople are affected and Jim, Simon and Dr. Conway are not, even though the virus is supposed to be airborne. Jim then notices an officer in the distance conversing with his mask off and overhears a man dressed as a Private talking about a "shipment" and giving a Lieutenant orders.

Jim and Simon separate to conduct a little reconnaissance, but Garner discovers Jim snooping around and confines them all to the inn. But Jim organizes to meet with Simon and Conway in her office instead and provides a sample of the cafe water for analysis. Jim theorizes that their captors are certainly not the US army and have immobilized the town with doped up water for another purpose. Although Conway had her own water tank and Jim, Blair and Simon were drinking bottled water, Blair did have ice at breakfast.

When the soldiers interrupt them and confiscate their weapons, Conway has just enough time to scan the readouts and notices a non-lethal viral toxin in the water before they are placed under guard. In the event of trouble, the guards say they have orders to shoot to kill. Jim wants to get Blair out of the containment tent and Fisker overhears them again and offers an escape route through the wine cellar in the inn.

In the meantime, Blair has typically not been taking his medication and instead drags himself out of his bunk to overhear several officers and the CDC doctor talking about a plan to intercept a train. Outside, Jim steals a quarantine suit and sneaks in to retrieve Blair, who has already worked out that the serum is formulated to keep them all down. He says he is already starting to feel better and tells them what he overheard.

Jim, Simon and Blair race out to the crossing just in time to see the officers looting a train of old US Treasury bills. Just then, Fisker and several officers with rifles appear and Fisker confesses that he used to work for the treasury department and still had access to the old codes. He is in charge of the scheme to intercept the $274 million being transferred to a federal facility for incineration. Clayton Falls, only six miles from the Canadian border, was the weak spot on the route.