“Deluge” is episode nineteen of season one of First Wave.
It opens at night during a storm and a man in a cell is woken by thunder. He makes another mark on the wall and asks if he can have another blanket. There’s no answer and the cell door is not locked. He leaves the building and then sees the sheriff. The sheriff, O’Connell, shoots at him and says it’s time to atone for his sins. The man, Harris, runs off, because the sheriff missed him at close range with both shots. That seemed like really bad shooting. Harris heads into the woods and stumbles across an idol, then people in animal masks. They knock him down and put him inside a wicker contraption. You can guess what happens. There are a lot of people watching and the pyre is lit, which is impressive given how wet everything is. Harris is inside a wicker man.
Cade has arrived at Athlone, which says population 2,300 – but the last ‘0’ has been crossed out. Cade is looking for Glenn Harris, a convicted mass murderer who escaped from police custody 3 weeks ago. The sheriff says he hasn’t seen the man, definitely a lie, and asks if Cade is with the police. No; he’s a bounty hunter. O’Connell says there isn’t much crime and that the cell mostly gets used for a town drinker. Yes; he was there last night. Cade notices the hatch marks on the wall. Drinking on a Tuesday? The roots of the town are deep in the Emerald Isle. The sheriff thinks Harris probably went down the coast. Cade is going to check around town anyway. O’Connell doesn’t want the townsfolk scaring. If there’s a remote possibility Harris is in the town, they should be scared.
Cade’s next stop is the pub, where he talks to the woman behind the bar, Glynis, about the mistletoe and Harris. He says he will split the reward if anyone has information. One of the other customers, Kieran, claims he has seen Harris and drags over another, Fergus, to Cade. Then another man, Ryan, comes over, and tells Kieran to leave Cade alone. Glynis is his niece. No, he hasn’t seen Harris either. As to where he is, Ryan suggests the same thing the sheriff did. Practically word for word. Now, that’s suspicious. Cade is going to stick around anyway and Kieran offers to buy him a whisky to apologise. Around these parts, if a man offers to buy you a drink, you don’t refuse. Many others offer. Cade ends up stumbling back to the inn and passing out whilst trying to ring Eddie. No-one on the phone when Eddie answers makes him paranoid.
Back at the pub, the sheriff is telling Ryan and Kieran that he got Cade’s fingerprint and is sending it off for a background check. They think it’s odd that a bounty hunter is staying in town when he’s been told the bounty he’s after isn’t there. It’s suggested that Kieran and his boys rough Cade up a bit.
In his room, Cade is woken up by Fergus knocking on his door. Fergus says the townsfolk don’t like outsiders; he came here a year ago for a job at the lumber mill and Cade can see how they treat him. He needs the work, though, with mills being closed across the state. He could do with the reward Cade mentioned. According to Fergus, he saw Harris buying camping equipment in the general store two weeks ago. Cade has already spoken to the store owner, who doesn’t remember Harris. Ryan, when pressed, admits Kieran sent him. When Cade pushes about the notches in the jail, Fergus also admits Harris was there. Cade should look for an idol in the woods. Cade finds the idol, and the remains of the fire, complete with a human skull in astonishingly good condition.
Cade phones Eddie again; Eddie thinks the signs that Cade saw indicate a druidic cult in the area. And they used to practice ritual human sacrifice. Usually, as a last resort, when a settlement was threatened by such as drought. There’s no drought; it’s not stopped raining in the past 24 hours. Eddie suggests the ritual worked. What would the aliens have to do with druids, though? Cade heads to the lumber mill and gets beaten up by people in masks, and told next time they won’t be so polite.
Afterwards, he heads back to his room and Glynis knocks on his door to see if he’s okay. He should have left when asked. Cade isn’t leaving until he finds out what happened to Harris. Glynis says he’s wasting his time; Harris isn’t hiding in town. Cade knows that. He found Harris’s skull.
The town isn’t performing human sacrifice to call the rains; they’re doing it to stop them. It’s rained for two years. That’s the bit the Gua are doing. The portrayal of the druidic religion seems a little off.