"Thanks! You too!" 

She goes back to the camper. She...wishes she had gotten to try the thing it feels like she could do, but that would have been a long shot even if she had said "can I" instead of "probably I shouldn't," which was the objectively correct thing to say. 

She peers out the window for aggressive and/or oversized wildlife, vaguely wishing they were Americans with guns. 

A really fucked-up-looking bird with enormous claws flies overhead, but it doesn't find the fast metal cans below an appealing target.

Here's more cop cars! This section of highway is CLOSED it is NOT OPEN you have to GET OUT AT THIS EXIT.

Oh boy. They will get out at this exit. 

Lucy peers out the window REALLY HARD to see if she can get any hints about why this stretch of highway is closed. 

There's an overturned semi and a fire truck. The fire truck has the hose out and there's wet pavement but no visible fire.

Now they're on a winding back road that was not even slightly meant for this much traffic. It's basically a parking lot.

Country road, take me home, to the-- some kind of giant fucked up land fish the size of a school bus is lumbering towards them. It has a mouth full of needle teeth and grey eyes full of malice. Some people try getting out of their cars and running away on foot.

It feels the same as that one guy.

It gets within ten yards and she pulls. 

It doesn't like that. It gets--wobblier. Less sure of itself. It swats at a Toyota with an ill-defined limb and dents the roof; the driver screams. 

A guy in a pickup has been doing a seventeen-point turn to get pointed the right way and clear of any obstacles; he goes for a ramming attack.

SHE WAS REALLY HOPING IT WOULD GET SMALLER HONESTLY.

It seems to have stayed the same size while acquiring higher standards for physical plausibility. The pickup connects and it falls down in a heap of fin-tentacles and attempts to grapple.

They don't have a gun but they do have a fire axe. Lavinia gets out of the vehicle and attempts to apply the axe to tentacles that appear to be successfully grappling the pickup. 

The fish-thing loses some tentacles, bleeds purplish blood everywhere and groans horribly! The pickup, now less grappled, reverses and comes back for another pass as soon as Lavinia's clear, and when it comes to a stop atop the fish-heap the fish-heap stops too.

"Are you alright?"

The pickup driver hollers in triumph and then rolls down the window to stare at Lavinia like she's the dawn of a new age. "I think so! Who are you? My name's John MacArthur."

"Lavinia Woodrow! No damage to your truck?"

"This old girl's seen worse." He attempts to back off the monster corpse and discovers he's having a traction problem: its ribs are caught in his undercarriage and three of his tires are on gore instead of pavement.

"Hm. Don't suppose you've got any kind of a towing setup? I might've gotten hung up a bit." This is not what he wants to be admitting to the beautiful brave woman with an axe but what can you do.

"No...but we've got some rope. I bet we can jury-rig something."