Wallace arrives in Houma with his wife Treasure. He overhears a woman talking to police about the disappearance of her alcoholic tenant, Diagonal Bob. Later, he comes across a group of boys chanting "Nukeface"; one of them is costumed as their conception of Nukeface. Wallace shouts at them to stop, indicating his growing fear that the toxic drifter has followed his waste-dumping company from Pennsylvania.
After dark, Wallace goes for a walk in the swamp, returning home to find that Treasure's gone out looking for him. When she doesn't come back, he talks the police into helping him search the wetlands. There they find luminous footprints and Bob's radiation-disfigured body.
Meanwhile, Treasure has come across Nukeface, who's collapsed due to withdrawal symptoms after giving the unwilling Swamp Thing his last bit of nuclear waste. She asks herself what Jesus would do, and decides to lend him her coat and lie down beside him all night to keep him warm, leaving his side only when he appears to be dead. When the police and Wallace come across her in the morning, she tells them what she's been up to and they all back away in fear of contamination. Then Wallace turns and runs off, too horrified and guilty to face her again.
Later that day, the boy who'd dressed up as Nukeface (after having seen and taunted him in person) tells his friends that Wallace has left town and that Treasure, who's in the hospital, is expected to have "a screwed-up baby."
In the meantime, the Swamp Thing, who's been slowly disintegrating all night and into the day, calls Abby's name, and has a brief vision of her at work. That same moment, Abby—who's been spending time with her new lover on weeknights and weekends—briefly sees him in turn. That night, she goes looking for him and finds his body nearly gone. While still able to speak, he warns her not to come too close and tells her he's going to send his mind into the Green and try to grow a new body. He gives her his love in case that doesn't work. Abby watches in tears until his current body's all gone.
Nukeface wakes up and resolves to search the entire country, if he must, for more of the waste that sustains him. "Heads up, America," he says with a horrifyingly buoyant grin, "here I come!"
Tropes:
- Anachronic Order: Different characters narrate their respective parts of the story at various points in time.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Nukeface yells at the boy who calls him by that name, recalling how he hated people doing that in Pennsylvania. (His real name is never revealed.)
- The End... Or Is It?
- The ending leaves Nukeface's fate up in the air. He may well continue innocently posing a mortal threat... somewhere. Though Abby mentions in the next issue that she'd heard he died while Swamp Thing was regenerating.
- In the final, full-page panel, a whole slew of newspaper article fragments, about nuclear waste, nearly crowd out Nukeface himself. The implication is that the environmental and public health threat isn't over, either.
- Good Samaritan: Treasure spends all night keeping Nukeface warm, simply because she considers it the godly thing to do.
- Green Aesop: Either "Improper nuclear waste disposal is bad," "Nuclear energy, period, is bad," or both.
- I'm Melting! / No Body Left Behind: This happens to the Swamp Thing after his poisoning. Subverted next issue, in which he grows the first of many new bodies.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Wallace's festering guilt over his part in his company's misdeeds boils over when he learns he's indirectly responsible for dooming his wife and their future baby.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Treasure's act of compassion turns out to be a lethal mistake for her and her unborn child.
- Psychic Link: Abby and the Swamp Thing are able to see each other from a remote distance at the same moment. While this is a step up from Another Green World, in which he could hear her calling his name from the Green but neither could see each other, it's not yet an instance of two-way psychic communication.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Wallace abandons his wife and future child because he can't bear to face her after he's indirectly and inadvertently sentenced them to death.
- What Would X Do?: Played for drama. Treasure, coming upon the homeless, ailing Nukeface and feeling empathy for him, asks herself what Jesus would do. Her answer has tragic results.
