As the screams from the cage became more excited, I closed the office door behind me to help deaden the sound and poured myself a celebratory glass of water.
Hello world. Meet your new Sheriff.
CHAPTER 10
A Man’s Castle: Part 1
The Ranch
Smoke.
Fire.
The crackling of wood and the shattering of windows.
The squealing of plastic as it expands and explodes.
The popping and snapping as the heat attacks and decimates everything in its path.
I stand across the street, watching the mill burn, knowing that there is only one option in my future.
I am going to find this guy. I am going to destroy everything he cares about and burn down everything he owns. I am going to pick his life apart piece by piece and then I am going to feed him to the horde.
And he knows it.
It’s why I’m alive. He wants me to find him. He knows I’ll be hunting him.
The game is on.
Four days ago…
The man stumbles out of the bushes and falls hard onto his knees and hands in the street. Air spews from his mouth and blood is shaken from his forehead as he bounces on the asphalt.
“God!” he curses, and begins to crawl. The cut on his head is still seeping steadily and the continued blood loss is making him dizzy. Nonetheless, he is determined to make it back to the ranch.
The fence needs to be replaced.
The property must be protected.
Provisions need to be found.
No one survives by waiting for a hero to come along. The only ones who are going to make it this are the ones who are willing to take the world by the balls and squeeze out what they need. It’s the pussies who got eaten first. It’s the weaklings who waited for salvation and found themselves cold, alone, and eventually between the teeth of some grey-skinned bastard.
‘But not me,’ he muses, now almost all the way across the roadway. “We fight!” he calls out to the cloudless sky. “For us,” he calls, “we fight!”
His eyes lift to the ranch, now just out of reach, and listens for his tribe. No one has spotted him yet, and it makes the man nervous. They should have confronted him by now, either the guards or the pirates.
He hated the names they gave themselves, the men who protected the property and those who scavenged for supplies, and even though they never intentionally called themselves by the titles in front of him, the man still knew all about it. He hated it, but he couldn’t control everything.
He paused in his crawl just long enough to listen behind him for the sound of pursuit. He heard nothing, but he wasn’t comforted. “How are these assholes supposed to keep the ranch safe if they don’t even know who’s coming up the road?” he muttered to himself and pushed himself back to his feet.
“Hey!” the man yelled at the house. When no one answered he tried again. “Steven! Michael! Kurt! Anybody! Hey!” Still no one answered.
He looked to the driveway and frowned, as though he expected a vehicle to be there. Instead of seeing his Jeep, the man became more and more nauseous.
No Jeep.
No responses.
The man made his way to the gaping hole in the fence, promising himself that the gap would not go two days without being fixed. But with every step, the man kept his eyes on the house, hoping to see movement of any kind. The front door was standing open but it appeared deserted.
Did they leave him? Where were they? Why has no one confronted him?
Around the busted fence.
Up the driveway.
Across the lawn.
“Michael? Kurt?” And still no one answered.
His steps were becoming sloppier and he felt as though he could fall over at any time. The man fell into the open doorway and propped himself by the shoulder.
He didn’t recoil at the sight. He didn’t hide his face or choke back tears. There were no huffing sobs or shaking convulsions or trembling hands. The man just stood there, staring at the three bodies seated on the couch.
Michael.
Kurt.
Dave.
The three of them were shot, execution-style, and put on display upon the couch. This was a message. Someone was trying to tell the man something, but what? And where’s Steven? The man made his way into the room, closing the door behind him. He went to the kitchen for a bottle of water and cursed out loud when he saw the empty shelves.
Then the moaning began.
He turned and found three zombies slowly shuffling into the kitchen.
Anthony and Christian’s betrayal. The missing Jeep. The missing provisions. His friends, dead and displayed like game in gramp’s den. Christian trying to kill him and Steven leaving to get help but never coming back. Every bad thing that happened came flooding back to his mind as he watched the lifeless eyes getting closer and closer.
And he smiled.
With all the terrible things that happened in the last twelve hours, killing some of these grey-faced bastards would make him feel a hell of a lot better.
He grabbed a chair and stomped a leg off. He looked at his homemade spike and laughed aloud.
“We’re all dead anyway,” he told the closest zombie, and plunged the broken end into its gaping mouth.
◊◊◊
It was strange eating new foods again. I mean, it used to be that we would just go to the grocery store. You’d see a can of soup you’ve never had before or a type of bread or cracker or cereal or fruit any other thing on a shelf, rack, or in a bucket. You’d make a choice to try something different, maybe even rewarding yourself for being experimental.
That’s how it used to be at least. Now…
I’ve been eating the same damn provisions for months. The same dried noodles boiled in water and seasoned with an odd colored powder. The same boxes of crackers. The same cans of tuna.
But
