04/07/11 Another chapter of my life ends in a viking funeral...


I should've taken the calm of that morning as a sign that the evening would hit us like buckshot. In the apocalypse, one "worst day ever" just precedes another, and another, until you start feeling numb from the horror of it all. Then, God manages to fuck you again.

After fixing the hole Vallerie sliced in our fence, and a hearty breakfast-- both courtesy of Doc-- a suspicious package landed in our yard. Food, fuel, weapons, and a note from some fuckers called the New Peace Order with a return address attached. Goddamn, how am I supposed to "Vibe and love life" when everyone and their mother knows where our base is? Even with my name cleared, I'm still uncomfortable when people dig into my private life. Then our radio picked up a broadcast from Pattinson's West-- "Lam dang! Lam dang!"-- whatever that means. Tracy ran off like she was about to be sick, so I came to offer her a beer and a shoulder to lean on. Regardless of who she's allied with in the past, if they want to take her freedom away, it'll be over my dead body. I made a promise. So I convinced the others to forget Pattinson's, and go scope out the New Peace Order at Wild Waves Theme Park.

Apparently, these creeps had been following the adventures of the M Street Marauders closely, and for a while. (That's us, baby. I was hoping we'd be too far under the radar to have a kickass nickname, but it does roll off the tongue.) I figured that they'd drugged the food before offering it to us, but Vallerie was already stuffing her face... too late to say something. I tried to keep an eye on her as best I could-- wandering around, clearly high off her ass-- while gathering intel. Luckily, the New Peace Order weren't planning to expiriment on us in the name of discovering more about walkers, as me and Doc had suspected. They wanted us to clear an undead threat nearby while they sat on their asses. As you can guess, I didn't take kindly to the fact that "Professor" Peppers, who was clearly in charge, had nonconsensually drugged my friends. I just couldn't leave her lackeys to get eaten.

One sick walker fight later, we were ready to leave the NPO behind us. But then, agents in black combat gear-- just what cowboy described from the PCLM massacre-- showed up and started unloading on us. I shot one of them in the neck, Doc ran the other over. Something, maybe my intuition, made me rip off the mask. And my heart dropped, because the dead agent looked just like Vallerie. I don't know who that woman was to her, but I couldn't face the celebration when we got home. I just ran and hid in the shed like a coward. What do you even tell someone after killing their family member? That I'm sorry, but I don't get how it feels, because I hope my family is dead too? Fuck.

I have no words to describe what happened next. I heard shouting outside, so I climbed up the watch tower. The next thing I knew, Lucius Delgato had come with soldiers and trucks and military grade weaponry. He introduced himself as the man behind the destruction of the PCLM, behind the enterprise recently named the Core, behind the mysterious agents in black. They shot Jim three times in the chest. Then they unleashed hellfire on his house and everyone inside. Cowboy-- Steven-- dissappeared. I saw Vallerie revving Priscilla and ran towards her, half aware of the bullets spraying around me. And before I left, I made a molotov cocktail with trembling hands, rolling it to where I knew the fire would reach our resevoir of oil.


As everything we'd built crumbled around us-- as Jim died-- as Doc held up the line, willing to sacrifice herself so the rest of us could get out-- it was only then that I admitted it to myself; our group felt like a family.
S. Smoke