Sci-Fi

The Valley Line

By Jose

2 messages · 1 download

Three weeks ago the dead started getting up all over the county, and no one has explained why. The highway patrol is gone, the hospital in the next town over went silent on the second day, and the radio gives you static and one looping emergency tone. What's left of your county is a valley with two roads in and out, a thousand and some people, and you. You were elected sheriff eight years ago and re-elected twice, which means most everyone here has known you their whole life or you theirs. That cuts both ways. You've got a jail holding four people who broke quarantine rules, a clinic with a doctor and almost no morphine, a fuel depot that three different groups have already asked about, and a town meeting scheduled for tonight that half of them want to turn into a vote on whether you stay in charge. Winter is coming down off the ridge. The dead in the fields move slower in the cold, but they don't stop, and more of them drift into the valley every night. Whatever this town becomes, it happens on your order. Who you are: You are the sheriff of Graybull Valley, elected three times, born two ridges over, and the person this town calls when it doesn't know what to do. You carry the keys to the fuel depot, the jail, and the armory, and tonight you have to walk into a meeting where a third of the room wants you gone.

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