Sherriff Don Hillmen didn't like getting called into work on Friday nights, nothing good happened after 11pm, but that’s part of the job. When two of his deputies showed up at his house saying there were zombies flooding out of the suburbs he didn’t believe it, but they brought a teenage kid, no older than thirteen, cloths covered in blood. The kid was panicking and crying. Through the sobs he was able to communicate that he saw spiders crawl into his house this morning and eat his parent's brains while he hid in the attic. He wouldn’t have believed it except for the moving corps they had in the back seat of the second patrol car. It was wearing a bloody and tattered electric company uniform, but it was missing most of its head. It looked like there were multiple close range gunshot and stab wounds on its body. It had a lot of flexi cuffs around its arms and legs, hog tied, but still struggling. The light coming from its mouth illuminated a gore soaked back seat.

“They carry off the dead then they come back like this, Sherriff. The only way to put one down is to shoot the flashlight disk out of its mouth, but even then they will drag off the body and it comes back later. They got Deputy Smith, he went missing before the power went out, and we’ve killed him three times since then.”

The only thing the Sherriff could say was “Welp, this is fixin' ta be a real shit show, boys.”

His deputies gave him a rundown of the situation on the way to the station. Everything south of Houston was in a blackout. Phone lines were dead, police and civilian radio were filled with interference signals and wouldn’t work past a quarter of a mile. The tv and internet were still running, but any attempt to upload resulted in 100% packet loss till the page or app was closed. Worse, the outside world seemed not to notice the issue.

When the sheriff arrived at the station he set about organizing the chaos. Even though he was an elected official his resume was more than just for show.

Half of his department was missing or reported dead to these zombies, so he deputized any volunteer over eighteen currently in holding, broke open the arms lockers, and hand wrote a sworn statement. He made copies with letters for the chief of police, mayor, and governor asking for assistance.

Earlier in the day they had picked up a couple teenage kids who were racing their parent's cars after summer school. The sheriff never saw a wild young man who couldn’t be turned around by the burden responsibility. He deputized them, handed them the keys to the department’s two interceptors, and sent them off to carry his letters.

Several families had gathered at the sheriff's station, anyone children were brought inside the station, anyone between 14 and 18 was assigned as messengers, anyone over 18 was armed. His deputies acted as team leaders, and a squad of military veterans and off duty national guard soldiers were issued automatic weapons and told to act as a reserve. After an hour his force of militia was organized and set out to create barricades along the roads leading north, a skeleton crew of department dispatchers and EMTs stayed at the station to direct any responding forces to the sheriff and receive casualties.

Barricades were setup on the main roads leading out of the suburbs in time for them to be hit by a wave of hundreds of zombies. Even if they killed the ones in the front ranks the ones in the rear would hold them up as literal shields.

A few barricades were forced back, but the one on the main thoroughfare was held by the sheriff and group of military veterans who brought more than standard weapons.

Pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails rained down on the rear ranks of zombies while precision gunfire eviscerated the front ranks. It turns out that people trained to shoot at a chest from three hundred meters can easily hit a mouth or throat of anything much closer. Somebody brought out a boom box and started playing Fortunate Son at the same time some crazy some of a bitch brought up a homemade flame thrower and started hosing the wave down with burning napalm. While it wasn’t an instant kill, it did make the corpses largely unsalvageable for the zombies and their spiders.

Despite it all, the other barricades were forced to pull back and Sheriff Hillman knew they were increasingly at risk for being surrounded. Between waves of zombies the Sherriff decided to pull back to his station and wait for reinforcements as the teams manning the other barricades had taken heavy casualties.

The National Guard soldiers and deputized civilians started to climb back in their vehicles, but the veterans stood to one side as a group, conferring amongst themselves.

The sheriff addressed the group, “boys, we put up a good fight, but we need to retreat and fortify at the sheriff’s station.”

Initially he was answered with silence, but after a moment one of the older veterans barked out “retreat? Hell, we just got here!" to a round of boisterous laughter and cheers from his companions. Somebody handed the old man a beer from a nearby cooler.

The one who spoke up stepped out in front of the group wearing a dark blue Stetson with yellow cord around it, a faded dress uniform with captain’s bars, 7th Cav unit patches, and a chest covered in ribbons and awards. The name tag on his jacket identifies him as Hoss.

“All due respect Sheriff, but we aint bein paid to retreat...”

“Hell, we aint being paid at all!” Hoss was cut off by a mountain muscle disguised as a man, wearing a sleeveless cammo vest that showed off bulging muscular arms covered in tattoos of skulls and names, the vest had sergeants rank and the name tag read Johnson. Again the veterans joined in a chorus of mock anger, demands for back pay, complaints about no run profiles, one who was missing his left arm below the elbow pulled out a medical waiver, Somebody handed the large man a beer.

Hoss waived them to silence and the ruckus stopped instantly, “it seems we are an unruly lot, you go on an rally some more civilians, we’re going to hold here till you get back.” Turning to his fellow veterans he yelled “Gary Owen!”

They responded with a thunderous roar of “GARY OWEN!” followed by whoever had the boom box playing Garyowen.

The sheriff shook his head and climbed into his patrol car, never expecting to see any of them alive again. As he was closing the door he heard Captain Hoss say “y'all fellers got any more of that napalm? The smell makes me feel 18 again.”

After the sheriff left, the veterans sat about fortifying their barricade on all sides, turning it into a small fortress, using nearby vehicles flipped onto their sides with the help of a tow truck and tied together with duct tape, paracord, and bailing wire. Pickups were brought inside the and used as firing positions for their fort. Somebody brought out a potato gun and several canister of what he claimed to be thermite. Everyone gave him a wide clearance as he setup, his vest was strapped with pipe bombs. The cargo shorts he was wearing showed off that both of his legs were replaced below the knee, and his ball cap had an EOD patch on the front and he said his name was Dawson, followed by telling Hoss to “make sure the sand dicks don’t block my field of fire… sir."