ISSUE 002

2028 The White House finally concedes that global warming, overpopulation and other man-made crises have irreversibly damaged Mothership Earth - but all the king's horses can't do a damn thing about it now. A chain reaction of natural disasters, crop failure and livestock disease, floods and famine have crippled the world economy, leading to epidemic poverty, unchecked crime, Biblical outbreaks of plague and war. The resulting civil and political instability creates a state of high panic, with every man armed and fending for himself in a wild-west American nightmare.

It's too late for hybrid cars and colored rubber bracelets: we are fucked.

In Winnemucca, Nevada, a drug deal gone bad leaves a pile of moaning, bleeding bodies at an abandoned construction site. Ambitious methamphetamine crystalsmith Carlos Horton has torched two big bridges with one wicked match tonight: just 48 hours after making parole, he's burned a Yucatan Mafia crew for their ephedrine, then pocketed the cash fronted by his Aryan prison gang backers. Some hot lead and cold blood was all it took for this cornrowed Tony Montana tweaker to jump from JV middleman to varsity criminal crewboss. Carlos now has a bankroll, a huge supply of ephedrine, name-brand enemies and a connoisseur's taste for murder.

Carlos flees the scene, abandoning his dead and wounded, unaware that his inaugural ripoff has watered the tomb of three inhuman killers. The revived vampires' skeletal, fibrous forms crawl from the red earth - blind, naked and shaky on all fours like newborn pups, instinctively following the sweet scent of hot blood. They suckle the wounds of the dying, growing stronger with each sticky red ounce, howling in praise to the full moon, which they see as the cratered bone-white eye of Lady Death, overseeing the trio's return to Her service in the mortal world.

Soon, the vamps' awakening senses will detect and track a trail of blood dripping from Carlos' bullet-riddled RV, where a wounded confederate lay bleeding out in the shower all the way back to Lakeview, a tiny crime-ridden town just over the border in Oregon's high desert.

Carlos' jailhouse letters to his incarcerated tweaker girlfriend, LINDA DOYLE, hinted at something big to come - a scheme that would set them up like kings. But prison has given Linda time to consider the downward trajectory of life with Carlos. Ever since an intake physical revealed her pregnancy, the scabby grifter girl has done some clear-headed thinking about the Big Picture, and she's concluded Carlos can't be part of it.

Online spot-news sensation and aspiring cable correspondent DANI DOYLE has endured years of humiliation as Linda's sister - spectacular fuckups and felony arrests that have reduced the family name to a small-town punchline. She's desperate to leave Lakeview and realize her dreams before larcenous Linda is released from prison and comes home with her disgusting gangster boyfriend, Carlos, to suck Dani dry.

ADAM FLYNN, Dani's true-blue, truly malleable boyfriend, is the assistant manager of ToroTread's flagship Lakeview location and the latent hero of our story. Dani has badgered Adam into taking an administrative position that will allow them to move from the state's lawless southern edge to Portland, a relatively safe haven far inside Oregon's Urban Security Zone where Dani's viral online dispatches have scored her a news-network internship.

Easygoing Adam dearly loves Lakeview, but the latest drunken stunt perpetrated by his father, wheelchair-bound Afghanistan veteran RAY FLYNN, was the last crazystraw. Adam opts to face the uncertain future as a devoted career man, with demanding Dani calling the shots, rather than remain in Lakeview alone, watching Ray disintegrate.

Days before he and Dani are to join her mother in Portland, Adam is summoned to the mansion of CANDELARIO "CANDY" ANGULO, the larger-than-life Les Schwabbish founder of ToroTread Tire Centers. Candy, a self-made man (and Marine Corps veteran who served in the same artillery unit with Adam's dad, Ray, and WAYNE DOYLE, Dani and Linda's late father) is also the disgraced uncle of criminal triplets Alejandro, Hector and Carlos.

Candy rightfully blames the spoiled boys' criminal activities for the drive-by death of their mother, FLOR HORTON - Candy's only sister. Flor and the triplets' clueless stepfather, HOWARD HORTON, often took Adam into their home when Ray (Flor's former high-school sweetheart) was too drunk to stay out of jail. The only stable and nurturing influences in Adam's life have been his career at ToroTread, Candy's trust and professional mentoring, and the love provided by Flor and Howard.

Candy has bad news for Adam. The administrative transfer is off the table because ToroTread must shrink to survive, and the Portland office has been closed along with half the company's service locations. But Candy has a special opportunity for Adam, right here in Lakeview: Twenty-four hours from now, in anticipation of the very worst - and quite possibly the very last - wildfire season in the history of the Pacific Northwest, Lakeview will transform into a command center for the U.S. Forest Service's firefighting efforts. The incoming circus of aircraft and personnel are going to resemble the American Eighth Air Force in WWII Britain.

To support the government's rolling stock, the local ToroTread center will abandon its dwindling customer base and begin operating as a lucrative government-contracted maintenance and supply hub for the Forest Service, National Guard, state and local law enforcement as they redouble efforts to battle fires and restore civil order. And Candy has hand-picked ambitious Adam to take the helm of this Fort Apache truck-stop scheme.

But what about Howard - Adam's longtime manager and sometime-surrogate father figure? Why isn't the beloved, portly platoon sergeant leading Adam's ToroTread team in this radical new business plan? After all, Howard's due back soon from medical leave, following his gastric bypass surgery. The mention of Howard's name unveils a previously unseen dimension of fury in Candy's eyes.

"That cocksucker told you boys he was getting gastric bypass surgery?" Candy says, incredulous. "Oh, hell, that's rich. No, boy - your EX-fucking boss, my EX-piece-of-shit brother-in-law - is not getting his stomach stapled shut to make him slim and looking Hasselhoff in a Speedo! He embezzled a million goddamn dollars from my corporation, and he pissed it all away gambling!"

Adam accepts Candy's mission to keep the company alive by creating a safe stopover and storage point for government rigs, solemnly pledging to secure and ensure custody of ToroTread property and client equipment. Candy forces a cash-crammed envelope into Adam's hands and demands a blood-oath promise to alert him at once, if Adam catches so much as a grainy Bigfoot glimpse of the endangered Howard Horton.

Shaken by the responsibility he's shouldered and dreading the possibility that he'll have to betray Howard for stealing from Candy's ToroTread family fortune, Adam can only hope the cash will soften the blow when he breaks the news to Dani that he's not leaving Lakeview.