ISSUE 003

On her way out of town in a fueled-up U-Haul, furious Dani halts at ToroTread just long enough to cuss out Adam and every member of his lineage who survived the Potato Famine only to come to Oregon and beget a long line of drunken descendants that have culminated in yet another selfish, weak-willed man who has let Dani down. She dumps his possessions in the parking lot and roars north, determined to land work as a fearless field correspondent.

With five farmer-tanned childhood friends backing him up, heartsick Adam throws himself into his work, turning the tire-and-brake shop into an armed and secure Alamo compound - and just in time. Lake County's half-dozen poorly run privatized prisons (meant to provide jobs after the region's cattle industry went [literally] tits-up due to disease) are about to turn loose nearly two thousand non-violent tweakers as part of the governor's solution to overcrowding. Anyone with the means to leave Lake County wastes no time in doing so, knowing that whatever isn't nailed down is about to magically disappear in a twitchy white-trash plague like something straight out of the Bible.

A morose parade of departing friends and neighbors honk as they drive past ToroTread on their way out of town. Adam finds himself searching the refugee stream for Howard's tubby form, but his field of view is dominated by a jellybean-jar spectrum of different-colored firefighting rigs from seven states, crawling into Lakeview for a set-piece battle against an opponent whose smoky approach blurs the surrounding horizon like a great brown scar.

The population of the nearby Modoc Indian reservation remains strong. The tribe have never lost a single life nor acre of land to fire thanks to an ancient arrangement between a then-starving Modoc chief and a monstrous spirit with black skin and no name. Tall as ten men and draped in a great bloody buffalo hide, the spirit spread his arms, and his red shadow thawed a snowy meadow to reveal a feast in the grass that saved the tribe and sealed an eternal pact. Since that day, the Modoc have welcomed outsiders - even enemies - to make camp in the lush meadow called Black Hide, and the spirit returns at each full moon to devour anyone stained by his blood-red shadow.

Since the 1960s, the Modoc have supported themselves by hosting a celestial arts gathering called Burning Rabbit (their name for the constellation Orion). Despite the early start of a catastrophic fire season and civil unrest throughout Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, this year's festival is shaping up to be the largest ever, drawing thousands of hippies, end-times Rapture freaks and Kool-Aid cultists to Black Hide. These harmless hacky-sack kooks have no idea they're about to be trapped behind armed roadblocks, part of a deadly perimeter erected by vigilantes in surrounding counties eager to ensure the mayhem of early release inmates from Lake County prisons remain a Lake County problem.

But the antics of simple thieves will seem downright tame once the hardcore Aryan and Mexican prison gangs launch a simultaneous takeover of every correctional facility in the county, freeing a murderous herd of 5,000 hardened criminals - subhumans who make Charles Manson look like Santa Claus.

Upon returning from Nevada, Carlos and his crew hide out at his Uncle Candy's plush hunting cabin, licking their wounds and cooking a batch of meth in the nearby barn. When a lone figure approaches the cabin one night, the nervous cartel respond by firing a storm of lead into the woods. Carlos' stepfather, Howard, emerges unscathed, on the lam from his gambling-addiction treatment center and grateful to be one step ahead of Candy's mafia-like reach.

When he sees Carlos' wad of cash, and recognizes the boy's potential to make more, manic Howard feels his luck has finally turned. Three strange travelers following a days-old trail of blood drops, however, will soon cast a decidedly unfortunate light on this situation.