The Boy in the Sheriff Hat (Book 1)

Prologue - It's Just Easier

"The end is nigh" - that was a phrase God-fearing people once used to warn others of an impending biblical apocalypse. No one uses it anymore because "The End" has already happened and there was nothing biblical about it. It has been and gone and no amount of praying or repenting was ever going to save anyone.

I often think it ironic that all those comics and bad movies about the undead were actually more like prophecies than entertainment...

...the ironic thing being we actually used to find them entertaining...

I can tell you now, there is nothing appealing about the prospect of being eaten alive by dead people.

Then again, maybe that's not why we used to watch them. Maybe we suffered through all the blood and the pain and the loss just to get to the end; because, in the movies there's usually a cure, right? The hope of saving the world and putting it all back together again...

Happy endings only happen in the movies, though... in this new world, no one has a happily ever after.

That's ok though - I'm not a kid anymore, I know the deal and I'm not going to cry about it. I was barely fourteen when the end of civilisation came about. That was roughly two years ago... possibly three now... to be entirely honest, I'm not sure...

Before the outbreak, it was easy to find the date. It was as simple as picking up the daily paper or checking your phone; you could even tell what season it was by the produce a store would sell, but none of that exists anymore.

Besides keeping time isn't the priority; now there's only day and night, asleep and awake - that's all that really matters. So perhaps I'm seventeen or perhaps I will be the next time the Earth orbits the Sun. Who knows anymore? Who cares...

I'm fairly certain my family are dead... sometimes I try to remember what happened to them but then I realise there's no point. Sometimes I try to mourn them but can never quite bring myself to shed a tear. Sometimes I wish I could care... I go through the motions, I wave at people who wave at me, I smile when I'm smiled at, I chat when I'm chatted to, but nothing quite feels real or solid. It's like trying to hear someone speak underwater, or someone whispering in a crowded room - I know I'm being spoken to, I just can't quite grasp the meaning of the words.

The only way I seem to be able to show any emotion these days is through my paintings... what? You think just because the apocalypse happened it means we can't have hobbies? Sure, it was almost impossible to pick up a pencil or a brush when I was out there but now that I'm in here, it's all I ever seem to do...

Alexandria is a safe zone, you see, perhaps the only sanctuary that exists. I've been here for a year or so now. Apparently, a man named Aaron found me and brought me behind the walls, but I don't remember... my story before Alexandria is a little fuzzy, like trying to see the bottom of a river; you know it exists and sometimes if you squint long enough you think you can see a stone or a fish but it hurts to squint so you blink but then you've lost it again. I just know there was a lot of walking, running and dead people trying to eat me. Sometimes I wonder how I kept myself alive on the other side of the wall. I'm no fighter, I've never even fired a gun; I suppose I'm just one of those people who happened to have survived... somehow.

The walls of Alexandria have stood strong since the beginning, which is a miracle; nothing seems to last these days. If they were to ever fall, the residents would fall with them. Most have never seen the outside and couldn't kill a zombie to save their lives. Sometimes I envy them - they have lived here for the entirety of the Apocalypse, oblivious to the horrors it's brought. But it has also left them weak - vulnerable. They fret over what to cook for dinner, worry about their children playing in the mud. I think that's why Deanne - our leader - chose to bring the 'others' in.