SHEPERD

Visit in Falls End

As Hope drove the short distance from her family's hangar, the tears never seized. She couldn't help but succumb to the overwhelming sadness, disdain and hurt that flowed through her body like a raging river - same could be described to the tears flowing from her blues. She didn't understand why how her own flesh and blood could take the one thing she held most dear to her and blatantly vandalize it while she was gone.

She thought about pulling off to the side of the road to allow herself to calm down, just enough so she could get to Mary May's home and spill her feelings out to her, but the last thing she wanted to do was show up at her friend's house in tears, after being gone for so long. She had more dignity than that.

Sighing, she flicked the radio on in an attempt to pull herself together.

As she listened along to the calming song that played over her dying speakers, she couldn't help but hum along to it. The more she listened to the words, the more she realized what exactly they were saying. The lyrics spoke of a collapse that would soon come and explained how all could be saved by those who followed the protector and savior, The Father.

The words sounded foreign to her. She had never heard this song before - and she had listened to a lot of music on her time away - however, this one was new to her. She didn't know why this song in particular spoke to her in such a way. Shaking herself from those thoughts, she concentrated more on making it to her friend's house alive, than one strange song she heard playing on the radio.

The more Hope drove through the county, the more she realized exactly how much things had changed. She not only noticed more billboards and signs with the same words and statements she had seen coming into the county, but she as well noticed a man who wore a wardrobe nearly identical to the one her brother had on when she arrived yesterday. She typically wouldn't have thought this weird, had he not have had a large bow in one hand and a huge white wolf with a red cross painted on its head, standing next to him.

As she drove by him, she couldn't help but stare into the eyes of the man staring back at her. She quickly turned her head forward and gulped slightly.

After driving through the boundary of the Whitetail Mountains and into Holland Valley, she noticed to the left of her - where a welcome sign should have been - was an even larger billboard sign that read, "WE LOVE YOU AND WE WILL TAKE YOU", spray-painted on with a similar color to the previous ones she had seen coming into Hope County as well as on her twin-engine.

Underneath this billboard stood two sentries that wore similar clothes to the ones of the man with the wolf and of course, Marcus.

The more she drove, the more she started to question whether this was her home or not. The familiar red silos that once stood shiny and tall in the County fields, were now spray-painted with the same floral cross she had seen around Marcus's neck and as well the wings of her plane.

The cross was bloody everywhere.

When Hope finally reached the sign of Falls End, she couldn't help but gasp softly as she approached the familiar Falls End sign that she had grown fond of. Only . . . now, it wasn't the same sign. It was ruined. Spray-painted across the words of her best friend's town name, was the same word that she had seen numerous times before;

'SINNER'.

Someone had to know what was happening around here. She intended to find out.