Umbagog

Awww, that gives me such heart

gives Joe heart too!

Marion was enjoying a quiet evening on the porch with her dog and a bottle of scotch, cigarette smoldering between her lips when she heard boots crunching over the pebbles of the dirt road that cut through the woods. Beau’s ears perked and his head lifted a moment, chuffing and giving a lazy wag of his tail before Kate ever came into view.

The board landed with a clatter on an old weathered porch-table beside Marion. It was so sun-aged and elderly the wood threatened to split just from looking at it, but the chess set wasn’t yet enough threat for it to give up.

Me reading dystopian fiction growing up and internalizing the message in the narrative: there’s no place for me in this world, I’d be dead the moment the regime took hold. I’m not strong enough. I couldn’t stand the suffering. Maybe the narrative is right. Maybe only the strong survive.

Hey if you like my work, especially Umbagog, consider donating to my patreon. You can donate as little as $1 and get so much!

$1 will now get you ALL behind scenes access. You’ll see design concepts, work in progress shots, and receive early access to pages.

$5 patrons will get all of the above rewards, PLUS Umbagog merch! For every two months of patronage, you will receive a gift from me mailed to your address. The gift might be a character charm, a sticker sheet, a comic, etc. (Shipping must be paid by receipient)

He was diseased, but he was my son! And you have… Why didn’t I kill you before?!

“But we can’t build walls to contain them!”

Moves by truck, train or boat. Ridiculously common. And see those holes on the bottom? Mobile by forklift. Also, HEAVY, even when empty they’re in the tons. If you had some warning you could string these things end to end for miles and human bodies can’t move them. Plus they’re nice and wide so you can comfortably walk on top of them for patrols.

“But we don’t have easy ways to kill them!”

Put the shotgun down you fucking idiot.

No tires to pop. Heavy and slow but inevitable. Climbing required to enter and thus, relatively zombie proof, especially if you spend like an hour to protect the glass.

A lot of large farming equipment can destroy cars.

Want to guess what it’d do to a decaying human body? It’s not pretty.

Now I know what you’re thinking. Merely flattening them with common construction equipment or farming gear isn’t enough.

How about a tree trimmer that can mulch a tree top to bottom in nothing flat?

OM NOM NOM NOM.

“But we need ways to move a lot of people that zombies can’t stop!”

BEEP BEEP MOTHERFUCKER. Deer don’t have a chance and neither does a zombie.

“But that’s not good enough!”

NOW it’s time to call our friend the military because this ride stops for no one.