State of Decay✔️

Chapter 03: The Ranger Station

"Wendell! Wait!"

Marcus' whole world had become a black hole, staring down the cold, metal barrel of a gun. It was like nothing he ever imagined. It was like looking into an open grave with his name on it. Around him, he could hear other voices, caught a peripheral of movement, but he paid it no heed. His attention was consumed by the gun.

Suddenly, it was taken away.

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and a vicious shudder went through his entire body. For a second, Marcus thought his legs would give out and that he would collapse right there in the entryway to ranger station. But he put out his hands and steadied himself by gripping the door frame.

"I do apologize," someone said, the man who had first spoken. As the gunman stepped away, a new man appeared in Marcus' field of vision. "But I simply must ask you to come inside and close the door. It's not safe."

"Of...of course," Marcus said, still feeling a strange sense of dislocation. "I'm sorry," he murmured as he stepped through.

Ed followed him, then closed and locked the door behind him.

"No apology necessary at all from you, my new friend," the man said.

Marcus took in the two men before him. Wendell, the gun-wielder, was not the musclebound giant Marcus had, for some reason, been expecting. He turned out to be a tall, thin man in a coat, jeans and a red beanie. He had a long face and was shaking. The other man, who was smoothing the situation over, was older. He had dirty glasses, a receding hairline and a thin frame. The man seemed more like a teacher or librarian than anything else.

"Thomas Ritter," the man who seemed to be the leader of the small group said, extending his hand. Marcus took it and shook it awkwardly.

"Uh...Marcus...Campbell. Marcus Campbell," he murmured. He felt as though his brain were a ship that had slipped its moorings and was now adrift at sea. He looked around the ranger station, taking in the damage, the destruction.

It was obvious that a lot of fighting had gone on here. Several of the windows were cracked, some of them outright broken. The furniture was overturned and, in some cases, completely demolished. There were no actual corpses in the cabin, but he could see more blood. Besides Wendell and Thomas, there were three other people. One was a pale, dark-haired, harrowed looking woman in a dark sweater and jeans. She was tending to two others, who appeared to be wounded. One was a man in an orange hunter's vest and outdoors boots, the other was a skinny man with a ponytail. They were both actively bleeding.

"Wendell is prone to frights," Thomas was saying.

"What happened?" Marcus asked finally. "What the hell is going on?"

"What's going on is that Wendell and Sheila and myself volunteered for a mission significantly more dangerous than we thought. We came up from Spencer's Mill to hunt for supplies and survivors. I didn't think it'd be this dangerous," Thomas explained.

"But...what happened, I mean-"

Thomas stopped looking around the cabin and looked directly at Marcus. "We're in a bad way," he said in a tense, confidential tone. "Our situation is desperate. We've already found these two and there are a lot more of the nasties up here than I had hoped. I need to defend this building, tend to the wounded so they don't die on us. At least stabilize them before we move them. I could never live with myself if I didn't conduct a more thorough search...you two seem hale and hearty. Would you please do me the favor of checking out the cabins and campsites?" he asked.

Marcus considering telling the man no, he wanted answers and he wanted them now, but he looked again at the two wounded. The woman, Sheila, was tending to them, but their wounds looked bad. With a sharp squeal, Marcus' attention was snapped to Wendell, who was pushing a large piece of furniture up against one of the broken windows.