Many people pass through the sands. Many do make it the whole way. Each of us survived. So each, in his own way is a legend. But, there are some who we look at as one's who didn't get a lucky break like us. They made their own. These people could lead us to a land we could not fear like the one we do now.

Jeriko

Late twenties, early thirtys. His is tall and menacinag to look at. Rough around the edges, short spikey hair, stubble. He is tough physically as well as mentally. He is very experienced at living in the wastes. He carries his fathers journal with him, reads it often and trys to make sense out of it. His main motivation is survival, how ever he has a mercenary side to him. He is NOT a knight in rusty armour. He is out to stay alive, he has only so much in the way of compassion. He has a gun with only a couple of shots left. It is his ace up his sleeve. He is trying to make sense out of what happened to his world although he wouldn't admit this to himself.

Its not everyday you meet someone who eminates an aura of stoicism. I met a wanderer once that made me think the world was just fine.



God’s Country

Jericho description: Wearing a tattered long coat, goggles and a thin scarf around his face. He has a huge knife in his belt as well as a BIG revolver at his hip. He has a fiberglass truck antenna as a walking stick.

Jericho Narration: There is a place a mind goes to when it hasn’t heard a human voice in months. It is a cool quiet place, like the inside of deep cave. Your mind just huddles there in the dark, awake but sleeping. Awake enough for your legs to keep moving, your eyes to keep seeing but asleep enough for your thoughts to just melt away. Your body does all the work, just a machine moving forward a step at a time. Some one once told me that a sleeping man doesn’t get thirsty or hungry. So here I am lost inside my dark cave, neither hungry nor thirsty, plodding along like a blind mule…..

Scene: Jericho trips on skull. The skull has a little hair clinging to it.
Jericho Narration: Yup, that’s me. Reflexes like a god damned cat.
Jericho: Shit.
Jericho: (Picks the skull up and looks at it. Then throws it over his shoulder)
Jericho Narration: After living in the wastes for a coupla years you get used to seeing the dead. They are all over the place. Starvation, disease, highwaymen. There are a million and one ways to buy it out in the wastes.
Jericho: Wonder where the rest of him is…(Sees a chunk of bone sticking up out of the sand.)
Jericho Narration: A rule about finding dead people though. If they aren’t chewed on or cut up your probably going to find where they came from some time soon.

Scene: Jericho walks up the top of a hill and below is an old church with a very high steeple. No other buildings surround it. The church is blackened and eerie looking.

Jericho Narration: Water is worth more then just about anything if you’re in the wastes. You can go a long time with out eating but if you miss a coupla days of drinking your going to look like my friend back there in the sand. I hoped that there was a clean well down there. A clean well and may be a good looking …

Scene: Two men come up out of the sand, they are wearing rough burlap and many patch clothing. They are young and look scared. One of the men has a much abused shot gun the other has a cleaver attacked to a short stick.

Man #1: Drop your weapons, (Jericho drops his knife and antenna) AND the pistol.
(Jericho complies)
Jericho Narration: I don’t know much about guns. Only what I have read in my father’s journal, but I do know that a shotgun with a barrel full of sand is either not going to fire or explode when it does.
Jericho: (Drops the gun…as he does so he ducks away, the shotgun user fires and the gun explodes he flies back screaming, Jericho and Man#2 fight)

Scene: Jericho is on top of man #2 and is holding a weapon to his throat.
Jericho: Ok dipshit, what’s in the church? You better start talking fast my friend because I have been out in the wastes for a long time and I am kinda edgy (Draws a bead of blood from the man#2’s neck.)

Man#2: G…G…G..Getherial….
Jericho: What? Who?
Man#2: Getherial, she runs the place. She s…s..says it’s a mission a place for some one to find God….
Jericho: You got a well down there?
Man#2: Y..Yeah..
Jericho: Ok lets go. I could use about twelve gallons of water right about now…
Man#2: What about David?
Jericho: He is still alive. You want to help him you carry him. Lets go..
Jericho Narration: Usually I wouldn’t go running blind into a situation I didn’t know but I was desperate for water….
SCENE: As Jericho and man#2 who is carrying man#1 walk over the crest of the hill the frame shows a Large chapel, blackened and crooked. An old Fire engine is abandoned in front of the chapel. The cross on the steeple of the chapel juts out into the sky surreally and is somehow mildly evil.

Jericho Narration: I have seen a lot of shit in my time in the wastes. Some of it enough to give a guy nightmares the rest of his life, but seeing that chapel hunched down there ate away at something inside me. It seemed obscene somehow…

Jericho: Nice place you got here….
SCENE: Jericho and Man#2 descend the far side of the hill, as they get closer Jericho sees a large machine gun nest on the roof of the chapel. Also there is a small line of people moving in and out of the front of the chapel.
Jericho: Hey, what’s going on over there?
Man#2: Pilgrims. They come from all over for water and for guidance from Getherial.
Jericho: Why the hell did you jump me then? I coulda been a pilgrim.
Man#2: ….(struggling with the burden of his companion)..You.came…from the wrong direction….
Jericho: The wrong direction? What the hell does that mean?
SCENE: Two very large men are approaching. One carries a baseball bat with large nails driven in it. The other carries a fireman’s axe.
Guard#1: Michale? What happened who is he?
Man#2(Michale): David is hurt we must get him inside…
Gurard#2: Who this scum…did he do this to David?
Michale:…..He came from the wastes. David and I….attempted to subdue him. David’s gun exploded. So far this man hasn’t hurt either of us.
Jericho Narration: I had to wonder about that one. Michale or what ever his name was had a nice shiner going from our little tussle. He was playing it cool, if he could so could I…
Jericho: I came from the..wrong direction..or what ever…all I want is some water. I can trade for it.
Guard#1: You look like desert scum to me….
Guard#2: Which direction did he come from Michale?
Michale: North…
SCENE: Both guards narrow their eyes at Jericho. Several of the pilgrims shy away from him and quietly mutter about the Nemesis.
Jericho Narration: Great. This was looking better and better all the time. What the hell does coming from the North have to do with anything? All I wanted was some water.
Jericho: Listen, all I want is some water. I don’t want any trouble…
Guard#1: Wait here.
SCENE: Guard#1 and Michale with his wounded companion disappear in to the Chapel. Jericho stands for a frame.
SCENE: The chapel doors reopen and Guard#1 comes back out.
Guard#1: You can enter. Follow the pilgrims. You will NOT deviate from the path the pilgrims take.
Jericho: …..ok.
SCENE: The inside of the chapel covered by a network of pipes all of which are old and rusty. The main worship area has been converted into a sleeping area with shitty bunkbeds along the walls, where there are no bed there are rags and ratty blankets. Jericho finds and empty spot near a pile of rags and sits down. A pilgrim is curled into a ball next to him.
Jericho Narration: I had seen places like this before. A crash hole for slags and down on their luck travelers. Hell I had slept in places like this quite a few times. Got to be careful though. Every slag and his mother has a knife ready to carve you a new smile so he can light finger your stuff, house of God or not….
Jericho: (Prods the pilgrim) Hey. Where’s the well?
Pilgrim: (squirms away from Jericho) What? The well? Don’t know. They bring water up from the Below.
Jericho: The Below? What..
TishTosh: (TishTosh is a shorter woman. She is wearing a thin white T-shirt that has seen better days. She has long blond hair she is wearing back in ponytail. She has a hard look to her. Very muscular, she has a leather bag across her back and a very very nasty knife on her hip) Downstairs. (This is said off frame)
Jericho: (Turns and looks at tish) Downstairs? This place has a basement huh?
TishTosh: Yup.
Jericho Narration: She was a kind of pretty you get used to in the wastes. You have to see past the scars and the iron expression. Scars are apart of the waste lands, just as much a part as the sand and scorpions.
Jericho: You don’t look like a pilgrim.
TishTosh: No.
Jericho: Where you from?
TishTosh: Heaven.
Jericho Narration: Heaven. I had been there about three years ago. It was a little shithole out in the middle of the wastes. Famous for it’s pit fighting. Heaven’s favorite past time was rounding up slags from the wastes and dumping them in a pit with barbed wire around the lip. After a few minutes with the crowds yuk yuking some big shot would tell the slags that only one would get out of the pit, the slag was the last one standing would get food and water for a week. Tough place, Heaven.
Jericho: What your name?
TishTosh: TishTosh.
Jericho:….little weird dontcha think?
TishTosh: Yours?
Jericho: Jericho.
TishTosh: Think mine’s weird.
Jericho: Heh. Yeah.
TishTosh: Big basement. Bigger then the top.
Jericho: How do you know?
TishTosh: Seen it.
Jericho: Bigger huh?
(NIGHT TIME)
Jericho Narration: Late in the day a few slags in robes brought out a tub on wheels full of water. One by one real polite like all the pilgrims filled their containers. Tish and I were the last ones to do so. A few minutes after that another little old guy in a robe started passing out chunks of meat.
Jericho: (Handed a chunk of cooked meat by a robed guy) Thanks.
TishTosh: (Hands her meat to the nearest pilgrim who starts eating ravenously)
Jericho: Why’d you do that?
TishTosh: You see any cows? Pigs? Chickens?
Jericho:…..oh shit.
Jericho Narration: You see it some times. The dead and the dying have a purpose if they didn’t die of disease. Meat. Cannibals come in all types. The holy variety or unholy.
Jericho: (Hands meat to nearest pilgrim) Fuckn’ cannibals.
SCENE: Michale walks up to Jericho. He is wearing fairly clean robe like clothing.
Jericho: Hiya Michale. Come to settle up an old grudge?
Michale: No. Getherial wants to see you.
Jericho: Why?
Michale: You came from the North.
Jericho Narration: This was starting to piss me off. What the hell was wrong with the north? Did this entire group of people have some kind of compass phobia?
Jericho: Fine. Let’s go.
SCENE: Jericho and Michale walk across the crowded room to the altar. Next to the altar there is a door that leads down some shitty stairs going down. These lead into a roughly cut hallway.
Jericho: How’s your friend, David?
Michale: (Spins and punches Jericho)
(Jericho and Michale fight, this time Michale fights much harder. They both are bleeding and break from the fight)
Jericho: ..pant..pant..We…already danced to day Mike. If you want to keep this up I am going to have to get serious…
Michale: If it were up to me you would be dead by now..
Jericho: But it isn’t up to you….David should have been ok but I think he was recycled eh? Made into tonight’s barbecue?
Michale: Fuck you….
Getherial: Michale. Enough. I assume you are the one from the North.
(Getherial is very beautiful. She is dressed in a homemade black dress. She has a nuns wimple (Hat/hood).”
Michale: I am sorry Mother Getherial.
Jericho: Mother?
Jericho Narration: I was expecting some shriveled old hag frothing at the mouth about God and demons…she was definitely ease to look at..
Getherial: Michale you may leave us. You, what is your name?
Jericho: Jericho.
Getherial: Jericho? Yes…very fitting.
Jericho: Huh?

This is just a bite from thefirst issue of the comik to come. Keep Vigil. RoadKill is comin soon.