The Horsemen

The world changed over the past two years. It wasn’t the big bang, EMP, or comet strike so many had planned for. It was worse because it was so avoidable, like a major corporation going bankrupt out of bad decisions and neglect. When the funds dried up and all the political machinations failed, nothing remained but the people. Left to their own devices, what sprang up more resembled the Old West of the 1800s. Law existed in small towns as much as could be prosecuted by a sheriff and a few deputies backed by a local judge and the townspeople. Outside the towns, homesteads and travelers operated at their own risk and the bandits and plunderers knew it.

Goose Truman is a haunted, damaged man taking out his misery on the bad men of the new world. Losing his family in the early days of the apocalypse broke something inside Goose. His only saving grace a bond of friendship with the governor of Kentucky, who in an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, tasked Goose with hunting the worst of the bad men terrorizing Kentucky, while building an elite band of Rangers in the state.

Governor envisioned an elite force much like Texas had in the early days of Rangers that would track the worst of the worst no matter where they went. Goose had other ideas. While he was happy to exact vengeance on the people who’d wrought so much destruction in the country, he had no intention of bringing any of them to a courtroom. The last days of the old America had sown a healthy distrust of the courts. Besides, bringing back prisoners added another level of risk to an operation that Goose didn’t want.

Goose had built a reputation so terrifying it created enemies and mothers used it to make their children behave. He also had an extended network of friends who had known him before. Those friends were willing to help, if Goose would only sober up and allow them to. As the missions got riskier and the gangs larger, Goose began to lose his passion for killing, and living, when he is finally pitted against a challenge even too large for him. That doesn’t stop him. Something’s got to give.

Can the people of America rebuild from the ashes, starting at the small towns and working up? Will the outlaws and robber barons turn America into a series of feudal kingdoms won by hard men with low morals? Can the Horsemen create a spark of hope and tip the balance between good and evil in America? Will Goose Truman be a tragic footnote in the history of the new America, or will he create a spark of change among the people who survived the apocalypse?