Jed watched the medic continue working on saving Bessie. Finally her wounded body was left wrapped in a blanket sleeping. The medic then took a brief look at Jed, before jumping out of the back of the jailwagon and locked the door shut behind him. The burning barn on the farm shot flames into the sky after being hit by an asteroid from a destroyed moon. Somehow the usual two moons still appeared to hang out full on the horizon.

“The machines are running out of crystal, so good thing for the horses, but we’re stuck without any more charge for our vehicles and more mouths i gotta feed slop too oh boy,” somebody moaned outside.

“Well Farc me ain’t you a prissy little weakling.. how about walking haha?” laughed another.

“Seriously boys I want your eyes glued on guarding those prisoners at all times understood, getup,” announced the last of the mounties riding off.

“Yes sir,” replied the group of troupers.

“BOOM!”

Whatever remained of the big red barn exploded shooting flaming fireballs out into the blast radius. A mushroom cloud formed over the farm as the previously cratered spaceballs rolled into the winds stirred into a blender again

“Get down,” yelled the Medic, running for the crawler while deadly objects blew overhead.

The main farmhouse had half its shingles ripped from the front while the gazebo and a section of the porch was crushed. The cowshed went up in smoke while what remained of a fence shot out like spikes. A spooked horse bucked kicking off the straggling rider into the mud and sped off without them.

“Fuck that must have been the old mans still,” said Jed, gripping the jail-bars as the wagon they were locked inside began tilting sideways on its wheels.

He slammed forward, falling until he was hanging by his handcuffed arm swinging through the air. The vehicle rolled into the ditch and he hit it. Bessie fell beside him unconscious. The runaway prison wagon stopped upright on a flat tire, and heavily dented body.

Jed thanked his lucky stars he was still alive even being presumed a prisoner for the rest of his life. Funny how fast things changed so fast from his previous “stance of you'll never take me alive” when he hadn’t even made it back to the courthouse he laughed at himself. Maybe the apocalyptic event he had just witnessed had destroyed all the judges, jails and courthouses. If that was the case then all the places to spend the bounty money would have also gone toast. And in that case they probably weren’t going to keep feeding him long term. Gulp they could find plenty of uses for her for better or worse, but he was probably soon to be executed.

The stars circling all around made him dazed and confused. He had probably hit his head was the last thought he could muster up before collapsing on his back. He stared at the blurry spinning ceiling overwhelmed with the feeling of motion sickness and the urge to puke. He had managed to throw the thin blanket back over Bessie for warmth in the meantime. He felt his heart beat a sigh of relief after making sure she wasn’t dead. The snowflakes continued falling outside filling the sacred ground. The two lay passed out drifting apart into separate nightmares while the lights of their rescuers caught up to them.

Nearby the chase to catch a tractor was still ongoing. The old guy sputtered away spewing a trail of smoke for the lawman to follow after. The sudden explosion had spooked many of the horses, but sheriff Nate Spit’s stead obeyed his every stern command to keep pushing forward through the smoke. He even had it jump through a ring of fire.

The chase slowly continued even with the barn explosion backfiring on his machine loaded with something, and the horse having trouble due to the horrible air quality. He pushed the animal forward while aiming his shotgun. He had almost gained close enough to jump to the tractor's cab when it suddenly disappeared out of view.

“Whoah,” Sheriff Nate, slowed his horse, before turning it around in a field.

The tractor had fallen sideways into a dark hole in the ground he had missed due to poor vision. The wheels spinning out of control in the air while out came spilling twelve liquid containers from the bucket rolling away in the process. The old man had spilled out two without being crushed. He tried to climb to his feet but he couldn’t without assistance.

“Hey mister, If you're thinking about doing anything funny well the first place your daughter will be taken is for a good long look at your fatal mistake, heck I might even rub her face in it,” taunted Sheriff Nate spit, showing off a sparkling badge and drawing his weapon to show he was serious.

The old man fell out of his overturned tractor and groaned on his stomach crawling out of the wreck as best he could manage. His mutated crystal coated body made his movements stiff and erratic. He rapidly breathed in and out underneath a shotgun shoved down his throat by a man with a wild look in his eyes who said he was keeping law and order. There was a showdown at the end of the property line where he had crashed. A concealed carry pistol revealed behind the old man's flapping jacket as the wind smacked them with the weather. The man paused for a second to think things over and realized he couldn’t grab it in time before he stopped resisting. The sheriff grabbed the weapons and started a pat down, finding three more small semi pistols, and a sawn off down his trousers that were built extra large to accommodate the mutations.

“I’m truly sorry about your horrible condition sir, well as the condition of your farm, but we do have a public emergency order in effect granting us the laws to secure everything in the kingdom,” said Nate who was midway into helping the sick suspect to his feet when he spotted purple leaking out of several of the spilled containers.

“Sir what have you tried to escape from the burning barn with?” questioned Nate.

The sheriff threw the old man down on the ground as three of his deputies ran into the picture, with one holding a bright light. The surrounding environment was suddenly still giving center stage to the humans.

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“He could mutate into a monster at any second, be careful,” yelled somebody.

Nate bent and let his hand be filled with the sticky purple substance leaking out of a container at his boots.

“This is highly illegal shit right here…Jungle juice,” he said after taking a taste. “One of you gets word out to the others to take over the farmhouse there to sleep for the night we have full right to seizure now that we have evidence of this stuff being stored here,”

“No warrant to come here,” gasped the old man being handcuffed.

“Don’t need a warrant in the apocalyptic conditions we can go onto any land as an enforcer of the crown's laws man you are lucky an act of likely a god destroyed most the evidence in that there barn,” speculated Nate, before pausing to lift the heavy container to where it wouldn’t spill anymore. “Men, we will first clear the house building, quarantine the old man in one of the rooms I guess, and spend the night until we can acquire the necessary crystal gas in order to charge our empty vehicles to move out,” he ordered.

“Sir the jail wagon took a tumble in the blast,” the messenger paused on seeing his boss's intense questioning eyes staring him down. “The prisoners were retrieved fine, but my horse ran off,” he was finally able to spit out under pressure.

“Right get the prisoners guarded and take them to the front steps of the farmhouse” Nate ordered.

“But my horse,”

“Forget it you'll never catch it follow orders,”

“Yes sir,”.

The lights flashed reflecting off the windows still intact. The house was dark as their footsteps creaked across the porch. Three officers remained guarding the prisoners laid out near the front steps while the rest prepared to breach the residence.

“3…2..1.”.

“Go, Go, Go!” Nate yelled, kicking open the front door.

They streamed inside the building, weapons drawn.

“Shit what was that?”

“Bang!”

Glass broke as something shattered apart in the kitchen.

“Hold your fire damn it,” yelled Nate, holding his ears.

He aimed his flashlight into the room with his pistol and charged towards danger. The shot had broken a cookie jar and scared a mouse across the floor.

“Watch your fire,” Nate nervously yelled at the man aiming his gun while the varmint ran under his legs and into a hole in the wall on the other side.

“Phew,” he said, whipping his sweat covered forehead. “You trigger the happy guy go in first to the next room,”.

“Yes sir,” said the officer, hanging his head in shame.

He walked across the room before exploding into the next room. “Clear!”.

Later the flames crackled as a grandfather clock began to strike the twelfth hour. There was a familiar couch where a familiar woman was tied to it. Jed’s vision returned to him before his mind came fully online. He was laying on the floor near the grate of a stone fireplace. He couldn’t move and whether it was due to the five star wanted response of having ropes, plastic ties, a mouth mask, a thing around his chest, and handcuffs holding him down around his body. Or maybe it was to do with the previous injuries that hurt like crazy. He had to fight his darkening vision to stay awake until the voices charged his adrenaline and he pretended to be asleep under closed eyelids but was really woken up by the situation.

“You guys know I was a deputy underneath the last sheriff before somebody killed him, I know who it really was too but a big part of my job is not acknowledging it,” said the Sheriff, strutting across the living room.

“Well with both rulers dead, a truly disastrously unproductive “Temporary council,” of nobodies in their place, I much preferred the royals because that's how we've always done things,” said another voice.

“And the moon blowing up triggering an apocalyptic event, who knows what we will find of civilization when we return to it,” added Nate, studying a row of family pictures.

“But do we want to return or play it safe and wait it out for a while?” asked the other.

“Of course there’s only a dozen of us here Charles, we need a full town of somebody to serve and protect. I ain't fit to govern or lead a cult,” said Nate.

Another cop barged from the kitchen. They've got the stockpile enough to feed us for at least a couple weeks,” he yelled, waving a bag of donuts in his hands.

“Hey don’t eat all those,” Nate scolded, catching one. “Thanks, but I intend for us to be out of here come tomorrow morning soon as we can, but first that requires us to get out of the old man where his gas storage on the property and let him know the alternative of not giving that up will be severe,”

“Yes sir, but don’t you figure that the gas that was exploded that barn,”

“Nope, that was mostly highly flammable but more highly illegal juice. Anyway, did you do what I told you?” Nate asked, before placing the food under his mustache.

“Yup we have the old guy chained to the radiator upstairs like you ordered.. But is it uhm that disease is contagious?” one trembling cop asked.

“Nope, as long as he's alive you can play cards with him if you want, the issue is when he dies if his zombie returns it ain’t gonna be a normal one” said Nate, nervously chuckling afterwards.

“No kidding, going to be extremely armored should it be revived like what we narrowly escaped from in the police headquarters back there in town but perhaps twice or three times as bad from the scale coverings,”.

“Gulp from going off that we should get the gas information off him and leave him behind so we don’t have to deal with the aftermath,” whispered 2nd in command.

“We should stay here and reinforce the building, but take him out to pasture who knows how many other bases are standing after the apocalypse from the destroyed moon,” said another.

“Look Charles and the rest of you listen, I realize the choices are we could settle down here stuck all winter, or take a gamble and look for a group of more people that have also survived,” said the sheriff, beginning to pace the creaking floorboards. There was a tapping on the window and he spun with a pistol.

“Just a branch boss,” said the cop standing beside it who had jumped out of the way. The sheriff walked to the window and remained silent staring outside. The horses were hooked on the porch and began pacing in place looking spooked. While the fires had mostly gone out there were little embers that illuminated smoke from smoldering craters. He thought he saw a shadow moving far behind where the barn had burnt to a crisp. There was a meadow full of undisturbed snow with a willow tree in the center of a small cemetery plot in the far view.

“Huh I wish I had my binoculars right, nevertheless we will divide ourselves up, I will interrogate the old man, and the rest of you will draw straws on dividing up the jobs of watching these two, beginning the reinforcing the building, cooking supper, plus going outside and bringing in water from the pump, while two more take the rest of the stuff from the vehicles,” ordered Nate.

Some began working together to haul bookcases, desks, and other furniture towards reinforcing the windows and backdoor. Nobody had wanted to go back out into the cold outside so spaghetti was repurposed. Charles and two others groaned on drawing short ends, and heading for the front door. Jed heard the sheriff and one other heading upstairs. He opened his eyes briefly enough to see he was still well guarded by two. He truly was crippled up shit creek without a paddle.