The Butcher.
The Baker.
The Candlestick Maker.
Turn them out. Knaves, all three.
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The most unlikely of survival companions.
The Butcher, a towering mountain of a man. He carries with him a selection of brutal bladed weapons; meat cleavers, bone saws, battle axes. He looks more like a medieval executioner than a butcher. Black executioner mask, giant axes, and unnerving willingness to slaughter the dead and living alike. Executioner. That is a good description of what he truly is. He executes the undead and any living who would pose a threat to his traveling companions and himself. He is stoic in his existence and reserved with his words. He claims he was a butcher before the outbreak, and his skills with a blade lead us to believe him.
The Baker. The opposite of the Butcher, the Baker is a small man, short in stature, and heavy around the middle. He appears middle-aged. And, by all accounts, is always under the influence of some substance. Witnesses described him as eternally baked hence the moniker the Baker. He likes to wax philosophical and reminisce about the times before the fall. He claims to have owned a legal marijuana dispensary. Now he works in the trade of all manner of pharmaceuticals.
The Candlestick Maker. A former college Chemistry Professor. The Candlestick Maker now applies her knowledge to the making of explosives and incendiary devices. Grenades, plastic explosives, dynamite, gun powder, she has and can make it all. She is the de facto leader of the trio as they roam the wastes traveling from place to place, leaving behind a trail of truly dead, drugged survivors, and burned tracts. Some see them as a blessing, others a curse. They see themselves as neither. In their view, they simply exist, what people do with the products they trade for is neither their fault nor their responsibility.
I sat down to talk to them at a remote location.
“Butch, yeah, the Butcher, he really was a butcher. We found him in his shop while we were looking for supplies. He came out covered in blood with some big ass clever. We raised our weapons to shoot him, then he smiled. A real creepy fucking smile. Really sent shivers down our spines. That’s when we realized he wasn’t one of THEM. It took us a while to lower our weapons, the whole time he just had that creepy ass sneer on his face. We talked, and he ditched his white coat and came out of the back with his full Executioner outfit.” She stops and looks up, her eyes showing that her mind is somewhere else. She visibly shivers. “I can not tell you how unsettling it was at first, but now, we owe that man our lives.”
“I was a baker.” Both his companions look at him with surprise. “ Oh c’mon, let me run with it.” The Candlestick Maker scowls. He throws his hands up, “Fine, fine. So I wasn’t a baker. I ran a marijuana dispensary. I owned the first chain of pot shops. I had spots in Cali, over in Colorado, anywhere it was legal, I owned a shop.” He lifts a large joint to his mouth and takes a long hit. Cough. Cough. “So there I was scouting spots for a new spot when the world went to shit. The first one I saw, I thought I had smoked some laced shit.” Cough! Cough! He takes another hit. “Turns out it was just the end of the world as we knew it. Fucking’ zombies, man. Seriously? I always thought it’d be aliens but whatever.” He goes to take another hit and offers me the joint I shake my head, no. He offers to his companions, neither accepts. “Your loss.” He takes another long pull, holding it in before letting the smoke trickle out of his mouth. “Yeah, man, the end of the world. I wasn’t stupid, you know. I was running a multi-million dollar business. I had weapons, a couple of bunkers, supplies, and I mean more than canned food and water. I had it all. Except people to count on.” He looks over at the Candlestick Maker. “She found me as I was tripping balls outside my bunker. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was damn near close to being eaten alive. She got me up and inside, shutting the door. We stayed there for a while till she convinced me to go out. Truth be told, I hadn’t really stocked up enough real food and stuff. So it was leave or starve.” He looks down and shakes his gut, “I haven’t starved yet, thanks to these two.”
I try to interview the Butcher, but he really wants nothing to do with me. I gather that he really was a butcher from a family of Italian butchers. That’s about it. I’m not comfortable pressing him since he’s sharpening the largest ax I’ve ever seen in person.