UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)
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12 thoughts on “540 – Trick Hello

  1. Called it, she figured he’d do this, if by choice or by zombie voodoo. I’m sure the “friendlier” questioning will start soon, if she doesn’t just kill him out-right. Or just add him to the herd.

  2. This turn of events is a surprise only to Eustace. And, maybe, Eustace’s subconscious. After all, this way he doesn’t have to actually risk actually attacking Suzie, which gives him a greater chance of survival than actually attacking her. I wonder what he was promised/threatened with?

  3. Not to nit-pick, but since sights are on target, finger should be on the trigger. Especially this close.
    The usual rule is “keep finger straight and off trigger until sights are on target”.

  4. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Not to nit-pick, but since that was current philosophies regarding trigger discipline have evolved.
    Of course, it will depend on who you get/got your training from.
    Experiments have determined that the fraction of a second to go from finger off the trigger to finger firing when appropriate is insignificant, and the risk of firing unintended is greatly reduced.

  5. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    I did the google thing and I believe I saw how you reached this conclusion … but there are two parts to it – One should not omit the second part.
    “Trigger Finger Discipline: · The practice of keeping your finger “off the trigger” until your sights are on target AND YOU ARE READY TO DISCHARGE THE FIREARM.” (Caps are my own)

  6. She wants him alive so she can question him; otherwise, he’d already be dead. 💀

  7. Good discussion on trigger discipline!
    His skin is very pale / gray. Is this malnourishment, or has he been poisoned with a mind-control drug? I would have to go back and look a t all various of skin tone.

    1. On a prior page we discussed what he’s likely got running in his system. I suggested that it’s probably Borrochero (Brugmansia arbora) which is already used by Colombian cartels to eradicate the free will of their victims.

  8. Oh, the gray is just the dim light. Here is McCarthy eating dinner, and has the typical white dude flesh tone.
    https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/531-inquisitional-etiquette/

    1. Yeah, I was trying to show that it was dark. But went with the old Hollywood method of adding a blue grey tint over everything.

  9. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Now can we satisfy my curiosity? Colt, Smith & Wesson, Ruger, or other timeline variant?

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540 – Trick Hello

Suzie hearkening back to the last time Eustace was faked out. She probably regrets not being able to sneak the Lawn Ranger into the bedcovers to be the victim of the stabbing.

And with that, it's Episode 23 time! Welcome back to the Ranch, everyone!

The rotary club

In popular fiction it often seems flying in a helicopter is a more dangerous prospect than off-roading in a Ford Pinto full of sweaty dynamite. There’s even a whole TV Tropes page dedicated to the phenomenon. Helicopters are the redshirts of the vehicular transportation world. Zombie fiction is no exception, probably because the helicopter represents a free ticket to safety from the gravity-bound hordes, and we can’t have that or we have no tension for our survival scenario. Maybe the pilot becomes a zombie, or one of the passengers, or a zombie was hiding somewhere on board, or something even more contrived than that, but whatever, the important thing is that the easy salvation and hope go down in flames and our protagonists are left to cry variations on “Game over, man!” But early on with Zombie Ranch, I knew we’d be telling a different kind of story, one where the world had been adjusting to the presence of the walking dead for several years, and more than that, still had a fair amount of resources and technology available. Roads in the Wild Zones wouldn’t be maintained and might still be choked with ruined cars; land travel wouldn’t be out of the question, but there’d definitely be dangers and delays. The Pony Express got by in the Old West, but in this Weird New West, wouldn’t it be nice if you could just fly your delivery right over it all, roads, hills, and zeds be damned? Well, shucks, there’s something that can do that! Helicopters could fly between safe zones or even fortified Wild Zone towns, never setting gear on the ground until they needed to (and requiring a lot less real estate and development to do so than a fixed-wing plane). I’ve been teasing hints of all this since Episode 2, so it’s fun to finally get a chance to dip into it more, this rotorhead culture of independent contractors running goods for the highest bidder. The High Road Couriers. When it absolutely, positively needs to be there on time, pay up — and up they’ll go!