UPDATING OCCASIONALLY (FOR NOW)
15

15 thoughts on “539 – A Knife In The Dark (END OF EPISODE 22)”

  1. Keith

    Why am I not surprised.

  2. Scarsdale

    Typical, it’s always someone else’s fault. Revenge is not just best served cold, but by stupid too. “This is all your fault!” Which is wrong, but in his head, it’s right.

    1. steelraven

      It’s also been heavily hinted he has already been brain washed by the zombie worshiping cult.

      1. Scarsdale

        Which, no doubt, made easier because of that under-lying feeling. People are always looking for a scape-goat…

    2. Clint

      I don’t know if you got my callback by intent or not, but it’s great to see almost the same words echoed! https://www.zombieranchcomic.com/comic/203-breaking-worst/

  3. RC

    Honestly, probably the first time he’s ever taken control of and done ever in his life. There’s a reason why they kept him. Give a dog that’s been beat all its life a whiff of conference and control, you got a problem.

  4. Crazyman

    Imagine his surprise when he stabs a pillow. 😜

  5. Zombatar

    He isn’t in control, RC – he’s probably drugged to the very dilated eyeballs, probably with Datura. Back on p.443, Eustace is shown holding a Mojave Rattlesnake on a stick while the Brujefe milks it into a glass. Mojave venom A is a paralytic neurotoxin, like tetrodotoxin. Tetrodotoxin was thought to be part of the legendary Haitian “zombie powder”. The other part was Datura, which contains scopalamine, which messes with memory and concentration, and is supposed to render victims docile and suggestible.
    The question is, where did he get his current dose, and did a little drone whisper in his ear?

    1. TKG

      Except Datura doesn’t do that. You’re thinking of the compound Scoplolmine (AKA the devil’s breath) which generally comes from a specific plant, Borrochero (Brugmansia arbora) that is native to Columbia that the gang in question probably would have had access to. It’s active compound obliterates free will, your conscious, you can function as normal but you are totally open to suggestion which is what happened to McCarty here. Datura just makes you trip mad balls and maybe die, but it does not make you a puppet.

  6. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Me lleva la chingada !

  7. TKG

    I’m betting money there’s no one in that bed and it’s a ruse to get him caught.

  8. Scarsdale

    I agree, the question is, will she just shoot him, will she have him added to the herd, or keep him alive to question him?

  9. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    [Zombatar] and [TKG], please resend cocktail recipe. My efforts to date yield only a foul taste and a mild buzz.

  10. TKG

    Just a disclaimer before I answer that, I don’t recommend using datura or borrochero, the risks are a bit too high. I say this because the potency can vary from plant to plant within the same growing year and for some a real datura trip can be psychologically damaging. But anyway, the main way to use D. stramonium is to smoke it’s leaves and or seeds blended in with tobacco, I’d presume you can also do this with D. metel, which is the one commonly sold in garden centers as plants and seeds. The seeds are susually what folks focus on because as with many nightshades the active compound is centered there as a chemical defence against insects that would otherwise eat the seeds. The issue with D. metel is that it’s been hybridized for flowers and away from the normal Datura benefits so it might be all bitter and no bang so to speak. As for Borrochero or Brugmansia arborea, you really don’t want to go there. When I said it removes free weill and leaves you open to suggestion, it annihilates it for hours, and anyone can get you to do whatever so I really do not suggest it. Gangs and cartels use it to rob people blind already, you just don’t want that.

  11. Dr. Norman (not a real doctor)

    Interesting, thank you. Truth be told youthful experimentation satisfied my curiosity.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

 

539 – A Knife In The Dark (END OF EPISODE 22)
Posted on December 25, 2024 by Dawn

Happy Holidays, all! That's a wrap (heh) for Episode 22 just in time for a Christmas cliffhanger! Hope we don't twist the knife too much...

See y'all in 2025 when Zombie Ranch continues!

A city for the “century”

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Clint
Well, here we are. Comic #100 in the zombie ranch storyline, and the start of Episode 5. I wanted to do something special, both for us and for you. Up until now we’ve kept our locations purposely vague. We’re somewhere in Texas. Now we’re on the borders of Oklahoma, or looking in on a shadowy corporate office. It was time, at least in this case, to take a risk and finally get specific. Though the Z Ranch itself remains “somewhere out there”, we’ve cast our cowboy hat in the ring and declared that there’s no need to Remember The Alamo in the world of Zombie Ranch; this time around The Alamo, and the city surrounding it, never fell. I’ve had that skyline vista of the last panel, with its contradictory pattern of welcome and isolationism, optimism and invasive authority, in my head for a long time now. Since before the start of Episode 2 I had the thought that San Antonio represented that big Safe Zone people were strutting around in, but we left it generic at that time while I fretted the details to figure out how feasible that might be. Isn’t it one of the sacred tenets of the zombie apocalypse that all major cities must be abandoned and/or wiped away? Certainly one recent book (which we’ve given a nod to in the form of graffiti) was very specific about San Antonio not surviving. How would that possibly work, especially for a bustling metropolis that in modern times is a big tourist destination? Eventually I got over myself, considering I already have a world here where the dead walk (and are harvested for pharmaceuticals!), and there’s camera drones floating around with no more suspension provided than that of disbelief. Zombie Ranch is already not your usual zombie story, so why couldn’t there be the idea of a city that closed its borders early enough and policed itself effectively enough to get by? Plus, the details of this particular city just kept drawing me back. The enclosing loops of highways that from overhead reminded me of ancient castles or fortified cities, with their interior palace or keep surrounded by an inner and outer bailey. An image of the Pam Am Expressway where I could envision steel or concrete barriers integrated with the underside to form not only an impenetrable wall, but one that was very easily moved around upon by its wardens.  Finding out the San Antonio River doesn’t just flow through the city, it actually bubbles up from deep underground only a few miles from downtown like a sort of gigantic natural well. The city runs its own power company, and is home to major military bases, medical complexes, biotech industries, and a certain broadcasting entity that inspires our own ClearStream Corporation. Military and biotech? Hospitals? Wouldn’t those be ground zero? Well, think about that. Most of the apocalype scenarios involving these institutions hinge upon them not knowing what they’re dealing with until it’s too late. Not that I’m implying anything sinister here, but the Safe Zone of Santone responded in a lot of correct ways to the Great Plague, in very quick order. Finally, I suppose I’ll just take cover behind those same rules of cool that allow me to have floating cameras. San Antonio is an iconic city of the Old West, a place many a hero of cowboy fiction passed through, and I want it. More than that, it’s a modern metropolis overlaid on those wild and dusty roots, where the Alamo is laid seige to these days not by Santa Anna, but by tall buildings and 21st century commercialism. All I have to do is tweak that to a starker contrast. So given the choice between Generic Safe Zone A and a place far more intriguing in past, present, and future, I go with Santone. If we’ve gotten some details wrong, I beg your indulgence for fiction’s sake. Trust me, I have to deal with the same thing every time I play a sandbox video game of Los Angeles, and those aren’t even set decades into a post-apocalyptic future. What can I say? The last time a vision nagged at me like this, it was the start of this whole comic. And that was just a few months, compared to this concept kicking around in my skull for almost two years. I’m thrilled to finally be able to share it, and hope it was a fitting treat for those of you that have joined Dawn and myself on this continuing journey into a Weird New West.