I swear to fucking God, if I ever see Detective Dickbag again, I'm shoving his fucking badge down his throat. I know I'm in the witness protection program and they sent me to this shitty podunk town in order to keep the mob from axing me to wrap up loose ends, and I see that this town is a good place to hide, because any mobster that would come here to kill me would run away screaming from how fucking boring this place is before they could ever find me. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm Jack. That's not my name, but now it is because of the witness protection program, and it's been my name for two years now, so I might as well get used to that being my name, because I don't think I'm ever fucking getting out of this town again. I'm pretty sure that detective's fucking forgot about me at this point. Or he's dead. I don't know, and I don't care, really. I'm resigned to the fact that I'm going to die in this shitty town. Anyway, this shitty town is Rockmore, a place in the ass-end of fucking nowhere in Montana. Like, consider how ass-end of fucking nowhere some places can be in, like, Nevada or, I don't know, Vermont. But now imagine that, but in fucking Montana. There's about 700 other doomed souls in this place alongside me, and every one of them is depressed, drunk, angry, or a combination of the three. Including me.
This town is absolutely dead. If you want something to eat, your options are the Wal-Mart in the center of town, or the shitty dive bar on the outskirts, and that's it. If there was a restaurant in this town... I can't even finish that sentence. This place can't even support a fucking Denny's, let alone anything that belongs in the same sentence as the word "restaurant". Any establishment here would serve misery and despair as free sides with infinite refills. The local high school shut down about a decade ago, from what I'm told, and every kid here is homeschooled in the ways of the town, and the less I think about what that entails, the fucking better. Instead, the high school building is now home to some gun nuts they call a militia. Then again, in this town, five guys with pistols is a fucking army. The only real opposition would be the cops, which are about five people, but with shotguns instead of pistols. And as is standard with country cops, they have a hardon for fucking with outsiders, except no fucking outsiders ever come to this place, so they've got a whole bunch of pent up energy that's just raring to go.
And that's not all. Oh no, this fucking shithole hit the god damn jackpot when it comes to tensions. We've also got a cult camping out in an old ranch building, a probably corrupt mayor, a power plant that might explode any day now, a serial killer just sitting in a jail cell, and there might be some government plans to fuck with the weather here too. This place is a powder keg waiting to explode. Now, how do I know about all this stuff? Well, I'm the bartender at the shitty dive bar. I don't know why the fuck that asshole of a detective set me up with this job, because it's miserable. It's like I get to stew in all the misery and drunkenness of this town, every fucking night, serving these fucking dickbags, mopping up the vomit and getting home at 1 AM every night. But I do pick up a lot of rumors, and those rumors tell me that this town is going to go to hell, and I'm going with it. It's just a matter of when.
So really, I shouldn't have been surprised when it did happen. But I'm getting ahead of myself again. It was a regular night. Six guys puking, below the monthly average, and only twelve broken glasses. Now that I think about it, it was a good night. I don't know where the fuck all the replacement glasses come from, but I've stopped questioning shit in this town. Anyway, when I was walking home, I had a very bad feeling come over me, and that was something new. I hadn't had a feeling like that for over a year now, and the last time I had it, somebody had explosive shits in the bar restroom and spread it all over the place. So that feeling usually means something very bad is going to happen. But at least I did manage to arrive at my shitty apartment without issue. Then again, the apartment is about three houses over from the bar, both in the shittiest part of town. So as usual, I collapsed on the sofa in front of a running TV showing some sort of shitty re-run of an ancient program because that's all the local stations show here, and before long, I fell asleep.
Then, a blaring buzzing noise jolts me awake. For a moment, I think it's my alarm, but as I start regaining full consciousness, I notice it's still dark out. A quick look at the clock tells me it's 2 AM, why the fuck is there some sort of buzzing waking me up at this sort of time? But then, one look at the TV answers that question. Instead of some boring program, all I get to see is a black screen with white text reading "Emergency Alert System". Oh, no. Some sort of shit is going down in this town, and I'm fucking stuck here. Now all I can do is listen and find out just what the fuck is going down here. A voice begins to speak on the TV: "This message is being broadcast at the request of the Rockmore Police Department. Civil authorities have released a civil emergency message. Important information will follow."
My mind races with possibilities. What is it going to be? The militia making their move? The cult starting sacrifices? The police launching a coup? Mayor Anderson's moonshine lab exploded? The power plant blew up? The serial killer escaped and is on the loose? I had no idea what was about to come. Finally, the voice continued. "The Rockmore Police Department reports: