Chapter Text
I was wildly out of my depth in Hope County and each day the so-called Collapse continued only confirmed it. I rued the fucking day, seven months ago, that I had come across an ad for an open Junior Deputy position. The ad asked: Do you want to help people and make a difference in a tight-knit community?
I don’t think I ever believed that I would be making that much of a difference to others, but at the time, saddled with my inattentive boyfriend and my unfulfilling office job, I thought, What could be worse than this?
I’ll tell you what is worse: Being in a helicopter crash. Having the bridge you’re being driven across explode, plunging you into the water below. Being all alone and having to come up with elaborate plans to rescue your co-workers from a cult. Getting into machine gun shootouts every day. Having nowhere safe to go at night because the house you bought when you moved to Hope County was confiscated by the cult you are trying to fight.
So now, when I sleep in sheds next to lawnmowers and stacked summer tires every night while mice skitter past me, I dream about these Peggie assholes rummaging through my closets and cupboards, gleefully throwing my television and books on a burn pile. When I am empty-stomached and extra tired, I dream of some unnamed Peggie eating a feast at my table and then resting his greasy-haired head on my pillow and sleeping a full eight hours. To say I am bitter would be an understatement. I am obsessively resentful every hour of the day.
Dutch’s suggestion on how to “un-fuck this situation” is to build a militia to fight the cult. He reasons that if I blow up enough shit and take back outposts throughout Hope County I might be able to convince others to fight with me against Joseph and his cult. I think it’s a pipe dream, but here I am, rocket launcher in hand, doing as I am told.
My first task of the day was to shoot down a large billboard that threatened to love and take me, with John Seed’s stupid, slimy face on it. Anyone wise to his ways didn’t need a billboard to recognize the disingenuous tilt to his smile, but it gave the piece a simpering touch that I appreciated. When I was desperate for a laugh, I conjured up scene after scene of him sitting in his office with his cult PR team as they tried to create campaigns with his face plastered all over them.
John would sulk behind a man slouched behind a computer, overseeing every aspect of the photo editing process. He would demand they make him look like a lovely and stable young man.
John would whine, “Make me look approachable!”
And then, unsatisfied when no amount of editing could make him look well-adjusted, he’d growl, “What the fuck am I paying you for?”
I raised the rocket launcher to my shoulder, hovering my finger over the trigger and giving that smug bastard one last long look. I intended to wipe the billboard off the map, but there was some hesitation on my part; after all, no one in Hope County was more delighted by this piece of art than I was. After it was gone, would I ever laugh again?
The radio clipped to my belt came alive before I could pull the trigger.
“Don’t you fucking dare, you little terror.”
It was John. No hello, no how-do-you-do. Typical . He had this thing about radioing me at all hours of the day to threaten or proselytize, depending on his mood.
No matter. His threats hadn’t stopped me before and they wouldn’t stop me now. I smiled and hoped he could see it from whichever hidden trail camera he was watching me from, and then I pulled the trigger.
The radio was silent for a minute and then he spewed a sermon I can only assume he had practiced before.
He said: “Sin is pervasive . It drives us to do unspeakable acts. I know the feelings that drive you. I know them intimately. But I can help you, Deputy. I can wash away these sins. I can cleanse your soul. It will be difficult and it will be painful, but it will be worth it. My people will come for you. They will bring you to me. Don’t fight it, because the harder you resist, well… the harder we’ll have to scrub your soul.”