I walked, step by step as I had done for weeks. The soles on my boots worn thin by the sands of famine that plague this entire region. The crops I had heard once consumed this land only dry and wither away to rejoin the crumbling earth. As I continued my solitary death march towards the Oklahoma border, I was surprised when I was engulfed by shadow, too quiet to have been a sandstorm. There it stood, close enough for me to taste its breath, was a large black stallion. Bigger than any I had ever seen, and rotting like a leper. It spoke with the voice like the devil, and I knew at once. It must be pestilence, or at least it's steed. Perhaps my hubris was too great, but I saw in that moment, my fate before me. I was to accept the demon's challenge. Beat sickness itself and beat back the illness and the flies. A doctor against the plague.

It marked me after that. A dead man grabbed my hand, wiping away my sleeve and leaving a blank space the size and shape of a horsefly. He warned that should I fail enough jobs, and the fly touch the cross, then he would win our wager. I know not what that would entail.

He sent us begrudgingly to contain a different plague. Not one of his, but one of mantis eggs, so small they can not be seen by the naked eye. They had infected the local water supplies, and would manifest with these manti growing rapidly under the skin of those who drink it. We managed to find the source at the well, and after my team had dropped into the well to observe it, I had to orchestrate an emergency rescue. After they were brought up, we set fire to the well, which seemed to kill every mantid. The creature in the well was none other than the mayor's own son, who had gotten sick, and a supposed doctor came to town, and made him better for a time. But by the time we got to town, he had become a mantid abomination.

Find the black bird masked doctor, and make him cease.

Bonus, Texas. A small township between Mount View and Houston proper. We had tracked the False Doctor to it, and the sight was a terrible one to behold.

The… undead for lack of better word, were overwhelming the remaining townspeople. There were bulls resurrected to demolish houses, and what was left of people had taken on specialized roles, climbing, sprinting and even shooting. We knew instantly that if we didn’t intervene, everyone here could very well die.

Our plan of action was simple.

First we take down the bulls. They could tear through any cover we used and keep up with the horses. We eliminated four out of the five bulls we could find, but the last one vanished.

Second, we focused our efforts into the Specialist zombies. I had managed to shoot down the one with the gun, while Ally covered me from a leaping attack from above. The Sprinters and the Centipede were put down shortly afterwards. This forced the False Doctor to retreat into the Jail.

Third, we were ambushed by a tunneling, multi headed bull monstrosity. It ripped the leg off my horse, and gave me and Mason just enough time to climb up onto a building.

When the False Doctor came out to retrieve my Horse, I sadly put a bolt through its head. This enrage- no, it pissed him off. He started to chase us, and I hit his bitch ass with a Molotov, hoping that the flames would sterilize him or maybe stop his regeneration completely. I was lucky I was right with the first.

What came next was a bit of a scramble as Mason was grabbed by the Multi-Headed bull, and we desperately tried to shoot its heads off. It tried to death touch Mason, only lighting him ablaze.

After a few more seconds of trading blows, the False Doctor was dressed, Mason was put out, and the bull put down. Mason lunged onto the Doctor’s clothed body, moments from passing out from the pain, and I knew what I had to do. I sat on the doctor and began to sew and stitch, his clothes and skin. Regenerative abilities should keep him from pulling out the stitches.

While I was doing this, Alley and the townsfolk sealed with the remaining zombies, including the final bull, which got the jump on her.

When all was done, we threw the False Doctor into the tunnels left behind by the Multi-Bull, and collapsed them.

Rust Water, Texas. That is where our notebooks The Mare had given us had told us to go. A town smaller than even the Township of Mountview. A group had passed through there some time ago, maybe a month prior. They restored water to the town, an awful rusted red water, which while not the best tasting, would ensure there would never be a child born who would have to live with an iron deficiency. What they had to live with instead was the long, waking hours, weeks without sleep. I was worried that this inability to rest may drive these people to their breaking points. So we asked around, and found the source of the sickness. A man who had killed his wife and children in a fit of madness who had been hanged more than a month back. So we set off to find his home, to trace this pathogen back to its origin.

The house was abandoned, all animals in the area were silent or non existent. We fared well for a time, but it was only a matter of hours before we felt the hand of sleep pressing down on us, and eventually we were all searching with our eyes half closed, aside from Allie, who was, as usual, a ball of youthful energy. As we continued to search, we found the symbol printed on the covers of our notebooks. The circle with three inward pointing arrows, surrounded by a blocky perimeter shape, almost like a vault door. Who were these people, and why do we have their relics? It looked like their plan accounted for any power outage, but perhaps only on a local scale. We managed to contain the sleep demon inside this room, after the blacksmith and Carson repaired the measures to keep it in place. Once it had been sealed, our drowsiness seemed to fade. I felt bad about lying to the people of the town, but we needed them to believe that the house was dangerous, so we told them the sicnkess had come from something inside, a disease. We then proceeded to give them "free immunizations" to help with the cover. It was just tea.