Slingshot 8

Seventy years after terrorists unleashed a weapons-grade virus on earth, a lone cluster of mankind survives in the Shoals Area of NW Alabama. Why? A U. S. Air Force C-130 carrying the only supply extant of the “Mad Flu” vaccine crash-landed at the Muscle Shoals Airport in Colbert County. Two draconian figures, Henry Wade Smith III and Charles Edward Ragland V, stepped up, and in the vacuum of governmental and military collapse, they cooperated to save the citizens of their two counties. Smith ruled Lauderdale County on the north side of the Tennessee River, and Ragland did the same in Colbert County to the south. They succeeded but not without costs. Democracy is gone. The Smith Ascendancy in Lauderdale and the Ragland Ascendancy in Colbert dictated the leaders since the apocalypse, and a falling-out between the two ruling families led to a series of devastating wars leaving the occupants of the “Spared Territory” divided and hate filled. 

Early attempts to venture out in the “Old World” failed. Sheltered behind their walls, the Lauderdales and Colberts compete for dwindling resources. Most recently, the two principalities are embroiled in a deadly dispute over control of Wilson Dam and its considerable yield of hydroelectric power. The Colberts have a larger population, deeper agriculture, a basic monetary system, and quite the industrial base. They feel entitled to a greater share of the dam’s output due to their economic progress and larger population. The Lauderdales are fewer in number, operate financially on a complicated barter system, and have a warrior mentality akin to ancient Sparta. The Colberts came up short in two prior invasions across the mighty river. Lauderdale strikes first this time; young Henry Wade Smith V (Harry) assumes the presidency after his father’s passing and takes Lauderdale to war the day of the state funeral. He commands from a painstakingly preserved Humvee designated Slingshot 8.