Zack is a Yankee, born and bred; his parents fought and died on the Union side in the War just gone. He was brought up by his aunt, and he and his cousin Zed (Zebediah, but ain’t nobody called him that since he was old enough to speak) grew up closer’n brothers – although there was always a mean streak to Zed that Zack never did have, nor rightly understand. Here was two boys, close in age as could be, same upbringing, damn near the same blood in both their veins – but where Zack was sunny and cheerful, Zed was gloomy and morose; almost as if he was the orphan rather than Zack.
When he was eighteen, maybe nineteen, Zed killed a local family one night for no other reason anyone could ever figure but that he could: shot them as they sat down for dinner and then burned their house down around them. He fled that night, and it took Zack the better part of three years to find him when he fled South, and then West. Eventually caught up with him in a cheap alley in a nowhere town in Nevada. Zack never intended it to be a fight to the death, he couldn’t believe that his cousin would be so far gone that he’d kill the boy he grew up with, but Zed was all that and worse. When his hand touched metal to draw his six-shooter though, he was outmatched – Zack has a sunny nature but there’s starch in his spine and quicksilver in his soul. He put three bullets in Zed before Zed’s gun was even out its holster.
It was what happened next that changed the course of Zack’s life (and contributed to the nightmares he’s still plagued with) – as he walked over to his cousin to say a prayer over the body, Zed sprang back up! Eyes burning with undead malice, he’d played dead to lure the sucker close so he could strangle him with his bare hands. Exactly how long he’d been Harrowed is anyone’s guess, but a life filled with evil deeds had led him to damnation as surely as a hound will follow a trail of blood. That would have been the end for poor old Zack, but suddenly a shot rang out and this time, ol’ Zed lay down and stayed dead. Unbeknown to Zack, his cousin had got hisself squarely in the crosshairs of the Agency; and this Agent knew how to kill the harrowed – he’d been hoping to do it quick and quiet, but Zack got in the way.
Now Zack has always been plagued with a most insatiable curiosity, and this new phenomenon of a man who wouldn’t stay dead just filled his head with questions. Once he’d made it clear that he just wouldn’t up and quit with his enquiries, the Agent (Hank was his name) gave a deep sigh; but seeing that Zack was handy with his gun, and not one to quit when on the trail of a fugitive, he did eventually agree to tell Zack some more; with one condition. Zack had to be accepted as an Agent his own good self, first. If Hank had counted on the prospect of a hard life endlessly on the trail of bad hombres and weird malarkey (and more often some unholy combination of the two) to put the youngster off, well he didn’t know Zack, no sirree.
In the five years since, Agent Zachary Ames has put his talents to good use, serving his country and rooting out the things that go bump in the night so they don’t bother the good folks trying to go about their daily lives.
