Chapter Five is in progress, and I hope it will be done in the next few days, but the weekend, at the very least. Meanwhile, I have an excerpt from the work. Please note that this chapter gets violent and dark, and might not be suitable for some people. Only you can judge if that applies to you.
I hunkered down behind the old Corvega and readied my own weapon. From
across the way, I heard muffled voices and the sound of weapons being
reloaded, then the sound of the grass rustling as the Hunters shifted
their positions. Not that I really had a good idea of where they were
exactly, anyway. All the same, I broke out the glass on the driver's
side window of the car--the other side had broken God only knew
when--and poked the barrel of the shotgun in. Though I took careful aim
where I thought I saw someone moving about, I only succeeded in making a
great deal of noise and making my shoulder sore.
Meanwhile,
Edgar also wasted no time in taking advantage of the current lull in
their violent activity to fire back. He popped up just enough to get a
clear shot, aimed, and carefully squeezed off a round. His shot was
true, because immediately I heard a high, gurgling scream which quickly
faded into a breathless, garbled moan. "Right in the throat," he
grunted.
I reloaded then took aim again. I preferred to not make
use of VATS--Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System--on my Pipboy, because
I had trained myself to not rely on it. One never knew if the device
might become damage or VATS simply not working for whatever reason or
whatever the fucking problem, I didn't like to rely on it. Perhaps also
there was a little touch of pride in knowing that when I was firing a
gun or rifle, that if I struck my target, I had hit true. I thought of
Alan's pleased expression earlier, and felt that little surge of pride
again.
This wasn't the time for overweening hubris, though. I
quickly pushed a button on my Pipboy, and within seconds, VATS had
detected and illuminated a target for me. My chances of hitting were
still very poor, but at least now I knew where one of the bastards was
hiding. She was in the tall grass, taking cover amongst some rocks
slightly left of center. No chance of hitting there, so I selected
another possibility. This one was in the process of moving to join the
woman. As he walked, I noted that he trembled slightly, wobbled even. I
took careful aim, and fired.
The roar of the shotgun filled my
ears, but the man's screams drilled into my brain. No matter how vile
or foul someone was, I disliked killing. this was self-defense, and it
gave me no pleasure. I'd had to shoot people before in defense of the
Vault, but even then I'd only managed to wound or slow them down some.
This
man would be dead. The shotgun had sheared his leg off at mid-thigh in
a cloud of blood and flesh. It threw him back several feet and he lay
where he landed, screaming until he went into shock from catastrophic
injury and loss of blood. I felt nothing as I reloaded and took aim
again, only this time the return fire of the three remaining Hunters
forced me to duck down behind the Corvega once more. I tried to not
think about how the man's screams had sounded. Twisted or not, they
were still human beings, struggling to survive in a world that their
distant grandparents had saw fit to nearly destroy.
For some what
it came to eventually was when you were faced with one too many evils
of humanity at times, you began to see the endless tide of those turned
Raider or slaver or cannibal or other, even more foul dregs of humanity,
you even ceased to see them as "De-Evolved Humans" and more as "Human
by virtue of DNA only". I would never fully lose my faith in humanity,
but I would suffer more than a few dark times of the spirit, times
where it would even seem that the man I would come to love would wonder
of me.
For now, I pushed this out of my mind. Others depended on
me and if I couldn't do what I must do, then why the fuck was I even
out here?
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