'Oh, fuck me sideways with a flaming chainsaw! This wasn't supposed to be how this would go. We were supposed to make it safely to the mall, because the wastelands were such a lovely place and... and...' Of course I was being sarcastic, even if only in my mind. Of course, I'd been expecting something like this. Alan hadn't let me that shotgun to go skeet shooting, after all.
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 tried not think about that as 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 reason, 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 reladed 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 seen 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 only 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? I edged upward, preparing to take aim, but Edgar pulled me back down.
"Not yet," he hissed. "Wait until you hear them moving and reloading again. Meanwhile..." He reached into the pouch on his belt and withdrew a round object. "I have a little party favor for them." He smirked, his leathery mouth twisting, then pulled a pin out of the round object. With horror, I realized that I was looking at a grenade.
"Oh, shit, Edgar!" The fact that this wasn't some lark right out of an old Grognak the Barbarian comic was really sinking in now. I opened my mouth to say I didn't even know what, but Edgar's hand on my shoulder, pushing downwards, silenced me.
"Get down. On the ground," he ordered, and when I was sufficiently down, he said, "Cover your ears."
I did so, and quickly, Edgar popped up from behind the car. Even with my ears covered, I heard him grunt as he tossed the grenade across the road, and the thump it made as it landed in the grass.
In the near silence that had followed as the Hunters had been shifting and reloading, that thump seemed to swallow the world in sound. One of the Hunters apparently spotted it, for he screamed, "Oh fuck, no!" Another cried out, "Jesus Christ, run--"
The world exploded.
Even with my hands clamped firmly over my ears, I heard the explosion, followed my a soft splattering sound and thuds. I didn't want to look, nor did I need to, to know what that had been. My stomach turned over. Thank God I hadn't eaten much for breakfast that morning: just a couple of old danish and some coffee that Millie had thoughtfully provided. I stayed where I was because, truth be told, I was afraid that i I looked and saw that I would never be the same person ever again.
I didn't hear Edgar calling my name. Only when he knelt down and tapped on my hat did I realize he was trying to get my attention. I uncovered my ears, but stayed where I was.'If I don't get up,' I thought, 'the world won't be so bad.' But I knew this wasn't true; I just couldn't make myself do it. I didn't want to see what that grenade had done to fellow humans, as degenerate as they had become.
"Forty-Nine," he repeated, his voice unusually soft, kindly. "are you all right?"
I shook my head. My own voice sounded as if it came from very far away as I said, "No, Edgar. I don't think I am."
With surprising gentleness, the ghoul took hold of my arms and helped me to sit back up. As if I were in a dream, I folded my legs together in the tailor's pose, my hands on my thighs. He didn't let me stay there, though. With gentle but determined prodding, Edgar got me to stand back up, and got my weapon back into my hands. Without thinking about it, I slung it onto my back once more, and now stared across the road. Blood and God only knew what else had painted the grass in bright crimson streaks. Over the grisly scene, crows had already begun to gather, along with a vulture or two.
Edgar turned me to face him now. He'd taken his sunglasses off, and reached up to remove mine as well. "I need you to see right into my eyes as I say this, Forty-Nine," he told me. There was some look in his eyes that I couldn't quite identify this time. Not desire, not recrimination. It took me a moment, but finally I realized that it was compassion. But it was a hard compassion, one so terrible that I had to struggle to not look away. It was the look you gave someone when you were about to say, "I'm sorry that you had to find out the hard way that the world sucks."
Edgar said, "You've never killed before, have you?"
I shook my head. "No, I've--I've--" I couldn't finish the words. Tears threatened to push themselves out of my eyes as I struggled to find the words. Edgar said nothing as he wordlessly wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close.
It wasn't simply a hug. Somehow, instinctively, I knew that. It was a gesture of comforting, but more than that, it was a gesture of humanity, one intended to show that I was not alone. Perhaps also he meant for it to calm me down long enough to get my head together, so that I didn't suddenly tip over into some mental abyss from which there'd be no escape. It wasn't merely a hug: it was a lifeline.
Normals often feared ghouls, called them monsters, or zombies. In that moment, for good or ill, Edgar was the most human of us all.
"Let it out, smoothskin,: he ordered. "Let it out or it will seep into your soul like tainted groundwater and poison you. You won't be the first one who cried after killing, so let it out." His voice sounded hoarse now, and I wondered briefly what his first kill had done to him before it all flooded out of me.
As Edgar kept watch, I vented my grief and anger. I shouldn't have to be out here killing. The world shouldn't be like that. There shouldn't be people hunting other humans, normal or mutant, for food or sadistic pleasure. But it was, and either I could let despair and anger pull me into a dark pit from which there could be no escape, or I could take what happened here today, and do my part to make a difference. There were many who took the road of doing no harm.
What the world needed those who would not be content to simply and passively do no evil. It needed those who would actively strive for something better. I didn't know if I was oir even could be that person, but I was sure as hell going to try.
I pulled away and wiped my eyes. Edgar said nothing, but he pulled an old bandana out of his pocket and handed it to me. I hesitated, and he said, "Eh, I can get another."
I wiped my eyes and blew my nose on it. "I must look like a big baby," I said. "You're all so tough, and badass." I felt compelled to include his bosses in that statement. Maybe because being over three hundred years old and waking up to a world that had all but gone down the shitter for the final count...not that what we did have was a picnic in the park.
Edgar shook his head. "No, you'd be surprised. Cynical is more like it, and pragmatic. but it comes with know that what must be done, will be done, for the good of all. This goes no further, Forty-Nine, but if it helps... when I found them in what was left of Akron at the time,they were lost, disoriented, and scared shitless. If I hadn't come along when I had... there wouldn't be an Akron, no mutant community.. Just another nameless shithole of a ruin on the wasteland map." He stared back the way we had come, adding, "They'll be the first to tell you that, too. Once they like you enough."
He put his sunglasses back on. and smiled. "You handled it a lot better than some do, Forty-Nine. i've seen people never come out of the shock... or worse, their heart shrivels into nothing."
I nodded. I still felt shaken to my very core, still felt that I would never be the same again. Perhpas this was another reason why it was said that sex and death were the opposite sides of the same coin: your first time with either changed you forever on a deeply fundamental level. There was no going back now, only forward.
To that end, I said, "I'm ready to move on if you are."
"Well, this is going to be distasteful, but it's the law of the wasteland. He who is the victor wins the spoils." He nodded to me, saying, "This is going to be bad, kiddo. Very bad. But if they have anything that we need in order to fulfill our mission, we need to take it. Besides, they don't need it anymore.'
I felt my face go white at the thought of looting the mangled corpses. "No...i suppose not." I swallowed hard. "but you're right. I... I can do this. I just might need to, uh..." I felt my stomach twist again in a current of nausea.
That look of compassion was back. "it never gets easier, smoothskin. You just learn to make do. Come on. 'Once begun, the sooner done', my mother used to say."
"Yeah." I followed him across the road.
****
Looting the grenade-splattered corpses was not a chore that I ever cared to repeat. I didn't puke, but I did come close. Several times, I had to turn away, and take a deep breath. Once I looked up at the bright morning sky, only to see the scavengers circling overhead. Some things never changed, wasteland or not. Somehow, seeing the carrion pickers was worse than the carrion itself.
Thankfully, Edgar spared me most of the serious grue, instead having me pick up dropped rifles or knives, or retrieve ammunition and the like. He took on the dirtier work of rifling through their packs himself. Much of it was still usable, and while the idea of eating food that had once belonged to these cannibals sickened me a little. Edgar reassured me, "Most of this isn't even meat, Forty-Nine. It's those Fancy Lad snack cakes, dried fruit, stuff like that. Pickings must have been slim, especially if they were attacking us both. Ain't much good meat on a ghoul, I wouldn't think."
"Err, yeah. Still kind of gross to think of, though." I examined the bolt action rifle that one of them had dropped. It was what people at the Vault called a 'varmint rifle', and that was what we mostly used it for: hunting vermin like radroaches (which could get to be the length of your forearm) and molerats, which could grow to be as big as a medium-sized dog. I showed it to Edgar, who was looting a dead Hunter's pack. He nodded and said, "Good rifle. I wouldn't go shooting yao guai with it, but I suppose for what this trash was hunting, it would have worked well enough." His voice sounded wry behind his scarf.
"Yeah, well if--"
"Score!" Edgar exclaimed. I looked over, and saw him holding two bottles of Nuka Cola aloft in triumph. Forgetting all about our grisly task, he quickly uncapped one with his teeth and spat the cap out as I'd seen him do yesterday. He drank half of it, then belched hugely. That wasn't anything new.
What was new was the way he held the half full bottle out to me. When I hesitated, he said, "Come on, kiddo. You earned it."
"Wow...Edgar. I know how much this stuff means to you. I'm honored." I reached out took the bottle, then raised it to him in a toast. He nodded to me, and I gulped down most of the softly glowing bluish liquid in a single pass. Nuka Cola always had a lightly berry-like taste in my opinion, and even this stuff that had been out in the wastes for two hundred years instead of popping fresh out of a food synthesizer was still pretty good. Our own back in the vault had died years back, defying everyone's attempts to fix it. Thinking of this, I chugged down the rest and let out a belch to rival Edgar's.
The ghoul blinked, then laughed long and loud. Feeling redness creep up my face, I couldn't help but join him. "Damn, smoothskin, was that a belch, or your impression of an angry Deathclaw?"
I grinned. It felt good to laugh a little after what had just happened The whole thing was no less ugly for it. In that moment, a friendship began, one that has lasted to this very day. I gave him back the empty bottle, saying, "Bound to be a use for it."
He nodded, pleased by my care for the environment as well as my desire to not be wasteful. Before the war, people littered, wasted things, or even outright polluted their environment without a care for the world or its future.. Here and now, even something as seemingly inconsequential as an empty Nuka Cola bottle could be useful. It could hold water, be used as a weapon, or even melted down in a glass furnace and shaped anew. Edgar tucked the bottle into his pack,
He picked up his hat and studied it. I didn't need to see his face to know that he was scowling at the bullet hole in it. then he shrugged and put it back on his head before we headed off down the road again.
"Not a bad haul," he commented as we walked. "Couple of good hunting rifles, the ammo, some food with decent origins, some pure water, even found a bottle of Med-X and a stimpak."
"Not to mention the Nuka Cola," I added. "Those chems, that will be helpful to Bob 2, if we don't end up having to use them."
"Speaking of..." Edgar scanned the roadside grasses for the plants we'd been asked to find. He shook his head. "Nothing so far. Keep your eyes out, though."
I started to answer, then a voice came out of my Pipboy. Startled, I almost dropped to my knees again, expecting another fire fight. I knew this voice, though. It was Jerry.
"We had reports of gunshots out by your position," he said. It came through tinny and weak sounding, with small bursts of static further occluding it. I said, "Yeah... Um, Hunters. They're,uh, dead now." My voice shook a little.
"Shit." In that one word, he managed to convey disgust, relief, and gratitude for ridding the territory of dangerous pests. "Just glad you're both all right.. We can't interrupt Big Dog's broadcast for long--his is the only transmitter with enough range. This is a secure channel, by the way, so it isn't like this is going out to every freak and asshole in the wasteland. We needed to break in and let you know we've had reports as well of Super Mutants on the move out of Cleveland. So far, we don't know where we're headed, but you and Edgar keep your eyes open, spudess. Got it?"
"Yep, we got it," I assured him. "Got it, Jerry," Edgar told him. "Seems strange that they're mobilizing so early in the year. They're just smart enough to know to wait until late Spring, early Summer, when the snow is for sure done. Wonder what's got them so stirred up?"
"I have no fucking clue, but rest assured, we're keeping on top of things over here. Akron out." Almost immediately, Big Dog came back in on the radio, saying, "Sorry about that little interruption, friends and neighbors. Even ol' Big Dog has his day." A deep chuckle. "But never mind that, now. Here's a little tune that's even older than our founders... believe it or not, such a thing is possible! You know it's true, because kids, 'It's A Sin To Tell A Lie'" An old song by the Ink Spots followed.
"I didn't even know I had the radio on," I mused. "Maybe when I hit the dirt I switched it on, or it's malfunctioning."
"Leave it on," he told me, in case they need to give warning about the Frankensteins," Edgar told me. "But if it's malfunctioning,we need to get it fixed asap," Edgar said. "Last thing we need is that thing switching on when we're trying to be sneaky. Come on, smoothskin. I want to hit the mall by noon."
"Yeah, good idea." We moved on, leaving the carnage without another look. Behind us, the scavengers had begun to feed.
Shae Montgomery Richardson
Karma: Good
Karmic Title:Defender
Level 4
Age: 28
Tag Skills: Repair, Science, Small Guns
S.P.E.C.I.A.L: Strength: 5 Perception; 7 Endurance: 5 Charisma: 4 Agility: 6 Intelligence: 7 Luck: 5
New Perk:
Educated
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