She used the last round in the chamber on the mole rat scavenging around the door. When she kicked it open it swung too easily and she collapsed from the pain in her leg. Half-slumped, she pointed the rifle into the single room and prayed to something there was nobody home. Silence was the only answer.
She heaved herself in and pushed the door closed with the rifle butt. Too exhausted to reload. She dumped the sack against the wall and felt relief surge up her right shoulder. Upright again for a proper look at the power substation. A desk in the back left corner. A file cabinet. A broken bedframe. And her holy grail: a first aid pack almost hidden under dust and dirt.
A single lantern on the desk lit the place, a silent radio alongside. Abandoned then, but not for long. Someone else like her trying to use the place to hole up in. She heaved herself over and yanked the first aid pack open so hard its contents went scattering across the room. A moment's rain of stimpaks and radaway and buffout.
A small blessing: her radiation levels were tolerable. She injected the stimpak into her right leg and felt the pain ease. She eased herself up against the wall and opened the drawers of the desk. The first held, tucked at the back, three bottlecaps. She scooped them into a pocket. Every one counts in the Wasteland.
The second and third drawers were empty. She sighed. Every place she stumbled into had already been picked clean three times over. But you always had to look anyway, always had to peer into every dark corner and under every broken piece of the world.
The file cabinet held more luck: a half-empty box of rounds for her 10mm pistol. She slid them in straight away, wishing her hunting rifle wasn't so close to dry. Always wishing for something. A back door, for instance. When the raiders found her then there was no way out but the way she'd come in. And they always seemed to find her. She reloaded her rifle. Four bullets left.
She thought about going outside. She could ease open the wire gate around the back and flick some switches, see if there was still power in this place. It was unlikely. What was more likely was that the raiders were already outside, and would lob a grenade as soon as she opened the door.
She tested her weight on her repaired leg. Good enough. She toppled the file cabinet onto its side and dragged it across to the door. At least it opened the right way for such a barricade to work. Once she'd made the error of not checking, of forgetting which way a door swung. She still had the scars from that mistake. Only make each mistake once, she told herself again. If you happen to live through it.
She loaded the cabinet's drawers with pieces of the bedframe to make it heavier. Getting out now would mean a complicated and lengthy process. In it for good now. What were the possibilities? The raiders had lost her trail and she could hold up for a while, then get the sack of supplies to Big Town, and get paid. Or the raiders would kill her and take the supplies for themselves. Or she would kill them, get to Big Town, and get paid.
Or she could run. Abandon the supplies outside and head in any direction but the one she'd come from. The raiders wouldn't bother pursuing her then. Would they?
She fiddled with the radio. There was no mic to speak into. No way to call for aid and nobody to call for it. She flinched as the silence was shattered with the sound of a violin. The music washed towards her and broke on her shore. She turned the radio off.
She moved the lantern to the floor and tipped the desk on its side. Another barricade to hide behind. She hunkered down with her pistol. The supplies were in reach but she would not touch them. Not when she could taste her payday. Still, she hoped maybe one of the raiders would have a bottle of something on them when she killed them.
This was the way to think. When she killed them. When she got to Big Town. Red would be grateful. Near-clean food and purified water. Medical supplies, too. A full sack akin to a holy grail in this hellhole.
She waited. Let herself breathe. Don't think of the words 'last stand'. Check the guns again. Five bullets for the rifle, a clip and a half for the pistol. There couldn't have been, what, more than half a dozen raiders? Hard to count with all the running and shouting. She'd killed at least two on her way out. The first silently. She'd been so pleased the second had gotten the jump on her. Hence the limp.
She thought she heard voices outside and lay still behind the desk. Stopped herself breathing. Silence but for her heartbeat. Just someone arguing in her head again.
And then came the thump on the door. The scratch of the file cabinet being pushed across the floor. She wondered if the door had been built to withstand bullets. She fired the rifle anyway. It went straight through the worn metal and she was rewarded with a yelp. There were low voices for a while, then the door started pushing open again.
She fired the rifle again and heard no yelp. Down to three bullets. She decided to wait until she could see some flesh. It came soon enough. Fingers curled around the edge of the door. She fired and two of the fingers became a red mist. The next item that appeared around the door was a submachine gun and she ducked behind the desk.
Something low-calibre, she hoped. Though if the door wasn't bulletproof, why would the desk be? She ducked down anyway. Most of the bullets shot high. Patterning across the wall. She dared a peek and saw a face. She fired but the face jerked back. One bullet. She decided to save it and drew her pistol. Much more secure. Twelve until she had to reload, then six. Almost a luxury.
The door began creaking still further. She waited for the gap and knew she had to act rather than react. The lower calibre might not pierce the door and she didn't have enough bullets to experiment. She inhaled and fired two bullets just as the raider appeared in the gap. The first burrowed into the door. Which answered that question. The second took the raider in the shoulder and their own shot went wide.
Maybe they'd be more careful next time. More wishful thinking. There was a grunt and the file cabinet skidded back, the door thrown wide open. Bullets rained in and she threw herself flat behind the desk. The room took on a pockmarked quality. The desk held, more or less. Solid stuff. An executive suite, maybe. She grinned. The expression evaporated as a bullet came through the desk and grazed her thigh, a little too close to the previous wound.
She got angry and angry at herself for getting angry. She raised her pistol just over the desk edge and fired half a dozen shots. From the human noise and ceasing of the bullet rain, she knew she'd hit something. She took the opportunity to reload. Ten left now, plus the solo bullet in the rifle.
Impossible to tell how many raiders were down. If any. If she'd hit the same one four times or four different ones. She slid sideways and took a peek, not over the top but around the left of the desk. One raider was slumped unmoving half over the file cabinet. Another was leaning against the doorframe and slid down as she watched. A slick bloodtrail left up the frame. She fired another into him. It wouldn't kill her to be sure, but the opposite had turned out to be too close to true too many times.
Two down, then. She couldn't see a shoulder wound or any missing fingers on either of them. She had to assume at least four were still standing. Bleeding, hopefully. Nobody appeared in the doorway. As quietly as she could she turned around and slid to look around the other side of the desk. The view wasn't a whole lot different from there.
Then, just to the left of the doorframe, she thought she saw something. The slightest rise and fall of someone's crooked elbow. Breathing ragged. An impossible shot. A waste of a shot, more importantly. She curled her free hand around the edge of the desk and pointed her gun in a direction she hoped wouldn't kill her. She pulled herself out from cover and saw the full arm and side and head of the raider.
She fired twice. The first cracked the doorframe and send the raider starting away from the wall. Into fuller view and the path of the second bullet. Their neck spurted blood and they staggered forward. Dropped out of sight. A yelled "Wait!" came from somewhere outside.
Here was another moment to act, not react. She fired three times where she knew the raider would appear. Enraged, in the centre of the doorway. One bullet went wide, but the other two hit them in the chest. She wished it were premonition. That at least wouldn't have taken so much lost blood to learn. The raider went down.
Four down then, definitely. That was when the grenade came through the door. It bounced off the desk front and sat in the gap between it and the file cabinet. She didn't have time to get upright. She dropped her pistol and reached for the rifle. That solo bullet wouldn't save her, but the gun's length might. With a one-armed heave, she swung the rifle butt at the grenade.
A stupid decision, but a good enough one. The grenade didn't go far. Only hopped over the file cabinet. Almost lingering on top. She yanked herself down behind the desk more or less in time. The explosion sent the file cabinet back into the room and into the desk. This in turn moved back and pressed her against the wall. She grunted as something in her side cracked. But the decreased momentum worked in her favour.
She listened for a while before showing her head around the desk. The corpses had taken a battering. The sack of supplies was undamaged. And maybe the last raiders outside had taken some choice shrapnel in the eye.
She had four bullets left in the pistol and she kept it trained on the doorway for a long time. Long enough for her arm to get sore. Long enough for her other hand to feel around her ribs and tell that something was cracked, not broken. Long enough to find the bottle of buffout and down two dry pills.
Nothing appeared in the doorway. She was sure the sun was getting lower. The lantern had smashed in the explosion. With her arm shaking as she kept it level, she rose and quickly swapped hands. The weary hand took charge of the rifle and its solo bullet. The scraping and grunting she made getting upright brought no sounds from outside.
No way to tell which side of the doorway to check first. She stepped around the file cabinet and moved to the left. The door itself had swung fully against the inside wall to the right. She moved along to the left, hoping to see a corpse along to the right of the outside wall. Nothing. She thought she heard something breathing, though it stopped when she did.
She leaned the rifle against the wall and took the pistol in both hands. She counted to a hundred. She exhaled then swung around the doorframe. The last raider lay on the dirt, as did some of his entrails. He'd bitten off part of his tongue and his eyes looked at her with fear. Or maybe anger. She didn't stop to check before she shot him twice in the head.
After he slumped back, she walked carefully around the entire substation and looked many times with squinted eyes across the landscape. Nothing else in sight. Only then did she allow herself to crouch and take the raider's ammo. Not that she hadn't gotten through without some bullets to spare, she told herself with a smile.
She checked her wounds and decided they would last until Big Town. Red owed her some medical work, at the very least. She trod inside for the sack and her rifle. She faced the direction that led to the end of this job and started walking. One step in front of the other, across the dry dirt. Just another step. Just another job.