Isaac wiped sweat from his face, and returned his cracked Oakley's to the bridge of his nose. It was hot out, damn hot. And sitting on the second story of a burned out townhouse, there was no roof to shield him from the sun's angry rays.
Isaac ran his hands, encased in their cracked leather gloves, over the stubble on his face and reached into the pocket of his plastic windbreaker. Opening the small coffee can he retrieved from the pocket, Isaac removed a piece of dried Brahmin meat, which he chewed thoughtfully as he surveyed the land in front of him.
The area in front of the townhouse, Maple Road according to the mailbox, was a mess. A suburb of Louisville before the War, all that remained of the former white-collar houses were a few brick walls, a chard tree and the odd rusted car.
Closer to Isaac's hiding place was Clarkie. Isaac had known Clarkie as a child. Eyes open, he lay on the hot, cracked pavement. Flies buzzed around a gaping knife wound in Clarkie's torso, delivered by a raider's thrust two days ago. Clarkie wore nothing but a frayed pair of corduroy pants; his body had been stripped of anything of value.
Farther down the street, movement caught Isaac's eye. Training his binoculars on the movement, he was startled by what he saw: Huge green figures, with lumpy ruptured faces, and patchy metal body armour. Super Mutants! Like the ones talked about by those traders from the D.C. Ruins. But what were they doing three weeks travel from there?
Snatching the hunting rifle up from beside him, Isaac yanked a piece of twine lying within arm reach three times, before climbing down from his vantage point. Following the twine out into what was once the backyard, Isaac arrived at the dig site. The site was a large hole in the ground several yards across, the twine ended at a small bell suspended on a stick above the hole. Next to the hole was a huge pile of earth, a raider's body lay on the pile with a dirty rain jacket draped over his upper half. The raider had died from internal bleeding the day before.
Seth stuck his balding, sunburned head out of the dig site: "What's up there?"
Isaac rolled up the twine and stuffed it and the bell into his coat pocket. "Super Mutants are rolling down the road. We gotta bounce."
Seth bit his lower lip. "Shit. You better get down here then." Seth disappeared down the hole and Isaac followed. The excavation was four yards deep and exposed a large steel door. Seth had broken the electronic lock six hours ago. Seth had only one arm, so his technical skills and geographical knowledge had made him an asset in the harsh realities of the wastes.
Through the steel door was a large storage room. Two raiders sat on the floor with their backs against the wall, hands bound behind their backs with plastic zip-ties. Their faces were bruised and misshapen; they had been beaten to a pulp by Isaac and Army.
Army stood over the raiders, his pump action shotgun trained on his captives. He was an imposing figure: standing over six-feet, with a wild red beard and dressed in a battered khaki flack jacket. "What's going on topside?"
Isaac repeated what he had told Seth. "Super Mutants. Coming up from the south… Maybe 400 yards away."
Army's brow furrowed, then he turned to his captives: "You two, if you help us get our swag out of here, we'll let you go after we're clear. Otherwise we leave you for the super mutants."
Older of the two raiders, his left ear had been torn off in some long-forgotten fight, grinned. "You got it skipper."
Army cut the two men's bonds and everyone, excluding Seth with his one arm, strapped hiking bags on their backs. The bags were packed with equipment and supplies found within the underground bunker. Climbing out of the hole, Isaac and Army carried their weapons. The two raiders were unarmed.
The party set out across the yard to the North, heading in the opposite direction from where Isaac spotted the super mutants. Rounding a rusted sheet metal shed, the men scrambled over a crumbling brick wall into the next lot. Suddenly, gun fire opened up to the left. Bullets stitched around the group and dug holes in the brick wall. Two super mutants were firing from the ruins of a back porch. One was wildly firing an assault rifle, while the second opened up with minigun.
Isaac turned on his heels and fired his rifle from the hip. The bullet struck the first mutant in the knee, exploding the joint. The mutant cried out in rage and stumbled off the deck and onto its remaining knee. Isaac turned and rushed after the others, sliding down the gravely slope into the next yard.
The party dashed across the yard and into the narrow alleyway between two large brownstones. The younger of the two raiders was in the lead, reaching the mouth of the alleyway. But he wouldn't get any farther. To Isaac it was a blur: A sledgehammer swung out from the corner of the house, striking the raider in the center of his forehead. The man's head exploded is a spray of gore, and his corpse folded into a sitting position. A grinning super mutant loomed at the mouth of the alley.
Army, who had been running behind the raider, fired his shotgun twice into the mutant's stomach; flinging it backwards.
The fighting held up the party in the confines of the narrow alleyway. Suddenly, the second raider pointed with a shout "Behind you one-arm!". Seth spun around, already drawing his desert eagle from its place in his hip holster. Seth fired once, the heavy calibre bullet passed through the jaw and braincase of a super mutant leaning out of a window behind him.
The group surged out of the alleyway, only Isaac slowed for long enough to grab the backpack off the dead raider's corpse.
An hour of jogging later, the four men slowed to a stop on a crumbling freeway on-ramp, leaning against an ancient city bus and sucking air into their burning lungs. "Well that was story to be told 'round the fire." Gasped the raider between breaths. In the blink of an eye Seth's gun was in his hand, squeezing the trigger even as he drew. The bullet struck the raider in the forehead.
"That was for Clarkie." Seth whispered
Issac sat in the Black Star, tapping his lips thoughtfully with the finger tips of his left hand. A glass of the bar's house special, rotgut moonshine brewed in coffee makers in the backroom, sat on the table before him. The Black Star was a pre-war factory's staff locker room and cafeteria, converted into a respectable bordello. The pre-war factory was situated within the Rock of Cashel, the former state of Kentucky's largest trading hub. Cashel got its name from an older castle in Ireland. Isaac was fairly certain that Ireland was a mythical land of rolling green hills and clear streams, located somewhere north of California.
Tiring of his drink, Isaac pushed back his chair and sauntered over to the Black Star's large bay window. Isaac gazed over a huge parking lot towards the Rock itself: a massive car factory that had miraculously survived the atomic bomb that levelled almost all of Louisville. When the area was first established, the Rock was fortified like a medieval castle, now Cashel boasted a population of several thousand and everything within a fortified wall a dozen blocks in diameter. The settlement even had its own quasi-police force, the Green Shirts, that controlled everything within a day's travel.
Turning his gaze towards the parking lot Isaac took in the activity of a huge market place in full swing. As he scanned the crowds, Isaac thought sardonically about the hundreds of shady deals and double crosses taking place at that very moment.
When the founders of Cashel discovered the intact car factory, they also found a seemly limitless supply of UV light-bulbs. The settlers dug huge underground galleries to grow crops, powering the UV lights with coal in the factory's giant converted power plant. It was this fresh produce that brought caravans long distances across the dangerous wastes to Cashel. Besides the subterranean farmers, a host of biologists and geologists taken from nearby vaults and trained in the settlement treated soil and water to reduce their radiation levels.
Distinctive movement caught Isaac's eye and he narrowed his vision to a man marching through the crowd. It was Seth, the empty sleeve of a new leather jacket flapping uselessly behind him. Isaac smiled. It was Seth who had turned him onto is current, and very profitable, line of work.
Seth had been a member of the Green Shirts, but after his enlistment a seemingly minor gecko bite had turned septic and a doctor lopped off the arm. The authorities took pity on Seth and had him trained to salvage data from recovered computers. It was in one of these ancient hard drives that Seth made his great discovery: A list of Vault Tec's residential fallout shelters built in the Louisville area.
For Seth, it was simply a matter of assembling a team and investigating the shelters for supplies and technology that could be traded in the marketplace. Their searches bore fruit, and the team had been making a tidy sum with relatively minor danger to themselves… until that last mission. Remembering Clarkie's stabbing death creased Isaac's brow in frustration.
He and Clarkie had been born into the same nomadic, mid-western tribe. Growing up, they had hunted Mammoth Boar on camel-back with spears and bows. When it became clear that tribal life was not enough to keep the pair satisfied, they signed on as guards with caravans travelling the trade routes of the former farm belt. With their merchant employers Isaac and Clarkie traveled East, across the Ocean of Glass and even through the United Empire, where the Kings of Oklahoma ruled as self-proclaimed Gods.
Shaking himself out of the past, Isaac strode out of the bar. He needed to meet up with Army and Seth to prepare for their next expedition.