Fear and Loathing in the Mojave:
Chapter 1: Bat Country
I was in an NCR outpost on the edge of the Mojave when the drugs began to take hold. "Say, this isn't bat country, is it?" I asked a trooper sitting two seats away from me at the bar.
"What?" he said, looking at me as if I'd asked him if he'd like to hump a bighorner.
"Bats," I repeated, knowing that in the part of my mind that wasn't addled by strong pills, a bit of jet and half a bottle of whiskey that making a scene in the cantina of military outpost was about as bad an idea as trying to hug a Deathclaw. But that part of my brain, thanks to the galaxy of pills I'd popped in a bathroom stall about twenty minutes prior, was most certainly not in control of my mouth.
"You know, bats. Ugly little fuckers that fly around at night and eat bugs."
The trooper gave me a look like he'd just found a large piece of brahman shit on his newly polished boots. "Yeah, I know what the fuck a bat is. What's it to you if there are any around here?"
"I've heard that they've got giant man-eating bats out this way. Come from some place called Carlsbad southwest of here," I rambled. "God damn things will swoop down and carry a man off before he knows what's hit him. Carry a man off and suck the blood out of him like a fucking vampire!"
My shouting was starting to attract attention and the trooper didn't seem to enjoy suddenly being at the center of my drug-induced foolishness. He glared at me. "I've never heard of any such thing. Never seen anything like it either. Sounds like Legion bullshit to scare people or junkies hallucinating."
"I wouldn't be so sure of that, Bruce," said another trooper who was nursing a drink at a nearby table. "People go missing in the Mojave all the time. I know I've found a skeleton or two that I couldn't tell what killed them. And shit, we KNOW there's all kinds of giant bugs all over this damn dessert. If there's giant bugs then it kinda makes sense that there's giant bats."
"That only makes sense if the giant bats are eating the giant bugs, Garcia. Not if they're sucking people's blood like this guy says. Now how about you go back to your drink and mind your own damn business!"
Garcia gave Bruce the finger but turned his attention back to his drink. Bruce turned his attention back me to and was able to say something but I beat him to the punch. "I've also heard that there's some kinda monsters living in Lake Mead and that most of the boys at Camp Guardian were eaten by whatever was in the lake. Professional soldiers fuckin' eaten, dammit! What the hell kinda place is this?"
That shut Bruce up real fast and from the glances the other troopers were giving each other they'd heard the same thing. Tossing out something with a ring from truth to it after an outburst of insane, drug-fueled bullshit had saved my ass more than once in the past and now it looked like it had come in handy again. Thank god soldiers talk when they drink and that caravaners gossip like old women. But I was too far from the glittering lights of New Vegas to blow all my luck at Mojave Outpost. It was time to cut and run.
"Anyway, that was just what I heard," I said in what I hoped was an amiable voice as I slid off the stool and tossed a few NCR bills onto the bar. It was a shitty tip but fuck the bartender. I needed to get out of here before it became too clear I was high as a kite. The jet and other extremely dangerous drugs I had stashed on my person would certainly get me a long stretch in jail if I was caught. But such are the risks of being a doctor of journalism with a fondness for chems and a healthy contempt for the law and most of the rules of polite society.
"Still, if I was you I'd keep a close eye on what was behind AND above me," I warned. "Especially at night. I know I didn't come all the way from San Francisco to end up bat guano." With that I quickly headed for the door while watching the troopers start to mutter among themselves nervously.
Good, to let the fuckers have something to worry about, I thought as I headed for the main road. New Vegas and the Mojave Wasteland had finally become NCR territory after the recent victory at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. It had been a big enough deal for my editor to show up at my home and demand that I cease the chemical induced nirvana I'd been enjoying at the time, put on some clothes and head to Nevada with all speed to cover the annexation.
While I was none to happy about his lack of respect for locked doors (nothing is worse for a journalist than an editor who can pick locks) and even less happy to be told to "Put some damn clothes on, you exhibitionist fuck!" the caps he offered were enticing. My more outlandish habits are not exactly a secret and thus the number of people willing to hire me was rather small. Sadly, I can rarely afford to turn down paying work.
I'd also called President Kimbell "a soulless, incompetent huckster" in my most recent piece and while San Francisco is still Shi territory the NRC influence there has been growing steadily for years. So getting out of California for a little while to let the backdraft die down didn't seem like such a bad idea. In fact, I'm sure that idea had occurred to my editor well before he'd found himself having to break into my home. Crafty bastard.
The caravan I'd been taking to New Vegas had stopped to resupply at the Mojave Outpost and wasn't due to to depart again for another two hours. Going back to the cantina was out of the question after the spectacle I'd made so I parked myself in a shady spot near the road, pulled out a cigarette and took in the Ranger Unification Treaty monument.
Meant as a tribute to the Dessert Rangers, formerly the closest thing the Mojave had to peacekeepers, signing up with the NCR the monument is big, black and as ugly as sin. You can see the damn thing for miles. But even I'll admit that in its own way it's somewhat impressive. It's also a damn lie. The old treaty is just an excuse to build something that's meant to be a symbol shouting across the wastes that this is NCR territory and that anyone who says different is going to end up on the wrong end of the Big Bear's claws.
Until just recently that weak threat was all that ugly ass statue was. Dick-waving in the dessert to try and scare Mr. House, Caesar's Legion and the Brotherhood of Steel. But now Caesar is dead, Mr. House is reported to be as well, the Legion has pulled back to Arizona after a brutal defeat that they'll be licking their wounds over for years and the Brotherhood have agreed to an official truce. There's no question that the NCR is running the show here now.
However, amid all the propaganda fodder that'll keep the mouthpieces in Shady Sands spewing bullshit with near orgasmic joy for years to come there's a nugget of strangeness. Caravaners, ham radio operators and loose-lipped NCR personnel all keep mentioning a person, a simple courier, who somehow has been at the heart of everything that's been going in the Mojave Wasteland. Just what this courier did has been labeled classified by the military. But the Golden Branch doesn't get handed out to just anyone. So whatever this courier (whose real name is Mark Fisher according to a carefully spun press release) did...well, now that sounds like a goddamn story.
I'll cover the annexation too, of course. Despite my fondness for drink, drugs and the casual use of firearms and explosives to stave off boredom I am a professional. All my professional instincts and several of those pills I'd popped were telling me that this courier and his story was the real key to the sudden changes that had swept the Mojave.
Just who was this asshole and how did someone who delivered packages turn into a pivotal player the history of the NCR? What was the truth and what was just more bullshit like that statue I was staring at? Was it all just PR hype? Or was it possible, even in this ruined, irradiated wasteland that someone who could honestly be called a hero could still come into being?
I took a long drag off my cigarette, flicked the butt away and lit another. What the hell was wrong with me? Well, a lot to be totally honest. But what was with that last thought? Even an aging borderline junkie like myself knew that there were no more heroes.
In the Old World, maybe there had been at some point. But if there were, all those heroes died in nuclear fire along with countless other luckless bastards. No, in this world there are no heroes. Only enlightened self-interest if you were lucky and a bullet or knife to the heart if you weren't.
Whatever the case, I had an array of pills all the colors of the rainbow in my pockets, enough jet and booze in my bags for one hell of a party even by New Vegas standards, a whole pint of ether, several types of mentats to help me keep my wits about me despite the intoxicants and several weapons concealed carefully about my person that would allow me to shoot, stab, smash or blow up most anything that I felt was getting in the way of the free press. I was a living tribute to the First and Second amendments of the old United States and a walking kick in the teeth to NCR drug laws.
I fished a red pill whose chemical pedigree I was too fucked up to remember out of one of my pockets and casually popped it into my mouth before taking another long drag of my cigarette. Indeed, it was fortunate for the Mojave Wasteland that I'd come. God only knows the last time a REAL journalist had come this way. It was time to get at the truth the only way I knew how. By grabbing it by the balls and giving it a good hard squeeze.
That is, after all, what professionals do.
Author's Note: This story is set several weeks to three months after the end of the game. Obviously, I'm going with the Courier having sided with the NCR. All the DLC content happened before the battle at Hoover Dam in keeping with Fallout continuity. Just what choices my Courier made will come up in the story.
For the record, I made his "real name" by doing what I normally do in games that offer you the option to pick the character's name: create one from a mishmash of names of people from the Star Wars movies. Even if you don't know SW that well, I think you can guess which two people I used this time around.
Lastly, I'm operating under the assumption that San Francisco is still independent of the NCR as it was in Fallout 2. Since Hunter S. Thompson, the inspiration for all of this, lived there for a time it seemed fitting that R. Duke would hang his hat there as well.