The night was bound--destined--to be one of those real hot ones. The kind that made people sleep outside, or wake up in the middle of the night to cool themselves with water; the kind that could kill the elderly or the sick just for the fun of it. The moon rose up blood red an hour before the sun had even gone down. The day had felt as if it'd been knocking on 100 degrees door, and the next one was sure to be even hotter. And the night... well the night, would burn. It would burn and be hot and sweaty and sticky. It was going to be perfect for a fight.
Levi heard them coming from a mile away. Who couldn't? They were a loud, noisy, ruthless bunch, and they made no apologies for it. Especially not tonight. The troop poured over the top of the hill, their flaming torches glowing furiously under the watching eye of the moon. Even from where he stood, Levi could make out Eddie. "Furious Eddie", as they called him, was standing on top of the War-Bus, holding a blazing torch in one hand and someone's severed head in the other. The bus was being dragged, slowly, over the crest of the hill by a dozen slaves. Their naked, painted, chests shone with moonlight at the top of the hill, and then they were submerged in darkness as they descended into the valley below; dragging the War-Bus along behind them. Furious Eddie screamed into the night, and Levi heard a crowd of dozens reply with their own war-cry. He saw torches inside the War-Bus. It was filled to the brim with his Raider brethren.
He grinned, scooped down to pick up his bottle of whiskey and his blade, and then trotted off into the wastelands to meet them. As he neared, even more came pouring over the crest of the hill. All of them carried torches and weapons, and all of them looked jacked up and ready to go. Furious Eddie must have given his speech already.
When the troops finally stopped coming, Levi counted at least a hundred men and women.
"Look at this hideous ghoul coming up to our party!" Eddie cried out when Levi was close enough to be seen. "Look at 'em! He's as ugly as a ghoul! Who could it be!?"
Levi laughed, and Eddie let out a thunderous sound that was his version of laughter.
"What do you fight for tonight Son Levi?" He called down to Levi as he fell in line next to the bus. "What baggage do you carry into battle?"
"My Christa," Levi answered him and pulled back his armor to reveal his tattooed arm. Christa's initials were carved there above a picture of two hunting rifles crossed over a heart.
"Aye," Furious Eddie acknowledged and bowed his head. Eddie wasn't furious for the moment. He understood the pains of loss. He'd lost a wife and a brother since the fighting with the Slavers had began a year ago. "For Christa then. What do you bring to avenge her?"
Levi reached down for his leg sheath and came up with the blade. It was a small machete, no bigger than his forearm. The moon and the torch light blazed off the smooth, steel finish. The thing was sharp. Sharper than the devil himself. Levi knew. He'd spent the last seven nights running it across his whetstone. The thing could cut, and that was good. It would need to get through flesh and bone and whatever else crossed its path tonight.
"Good," Eddie called down in approval. "Let that blade make fucking nightmares for our enemies."
"I've named it Christa," Levi said, running his finger along the edge of it. It left a thin trail of blood along his skin. "Tonight she leaves them with more than nightmares."
Eddie grinned and screamed again, and the crowd screamed with him.
Levi dropped back in line. As he fell alongside the bus, Spaz stuck his head out of the side window.
"Levi you fuck," He called down, obviously drunk out of his mind. "Gonna be a bloodbath tonight, huh?"
"You bet."
"Hey? Hey where's Christa at tonight? Don't she wanna bleed some fuckin' slaver scum?"
"Spaz, get in here ya dumb fuck," Levi heard a woman say from inside the bus and then Spaz had disappeared and Shelly had appeared in his place.
"Sorry Levi," She told him. A cigarette drooped from the corner of her mouth. "The idiot's piss drunk already. He'll be lucky to be awake when the fighting starts, let alone kill one of those Slaver-fucks."
"We'll have to kill his share then, Shell," He told her and she saluted him with a bottle of beer and then guzzled it down with her head still out the window.
He kept slowing to let the bus pass him more and more. In the windows he saw a dozen familiar faces. Crags, Mathew, Sloan, Derk, Little Mathew, Estelle, Betty and her husband Rooce. Towards the back he saw Preez and Shander, neither of them even old enough to grow facial hair. Everyone had come out. Tonight was to be the last night. He hoped that was true.
It was to be Raiders vs Slavers in Old Olney. The battle to end the war. How the war started, he wasn't sure, and you'd probably be damned hard-pressed to find someone amongst them that did. Probably a misplaced kill. Or a rape. Wasn't that how all wars started? With all the scum and pieces of shit out in the wasteland... who knew that by flushing the wrong piece you'd wind up in a year-long war. That's where they were though. But tonight it would end.
Kara slipped up beside him, her smooth ebony skin nearly invisible under the night sky. She slid her hand onto his crotch and squeezed.
"Kara-" Levi began, but Kara stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it before he could continue. He grinned and sucked a long drag off it. She plucked it from his lips and stuck it in her own.
"For Christa tonight, hmmm?" She questioned, her eyes were down at the blade he carried. "What about Kara? When will you fight for her?"
"When she does something for me that's worth fighting for," He answered and handed her his whiskey.
She grinned a wide grin and took a chug of it.
"I'll hold you to that," She told him and handed him back the whiskey. Reaching down into her Painspike armor, she pulled out a pair of nun chucks, each one had a side that was wrapped in barbed wire. "And I mean it," She added and started swinging the chucks around wildly with another wide grin on her face.
Everyone brought a weapon. Those were the rules. The only ones. Somehow, someway, the two factions were civilized to speak to one another once, and the only rule that came out of the meeting was that there was to be no "easy" weapons used. That meant no guns, no nukes, no grenades, no mines, no lasers. You had to use a raw, up-close, sort of thing. Something that made you get near enough to smell the sweat of your opponent as you took their life. Or they took yours.
Life was funny in the wasteland. You couldn't find a trace of honor or decency among a man living in the damned thing unless it came to war. No one would break the rules tonight. Not for a fight. When the fighting was done, they'd slit each others throats in the night, or stick live grenades in their children's toys, or poison each other's food supply. But tonight there was rules. And they would be followed.
Only the strong would survive.
Everyone's weapon was a personal thing. That was Furious Eddie's wishes. It had to be something you made, or something you spent a lot of time with. It was all the better to Eddie if you named it and even tried to love it. 'The weapon,' Eddie had said once with that loud, booming voice of his, 'Will be the last and only thing that separates you from death. Treat it good.'. Levi's was treated very good. He kept it clean and sharp and sometimes when he looked into it--deep into it--he swore he could see Christa's face smiling at him. The blade was Christa now. All that was left of her anyway. She had given it to him two years ago.
A man he didn't know slammed into him, bombed out of his mind on hard liquor. The man laughed and pointed and then fell face first into the ground. He was probably sleeping before he hit the dirt.
Levi wondered how many among them were sober enough to be any use. He'd drank a quarter of his bottle of whiskey himself, but that was only enough to kill any fear he may have had. Fear on the battlefield was like a slow poison. It would be the end of you if you didn't treat it. Alcohol was a good medicine. Some of them seemed to have overdone it a bit though. The man who just fell down would never see the battle tonight. He'd wake up tomorrow alive or dead or dying or enslaved. The Raiders were a wild, ruthless bunch, that was for sure, but the Slavers were more organized, more together. If it was a battle of guns, Levi didn't doubt the Slavers victory for a moment. Guns were the weapons of the civilized. But with knives and bats and wrenches and axes and barbed-wire-covered nun chucks, the Raiders would have to win. They were the tools of savages, and the Raiders were as savage as any living creature in the wastes.
Furious Eddie let our a scream. Levi looked up to see Old Olney was in view. The broken city was already alive with torches. It was no surprise that the Slavers made it there before their own ragged group of drunks.
The noise coming from Old Olney might have scared Levi had he been clean sober. The slavers were in there, gathered in mass and cheering. Their torches were enough light to see the crowds spread amongst the city floor like a plague. Levi realized at that moment that they were heavily outnumbered. Maybe even by a factor of three to one. Where the Slavers had managed to pull so many people from in this dying waste, Levi had no idea. Talon Mercs maybe. Maybe others had come. It was a waste thinking about it. They were there, and they were his opponents. They would die just the same as any other man.
Even Furious Eddie had grown quiet as they approached the city. In fact, most of them had. The drunks had all seemed to be miraculously sobered by the sounds of war; they're faces suddenly stern and rigid and dead-serious.
Inside the bus, he saw The Butcher standing up, his size was a hulking mass amongst the regular-sized people beside him. The Butcher's two-hand axe hung from his one hand, scarred and ugly. Behind the bus, was the majority of the Raiders. The lucky ones were dressed in armor and carried thick steel weapons, or at least broad wooden ones. The less fortunate were covered in trash cans and ropes and old refrigerator parts: any thing that could become makeshift armor. He saw Squirrly Dave with his glass eye clutching a kitchen knife and a bottle of vodka. Further back down the line he spotted his friend Breen with nothing but an old piece of rusted tailpipe. Miranda The Ugly simply had some brass knuckles.
If they were going to win, they'd better be good.
The slaves pulled and pulled the bus forward until the wheels hit the broken asphalt of the road that once traveled through Old Olney. Straight ahead of them was the Slavers, flanked on both sides by tall, crumbling and decaying buildings. Furious Eddie held his severed head high and pointed at them. The rest of the raiders started laughing and muttering. The Slavers ahead didn't look amused. They looked ready.
As they slowly pushed into the city, closer to the Slavers, Levi felt a claustrophobic feeling. The tall buildings that still stood now surrounded them. Life as a raider in the wastelands made you forget what it was like to be surrounded by structures. Your only company in the wastes was the beating son in the day and the lonely moon at night. Neither was visible in this city of Old Olney. Only the Slavers and their torches.
A young girl named Rachel suddenly darted past Levi with a club swinging about over her head. She was screaming ferociously, and Levi remembered that she had lost her boyfriend to the Slavers not one month ago. The Raiders watched her go, stunned. The Slavers watched her come, stunned.
Her scream was the only sound as she neared them. When she was close, the crowd of Slavers split apart, and a tall, muscular man with bleached blonde hair stepped out of it holding a long two by four studded with rusty nails. He craned the hulking weapon back and swung and Rachel's cry went silent. Levi saw her neck twist in an un-humanly and grotesque fashion as her limp body flew off to the side.
The battle had begun.
"Let's rip their fucking cocks off," Furious Eddie said furiously.
Raiders began to pour out of the bus' side doors. They had big, nasty looking weapons and there arms were well rested from not having to carry them during the trip. The War-Bus slowly, but surely emptied completely; Slow Pete coming out last holding a massive pipe in each hand. The Butcher hovered a foot above the next tallest man with his axe slung over his shoulder and a sadistic grin on his face. Kara was behind Furious Eddie, who had dismounted the bus' roof and was now holding his weapon--The Shishkebab. Somehow he had rigged up a sword with a flamethrower and created one of the most terrifying things Levi had ever seen. He heard the gasps from the Slavers when Eddie started it up and the fire danced over the blade of the sword.
The tall blonde with the nailed board pointed across the gap towards them.
"Come on then Raiders. Come die like the wasteland filth you are," He called to them. The Slavers behind him grinned and began walking forward.
"Fight for something," Eddie said. "Love your weapon. No mercy."
The first minutes were a blur to Levi. There was screaming and running and then instantly there was different kinds of screaming. The pain-filled, dying kind. A young, plump-faced man was the first person Levi came in sight of. They were directly across from each other; the plump man charging him with a tire iron and a pair of brass knucks. Levi held Christa tightly in his right hand, staring his plump-faced foe down. At the last moment he quickly floated the machete to his left hand (his dominant one) and took the man by surprise. He went to counter the move, but Levi was already jamming the blade up into his throat. It came out the side of plump-face's face, sending a streaming jet of blood with it. Levi yanked it out and the dead man fell to the ground. Another Slaver who'd seen what just happened rushed at him wearing a powerfist. Levi luckily side-stepped the punch--it would have left him crippled. The powerfister sent another blow his way, Levi dodged again. He knew the weakness of the powerfist weapon was its speed. The third time the guy tried it, Levi beat him to the punch, sliding in close to him and lopping of his arm. The arm and the powerfist fell useless to the ground. The man screamed. Levi jabbed him in the throat and ended him.
Furious Eddie was butchering his way down the line. His Shiskebab was slicing and dicing through men and women alike, and those who managed to doge its blade were caught by its fire. One woman's hair was caught, and she ran shrieking off into the crowed where Levi saw one of her own Slavers knock her down with a baseball bat.
Beside them, several Slavers were pushing down the right side, creating a tight flank between them and the buildings. One of the Slavers craned his arm back and chucked a jagged and broken bottle into their crowd. It caught Shander--who was too young to grow facial hair--in the side of the face, splitting open his left eye and sending a gush of blood streaming down his cheek. He screamed, and then the Slavers were rushing into the crowd with pipes and bats, using the screaming boy as a distraction.
Levi turned his attention back ahead of him. Two Slavers--a guy and a girl--were rushing down the road towards them holding a thin line of barbed wire neck high. They wore thick gloves to protect their hands. Levi chucked his machete at the guy and caught him in the chest. He stuttered, staggered, and collapsed: the barbed wire catching and ripping away at his face as he fell. The girl looked back confused. Levi shoved her into the side of the building and went to collect his blade.
The tall blonde Slaver was a beast, thrashing through people two at a time with his massive nailed board. Levi saw Spaz throw a swing at him with his pipe, but the idiot was too drunk and missed by a good three feet. The blonde man brought the fury of the nail board down on the back of Spaz's head, and then that was the end of Spaz. His wife, Shelly, who Levi had always liked, jumped onto the blond man's back screaming and trying to tear at his throat with her nails. The man flipped her over his shoulder and crushed her beneath the end of the board. Shelly was no more.
The fighting went on.
The Raiders were stronger, but the Slavers had greater numbers. As the Raiders pushed and fought their way up the road, they only submerged themselves deeper and deeper into the Slavers numbers, until they were surrounded on all sides. Furious Eddie was still sending people running away in flames from his sword, and the tall man was still crushing people alive with his nailed board. Levi hacked through at least a half dozen Slavers before he was finally cut. A thin, weasly-looking man with black hair came up beside him and jammed a knife into his side. Levi screamed in pain and thrust his Christa sideways, catching the thin man in the cheek and splitting it open. Another swing took the mans life. Levi pulled the blade from his stomach and cringed from the pain. He knew there was no time to be in pain, so he tossed the blade aside and continued slicing into the Slavers.
The fighting went on.
Someone, off in the distant was screaming something. Most people were screaming something, honestly, but this voice was saying words. It caught Levi's attention amongst all the death and chaos. He hopped up onto a rusted old broken car and craned his neck to find the source of the shouts. It was off to the North, down one of Old Olney's many empty streets. There was a Slaver cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting and pointing behind him. Levi squinted at the man and then tried to see what he was pointing at. He saw. The words suddenly became clear to him.
"DEATHCLAWS!" Levi screamed and pointed towards the road.
There were a small pack of three of them, but three was enough to cause trouble. Especially with no guns. They were charging the crowd, racing towards them at ten feet tall. Their eyes were small and serious, their jaws snapping at the air, and their claws... their claws were open and searching for flesh to tear through.
The fighting momentarily stopped.
All eyes turned towards the Deathclaws. The man who had first alerted them was their first victim. The Deathclaws swept past him, and as they did their claws found all his vital spots: ripping limbs off and tearing his jugular apart. Furious Eddie pushed through the crowd and pointed his Shiskebab at them. The Deathclaws screamed and then they were on the crowd, clawing and slashing at people. Their thick jaws taking heads in one, easy bite. Eddie got one. Right off the bat, he got one. He jammed his sword up into it and used all his strength to lift up, sending the blade up through the roof of the things head. It let out a fearsome, shrill cry and then it was dead.
The other two took no notice of their dead brethren. One of them was tearing through the Slavers, the other was plowing into the Raiders. It was as if they had planned it. The blonde man was stalking the Deathclaw in his camp. The beast picked a man up by his arm, then used its claws to pull his stomach apart. The man bled to death in seconds. The blonde moved in closer, cautiously holding his nailed board over his shoulder. The Deathclaw snapped off someone's leg as they ran from it, and then it caught sight of the blonde man. It turned towards him snapping and clawing. The blonde man seemed to measure this for a second, then he swung a massive swing into the side of the creature's head. A few of the rusted nails protruding from the board caught inside the Deathclaws head and the blonde man used the opportunity to wrangle it to the ground. The Slavers were on its downed body in a heartbeat. Stabbing at it with anything sharp they had. The Deathclaw screamed in agony, but the blonde man's strong arms kept it pinned down with his board stuck into the side of its head.
The last Deathclaw was ripping up Raiders left and right. Levi hopped down to face it, but Kara was already there. She twirled the barbed wire nun chucks around in a dazzling display to everyone but the pissed-off Deathclaw who was eyeing her down. Levi stepped up beside her and brought his Christa up to defend them. Kara looked at him and smiled.
"Are you fighting for me?" She asked.
The Deathclaw pounced at them, it's thick claws ripping into Levi's chest. He tumbled backwards, blood sprouting from the wound, but managed to jam his machete into the beasts arm. The Deathclaw screamed, but otherwise was indifferent to the wound. Kara twirled her chucks faster and faster. The Deathclaw seemed annoyed by this. He roared. Furious Eddie took the beast by surprise and jabbed him in the side with his Shiskebab. The Deathclaw spun around to face its attacker, taking the sword in his stomach with it. Eddie stood facing it without a weapon.
He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a bottle of bourbon. The Deathclaw paced towards him, but he back up and took a swig from the bottle. A Raider went running past him with a torch, but Eddie snatched it from his hands, held it before his face, and spit a ball of fire at the beast. The Deathclaw screamed and backed up. Levi took the opportunity to pull his blade back out from the creatures arm. It turned to look at him as he did so, and Furious Eddie plucked his weapon out as well.
That's when the blonde man appeared, as if from nowhere, behind Eddie's shoulder. The nailed board was craned back and ready to swing. Levi shouted, but it was too late. The blonde man caught Eddie in the side of the head, the life instantly drained from his face. The Deathclaw charged and ripped Eddie's lifeless head from his lifeless body. Levi charged, jumped, and caught the distracted Deathclaw between the eyes with Christa. It went down blind and crying and in agony. Levi was satisfied.
The fighting hand dwindled down drastically since the Deathclaw's had come. Many men were dead, some had fled for their lives, and even more were wounded and dying on the streets. A scattering of Raiders were beating on a downed Slaver near a car. A pack of Slavers were heading up the road carrying two of their injured comrades with them. Dawn was breaking. The sun was starting to spill its light on the barren roads of Old Olney. Levi looked around and decided it had missed the fight.
The tall blonde man knelt beside Furious Eddie's headless corpse and picked up his Shiskebab. He studied it for a moment, then made it work. The fire breathed up and around the blade. The blonde man took delight in this.
"We lose so much more than we gain in war, don't we," The blonde man said to no one in particular. Levi didn't think anyone heard him but himself. "And what is it for? What did any man win her today that a hundred others didn't lose?"
Levi wasn't much for bullshit philosophical speeches. He raised his machete and approached the blonde man--Furious Eddie's gutless killer. The blonde man looked up and noticed him. He grinned and looked around. The battlefield was rapidly emptying.
"Bit late to the fight, no?" He asked humorously.
"Fuck you. You're going to bleed," Levi told him and slowly approached him, weapon drawn.
"The fight is over. No one wins. Like always." The blonde man said and wiped some blood off his chin.
"I'm going to kill you. For Eddie's--For Furious Eddie's honor."
"Honor? There's no honor in war. There's no honor anywhere in life, really. Not anymore. We're lucky if we find someone we love, and then maybe we find this 'honor' within them and for them. But look around us. This is a cemetery. There's no honor here."
"We kept to the no guns pact. There was honor in that."
"We did that for fun," The blond man said laughing. "Death and war have to be made fun somehow, after all. Such a bloody game. But now the game is over. And I'm not having fun anymore."
The blonde man reached around behind his back and when he brought his arm around, it was holding a large pistol. Levi opened his mouth but then his chest was filled with lead and he was collapsed on the street; a cavern of dark crimson blood matting his body. He coughed blood and grabbed for his wound. The blonde laughed and turned, tossing Shiskebab to the side next to a number of dead bodies that laid all over the place.
The blonde man got ten steps and then Kara was on his back, her nun chucks wrapped around his neck, squeezing the life from him. He let out a high, gurgling noise, and then fell to his knees. Kara's arms tightened as she waited out his oxygen supply. His arms went limp and he was dead.
Levi's head was in her lap. Blood was spilling from his lips in an endless stream.
"Damn Levi," Kara said and brushed the hair from his face. "You're dying."
He looked to his side and saw his blade there, now glimmering in the sun's first light. He reached for it, too weak to move. Kara picked it up and handed it to him. He looked into it. Deep into it. Christa was there.
She was smiling.