That Godawful Stench
Chapter 1: Killing Time
A smell lingered around the Super Duper Mart, like dry blood mixed with strong booze. The dry blood was from the small group of raiders we had taken out about five hours earlier; the booze-stench came from the cracked, half-empty whiskey bottle I clutched. I was trying to dull my senses to the point where I couldn't detect that godawful stench; alcohol was a tried-and-true method of achieving that. A iron box full of the sweet stuff sat on the counter above me. The original owners must have been stowing it away for god-knows whatever reason; it's not like the shit was hard to come by for a raider. But the smell wasn't the only reason I was swigging it down by the gallons; I was also trying to supress my overbearing nervousness. You see, an average raider gang travel with about eight or nine people; but when we took the market during the day, there were only three raiders holding up the place. And since they were wearing Sadist armor (Sadists being the second-largest gang in the Wasteland), it meant the rest of them were out raping the land. And they would return, wielding guns and other assorted killing instruments. At first, we were going to kill the raiders, swindle as many supplies as we could hold, and clear the hell out before the rest of the gang got back. After some debating, however, it was decided that it would be better to just ambush the fuckers once they came back than to spend another night sleeping in the desert; the supermarket provided more heat, food, shelter, and whiskey than the barren Wasteland did.
After we snuck into the Super Duper Mart and picked off the bastards guarding it, we moved the bodies into a pharmacy in the back. That fucking smell got through the door, though. Don't get me wrong, a raider stinks to high hell, anyway, but death doesn't exactly appease the odor. So, with our dusters over our noses, we dragged the corpses to a rocky quarrel adjacent to the building, and dumped them there. They had already left that stench planted in the walls, though.
I wasn't drinking away my nervousness because the raiders were coming; hell, we had fought plenty of the bastards prior to this. I was nervous because the ones that were coming were the dangerous ones. The raiders we killed in the mart couldn't shoot worth a shit and were poorly armed; they were grunts, assigned to keep house while the big boys went out to play.
You see, raider groups are much more organized than you would think; the eight or nine people that make up a gang have certain posistions. Calling the shots is the leader, who probably started the gang, decides who gets intiated for the gang, and basically makes sure the gang keeps in check. He or she has to be somewhat capable, and be able to control a bunch of Wasteland rats. Then comes the strategist, who helps the head honcho plan raids, distrubutes supplies among the lower members, and takes part in the choosing of camp placements. The workers get to do all the fun stuff, such as pillaging, murdering, and burning. If it's a larger group, then there might be a tracker, who follows the pursuits of other gangs in the area (hey, it's stiff competion). A leader may also kidnap a woman to travel with the gang, whose purpose is to provide "entertainment" to the male members. Most of them are taken while they're young, and raised to be sex slaves. Finally, there are two or three grunts, recent inductees, who cook the radroach meat, clean the guns, and pack up the camp. You may be wondering how I aquired all of this information. For most of my life, I was a raider. It wasn't my choice, though; I got picked up when I was a kid. I don't why I'm remembering it now; I tend to forget snippets like that about after consuming so much liquar. I guess that smell is bringing back memories.