There's a stale, empty building. Its concrete walls are crumbling, and the metal bars that once held it up with a sure confidence now wilt and rust and stick out at awkward angles. The building is bathed in a tired, orange sunrise, leaving the shady spots created by the rubble seemingly black and cold.

A thick layer of dust and ash floats in the sunlit air, the only movement in the room. Everything else is completely still and silent: though it isn't a dangerous or uncomfortable silence, but a natural one, as if the building had been doing the same, silent routine for years: it's been eroding—and, of course, decomposing.

Dead bodies—about eight of them, men and women alike—litter the ground. Their wide eyes are blank and stare dead-set on whatever is in front, the color absent from their faces, just like the paint on the walls that flaked off long ago. The bodies are fresh, and the blood's just begun to dry. Their skin's irritated and sickly-looking from the overuse of drug needles, and they wear scraps backed up by old metal from trash cans and large tribal-like skull helmets. One man has a meter-long spear stuck through his chest, and another woman has a bullet hole just between her eyes.

The bodies all reside together in the room, now in sync with the crumbling landscape.

Out of the full silence, a slow, steady 50's swing song approaches from a distance. Footsteps follow, though they aren't steady. Sometimes they're light, sometimes heavy, and sometimes gravel can be heard scratching against the concrete floor as if the person were dancing.

As the music draws closer, the steady swing of drums and trumpet, accompanied by cheerful whistling, echo through the empty space, bringing an eerie, casual ambiance to the deadly building.

A tall, muscular young woman rounds a corner, cheeks puckered and whistling. She has bright green hair that barely goes over her shoulders, flushed pink cheeks, a thin nose, and light brown eyes lined in black that peer behind dark shades. She wears a tight, dark green armored suit and tall leather boots. There's a large, heavy pack hanging onto her shoulders and a large belt with hooks and pockets hugging her hips, laden with grenades, C-4, knives, spears, pistols, any tool of death. An old radio with a lopsided antenna hangs loosely from a clip and bangs against her thigh every time she hops or steps to the music.

She whistles gleefully along with the man's low baritone on the radio and twirls a bloody machete around her finger. She hops over one dead body with a spear lodged in its chest, removes it with ease, and tucks it next to her collection.

She kicks another body aside and twirls around on her heels, avoiding a pool of blood.

The young woman, about twenty years of age, takes a large bottle of Sunset Sarsaparilla from her pack and pops the cap with her thumbnail. The soda sizzles and she tucks the cap away for later, then feverishly downs the bottle and drops it conclusively, wiping her lips. It clanks around, then settles next to a dead man's absent head.

Her eyes search the sunlit walls. On one side of a crumbling concrete slab, someone had graffitied the words:

WAR NEVER CHANGES

The girl snorts with laughter, then kicks another limp body.

"Ain't that right, buddy?" She wiped the blood from her machete with a sleeve, "War never changes...'specially in New Vegas."


Please continue to the next chapter, Fox Handall.