FALLOUT: NEW VEGAS

There is a saying among the settlers of the wasteland that the only reason anything grows here is because we water the Mojave with our tears. I remember seeing a holotape from my Grandfather's vault once. Masses of people walked, or staggered, along the Strip, happy and care free as water danced and moved in elaborate fountains. So much water wasted for a moment's idleness. There were vehicles motoring along, their operating lights forming rivers of luminescence on the streets of old Las Vegas. The people were well fed with no signs of radiation poisoning or disease and they didn't carry guns or wear body armor because the lethal mutations that haunt the Mojave Wasteland didn't exist yet. I wondered to myself how those people could be so willing to destroy that world?

In the distance, through the bars on my window, I can usually see the glow of New Vegas lighting the northern sky, outlining the mountain peaks. That glow is a beacon of false hope and vice that draws in willing fools and takes all their caps with a smile. I've only been to the strip once, back when I served with NCR army, and I didn't think I would ever go back. Tonight a sandstorm is kicking up and there is only darkness.

The lamp on my workbench sputters a bit in the draft as I work on a varmint rifle, trying to fix it with my collection of spare parts. Two years ago a Deathclaw tried to dig me out of my shack, and my repairs were rough and amateurish and the wind comes in easily these days. I will have to sweep the sand out tomorrow. I looked at my tin can lamp and see the Mole Rat oil it burns is running low, so I get up and grab an old whisky bottle half full with oil from a shelf by the door and top it off.

I freeze for an instant, listening intently, and when the sound of rocks shifting came again over the drone of the wind I move quickly to my armor stand. With an efficiency born from long practice, I was buckled into my old combat armor in a matter of seconds. I had just buckled on my knife and sawed off shotgun when someone began pounding on my door.

"Harper, for God's sake, let us in!" Called out a familiar voice. "It's Annie."

I double-checked my shotgun to see if it was loaded, trust being a foolish sentiment in the Mojave, before I cracked open my door. I keep a footlocker full of scrap metal just behind the door with just enough room to open it a few centimeters. Anyone trying to force their way in to my two roomed shack would be held up long enough for me to unload both barrels into them.

Opening the door I see Annie holding a ghoul with his arm over her shoulders. The ghoul is hurt, barely conscious and muttering incoherently. His clothes are shredded and covered in a dark liquid.

"Let us in, dammit!" Annie exclaims. "Rex is hurt bad."

I pull the heavy box out of the way and my erstwhile companion from the NCR army comes into my shack. Another man, a boy really, comes in behind them. He is a smoothskin like Annie and myself. He eyes are wide with fear behind his sand goggles as he looks back in a furtive way as if something bad was following. On his back is an old Sunset Sarsaparilla case with ropes attached as carrying straps.

"Is your trouble following you?" I demand of Annie, hoping she hadn't brought a war to my home.

"I don't think so. We lost them in the sandstorm." She answers me putting the ghoul down on the table that occupies the center of my shack.

"Think or know?" I demand the clarification.

"No one could have followed us in this. We barely made it here ourselves. Any sign we left behind would have been obliterated in seconds."

"All right," I say reluctantly as Annie strips off the ghoul's shredded clothing.

"Can you help Rex?" She asks me.

I don't reply right away, but I open a metal box and pull out two of the four plastic bottles in it filled with water muddy and silt and then say, "Let him drink this, but don't get any on your skin. It's dirty with fallout."

The small wrist Geiger Annie is wearing starts to click when I hand her the water. She gently props the scarred head up and lets him drink his fill in small sips. It is slow going as he is passing in and out of consciousness. The radiation that changed Rex into a ghoul would help to heal him. If he were a smoothskin, I wouldn't have given him any chance of survival, but ghouls were tough, far tougher than normal humans.

While Annie was ministering to the ghoul, I rummaged through a metal box full of junk I had collected over the years. Finding what I needed, I unscrewed the top of the other bottle of dirty water and with a switchblade and some Wonderglue attached a hollow piece of surgical tubing to the cap and on the other end I glued the barrel and needle from an old syringe. With the cap screwed back on, I had an improvised I.V. bottle.

I turn on the flashlight on my grandfather's pip-boy to help me see. It takes me several tries to get the rusty needle through the ghoul's thick scar tissue and into a vein, but I eventually succeed. I then duct taped the bottle to a broom handle and the broom handle to a table's leg and the irradiated water and silt began to flow into the ghoul's veins. You might think my efforts would kill the ghoul with an infection or blood poisoning, but ghouls don't get blood poisoning or infections since microbes cannot live in their irradiated systems.

In my medical kit, I find some clean rolls of bandages and say to Annie, "Here, dress his wounds with these."

I look over at the boy who is standing there, dumbstruck with terror and tell him, "You go outside, just outside the door and watch to see if anyone is coming. You should be able to see their lights before the get here. Remember, stay just outside the door. I have landmines all around here and if step wrong you will lose your leg."

"I know," he replies, "Annie told us. I followed her through the safe path you had marked out."

"Okay," I reply, "shout if you see anything."

I mentally kick myself as the boy goes outside. I should have known a NCR veteran, especially Annie, would know how I had marked my safe path through the mines. I moved the mines around, from time to time, in case anyone is watching my place and figures out where I've buried them. Because of that, I have to mark a safe path with stones set in patterns not readily obvious to a casual passerby.

"There," says Annie, "that should do it. He's slipped under now, I hope we were in time to save him."

When Annie turns around to look at me, her green eyes go wide at the two cavernous barrels of my shotgun a handbreadth from her face. She looks past the gun and sees the horrible determination in my own eyes.

"John," she says, "I am truly sorry. I was told it was just going to be a robbery and no one was to be hurt. I didn't know you were involved or I would never had agreed to help them."

"Four good men died when you and your partners ambushed us in that pass. Two weeks later I crawled out of the desert with a broken arm and two bullets inside of me. Now you come banging on my door asking for my help?"

"John…"

"Give me a reason not pull the trigger." I say in a deadly cold voice.

"Because if you do, a lot of people may die." She says quickly. "Rex is a Follower, a doctor, we were on our way to the Old Mormon Fort in Vegas to meet with a research scientist there with some new medicine. I was hired to help guard the caravan. Some gang ambushed us a few miles from here and they were well armed and organized. I only came here because we were desperate and Rex mustn't die, you see."

"Khans," I tell her, "I saw them moving through a couple of days ago. But do you really expect me to believe that you were working for the Followers of Apocalypse and the Great Khans just happened to hit your caravan? That is a little too much irony for me. No way same gang you shacked up with five years ago to ambush the Followers caravan I was guarding hit yours as well."

"It's true," said a gravelly voice behind Annie. "My name is Dr. Rex Madrid. Ms. Nichols is one of the guards from my caravan. If you don't believe her, then believe me. You must know that the Khans don't allow ghouls among their membership."

"None of that explains why I shouldn't pull this trigger and avenge the death of my comrades."

"You shouldn't because she has apologized and is sorry for what she has done to you in the past." The ghoul's voice is weak as he goes on, "Holding onto grudges and hate is what burned the world with nuclear fire. Ms. Nichols told us about her crimes against us, and we have forgiven her. She has been a loyal protector of the Followers for the last four years."

I slowly lower the gun. I am not convinced, not completely, that Annie is telling me the truth. But it is true the Great Khans don't allow ghouls to join up with them. I walk over and undo the rough clasp holding the lid closed on the wooden case. Inside are vials of a greenish liquid. Handwritten on the labels is R-37-81.

"What is this stuff?" I ask.

The ghoul is unconscious again, and Annie just shrugs her shoulders and says, "Some new medicine the Followers developed in the California Hub. Rex says he's been working on it for seventy years. There is still some problems with it, he said, but if it can be perfected, it will be the biggest thing for medicine since antibiotics were invented."

"Why were the Khans after it?"

"Some of the side effects are hallucinations and feelings of euphoria. The Khans probably want it for illegal chems, I guess. They could make a fortune selling it. How they found out about the shipment, I don't know."

"How did you find out about he shipment you ambushed?" I ask harshly.

Just then the boy came in from outside, and sand blew in behind him. The wind was ripping hard now, making it difficult for him to shut the door. The shack creaked as it shook under the onslaught of sand and wind.

"I can't see anything out there," he explained. "The sandstorm is getting worse. I thought I heard some howling, but it was probably just the wind."

"It was probably the Deathclaws who live in a cave up the valley," I say to him.

"Deathclaws?" The boy asks as his face pales visibly in the dim light of the shack.

"They won't bother us if we don't bother them," I try to reassure him, unsuccessfully. In fact there is a cave up the valley and there are Deathclaws in it, but I blew up the entrance after one of them wandered down here to eat me. The noise he was hearing is an old steam whistle I found years ago. When the wind blows, which is most of the time, it moans out a sound just like a Deathclaw's howl. That noise, the valley's reputation, and the dried skeletons of men and animals scattered about ensure my solitude. For that reason I perpetuate the stories of the Deathclaws at every opportunity.

"Crazy John Harper," Annie says with a mix of admiration and incredulity. "Slayer of monsters, protector of the innocent, neighbor to worst kind of killer to haunt the wasteland."

"Not the worst," I explain, "only the most efficient. They only kill for food or to protect their territory from intruders. Man has always been the worst killer in the Mojave Wasteland because he enjoys it."

"And you are the best killer of them all, John Harper," Annie admonishes me.

"Only when I am hungry or my territory is threatened," I reply.

Normally I cook outside, but with the storm blowing I am forced to wire a series of fission batteries together to power a hotplate. I mix RadX into my gecko stew to kill the radiation. I give it a taste and it's not bad, but I can feel sand gritting between my teeth. There's no getting around that, not with the storm blowing. The kid makes a face at the unwanted sand in his food, but Annie and I are used to it. Obviously, the kid isn't from the Mojave, besides his fussiness about the dirt, his skin is bright red and peeling from sunburn. No desert dweller him.

As we eat, I can see he is favoring his left shoulder. I put my plate down and tell him to take off his jacket and he does so gingerly. With the jacket off, I can see his shoulder has been badly burned by an energy weapon. From my medical kit I pull out a bag of healing powder and dress the wound. The boy flinches as I shake the powder on the burn, but soon relaxes as the powder numbs the pain.

"What's your name, boy?" I ask sitting down and picking up my supper once again.

"Jason," he replies. "Jason Cane."

"Why are you here in the Mojave, Jason Cane?"

"I belong to the Followers of the Apocalypse and I was asked to accompany Dr. Rex here to New Vegas."

"Hold up your hand, let me see the palms," I tell him.

He does as he is told, but his face is puzzled. I look at the skin of his palms and it tells me what I need to know.

"You're from the Hub and your family has money."

"How do you know that by looking at my hands?"

"You don't have any calluses. If you were a farmer or a worker, you would have calluses on your hands."

"My father is NCR Senator Eric Cane."

"How come you are with the followers?"

"I knew Dr. Rex, he sometimes teaches medicine at Hub's college. He told us all about the Followers and the good they were trying to do and I left school to join them last year. This is my first field assignment."

"A bright-eyed kid trying to save the world," I mutter to myself.

"Reminds me of another bright-eyed kid who once joined the NCR army to save the world." Annie says mockingly.

" In that case Jason Cane," I say, "you may end up with your very own shack in the mountains of a wasteland with monsters for neighbors and eating irradiated meals by yourself while listening to wind moan. Certainly something to dream about for the future."

"You can mock my decision, Mr. Harper, because I am young," the boy responds. "But Dr. Rex is over two hundred years old and he still tries to help the world. I can do no less, even if it is a fool's choice."

"God love you son, the world certainly needs it fools to keep it entertained."

The storm last for three days and we hunker down in my shack as we wait it out. The ghoul wakes up late on the second day. I've given him all the irradiated water I had and it seems to have done the trick. Annie feeds him some dried Dandy Boy Apples I had found in a vault. Its part of my emergency food supply, as it is too irradiated to eat every day. But Rex mumbles something about apple being his favorite flavor and the radiation will do him some good. By the third day the good doctor is up and about with a tremendous appetite. He finishes almost all of the irradiated foodstuffs I have, which is considerable, promising me the Followers will reimburse me for what he has taken.

I give the ghoul a new set of clothes and a ballcap he takes a liking to when he sees it. He said he use to be a big fan of Redbirds before the war, whatever that meant. I get the varmint rifle I was working on fixed, and give it and some ammo to the boy. Annie shows him how to load it and work the bolt. Annie asks if I have any 5.56mm ammo for her service rifle and I supply it, although I ignore her proffered thanks. Besides the weapons and ammo, I give them packs; trail rations, clean water, and bedrolls to sleep on at night. Annie has her combat knife, but he kid doesn't have a blade so I give him a machete I had taken from a Legionnaire during the second battle of Hoover Dam.

"Here," say to him as I hand him a cowboy hat, "this will keep the sun from cooking your brains while you're walking the wasteland. The smell of cooked brains might send the good doctor into a feeding frenzy."

The boy looks horrified, but Dr. Madrid throws back his head and laughs heartily at my joke.

"Come with us Mr. Harper," Dr. Rex says to me. "We could use your skills and knowledge of the area, and I will pay you guards wages on top of the reimbursement for the food and medicine you have supplied us, once we reach the fort, I mean."

I consider his offer, I could use the caps and some more supplies, but my desire, my need, to be alone fights to have me say no. In the end, the need for more supplies out maneuvers my misanthropic tendencies and I agree to go.

Just before dawn the next day, I don pre-war Mk II Combat Armor. I had gathered the pieces of my armor from more than a dozen sites during my travels and I repaired it back here in my shack. My sleeker Veteran Ranger armor was turned in when I mustered out eight years ago. On my head was a standard wide brimmed NCR helmet the troops called "soup bowls". A pair of sand goggles completed my attire.

As for weapons, I decided to take my trusty M1 Garand rifle with one hundred rounds of .308 FMJ ammo, and thirty rounds of armor piercing ammo, which is all I had. For close quarter battle, I carry a MagArms Timber Rattler 10mm Submachine gun modified with recoil compensator and using the extended magazines that holds forty rounds of ammunition instead of the usual thirty. Attached to the SMG is a wooden buttstock I carved from an old plank, it wasn't pretty, but it worked and with it I could more than triple the effective range of the gun. The sub-gun I let hang from a strap around my neck and on my right leg in a drop holster is N99 10mm Pistol with a laser site and a detachable silencer. I preferred using weapons of the same caliber to reduce the weight and types of ammo I have to carry. I also have a combat knife, a twin to the one Annie is carrying, except my knife has her name engraved on the blade and hers had mine.

My other gear is similar to what the others are carrying, so I don't need to describe it to you except for my binoculars and, of course, I also have my pip-boy that my grandfather gave to me after I had graduated from Ranger School at the NCR Hub Army Base. I am amazed the GPS function still works on the thing, which is a great asset to have here in the wastes. The V.A.T.S. function I only use in close fighting, preferring my own eye at range.

When the sun comes up, we are already on the trail heading back to place where the ambush took place. I lead the group through the twisting gullies and hidden tracks I have found over the last eight years of wandering the Mojave Wasteland. It's a slow, tough way to go, but we will slip past any one watching the road.

The first thing we see are buzzards circling overhead as we approach, but soon we can see the bhramin cow carcasses rotting in the sun as we lay on our bellies in the shade of a Joshua tree on a ridgeline overlooking the highway.