The Gang and The Thieves

War. War never changes.
The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth.
Spain built an empire from its lust of gold and territory.
Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower.
But war never changes.
In the 21st century, war was still waged over the resources that could be acquired.
Only this time, the spoils of war were also its weapons.
Petroleum and Uranium.
For the resources, China would invade Alaska, the US would annex Canada, and the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering, nation-states bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth.
In 2077, the storm of world war had come again.
In two brief hours, most of the planet was reduced to cinders.
And from the ashes of nuclear devastation, a new civilization would struggle to arise.
- From the prologue of the PC game "Fallout."

1
The sun shone down on the large city that was The Hub. Its populace was mostly composed of traders, drifters, and criminals, though there were some that took up permanent residence as law-abiding citizens.
The Hub was a sort of trading post for what was left of the world, a place where anyone could come for work, supplies, and anything else needed.
Because of this, the town was guarded by its own police force. The police, though helpful at times, could never catch any member of the underground evils that inhabited the town without help.

2
Loxley downed another bottle of Nuka-Cola as he sat in his office, thinking. The last big job that the Circle of Thieves had pulled was the theft of a necklace from the Hightower family, the richest in the entire Hub. Neither he, Cleo, Jasmine, nor Smitty had actually pulled that one off, however. That had been done by one of the drifters that had passed through town. Loxley shook his head. No, they needed something big. Money was running out fast, and simply picking the pockets of unsuspecting travelers just wasn't enough anymore. Loxley and the other three needed something that would keep them stable for a while, something that would get them food. It wasn't that Loxley couldn't think of any big jobs, of course. There were many gun salesmen and merchants that the four of them could rob easily. No, the real problem was a job that wouldn't attract the attention of the Hub police. Too big a job, and they would be discovered. The trick was to get a job outside the Hub, where the police had no power. Caravans? No, those are too heavily guarded. Besides, killing to get money wasn't their style. Oh well.
Loxley stood up and put the empty bottle of Nuka-Cola down onto the table. He grabbed his jacket and stepped out of his office into the main room of their headquarters. Jasmine looked up from her workbench, placing the set of electronic lockpicks she was fixing down on the table.
"I'm headin' out. I'm gonna go look for some work."
Jasmine nodded. They both knew that when he said "work" he didn't mean going to work for a caravan. She and the others bid him adieu. They had all noticed that Loxley had been getting gloomier lately, and they all knew why. When Loxley wasn't stealing, he wasn't happy. Simple as that.

3
Demetre was awakened from his nap when a badly scarred man with a five o' clock shadow opened the door to the Crimson Caravan offices. He walked over to Demetre and sat down in a nearby chair without a word. Demetre noticed that his movements were much smoother and graceful than what one would expect from his outside appearance. Instead of his feet clomping down onto the floor as if they were attached to weights, he gently touched the ground with each step, muffling the sounds of his boots. Demetre sat up in his chair as the man began speaking. "I need work." Demetre smiled and talked the way he did to all that walked in his door. "Then you've come to the right place, my friend! Do you know what we do here?" The man nodded. Most everyone knew that any building in this area of town was always some company looking for anyone to guard their caravans, which transported food and other items to cities around the wasteland. Demetre smiled again. "That's great! Just go talk to Keri and you'll be all set. She's in that room." Demetre pointed to his right. The man got up and silently opened the door to Keri's room. She was lying on the floor, resting. "I need work." The man repeated himself to Keri. She stood. "Good. We go to Necropolis, the Boneyard, and the Brotherhood of Steel base. We leave on the 3rd and the 17th of each month. What is
Today?" The man shrugged. Demetre yelled from the other room, "It's the tenth!" Keri turned her attention back to the man. "You've got a week."

4
Bruno went back to his gang with the information they needed. "They leave on the 3rd and the 17th. They go to the base, the Boneyard, and Necropolis." Bruno looked around him and rubbed his chin, the stubble on his face feeling like sandpaper. He looked around him at the other gang members, people like him. His attention turned to the tall man that stood directly in front of him. The tall man had on leather armor, an eye patch, and a holster for his 44. Desert eagle. He, the leader of the gang, Harley, smiled and nodded. "Give me a day and I'll make up some plans."

5
Loxley smiled from behind the rock that he was crouched by. He had heard everything the gangsters had said, every syllable. He checked his jacket pocket, took out his map. He traced where they had come from the Hub, to about a mile out of town. He had followed them after spotting the scary man exiting the Crimson Caravan offices. At the time, Loxley didn't know why he had, but he was now glad that he did. He was scrunched up behind a rock about thirty feet away, latching onto their plans with his highly developed ears. He waited for them to sleep. He looked around the camp that the gang had created, the bonfire that several tents were posted next to. Inside one, a candle provided light to a tall man that worked all through the night. Loxley stayed up as well.
When dawn broke, the leader stepped out of his tent holding a map that seemed to have been drawn on in permanent ink. The tall man awoke his comrades and put out the campfire as they waited for his plan. There were six of them.
Harley lay the map down on the ground and weighed it down with a rock. He pointed to their current position.
"We are here." The others nodded.
His finger traced a black line that he had drawn across the tattered piece of paper.
"Nine days from now, the Crimson Caravan will send one of their caravans out to the Brotherhood of Steel. Our good buddy Bruno here will be with them. On the way, they will pass through here,"-his finger landed on a small dot he had marked- "what I now call 'Wasteland Pass.' It is a valley that goes between two mountains, which would leave the caravan completely defenseless, with nowhere to run. While Bruno walks behind the caravan, the rest of us will set up sniper positions on the mountains. Jack and myself will take the one to the east, and Ryan, Locke, and Anthony will take the one to the west. We will then wait until Bruno gives us the signal to open fire."
Anthony raised his hand.
"Just what is the signal, chief?"
Harley smiled.
"The signal is when Bruno slits the throats of the two guards in the back."

6
"Bloody hell." Loxley waited a moment to take in all that he had heard. He suddenly had an idea. He could kill two birds with one stone. Loxley heard "Lets go back to get some supplies" from one of them, and he tensed up. If they were going directly back to the Hub, then they would be walking straight in the direction of him. He looked around, trying to find a better place to hide. He looked to his left and saw nothing but desert. Behind him was nothing. In front of him was the camp. To his right was the disemboweled corpse of a Brahmin. Suddenly, he knew what he had to do. He watched the men, waiting for a time when it would be safe to move. When they went back into their tents to get their guns, Loxley took advantage of the opportunity.
Quickly, he ran to his right and thrust his hands inside the two-headed cow, ripping the hole in its belly to a larger size. When it was big enough, he quickly jumped inside and rolled the Brahmin on its side, its belly away from the men. They passed by the corpse without a second thought, although Anthony could have sworn that it had changed position since last night.

7
Loxley rushed into the headquarters of the Thieves Circle with a smile on his face and a stench on his body. His friends stood up, hungry for work.
"We're in luck," he said.
Loxley laid it all out for them, everything that he had heard and exactly what they were going to do about it. He whipped out his map and showed them where they needed to go, along with where the gang was going. He had copied the map of the gang onto his when they had left. Smitty smiled. It was a very good idea.
Loxley went into his office and grabbed a large burlap sack.
"Let's go!"
8
The Circle of Thieves slowly approached the camp, their footsteps muffled by towels they had tied to their boots. Once they got there, Loxley laid the sack next to the fire. He pointed at Cleo and Smitty, and then the first of three tents. He pointed a Jasmine and then the last of the tents. He went into the second.
Cleo and Smitty saw the two men sleeping on the floor, their bodies limp. According to Loxley, these two men were Jack and "Chief." Cleo crouched silently next to Jack, and Smitty did the same to Chief. Cleo's eyes scanned Jack's body, searching for-there! Hooked to Jack's belt was a small red sack, the most popular way of carrying around ammunition. Carefully, she unhooked it, pulled the bullets from the bag into her hand, refilled the bag with gravel she had taken with her, put the bullets into the large burlap sack by the fire, and then hooked the sack back on. Smitty replicated the procedure on Chief, although he had to do it several times, seeing as Chief had roughly six bags of ammo on his belt. Cleo looked under Jack's arms and found a sniper rifle. Carefully, she pulled it out, inch by inch, until it was free of his grasp. She walked back out of the tent and untied one of the towels from her shoes. She wrapped the muzzle of the rifle with the towel and walked fifty feet away from the camp. There, she jammed the silenced muzzled into the ground and pulled the trigger until the gun stopped jerking. She then walked back into the tent, Smitty leaving to do the same as she entered. Suddenly, she panicked. Jack had changed positions. He had somehow inched forward just enough so that he lay where the sniper rifle had originally been, his hands tucked under his chest. It was impossible to replace the rifle in Jack's hands without awaking him. Getting an idea, she lightly brushed Jack's cheek. He stirred. She did it again, this time blowing on his ear as well. In his sleep, Jack took his hands out from under his chest to brush that tickling away from his face. Seizing the opportunity, Cleo replaced the gun under his chest and walked back to the Hub, just as Loxley had instructed.
Within minutes, three of the four had completed their missions and had returned home. Loxley had stayed behind, for he had two extra men to rob. He crept into the tent of Bruno and Ryan. He robbed them both the way the entire group had been doing throughout the night, but then he knelt down next to Bruno. Carefully, he located the sheath in which Bruno kept his knife. Slowly, he removed the knife and took the rubber cement he had bought from a Hub vendor out of his pockets. Working quickly and quietly, he drenched the blade of the knife in rubber cement, making it very sticky. He put the knife back in its sheath and walked out to the campfire. He pocketed the can of rubber cement and picked up the sack full of bullets, which would definitely fetch a nice price from the vendors. Smiling, he walked back to headquarters. He had killed two birds with one stone.

9
Harley woke the others and approached the edge of the mountain. Today was the big day. He lay belly-down on the ground, and the others did the same. They all got their rifles ready as the caravan approached.
Bruno walked silently behind the caravan, his footsteps silent. In front of him were two other caravan guards, people who had falsely put their trust in him. He walked faster and reached for his knife. He tried to pull it out, but it was stuck. He yanked and yanked until the sheath detached from his belt. He struggled to get it out, wanting badly to kill the men ahead of him. He grunted loudly, fighting with his own knife. The two guards directly in front of him heard this, and they turned around just in time to see him use all of his strength to unsheathe the knife. Startled, the two guards quickly unholstered their guns just as Bruno rushed at them, knife in hand. The first raised his sawed-off shotgun and fired. Bruno's chest was torn apart by the buckshot, blood pouring from the open hole in his chest. He was dead before he hit the ground.
To say the least, Harley was confused. Quickly, he trained his gun on the guard who had blown Bruno away. He pulled the trigger. Unexpectedly, Harley heard the gun click as nothing happened. He quickly checked the magazine, seeing that there were no more bullets. Very strange, indeed, but no problem. He quickly went to his bag of ammo he kept on his belt and opened it up, only to find rocks. He opened all of his other ammo bags too, still finding nothing but rocks. He looked at his partners, seeing that they had been sabotaged too. He looked down at the stopped caravan, the guards looking all around for anyone else that might have been trying to destroy the caravan. Eventually, one looked up at the nearby mountains. He saw the panicking Harley, gun in hand, and the man next to him. They both made eye contact just as the guard raised his submachine gun and fired a long burst.
Right before the guard fired, Harley looked straight into his eyes, dumbfounded. Just as the guard fired the shots that would end the lives of both he and Jack, Harley's last though was, "What the hell just happened?"
The bullets hit Harley straight in the face, spraying gray matter across the dry wasteland ground. Jack looked up just in time to have the same happen to him. Seeing what had happened to their friends, the three men on the other mountain stood up, cursing the guards. They threw their guns down at the caravan, hoping to smash the skull of one of the guards. The rifles clattered against the desert ground as the remaining guards raised their guns and fired at the new "threat" on the other mountain. Ryan, Locke, and Anthony died cussing and screaming.

10
Back in his office, Loxley smiled.

THE END