Mr. Burke knew of many ways to kill a man, but he'd never heard of doing it via suicide before.
Suicide by minefield, no less.
In an irritated motion of tapped-off cigarette ashes and pushed-up tinted glasses, he wished with all his might for an ice-frosted tumbler of fine whiskey to magically appear in front of him. The murky swill in the chipped glass, dished up by a rotting corpse of a ghoul bartender and garnished with this most unusual - yet unwelcome - tidbit of news, fell far short of his hopes.
Mr. Burke took the piss-warm booze back to the shady corner of the saloon, realizing the full inconvenience of the naïve vault dweller's demise with each dust-cloud raising step. Not only were the bits and pieces of the best prospect he'd met now scattered over the wastes, but the fusion pulse charge went up in that same spectacular display of misguided bravado and shredded body parts.
Which left him stuck here in this baking shit hole of a town, to conduct his affairs under the scheming eye of the saloon owner and the watchful eye of the self-appointed sheriff. He needed to make another detonator, while still looking for an individual with enough perception, greed, or sheer maliciousness to accept his proposal.
Stubbing out the stinking remnants of his cigarette in the grime-filled ashtray, he stared into the depths of his drink, searching for answers and stray bits of ghoul flesh. It held neither, only a stomach ravaging sting and the promise of a super mutant sized hangover if he drank too much.
Mr. Burke set the distasteful beverage to the side, brushed a fleck of stray ash from his lapel, and eased further back into his chair. With the brim of his hat pulled low, and his eyes closed behind their shrouded lenses, he could block out the mindless chattering of the whore and her clients, the zombie behind the bar and the regulars shining the counter with their elbows, and finally get back to the important business at hand.
The intriguing challenge of how to kill an entire town without lifting a finger.
