"Look, kid, I just want my goddamn bottlecaps, alright?" I felt the skin of my face sag beneath my fingertips. "Please, alright? I know you have them. Your mother told me you'd pay me. Cough 'em up, alright?"
"What bottlecaps, mister? I'm too wittwe to have money." The ten-year-old shuffled her foot innocently. Her pockets chimed brightly and gently, as if they were full of caps. Her grin was going from 'nasty' to outright 'stranglable'.
"Yeah, alright, you little shit. That's the last fucking time-"
"You watch your fucking language!" A very angry woman moseyed over to us from behind the brick hut. "She's a little girl!"
Her stride would be menacing if not for the fact that her left leg was wooden and crudely made, not unlike that of a chair. She favored the peg heavily, and it made her angry strut more funny than scary. Otherwise, she was a spitting image of her daughter: the same chubby freckled face, the same auburn pigtails, and their coveralls looked like they were made from the same brahmin. The only difference was that the mother was about two hundred pounds and had a sawed-off lever-action shotgun slung across her back. The little one only had a thirty-eight snubnose.
"Angela! So good to see you," I lied with a deadpan. "Pay up." I nodded towards the two pack brahmins being unloaded in front of the rest stop.
"Angelica, pay the zombie, willya?" Angela spat a brownish glob on the dusty asphalt.
"But momma!" she whined. "I want a new gu-hu-hu-hun!"
"Yeah, alright, sure, and you'd fight critters and raiders with it yourself, right?" I grinned.
"Will too!" The girl whined again and stomped her little foot.
"Stop harassing my daughter!" Angela stomped too. "Or I ain't paying you jack!"
"Good luck with the raiders then. We'll see how the brat handles them, yeah?" I shrugged and felt a wet pop in my shoulder where a dislocated joint finally set itself. The two didn't even bother hiding their disgust.
"Fine!" Angelica dug into her pockets and tossed the bottlecaps onto the cracked asphalt. "I hope you choke on them! Stanky!"
"Fuck you." I smiled amicably. Well, so much for working with these two anymore. Actually, so much for working in this hamlet whatsoever. It's not like anyone needed twitchy trigger fingers for hire aside from the caravaners.
Good riddance, I say. It was high time I skipped town anyway.
They left with a harrumph. I waited until they were out of sight before I started picking up the caps and sliding them into pouches by twenty-fives. There was only one hundred seventy one out of the two hundred fifty promised to me. That little brat, I swear to fucking god.
The rest stop was set up inside a shell of the brick house by the road, with badly boarded-up windows, saggy ceiling, wan lights and questionable sorts in dark corners. At least there was booze, jet and an annoying whore of a waitress so I never actually had to talk to Angela at the bar. I spent about two hours getting my wine on. Angela was giving me the stink-eye, but I paid her no mind, for today I would fuck off elsewhere without settling my tab. Serves her right for calling me a zombie to my face. Honestly, it wasn't so bad. I had a good head of hair on account of the implants, and I didn't stink too bad, on account of my old age. I tried explaining the particulars of ghoul stinkonomy to Angelica once, but she found calling me 'stanky' too amusing to listen. Man, fuck both of them. Like mother, like chip off a block or something or other. Point is, the two deserved each other, and this squalid burg deserved the two. To lighten the mood I ordered locally brewed ultra jet. Instead of one, though, I got two.
"Heya Folly!" The waitress, Maude, sang. "Chin up, sourpuss! This from a gentleman way over there!" She pointed me towards a lonely patron. He waved at me.
"Ah, alright. I see. Thanks, Maude." I watched her bouncy behind as she strode over to another table with a bunch of tequila shots and a salt shaker, undoing her grimy blouse. A herd of very inebriated raiders livened up even more. This town needed a little more security. Too bad I was leaving.
I decided to cut to the chase and went directly towards the 'gentleman' Maude pointed at. He gave a prim smile at my approach and gestured at the second chair. His features were a little bit grating to the eye, sort of like looking at a cactus. By his looks he was thirty-ish, but his swept-back long hair was prematurely gray. A dark brown canvas jacket hung from his shoulders. I couldn't make out much else.
"Good evening, sir. How was your day?" he asked in a very pleasant baritone. I used to have a similar voice way back when.
"Fucking awful, and let's talk business. I assume the Undead Special ain't just a gift outta the kindness of your heart. What do you want?"
He balked, clearly not expecting me to be this blunt. Probably a city slicker by the looks of him. How he made it all the way here was beyond me, and, quite frankly, didn't interest me all that much.
"Well." He finally managed. "I am sorry to hear that your day was awful. I'd offer to talk later, but I'm afraid I'm in quite a hurry."
"Coulda fooled me."
"Yes, well... To business then." He adjusted his collar nervously. "After asking around I've heard that you're, pardon me, the ugliest, stinkiest, most despicable good-for-nothing sumbitch in this town."
"From the lovely Angela, no doubt."
"Yes, the very lovely barkeep and mayor herself! So I asked some more, and-"
"Weren'tcha in a hurry?" I rasped. "Skip to the job and the pay. If it pleases your royal highness."
He almost looked indignant for a moment. "The job is easy. I need to get to New Vegas for reasons of my own. I'm afraid I won't make the trip, so I need a bodyguard. The pay will be adequate, I can assure you."
"I can't count to 'adequate'. Give me a number." I twirled the reddish inhaler in my hands.
"Well, how does forty thousand caps sound?" He smiled pleasantly. His teeth were pearly white, even in this light. Too white for a wastelander.
"Oh-kay." I stood up and straightened up my shirt. "Not that it hasn't been nice, but I'ma just take the jet and go."
"Oh. I'm sorry you feel that way. Is there a problem?" He had the decency to actually fake a confused frown.
"The problem, buddy-" I leaned in closer to him "-is that you're full of shit and your offer is obviously a bait for morons. And I ain't dumb enough to bite, alright? Sayonara, hastalavista, hajimemaste, whatever." I waved at him angrily, snatched the inhalers and sauntered off before Angela had a chance to figure out my ploy. Fuck her, fuck this town, and fuck whoever this idiot was. Forty thousand bottlecaps, my ass. More like one cap, right between the eyes.
The town was a little ways from Long Fifteen, as were most of the settlements and trading posts along it between the Hub and Primm. There were all kinds of little getaways, factories, and towns both before and after the bombs fell. I could remember four places off the top of my head where I could stop and look for jobs, not too far from here, but first I'd need to retrieve some stashed gear and caps.
When you become a ghoul, eventually you stop worrying about a lot of stuff. Mainly, it's radiation, dying of old age, and having normal sex with smoothskins ever again. So instead you set your freed-up brain capacity on more abstract concepts, such as the human condition. And boy, let me tell you, the condition of most of the humans in Angeltown was pretty goddamn terrible. The place had, aside from the rest stop, only a bunch of houses, a clinic, a farm, some derelict shacks turned drug dens, and a brothel. As such, the population consisted mostly of scumbags, whores and rednecks. The raider gangs from this region of the badlands liked the town a lot, mainly because the farm produced, roasted, mashed, fermented and distilled agave. Angela, as sad as it sounds, was pretty much the most decent person living there. The next town over was a lot more welcoming trade-wise. For one, it actually had a general store, and it didn't let raiders just run around, swinging their cocks like fucking war banners. I suspected that they belonged to the same outfit I had to fight off every time Angela hired me to protect her caravan. When that merry bunch inevitably gang-rapes her annoying pre-teen daughter, maybe she'll get someone to set things straight. Hell, maybe it will be me. It will cost her dearly, though. It's not like NCR is going to lift a fucking finger for us little people unless we foot the bill for their valiant conquest. Motherfuckers.
This is exactly why I kept most of my valuable stuff in a locked safe I randomly stumbled onto in the desert outside of town a couple years back. I didn't know the combination at first, but I was so good at picking locks and cracking safes that it didn't matter. After that, it became my Angeltown stash, because I could trust the inbred tossers to be absolutely inept at opening locks, but not beneath robbing a poor-looking, but still roguishly handsome ghoul, who was the sole reason Angeltown still existed. Right now I had just what Angela paid me, an old green plaid shirt, a brown duster with some armor plates sewn in around vital bits, a shamefully unarmored hat, a brown poncho more for its "classic movie" aesthetic than practicality, a pre-war scoped five-five-six military DMR, my lovely ten gauge mare's leg as a sidearm, and, finally, assorted crap I pilfered from raiders I killed on the job earlier today. Ninety three years might seem like enough time to amass a fortune, but, I gotta be frank, I was shoddy with money, and ultra jet was expensive. The stash in the safe used to be one of many, but these days it was my only one. Try feeding a habit for a quarter of a century, see how you fare.
I was riding that cheerful train of thought when I bumped into a gleaming set of power armor that towered almost two heads above me. Now, I don't claim to be an expert, but you live as long as me and you eventually learn to distinguish between your normal everyday pedestrian Brotherhood armor and badass rare northern winterized armor, and the dude in front of me was not wearing the pedestrian kind. On top of being gleaming silver, it had an actual capital-F Fucking Fur collar and a strange flaming bird emblem stenciled across the chest. To add insult to injury, the, I assume, Paladin was sporting a scary-looking incinerator. And I somehow didn't notice that monster and walked straight into him. Classic me.
"S-sorry," I stammered.
I wasn't a coward, but damn right I was gonna be polite to a guy wearing a fucking tank. The armor's speakers gave a tinny dismissive grunt, thank god. We both went on our way.
"Wait a second," he said after a couple of steps.
"Y-yeah?" I turned to him with a nervous grin.
"I'm looking for an old acquaintance." His accent was weird. "Maybe you've seen him. Long gray hair? Sorta ugly? Straps his whole body in cloth like a burn victim?" His voice was low. It would be menacing if it wasn't so... Disinterested?
"Ahh, no, can't say I did, sorry," I lied with a smile. That guy was bad news, but being a snitch was even worse news, according to my admittedly finicky moral compass.
"Was worth a shot." He sighed and carried on. He was making his way towards the brothel, but it was only a matter of time before he discovers the stranger in the rest stop. By the looks of his weapon, when he does, I'd better be as far away from Angeltown as I can, lest I get cremated, and I absolutely refuse to be in the same pile of ash as Angela, or her little bitch of a daughter. All the more reason to get my ass in gear!
The trip to a lonely cactus plant, which marked my stash, would normally take me about half an hour. Looping around the derelict buildings to confuse potential thieves tailing me took another ten, which was about fifteen more than I cared to spend in this place. Just as I crossed the town limits marked by a spotty fence, I saw the gray-haired guy slink across the street and disappear in one of the drug dens just as the Winterized came out of the brothel. Not that it wasn't fun, but...
What's this dust cloud coming from the south?
"Hello. I see you've decided to run. If you won't accept my offer, at least let me run away with you," said a familiar calm voice from behind me.
Of course, by the first 'run' I already snatched my mare's leg out of its hip holster and had it pointed at his center of mass. He only seemed mildly concerned about that. Sure didn't stop him from finishing his spiel.
"The fuck!" I barked at him. "Don't ever sneak up on me like that, alright?!"
"I'm sorry..."
"And stop apologizing!" I slammed the shotgun back onto my hip. "Why do you want me around so much?"
"I'm- You seem capable. And look..." He lifted a large suitcase up to me and shook it. A telltale jingle-jangle-jingle of small round stamped metal objects was all I needed to hear. "I wasn't lying about the caps. Please. I need help."
His face was as flat and emotionless as if he was making an offhand comment about the weather. His plea was... unnerving. I noticed that he had canvas wraps even on his fingers. His face was the only skin he was showing. Not uncommon for the Wasteland, but combined with his voice, his hair and his face, which was just... fucking... wrong... somehow... I turned away from his patient gaze.
"There's no time," he said calmly. "We must escape. We'll discuss the terms later. Firebird's going to tear the place apart looking for me."
"Firebird, huh?" I asked, falling into a measured trot. "He a Brotherhood Paladin?"
"Former," the man replied, jogging alongside me. Another two things I did not notice until just now - his bright hazel eyes, so bright they seemed to glow, and a laser rifle with a beam splitter attachment dangling from his shoulder.
"And he's after you. What did you steal from him?"
"Well. Let's say I was the reason he was exiled from his chapter, and leave it at that, for now."
"Fine." It wasn't fine, but I wasn't about to press the issue, seeing as I was briskly jogging for my life at the moment. "What's your name, anyway?"
"Call me Mister Cogs. Everyone else does."
"Alright, Cogs. I'm Folly."
"Well, pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mister Folly!" We shook hands uncomfortably, without stopping.
"Say, ain't that dust cloud getting bigger and bigger?" I pointed at said cloud. He squinted at it and promptly quickened his pace. Not a good sign!
We reached the safe at the same time the cloud reached Angeltown. Whatever the hell that was, I quickly punched the combination and tugged it open to reveal... Just a little pile of caps, two empty jet inhalers, a spare shirt and a forty-four Magnum sixgun with no bullets!
"That it!?" I slapped the rusty rib of the safe. Then again, as if it would reveal a secret compartment that I knew wasn't there.
"That's... Not much." Cogs scratched his chin in my peripheral vision. "Were you expecting..."
"Yeah, I was! Goddamn, I took more off the raiders today than I had in my rainy day fund! Motherfucker!" I clutched my head, running my fingers through my hair, careful not to tug it off. "I musta sold the rest to some pusher in Angeltown! Fu-u-uck, I woulda remembered if I wasn't fucking jetted outta my skull!" My thick stupid skull!
"Well. So what now?" Cogs asked.
Okay. Breathe. It's not like this is the first time this happened. Hell, it's not even the fourth.
"Alright." I straightened up and shook sand off my pants. "Not an issue. You have that suitcase fulla caps, and I have about four hundred on me, plus some guns and valuables I looted. We're not gonna starve, but we're not gonna buy a car neither. Shit, I was hoping for at least some transportation, but we'll have to hoof it to Vegas. It's not that far. Avoiding NCR checkpoints and troops could be a problem though. Assuming I help you, which is not decided yet!"
"Or course. And I'd prefer to avoid NCR too, please, if possible. I'm somewhat..." I looked at his uneasy little smile. "Somewhat of a 'dead or alive' situation."
"You're a guy after my own heart..." I chuckled, and then I saw behind him and the heart promptly sank. "Ah fuck me."
The dust cloud was now slowly approaching us. Of course, by then it was pretty clear that it wasn't a cloud, but a dinged-up rusty Corvega with no roof and no front fender, and the cloud was just raised by its wheels. Cogs and myself were already held at a gunpoint by its three riders. One sat on the front door with his feet on the seats and a submachine gun lazily slouched in his hand, and the second was driving, and his gun was more a courtesy than a threat. I didn't know them. But when I saw the one lounging on the back seat, my face immediately melted into a smile.
"Motherlode!" I exclaimed and raised my arms in a heartfelt greeting. "Long time!"
"Ah, Charlie!" She brightened up too. "Thought yo' undead ass looked familiar! How you been, sweetie?"
She was a ghoul, same as me, and a pretty one at that, same as me again. The patched baseball cap she wore could barely contain her wild curly implanted mane, most of which she miraculously hadn't lost since the last time I saw her. Her dark boiled-looking face shifted into a frown when she looked at my unlikely companion.
"Whachu doin' with that snake? What, you two buddies now?"
"You know him, Tan-Tan?" I asked, giving Cogs' slightly perturbed expression a glance.
"Damn right I know that muthafucka! We been doing scores in New Cali, ya know how Motherlode rolls!" She rolled her eyes and flicked her wrist coyly. "Anyway, last job we did, he took the caps and split!" She eyed the suitcase still in Cogs' hand. "And this ain't enough. Where's the rest?"
Cogs suddenly blushed and muttered something, scratching the back of his neck.
"Di-in't quite catch that!" Motherlode yelled at him, rising in her seat.
"I lost it, okay!" He cried out with a pained expression. "I was running away from Firebird and he incinerated my luggage! Five thousand is all I have left!"
"You stupid muthafucka." Motherlode shook her head with a rueful smile. "I mighta just shotcha a little and letcha go, since yo shiny ass is so handsome, but this is just... Wow you's a dumbass!"
"So what exactly were you gonna pay me with?" I piped in.
"I'll admit..." Cogs sighed. "Not my proudest moment."
"Ya think?" Motherlode laughed. "What'm I gonna do wichu?.."
This is when we all heard it. The rhythmic low thumping. Like someone took a super sledge and was slamming it into the ground the sound was moving closer. There was only one thing in the vicinity that could be making that sound. A very heavy, very shiny, very winterized thing. And, to my amazement, the one-legged matron of Angeltown was sitting on his shoulder, screaming for my blood and bottlecaps. Behind him marched a small army of doped-up raiders. The shiny avant-garde would catch up to us in about a minute, give or take. Fuck me. Fu-u-u-uck me. Fuck me sideways. Fuck me.
"Folly. Listen." Cogs grabbed my shoulder and spoke very quietly and very urgently. There was actual fear in his eyes, which surprised and startled me even more than Angela's goon squad of retards. "I have merchandise that I can sell once we get to Vegas, and also a lot of invested caps. I'll pay you whatever you want. But right now we really have to go!"
I don't know what did it. Maybe it was seeing a genuine emotion on his face for the first time that day. Maybe the part about him paying me. Maybe I was just tired of protecting caravans for a pittance paid by assholes that hated me, and this looked like the first honest to God adventure in five years. Either way, I nodded and fished an inhaler out of my pocket while Motherlode and her cronies were distracted.
"Follow my lead," I said and breathed the nasty chem deep into my lungs.
When you huff ultra jet, two things usually happen, if it doesn't kill you outright. First, your perception of time... Well, it twists and distorts somehow. Depending on your disposition, it may slow down to almost a complete stop, making minutes feel like days, or drop entire hours from your memory, shrinking them to a pinprick of hyper focused thought, gone in an instant. Meanwhile, it gives you such an emotional and mental high that you feel like you can do anything, if you're so inclined. At the moment I was very much inclined. Tilted, even.
I figured, the most immediate threat was the front passenger sitting on the front door. I saw his face in very intricate detail, from his greasy cornrows to the polka dot of dirty pores. He noticed my manic grin and my hand slipping onto my shotgun, but he just wasn't fast enough to compete with a jetter and, more importantly, a marksman with eighty years of experience on him. I savored the fear on his face for a fraction of an eyeblink before pulling the trigger and turning his head into googly-eyed puff pastry, hopping up the bonnet in one smooth motion. There was a special hook on my holster, in which I could brace the barrel of my shotgun and rack the lever one-handed, so I did that, taking less than a second. Puff Pastry's body seized up. He was probably going to fall out of the car on his own cadaverous volition, but I decided to encourage him by shoving his chest with the freshly-cocked gun.
Cogs, to my surprise, wasn't much slower than me. The reason that the driver wasn't opening up on me with his own SMG was because my silver-haired now-companion leapt onto the bonnet after me and, in one hearty one-handed arc, lobbed the driver way up in the air and out of the car. I laughed, which might have sounded like a chainsaw on metal to any onlookers. The former driver fell out of the air screaming and landed upside-down with an audible crunch, his scream cut short. Should have worn a seatbelt!
"Consider your shit jacked!" I screamed, holstered my shotgun and grabbed Motherlode by the collar. "No hard feelings, Tan-Tan!"
I felt Cogs' hand help me, effortlessly tossing her out of the back seat and onto the ground. The bastard was surprisingly strong!
"It was a pleasure, sweetheart!" She yelled at me from below. Cogs plopped his suitcase at the seat and it burst open, letting me feast my eyes on hundreds of caps.
"Oh, absolutely! It was so nice to see ya! When this is all over, we'll gather for drinks, yeah?"
"Sure, honey. Assumin' we both survive this. Bidness, ya get it!" She smiled and waved.
"I do, Tan-Tan! Toodles!"
"MISTER COGS!" Firebird bellowed, with the helmet's speakers amplifying the sound. Angela slid down and took cover behind his leg, taking aim at me still standing on the car. "STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE!"
Cogs was standing on the driver's seat with his laser rifle pointed at the bird, but I could see in his eyes that his heart wasn't in it. I could understand history, especially considering I didn't shoot Motherlode just now. I took his shoulder and shoved him down onto the driver's seat.
"Why don't you fuck off?!" I yelled, snatching the DMR from my back and promptly sending a volley of bullets towards the armored chest from the hip.
"NOT IMPRESSED!" His armor didn't even show a dent. He reared up and fired his incinerator at a wide arc.
"Floor it!" I yelled downwards, watching the globs of gelatinous volatile substance soar right at the car.
Right at the motherfucking suitcase chock full of my well-earned motherfucking bottlecaps!
The old Corvega's nuclear engine sneezed in displeasure and the car launched in the general direction of the hell away from here, blowing a cloud of dust toward our pursuers. Moments before that, the fireball plopped onto the bed of junk money, soaking the entire load in burning flamer fuel. Soon enough, it would start to consume the car and us with it.
"Toss it!" Cogs yelled, trying to outshout the wind.
"Say what now?!" I asked, scrambling to put the fire out or save at least a handful.
"Toss it! It's just caps! And they're all ruined anyway! I will pay you a lot more when we get to New Vegas!"
"Just caps!? Do you know how much-"
"Do you want to fucking die, Folly?!" He bristled, giving me a livid look. "Once the fire reaches the upholstery, we're dead! This car is a piece of crap and it's two strong farts away from exploding! The caps are melted! Toss the suitcase, now!"
"I'll tear Firebird apart..." I heaved the thing, burning my fingers. It rolled around in the sand, caps melting into worthless slag and spilling onto the ground. "Okay, it's done, alright?" I sat down on the passenger seat with a huff. I was already feeling the high wearing off.
"Well. Now." Cogs inhaled deeply. "I apologize for my outburst. I simply don't want to die."
"Yeah, I get it." I slumped. "Still, thousands of caps..."
The car shuddered. There came a yelp from the engine. It probably wasn't supposed to do that.
"Don't worry about it. As I said, I have investments in Vegas. They'll pay me when I get there." He looked at me with a small smile. "I lied to Motherlode. I didn't lose the money. I sent it ahead. It's already arrived."
"Huh." My body felt heavy. I took the mare's leg and slid a shell into the tube just in case. "Invested where?"
"The Followers of the Apocalypse. I have business with them. Profitable business." He turned his attention back onto the road, or, the desert, I suppose. "So where do we go now? It shouldn't be too long a ride to Vegas if we take the Interstate Fifteen."
"No. That's the opposite of what we should do," I said, tiredly. There we go. A high always means a low. After kicking my body into high gear, I couldn't bring myself to even speak loud enough. Fucking amphetamine fucking fuck. "You should've mentioned that Motherlode was chasing you."
"Does it make a difference?" Cogs asked.
"Of course it fucking does. You've worked with her, so you must know her at least a little. You know how she has a way with people and not to forget how she plans everything way in advance. She probably got half the neighboring towns working for her by now. Not to mention there are NCR troops coming into the Mojave desert to tussle with the Legion for that fucking dam." I sighed. "We're both wanted men and we can't fight that many raiders. We'll have to make a huge loop and come into the Mojave from the north."
"So what, are we supposed to wander the desert?"
"No. People always assume that The Hub, New Reno and Vegas are the only towns here. That's bullshit, alright? There are many towns here, villages, bighorner ranches. Places to rest, stock up and eat. We'll just go from one to one. Do jobs. Pillage raider camps." I leaned forward, checked our position relative to the blip of Angeltown on the horizon and pointed towards where the next town approximately was. "That-a way."
"I hope the car doesn't explode on us," Cogs muttered. Judging by the ticking and yelping sounds coming from under the hood, that was a very real possibility.
"You and me both. Listen, I gotta take a little nap after jetting all day. Wake me up when we get there, alright? Don't get us killed." I slid down in the seat, pulled my hat over my eyes and tightened the strap that has held it on my head through all the turmoil.
"I'm your employer, not your chauffeur..." was the last thing I heard before I surrendered to treacherous and uncomfortable slumber.