My ongoing adventures of Cort and Charon is still my main focus, but this plot bunny has been biting my ass ever since I did those two chapters in Into the Pitt(people who have read those will probably know exactly who this is about if you pick up on the clues, and I'll post it in the story description later, once I've written the second chapter. For now, isn't the surprise at the end of the first fun?). I'll be using it as a way to refresh myself now and then, and I hope you folks enjoy it.
Gerry pushed up, groaning, the feeble and diseased sunlight hitting him in wavering bars through the blasted trees forcing him up and out of a cold but comfortable oblivion. It was another fantastic morning in the shit-stained armpit the world had become, and time to get moving. Unfortunately, what had stopped him from moving the night before was a pack of hopped up crazies hell-bent on either killing, robbing or screwing him blind, or all three in God only knew what order. Not one hundred percent confident on the particulars as they had happened, he nevertheless decided that he had managed to take all of them down before falling unconscious out of pure exhaustion; if any of them had been left even a scrap alive, he would certainly have been dead right now. It was blind luck that no one else had stumbled on the clearing he was holed up in, and downright fucking amazing that the stench of blood and cordite hadn't attracted one of the large packs of feral dogs now roaming the shattered cities and burnt countryside, abandoned and orphaned pets sopping up the remains of their former gods. Gerry patted at his crotch, disgustedly noticing something else that was sopping, and swore.
"Christ. Waxing poetic while you shiver in your own piss, and you didn't even get to drink yourself into it." Staggering to his feet, he swore again and spat before looking around warily, a healthy wad of paranoia replacing the clot of mucus he had just snucked out of his head. Standing with his head cocked to one side, hands flexing slowly in and out as he listened, anyone who had known him before the bombs dropped would be hard-pressed to recognize him, and would probably have ended up shot for their trouble if they had and foolishly decided to call out a greeting.
Somewhere in the range of six feet, it was hard to tell with the brutish way he was hunched over, what someone looking at him would see was a man with one foot in a lost civilization and one in the primordial ooze his forebears had evolved from, one slipping reluctantly out as the other slid inexorably in. They would see iron grey hair that had once been neatly trimmed to short and tidy was now unkempt and shagging around his ears, one of which had what was either a leaf or a swatch of dried gore stuck behind it. Impossibly blue eyes staring out of a gaunt face that might have been open and kind at one point but was now so hard and flat it was like a visual clap of thunder. He was dressed in a mishmash of clothing, ragged army coat over a sport jacket over a bulky sweater that might once have been a blue close to his eyes, and two pairs of jeans that could have fit in another life covered by baggy businesswear slacks that never would.
Sparing one last furtive glance for the seemingly endless march of dead trees around him, pitiful shedding things that would have been a swath of green pine not even a full year beforehand, he quickly gathered up all the weapons he could see and then fell on the closest body, tearing through the pockets on its equally mismatched garb before moving his attention to the corpse's feet, swearing a second later. "Gods damn you, you sick, inconvenient sonofabitch. Why couldn't you have a decent-sized pair of feet." Jerking his head up and looking around, he scuttled over to the next closest of his would-be assailants and repeated the treatment, this time turning up something that turned his face into a ravenous nightmare, before it was reformed by simple, pure bliss. Whipping his hands up so fast it was a wonder that he didn't break his nose, he crammed the squashed, half rotten orange into his mouth, gobbling every scrap of bitter peel and slurping the rancid juice off of his chapped palms, tongue tracking down inside his cuff and nibbling over the dirty fabric to draw out any moisture that might have been drawn into it. It was the first thing he had eaten in almost a week, and it was ambrosial. Sighing happily, he resumed his pilfering of the recently deceased, immediately jamming anything edible into his mouth and anything useful into his pockets before stripping the raiders -and that was a good word for them, the fucking bastards came at you like a squad of Robin Hoods from hell- of clothing, finally finding a replacement pair of boots for his own tattered dress shoes, hooting when he put them on. This one had been a soldier, and Gerry pulled his dogtags loose as well, thinking the chain could be useful. Best of all was a pair of army-issue gloves tucked into one of the man's pockets, a matching pair, and this discovery almost overshadowed his splendid new footwear(if, by miracle of miracles there had been intact socks in the boots, Gerry was positive he would have orgasmed on the spot. There wasn't, but he could happily keep wrapping his feet up in rags, if it meant they would stay clean and dry, especially if his hands were too). He also ripped the remaining leather from his shoes apart and squirrelled that away. That could be edible, if he got desperate. At the very least, chewing it could make him think he was eating something, if he managed to pretend hard enough. He was getting good at that.
The remainder of his shrunken stomach stuffed on a surfeit of mouldy bread and assorted scraps, he turned his attention to the rest of his body, patting lightly but not feeling much in flesh deadened by the unending cold. He knew he had been shot, but apparently not seriously, if he was still kicking and couldn't remember where. Hauling back a newly booted foot, he kicked at the head of the closest corpse, smiling at the hollow sound it produced, the side caving in like a ripe melon. "That's right, you skinny little shit. Gerry's still kicking." Lashing out his foot one more time, he grunted in satisfaction, then gathered up his wearable spoils, hovering over the cache of guns as he stripped off his soiled clothes, and a new wave of shivering passed over him, teeth chattering as the cold struck his bare skin. It was always cold now, always freezing, and anything he couldn't wear was tied in bundles over a tattered knapsack he carried, used along with the last leaves the world would see as nesting material when he slept. Squinting as he used the dry parts of one pair of fouled jeans to scrub the cold piss from himself, he looked up and tried to judge what time it was, his eyes flicking around shrewdly every few seconds. The sun had started appearing again barely a week ago, if you could call a muddy circle that looked like God's own holy glowing asshole an appearance. Gerry called it about fucking time, he was tired of living in perpetual gloom, and was almost anxiously hopeful that the stars would soon expose themselves, give him at least a rough idea of where he was, in this fine...he smiled, childishly pleased at having figured out what he had been after, and for a moment his face was heartbreakingly beautiful.
"Morning, in August, give or take. It's around eleven, and a healthy smidge above freezing if I'm not dead, well Hallelujah. At least you didn't sleep past noon Gerry, you lazy old coot." Hissing as he scrubbed over his thigh, he looked back down, noting a red swiping gouge on the inside. "Yup. Shot. No wonder I didn't notice, accidental incontinental camouflage. At least it missed my bits, Hallelujah." There were wounds in various mended states all over him from bloody to faded scars, bullets and stabs and bites, although these last were relatively minor, the layered hodgepodge of clothing worn as protection against the harsh nuclear winter doing excellent duty against fanged teeth. Unless something was crippled, he was more apt to lay himself up in some hidey-hole instead of using one of the precious Stimpaks he had scavenged, not knowing when he might run across another, so he cleaned the ragged furrow off as best he could and started redressing, not giving any particular thought to infection. One benefit to this apocalyptic shit-fit, if you could even call it that, considering it had sterilized the good along with the bad, was the fact that harmful bacteria seemed to have gone the way of the dodo, along with practically everything and everyone else.
Thinking of Stimpaks, he reached into a little bundle of collected oddments, wrapped up in a stained shirt he had co-opted for the purpose. The set of asswipes from last night had had four, one each, practically a bonanza out here in the boonies, and he hid them inside his sport jacket, wrapping them with scraps of fabric to protect them from any falls he might take. He applied the same care to the Buffout and Mentats, and after tucking those away, carefully examined the one solitary pack of Psycho he had turned up. This was particularly tricky stuff, something that he shouldn't even have known existed, but with his whole department being run by brassheads for several decades, it wasn't hard to hear things that weren't supposed to be said, particularly when everything had started to go to shit; you just had to make sure you weren't stupid enough to repeat them. Not unless you wanted to disappear without a trace, along with anyone in your immediate family. Gerry tilted the strange conglomeration of syringe and vials back and forth, staring at it with more hate than the little object alone should have deserved, being inanimate and therefore blameless. "General Chase's dirty little secret, one of many, you egotistical dingbat. How much of this was your fault, Connie?" He let his hand drop, staring sullenly at the ground. "How much of it was mine, helping to fill those poor, beautiful rockets up with warheads, fucking death in a raped dream." Suddenly not caring that he could trade it if he found someone who wouldn't shoot him for it first, not giving one fucking shit that it might mean a scrap of bread or a chance at beating through whatever monstrosity the world threw at him next, he hauled back his arm and flung the drug as hard as he could, a guttural scream breaking out of him as it smashed to pieces against a tree. Panting too hard, blue eyes too bright, he let a sob run out of him as the collection of various chemicals ran down the flaking trunk to puddle in the barren earth at the base. "Gerald Bruce Winthrop, you stupid, cowardly old bastard, how much of this is your fault?"