Updated 2-25-12: Some more grammatical fixes, and a little tweaking of verbiage. Also, I broke it up into smaller paragraphs so people might actually be able to get through it without going blind. Anyway, I still have problems with the way this story turned out, but I've got a soft spot for it, so I'll probably take a shot at a rewrite again at some point.
It's a Thursday in June, and she's lying in wait for a caravan. She's holed up with three men in a shallow depression, half-hidden behind a rock outcropping a mile from Megaton, along the southern caravan route that hugs the wall of the settlement in a tight half circle before snaking sharply down among the rocks, then over the old bridge towards Rivet City.
She's been with this crew a week, ever since she met them in Smiling Jack's back at Evergreen Mills. They're new to the Mills; she noticed them a month ago when they first showed up, drinking up the take from their last run. Jack had warned her off of them, so she'd asked Flick first, and then Chris, and finally even scarred, crazy Fergal. None of them want new meat in their crews, none of them want the risk, or the dead weight of an underfed teenage girl when moving light and fast means the difference between a flush run and a hungry one.
Finally she'd approached the chief of the new crew, the darkest of the three thin, sunburned men with cold eyes. They were northerners, in from the Pitt, she'd heard, wherever that was. Jones had tight, curling black hair and brownish-yellow skin, and a whirling tattoo on his face. He'd looked her over, then told her she could come if she brought her own gear and followed orders. The other two just smirked at her, but she clenched her fists and walked away, knowing they were watching her go.
She thinks they've got a good spot, but she isn't sure, she doesn't have any experience to compare it to. They've only been here a day; hit one trader this morning, there wasn't much in the bags they pulled off of the dead brahmin, but he had fifty-two caps in his pockets when they went through them. She'd counted them twice, scratched the number in the dust next to his body with a stick. That was more caps than she'd ever seen before, but the others sounded mad, disappointed.
She doesn't think they're doing this right – she'd expected they would jump him, make him give up his caps, and then he'd run away. Scab had just run right up and shot him in the head. He'd fallen over, and Scab had danced around the body yelling and spooking the Brahmin. Jones hadn't even tried to stop him, he'd just rolled his eyes and shot the Brahmin twice, once in each head, and then sent Vince to dig through the saddlebags. When Scab stopped dancing there was drool on his lips.
She wonders why Scab did it. She thinks the trader would have given up the caps and the brahmin without a fight – it was four to one, what else could he do? She thinks maybe this wasn't a good idea. The crews at Smiling Jack's, throwing caps around on booze and whores and chems seemed so rich, so important. She was always hungry at the Mills, scrounging trash and doing errands to pay for a little food. How bad could it be?she had thought.
Vince is creeping back over the rocks, belly down low to the ground.
"Traveller!" He said. "One man alone."
Jones and Scab are up now, crouched and waiting. "How's he look?" Jones asks.
Vince grins, showing rotten teeth and bleeding gums. "Couldn't see a gun, but he's wearing some kind of weird bumpy clothes and a backpack. Looks like he's been eating good, at least."
Scab doesn't say anything, just smirks and touches the .38 he carries tucked into the front of his pants. His hand lingers there a little too long. She shivers.
"Ok," Jones said, "We'll do this right this time. Wait till he gets up even with us, then we pop up and get the drop on him. Scab, no shooting unless he pulls a piece – I don't want you fucking up his gear."
Scab looks rebellious, but Jones stares him down and he subsides. The leader turns to her. "Meat, I want you down on the road around that turn. He'll see you first, and while he's looking, we can get up on him before he notices."
She doesn't understand. Why doesn't he want her down where the mark is going to be? Is he going to shoot her too?
Jones is still looking at her. "You got a problem, new meat?"
She moves her fingers on the handle of her bat. It's brand new (new to her), bought from Jack a week ago at the Mills. It cost most of her hoarded stash of caps, what was left after she had paid him for Ma's last dose of Med-X, when her fever got really bad.
The bat says "Louisville Slugger" on it, whatever that means, but Jones has a machete and a hunting rifle, and Scab has his .38, and Vince has his knife and a sawed-off shotgun and almost a dozen extra shells, so she knows she doesn't have a chance.
Besides, she thinks, what is she complaining about? She doesn't really want to hurt anyone, not even the mark coming down the hill. She is just so sick of being hungry, and she doesn't want to be a whore like Ma. So she gets up and walks down the back side of the hill and stands in the road. After a minute, she walks to the rusted guardrail, puts the bat back down behind it, and then goes back to sit in the middle of the cracked pavement.
A minute ticks by, then two. Finally, she sees Vince stick his head up over the rocks, then crawl down out of sight. A minute after that, he's back, and the guys are all yelling at each other. She picks up the bat again and walks up the hill. When she gets up into the campsite Jones is jabbing his finger into Vince's chest.
"He must have seen you, you clumsy fuck!"
"He didn't see me!" Vince is yelling too, and he's got blood on his lip. He turns and points at her. "The bitch must have tipped him off! She didn't like it when Scab scragged that trader this morning. I bet she waved him off when we couldn't see her!"
Jones grunts. "She couldn't see him from where she was. He probably saw you, or heard us arguing, or just got lucky." He sighs. "It's OK, someone else will come by tomorrow, and we've still got that Brahmin to cook for tonight."
She can tell he's still mad, and then Scab says:
"What about the bitch?" and he points at her.
"What about me?" She asks. The other two don't say anything, they just look at her. "What?" she asks.
They're looking at each other, now. "That trader is gone, and I'm pissed off," says Vince. "Besides, how long are we going to save her? It's been damn near a week now."
Jones looks at Scab. Scab runs his tongue out and licks his upper lip, and shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other, like his pants don't fit right. His eyes never leave her, though.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" She's nervous now. "What do you mean, 'save me'?"
"Girlie, you think we brought you along for your fighting skills?" Vince sneered. "You're here for entertainment. And bait, but you suck at that."
Her hands are shaking, and her knuckles are white on the bat. "You said I could come with you, said I could be part of your crew, said I could have an equal share."
Jones seems to have made up his mind. "Then earn it, meat. You'll get your share when we get back… ifyou keep us happy." Scab is licking his lips nonstop, and Vince is grinning now, and she clutches the bat, brings it back over her shoulder, but her muscles aren't working right, they're too tense and her heart is racing, and Vince hits her in the belly. The air goes out of her lungs with a whoosh, and she drops the bat. She's on the ground now, and Vince's boot is coming at her and now the world is spinning and dark, and light, and dark again and she can't seem to move.
She can see again, and the three men are walking towards her. Vince is fumbling with the laces on the crotch of the old athletic pads he wears. They're talking, but she's not sure who's speaking, and there's a rushing noise in her ears.
"… first this time, I was last when we caught that trader bitch last week, and she was already dead because that fuck Scab cut her throat when he finished."
Scab is giggling.
"Fine, fucking hurry up." She can tell that's Jones.
Feeling is starting to come back into her limbs now, she can move, but not enough, not enough, she's too weak; she can't even roll over to crawl away.
Vince is right in front of her but suddenly over his shoulder she can see Scab rising up into the air, boots waving wildly, back arched, eyes bulging. There's something wrong with his mouth, it's distorted somehow, like something invisible is pressing against it and his lips are writhing but no sound is coming out. Then his eyes roll back in his head and he jerks, boots kicking in the air, and then hanging limp. Water runs down his leg and spills off of his boot to puddle in the dust.
Vince sees her looking, and turns back, puzzled. There's a ripple in the air above Jones and then his head is wrenched backwards and to one side, and now there's a knife handle sticking out of the angle where his neck meets his collarbone, and he sits down hard, eyes wide and mouth open. She can see his pink tongue moving, but no sound comes out and then he falls over slowly, and she sees that there's a shimmer in the air between her and Jones, like heat on a pre-war road.
"The fuck?" is all Vince gets out before the shimmer is on him, and then there's a flat smacking sound and Vince is on the ground, gurgling. The shimmer shifts again, and there's another smack, and a crunching noise underneath, and he shuts up.
She's more scared than she's ever been in her life. She tries to roll over, she claws at the ground trying to drag herself away from that thing, whatever it is, but she's so tired, and her arms won't work right.
"It's okay" says a voice. "You're safe," it says. She knows better than to believe it, so she keeps trying to crawl. She's making progress now: the rock in front of her is a little closer, and then she feels a hand on her collar and she's rolled, gently, onto her back. She can feel the hand behind her head now, and it reminds her of Ma before she got sick, but Ma is dead, and the shimmer is right in front of her and she's scared, eyes opened as wide as they can go, staring at something that's barely there.
"Oops, forgot about that," says the voice again, and the shimmer darkens and then there's a man's face in front of her, a man or a boy, she's not sure which, because he looks clean, and he doesn't have any scars, or acne, and he's beautiful, and then her stomach heaves and she's vomiting onto the smooth gray plates on his chest.
"Shit!" he yells, and he almost drops her. He's leaning as far away from her as he can, his face in profile. It's a nice face, long nose, good jaw, with just a few patches of stubble, because she can see now that he's young and he doesn't have all his beard in yet. She's desperate for a breath of air, but she can feel the vomit filling her mouth and nose, and she's afraid she'll choke. He looks back at her, and seems to understand.
"Oh, right," he says, and he turns her over, a bit more roughly than before, which makes her head throb, but the vomit runs out of her mouth and her nose, and now she can paw at her face with the rag, and finally take a breath. The air burns coming in, but she doesn't choke, and she starts feeling better right away.
A hand appears in front of her, holding a rag. She's grateful; she takes it and wipes the snot and puke off of her face. Her cheek hurts, and her head is throbbing. Her thoughts are moving slowly, and she's having trouble concentrating. There's something important going on, and she's having trouble remembering what it is.
He sits her up. She can look at him now. He's wearing some strange clothing, a little like the armor Jack keeps locked in the back, the one with the yellow number 13 on it. He told her once that it came, traded from caravan to caravan, hand to hand, all the way from a vault far to the west. She likes numbers, the way they can squeeze down so many things into a little squiggle; Ma was teaching her to read letters and numbers so she could work with Smiling Jack in the trading post and not have to be a whore, but now Ma is dead, and she's been so stupid, so stupid, and she wonders if this boy is going to kill her or just rape her.
He's holding a canteen out to her, cap open. She takes it, sees her hand moving slowly, missing the first time so she has to concentrate and use both hands to grab it and bring it to her mouth. She expects it to burn going down, like all the water she's ever had in her life, but it doesn't. She drinks again and feels better, feels some running down her chin. He's laughing. He's laughing at her, but it's a nice laugh, she thinks, and she realizes she might get to live after all. Then she passes out.
She opens her eyes, and he's still there. The angle is different, she's looking up at him and she's warm. She sees she's wrapped in Jones's blanket. The man has lit a fire.
"Easy, sweetie, I think you've got a concussion."
She thinks that's a stupid thing to call her; he can't be more than a year or two older than she is. He leans forward and peers into her eyes, then leans back and does something to his wrist, and there's a bright light and he's back looking at her eyes again. He's holding her chin and she holds still, dazzled, but the light hurts her eyes and she feels tired again.
"Pupillary response looks good. My dad was a doctor," he explains. "Isa doctor. In a vault. Okay, not in a vault anymore, they chased us out. Actually, he left on his own, and then they chased me out." He falls silent. "Are you okay?"
No, she thinks, then yes. She picks her words.
"I will be, I think. Who are you?" she asks.
"People call me one-oh-one," he says, like that should mean something to her. She can see he's disappointed when it doesn't.
"That's an odd name," she says. She thinks for a minute, remembers. "Thank you."
"Welcome." He pauses. "How'd they catch you?" he asks. "Were there any more in your caravan?"
He must have seen the mess they made of the trader from this morning.
She's ashamed. She knows, because Ma told her once, that outsiders call them "Raiders," and hate them for going out and taking the things they need from the Wasters. She doesn't think this young man will like her if she tells him, but she does it anyway and she watches his eyes narrow.
"I'm sorry." She says. She doesn't know why, but she's sorry now, and then she's angry, and her head still hurts bad. She looks up. He asks how old she is, and she tells him that she's seventeen. She might be. She's not really sure.
He laughs, suddenly. "No way, you're tiny!"
She's mad at him now, for laughing at her. She's not a little girl, she's a woman, she's had her blood and she's had a man already, but he smelled and his beard was rough. She wouldn't let him do all the things he wanted. He called her a cold bitch, but he gave her ten caps anyway. She hid them in her shirt so Ma wouldn't know, but Ma never woke up when she came back in with the food. Ma was sleeping most of the time, by then, and the lump on her neck was the size of a man's fist.
She wonders how this boy smells, and if his beard is rough. She doesn't mean to, but she says that last part out loud, and he laughs again. He's decided she's not a threat, she thinks. He turns his head, presenting one side of his face to her, his jaw, his cheekbone lit up by firelight. After a second, she realizes he wants her to touch it. She does. It's rough, but only in a few places. She keeps touching it, stroking it with her fingers, and then realizes what she's doing and pulls her hand back. There's an awkward silence.
"Why'd you do it?" he asks. She thinks he means the thing with his cheek, then realizes she's wrong. She tells him she's always been hungry. She tells him about the raiders, and the caps, and the booze. She tells him about Ma, but she doesn't know why. She never talks about Ma.
She says she's sorry again. She looks up at him, and he's wearing a funny expression, like maybe he's going to cry. She wonders why.
Then she's suddenly dizzy, and tired, and the world is tilting, and the boy is cursing, swearing, nonsense words, words she's never heard before, and then there's a hiss, and she's awake again and he's pulling a stimpak out from under her chin. She's seen them before, but they're precious, and she never thought someone would use one on her. Waste one on her. He's pulled a smaller bag out of his pack and there are rows of shiny things inside and more stimpaks, more than she's ever seen before, and then she passes out again.
She wakes up in the dark, and she's moving. She can see the stars, and she's warm, and a little bit sweaty, and she's bumping along the ground. She can't move, even a little bit, which scares her until she sees the ropes and blankets he's used to tie her to the travois, so he can move her. She admires the knots for a bit, and then she goes to sleep again.
She wakes up in a metal house with a man named Church, who says he's going to help her sleep. She doesn't want to; she's slept enough, but she hears another hiss, and she does anyway. She wants to tell him that she knows him, she remembers him from before, from the Mills when she was little and he came to see Ma, but it's too late. She sees the boy again before her eyes close. He looks worried, but she feels warm, and she knows it's going to be OK.
It's December now, and it's cold. She doesn't mind - she's tougher, stronger now than she was. She can barely remember the girl who left the Mills. She's killed some men. Men who had it coming, or maybe men who were just desperate, as she was once, but it doesn't matter.
She's got an assault rifle, and good leather armor, only missing one sleeve, and more ammunition and stimpaks than anyone she's ever known except for him, and now she's guarding caravans instead of raiding them. She gets paid at the end of every run, in caps, and the men who hire her never try to touch her or hit her. She's got a reputation now.
At night, around the campfire, she keeps working on her reading, and her numbers. She's going to go into business for herself someday.
She can't wait to see him again. He told her he'd be back in Megaton in December sometime, and she's got enough caps put by that she can wait for him 'till he gets back. She'll stay at the Brass Lantern; she doesn't trust Moriarty, who sometimes smiles with his mouth, and sometimes with his eyes, but never both at the same time.
They get in after dark, and Crow pays her off, one hundred and thirty-eight caps, one tenth of the haul. He asks her if she's sure she doesn't want to make the run to Agatha's with him. She's sure. She sees there's a light on in the house high up on the side of the crater, near the big steel doors to the outside. She makes herself walk over slowly, doesn't even jump over the old iron water pipe, but her heart is pounding anyway.
She knocks, and the door opens and he's there, with the light and the warmth coming out of the room behind him. He's smiling, and they go inside, and there's laughter, and warm food, and his hand on hers, and a robot with a funny voice. But most of all there's him, and in the morning he gives her a box, and he's written "For Sally" on it, and inside is a key. And outside, snow starts to fall from the sky in tiny, drifting puffs, and that, in this place, is a rare and precious thing.