II: Trouble on the Way

It didn't take long to figure out what road the old man had meant, as the only other road going south had a crater in it the size of a small building with the remains of a large aircraft sunk in it. This would have taken a while to get around. Instead, Philip turned a little on a cross-street and headed to a parallel road, marked Highway 69. The way was much more passable here, though there were several old vehicles blocking a straight walk.

As he walked, he passed several reminders of both the destruction of war and the world that was left behind. It was a curious mix that he'd never quite gotten a handle on as he'd traveled across the wasteland. He, and every other living being, now lived in some bizarre mixture of the old world and a new world. Walking across the wasteland gave a man time to think, if he cared to.

As the Ranger made his way around the remains of a tractor trailer, he heard the soft crackle of a footstep nearby. He froze instantly. While the helmet and mask provided protection that Philip dared not go without for long, they decreased his overall visibility. He rarely got into situation where this was an issue, but they did happen. He hoped now wasn't one of those times.

The soft crackle was repeated a few times and Philip slowly withdrew his revolver and stepped forward. He peeked around the edge of the truck and saw a dog several feet away. It was a thin shell of a dog, really, but in Philip's experience that made them worse. Dogs could get hungry and extremely violent when hungry. Philip tried to hold still so the dog would wander off.

As he settled back into a waiting position he heard his own crackle as his feet came down on a stick on the pavement. He could immediately hear that he had alerted the dog to his presence. The animal stopped short and turned around. Philip realized that he really only had one option, even though he wanted to conserve as much of his limited ammunition as he could. He considered getting his knife out, but frankly he didn't want to get close enough to the animal to use the knife. The gun carried risk, but less risk than the knife. Philip readied himself for a quick shot and hoped he was as accurate as he needed to be.

He spun around the edge of the truck and leveled his revolver at the dog. But the dog wasn't there anymore. Philip looked to his right and left for the animal and only saw it out of the corner of his eye as it leapt from the side of the overturned truck to attack. Philip turned quickly and pulled the trigger. The report echoed in his ears, despite the mask and helmet, but it was to no avail. His aim had been poor owing to the surprise. The angry canine landed on him and knocked him off his feet. The handgun fell from his hand and skidded across the pavement. It now lay about three feet from him and there was a large angry dog on top of him and biting wildly. Fortunately, his clothing – which a moment ago he had thought better of for restricting his vision – protected his face and arms from the bites of the dog.

Nevertheless, the struggle with the dog was fierce. He grabbed the dog's jaw with one gloved hand and held it by the throat to try to keep its mouth away from him. The dog growled fiercely at this maneuver but quickly forgot its concern as Philip's other arm rocketed into its side and sent it reeling. Philip rolled and came to a kneeling position just as the dog regained its footing and made a lunge at the Ranger. Philip had just enough time to pull the knife from his belt and swipe at the dog.

He missed, and the dog bit into his canvas duster sleeve. Even though the canvas was too thick to bite through, the teeth dug into Philip's arm and hurt severely. Philip cried out and shoved with the arm the dog had its teeth on, trying to distance himself from the savage creature. The dog held on tight and bit down even harder. Philip felt the teeth dig into his skin, even cutting through the canvas of the sleeve. With his free arm he pounded on the beast's head and body, trying to get traction and get to a standing position.

Even though the dog maintained its iron grip on Philip's arm, he was able to get to his knees and roll toward the dog, pushing it into the metal wheel of a nearby truck. Once against the vehicle, Philip put his full force against the animal and finally caused it to yelp, releasing the grip on his arm. Philip wasted no time, lashing out with a kick to the dog's face that sent it reeling.

He turned quickly, scanning the area for his dropped gun. Seeing it under the edge of an old Toyota, he made a scramble for it. His arm screamed in pain as he grasped for the gun and spun around to face his attacker again. By the time he had the gun; the dog had regained its composure as well and was prepared to make another charge. Philip leveled the revolver with a hand that was in great pain and fired a round at the beast. He missed again! The dog was no more than five feet away when Philip fired his final round out of his .38 S&M K38 revolver.

The shot struck the dog just behind the shoulder. At that range, the bullet exited the other side of the animal in a spray of blood and tissue. The dog dropped almost instantly. It whimpered a few times before choking on its own blood and dying.

Once Philip felt confident the animal wasn't going to move again, he fell back down onto the pavement and sighed. He took the empty revolver from his right hand and set it down beside him. He winced in pain as he examined his sleeve. The dog's bite marks could be clearly seen on his own forearm. There were some serious tears in the canvas and he could see blood. He now needed the trader more than ever. He was now completely out of ammunition, he would need medicine (he had some basic first aid materials, but no antibiotics). As he positioned himself for treating his arm, he realized that sometime during the brawl with the canine, he had broken his bow and the few arrows he had. These would now be useless as well.

Philip wanted to get his arm taken care of as quickly as he could. He didn't think taking his gear off out in the middle of the road would be prudent, so he scanned the nearby area for a house or building. One side of the street had once been used for storage of city electrical components – transformers, insulators, and even the long wooden poles. There were a few metal buildings on the lot, but nothing Philip thought would provide him the kind of location he wanted to treat his wounds. On the other side of the street, however, were the remains of a small apartment community. It was just a few buildings and none of them were more than two stories high. The few buildings he could see looked to be mostly intact.

"Might as well." Philip said, exasperated. "Not going to do my any good sitting here."

Philip stood up, wincing at the pain in his arm as he got to his feet. He moved around the corpse of the dog. He felt bad about it, in a way. The dog was really only doing what he was doing – surviving. It was what anyone still around was forced to do. If you didn't do that, you died! Obviously some people and animals played the survival game better than others. This time Philip had won. What about next time? He shook his head at the thought and pushed it back in his mind. It was not something one wanted to dwell on. It wasn't healthy.

He walked around the edge of the Toyota from which he'd pulled his gun and made his way across the street and towards the entrance to the apartment complex. There was still part of a sign announcing that he was at Parkside Apartments. The first building he came to was a single story structure that looked to be partially intact. Wooden boards were over the windows and the front door, indicating someone had used it since the war.

He wanted to be cautious so he walked around the backside of the building as well. Here he found more boarded up windows, but a back door had been broken through at some point. Whoever had used it had either abandoned it or been forced to abandon it. Before entering, Philip finished his circuit of the exterior of the building. He didn't want any surprises as he was going to be more vulnerable while he tended to his arm. The rest of the building was as secure as it could be, so Philip determined it would work as a shelter. The sky was getting darker too, and it was getting late in the day. Philip figured he would probably need to stay the night.

First his arm, though.

He went back to the broken door and stepped into the building. It was dark inside with all the windows boarded up. He stepped over a large desk that had once been used to barricade the door and he could see the remains of the wooden beams used to block the door as well. Whoever had tried to stay here had made the back door – the one Philip was now using – their point of entry. They had boarded everything else up from both inside and outside, while the back door was only closed off from the inside.

Once past the debris, he took a look around the building. It was divided into only about four rooms. The main room, which he was standing in, was the largest. Three other rooms were set to the side. Two of them had large openings for windows facing the interior of the building and door frames for doors. The room between these had been a lavatory at some point.

Philip felt the need to secure the building, but wasn't sure he could before he dealt with his arm. He weighed the options and decided even if it caused more pain, it was best to do some minor repairs to the back door before treating his wound. He turned back to the open doorway behind him and looked at the desk. While it had been shoved out of the way, it was still sound. It would work for his purposes as well.

He grimaced some when he had to use his injured arm to lift the desk in place. He set it partially into the doorway, trying to cover as much of the entry as he could with the desk. Once in place he found some chairs around the room and shoved them into the open spaces. He stepped back once complete and eyed his work. It wouldn't hold for long, but it would give him some pretty good warning that someone was coming.

Now it was time to do something about his arm.

He set his backpack down in the floor near the bathroom entry. He did have the good fortune of finding a mostly intact mirror in the room. However, with only fading sunlight filtered through boarded-up windows, it might not do him much good. Once he had his pack down, he noticed to long wires coming from the light above the mirror and followed them down to a black box on the floor. Philip immediately recognized the set-up. Above the mirror was an old fluorescent tube in its ballast. The connecting wires, which would have gone into the wall in the old world, were pulled out and dangling to the floor. At the ends of each wire was a small clip. On the floor was an old car battery. He wondered if it would still work as he connected the two wires to the battery.

Sure enough, the light bulb flickered to life and glowed in the dark like a miniature bar of sunlight. Philip stood amazed. He'd not had the luxury of electricity many times since leaving the comforts of the Mojave district. One place he'd stayed in the ruins of Norman, near Oklahoma City, had possessed a working generator running off who knew what cobbled together electrical rubbish. It had been worth the ridiculous amount of caps it cost to get a hot shower. But that had been a long time ago, before a hungry dog had tried to eat his arm.

Philip worked his duster off, cringing from the pain. Once the duster was of, he had to work his riot gear off as well, which was easier as it was mostly the torso piece and no arm parts. Once he had those off, he looked at the sleeve of his shirt. It was ripped in several places and he could see the teeth marks and blood soaking into the fabric of the clothing. Philip slowly pulled the shirt sleeve up so he could get to the wounds underneath.

The dog's teeth had ripped open his flesh on his right forearm. He was bleeding pretty badly and would need stitches for the wound to heal properly. He reached back into his pack, rummaged around and pulled out a small leather pouch. He unwrapped the package and pulled out a small emergency suture kit, some wound antiseptic wash and a roll of three inch bandage for dressing his wound. Setting this aside, he embarked on the painful task of cleaning, suturing, and dressing his arm.

It took a little while (especially one-handed), but eventually Philip had his arm as clean as he could get it and bandaged up. It didn't feel much better, even though he'd taken a Med-X shot. He only had one hypodermic of Med-X, so he had limited himself to a quarter-dose. He wanted to get his hands on some antibiotics as he had no clue what germs the dog had been carrying. He'd have to wait at least until morning before he moved on in search of Old Bagger. He hoped it would be worth his time.

After he had made some more permanent repairs to the rear door of the building, he settled in for the night. As he sat on the floor against the wall, he reached into his bag and pulled out the small transceiver he'd been carrying with him since he left the Mojave months ago. He set it on the ground beside him and twisted the dial to turn it on. As the unit came to life he began to hear the signal he'd initially picked up at the listening post in Boulder City. As he'd moved East the signal grew stronger and was now pretty clear. As he listened to the signal and the message it broadcast, the battery in the bathroom gave up and the fluorescent light flickered out. Philip paid it no mind. He listened contentedly to the message and drifted off to sleep.

Atlanta Station One

Poseidon Project underway, need help

Power levels high

Please come

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