Light.
Harsh light flooded in through Jack's eyelashes. He opened his eyes and was immediately blinded by the hot Wasteland sun. Slamming them shut again, he tried to speak. Only a dry, rattling breath escaped his cracked lips.
Water. He needed water. All he could taste was blood in his mouth. A faint buzzing in his ears grew into voices. He tried opening his eyes again.
He was curled up in a small wire cage. He was not chained down or bound in any way, just confined to this cage by a small padlock. Thoughts of trying to break the lock and escape entered his mind, and fled just as quickly as he noticed the patrol of raiders encircling the cage. There were more than he remembered last night, five or six in total. Jack ran his hands through his hair. The back of his head was covered in sticky, semi-dried blood. To add to the fun, he found himself completely devoid of any clothing.
"So you're some kinda trader, that right?" said the voice. It was the voice belonging to the leader of the men who captured him last night.
"Heh heh, only the best, my friend." Jack painfully turned his head to see. "They call me the Scarab… like the beetle! Heh heh."
Scarab was an old man. A very small old man, with a filthy red cloak wrapped around him with its ends laying sprawled across the dirt. A spotted and wrinkled hand clutched at it with long fingers, keeping it drawn tightly across his frail frame. His face was weathered and beaten, with many a scar to show. Thin white hair drifted lazily about in the wind, matched by thick white eyebrows.
However, his eyes betrayed the appearance of a normal old man. One was blue and one was green, but both sparkled with the mischievous fire of a youth up to no good. His lips gave way to a huge smile spotted with yellowed teeth that stretched from ear to ear. The man had a funny air about him.
"Scarab, huh? You look like another pathetic old asshole to me. If you're really a trader, whatcha got to sell?"
"Ha! Why I reckon just a little bit o' everything, son. Guns, clothes, food, and the best… supplements you'll find! And I'll make you a deal, hoo boy will Scarab make you a deal!"
"I bet you will." The leader made a quick motion and there was a glint of reflected sunlight from his side as he raised a pistol. The others sniggered and similarly drew their weapons.
"Well now boy, let's not get unfriendly about it! Say, what might that be in that little ol' cart of yours, hey boy?" The old man looked directly into the cage and Jack felt a chill pass through his body.
"Just a new pet of mine. He's awful hungry, maybe we might could let 'im out and show you some of his tricks." More sinister chuckling.
"Oh, that's quite alright my boy. Say, you were lookin' to make that deal now weren't you?"
"Yeah. You just lay what you got on the ground right here, real slow like."
"Alright then. You want it?" he moved faster than Jack had ever seen anybody move, "You got it!"
Then came the sound Jack Augustine knew all too well, the sound that had been forever burned into his memories and his dreams; the sound of automatic gunfire. The combination of the rapid, air-splitting cracks and the squelching, skull-splitting thuds. Before the raiders could aim their pistols, they were rent apart and droplets of scarlet blood showered over the ground. Jack shielded his face and looked through the space between his arms to see the raider's leader fall to his knees, trying to catch the wet coils of his intestines as they fell to the ground with a sickening plop.
Jack kept screaming long after the bullets stopped.
. . . . .
Jesus shit that boy can holler! thought Scarab as he tucked his submachine gun back into the belt of his cloak. Never in his life had he heard a man scream like that, not even when being torn apart by one of those fucking yellow-skinned monsters. He looked around at the carnage before him. Six. Six bodies strewn about the blood-soaked earth before him, around a very scared two-headed cow and an even more scared boy in a cage. One of the bodies lay close to him, its face caved in by the force of the bullet. He'd tried to be the hero, rushing an old man with nothing but an old tire iron. Scarab kicked the lifeless corpse over onto its front with contempt. He shook the sleeves of his cloak off of his wrinkled forearms and held his palms up towards the sky. His hands were shaking again. He was getting too old for this shit.
The boy finally shut up. Scarab took a long look at him. He squinted with one eye, trying to see out of the other. The good one. The green one, he supposed.
Kid looked no older than his late teens. Tears still streamed over his face and his mangy black hair was covered in blood. He was shaking, and lean muscle showed through his tanned skin. He must be one of those escaped slaves, to be in that kind of shape and still be such a pussy. Poor boy had probably been through a lot, but then, who nowadays hadn't? Scarab had seen more than his fair share of dead people, yes sir-ee he had. Made a good bit of them dead too. He didn't know how old he was, but he figured it to be around sixty.
"Woo-ee boy, I'll say, you're sure as hell naked, ain't you?" Scarab said as he forced another cracked smile. The boy said nothing, just looked down at the floor of his prison.
"Not a talker? Boy, that's quite alright I say, quite alright. Got a name?"
Nothing.
"Well now, well now… they call me Scarab. Like the beetle! Ha ha."
"I – I know."
"Ha, you CAN talk boy! I knew it, I just sure as shit knowed it, boy." he smiled even wider, his face looking like it was going to crack. "So where you from?"
"Paradise Falls."
"Oh ho, one of them slave types! Well boy, you want outta that cage or you gonna stay in there for them mole rats to pick at?"
"Please."
Scarab limped towards the cage. He reached back into one of his cloak's inner pockets, pulling out a weapon. This time it wasn't the submachine gun, it was an antique police-issue pistol from before the war. He raised it to shoulder height, squinted one eye, and fired two shots at the lock on the cage. He heard the boy yelp again, like a wounded dog. Gun shy, that's all he was. The door swung open and the naked kid clambered out.
"Well ain't you gonna say thank you? Scarab saved your hide, you bet he did!"
"Thank you. You said you had clothes, didn't you?"
"If you got the caps, you betcha!"
The slave kid looked down at his feet and kicked at the dirt. Scarab suppressed a scowl. The only thing he hated more than deadbeat broke-ass wanderers was raiders. But an idea trickled into his head.
"Say boy.. don't take no offense, you hear now? but you seem like you're in a bit of a fix. I got clothes, I got guns, I got everything you need out here.. and I got protection! Yes sah, Scarab's seen it all, and I was thinkin', how's about you and me join up for a little while? You ain't got a whole lot better to do now, you hear?"
The boy seemed to think about it for a while. He sat in the dirt and rubbed his tired face with his dirty hands, and after a long pause, he spoke.
"Jack."
"Say what?"
"That's my name. Jack Augustine."
Scarab smiled another one of those crooked grins.
Fresh meat.
. . . . .
Scarab looked like he was up to something, but after weighing his chances, Jack decided it was better to tag along with a crooked old man with a gun than to wander this nightmarish desert, this last vestige of hell, alone and naked. He had no idea where to go, no friends, and apparently the gang of raiders and slavers he'd seen visiting Paradise Falls was hunting him now.
He removed his hands from his face and saw the old man standing in front of him with a bundle of clothing. Jack took them graciously and used one of the shirt's sleeves to dab the dirt-stained tears from his face. There was a makeshift leather pair of pants, a white but stained long-sleeved t-shirt, a rope belt with some kind of holster, and a weathered pair of boots, the kind that the cowboys in all the ancient posters and magazines wore. He dressed himself quickly and caught a wide-brimmed hat Scarab threw his way.
"Heh, there you go, boy, dressed to impress I'd say!" said the old man as he shuffled back to his pack animal. "You got a gun?"
Jack realized he didn't. He looked around the bodies lying before him and identified that of the raider's leader. Still held in his outstretched hand was that revolver, casting glints of sunlight onto the ground beside it despite the blood spattered across the barrel. Jack took it and checked the chamber. Still had six rounds. He looked around again and saw a rifle slung over the shoulder of the body furthest from a cage. He bent over and picked it up, slinging it across his back and tucking the pistol into his belt.
"Boy, boy, boy, you just the reg'lar cowboy now ain't you?" laughed the old man. He tossed a small canvas sack at the boy. "Them guns take .32 bullets, that'll be enough to last you least till we get past D.C." Jack stuffed the bag inside his pack. "And here's lunch!"
Scarab handed Jack a blackened chunk of meat. Jack realized just how hungry he was and tore eagerly into the food. It tasted funny, like fruit that had gone bad, but it was better than nothing. It burned going down his threat and he began to feel slightly queasy almost at once. Probably just the small amount of radiation that still inhabited everything in the wastes.
"Now boy, you come over here and sit beside the Scarab, yes sir-ee I'd like that!" the old man chuckled again. Jack obeyed and bit into the dry meat again before taking a seat by Scarab, leaning against a rock. The old man smiled then started eating his own food.
After they had eaten in silence, Jack felt compelled to speak.
"Where are you going to go?"
"Well, heh, that's the question for everybody nowadays, ain't it son?"
"Yeah, but you've got to have some kind of a plan."
The old man leaned in close. His breath was hot and bore the putrid smell of that meat.
"You want to know my plan? You really want to know?" His voice was alarmingly clear now, none of the wheezing and friendliness of his formal tone.
"Yeah, I do."
"There's a place. Far southwest of here, only accessible by this one tunnel. Called Adams Air Force Base, yes sir-ee," he laughed and clapped his hands with delight. "It was a secret installation before the bombs fell, and word has it that it's still intact."
"What in the hell are you going to do at some old military base?"
"Them planes are old, but they're not destroyed. No, I'm reckoning there's a hangar somewhere on that base that still has some planes that haven't been scrapped for parts. It's a shot in the dark, but I'm figurin' we can get our hands on one of them whirly-birds."
"And where would you go? There's nothing but ruins. The world is dead, Scarab."
"Not so fast," and his eye took on that insane sparkle again. "I've seen a lot of people in my time boy, heard a lot of stories. More than a couple say there's a safe place far, far away from here. Maybe not even in the good ol' U.S. of A., but I say to hell with it. It's better than dying out here, right boy?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Are you going alone?"
"Heh, I don't know. That's for you to answer."
Jack looked at the ground again. It was a gamble. Crossing miles of dangerous terrain with this old man, with nothing but a hope of a way out, and even then, only a hope of some place untouched by the Great War. He'd be much better off continuing on his way to Megaton, trying to make a home for himself here. But...
"I'm in."
"Woo-hee! That's what I wanna hear! Now boy, there's a couple of buildings still standin' not too far from here, not to goddamn far at all. We gonna shack up for the afternoon, we leave tonight!"
Jack looked towards the sky. He had a sick sensation that this would be the last time he saw that unforgiving Wasteland sun.
