Most people probably do not know the name of the city anymore, despite its endless miles of concrete, broken buildings and roads. The residents here are more concerned with trying to stay alive. Of course, that occasionally means ending someone else's life. In the wastelands it's a general rule of thumb that someone's good day of begotten items usually came at the expense of someone else's bad day.
And on this side street in what was once New York City, a gang of raiders loitered around their makeshift bastion, waiting to give someone a bad day.
A raider gang leader stood outside a broken building, its entrance flanked by hastily erected barricades. He stroked his Chinese assault rifle for a moment, savoring the heat of the day as he looked down the narrow street. His cronies also milled about. However, he was starting to get impatient.
"Bella, you see anything up there?" the raider shouted up to a young if weathered woman handling a sniper rifle three stories above him. Bella sighed in exasperation, that man demanded a lot.
"Not a single thing, Chief, and if you keep yelling like that, you'll scare them all away." Bella shouted back.
Back on the ground, Chief grumbled and shook his head before looking back discontentedly at the empty alley. His second in command, Buck, quietly stepped up to him.
"Hey, calm down Chief. We can go another day without a hit, it's not like we're low on anything. Besides, I'm not too keen on another toy for Jaws to go walking by our way. I've seen a lot of things running with other gangs but after what Jaws did to that last sap we captured, I think I'll be getting a whole new set of nightmares." Buck muttered. They both looked up on the second floor to see Jaws walk past one of the windows, idly warming up the chain blades on his Ripper.
"I'm just so bored. I need to see some blood." Chief complained, lighting up a cigarette.
And just at that moment, a single figure wearing a long, olive green coat stumbled into the alley.
"Looks like you'll get your wish." Buck murmured with a subtle but sadistic grin, his rotted teeth gleaming with the promise of much wanted torture to come.
Chief had a few early misgivings. He recognized that olive green coat; it was the uniform of the Regulators, the self appointed law bringers and vigilantes in the wastes. You never saw them alone, they usually traveled in teams. Of course, Bella never missed a thing from her perch and it really did look like this guy was alone.
"Hey, you! Buddy, there's a fee for passing through here." Chief yelled, taking a few steps towards the regulator. The man did not even seem armed. The man looked up, his amber hair matching with his trimmed goatee and soul patch. He too had a lit cigarette hanging in his mouth.
"Really? I thought this was a toll free road."
"Oh no there, wise guy. It'll cost you something." Chief retorted, pulling the cocking mechanism on his rifle. Inside the building, the wayward regulator could hear the sniggering of a dozen or so raiders laughing at his impending demise. He nervously scratched the back of his head.
"Well, I don't have much in the way of caps but I have a few things that might be useful to you." And with that, the enforcer suavely revealed the underside of his coat on both his sides, showing an amazing array of knives and daggers.
"Hmm, it'll cost you a little more than just that." Chief taunted, aiming down his iron sights now.
"Oh? How much more cause that's all I'm willing to show you." The enforcer shrugged.
"You can show me your spleen in all its red juices!" Jaws yelled from the second floor. More laughter from the raiders lurking in the building. The enforcer raise both hands now as if to signal he wanted a little more time.
"Whoa now, if you're going to have that attitude…I think you've seen enough." And with that, he abruptly became translucent, almost invisible.
"He's got a stealth boy! Bella, get a fix on him." Chief yelled. All he heard in response was a harsh whistle followed by a metallic clang. Chief then saw Bella's rifle fall from the window shortly followed by her body. Her head was missing.
And then all at once everything happened.
The unmistakable whine of a minigun warming up hit his ears when he saw a larger enforcer, a walking mountain of a man, casually strolling up the street, a blizzard of bullets spraying from his gun.
"You bastards, take that gunner out!" Chief yelled at the raiders in the building, all of whom started firing from the windows only to draw the wrath of the minigun.
Buck who was taking careful aim on the new enforcer with his bolt action rifle was finally able to line up the iron sights. He grinned for a moment, savoring the rush just before he heard a muffled pop. A bullet from a silenced 10mm gun had lodged in the back of his head.
On the second floor, Jaws watched a raider named Potato grab his preferred weapon, several armed grenades. Potato managed to evade the flying bullets from the minigun and cocked his arm back to throw the lethal ordnance at the black skinned enforcer with the heavy weapon. Just before the grenade left his hand, Jaws suddenly saw Potato's head leap off his neck and stick to the ceiling above, a large metal bolt holding it there. The armed grenade rolled to the bottom floor and went off, followed by several agonizing screams of his comrades below.
To make matters worse, he suddenly heard the roar of a flamethrower downstairs. Another enforcer had gone through the backdoor and was unleashing literal hell down there. The formerly blood thirst raider cowered as close as he could to the building wall away from the windows. He suddenly felt the wall behind him give way.
He had just one second to realize another metal bolt had blasted through the wall and bored through his heart.
Outside, Chief suddenly realized he was alone, the screams and flashes of fire inside the building had gone silent and nothing seemed to be firing from the upstairs floors on the large enforcer.
And before he could do anything, the first enforcer with all the knives suddenly appeared before him right in his face. His shock registered just as he felt the enforcer stab two knives into his chest, one from each of his hands. Chief fell flat on his back.
A few moments later, his vision swimming, Chief woke out of the black and saw the larger enforcer prepping another belt of ammo into his gun. Nearby, another enforcer took off his blast mask, having just finished using his flamethrower. Too late Chief felt something messing with his hand.
Chief screamed as he felt his trigger finger leave its place, forever separated from him. He looked up to find the first enforcer standing over him, a blooded dagger in one hand, a silenced pistol hanging from his hip. And there in his hand was Chief's disembodied finger.
And then yet a final enforcer appeared over him, this one wearing a brimmed hat and shaded glasses with his olive duster coat. Instead of bullets on his ammo belt, he saw polished metal spikes.
"Normally you're suppose to make sure they're dead before you do that." The one with the hat and glasses reprimanded the first enforcer.
"Really? He's still alive? I must have gotten excited and missed that."
"Well, yeah." The one with the hat said, pulling out a sleek, foot long blade from his coat and pointing at the two knives lodged on either side of Chief's chest.
"You stabbed too high, missed his lungs. That's still a sloppy way to do it."
"Fine, you want the honor?" the first said with a shrug. The one with the hat and glasses knelt down on a knee to speak to Chief directly. Chief was more transfixed with the man's single edged blade that ended in a surgical point.
"You tell me, because you're not worth the spike, laser blast or buckshot I got on me to end you and I don't feel like dirtying my blade." The enforcer told him. Chief just stuttered nervous fright.
"Tell you what, I just noticed inside there that you got a safe. We could use some of the ill begotten gains you might have in there. However, I also noticed there's a trip wire right in front of it. You put that safe right in plain sight from the entrance so that any fool would stumble right to it. Also, judging from a particular unique stench of death in there, I gather that trip wire connects to several hundred pounds of rotting Brahmin corpse. That's quite a lot of effort to put into a trap, almost like you were trying to make a statement." The enforcer with the hat told him, sheathing his sword and roughly dragging Chief to his feet.
"I'd say that's a lot of bull." And Chief was unceremoniously rough handled and forcefully shoved through the doorway.
The two enforcers sidestepped just in time to avoid Chief's corpse fly back out the doorway as quickly as it had entered.
--
Somewhere north of the city, the four enforcers marched back through the barren landscape, the trees long since gone in the atomic flood that swept the land two hundred years ago. The sun had set some time ago and now the moon's light was beginning to stand vigil over them.
"You doing okay back there, Carl?" the enforcer with all the knives asked the mountainous one with the minigun. He was weighed down with the most equipment.
"Doing just fine, Adam." Carl replied. Of course, Carl wondered why he, in addition to carrying his minigun and all its ammo, had to carry the bulk of the requisitioned weapons they got from the raiders while Adam was stuck carrying all the caps and fingers.
"Less chatter, more walk. The sooner we get back to the vault, the better I'll feel." The enforcer with the glasses and hat stated. He had stashed away most of the substances, medicines and spare parts.
"Do you ever calm down, James?" Adam retorted.
"Yes, when I'm in the vault." James replied, squinting through the dark.
"Haha, I can't wait to play with all this new stuff." The last enforcer announced, the one with the heavier armor under his coat, flamethrower and blast helmet. He had ironically stashed away any unexploded explosives.
"Sven, did you take any radioactive materials with you this time?" James asked unenthusiastically.
"Unfortunately no." Sven replied.
"Well you don't need any more of it. You glow enough as it is." James replied.
"But being bright is a good thing." Sven shrugged.
"Not when it gives away your position." Adam replied. Sven shot him a quizzical look.
"Since when did my job ever give you the impression it had anything to do with your line of work called 'stealth?'" Sven asked. Everyone else sighed.
And just over the ridge, the men could see the cavernous entrance to their vault, its face carved into the nearby hillside.
"Well, all in all, I'd say it was a good day." Adam smiled.