2
The bastard didn't even know it was me. I had escorted an older lady from Underworld all the way out to Girder Shade, where she had business of her own. After she'd spent a few minutes in one of the wooden shacks she came back out with a leather satchel. She said this was where we parted company and asked if I was going back to Underworld.
"Yeah," I said.
"I don't suppose you'd consider taking a package back for me, dear? I promised Tulip I'd send it to her."
"Sure, why not?" I said. "I'll give it to Tulip." She handed it over, dry bits of skin flaking off her fingers, and I stuffed it in my rucksack. She didn't wear gloves, but she'd found a wide pink hat somewhere and she wore it all the time. Always struck me as funny, because she didn't look much older than I do. It was like she'd decided it was time to be an old lady, so she'd act like one.
"You be careful, dear," was the last thing she told me. It's not like I wasn't listening. It just didn't do me any good.
The whole trip I'd had the uneasy feeling we were being followed, but I never saw or heard anybody. That made me really really nervous, because on those rare occasions when this happens it means somebody is following me but they're as good as I am at walking soft. Which rules out most Raiders and nearly all slavers, but it's still very bad. Sometimes a yao guai will track you for miles and you'll never see it. If they don't try to pull you down the first day, they usually lose interest pretty fast. Same with plain wild dogs. Besides, I'd had this feeling since the outskirts of D.C. If a feral Ghoul was after me they were being weirdly patient about it and that made me more nervous yet.
So I took off out of Girder Shade in the early morning, looking over my shoulder all the way. I got out from under the highway and headed out. At the time I was thinking to stay the night at Jocko's, an old gas station not too far from there. The walls were wood and tin, but not even I could sneak into it without making a noise – the whole thing was too creaky. I didn't go straight there. I went North to where there were some rocks and my trail would be hard to follow, stuck to them until they looped around toward the South, and stepped off into a radioactive mudflat that a smoothskin couldn't follow me through without being very sorry afterwards. (Project Purity might've cleaned the water, but it'd take more than that to get the rads out of the dirt.) You can't tell something's radioactive by looking at it, but a Ghoul can always tell where there's radiation. I don't know what it feels like to anyone else, but I get kind of a funny tingle on whatever skin is bare and aimed at it.
Eventually the mudhole turned into a shallow pond, which was probably rad-free but wasn't looking too clean. There were still no mirelurks hanging around, which was good. At least, that's what I was thinking when I heard the heavy boom of the .44, and then the bullet hit.
I didn't see where it came from. I was moving Southeast at that point and the sun had only just come up, so it was still in my eyes. I'd thought it was worth the risk because whoever was following me would have it in his eyes, too. It never occurred to me he might know the terrain as well as I did and lay for me behind a stony outcrop next to the pond.
It was like being punched in the stomach, but it didn't hurt too much at first. I was already diving for the nearest boulder when I heard the second shot. I felt the breeze as it went by, and then I was on my knees behind the rock with my plasma rifle in my hands and my rucksack on the ground in front of me. About that time it registered what I'd heard and what it had to be. I looked down at my belly. There was a bleeding hole in my leather vest. It didn't look too bad until I felt around back and found the other hole, which was a lot bigger. My hand came away wet.
I wiped it on my jeans and wiggled my toes. I could still feel all of them. I still had my ruck, but now did not seem like a good time to go fishing around in there for stimpaks.
I heard the rattle and click of somebody shoving a couple more bullets into the Magnum. I don't know why I knew then who it was. Lots of guys use that kind of gun. Maybe something about the sound had stuck in my memory. Maybe it was something about the fact he was taking time to reload a gun that wasn't empty.
"What'd you do that for?" I said, still behind my rock.
"You moved pretty fast," said a familiar voice. "Not as fast as me, though. You toss me that package you've got in your pack and I'll call it quits."
"You and me are a long way from quits, Jay," I growled. He was quiet for a second, probably trying to figure out who I was. My voice is a lot raspier than it was, and the bullet hole (which was just starting to hurt) wasn't helping that any. "Why'd you have to go and kill him?"
"Kill who?" he didn't sound very concerned, just interested.
"McPherson," I said. (Now I remember his name.) There was another sort of pause. I could picture him over there behind his outcrop, squatting with one arm resting on his knee while he thought. I wondered if he was tanned as dark as he'd used to get. He used to look kind of funny with his hair blond and his skin browner than mine. He'd be rangy, not too tall but big through the shoulders. That was how I remembered him, anyhow. I'd used to think he wasn't too hard to look at. It about turned my stomach to think it now.
"You a relative?" he said after a minute.
"No, you asshole," I said, trying to keep my voice from sounding weak. This was getting harder. I could feel blood soaking the top of my jeans in the back. "My name was Garcia."
"Garcia..." He sounded sort of surprised. "Connie Garcia?"
"Not any more," I said. "Now it's Thistle."
"So you did make it out of there," said Jay. "I never thought you'd end up a Ghoul, though. When you didn't come after me I thought you must be dead after all."
"Didn't know where to look," I said. "And here you found me instead." I turned up the power feed on the plasma rifle a little so he could hear it start to hum.
"It don't matter either way," said Jay. "I killed McPherson for the same reason I'm gonna have to have that package you took from the old lady. Somebody's paying me."
I should've figured that one out sooner, really. I'd known the first time I saw Jay he was too good to be out guarding one merchant. Explained why McPherson told me he'd come cheaper than I had. I wondered who a scrawny gunsmith in a stripey suit could've made that mad at him, but it didn't seem really relevant.
"You know what's in the package?" I said.
"Don't care," said Jay.
"Okay," I said. Now I was getting mad. Not about McPherson – I hadn't really known him and for all I knew, he'd had it coming – but about me. Jay didn't sound sorry. It didn't bother him that he'd made me into what most people would consider a monster. This wasn't really any different than what I'd expected from him, but it still made me angry. I kept hold of the plasma rifle with one hand (that one cost me, let me tell you) and fumbled the package out of the ruck. It was a satchel made of leather, sewed shut. I tore the stitches out with my teeth and pulled it open. There was something silky inside.
I pulled it out and stared at it. It was underwear. There was a leopard-print pair of panties and a nightie to go over top. Jay had shot me in the stomach and I was very likely going to bleed out because somebody had paid him to retrieve a set of lingerie.
"Here you go," I said, and tossed the underwear up in the air and blew them into plasma. I did the same with the top. Then the satchel. It flew far enough to make a satisfying rain of green goo over the outcrop where Jay was still hiding.
"What'd you go and do that for?" said Jay. He sounded a little annoyed now, like maybe he'd got a small plasma burn. I grinned at the boulder even though I could see little spots now.
"You got two choices," I said. "Depending whether or not you actually knew what you were looking for." I slid down and leaned my shoulder against the rock, trying to breathe deep. "You can go tell your boss you saw the package blow up. Or you can come over here and try to get it back, if you think that wasn't it."
"That was it," said Jay. "I never saw it, but I remember you that well."
I could've laughed then, except it would've hurt too bad. I heard the crunch of heeled shoes on the gravel and dirt. Jay could walk without making much noise if he wanted. He was doing it on purpose so I could hear him. He walked right out where I could see him with the .44 in one hand and a stimpak in the other. Why he thought I wouldn't shoot him then, I don't know. Why I didn't shoot him then is more than I can tell you. Maybe because he was still pretty easy on the eyes.
"Old times' sake, Garcia," said Jay, and tossed the stimpak in the dirt in front of me and turned his back and walked away.
I cursed him under my breath, but I grabbed the stimpak and jabbed it into the hole in my back anyhow. I just about screamed at the way this felt, but I managed to bite through my lower lip instead while I pressed the plunger. I could feel the bleeding slow down. It took both of the stimpaks in my rucksack to stop it all the way. And that still left me with a pretty good hole in back, a smaller one in front, and a pair of rubber legs. I sat there leaning against the rock for a while, thinking about my chances.
Then I opened my eyes and it was dark. I felt for my gun and my ruck, trying to figure out how long I'd been out. My eyes adjust to the dark pretty fast. The moon was up and no roving predator had found me yet. I was still leaning against that same rock next to the murky pond. The pond was at the bottom of a hollow, with my rock on one gentle slope and the radioactive mud most of the rest of the way around.
The power cell on my rifle was doing fine. I must've powered it down without even knowing it.
The whole middle of my body felt stiff and sore. My bitten lip was swollen. I shucked one glove and went to crawl over by the nearest edge of the mud. That hurt pretty bad and I had to lay there for a second on my side before I could do what I'd come for. I untucked my vest and shirt, pulled them up, and packed the mud as far into the hole as I could front and back. After that I had to lie there a while longer and things sort of went away again. When they came back the stars were out still, but the moon was gone. I managed to get back over by my rock and pulled one of my two water bottles out of my ruck. I was careful opening it. My fingers felt like sausages and, maybe because of the stress, my right hand was bare down to the muscle.
I managed to get myself a drink without spilling too much. That made me feel a little better. I got the fingerless glove back onto my skinless right hand so it would have a little more protection. Losing skin doesn't really hurt a Ghoul, and even if it had, it couldn't hurt as much as the hole in my gut. I was still thirsty, and the pond was right there, so I drank the rest of what was in the bottle. Then I settled as best I could, propped between the rock and my pack, and let things drift again for a while.
The morning sun woke me up. I thought about trying to get some of the blood out of my clothes, so the smell wouldn't attract anything, but I couldn't see myself doing it. Now I was feeling some bruises I must've gotten when I dove for the rock. My lip was still fat. And the middle of me didn't hurt too bad as long as I didn't move or breathe too deeply.
At least there was no fever, no infection. Except for tailored viruses (which you don't see too many of out here in the Wasteland) there just aren't that many microbes that can live on something as lousy with rads as a Ghoul is. I'd packed the wound full of radioactive mud, too, which ought to make me heal faster than a smoothskin. A Ghoul's got to be careful of that. Too much radiation will eventually turn you into a Glowing One, and that will kill your chances of ever seeing any company that isn't feral and crazy. Which, since Glowing Ones are feral and crazy too, probably won't matter much to you by that point.
At the moment it was looking like a better risk than just hoping the wound would close on its own. I was plenty thankful for the radiation right then, and being a Ghoul didn't seem too bad, either.