"How much further?" Sadie asked tiredly. My 13 year old little sister shifted the heavy brown canvas pack on her back with a groan, obviously drained from walking all evening. She was such a trooper. I was proud of her. I wanted to take the heavy pack from her, but I was carrying almost twice as much as her already.

"Should only be another mile or so," I responded. We had been walking for more than two weeks, only stopping to make small camps to sleep during the day and resume moving in the late evening and well into the night. The desert nights were always cold and we didn't lose as much water from sweat walking during the cold nights as we did during the day. But our stops were short and never allowed us to regain our full strength. If we stopped long enough to fully recuperate we would lose the gap we gained. I yawned as the sun began to set and heard Sadie do the same behind me.

In all honesty, we were both tired. We have covered over twenty miles today and our feet and legs were extremely sore. But I had no right to complain in front of Sadie. I mean come on, I'm six years older than her and she's kept pace this whole time. We had resolved not to stop until we reached the next town.

I looked up and the sun was starting to set. We needed to hurry if we were going to make it before nightfall. If we approached the town at night we wouldn't receive as friendly a welcome as we would if it were broad daylight.

"Come on Sadie, we need to hurry," I urged patiently.

"Okay Ashley. But promise that we can rest for a whole day once we get to the town!"

"..."

"Ashley?"

"Yeah, sure. Just keep your stuff packed and be ready to move at the first sign of trouble." Sadie nodded.

"Okay."

We did a light jog over the last few hills and finally had the town in sight. I looked back at Sadie and saw the she was huffing and puffing breathlessly.

'Dammit. Sometimes I wish she would just act like a regular girl and complain when something was wrong.' I thought.

"Sadie? Come here for a sec," I asked, lowering my pack to the ground and motioning her to do the same. Still out of breath, the 13 year old walked over and looked at me questioningly. I quickly swooped down and picked her up, throwing her on my back. She squealed in surprise at the sudden piggy-back ride and then started giggling as I spun around.

It was a waste of energy, but I didn't care. If she was smiling and happy then I didn't care at all.

"You good?" I asked as I lowered myself to tie the bags together and detached the thin wood sled that was bound to my pack.

"Y-yeah, thanks," she replied, a big smile still on her face. I set the bags on the sled and stood back up with Sadie still on my back.

"No problem, you've done well and I'm proud of you."

"Thanks, sis," she said as she hugged me tighter around my neck. I smiled and started to walk towards the town, dragging our packs behind us. The sun was getting lower and the air began to cool.

'We need to get to shelter before it begins to really get cold,'I thought. Now that we had finally made it to a town I was looking forward to spending some time out of the cold and the heat. It took about 15 minutes to get to the first house, which oddly enough had no door; just boards covering the entrance. I carried on down the road with Sadie on my back and then got a shiver, but it had nothing to do with the nippy night air.

Sadie settled her face in the crook of my neck and drifted off to sleep as I walked.

The moon had just begun to rise when I noticed something was wrong. There were no lights on. That and it was deathly quiet. From what I'd heard this place was supposed to be active and lively, even at night. I shrugged it off and kept on, looking for any signs of life. I felt Sadie begin to shift on my back. I craned my neck to check on her. She began to wake up and looked at me then over my shoulder. Suddenly she tensed up and froze. Confused, I turned my head. "Sadie, what are you..."

Then I saw it, the first signs of life for miles.

A rotted corpse with oozing spots of infection and gangrene, flaps of decaying flesh hanging off of the torso, arms, and face. Rotted teeth and gray, unfocused eyes were set into a head that was in worse condition than the rest of the body. But what frightened me most, was that the corpse was eating a dead human body, probably one of the townspeople. It turned to look at me, and opened its mouth wider to let out a screeching cry.

That's when Sadie screamed.

I quickly clamped a hand over Sadie's mouth but it was too late. I already heard more moans coming from every direction.

'Crap crap crap crap crap! We need to get out of here,'I thought frantically. Dropping the tether to the sled, I leaned back and centered my weight on my left foot, striking out at the feral ghoul in front of me. It stumbled back and fell flat on its back. With the ghoul out of the way I spotted the fence. A chain-link fence with an open gate looked to be our only reliable escape. With Sadie still on my back I dashed for the gate, seeing several feral ghouls begin to move in my peripheral vision. I ran and dodged the outstretched arms of a sprinting ghoul which fell to the ground in a heap. When we reached the gate I put Sadie down and quickly closed the gate. I took Sadie's hand and looked for somewhere to hide. Examining the area I quickly realized this was a scrap yard, which meant that there should be cars or dumpsters nearby. I jumped at the loud clang from the ghouls pushing mindlessly against to gate. I swept my gaze around the scrap yard and spotted the shape of stacked cars in the far corner. I pulled Sadie over and we hid behind the cars, hunkering down hoping that they would eventually forget us.

The moans of the feral ghouls began to grow louder as time progressed. We hadn't been hiding for very long before it became too much for Sadie and she clapped her hands over her ears and screamed. I hastily put my had over her mouth but once again, I was too late. Now the ghouls on the other side of town would be coming and I could hear the ghouls pushing on the fence begin to move towards us. I held my hand over Sadie's mouth to muffle her screams but I was almost to the point of screaming myself! The ghouls had gathered to a huge group and were screeching at us, fingers and hands stretching through the chain link, gray lifeless eyes staring at us with animal hunger and rage. The fence began to scree and cave under the weight, at this rate there wouldn't be anything separating us!

'We need to get out of here! We need to get away! But there's no other exit! Oh, please someone help!' I thought desperately, clinging to Sadie even tighter.

BOOM

We both jumped as the ground trembled and the ghouls blew up into bits and pieces in front of us.

I looked up and saw a man run out from behind a building. In the dark it was hard to see details but I could see the moonlight glint off a metallic silver object being held in his hand: a gun.

I grabbed Sadie's hand and we quickly took off towards the gate. I undid the latch and threw open the gate, sprinting towards an abandoned house. We hid back there and I took a moment for my scrambled mind to think about what just happened.

'The ghouls blow up and right after that that man comes out and starts toward us with a gun. Does he want to kill us? Is he Legion? No, I think they only use spears and swords. NCR? Maybe, but where would the rest of them be? I can't trust him. I can't trust anyone. Only Sadie. What do I do? We need to get away! We need to run!'

I braced myself to begin sprinting off into the wasteland and Sadie sensed my sudden movement, getting ready herself.

'No, stop. Just calm down Ash, slow and steady breaths. That's it, now lets think without that animal instinct in the way. We can't run because there's nothing around for miles and we left our supplies back there. We can't know what his plans are for us, so we need to find something to knock him out with. Then we can tie him up and find out who he is and what he wants. Alright, that somewhat resembles a plan. Now what can I use?'

I looked around and saw a beaten-up baseball bat sitting not 5 feet away in a pile of junk. I reached over and inspected it, checking to see if it would do any good. Other than having a large crack down the middle and having several splinters on the handle there didn't seem to be any significant damage. 'This'll do,'I thought to myself. I shifted my grip so I avoided most of the splinters and peeked around the corner.

The man was standing in the middle of a crater where the ghouls had once been. He seemed distracted by something, as if lost in thought. 'Now's my chance!' I crouched and snuck up behind him as his gaze began to slowly wander away from the scrapyard.

'Crap! Don't turn around yet!'I thought frantically. I stood up and got ready to swing, aiming for his left temple. As he turned to face me things moved as if in slow motion and I got a good look at his face in the moonlight. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest, this man was so unlike any others I had seen. He had white hair turned a light reddish brown from dirt and his eyes were a startlingly bright blue that seemed to reflect everything he was seeing with an intensity that was hard to describe. But the lower half of his face was covered by a strange kind of mask with a tube coming out of the right side. It looked to be expertly crafted from before the war, but had several dents and scratches from extended use. There was a slight sound of his breathing emanating from it, slow and steady, even after all of this chaos. He was so calm, and I had panicked at the first ghoul!

'Who is this guy? He's in his twenties so why does he have white hair? What's with that strange mask? How can he be so calm after all of this?'

His blue eyes settled on me and I saw myself in them.Seeing the dirty, angry girl in those blue mirrors holding the bat snapped me out of my thoughts and I pulled my arms forward; smashing the bat into his head, but not strong enough to do permanent damage. Er, I hope.

He crumpled to the ground and lay there in a heap, his chest slowly rising and falling. With that done I called Sadie over and got the rope out of her small backpack. I tied up his arms and legs and tried to pick him up but failed miserably.

'Man, this guy is heavy!'I thought.

I ended up dragging him by his wrists to a nearby house with an open door. Sadie followed close behind, looking around warily for any sign of feral ghouls or other undesirables. Once we were in the house I set him up against the wall in the corner and looked over at Sadie.

We just kind of looked at each other for a few seconds. We really didn't know what to say about this peculiar situation.

"Well," I started.

"I guess I should go get our gear. Could you stay here and keep an eye on him? Try to pat him down for weapons of any kind and put them in one of the rooms. We can't be too careful with this guy."

"Yeah, okay." Sadie said, already walking towards the white-haired man.

I started walking through the night towards our supplies, thinking on what we should do now.

Nothing came to mind.

We just have to hope that He doesn't catch up with us while we deal with this guy.