Chapter 2

Though she'd only been awake a few hours, Lydia was exhausted again, and fairly collapsed into a pile of old laundry in the house. The corpselike man also set up camp in the meager shelter the half-a-house offered. Although he seemed mildly irritated at her presence, he no longer insisted that she leave, much to her relief. Her hitting the Yao Guai (as he had told her they were called) in the head from that far away had been mostly a fluke, and she doubted she could have repeated the performance even with the help of VATS. She didn't mention this to the man, since she suspected that her apparent skill was the only reason he'd permitted her presence. Although, he had taken her pistol away. She didn't know how he expected her to be of any use without it, but she didn't really care. If they ran into something that he couldn't fight off, she didn't think she would be able to.

She watched him go about his business. He dragged away the bodies of the Yao Guai and the people he'd killed, then sat down against the wall with his legs stuck straight out and crossed. He took out a cigarette and a matchbook.

"I'm Lydia," she said. He didn't reply. She watched as he struck a match and held it up to the cigarette. He had a very slow, precise way of moving. He tossed the match on the ground and put the rest back in his pocket. He glanced up to see her watching him. He gave her a hard, expressionless stare in return.

"What's your name?" Lydia pushed, squirming a bit under his gaze.

He rubbed a hand over his forehead in an exasperated gesture and looked off into the distance. "Harris."

The bodies of the people he'd killed were lying not far away. She could still see them. He ignored them completely. He may has well have just finished reading a particularly boring novel for all that he seemed to care about what he'd done. Would she invoke his wrath if she mentioned them?

She cleared her throat feebly and shifted her feet a bit. "Who were those people?" She cringed at the sound of her voice. It came out as more of a squeak than anything else.

"Raiders." he said, "They had it coming."

She didn't know what they could have done to deserve death. That seemed a little harsh no matter what they had done to 'have it coming'. She kept her thoughts to herself, though. "You know, you're the first Wastelander I've met," she told him. "Ever."

"What an honor," he deadpanned.

"Does everyone out here...um...look like you?"

"No."

"Oh. Um, are you sure you don't need any stimpaks?"

"I'm a ghoul. Stimpaks won't help."

"A ghoul?" she asked. "What does that mean?"

"It's a mutation. It happens to some of us in the Wasteland."

She observed him quietly. He didn't seem to feel either good or ill about his condition. "Does it hurt?"

He made a small sighing sound. "Please be quiet."

So Lydia quieted, settling into her pile of laundry. 'Ghoul' seemed like a strange term for a medical condition, even if it was slang. It sounded so insulting. She studied the man's face, as she had been doing for the past hour. If she had to guess, she'd say it was Cutaneous Radiation Syndrome. But she had no way to treat that, and even if she did, she doubted it would help him. He was too far gone. He could have passed for a zombie, for goodness sake. He looked like he should already be dead. Like I should be. She checked the time. She'd woken up next to the radioactive waste an hour and a half ago. She wondered how much longer she had.

They rested in the house for the remainder of the day, though as far as she could tell, Harris didn't sleep. Lydia drifted in and out of dreams. No matter how many times she woke up, she was always confused and dizzy for a few seconds upon opening her eyes and seeing the sky. It was blue and white now, like in the picture books she'd had when she was a kid. It looked so unnatural. She kept imagining that it was simply an enormous, painted ceiling, but according to her dad's encyclopedia, that was not the case. She was inclined to doubt the encyclopedia.

Finally, when the sun began setting, Harris stood up. As an afterthought, he brushed the dust off his pants.

"Where are you going?" Lydia asked.

"To find a trader."

"When are you coming back?"

"I'm not coming back."

"Oh... " Lydia deflated. She had realized by this point that she hadn't accounted for how dangerous the Wasteland was before she left the vault. From what she'd seen so far, she guessed that her chances of survival were roughly zero percent if she didn't have someone to help her.

The ghoul closed his eyes and exhaled almost imperceptibly. "If you want to come, you'd better change into some different clothes."

"Oh!" She remembered what he'd said about vault dwellers attracting attention. "Oh." She didn't have any non-vault-issued clothing, so she turned to the pile of laundry she'd been using as a bed. Much of the fabric was burned or so caked with dust that it had the rigidity of hard plastic, but she dug farther and found that the inside of the pile had been protected by the outside. She picked out a pair of jeans and a shirt that was stained to brownish white, but was wearable. She began to unzip her 101 suit, then paused and looked at Harris. He was leaning against the wall at the other end of the house, facing the other direction. She hurriedly changed, placing the vault suit in her backpack. She kept her own boots on.

It was weird wearing two separate articles of clothing. When she lifted her arms over her head, her stomach showed. It was probably a kid's shirt, but it fit well enough, although she had to keep the left sleeve bunched up to accommodate her Pip-Boy. She glanced at Harris again. He was wearing a flak jacket and army fatigue pants. He was a lot better protected than she was, but there wasn't anything in the laundry pile that would be much help against bullets or Yao Guai claws. She shrugged in resignation and threw her pack over her shoulders. At least she wouldn't get hot.

"So where are there traders?" she asked when she caught up to Harris.

He exhaled a wisp of smoke politely downwind of her and started walking, with Lydia on his heels. "They wander, but there's usually one camped out outside of Megaton. It's half a day north of here."

"Megaton? That's a city?"

"Yes."

Lydia was unable to contain the excitement that rose up like a bubble in her chest. "I've never seen a city before," she told him.

"I'll bet."

"What's it like? Is it from before the war?"

"No."

"Are there lots of people there?"

"What's 'a lot'?"

"I don't know. A hundred?"

"There are more than a hundred people in Megaton."

"How many more?"

"I have no idea."

"Well how big is it?"

"Be quiet."

Lydia pressed her lips together. Instead of speaking, she watched the horizon, squinting behind her sunglasses. The sun was setting and the sky glowed red. It was impressive. She wondered if sunsets were always like that, or if it was just today. It unnerved her just how much she didn't know about this place, the outside. In the vault, she'd always been the studious one. She'd thought she was well-read, and perhaps she was with things that concerned a vault citizen: engineering, computers, medicine... but she knew very little about the natural world (if a world this tragically altered by man could be considered natural). Not to mention that all the information she'd had about the outside world had been circa 200 years ago. What had happened since then was a mystery to those imprisoned in the vaults.

"You should probably know," Lydia said in between breaths. "I'm going to die."

"We're all going to die."

"No, I meant, I'm going to die soon," she said. "Radiation poisoning." He didn't seem interested, but she kept going anyway. "Last night I slept next to some kind of radioactive waste. My Pip-Boy says I absorbed a thousand rads." She shook her head in disappointment. "I'm an idiot."

"Sounds like it."

Lydia glared at his back and decided to stop sharing for the time being.

They walked for what seemed like a very long time. Soon the sun was down and the moon and stars were out again, and Lydia perched her sunglasses on top of her head. She was breathing hard before long and had to work to keep up with Harris, though he wasn't moving particularly quickly. He never broke his steady speed, and often outpaced her, at which point either he would stop and smoke while he waited for her, or she would jog until she'd caught up.

She couldn't tell whether he was annoyed at having to wait. He was hard to read. It made her a little nervous. Or, rather, it added to her already present nervousness.

Suddenly he stopped. Lydia was about to gratefully sit down when he seized her wrist and pulled her roughly to the left, behind a massive rock. She cried out in surprise and aggravation. "What are you doing?"

He shushed her and drew his rifle. She froze. He was going to kill her now? Why had he waited?

But then he turned his back to her and faced the edge of the boulder, waiting. It was quiet, and at first she sensed nothing. After a full minute she heard something. Voices, coming from the direction in which they had been traveling. They were very quiet at first, but slowly grew in volume, as did their footsteps.

"... so then I cut it off."

Someone laughed. "Good. That asshole was biggest pansy I ever seen. Couldn't take pain for shit."

"I know. He comes to our camp wanting all of my buffout, and whenever we go on a raid he's 'sick'. I'm glad he's gone."

The footsteps came to a stop as they neared the boulder. It sounded like they were just on the other side. Lydia held her breath. She did not want a confrontation with these people. There was a metallic rattling noise from the other side of the rock, and then hissing.

"Have you never fucking spray painted before?" asked the female voice. "You suck at this. Give it to me." There was short scuffle.

"Shit! Fine, just take it!" the other one pouted.

Harris chose this moment to explode out of his crouch and dart around the corner, so fast that he had already fired off several rounds before Lydia had even registered what was happening.

There were a couple half-screams, and then the sound of bodies hitting the ground. Lydia peeked around the edge of the rock. Of course, the two strangers lay in a pile on the ground, and Harris stood over them, the muzzle of his gun smoking a tiny bit.

He hadn't even given them a chance. It seemed wrong, but she decided not to point that out to him. "You killed them," she said flatly.

"Are you always so observant?" He bent to search the bodies as he had with the people yesterday. Lydia stepped closer. One of the people had a line of bullet wounds across his torso, and the other had been shot in the eye. There was a spatter of gore on the ground. She could just make out some bits of skull and brain in the pooling blood. They both had hair dyed unnatural colors and wore strange rags, like the people yesterday.

"More raiders?" she guessed. The ghoul nodded absently.

The girl raider's hand still grasped a can of spray paint. Lydia looked behind her at the rock and found streaks of bright red liquid, some of which wasn't blood.

"What were they doing?"

"Marking their territory. Raiders stick to groups, mostly. They must have just set up a camp near here, and they want to make sure everyone else knows that this is their spot."

"That's childish."

"Yes," he agreed, "but it's fine with me if they want to give me forewarning before I run into them." He finished searching the bodies, keeping a few objects that Lydia couldn't make out in the darkness. He pointed in the direction the raiders had come from. "There will be more out that way. We'll circle around to the left, and we should avoid them. It'll take a little longer, but it'll be less of an inconvenience than getting shot."

"You think we'd get shot?" she asked. "You took care of them, and those ones yesterday pretty easily."

He gave her an odd look then. "I wouldn't say 'easily'. But there would be more than two of them at their camp. Anyway, it's not my job to police the Wasteland. It's always better to avoid fights in the first place."

"I suppose," Lydia said.

For a while it was quiet, save their soft footsteps in the dirt and gravel. The silence was distracting to Lydia. She'd always found solace in the quiet of her room in the vault, when she got the chance to get away from her father and especially Amata, who seemed to follow her everywhere. Now that the hum of air vent fans and the echo of distant voices were gone, she almost missed them. The lack of noise only served to remind her how far from home she was, and gave her too much time to picture the bodies of those raiders who seemed to pop up in her mind whenever she closed her eyes.

She wondered what Amata would do now that she was gone. She felt a little bad about not telling her she was leaving. Lydia was pretty sure that she'd been her only friend, though Amata had definitely made more of an effort in that department than she had. Probably too much so. She had to hand it to her, though, she had saved her from a lot of beatings from the Tunnel Snakes by pulling the "Overseer's Daughter" card. It wasn't bad to have those kinds of connections. But she was kidding herself if she thought she could convince herself that that was the only reason she was friends with Amata. Though she hated to admit it, she missed her, too. Now she was alone out here, in this vast emptiness.

Well. Not quite alone.

She glanced up at the ghoul. "So... what are we doing when we get to Megaton?" she ventured.

"I'm selling my stuff," he said without turning around. "You're, hopefully, going to find a job and a cot at the common house so I don't have to babysit you anymore."

"Babysit?" Lydia said. "Excuse me, but I can take care of myself. I didn't ask you to do any favors for me."

"Oh?" He smirked over his shoulder. It was the most emotion she'd seen him show since she met him. "No, you're right. You just started following me without asking. I'm sure you and your BB gun would be just fine on your own."

She felt her face flushing. She glowered at him, but said nothing.

Suddenly something whizzed past her head. She blinked. Then something slammed into her right tricep. She staggered and looked down at her arm. There was a large red stain growing on the fabric of her shirt. Then, as though she'd needed to see it to know it was there, the pain hit her. It was worse than anything she'd ever felt before. She wanted to scream or cry, but she just stood there, unable to move. She was vaguely aware of Harris saying something somewhere ahead of her. Then his face swam into view in front of her.

He paused, eyes wide, lips drawn tight across his teeth. No... he hadn't paused. It was the adrenaline. VATS was kicking in. The pain in her arm numbed, at least enough for her to concentrate on what was happening around her. She watched Harris's mouth moving. It formed the word, "run". Right. Running would be a good idea. Harris turned and ran at a snail's pace, at the same time drawing his rifle and shooting into the darkness at their right. She could just make out the shapes of the raiders coming toward them. Moonlight glinted off the metal bits of their armor and weapons. They were yelling something, but their words blurred together and she couldn't understand them.

Lydia followed Harris to the edge of a small ravine. Beyond the ledge was what looked like a village of makeshift sheds of scrap wood and metal. They slid down the slope and made their way over to them. Bullets pounded into the dirt near them, at half speed. They sprinted around the corner of one of the shacks, then another, then another, until they were inside a maze of crooked planks and corrugated metal sheets. They came to a stop in a dark corner.

"Stay here," Harris ordered her, giving her a look that said, 'This is serious business, do what I tell you or else'. The effect was lessened by his drawling slow motion voice. He ran off back the way they'd come and disappeared around the corner of the building.

Lydia crouched against the wall, breathing hard and twitching but trying to be unnoticeable. She looked around her metal alcove. Part of the wall was rusted through. She put an eye to the hole and saw that it led to the other side of the sheds she stood between. Dim shapes ran back and forth in her view. This went on for a while. She couldn't tell what was going on. Harris was nowhere to be seen. She guessed that he was hiding somewhere, in a good place to snipe from. From the sound of it, and the gradually diminishing number of people running past, he was winning.

The gunshots and shouting slowly became higher pitched-closer to normal speed-as the adrenaline began wearing off. She heard footsteps behind her. They were moving quickly, and getting closer. Whoever it was would be coming around the corner soon, and unless she was very lucky, they'd see her. Her eyes darted around and fell on a piece of rusted pipe that was protruding from the side of one of the buildings. She wrenched it free, tearing it away from a valve. It was heavier than it looked, and cold. She brought it up like a baseball bat, and the footsteps got faster and louder.

A large figure loomed into view. She saw a face smeared with dirt and paint, wild, red-rimmed eyes, and an ugly sneer. Not Harris. For fraction of a second, her eyes met his. They were alight with fury, insane delight, and surprise.

Lydia slammed the pipe into the side of the face as hard as she could. To her surprise the force of the hit sent both of them reeling. She hit the ground and quickly jumped back up, but the man she'd hit wasn't moving, and blood drizzled steadily from his wound.

More guns went off. She quickly returned to her corner and looked through the hole. Two people were left in the shootout. One knelt behind a small rock. The other stood behind one of the sheds, hopping from foot to foot and screaming obscenities. He lost patience and streaked toward the man behind the rock. He was promptly shot repeatedly. Lydia waited for more gunshots or footsteps, but it was silent. The man behind the rock, having also waited and listened, slowly stood and shouldered his rifle. He walked nonchalantly to the shot man and began searching his body. Of course. It was Harris this time.

She sighed with relief. Her entire body sagged. She suddenly felt very tired. Now everything was going at normal speed. Although nothing much was moving, the world seemed to be spinning. Her arm throbbed with pain to remind her that she'd been shot. It was much worse now that VATS was wearing off. Her vision swam. She felt herself falling, and her vision went black before she hit the ground.