"Now I don't expect to have to tell someone like you just how bad it gets out there in the woods at night. Beyond the perimeter. In the dark. Happened to me twice in my lifetime.. Both times were touch and go. Ammo exhausted, lucky not to be ripped to pieces.
Razorbats are bad enough - they'll trim a man from the shoulders up. But there's bigger wildlife; nasties that gets displaced from the coastal regions, fleeing the rad-storms, the desert wastes. There's shelter here, food. The term free for all springs to mind.
I was armed, both times I got caught beyond the perimeter. Both times it nearly killed me.
How she managed three days? Shit, your guess is as good as mine."
Erin waited for the sound of hooves to depart. Then she waited some more.
The temperature plummeted. She shivered, and not just from the cold.
Shock. She knew what it was, conceptually. Erin read. She read voraciously. Consuming everything from children's books to technical manuals, to the faded mould-ridden text on discarded packaging. Anything Daddy could find for her, she absorbed and retained. Storing it for future use, often supplying it without prompt or any particular context. Erin Atwood was a wellspring of useless information, as Brody so often reminded her.
Even so, she knew what shock was. Had seen it first hand, in their journey east.
Her feet rustled and crunched through the foliage towards the ruins of the cart as she crept, slowly.
Her eyes had adjusted to the dark now. She could see Brody's broken body against the tree.
He was gone. Dead. The word seemed leaden to her. Shocking in its finality. Her heart broke, and yet there was something disturbingly alien in that slumped figure broken by the tree. He seemed so still now. Like a mannequin, or a doll. Nothing like the fierce brother who had protected her growing up.
The Atwoods had travelled the wasteland far and wide. This was not the first time she had seen a corpse. But this was all too different.
She averted her eyes as she stepped past the body. That was not Brody. Not anymore.
The tears would flood later.
The slope was a ruin. The foliage was torn and littered with all manner of debris from the cart's chaotic descent. The cart itself lay split at the foot of the hill, all but bisected by a mighty tree. Air hissed through her teeth in frustration. Her pack was missing.
They each had a survival pack, in the case they got separated. A Bug-Out Bag, as Daddy called them. Our good friend BOB, as Brody called it. Erin had rolled her eyes whenever her father had reminded her to pack and repack it, but checking BOB became a ritual the Atwoods observed more strictly than any other. It was a necessary discipline, in their family's line of work.
Daddy was dead too. She could feel it in her bones, some instinctual sense. A certain hollowing. Only death awaited her, up that slope. But she couldn't survive on her wits alone.
Hands shaking, sniffling from the rivulets of snot that leaked from her nose, Erin clambered up the slope, picking up bits and pieces as she went. She picked up a broken bottle, sniffed at it. Recoiled when the powerful whiskey curled her nose.
Other items followed, as she ascended the slope. A swathing blanket, draped over a bush. She pulled it around her like a shawl, shivering as she did so. Then a loose water canteen, all but invisible by a shredded bush. It barely sloshed as she picked it up. It was heavy. Good.
She popped the cap, and took a greedy slug. Her mouth was drier than the Mojave, her tongue swollen and metallic. Adrenal high. When it faded, the myriad cuts and bruises covering her body would be all the keener felt. She kept moving.
Slowly, she scavenged what little she could.
Eventually she spied a knife in the dark, glinting in the moonlight. It was Brody's. A simple field hand's tool, useful for all manner of things on the frontier. It was not especially sharp. She grabbed it. She was a girl of ten, but knew she needed something to defend herself with.
Finally, hanging from a broken branch, BOB.
The rucksack was a no-nonsense green, intended for a kid her size. Rope, matches, enough tinned food to last three days. NCR military rations. She had no idea what to expect, but she knew they were there. Had packed and repacked them herself, under her Daddy's careful supervision.
Erin sniffled, her lip quivering, teeth chattering. She stopped herself. To dwell would let them down.
She pulled the rucksack over her back. Erin debated climbing further up the slope, but decided against it. She could hear the flames licking at the top of the hill. Could see the plume of smoke as the fire spread. The air stank of cooking meat.
Smell. Scent. Predators. Bad idea, E. Downhill, away. Away from the men with guns. There were many kinds of monster in the hills, and not all of them human.
She retreated down the slope, heading deeper into the valley.
Away from the crackling flames, and into the darkest night.
It was morning, and the sun rose over the lake.
The splitting axe met the wood with a hollow chunk, scraping as Edric lifted it from the scarred tree bole. His cabin was little more than a shack at the edge of the water: a sorry, ramshackle thing. A squat single storey structure, it had a lean-to that housed his workshop. The windmill that emerged from the roof and spun in the breeze granted it a certain folksy charm, albeit in a lopsided way.
Geiger counter had been clear: no storms due for at least a week.
The perimeter was a series of crudely assembled watch towers; skeletal things interspersed with a tall wooden wall fronted by sharpened stakes. Any gaps in the perimeter were closely watched by the turrets that huffed oily smoke and ticked in the hidden crevices in his shack's roof.
That was the start of it. In the event of a raid there were all manner of pulse mines, fragmentation grenades and hidden flamethrowers secreted in the woods around him. A necessary precaution, this far out on the frontier. The simplicity of the cabin belied the sophistication of its defences.
Edric was no carpenter. But it kept the wolves from the door, oftentimes literally; and gave him a place to ply his trade.
Edric was a machinist. He was many things, in his former life, but now he lived as something of a hermit, a tinkerer all but forgotten at the edge of the Protectorate. A broad-shouldered man in his late thirties, Edric had a scruffy beard shot with grey that spoke of seldom company and a healthy lack of vanity. His scalp was meticulously shaved. Some old habits die hard. His overalls were grease stained or scorched with soot.
Not that he cared. It was the work that kept him occupied.
They came to him from all over. A faulty Mr. Handy with a fitful actuator, a looted PIP Boy with a fizzling display. Broken goods were presented to him, and he took his payment in food or ammunition. Seldom caps. Too many caps meant too much attention, and as sparse and open as the Protectorate was, you never wanted attention. Raiders came in many forms.
Now he was midway through his morning routine. Basic calisthenics to start, then chopping wood for the fire. Preceding this had been the perimeter evaluation. That was always first. Of everything in his routine, this was the most important. So much so that he repeated it again prior to retiring to his workshop and commence the day's work.
Edric had already checked the snares for food, and was checking the charge on the harmonic resonators when he stopped.
It the old soldier's instincts that told him he was being watched. He stopped, suddenly very still.
Edric swallowed, clearing his throat as he stood tall, the fire-axe in his hands.
"You're going to want to do better than that, if you're hoping to sneak in here unannounced."
The machinist turned and looked at thick foliage, narrowed eyes hunting.
Nothing. And yet still that feeling.
He tried again.
"I warn you. Another step beyond the perimeter and the turrets will paint you across the forest floor. You've done well to get this far already."
There was a rustle.
A young girl emerged from a bush mere inches from the boundary of his turret's killzone, rising up like a peeking mole rat. She was right in front of him, and so silent he almost yelped in shock.
She was a tiny, ragged thing. Filthy, with a gaunt, stricken look that spoke of little sleep.
The fire-axe hit the ground with a soft thud as Edric blinked in disbelief.
Finally his mouth formed the words his mind was thinking.
"Oh. Shit."
