Chapter 4
Concord probably looked better before the war. Nowadays it looked like a shelled out shit hole. buildings were toppled in places. They weren't the sheet metal and plaster homes of Sanctuary hills either. These were tall buildings of concrete and steel. bits of rubble and broken glass still crunched under my boots as I made My way through. Mongrel seemed fine, expertly navigating patches of debris. Good dog.
I put my hand to one of the walls that had been shattered, scrutinizing it. The bare, pebbled concrete was distinctly paler than the outside layer. This wall hadn't been broken down two hundred years ago. judging by the jaggedness, the brightness of the material... could have been last week. Could have been a rocket or grenade, based on the sooty blast marks around the break. I like to think I knew a thing or two about shelled out buildings and stuff like that.
One way or another, it meant people were here, and still friendly as ever.
When one is a raider, you begin to pick up on things. Likely hideouts, ambush routes, sniper blinds, artificial bottlenecks. We hunt people after all. Even the Fiends had some tactics. The one thing you should probably never do, is walk towards these signs when you hear abundant gunfire. I tried. I really really did, but guns meant people, and that many guns firing at once probably meant Mean people. Since I was looking for some Mean people, this was the best course of action to take.
After much grumbling and sighing and trying to work out better options, finding none that really helped, I resolved to try and make myself known but without making myself an enemy. Establishing chats with a bunch of raiders is like romancing a really REALLY picky girl. A girl, for the record, who just might cut your face off and wear it because that's "Just her Thing." I cut alongside choke paths rather than through them. I avoided being out in the open. I eventually made my way to a big open T-section. People on one side of the street were firing at people in the building opposite.
Tattoos, swearing, grime, erratic fire from one guy that I'm pretty sure was spaced out on something. Jet, probably. Yeah. These were the people I was looking for. On the other side, in the building were guys with weird looking Laser Rifles. Now that just aint fair.
Laser guys were holding their own pretty well. I watched one girl take a laser bolt in the shoulder and drop. I could sympathize. those things hurt like all hell. The best shot Laser side was this asshole in the window. He was layin down some good suppression fire, making the other guys keep their heads down behind burned out cars and in buildings. He hadn't spotted me yet, and I was about level with him, having climbed into a building, up to the second story window. Charlotte had a nice long barrel, but I would still need a pretty lucky shot to do more than wound him. He had a buddy too, dark fella with a brown hat. Guy was too obscured by cover, so hopefully his buddy going down would spook him.
I took aim, careful aim. The wind was low, the sun was up, Mongrel was quiet and warm beside me as I pulled the trigger.
Sometimes, when you really need her most, Luck smiles, takes out her bag, and hands you a nice fat Flush when no one has more than a pair. I watched with held breath as the back of the man's head popped all over the wall behind him and fell face-first through the window. Guns on my side stopped in confusion. I heard a female voice yell out.
"Shit was that one of Ours?"
To which I responded, "Yes! Yes! One of Yours! Fuck That Guy with the laser rifle, right?" this was followed by some contemplative silence... then:
"YEAH! FUCK THAT GUY! HE SHOT ME IN THE ARM!"
This was followed by a chorus of 'yeah's and various disparaging comments regarding the recently deceased. Brown-Hat ducked down as a hail of bullets smacked into his cover. He had lost ground now that he could only cover one side of the building at a time.
"HEY! Fuck that Guy in the Hat too!"I called out to my new friends that were ground-level, as I climbed down the broken stairs in the building. Meeting the girl who had gotten her arm shot by Laser guy. She was tall, had her dirt-blonde hair in a cropped mohawk, bits of metal and re-bar formed armor plates over a knee-length duster, not unlike my own. I like dusters. she was holding a bit of wadded cloth smelling strongly of ethanol to her wounded shoulder.
"You the guy what shot the Minute Man?" Wasn't sure what she meant. Raider slang could be tough to figure out sometimes when you travel from one end of the wastes to another. Maybe, 'Shot the Minute' meant showed up in the nick of time or something. It kinda sounded cool.
"Yeah." I said. I mean, I kinda felt a little uneasy. guarded answers were probably best. If a raider thinks you want something, chances are he'll just keep it, just to spite you. We're kind of assholes that way.
"Don't recognize ya." Her eyes were narrowing, "How'd you hit him?" I noticed that she was lookin over Mongrel. He was panting good naturedly, didn't seem to mind her.
"Was upstairs. You guys were keepin him busy so I ... thought I could make a nobody, be a somebody. Y'know?" I could tell from her confused expression that she was experiencing the same problem I had a few moments ago. 'Make a Nobody, be a Somebody' was term used by my Boss and his top guys. It meant killin people for profit, caps, booze or drugs. Simple, catchy, easy to spread among strung-out druggies. It was something we could repeat to ourselves when we felt low.
"Lemme see yer piece."
"Can't ya take me out to dinner first?" I kinda clenched up a little when I said this. Sometimes, after walking out alone for who knows how long, I get mouthy when I meet people. Sometimes I can't turn it off. It REALLY gets in the way when I try to make nice with Unfriendlies. She took it in her stride though, smiling even. It was a nice smile, she had almost all of her teeth.
"Call me Bess."
"Brennan"
She took me back behind the building where they were taking cover and I was greeted by a bunch of dirty, twitchy, inked-up, chemed-out folks with drawn guns, looking ready to blow my head off if I looked at them funny.
It felt like home.
Author's note
Jake here! Yeah, this was fun, but I hope people don't mind the OC's. I kinda consider all the unnamed settlers, raiders, addicts and such like to be open to interpretation, so I made up about four to five for narrative purposes. The story will continue to revolve around our Sole Survivor. (he is after all, as far as we know, the only surviving Fiend out there.) Don't worry, he will eventually run into characters you know and love, who knows? He might not even shoot them in the head!
