Okay sorry this took so long, I went on holiday and tried to get it finished before I left but I couldn't manage it. Here's part one of the two part fourth chapter, first time I've ever really done any significant action so please tell me what you think. Enjoy.
Chapter 4: Bad Blood on Familiar Footsteps (part 1).
Bill Wilson slapped the light bulb hanging from the ceiling, causing it to sway and sending shadows dancing across the blood stained walls. He scraped a large knife along the table, on top of which the lone wanderer was bound, his shirt off, lines running up and down his body indicating where the best cuts of meat could be found.
"My oh my were gonna be eating good tonight, guest's your size don't normally visit often, normally they're just skin and bones, but you've got some fine meat on you", He sighed in a nostalgic fashion, looking down at a corpse that lay on the counter, the meat stripped from the bone, only the face remained, frozen in an eternal scream of agony.
"Our most recent meal came across a bit gamey, nothing to do with my wife's cooking mind you, she won an award for best cooking in Andale, and seeming as Andale is the best town in the USA, and as the USA is the best country in the world, that makes her the best cook in the world in my book"
"Your book's been written by a psychopath" spat the wonderer through a mouthful of blood.
"Well that's just not very nice" Bill purred as he raised a ripper. These nasty little contraptions could open up a human torso like a packet of potato crisps. Flesh, bone, anything, the ripper could make short work of it all. Bill gave it a rev and specs of dried gore landed on his face, which was now pulled into a madman's smile.
Now was the only chance he was going to get, after working on the rope that tied his left hand to the table the wanderer had spent the last five minutes fumbling to find any sort of weapon. Miraculously, Bill was messy, leaving a human femur on the floor. With a monumental swing the femur landed a blow on the side of the cannibal's face. Bill dropped his ripper and fell, dazed, the wanderer reached over himself, almost breaking his back in the process, and gripped the handle of the ripper and severed his remaining ties in the time it took Bill to regain consciousness.
"Welcome back Bill" smirked the wanderer, ripper in hand. Abandoning his usual cheery persona, Bills face turned a dark shade of red, he shouted, throwing spittle over the wanderer's face:
"YOU GOD DAMN DIRTY COMMIE I'M GONNA RIP YOUR..."was as far as he got, the hard side of a femur stopped him mid sentence. The wanderer grunted and made his way to the door. Before his hand touched the knob he heard a distinct and familiar sound, a sawed-off shotgun being cocked.
Acting on instinct the Lone Wanderer threw himself sideways just as a double-barrelled shotgun unleashed a rain of hot lead which ripped through the door and was itself inches away from ripping through him. A boot kicked the shack's make-shift door off his hinges as the wanderer revved the ripper and swung it towards the cannibal, the motorised teeth met flesh as they tore their way into the man's throat. There was a gurgling sound and a hiss as the air in his lungs escaped through his new hole, the man went limp and died.
His wife, wielding a kitchen knife let out a primal scream and sprinted towards the wanderer, to cease her deadly march the wanderer threw the femur into the path of the crazed widow. While not enough to harm her, the bone did place her somewhat off balance, she ran into the wanderer's ripper and was semi-liquidized by the deadly little weapon. A second woman ran at him, no weapon, just blind fury in her eyes. The wanderer pointed the ripper at her and revved it twice. The fury in her eyes died, replaced by fear, she dug her heels into the ground, turned, and ran into the never-ending wasteland.
Observing the scene the wanderer could not help but feel a twinge of sickness, at himself. Years ago in the vault he would have never imagined that he would be the harbinger of death, evil people or not they had once been living, breathing things, yes capable of horrible things but equally capable of miracles. Even vultures deserved life.
Behind him the frantic Bill Wilson had awoken once more and was attempting to sneak up on the lone wanderer, spinning to meet him the wanderer forced the ripper into his chest, killing him instantly and making a spine tingling noise as the saw grated against the mans chestplate.
It's hard to maintain a position of high moral stature in hell.
A sob caught his attention, looking over the bloody mess were two young children and an old man, family of the cannibals. In their eyes, a hollow look of misery. No tears would be shed for the monsters that lay on the ground, but family is family.
The wanderer sighed, he promised himself, that once the wasteland had had enough of him, if he was lucky enough to survive, he would raise a family, otherwise he feared he could never truly redeem himself after all the wrongs he had committed.
...
Luka ran his hand over the rough hair that covered his face. He had been travelling for 3 days and his stubble was starting to bother him, but when your only travelling companion is a semi-rotted dog everything can get to you. Deadmeat ran a few steps ahead of Luka to relieve himself over a large stone, there was a hissing sound as the radioactive urine burnt through the rock as if it were nothing more than a tissue.
Deciding that he needed a break Luka climbed atop a large boulder, a habit he had picked up after a run-in with a giant radscorpion a few years back. He grabbed his last pack of dandy boy apples from his back and surveyed his surroundings.
The wasteland stretched out for miles in every direction, dust whipped over the plains, lifted by the gentle wind. The sun beat down through the ashen sky and made Luka's skin tingle with perspiration. The air had the humid and musky feel of being in a cave even though it was out doors. Many people described it as hell but Luka often thought there was a sort of barren beauty to the capital wasteland, it was unforgiving, bleak and inhospitable, but it was home.
Finishing the box, Luka laughed and remembered his father telling him off for littering of all things, Luka placed the box in his sack for later disposal as he mouthed the words his father had once spoken.
"Son this place can't get any worse, so the only thing we can do is try and make it better".
The laugh died, and Luka pushed the memories to the back of his mind, it still hurt even now. To distract himself Luka focussed on his goal, or rather, tried to think of what his goal was. A map and a holotape, in Big Town? The old man had a lot to answer for. Luka had listened to the tape several times to decipher what he had meant by "trust me", and still it eluded him. He hoped that the answers would lie in Big Town, which, as Luka said the words in his head, appeared on the horizon.
It wasn't as Big as he thought it would be, if anything it was tiny. A small group of houses had been turned into a relative fortress with only one entrance, over a thin rope bridge. As Luka approached he got the unnerving feeling he was being watched, he rested his hand on the stock of his 44. And kept his eyes peeled, deadmeat showed no signs of alarm, but Luka trusted his instincts.
A gloved hand reached around his face and pulled him to the floor, Luka looked up to see a large rusty knife resting over his right eye, deadmeat growled as another attacker smothered him in a large brown bag.
"What's your business in big town?"
"I'm looking for something" Luka rushed the words word's in the hope that they would be enough to stop him from being stabbed in the eye.
"And what is it your looking for? Hmm, punk?"
"A-a" Luka hesitated, he doubted that they would buy his map story, he improvised.
"Trade and a place to stay for the night"
The two men, who Luka now realised were wearing what looked like bushes fashioned into camouflage gear, glanced at each other, the one that thought he had deadmeat in his bag spoke up.
"Bullshit this guys a raider"
"Do I look like a fucking raider to you?" Luka spat, offended
"Well you don't look like no trader I've ever seen" He stopped and lifted his now empty bag, he turned it to reveal the bottom of the bag, which sported a massive hole and was dripping Irradiated dog piss.
"What the fuck..." Deadmeat leapt at the man, pinning his arms to the ground and snarling like a wolf just inches from his face, the man screamed at the sight of the zombie dog. Luka used the distraction to his advantage, slapping the knife from the mans hand flipping him onto his back, Luka drew his magnum and rested the barrel against the mans forehead, silence followed.
"One word and my dog here will tear your boys throat out, and i'll paste your brains over this rock. But, I haven't, why? Because I'm not a raider, I'm just a guy who has had a long journey and needs a place to stay for the night" Luka paused for breath and smiled, "what do you say?"
...
Five minutes later Luka was walking over the bridge entrance Big Town, a guard with an assault rifle gave him a look up and down. A young woman bounced over to him with a grin on her face.
"Guns please" she beamed, opening a bag.
"I'm sorry?" Luka asked, he was unwilling to part with any of his guns.
"Gimme your guns, or I'll put a pistol in your nose-hole and see if the inside of your head can understand plain fucking English" She smiled again. Luka got the point and handed over his various arms, placing them in the bag with a pang of regret. The bag was hung on the wall by the entrance.
"Thanks blue" She gave him a wink, turned around and bounced off. An old man with a combat helmet approached, he was fifty or so, a cigarette hung from his lower lip and a laser rifle was strapped across his back. He wasn't a tall man, but he walked as if he had stature beyond his height.
"Ignore Pop" He said in a deep voice, made rough by years of smoking. "She still hasn't grown up since she left little lamplight" Luka finally remembered what this place was, he had heard of little lamplight and the town where the residents went when they had grown up. Although he had also heard that big town was basically a death trap, slavers and super mutants had apparently run the place into the ground. But the town he saw before him was bustling with life, a few residents were roasting a mole rat over an open fire, others sat at a desk cleaning weapons, a pair were jogging around the encampment, the town felt more like an army barracks then a settlement.
"The names MacCready, I run this place, you must be the guy with the zombie dog", the grizzled mayor spat out his cigarette and looked Luka in the eye, sizing him up. Luka got the feeling that MacCready disliked outsiders, but he played nice nonetheless.
"That I am, sorry about your boy's but they did give me quite a fright"
MacCready, half smiled flashing a row of yellow teeth.
"Don't you worry, they should know not to jump a guy with a 44. And a zombie dog". Luka hated people referring to deadmeat as a "zombie dog", swallowing his anger he spoke up.
"I'm looking for something"
"Aint we all kid"
"Something in town"
"Straight to the point eh? Fine, I'll cut the shit, you need something from me your gonna have to earn it". Luka didn't like the sound of that.
"I run my town like a god damn army, you may have noticed, why is this so? It's cos we got slavers to the west, muties to the north, raiders poking their heads up my ass and new kids coming in when this place is full enough as it is". With hesitation Luka asked what needed to be done.
"Well I got a problem see, my people can fight, and we pride ourselves on being able to stay hidden, we can hold our own and have done for years."
Luka glanced at the town once again and said;
"Well from what I know about big town you guy's seem to be doing a lot better then what I've heard". MacCready spat a globule of yellow phlegm next to Luka's feet.
"You thought we were some sort of limp-dick pussy clan with our head's so far in the sand we can taste mole-shit". Luka began to explain but was interrupted. "Well we ain't, but the rest of the wastes don't know that, they still think we are the same as we were in the old days"
"Old days?" asked Luka
"Yeah, back before the lone wanderer came and sorted shit out" Luka coughed back a pang of surprise.
"What, you mean, the lone wanderer?"
"Yeah, y'know I met him once, back when I was in Lamplight, only fuckin' mungo I could bear to look at. Legend has it he came along and taught some of the old residents how to fend for themselves"
"But your still getting trouble?"
"Yep"
"Who from?" MacCready gave a large and knowing smile which chilled Luka to the core.
"Raiders?"
"no"
"mutant's?"
"no"
"slavers?"
"no"
"Then whose bothering you" MacCready let out a chuckle and lit a fresh cigarette.
"We got ourselves a vampire problem kid."
...
...TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 2.