The next few hours, as they continued their slow, agonizing crawl over the landscape, became ones of torture for Gob. Charon's stretcher seemed to weigh more and more with each step. The ache in his shoulders deepened into a dull burning that intensified by the hour, until it became so bad he almost did not know how he could go on. His upper back was afire with pain, and the skin remaining on his fingers was being rubbed raw from clasping the handles of the stretcher. He hadn't been in such misery since the Slaver caravan. As he had done then, Gob willed himself to go numb; he tried to simply switch off his brain, concentrating on placing one foot in front of the other and staring at Samantha's armored, unyielding back. Samantha strode on mechanically, as if she were some form of automaton immune to such mundane, human things as exhaustion, hunger and thirst, totally focused on reaching her destination. Come on, Gob panted to himself as they dragged the stretcher uphill or maneuvered it around some rocks. If a little thing like her can do it, then a tough ghoul like you should be able to do it too. Just keep going…just one more step…and one more after that…and one more after that…. And when the pain in his back and shoulders became too great for even that to help, Gob dropped his eyes to where Charon lay on the stretcher. Whatever you're enduring, it can't be as bad as what he is going through.
Charon lay strapped in, quiet and unmoving in the restraints. He said nothing, but he still held the Blackhawk in one hand; his filmy eyes were open, and hellishly bright. They moved, taking in everything around him, constantly alert for—Gob had no idea what he was looking for, but he assumed it was threats of some kind. His breathing was rasping and tortured, hissing through his teeth; his visible muscles spasmed irregularly. From time to time, his eyes would drift closed, but he would always re-open them with a jerk, refusing to allow himself the soothing embrace of sleep. Gob could not even imagine the agony Charon must have been in but the other ghoul showed almost no sign of it: a tension in his limbs, a grunt or two when Gob and Samantha had difficulty maneuvering the stretcher. About midday, they came to a fork in the road. Samantha paused for a moment, then told Gob, "We need to swing south to avoid Fort Bannister."
"What's Fort Bannister?" Gob had asked her. He had never heard of it.
"It's the headquarters of Talon Company," Samantha had replied, glancing back over her shoulder. "We've crossed paths before....Trust me when I say we're in no shape to tangle with them now."
"Oh." Gob bit his lip and resettled the stretcher in his hands. His fingers seemed permanently frozen into their grip around the handles; they were somehow numb and aching at once. His hands felt like blocks of wood at the end of his arms.
Detouring around Fort Bannister meant leaving the road for a time; scrambling through rocks, over unpaved ground, and at least once through a torn-up trench that went on for almost half a mile. Gob tried to be careful, but the ground was uneven and he was already fatigued; he stumbled, fell to his knees, and was only able to keep from dropping the stretcher by an effort of will. Charon hissed in pain; Gob winced uneasily. As the two of them stopped and backed up, trying to push the stretcher up a steep slope, Charon spoke.
"Why did you not fire?"
Gob started and almost dropped the stretcher again, saving it at the last moment. "Wh-what?" he faltered, glancing at Samantha. The armored woman did not look back toward them; Gob did not know if she'd even heard.
"In the diner. When the Raiders came. You had a shot and yet you did not take it. Why?"
The words were a rasping whisper, noticeably weaker than before. Charon's bright, feverish eyes fixed on him; his lantern jaw set. Gob swallowed under that regard, resettling the stretcher handles in his raw and aching hands.
"I—I was afraid," he admitted shamefacedly.
Charon said nothing, but his rheumy eyes remained locked on Gob, demanding. Gob bit his lip, and somehow found himself opening up to the other ghoul. "When—when I heard their voices, I—all of a sudden, I was back in the slave pens in Paradise Falls," he confessed unsteadily. "It was just like I was a slave again—I was so scared that I couldn't think. All I wanted to do was hide." The only good thing about Moriarty buying him, Gob thought morosely, had been getting him away from the Slavers.
Charon considered that as Gob and Samantha threaded the stretcher through some boulder piles. His breathing was uneven, and he was gritting his teeth. At last, as they began to lurch downhill, he spoke again. "It is not chains that make a slave, and weapons will not free one. You are still a slave," he pronounced in that raspy whisper, "and worse, you are a coward. You will be one as long as you are the other." He turned his head to the side and closed his eyes. His flaking hands clenched spasmodically on the sides of the stretcher. Gob swallowed this in silence. After all, he thought bitterly, it's true, isn't it?
[*]
It was almost full dark and the first stars were twinkling in the sky by the time Samantha finally called a halt. For the last couple hours, Gob had been dead on his feet with exhaustion, stumbling after Samantha as if he were, in truth, the mindless zombie that so many people thought ghouls were. When Samantha stopped, he missed it and almost crashed into her with the back of the stretcher. The sudden shock jolted him back to himself somewhat; he shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind.
"Samantha?" he faltered.
She glanced back at him. "Put Charon down," she told him. "Over there."
Gob looked where she nodded. A stony shelf jutted out some feet above, creating a bit of a sheltered space. The dirt was hard-packed beneath it, and there was a fire-blackened steel drum. They were in rocky territory; the recess was surrounded by more piles of stone, creating a wind break and giving them some cover from prying eyes. "It's getting too dark to go on in this kind of terrain," she explained. "If I were on my own, I would, but, while trying to carry Charon too—" She trailed off.
Together the two of them knelt to lay the stretcher on the ground. It felt strange to be unburdened after so long. Gob's hands, arms and shoulders had gone completely dead; they prickled with tiny needles that felt as if they would shortly turn into lances of pain. He shook them, trying to bring back the blood flow, and turned his hands over to look at the skin left on his palms. He bit his lip at the sight: huge, bloody blisters were rising on his hands, in fact several had already broken and raw, oozing flesh was exposed underneath. Samantha saw him looking, and sighed.
"I'm sorry, Gob," she said quietly.
Gob was silent for a moment, then shrugged. "It's only skin," he said, managing a smile. Samantha nodded, then went to kneel by Charon's side. The other ghoul's eyes opened. They were vague and wandering.
"Mistress?"
Samantha swallowed. "I'm here."
Charon seemed to find her, and his gaze focused. After a moment, he breathed in. "I am very thirsty, Mistress," he whispered.
Samantha closed her eyes. Gob could see lines of moisture on her cheeks, reflecting the flickering green light of her armor. Beside her, Dogmeat came up and whined softly. "I know. I'm sorry, Charon." She reached out and brushed some lank, discolored strands of hair back from the ghoul's peeling forehead. "I can give you a hypo of Med-X—will you take it now?" He had consistently refused Med-X throughout the day, despite her repeated entreaties.
"Yes, please, Mistress," he whispered. Samantha pulled out the hypo, and injected him, then took one of his scabrous hands in her own. She knelt by him, holding his hand, as his eyes drifted closed again. Eventually, his breathing evened out. Samantha gently replaced his hand, then sat back on her heels, gazing down at him. Charon tossed a bit, then mumbled something indistinctly and became still again.
"Is that English?" Gob hadn't been able to make out the words, but it hadn't sounded like English.
Samantha shrugged. "I don't know. He's never said much about his past." She stroked his forehead again.
Gob, watching, ventured, "You—" As she turned to look at him, he faltered. "Do—Do you—love him?"
"Not like you mean it, but yeah," Samantha said quietly. "His being here has made so much of a difference in my life—I can't even imagine what it would be like without him. Before he came…." She trailed off. Her face grew shadowed. "You have no idea how lonely it can get out here," she confessed. "How it can just beat you down—the silence, the emptiness—day after day, until…. Sometimes I think that's the worst part about the Wastelands: just the loneliness. It's—" She paused. "I think I was dying inside before I found him," she said in a low voice. "Using too many chems, taking too many chances, I….Let's just say I was not in a good place," she said at last.
Gob nodded. He remembered the way she had looked the first couple of months after she had climbed out of the Vault: as if she were slowly wasting away, consuming herself from the inside. He and Nova had even speculated, privately, on how long it would be before one day she went out there and just didn't come back.
"I don't know," Samantha continued. "Maybe I would have been okay if I hadn't found him. But deep down inside, I don't really think so. He gave me something—someone—to live for. Something outside of myself to hang onto." She sighed. "Does he feel the same way? I don't know. Anyway, it doesn't matter." She glanced over at Dogmeat, who was lying down next to Charon, and reached out, ruffling the dog's fur. Dogmeat licked Samantha's hand politely, then tucked his nose under his tail. There was silence for a while, then Samantha turned to him. "Here," she said. "Let me see your hands."
He held out his hands, and Samantha examined them. The numbness was fading, and the ache was settling deeper and deeper into his overstrained muscles. His hands felt as if they had been barbecued. Even the gentle brush of the breeze against his exposed flesh stung. Samantha took some bandages from her leg armor and wrapped them, smearing them first with pre-war ointment. Gob sighed with relief as the ointment sank into his raw flesh, soothing and cooling. Both of them knew that Gob would have to go on tomorrow; neither of them said anything about it, for there was nothing to be done. Samantha got up and began to kindle a fire in the fire drum.
"We didn't make it as far as I wanted to today," she said with a sigh, "but I think we made it far enough. With luck, we should get to the outskirts of Vault 87 by tomorrow midmorning." The fire crackled as it caught, and a red glow bloomed out of the top of the drum. Gob moved closer to it gratefully; the chill in the night air was beginning to set in, soaking through the leather armor he wore. "Since we are stopped," Samantha continued, "I figure I might as well take a quick look around—make sure we're alone out here and that nothing is going to come and ambush us in the middle of the night. I'll leave Dogmeat here," she said, gesturing to the furry ball of the Blue Heeler. "Will you be comfortable with that, Gob?"
No, Gob wanted to say, don't leave me, but the memory of Charon's words earlier silenced him. "Ahhh, sure," he said with a confidence he didn't feel. "I'll be fine."
"Okay. I'll be back in a bit."
As Samantha gave the fire a final poke, then took her helmet from her waist, Gob's eyes wandered past her to the darkening purple skyline. Far to the south, the black outline of a tower stood out in sharp silhouette, dark against the stars. "Before you go—what's that there?" he asked her, gesturing to the tower.
"That's Tenpenny Tower." The words were clipped brutally short. Gob turned to look at her, but her face was taut, revealing nothing.
"Oh. T-Tenpenny Tower?" Gob frowned. It sounded familiar for some reason. He searched his memory, then after a bit, he had it. "Hey, that's the tower that Roy Phillips and those ghouls were trying to get into, isn't it?" he said excitedly, remembering one of Three Dog's broadcasts. "Did they make it?"
"They did," Samantha said, even more curtly than before.
Gob studied the tower again. It was totally black against the sky; there were no lights coming from it at all. "Strange that it doesn't look inhabited." There was something almost sinister about that black shape, looming up above the hills of the Wastes; it seemed a vast, brooding presence, casting a shadow over its surroundings. "Do you know if anyone's still living there, or—"
"I have to go." Samantha donned her helmet, cutting him off sharply. "I'll be back," her voice crackled through the synthesizers. She took out her plasma rifle and strode off, leaving Gob alone behind her.
The night darkened around him, and the air continued to chill. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire in the drum, the soft sighing of the wind, and, from time to time, a few unintelligible mumbles from Charon. I see what Samantha meant about the silence, Gob thought. In Megaton, there were always sounds at night; the lowing of Brahmin, the far-off sounds of distant voices, the hum of generators. Here there was nothing; just the immensity of the night. He, Dogmeat and Charon might as well be the only people in the world. Gob shivered, wrapping his arms around himself, and drew closer to the warmth of the fire. It's so spooky out here….
Dogmeat's ears pricked up. He uncurled and got to his feet, pacing to the edge of the firelight and staring into the darkness. A low growl formed in his throat. Gob looked over at him. "Do you see something?" he asked.
Dogmeat's growl deepened. His tail curled up over his back, and he gave a short bark. Gob went to him and peered out into the dark. He could see nothing. He listened, but no sounds came.
"There's nothing out there. Lie down," he told the dog.
Dogmeat ignored him. His lip curled back from his teeth. The dog's hackles were actually standing up on the back of his neck. The rumbling in his throat exploded into a series of loud barks. Gob cursed under his breath. If there is anything out there, they'll hear that and come looking for us right away—
"Quiet, Dogmeat!" he ordered the dog. "Quiet! Sit down! Sit!" Desperate and not knowing what to do, he grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and pushed on his hindquarters, trying to quiet him. Dogmeat continued to bark, furiously. In something of a panic, Gob tried to clamp his aching hands around the dog's muzzle. "There's nothing out there!" he repeated. "Be quiet and—"
Low laughter came bubbling out of the darkness beyond the ring of firelight.
Gob froze, his heart in his throat. "Who—Who is it?" he demanded, hearing his voice tremble. "Samantha? Is—Is that you?"
The laughter came again. "It's not Samantha," a polite voice called out.
Dogmeat's bonechilling growl seemed to reverberate through Gob's chest. He tightened his grip on the scruff of the dog's neck, trying to still his trembling; with one hand, he groped for the weapons holster at his hip. "I—I'm warning you, I'm armed!" he called, then cursed again as his hands closed on air; Charon still has the gun, he remembered, too late.
"So are we," another clear, smooth voice called. "Isn't everyone out here?" There was a pause, during which time Gob could hear some low murmuring. Then the first voice called again, "We're going to come closer now. Just so you can see us. Is that all right?"
Gob considered that. Dogmeat was fighting against his grip, snarling. "A-All right," he acquiesced. "But not too close. I'm not sure how much longer I can hold the dog back."
Gob backed toward Charon as footsteps shuffled toward him out of the darkness. Dogmeat was going wild; he had to wrap his arms around the dog's chest and physically drag him backwards. As the shapes of the newcomers emerged out of the darkness, Gob shoved Dogmeat's hindquarters down, hard, and shouted at him, "Bad dog! Sit!" For a moment, one blue eye and one brown stared at him balefully and Gob almost recoiled; but Dogmeat did as he was told, though his teeth were bared and he was trembling with aggression. Gob quickly knelt to retrieve the pistol from Charon's hands and then turned to face the newcomers, hoping he didn't look as scared as he felt.
There were three of them standing just at the edge of the firelight: two men and a woman, all wearing leather armor so dark that it was almost black. Their hair and eyes were dark as well, and glossy, while their complexions were pale and clear; they looked as if they might all be related. Unlike the scrawny, underfed and jittery Raiders, this group appeared to be in good health; Gob didn't see any of the tell-tale signs of illness or chem addiction. They were armed with hunting rifles and combat knives; the woman had a long-barreled sniper rifle at her back. They made no aggressive moves, simply waiting for him to speak.
"Wh-what do you want?" he demanded, curving one injured hand around the stock of his pistol.
The woman smiled. "We want only to come close enough to share your fire. That's all. Will you let us? We're the Hunters," she added as an afterthought.
The Hunters…. Something tugged at his memory, but was gone before he could retrieve it. Gob studied them. They waited patiently under his scrutiny, keeping their hands well away from their weapons. Dogmeat's growl continued unabated; Gob turned on him and ordered, again, "Be quiet!" to no effect. At last, he nodded. "Okay," he said finally. "But I'm warning you: Don't try anything funny." What he could do to stop them if they did, he had no idea; there were three of them to one of him, and they looked to be better armed.
"Thank you," one of the men said courteously, and they came forward just to the fire drum; they made no attempt to move any closer. "We appreciate your hospitality," he continued. "Not many in the Wastes welcome strangers."
"Try being a ghoul," Gob said dourly. There was more polite laughter. The Hunters put down their packs and began settling in. Summoning his courage, he ventured, "Where are you from?"
"Here and there," the other man said.
"Down south," the woman chimed in. "Near Fairfax, if you know where that is."
Gob shrugged. The words meant nothing to him. "What brings you up this way?"
"Hunting," the first man said, and the three of them shared a small, secret smile. Dogmeat kept up his growling, a low rumble just at the edge of hearing. A thin feather-touch of unease brushed Gob's heart.
"A long way to come for hunting," he ventured.
"Well, game is growing scarce down south," the woman said apologetically. "You know how it is."
"Times are tough all over," Gob offered.
"They certainly are," the second man agreed. The Hunters gathered around the drum and began to make themselves at home, putting down their packs and beginning to set up camp. The first man extracted several skewers from his pack and threaded them with chunks of meat, then laid the skewers over the fire in the drum. The meat sizzled as the flames brushed it, and a rich aroma wafted up. Gob bit his lip.
"That smells good. Is it Mirelurk?" he asked.
"The most delicious meat of all," the man affirmed. "Care to try some?"
Gob shook his head regretfully. "I'm allergic to shellfish."
There was more quiet laughter. "Your loss," the woman said with a shrug. There was silence for a time as the Hunters settled in, beginning to work on their weapons as they waited for their food to be done. Dogmeat eventually laid down, though he never took his eyes from the Hunters and the low, rumbling growl kept up in his throat. At the back of the shallow depression, under the rock ledge, Charon tossed again in his restraints, mumbling; then he was still again.
"We don't really see many ghouls out here," said the first man, looking up at Gob. His white, even teeth gleamed in a smile and his dark eyes were very bright. Again, that thin edge of unease brushed him. "Where are you from, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I'm from—" Gob paused. "Underworld, originally."
"Oh?" The woman turned toward him. "How long ago did you leave?"
"A while ago." Gob shifted, somewhat uncomfortable though he could not have given a reason why. Hunters… The word tugged at his memory again.
"I see your friend there—" the first man gestured toward Charon "—is also a ghoul. Are you headed back there?"
"Not exactly," Gob replied.
"No?" the man asked. Gob simply shook his head.
"Your friend looks as if he is sick," the woman said now, looking over at Charon, where he still lay strapped into his stretcher.
"Something like that," Gob admitted cautiously. The woman's eyes gleamed.
"It must be difficult, trying to drag him over the Wastes all by yourself."
"Oh, we're not alone," Gob hastened to say. "There's someone else with us, and she's been helping me carry the stretcher. She just left to take a quick look around, but she should be back shortly." Uneasily he wondered where Samantha was and what was taking her so long.
"I see." The meat sizzled, and the woman rose to her feet and collected the skewers from the fire. She doled them out to her companions, and the three of them fell to with decent appetite. There was a bit more silence while they ate.
"How is it?" Gob asked.
"It's okay," the woman shrugged, licking her fingers. "It might have been better if it were the slightest bit aged, though." She gave that secret smile again, and Gob's unease spiked. Something is not right here, he thought. Maddeningly, whatever it was he was trying to remember danced just out of reach.
The first man finished picking a few last shreds of meat off his skewer, and he looked back up at Gob with those shining eyes. "So…when did you say your friend was coming back?"
"Oh, she should be back any time," Gob said quickly, edging toward Dogmeat. Dogmeat was still growling, almost inaudibly. "Any time at all. So," he said, wetting his lips, "you're the Hunters?"
"That's right," the second man said, with a smile that showed far too many teeth.
"Wh—" He broke off, swallowing. "What do you hunt, exactly? Mirelurk?"
"Oh, whatever we can," the second man said. "Whatever we can catch, we hunt. Sometimes we have to track our prey for miles, but other times…." He gave that eerie smile again. "Other times, our prey practically invites us in."
"Is that so," Gob said faintly. And suddenly he had it; the connection burst into his brain, complete and whole. Hunters…Gob thought as horror filled him. Hunters of Men—!
Now he remembered hearing Samantha talk about it: how from time to time she would come across groups in the Wastes, clad in leather armor, chasing down some poor fleeing Wastelander; what they would do to the Wastelander if she failed to get there in time. His body seemed to go numb. His hands were shaking. His mouth was so dry that his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. They were all looking at him with their overly-bright eyes, and now he recognized that look for what it was: the stare of a predator eyeing its prey. The panic filled his mind, making it hard to think. Flee, his fear hammered at him, flee, flee, flee!
Gob actually started to rise—he stirred and made a hesitant move toward the edge of the camp—before he stopped himself. Can't flee, he thought desperately. They'll catch me if I do. All of them were armed and the woman had a sniper rifle; they could take him from quite a distance if he did. And even if I do escape….then there'll be nobody to protect Charon. Charon was helpless, injured and unconscious on his stretcher; if he ran, then—then they'll…get him. The image of the Hunters of Men surrounding the defenseless Charon and…and doing things to him—made him sick to think about. His eyes darted to the skewers still lying in the fire, and he shuddered. No. I can't leave Charon, I can't. He felt frozen with fear. What am I going to do? Samantha, where are you?
The Hunters were smiling now, bright toothy smiles. Gob's mind raced, searching for some idea, any idea to save him. Shoot them, he thought, but discarded the idea at once; he'd have to drop all three of them before any of them got a shot off. He suspected Samantha could have done it; and he was sure that Charon could have. Gob knew that his shooting prowess was nowhere near theirs. Keep your hands off weapons, he heard Charon's raspy voice again. His eyes kept straying to the discarded skewers and the shreds of meat clinging to them, and he felt his gorge rise; he swallowed hard. His mind cast about in panic, searching for something, anything….Think, you coward, think!
"Wh-where are you headed?" he stammered, playing for time, hoping that their answer would reveal something that would be helpful to him.
"Nowhere in particular," murmured the woman. She casually moved her sniper rifle from her back, as if she were preparing to clean it.
"Possibly up north," the first man said. He was fingering the stock of his hunting rifle.
"Oh." Gob licked his lips. A wild thought slipped into his head; Gob seized it immediately. He had no idea if it would work, but there was nothing else. "I w-was going to tell you—if you were headed to Underworld—to stay clear."
"Is that so," murmured the second man politely. He checked the load of his own weapon. His dark eyes—all their eyes—were shining.
"Yeah. There's—there's a sickness in Underworld right now, as a matter of fact," Gob said, his voice gaining strength. "That's why my friend—my friends," he corrected himself "and I came out here—to get away from it."
The three of them exchanged glances. Gob had no idea what the looks they gave each other meant. "A…sickness," the woman said.
"Yeah. The doctor there, Doc Barrows, said he's never seen anything like it before," Gob continued, improvising quickly. "He tried all the pre-war junk he had on hand, but there was nothing that could touch it. He and Nurse Graves think it might have been some sort of pre-war bioweapon lying around, and that maybe the supermutants stirred it up—they've been digging around the Mall lately. Whatever it is, it's rough on ghouls, but really does a number on smoothskins." Listening to himself, Gob couldn't believe he was saying all this stuff—couldn't believe, either, that it actually sounded somewhat plausible. The three Hunters had paused in toying with their weapons and were listening to him, though their expressions were unreadable.
"Is that so?" the first man asked, with a bit more interest this time.
"Oh yeah," Gob fervently insisted. "Finally Winston—he's sort of the guy in charge of Underworld—decided to close it off until the disease had died down—quarantine the area. Or at least, we heard he was going to. My friends and I decided we wouldn't stick around for that, and we managed to get out before he locked the doors. I think it was too late though." He tried to look somber—though he didn't know if it would matter; it had been his experience that smoothskins generally couldn't read ghouls' expressions—and glanced at Charon. "A couple of days ago my friend there started complaining that he wasn't feeling so good. At first we were hoping it was something else, but he just kept getting worse and worse until he collapsed this morning. We carried him as far as we could, but finally he got so bad we just couldn't go on. My friend left me here to watch him while she went out to look and see if she could find any medicine for him—"
"Not much chance of finding medicine around here," murmured the second man.
Gob swallowed. "I know. We should have stopped earlier, but—" But what? Gob's mind came up blank. "But, well, you know. Coulda, shoulda, woulda," he said with an unfeigned grimace. "Hindsight is always 20/20, and all that. Anyway, I-I just thought I would warn you. You folks might want to be moving on before too long," he added, wetting his lips again. "It's catching, you know, and it's much worse for smoothskins than it is for us." A sudden burst of inspiration struck him, and Gob seized it and ran with it. He wondered again in the back of his mind just where in creation he was getting such ideas from; he would never have believed that he could lie so quickly and so well. "My friend there—" he jerked a thumb at Charon "—actually is a smoothskin. Or he was, but the sickness…." Gob bit his lip, trying to look uncertain. It wasn't too difficult. "Like I was saying, it's probably best for you to get on quickly."
The three Hunters of Men turned to stare at each other for a long moment, their dark eyes flickering unreadably. Gob curled his hand around the butt of the pistol he had taken from Charon, more for comfort than anything else. His heart was in his throat. The moment stretched out, and he dared for an instant to hope—
Then the woman looked back at him. "You are a gifted storyteller," she said, smiling that too-bright smile. "Very believable. But unfortunately for you, the last prey we took, not two days before, had just come from Underworld, and he said nothing about any plague there. So you are out of luck, prey."
She raised her weapon now, pointing it directly at him. Behind her, the other two Hunters did the same. The three of them cocked their weapons and panic filled Gob. He raised his hands, trembling. "Wait—please, I—please—"
"It's been a long time since we've taken a ghoul," the second man said. "Ghoul flesh is a rare treat. I can't wait to—"
"Get away from him!"
The whining of powered armor filled the campsite as Samantha strode forward out of the darkness. Gob could have wept to see her. The arc lighting of her Tesla armor crackled around her, making her look like a demon out of some prewar story, and she held her plasma rifle at the ready. Her helmet was off, hanging at her hip, and Gob cringed at the anger on her face. This was not the cold dispassion that she had shown when she had shot Moriarty; this was a fundamental hatred –a loathing—that made Gob want to cower. A collective hiss went up from the Hunters of Men, and Gob saw the same loathing reflected on their faces.
"You," one of the men spat.
"That's right. It's me," Samantha snarled. The air around her was electric with danger. Dogmeat rose from his sitting position and began to bark furiously, his lip curled, showing teeth. Gob had never heard such gruesome sounds come from a dog's throat before. "Get away from here right now, you jackals, or so help me, I'll splatter your filthy brains all over the dirt."
"You can't," the woman said coolly. "There are three of us to one of you. You can shoot one of us, but while you do that--"
"Take your best shot, filth," Samantha replied. "We'll see just how well those hunting rifles do against Tesla armor."
"Not you," the woman said, laughing. The sound was discordant, frightening. "Your friends. Your rotten, undefended, oh-so-vulnerable friends." She showed teeth again. "Two of them—and three of us. Do you think you can get all three of us before we manage to take down one of them?"
Samantha stared at them as the lightning arced around her. Her face worked. "I don't care!" she almost shouted. "If you don't get out of here right this instant, I will shoot you and odds be damned. Go!"
She sighted along her weapon. The Hunters of Men exchanged a look, then slowly began to edge backwards, their own rifles still pointed at their targets. The female held Samantha's eyes. "This isn't over," she told her. "You're young and soft—succulent, one might say. Someday we will feast. 'Messiah' or no."
Samantha jerked her chin at her left wrist, where her Pip-Boy 3000 was. "You have three minutes to vanish completely off my radar. And if I catch you following us—and I will catch you—you'll never feast again."
"Someday," the woman said only, and they faded into the darkness. Samantha's eyes lowered, watching her Pip-Boy screen. Gob waited, scarcely daring to breathe. At last, Samantha's taut, hyper-alert stance relaxed slightly.
"They're gone." She was shaking with emotion. "Bastards. Bastards, bastards, bastards!" She hawked and spat at the place where they had stood. Gob flinched. "Vermin. Filth. Jackals. God, I hate them." She looked like she wanted to spit again. "I should have shot them all like the radroaches they are—but with Charon—" Samantha stopped herself and drew a breath, visibly getting herself under control. "I had no idea they were out here. Gob, are you and Charon okay?"
Gob swallowed, trying to calm himself. "I—yes. I—tried to stall them, they didn't—" His eyes went to the fire, where the skewers still lay, and his stomach lurched horribly. "I-I think I have to—" Abruptly he stumbled to the edge of the firelight and fell to his knees, vomiting into the dirt. Shamefacedly, he straightened, wiping his mouth. "I'm sorry—I'm sorry, I—"
"It's okay," Samantha said quietly. "I did the same thing, the first time I realized who they were and what they were doing." She moved over to the drum and tipped the skewers gently into the coals. They caught and burned brightly, falling into ash. "There are definitely things worse than Raiders out here. I hate those bastards even worse than the Enclave," she said, her voice shaking. "They're worse than animals. Just the thought of what they would—" She stopped herself again. "Anyway, they're gone now," she said as if forcibly reminding herself.
Samantha moved to check on Charon while Gob collected himself, trying to get his stomach under control. She looked up from the other ghoul. "You should probably turn in. We have more walking to do tomorrow," she told him gently. "I'll take first watch. They probably won't be back; the Hunters of Men are nothing if not cowards—but if they do come back, Dogmeat will know and warn us."
"Oh—okay," he said faintly. He awkwardly lay down, close to the fire, and tried to get comfortable; he hadn't slept on dirt in a long, long time. Since the Slaver caravan, he thought, swallowing. He closed his eyes, trying to blot out the images in his head. After a time, he succeeded.