The Wild One – Memorial Day – Atomic Hot Sauce – Fireworks – Dutch Loses his Cool – The Rocket's Red Glare
Driving an electric motorcycle through the wasteland gave an eerie, almost ethereal experience. With barely a high pitched whine from the motor even at the highest speed, the overwhelming sound was the rush of wind breaking across Dutch's metal plated face, the occasional clatter of his suspension over the cracks in the ancient asphalt. For a man who had spent the last ten years of his life walking at a tortoise pace across the wastes, traveling at high speed on wheels seemed as alien as flying.
He entered a long, narrow canyon between mountains where the road seemed as straight and as flat as a landing strip, and where the asphalt had been preserved from the elements so that it might have been freshly paved. He slowed to a stop and he took a swig of water through the tube fixed to his collar. He dialed Rebel Rouser into his PIPBoy and the deep, twangy sound of an electric guitar paired with the swinging blare of a saxophone—prewar rock and roll—entered his ears. He adjusted the knob on the side of motorcycle from normal gear to racing mode. He smiled and gunned his engine.
He went from zero to sixty in all of two seconds and rose to ninety in less than two more. His heart thudded and the music roared and he smiled wider than he could ever remember.
He returned to Slickrock the next morning and cruised slowly down a central street decorated with festive banners and filled with booths and tents and tables covered with bright tablecloths and pitchers of beer and iced tea and steaming hot pies and meats and fruit salads. Music was being played on every street corner and he had to navigate crowds of dancing and laughing people who walked from booth to booth sampling free foodstuffs. Eventually he reached the town's hotel and found Hatchett sitting sentry-like on the porch. Dutch parked the motorcycle and went over to him.
"You're back," Hatchett said. He had a half of a lemon meringue pie on a table next to his chair and a slice of it on a plate in his hand. His bulging waistline explained where the other half of the pie had gone. "I'm glad."
"What's going on?" Dutch said.
"Festival," Hatchett said.
"What's the occasion?"
"The Khan is still dead. And it's the tenth anniversary of the Battle of Thermopolis."
A bullet to the head had clouded Dutch's memories of that day. He remembered a lot of pain, a lot of screaming, a great many lives lost, and a city vanishing in a flash of nuclear fire. "People celebrate that?"
Hatchett shrugged. "The ones who weren't there think it's worth remembering. I'll go along with it as long as the food is always this good. 'Veterans' of the battle eat free, by the way. That includes you." He cut another piece of the pie off and put it on a plate and handed it to Dutch. "Maybe you'll glue more than a half pound of weight to those sticks before you go running off again this time."
Dutch took a bite of the pie and looked around. "Any more…?"
Hatchett frowned. "No. It's been quiet."
"Where's my prisoner?"
"Out there somewhere," Hatchett said. "Partaking."
"Seriously?"
Hatchett smiled. "She was this year's only winner in the Atomic Hot Legs competition. She was the only one who could finish a plate of fried gecko legs coated in Elita's hot sauce recipe. Girl's got a tolerance for punishment. If I even smelled one of them things, I'd be up all night feeling like I been gutshot."
"I'll be damned," Dutch said.
Hatchett stood. "Come on. Let's lock that gear up at the station."
Hatchett helped Dutch push the motorcycle along toward the sheriff's station. Each time they passed a booth, Hatchett would stop and hold the bike and refuse to proceed until Dutch had sampled more the local cuisine. By the time they reached the station, he'd eaten three large Brahmin ribs, an eight-inch broiled sausage, a chop of breaded bighorner mutton in mint sauce, three slices of pie, a plate of beans and coleslaw, and a bowl of banana pudding. Hatchett handed him a mug of beer the size of a flagon, and they came upon a wooden dance floor erected in center of town.
Couples danced swinging and spinning on the floor to a screeching fiddler and a country bluegrass band. Dutch recognized Hatchett's deputy well before he recognized the girl he danced with. She wore floral cowboy boots and a light blue skirt and a fringed buckskin jacket. She danced with as much enthusiasm as anyone on the floor. Marion struggled to keep up.
"This," Dutch said, "I did not foresee."
"She warmed to us faster than we warmed to her," Hatchett said. "But with all the things she's done for us the last few weeks, she's become a bit of a local favorite."
"What things?"
"Well Doc McCabe originally took her on as an assistant, but now it seems like, between the two of us, it's more like he's the one assisting her. She's four different kinds of doctors rolled into one. You know that?"
"She was made for medicine," Dutch said. "The way I was made to kill."
Hatchett glanced at him strangely. They passed the dance floor and reached the station. Dutch leaned the motorcycle against the porch and secured it with a chain and padlock. He lifted his bags off the back seat and carried them inside and Hatchett unlocked the iron bars around the armory. Dutch unloaded his gear into a footlocker marked with his name. He hung up his big .50 on the rack and started to turn away. Hatchett shook his head. Dutch unhooked the SMG from its nylon harness and set it down before stepping out.
Hatchett lit a cigar and watched the people dancing through a window. "She saved that boy they brought in, you know. McCabe never would have been able to. That's not all, either. Burt, one of my deputies, used to be the grumpiest old bear in town, and now he's the happiest, since she fixed a knee that's been causing him misery for fifteen years. She fixed a little girl who couldn't walk to where she will soon. I'm talking about stuff the best doctors in California wouldn't know how to do."
Dutch nodded. "That's not the half of what she knows."
"You mean she knows how to put a computer in a person's head."
Dutch went to the window and looked out at the dance floor and his prisoner, dancing. "Or replace his eyes with mechanical ones."
"Was gonna tiptoe around that one."
"Don't bother." Dutch's eyes ticked and hummed as they zoomed in like telescopes to view the girl's face. He noticed the placement of her hands on the young deputy's lower back. "She's getting very close to your deputy, I see."
Hatchett was silent for a moment. "Yeah, uh…whatever woke up in her being off that spiked water woke up something else too, I reckon."
Dutch looked at him. "Did you…?"
Hatchett scowled. "No, damn it." He tugged at his collar. "She tried it, one night. I'm too old to get into that kind of trouble. I guess she's latched onto Marion now. I don't know if it's a good or bad thing for either of them, but lord knows it's better than that."
Dutch sipped his beer. "I did not foresee this at all."
"I'll tell you one thing," Hatchett said. "As far as folks around here are concerned, she's one of us now."
Dutch sipped his beer. "And when they find out her involvement?"
"Why should they?"
"You don't think they should?"
"People around here have all made their own mistakes. Lord knows I have. You have. McCabe was one of the Khan's doctors—and I'll thank you not to spread that around. Let's not go hurting anyone's feelings if we can help it." Hatchett went to his desk and sat down. "So? You find the Major?"
Dutch continued to watch out the window. "Yes. I invited him here. I hope you approve."
"Did he?"
Dutch shook his head. "He gave me no clear answer on whether he'd accept it. But it was as I suspected. He's as embroiled as we are, and as hungry for answers."
"How much did you fill him in on?"
"What I could. But he had found something that I had no answers for. That opened a whole new chapter of questions."
"Don't tell me that."
"Are you familiar with…Kango?"
Hatchett raised an eyebrow. "By association. He pointed at the cell. Them two in there are his boys. The blind and deaf one is his cousin. Why?"
Dutch shook his head. "I don't know why. He and all of his men are missing."
"Missing?"
"They vanished into the night. I think my old associates took him. They left no bodies."
Hatchett scratched his head under his hat. "The hell…?"
"Indeed."
As night fell over the town, the festivities picked up rather than slowed down, and kegs of beer and ale and bottles of wasteland corn whiskey and agave tequila were uncorked and the townspeople danced drunkenly in high spirits in the streets by moonlight. Fireworks were launched into the sky and exploded in flares of red and yellow and blue and cracked like the gunfire of the battle they commemorated.
Hatchett and Dutch and Marion and Doc McCabe sat at a round table. Dutch sat beside a new friend—a tribal with braided hair and a gecko-skin vest who introduced himself as Rhiago and wore a machete like a sword. On a narrow stage a leathery-skinned ghoul with no eyes—just empty sockets—played slide guitar and a wailing harmonica. The ghoul, Blind Willie, regaled them with songs about times long passed and guzzled from a glowing bottle of irradiated spirits. The Geiger counter in Dutch's PIPboy ticked softly in his presence
Emmy came back to the table with six shots of tequila on a plate and passed them around. Hatchett declined, so the girl drank his in addition to her own.
"The night is young yet," Marion said. "You think you might want to slow down, lady?"
"Come on," she said, her voice slurring. "It's a festival!"
"For someone who says she never met John Barleycorn, you're sure not shy about getting acquainted in a hurry."
She's been addicted to stronger stuff her whole life, Dutch thought. Inebriation was something close to her natural state, only more fun. She'd likely become an alcoholic. He decided not to share his prognosis for the time being.
"I remember the day my tribe learned of the firewater," Rhiago said. "Rhiago fathered two children that day. Noble warriors both. Such shame they look so much like Rhiago. He have to leave tribe when chief realize it."
"Oh, I'm sure we've all been there," the Doc said, rubbing his eyes. He looked around. "Oh. Just me?"
Hatchett's eyes had been on the bar, or more specifically the bartender Elita, for much of the night. She wore a tight checked flannel shirt and cut off jeans and dazzling white boots. He finished his beer and finally got up to go talk to her when he saw an opening.
"So is that…" Emmy said. She gazed at the bluesman on stage. "Is that one of the mutants?"
"But they all are," Dutch said.
"I suppose you could say he has a mutation or two," Marion said. "But we can't go holding that against him."
"The ghouls be sacred things," Rhiago said. "They be the holy spirits made flesh for my people. Smelly, droopy flesh."
McCabe burped. "And who is to fault them for a mutation. Is it not mutation that gave the world so long ago the soupy plankton that sprouted legs and crawled onto the beach and sprouted hands which sprouted thumbs which built the beautiful bomb that reduced the world that gave him life to a scorched cinder in thanks…?"
"What do you think should be done with that mutant on stage?" Dutch said. "Emmy."
She looked at him. "I guess…someone could buy him a drink? He's pretty good."
"Don't you think he should be incinerated, before whatever he has spreads to us?"
Emmy frowned. Marion scratched his chin. "Killing the mood a little there, aren't you Dutchman?"
"Don't you think Marion should be too? The mutant whose lap you're sitting in?"
"Hey," Marion said. "She's just on the corner of the same chair…"
"I think he's drunk," Emmy said.
"I think you're a fucking faker," Dutch said. "I think you should still be in a god damned cage."
"Hey," Marion said.
"I…I know I was wrong now," she said. "I'm trying to learn."
"Prove it, bitch," Dutch said.
"Hey now," Marion said. "You check that sh—"
Dutch overturned the table. Drinks spilled. Glasses shattered. Chairs clattered backward to the floor. Marion rose and got in Dutch's way and got shoved to the floor. Dutch seized "Emmy" around the neck and carried her to the wall and shoved her against it. The Doc and the tribal grabbed his arms, trying to tear him off her. Her eyes bulged.
"People disappearing at night. Children, sick, and elderly leave only bones. Deathclaw chow. Able bodied men and women leave nothing. They're being taken alive. Where? Why? What is the purpose? I know you know why, you brilliant fucking doctor. If you have seen the light, then reflect some of it, or stop pretending, and go back in your cage."
Marion added a pair of arms around the neck trying to pull him off. The music had stopped. She squeaked. He relaxed his grip to let her speak. "I don't know anyth—"
He slammed her into the wall. A framed picture fell to the floor and shattered.
"You know exactly two clearance levels more than I do. That means you know something. So share it. Why would they abduct raiders? Why take a man without a jaw, and leave an anemic man to bleed?"
"They can replace a jaw," she said. He loosened his grip. "They can…they…" Then her eyes rolled up into her head and she went into a violent spasm and collapsed onto the floor.
The three men finally managed to pull Dutch back and they all stumbled and all four men fell crashing to the floor. When Dutch untangled himself from the three men, Hatchett and McCabe were over Emmy, who thrashed violently on the floor, vomiting pie and tequila. Hatchett forced a wooden spoon into her mouth so she didn't bite through her tongue.
"What in the hell did you do?" Marion yelled, grabbing his collar.
"I didn't…"
"She's having a seizure," McCabe said. "She's epileptic?"
"No," Dutch said. "Impossible."
"Then what?" Hatchett said.
"She was trying. I think she was trying to tell me. Something stopped her."
"God damn it at all," Hatchett said. "I am so fucking tired of this bullshi—"
"Help me get her to my office so I can give her something to calm her down," McCabe said.
Hatchett and McCabe lifted the girl up and went for the door. The men and women at their tables sat staring in silence. Dutch started after them. Marion grabbed him and swung him around. "You got a real nice way about you, tin man. You know that?"
Marion shoved past him. Dutch scratched his head and looked at his PIPboy. His blood alcohol content registered 0.08. He took a moment to collect himself and then followed them outside. They were halfway down the street. He jogged to catch up. A man in a duster and cowboy hat with a rifle yelled down at them from the parapets of the high wall that surrounded the city. "Oh my god Sheriff. What's wrong with that pretty lady doctor. She okay?"
"I'm sure she's fine, Burt. You just stay about your business."
"I can come down."
"You just keep your eyes over the wall. You're the only one watching that sector."
"Hell, Sheriff, there ain't nothing—"
Burt, and a tremendous portion of the wall beneath him, vanished in a ball of orange flame. The shockwave knocked the crowds of people off their feet. Chunks of brick and concrete rained down with bits of Burt. A fist-sized chunk of rock rebounded off Dutch's metal face and it rang like a gong, knocking him senseless. He woke up surrounded by injured and screaming people and chunks of debris. He rose.
A man approached him through the dust and the smoke. A pair of eyes glowed yellow in out of the otherwise formless outline. A civilian pushed past Dutch, moving toward a crying child. Dutch put out a hand to try to stop him. A light flashed florescent blue, and the man disappeared in a pillar of blue flame—a blackened skeleton with hands outstretched briefly visible through the flames before they crumbled into a pile of ash. The light of the flames cleared away the shadows, and Dutch beheld a man dressed in a raider's spray-painted steel armor and wearing a necklace of human ears, and yet he had Dutch's own face—his own metal face and glowing mechanical eyes. He grinned wide, revealing missing and blackened teeth, and leveled a phased plasma bolt rifle in Dutch's direction.
"Ha ha ha," he said. His voice was just like Dutch's.
Dutch's raised his 10mm pistol and shot the abomination between his mechanical eyes. The metal plating there pinged and the raider's head snapped back and forth and swayed for a moment and he took a dizzy step forward. Dutch slugged him across the jaw and spun him around and held him around the throat and wrapped his hand around his, refusing to let the raider release his hold around the trigger of the plasma gun and firing form him. He fired it through the gaping hole in the breeched wall, firing bolts of arcing blue fire through the smoky haze at the hordes of shadowy figures pouring through it. He struck one, and then another, lighting them up. Their bodies continued to run forward, fully engulfed in blue flame, before finally crumbling into ash.
The abomination in his arms struggled against him. He touched the plasma gun's trigger once with his own index finger before the thing fought free of him, and that was all it took. He kicked the thing hard in the back and it stumbled forward, his weapon emitting strings of warning chirps and beeps. The thing spun around and aimed the rifle, and suddenly the weapon exploded in his hands, sending up a geyser of blue flame that left only a glowing hot metal faceplate on top of a pile of smoking ashes in his place.
Gunfire chattered out. People screamed, and everywhere fell flailing and bloody, gunned down in the streets. Dutch picked a target out of the smoke and the crowd and snapped off six shots into him as he walked forward—blood and dust and electrical sparks spraying where the slugs thumped his body until he finally teetered over backward and fell into a water trough and sizzled out. They were raiders, but they had bionics like his own. No training, but all of his own kind's technology. It made no sense at all.
He fired four more shots at targets moving around him. He drew a bead on another and fired two shots, and one thumped a bit of hair off the back of a raider's skull and dropped him. His slide locked back. He dropped his empty mag and reached for another. A grenade landed beside him. His integrated sensors beeped a warning into his ears. He dove. The grenade exploded and lifted him into the air. His body slammed into the side of a lamp post and fell to the street. He rose, groaning, and reached again for another mag, but when he looked up, three of the robo-raiders stood around him. One had a single mechanical eye crudely welded into his left eye socket, nearly obscuring an ancient scar. Another looked normal, but rather than holding a gun his hand was a gun. One had legs that resembled metal goat's legs. And yet they all wore the decorations and colors of one of Kango's raiders.
"You maniacs," Dutch said. "You fucking lunatics."
"Now you die," the one with the robot legs said.
Then all three of their heads exploded clean off their shoulders—and Dutch caught brief glimpses of tangled wires and sparking computer relays amid the chunks of gray matter and bone fragments that filled the air.
The three bodies thudded to the ground, blood pooling. Sheriff Hatchett stepped out of the smoke and the dust with a revolver in either hand. He holstered one and reached down to help Dutch to his feet.
"Get up," he said. "You can rest after you help me clean this trash out of my town."
