Gob sensed the rads almost the moment he stepped past the wire fence. It started as a low-level tingling, like what he had experienced at the Jalbert Brothers site; but as he pulled Charon further among the rocky, lifeless bluffs, he could feel it increasing almost literally step by step. After he had gone perhaps a dozen paces, the faint tingle had grown to a sense of surging strength and vigor, a thrilling exhilaration that grew stronger by the second. The aches he had gained over the past day and a half of helping to carry Charon had completely disappeared. He felt all-powerful, invincible—almost as if he could simply scoop the other ghoul up in his arms and bound his way over the boulders to the entrance of Vault 87.

Christ, he thought as he maneuvered Charon's stretcher around a granite outcropping; the weight of the other ghoul seemed as light and trivial as that of a feather. No wonder Samantha didn't dare come in here by herself. The rad count must be astronomical. He had never in his life experienced anything like the sense of limitless strength that filled him now. The sensation was emboldening, intoxicating. He wanted to throw his head back and laugh aloud. This is better than chems.

Samantha had been right; the Vault door was not that far from the barrier around the area. Trails of packed dirt—probably made by the supermutants—criss-crossed the area; Gob followed one of these up to the lip of a cliff. As he reached the top and looked over the edge, he found that he was looking into a sort of bowl, surrounded on three sides by stone bulwarks but with a dirt floor. Embedded in one of the stone walls, on the opposite side of the bowl from him, was a ramshackle wooden door that looked almost like an ancient screen door; he knew from hearing Samantha describe her adventures in leaving Vault 101 that it was the outer door to the Vault's entrance.

That's it. That's the place. Strong as the rads were around him, he could feel that they were still increasing. He glanced back at Charon, where he lay on the stretcher. The other ghoul was already starting to look healthier; some tone had come back into his muscles, and his breathing was strengthening. Not too late yet, Gob thought, exulting. Nevertheless, it would be best to take no chances; the best place for him would be at the very heart of the radiation. Right in front of the door.

He set Charon's stretcher down for a brief moment to unwind the bandages around his hands, and was elated to see that the oozing blisters were completely gone as if they had never been; the raddled, patchwork flesh of his hands looked the same as it always had. This is incredible. Forget Underworld, why the hell isn't there a colony of ghouls living here? Supermutants? The way Gob felt now, the idea that super-mutants might pose any sort of threat to him seemed ludicrous. We'd tear them apart—

His thoughts broke off as he felt the ground tremble beneath him.

What the— He lost his footing briefly, then caught himself. Earthquake? was his first thought. But we've never had an earthquake in the Wastes…. He glanced around in confusion. The shaking continued, regular and rhythmic, growing stronger with each repetition. Slowly, a darkness slid over him, as though a cloud was blotting out the sun. Startled, Gob turned to look behind him as the shaking came to a halt.

Standing perhaps a dozen yards away, towering up against the sky, was a Super-Mutant Behemoth.

Gob had never seen one before, but he had heard them described by Samantha and others; he knew immediately what he was looking at. The green-skinned creature behind him was easily twenty feet tall or more, and its enormous frame was so heavily muscled it appeared grotesque. Its face was hideous and misshapen, a horrible parody of human features. In one hand, it carried a club made out of a massive fire hydrant and an attached section of pipe that appeared to have been simply ripped whole out of the ground; a car door strapped to its other arm served as a shield. Its thick, hideous neck was festooned with a necklace of human skulls, and more skulls hung attached to the crude loincloth that girded its hips. An arrangement of two shopping carts bound together to make a crude basket was strapped to its back; within were the rattling remains of decaying human corpses. It stood there for a moment, then raised its fire hydrant club with a bellow. It brandished the club against the sky and bellowed again, and Gob could just barely make out the vestiges of words within the mass of noise.

"Rotten man!" it roared. "Rotten man go squish!" It roared again, swinging its club at the ground, and the earth beneath him shook. Showers of dirt sifted down from the edge of the cliff, to spatter on the ground far below.

Gob gazed up at the behemoth. The radiation danced along his blood and buzzed in his brain. He felt no fear, despite the size of the thing; just a drilling, heady excitement. The stretcher was at his back, yet he dared not glance at it. His hand slid down his side to the holster at his hip; he touched the smooth stock of the gun briefly…

Keep your hands off weapons, Charon's voice rasped in his mind, and Gob released the gun. Samantha had said the .44 magnum Blackhawk could kill a super-mutant in one shot; she had said nothing about a super-mutant behemoth. All he was like to do by shooting that thing was make it angry.

So what else can I do?

He drew a breath. "Hey, ugly!" he shouted up at the super-mutant, his grating tones harsh in his own ears. "I'll bet you can't catch me!"

The behemoth roared and shook his club. Gob took off running, roughly parallel to the cliff—he dared not go forward, because that would be right past the monster. He could hear the mutant lumbering behind him, and turned to shout back, "You're as slow as you are stupid!" The behemoth howled again. The ground shook with his heavy strides. Gob's own feet seemed to fly over the packed dirt; for long stretches it felt as if his feet did not even touch the earth. The air behind him whistled as the behemoth swung his fire-hydrant club, barely missing him; Gob felt the wind of its passage stir his clothing. Suddenly a wall of rock loomed before him and Gob skidded to a stop, whirling to face his pursuer. The behemoth charged, but Gob dodged at the last moment and the behemoth staggered to a halt.

"Rotten man run fast!" it roared, glowering down at him. "Rotten man scared?"

Gob stared up at the behemoth. He was still not afraid in the slightest, curiously enough, though he recognized how dangerous the situation was. The rads bubbled in his brain. He tilted his head. "Should I be?" he asked.

The behemoth bellowed again. Its rage echoed off the stone walls and canyons, filling the air for miles. Gob suspected Samantha must have heard it, and wondered distantly what she thought.

"Rotten man weak—puny! Me strong! Me eat your bones, rotten man!"

It roared and beat its club on the ground and howled so that boulders came crashing down from the wall behind him; a rock the size of a small car struck the ground three feet to the left of Gob. Gob didn't bother to flinch.

"You are very strong," he said, looking up at the behemoth. "Much stronger than I am. I'm sure if you wanted to, you could kill me very easily." He shoved his hands into his pockets. His right hand closed on something smooth and round. Samantha's lucky 8-ball, he realized. He turned it over in his hand.

"Kill AND EAT, rotten man!"

Gob's fingers worked on the 8-ball, turning it and turning it. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea. Ghouls—rotten men like me—aren't all that good to eat. We tend to give people indigestion. Are you sure you're strong enough to eat me?"

The behemoth howled. "Me strongest ever!"

"Well, I can't let you eat me until I know you're strong enough to handle it. I need you to show me how strong you are." As the behemoth stared at him in confusion, Gob nodded to where a blackened, shattered tree still clung to the edge of the cliff. Its trunk was gnarled and ruined. "Are you strong enough to pick up that tree?"

"More than strong enough, rotten man!" The behemoth set down its club and bounded to the tree. Wrapping its hands around the trunk, it ripped the tree out of the ground with a prodigious heave, its huge muscles flexing. Roaring in triumph, it threw the tree trunk across the chasm, so that it crashed into the wall on the other side. "Strong enough for you?"

"That certainly is strong," Gob agreed . "But I bet you're not strong enough to lift, say, that boulder next to it." He pointed to a huge boulder standing next to the crater in the ground where the tree had been; it was roughly the size of Samantha's Megaton house.

"Me strong!" the behemoth roared. It wrapped its arms around the boulder, struggling to lift it. Sweat glistened on its rubbery green skin. For a long moment nothing happened, then with a groan, the rock began to move. The behemoth raised the huge boulder over its head, raging, and flung it down into the chasm as well. It smashed into the dirt floor far below, so hard that a cloud of dust billowed up in its wake all the way to the level where Gob and the super-mutant were standing. "Strong now, rotten man?!"

"I'm impressed," Gob admitted. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone as strong as you are. I wonder if you're strong enough to—" He paused, then shook his head. "Never mind."

"Never mind? What 'never mind?'" The behemoth focused its uneven yellow eyes on him sharply.

"Forget it. Nobody's that strong," Gob demurred, waving one hand. His other hand tightened on the 8-ball in his pocket.

The behemoth. "What strong? How strong? You tell me now, rotten man!"

Gob paused, as if thinking it over, then said slowly, "I bet you're not strong enough to lift yourself."

"Lift self? What you talk about, rotten man!?"

"Well," said Gob, gazing up at the creature's hideously distorted face, "you know they say that not even the strongest man in the world is strong enough to lift himself. If you could do that, it would certainly mean that you were the strongest one ever. But," he said, sighing in regret, "I don't think even you're that strong. I guess you'd better just go ahead and eat me now."

The behemoth roared in rage, and the echoes of its howls rolled like thunder. "You wrong, rotten man! Me strongest ever! You watch--me show you!" It ripped the car-door shield off its arm and threw it aside, then stared down at its body, its deformed features contorting into a dim frown.

Gob watched with interest. First, the supermutant wrapped its arms around its torso. Its shoulders flexed with effort, but that didn't seem to work. It took a step back, its frown deepening. Next it tried grabbing itself by the upper arms and pulling, but it had no better luck that way. It wrapped its hands around its neck just under its head, and tried pulling up, but again, nothing happened. The creature threw its head back and howled in frustration.

"You know, never mind," Gob called out to him. "I didn't really think you could do it in the first place. Why don't you just forget it. You can just eat me right now, if you like."

"You be quiet, rotten man!" the behemoth raged at him. "Me show you!" It took another step back and stared down at itself again. One heel ground on the edge of the cliff, and a small shower of stones cascaded down. Gob watched. His fingers curled around Samantha's lucky 8-ball.

The behemoth put its hands on its sides, then on its thighs. It ran its hands down its left leg. After feeling around its foot for a moment, it picked its appendage up in its hands. The behemoth staggered, thrown off-balance, and hopped on its right foot, striving to steady itself. Again, its foot ground right on the cliff's rocky lip.

Now. "Maybe this will help. Here!" Gob shouted, and threw Samantha's 8-ball.

It was a long shot—normally, Gob knew, he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn if he were inside it—but perhaps there was something to that luck business after all; the 8-ball flew true, straight for the behemoth's head. With a roar of surprise, the already-off-balance behemoth jerked away, and its heel slipped over the edge. It tottered for a split-second, waving its arms, and then with a scream of sheer rage it went plunging over the side. A moment or so later there was a tremendous, ground-shaking thud, and the monster's cry stopped abruptly.

Slowly, Gob made his way to the edge of the cliff, stopping to retrieve the 8-ball, which lay dark and shining on the ground next to the drop-off. The behemoth lay on the ground, sprawled in an unnatural position; its skull had struck a sharp rock, and there was a profound dent in the side of its head. Its yellow eyes stared upward, sightless

It's dead, he thought, staring down at it. His foot dislodged a shower of stones that went bouncing and rattling down over the cliff face, to spatter on the ground next to the creature's head. The first thing I ever killed. Looking down at the remains of the monstrous creature, he could scarcely believe it. He hadn't really thought that trick with the 8-ball would work; it was just the only thing he could think of to try. It's really, actually dead…

The drilling elation of the rads surged in him, and he shot one fist skyward with a cry, loud enough to echo back starkly from the canyon walls. He'd done it. He, Gob, had brought down a behemoth all by himself. Me, Moriarty's tavern slave…

But Moriarty was dead, Gob remembered. As dead as the behemoth down there. And he was a slave no longer.

Tucking the 8-ball away, he turned and made his way back to Charon.

[*]

Even in the short amount of time Gob had been occupied with the behemoth, Charon appeared to have grown visibly stronger; his breathing was deeper and more even, and he tossed a bit in his restraints, murmuring muddy syllables that might or might not have been English. Gob knelt and checked him to be sure that the straps were still secure—he didn't want Charon rolling off the stretcher while he was dragging him down the cliff face. Then he lifted the end of the stretcher, and started down into the bowl of earth below.

As he drew near to the rickety wooden door that led to the entrance of Vault 87, he saw bodies lying at the base of it: three or four skeletons, a yellow-rad-suited form, a couple of packets of Rad-Away, and two suitcases, one of which held a .32 pistol. They must have tried to get into the Vault after the bombs fell, he realized. The thrilling energy of the rads was almost unbearable. This is the place.

The sprawled corpse of the behemoth lay at the far end of the bowl, a green bulk in the shadows; Gob kept his distance from it, just to be safe, though he was sure the creature was dead. He gently set the stretcher with Charon down right outside the Vault door, where the radiation was hottest. He gathered up the pistol and the packets of Rad-Away—he didn't need it, but Samantha might—then sat himself down on one of the suitcases, waiting.

He sat there with his chin in his hands, his eyes on Charon, as the sun climbed higher in the sky and the day grew warmer around them. At first he wondered if more super-mutants might come to bother him, but none did, and after a while he stopped worrying. Samantha must have got them all. He thought of her, and if she had heard his fight with the super-mutant behemoth, and what she might have thought if she did; he thought of Nova, and wished vaguely that she could see him now. His mind wandered back to Megaton and its inhabitants, as he pondered how they would react to the death of Moriarty and what that would mean for Samantha and Charon and himself. He lost track of time as he sat there, thinking; he could not have said how long it was before he came back to himself to see that Charon's eyes were open, watching him.

"You're awake," he said with a start.

Charon reached to unhook the quick-release clasp on the restraints that held him to the stretcher. The straps fell away and he sat up, moving easily. The other ghoul looked down at himself, exploring his bandaged torso with his hands, then began to unwind the wrappings. As they came off, Gob saw that the inner dressings were stiff and dark with blood, yet the reddish-orange flesh beneath was completely uninjured. Charon tossed them aside. His eyes found Gob.

"Water," he rasped.

Gob immediately handed him a bottle of the purified water that Samantha had given him. Charon drank thirstily, his eyes watching Gob. When he had finished, he discarded the now-empty bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. He glanced briefly at the bulk of the dead behemoth, still lying where it had fallen at the far end of the canyon. "I…I thought it was a dream."

"What?"

"I dreamed that—" He hesitated, studying Gob. Something that looked like a frown crossed his ruined features. "There was a super-mutant behemoth. And—you—killed it."

"It wasn't a dream," Gob said quietly.

Charon's frown deepened. His eyes went from the behemoth's corpse to Gob, and back again. "You. By yourself?"

"Yes," Gob confirmed.

Charon studied him for a long moment. At last, he nodded. Something flickered in his flat, expressionless eyes.

"Well done," he said.

Gob was silent, but a burst of euphoria filled him. Charon got his feet under him and stood, a bit unsteadily; he braced himself against the wall. If he's feeling any of the rads, Gob mused, he isn't showing it.

"We are at Vault 87?" At Gob's nod, Charon continued, "Where is Samantha?"

"Waiting beyond the fence." Gob pointed back toward the girder and barbed-wire construction.

"I must return to my mistress." Charon pushed away from the wall. "Do you have a weapon for me?"

Without a qualm, Gob unbelted the .44 Magnum Blackhawk that Samantha had given him and passed it to Charon. Charon checked the load of the pistol and then fastened around his waist. He was slightly unsteady on his feet, and he leaned on Gob as the two of them started their long, slow climb back toward the fence around the area. Behind them, just at the base of the screen door, lay the discarded stretcher and pile of bandages. Neither one of them looked back.

[*]

The sun had passed its zenith and started its descent by the time the two ghouls reached the border of the irradiated area. Gob felt a pang of regret as they passed out of the radiation, but with a glance at his comrade, he suppressed it; Charon's face was stone. If he felt a similar regret, he gave no sign: his entire concern was to return to the side of his mistress.

Together, with Charon still leaning heavily on Gob, the two of them made their limping way across the stony field to the cover of the treeline. The long, golden afternoon light came slanting into the desiccated remains of the forest; Samantha was in among the blackened trunks, seated on a fallen log and working on her sniper rifle in the middle of a dim shaft of sunshine. Dust motes danced and sparkled around her in the rays of the setting sun. Her back was to them. Dogmeat was curled by her side, his nose buried in his tail; his head came up at their approach, and he bounded toward them with a joyous bark.

The sniper rifle went clattering to the ground as Samantha started up from her seat. "Charon…" she breathed. The next moment she was clasping the taller ghoul in her arms, crushing him to her. She buried her face against him, her armored shoulders shaking. Charon flinched at the impetuosity of her embrace, then stood unresisting; he did not return it, but perhaps he did not have to, Gob thought. After a long moment, Samantha pushed Charon away, gripping him by the shoulders and looking at him.

"Charon," she said again, and smiled through her tears.

"My mistress," Charon responded quietly. He said no more, yet the depth of emotion in those two words could have filled volumes. Gob averted his eyes.

Samantha enfolded Charon in another embrace, then bestowed that radiant smile on Gob; Gob found himself fidgeting awkwardly. "You did it," she said. "You actually did it. I heard all the commotion earlier and I didn't think—but you actually brought back Charon—"

"He killed a super-mutant behemoth," Charon interposed in his grinding voice.

Samantha's eyes widened as she digested that information. "Really." There was a new respect in her voice. "Gob, if I had known I would have—but you did it. I—" Abruptly, she pulled him to her and kissed him soundly on one ruined cheek. "Thank you. I—I don't know how I can ever repay you."

"It—It wasn't so much," Gob stammered. He dropped his eyes and kicked at the ground, filled with embarrassment and a strange, singing joy. The remaining skin on his face felt hot, as if he were blushing, and the place where her lips had touched him seemed to burn.

"No. Gob, I mean it. If you ever need a favor, just ask me. I'm in your debt," Samantha said seriously.

"As am I."

Startled, Gob glanced at the taller ghoul; Charon folded his arms and raised his chin, his lantern jaw set. Gob swallowed a bit; somehow the idea of Charon owing him a favor intimidated him.

Samantha took a step back and regarded her two ghoulish companions. When she spoke, her tone was brisk and businesslike, though she couldn't quite suppress that giddy smile. "Well. Okay, the first order of business: Charon. You need clothes. Armor, too." The tall ghoul was still clad in nothing but his boxer shorts, as he had been when they had first taken him from Megaton. "Fort Bannister is that way." She pointed. "How do the two of you feel about hunting some Talon Company?" Her eyes danced.

"As you command, my mistress," was Charon's calm reply.

"Talon? Shoot." Gob waved one hand. "After a behemoth, how hard can they be?"

Samantha's mouth twitched, and she burst into peals of laughter. Gob couldn't help it; he found himself joining her. The ancient, dead forest rang with the sounds of their mirth, as the terrible stress of the journey ebbed away into the dusty late-afternoon air.