The rifle stock hit the man in the mouth with a loud crack, likely breaking his jaw. Sam winced at the sound but had the presence of mind to catch his body before it hit the dirt; he didn't need to make any more noise.
"Oi, Roy, you hear that?" a voice asked, high pitched. Young.
Another man emerged from around the corner of the building, a big smile on his face, his mouth open as if he was just about to say something. Sam grabbed him from behind, clamped his hand over his mouth, then slashed his knife across the man's throat. The man thrashed for a moment, kicking out on instinct. His movements slowed, eventually coming to a stop, and Sam lowered him to the ground.
He picked his rifle off the ground and slung it over his back, taking out his grenade launcher in the same process. He opened the single barrelled weapon and stuck one of the cone shaped rounds in to it, and in that moment his eyes met the dying man's.
He looked young, probably still a boy, probably still a virgin. His eyes were a mixture of shock and pleadings. His mouth was opening and closing like a fish out of water, probably trying to say something, but Sam knew there was nothing left to say it with. The only thing keeping that boy's head on was his spine.
But the most horrifying part, at least to Sam, was that he couldn't take his eyes away from the dying boy's. No matter how hard he tried he just couldn't move, like he was in a trance.
This is why he had left the west, he thought, why he had headed east and become a courier. The war between the technology hoarding Brotherhood of Steel and the bureaucratic New California Republic had reached new heights and there weren't many places left unaffected. Fighting was constant, even more constant than usual in the wastes, and dead bodies threatened to choke many of the major roads.
That wasn't why he had left, though. He didn't care about the soldiers that died; they knew what they signed up for, knew the risks. No, it was the burnt out villages, the sacked farms, the shallow, mass graves of women and children that forced Sam to leave. He couldn't face it. He didn't understand how anyone could.
And why were they even fighting, really? So that one of them could control this or that piece of technology? So their bosses could look at a point on a map and say "That's ours!"? It was all so pointless.
Couriering had seemed so much easier. Take a package here, kill a radscorpion there, maybe fight off a raider or two every once and a while. Easy work. But most importantly, peaceful work. It almost made him laugh, now that he thought about it. How far from the truth that had turned out to be.
He shook his head, breaking his trance with the dead boy and shaking the thoughts from his head. This wasn't the time for it. Not when there was killing to be done.
With a flick of his wrist he snapped the launcher shut and headed forward. The boy had emerged from around a corner of a white building, which Sam knew was on the eastern part of the village. He poked his head out slightly, checking there was no one else around, then ducked across the road to a spot between two other buildings, the area heavily shaded and perfect for a hiding spot.
The small alley only lasted another few metres, opening in to the large field that dominated the middle of the village. Sam looked out, careful not to be seen by the men patrolling the area. The sun was high in the sky, only an hour or so before midday, and it wasn't hard to make out the black shapes of the Inquisitors walking the area.
They had finished building the stakes, at least from what Sam could tell, as there was a clear platform and design to it rather than the pile of wood he saw yesterday. But he wasn't here for the stakes.
He looked up and to his left, his eyes locking on the guard tower. The two men were lounging, laughing at some joke, their large gun hanging loosely on its supports. He squinted, trying to judge the distance. When he was satisfied he turned his attention to the others.
Patrick and Abigail were setting up at the south end of town. Sam had already seen a few silver glints from Patrick's armour, his heart jumping in to his throat as he thought the tower guards might have seen it. But every time they stayed oblivious. Still, it wasn't good to push one's luck, so Sam was glad when Abby noticed him and gave him the thumbs up; their' ready' signal. Sam returned it, then looked across the field.
Isaac was supposed to be set up on the east side of the town, although Sam saw no sign of him. He cursed and tried the surrounding areas, but still nothing. This was the last thing he needed; the plan depended enough on luck as it was without someone deciding to go freelance. But just as he was starting to consider circling around the field to check up on the trapper he spotted the tanned man, who gave him a thumbs up.
So that was it, everyone was ready. Strangely it didn't stop his beating heart, or his hands from shaking. He clenched his teeth. Better to get it over with, he thought.
He hefted the grenade launcher, locking the stock in to the crook of his shoulder. He flicked up a small sliver of metal on top of the barrel; the weapon's 'sight', and took aim at the tower. His finger began to squeeze the trigger.
Don't miss, he suddenly thought. If his heart had been in his throat then it well and truly jumped out of his mouth at that. But he couldn't stop his finger and, after a dull thump and a bit of recoil, he saw the small grenade sail out towards the tower.
Time seemed to slow, the grenade moving excruciatingly slow. The guards, beginning to turn to look at the noise. Patrick, surging to his feet with a mighty roar, barely moving or making a sound at all. The grenade, beginning to sail over the rails on the tower, looking like it was going to go right through the tower without ever hitting it. Sam's heart stopped beating.
Then it all rushed back into reality.
The grenade was off the mark, but luckily it wasn't long. It landed slightly short, exploding on the bottom corner of the tower. The shockwave sent one of the guards tumbling out, his screams cut off as he hit the ground face first. The second scrambled up, a look of pure terror on his face, and reached for the gun. But before he could reach it the supports of the tower broke with a thunderous crack and it toppled over, smashing in to pieces just in front of where Isaac was set up.
The entire field was deathly still for a moment, the rest of the Inquisitors just gawping with surprise at the broken tower. Patrick was the one that broke it, a mighty roar tearing from his lips, amplified through his helmets speakers, as he got to his feet and began spraying the area with fire. Several went down, but they managed to regroup and began making a counter-push towards Patrick and Abby, obviously thinking that was where the attack on the tower had come from. The pair ducked behind cover and began exchanging fire with the black clad enemy.
Sam took his rifle off his back and, with a weapon in each hand, he sprinted forward, diving for a wooden cart just to the left of the alley. He heard a few bullets thud in to the wooden vehicle, so he knew they had seen him.
He left his rifle on the ground and opened his grenade launcher to load in another shell. Strange, he thought as he noticed his hands weren't shaking anymore. He flicked his wrist, closing the launcher with a click, then poked his head out from behind the wagon just long enough to get an idea of the situation.
Patrick and Abby were still pinned down, while the Inquisitors had taken cover around various other wagons and boxes scattered around the field. But there was a sizable group who was using the tower as cover and it was this group that was firing on Sam.
He took several quick, deep breaths, gripped the launcher as tight as he could, reared up and fired all in the same motion. The grenade flew high and true, landing behind the Inquisitors' cover. In the enclosed space the shrapnel alone would have killed them all, but the concussive force of the explosion separated limbs from bodies in a gory fountain of blood. A solitary arm, or leg, Sam couldn't tell which, was shot up in to the air and landed with a squelch somewhere on the other side of the tower. It would have been enough to make him hurl if Sam hadn't seen far worse. A few bullets zipped past his head and he ducked back behind the wagon, hearing more thud into the thick wood it was made from.
The bullets had come from his right, the north end of town. He tilted his head out just enough to see who it was, spotting a line of the black clad men forming into groups, Scarface bellowing orders behind them. And behind him rose the hall the survivors were kept in.
Sam cursed. He had hoped that, with a fast enough attack, the rest of the Inquisitors would run off to the north rather than risk being killed. Apparently that was a risk worth taking while Scarface was around.
More bullets thudded in to the wagon and Sam was forced to make a dash for new cover. The only closest candidate was the tower so, after several deep breathes, he sprinted out from behind the wagon and headed towards the ruined mass of wood and metal. Bullets slammed into the ground following his every footstep and, when he finally reached cover, his heart was pounding so fast he thought it might explode.
His rifle snapped up, almost on its own, as he heard movement from behind him. But he lowered it when he saw it was only Patrick and Abby, moving up to join him. Patrick kneeled down next to him and began firing at the Inquisitors.
"They're not retreating" he said, matter-of-factly.
"No shit" muttered Sam, careful not to let Patrick hear him. He saw Abby was shaking, staring around wild eyed, ducking down further the more bullets that were fired at them. "How are you doing?"
"I'm...alright" she said, then smiled sheepishly, "can you tell I've never done something like this before?"
"You're still here," he said, giving her a nod, "you should be proud. Most people wouldn't be, their first time"
"I wonder why..." she muttered sarcastically. He smiled, then turned to Patrick.
"Any ideas?"
"We need to push now, before our momentum is completely gone" Patrick grunted while reloading his rifle, "if we can't break them now, their numbers will be too much"
"Just what I was thinking" Sam said, peaking his head over their cover to see where things stood. Something didn't feel right though. There were the Inquisitors, all of the groups still right outside the hall, but it felt like something was missing. "Wait...where the hell is Isaac?"
"Saw him go into that building," Patrick started, nodding his head towards a building on their left. A big, grey, two storey house that had been to Isaac's left before the shooting started. "Haven't seen him come out since"
Sam nodded. No point worrying about the tracker for now, not when there were bigger problems at hand.
His mind was buzzing, going over every possibility he could think of, analysing them, finding their weaknesses, making adjustments but ultimately discarding them. He couldn't see a way to finish what they had started now. They were pinned down at their current position and trying to move would mean another suicidal run across open ground, something Sam wasn't keen on trying again. Their only choice at getting out of it alive was falling back the way Patrick and Abby had come, even if it left a bad taste in his mouth just thinking about it.
"Alright, let's-"
He was cut off as new shooters opened up on the Inquisitors. The building that Patrick said Isaac was in had to have had at least 3 shooters in the upstairs windows. With their elevated position they tore through the black clad enemy.
To their credit, the Inquisitors reformed and turned their fire on the building but it didn't stop the shooters, who continued mercilessly gunning down their enemy. Sam could see Scarface now, slinking away, firing his pistol every once and a while to look like he was fighting, before disappearing around the corner of the hall.
It took a moment for the rest to realise but, when they did see that their leader had abandoned them, they quickly followed, running as fast as they could past the barn and into the fields beyond. Strangely, the shooters kept firing until their guns ran out of ammunition and the constant clicking sounds of an empty barrel reached Sam's ears.
"What the hell?" grunted Patrick, allowing his head to emerge over the top of the cover to get a better view. He had just taken the words out of Sam's mouth.
Sam stood, squinting his eyes at the building, trying to spot any sort of movement. There was a dull creaking at one of the front doors and both Patrick and Sam sprang up, guns ready. The door was wrenched open and Isaac strode out, a big grin on his face.
His face was covered in blood, in fact most of his body was. It looked to Sam like he had been bathing in it. He saw them looking at him, guns slightly slack, clearly dumbfounded. He waved.
"Good plan" he shouted, still smiling. Sam lowered his weapon and jumped over the bits of ruined tower they were using for cover, motioning the others to follow. Patrick did, reluctantly, while Abby was sure to stay a fair distance behind them.
"What happened to you?" Sam asked as they got closer.
"What, this?" Isaac asked, pulling his vest out so he could examine the blood covering it. "You got to get bloody if you want to get killing done"
"I was talking about that" Sam explained, nodding up at the second floor windows.
"Oh, that" Isaac's eyes moved up to look at the windows, then he shrugged. "I saw you were in trouble down there, so I rigged up a little something. It took me longer than I thought though...sorry"
Patrick moved towards the door. "You probably don't want to go in there, big man" Isaac said absently.
"And why not?" Patrick growled.
Isaac spread his arms, showing his blood soaked body as if the answer was obvious. "It's a little messy"
Patrick shook his head and moved away from the building, heading over to some of the downed Inquisitors. He began to go through their pockets, pulling out whatever he found and dumping it in a small pile to his left.
"Go help him, Abby" Sam said. She looked uncertain at the idea of touching dead bodies, but nodded and headed off regardless.
"I think she likes you" Isaac whispered, "Any woman that will comb through dead bodies for you is worth keeping, that's what I always say..."
"Just...stop, alright?" Sam said with a sigh. He looked over at the hall. It was pock-marked with bullet holes and, as his hearing was beginning to return to normal after the battle, he could hear muffled sobs.
"Shall we?" Isaac asked, sweeping his hand across the side of the hall. Sam nodded and the pair moved towards the two large doors at the front that led inside. Each of the door had a window, the grimy glass cracked by several bullets on both sides but it was surprisingly still intact. Even so, it was impossible to see past. Gripping one handle each, the two men pulled the doors open, the hinges whining in protest as their rusted parts ground against each other. The light flowed through the now open doorway, illuminating a scene of pure hell.
Beams of light criss-crossed the room like lasers, piercing through the bullet holes scattered across every wall. The people inside, at least the ones that were moving, were more bloody than Isaac. A middle-aged woman had her arms around an older man, clearly dead. She was sobbing, rocking back and forth. A child was lying only a few feet from Sam, a great big hole where his chest should have been. Sam had to fight the urge to vomit.
Isaac was the first to move, seemingly unworried by what he saw. Sam followed, reluctantly, and the pair made their way through the room. The floor was slick with blood, enough to make a man slip if he wasn't careful, so they trod as lightly as they could. Isaac looked right at home, flipping corpses over with his feet, looking for Original. Sam would have snapped something at him but he was worried that, if he opened his mouth, he wouldn't be able to fight the vomiting urge. And he was struggling with it enough as it was.
"Ah, there you are" remarked Isaac. Sam looked up from the floor for the first time since they had entered. They had covered almost the entire expanse of the hall and were moving towards one of the corners. There, covered in blood like everything else, was Original Jones.
He was skinnier in person then he had looked before, when Sam had seen him from the ridge. He was still wearing the same clothes although it was hard to tell with all the blood. The man's head was shaved, his eyes squeezed tight and he was rocking back and forth, mumbling something that Sam couldn't understand.
"I told you he was crazy" Isaac muttered. Sam ignored him.
"Original?" he offered, extending his hand to the man. The man either didn't notice him or ignored his hand, but he continued muttering. Even as Sam's hand reached under his arm, pulling him to his feet, leading him out of the blood soaked hall and away from the moaning survivors, he never stopped muttering to himself. His eyes were open now, but had a faraway look to them, as if he wasn't so much looking at the floor but past it, down into the soul of the planet itself.
"Jesus" muttered Patrick, as he looked them up and down. Sam followed his eyes, realising his shoes and the bottom of his pants were soaked in blood. He must not have seen it in the darkened hall. "What happened in there?"
Isaac shook his head and strode away a short distance, crouching down to check one of the dead Inquisitors. Sam swallowed. "Collateral damage" he managed to say, his voice cracking slightly. He hadn't wanted to admit it when he went in, had wanted to believe so bad that the Inquisitors had done that, had shot their prisoners when they were first attacked. But he was too logical for that.
"What?" snapped Patrick, shouldering his way past. Sam made to stop him, but it was too late, the armoured man having disappeared into the hall. A few moments passed before a new voice joined the mourning, a vicious howl of suffering the likes Sam had never heard. A howl that could only come from a man trying to atone from sins...who realised he had just committed one more.
Abby took a deep breath and looked at Sam. "I got this" she whispered, throwing her rifle over her back and disappearing in to the hall.
Isaac strode back over. "We should go, soon" he said, looking around, "they might look to come back once they've found their balls again"
"I know," Sam said. He pushed Original, still muttering, towards Isaac. "Take him back to Oz, get everything ready to go. I'll bring Abby and Patrick up soon"
"You've got to be kidding" said Isaac, looking with disgust at Original.
"Just take him" Sam snapped, "I'm not in the mood"
Isaac threw him a glare, but took Original under the arm and began heading south, back towards Oz. "Oh Christ, shut up!" he heard Isaac snap as they got further away. When they had disappeared past the furthest buildings Sam turned and headed into the hall.
Patrick was kneeling next to someone, a man with a hole in his throat. He was gurgling blood, but Patrick had his attention focused on a wound in the man's chest. It was obvious he was going to die. Whether Patrick knew or cared, Sam didn't know.
Abby was hovering around, trying to get Patrick away with kind words or subtle pushes, but he angrily denied her every attempt.
"Patrick," Sam barked, "we're leaving"
"I'm busy" Patrick snapped. Sam stepped closer.
"We don't have time. The Inquisitors could come back at any time..."
"We can't just leave them hear" Patrick said sternly, "it's not right"
"What part of this looks right to you?" Sam asked sadly, "It is what it is. They'll bury their dead"
"We did this" muttered Patrick sadly, "I can't handle this..."
His body went limp for a moment, then stiffened. His helmet swivelled around, taking in the scene, then he backed away.
"Jesus Christ!" he exclaimed, using his legs to push the corpses away from him.
"Mo?" asked Abby.
Sam heard a sigh from the helmet's speakers. "Yeah, it's me" Mo sighed, "let's go"
Original had stopped mumbling when Sam and the others returned to Oz, but he still had that faraway look and, despite Oz's best attempts, didn't respond to communication.
"Trauma?" Sam asked, "From what happened down there?"
"No," grunted Isaac, "he's always been like this. I told yo-"
"I know" Sam said quickly, cutting him off, "can you get him to talk?" he asked Oz.
Oz shook his head. "He's worse than usual...but I think he will still work out"
"If he can't talk, what use is he?" Abby asked.
"I expect he'll do something" Oz said absently. Sam shot him a glare. "Look, I know it doesn't seem like it, but we're better off with him than without him, right? And nobody died getting him, so what's the harm?"
Mo looked away, clearly thinking about the hall. Sam didn't blame him, since he was remembering the exact same thing. If Original didn't pan out than all those lives had died pointlessly.
He frowned. Even if Original did work out, all of those people had died pointlessly, he corrected himself.
Sam sighed. "Fine, but we have to go. Isaac..."
"Gladly" he said, throwing a glare at Original before tossing his pack over his back and heading down a trail that skirted the village. Everyone followed, putting on their backs and making their way down the track after Isaac, Oz pulling Original along, the man still not showing the slightest sign that he knew or cared where he was. He had even started mumbling again.
As Mo strode past, Sam grabbed his arm to stop him. His helmet was off, hanging loosely from one side of his pack, so Sam could see his face screw up in confusion.
"I thought you said we had-" he started.
"Just...wait" Sam said, interrupting the other man. Mo relaxed, taking a step back and Sam let his arm fall away. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, of course, why wouldn't I be?"
"The hall?"
"Oh...yeah" Mo said, looking away. "Patrick finds it hard to deal with that kind of thing...after Tonopah and all"
"Is he going to be okay?" Sam asked.
Mo shrugged. "Probably, a few days in here..." he tapped his head, "...can do wonders" he finished with a wry smile.
"I'm glad to see you're taking it so well" remarked Sam.
"Oh, I feel like shit" Mo admitted with a shrug, "but...Patrick absorbs guilt like a sponge, whether he deserves it or not. I know there was nothing to do for those people. He just finds it hard to disconnect his heart from his brain..." he laughed suddenly, grimly, "sometimes I think he's the heart and I'm the brain, you know?"
"Yeah," Sam answered, nodding, "I know exactly what you mean. Let's head off..."
Mo started walking, leaving Sam to toss his own pack over his back. But as he strode away Sam made a mental note to watch the two-souled man. He was definitely more complicated than Sam had anticipated and that made him dangerous. Say one thing for Samael Grant, say he's a careful man...and a careful man suspects everyone.
