"So, Olive was it? That's a beautiful name," Linda Smith was saying as she filled everyone's bowls with a deliciously smelling meat and vegetable stew. "We love having guests for dinner."

Olive beamed at the woman. Her happiness was contagious and Jack was a thrill to be around. He reminded Olive of her uncle Wallace.

"Dig in!" the husband declared.

Charon stirred the stew in his bowl, watching the contents spin about. He didn't trust these people and half expected to see razorblades mixed in with his meal. The entire stew came from the same batch the rest of the family was eating, so he knew his paranoia had no reason to exist. The ghoul just didn't trust anyone who was this happy to have guests. Something was very strange about this town.

Olive would be the first to discover exactly why the Smiths were so pleased to see them – well, her anyway. She popped a spoonful of stew in her mouth and gave it a happy chew. The taste was strange – not unpleasant by any means – but something different. Something she had tasted before. It was sweet with a slight tangy touch. It chewed nicely.

"We don't get many visitors," Jack was saying in polite conversation. "The last folks that came through were some Brotherhood of Steel folks. They came…oh…" he paused, looking up at the ceiling in thought. His face crinkled and he stared at his dinner. "I think it was two months ago. Possibly a little longer." Jack laughed suddenly, a huge smile breaking out onto his face. "But that doesn't matter now, now does it? Where are you and your friend from?"

Olive swallowed her mouthful – wiping her mouth with a table napkin. She giggled slightly at the small article of cloth. When was the last time she had used a napkin? "I'm from out West a ways. Used to be from this area, but moved west when I was younger." The girl nudged Charon's elbow as he shoved another spoonful of food into his mouth. "This big oaf here is native to the DC area."

"He doesn't talk much, does he?"

Charon glowered at the man from over the bowl of held stew. He did not like this Jack Smith. No, Charon did not.

Olive's jaw froze in mid-chew as she finally found the taste memory. It was an old one – a very, very old memory. The people had been nice there, too. They had welcomed her into their home, fed her, washed her, and then said they had a spare bed in the basement. She was so naïve then – a lamb to the slaughter. From then on, there was always a 9mm handgun tucked in the small of her back.

With the greatest willpower she had ever found, Olive forced herself to swallow to contents of her mouth. The suppression of the shiver and spinning of her stomach that followed was nothing short of heroic.

Glancing next to her, the girl could clearly see Charon mindlessly shoveling the stew into his mouth as he continued to glare at Jack. The ghoul probably couldn't even taste it.

An idea snapped into Olive's mind and she suddenly tensed, leaning backwards and patting her pants pockets.

The sudden movement about gave Charon a heart-attack and he jumped from his seat, the held bowl clattering to the table.

"Oh, god!" Olive patted herself all over. "Charon, I can't find Grandma's ring!"

The ghoul stared at the girl. He already knew she was crazy but sometimes he thought her insanity would decide to explore new lands. This was one such expedition.

Olive stood from her chair. "I am so, so sorry! I'll be right back. I must have put it in my bag. I had to have!"

His employer bolted up stairs and Charon, after a neutral look at the family, followed. The Smoothskin was up to something. This was definitely confirmed when he saw her rapidly packing their belongings and attempting to get the window open.

"Smoothskin, what's going on?"

"They're cannibals, Charon," Olive whispered, shoving a shirt into her bag. "We have to get out of here."

A disgusted chill ran up and down the ghoul's spine. "How do you know?"

"I tasted it in the stew. You never forget that taste. Never." She dug through a side pocket of her bag and then tore into the main pocket. "Where the hell is my rope? I always keep rope in here."

Charon immediately wanted a conversation change. He'd burned that rope and every other rope in the house. "We can leave through the front door. Come on."

"They're going to know. They're not going to let us leave. Charon, they have a kid!" Horror struck her. They were feeding this to their child!

"Olive," Charon grabbed the front of the girl's shirt, tugging her to him and roughly shaking, "they're fucking cannibals. They're killing and eating people. They don't deserve to live. We have to kill them. If we don't, they'll kill more people."

"But...I...they..."

A squeak of boards out in the hallway snapped Charon around, his shotgun at the ready.

"Do it," Olive whispered, covering her ears and clamping her eyes shut. She didn't want to see. She wanted to hold in the image of a perfectly, loving family for just a few more moments. The girl wanted to believe there were still good people out in the world – people who would allow strangers into their homes and care for them.

The fingers in her ears did little to muffle the shotgun retort.

The world was still good. There were nice people in it. She would find these people. She would thrive with them. Tears rolled down her cheeks as another blast soon followed.

At least she had Charon.

Olive opened her eyes to find Charon poking the still bodies of Jack and Linda with his boot. The ghoul was tall – outrageously tall with shoulders wide and strong. That used to be a good trait. 'Find a man with broad shoulders,' mother used to say. His body reminded her of the old anatomy books the school teachers made her study. The girl didn't remember the different names of all the muscles – biceps, triceps, miceps...all she could remember was a few of them had 'ceps' in them.

Charon was a ghoul. He was a human exposed to a large amount of radiation and his body began to change accordingly. The hair would be the first to go – out in large clumps – followed closely by the scabbing skin. The radiation hardened his internal muscles and organs – basically turning them to leather – but the skin was too fragile. The horrific appearance was a curse and a gift.

Ghouls were immortal.

The realization of this hit Olive like a dud missile to the chest. Ely wasn't just being a bitch – making Olive paired with a creature she was afraid of. The alternate personality wasn't just worried about their safety. She was worried about their loneliness.

Unlike everyone else in Olive's life, Charon was strong enough to take care of himself and bull-headed enough to keep her safe. Unless Ely was given another round, the ghoul would never leave her. She would forever have someone she could rely on. Someone to sit by the fire with. Someone that might understand her plight.

"Charon..."

Charon turned just in time to have Olive ram into him and embrace the large ghoul is a deep hug. He about judo-chopped her in the head, but the sobs that shook her small frame made him freeze. The girl was upset about something, again, and Charon was not sure how to fix it. He also really did not want to be touching this woman.

"I am so sorry for whatever Ely did!" Olive suddenly sobbed out. "She's crazy but I can't...I can't stop her! Please don't leave me. I don't want to be alone anymore."

Only half hearing his employer's words, Charon was instead paying attention to the sudden amount of yelling going on outside the house. There were other locals he had to deal with. The Smoothskin was in no shape or mental state to be shooting someone.

"Smoothskin," Charon pealed Olive from his armor and held her at arm's length, "stay here." He looked her right in the eye to help emphasize his words. "There are more towns-folk outside. I'm going to deal with them, and I want you to stay hidden."

"But I can help."

The ghoul shook his head. "You'll be staying right here. I'm not going to argue with you about this. You stay put, or I'm going to knock you out and hide you under the bed." Charon then left her, mouth agape, in the small bedroom. He knew she would do as he ordered. He also knew that his training had run head-first into a wall of insanity since he met this girl.

Charon felt ballsy around Olive – feeling like more of a mercenary instead of a slave. Maybe it was the ten years in Underword, or maybe it was just time for his own mind to slip. Two-hundred years was a long time to be alive.

Was insanity contagious?

He laughed. Charon couldn't help it. He laughed hard and loud, the echo reverberating around the cozy home as he descended the steps to the bottom level. There were two people down here – another man and woman – who had just entered through the front door. At the sight of him – ghoulified body, dirty leather armor, wicked smile, and shotgun – the woman screamed.

"Zombie!" She screeched in horror. "They're coming back from the grave!"

Yep. She would die last. Slowly.

Charon's shotgun boomed and the woman stumbled backwards. He was too far away to do any lethal damage, but getting a barrel of bird-shot to the chest had a very demoralizing effect on someone. As expected, she crumpled to the ground wailing.

The man lunged at Charon with only a butcher knife. Was a knife supposed to scare him? This man wasn't even worth the shotgun shell, so Charon bashed him in the head with the butt of his gun.

"Oops," The ghoul mumbled, feeling his victim's skull cave under his blow. He really did need to learn his own strength.

Olive felt sick inside. She had long since purged her belly of the stew, but she still felt as though the horrid substance was inside her. It was disgusting. It was horrible. But she had to look. She had to know for certain.

"Do you want me to go down first?" Charon was leaning against the counter, rubbing some brain-matter from the barrel of his shotgun. Though his hands were busy, those cloudy eyes watched his Smoothskin like a hawk. He rather liked the feelings flowing through him right now. Despite the occurrences in Megaton, Charon was comfortable around the girl again. He wasn't sure why. He knew he should still be angry and vengeful, but he felt good.

Maybe it was the slaughtering of an entire town of cannibals. Well, four adults, two children, and an old man didn't really constitute as a 'town' but Charon wasn't one to complain.

He studied his employer. He committed her face to memory – the way she chewed her thin lips and how her eyes darted from place to place as she thought. The way her pixie-cut hair fell about her head. Those eyes of hers – the wide orbs so full of fear and life.

Her body was next. Charon was still amazed at how short she was. A few inches less and she would probably be considered a midget. If it wasn't for all the curves being in all the right places, a person could easily mistake her for a child or at least an adolescent boy. Sometimes he wondered if she didn't occasionally masquerade as a male while out exploring the wastes. It was a logical thing to do – since raiders were much more likely to attack a wandering woman over a wondering man. To partially solidify his theory, Charon knew Olive had long since mastered a male voice and often spoke that way when pretending to be manly.

Despite her height and curves, she was built much like a feline – thin and lanky but fully muscled.

A cat.

Yes. That's how the ghoul would describe his employer. She was very light on her feet – fast, agile, and impossibly hard to catch. He'd once seen a raider try to grab a hold of her but she wiggled out of his grasp much like Houdini in his escapes.

His kitten was afraid – torn between the desire to see horror and the desire to run. Olive fingered an old, rusty key and stared at the basement door. A basement was where she was nearly chopped into bite-sized bits before. It made sense that these cannibals would be similar.

"No..." the girl whispered, answering his long forgotten question. "I'll go down first. You just cover me."

The only response was the kuh-kuh of a shotgun.

The basement was where the cannibals kept their 'food stock'. There were multiple large refrigerators and freezers filled with frozen hunks of meat. It didn't take a trained doctor to recognize that most of it was obviously human.

A human hand attached to its limb. A man's upper thigh – hair still present. A woman's chest with breasts.

In one corner sat a broken freezer full of clothing and random items. These were probably the possessions of those who had also fallen for the perfectness of this small town. Sadly, none of them were aware of the danger until it was probably too late.

Charon began going through the discarded belongings – checking them for anything valuable or useful. Most of it was junk and random bits of clothing, but Charon did find a mostly intact set of leather armor. His had a few bullet holes in them and could use a fix. This set would work nicely. He also spotted what looked like a scarf. On impulse, the ghoul pocketed that as well.

"We can...um..." Olive was poking around at some pipes that ran the course of the eastern wall. She was rhythmically tapping each and listening to the echo. "Um, I think this one is a natural gas pipe. We can burn the place down and bury the bodies that way."

Charon nodded, accepting the girl's disposal tactics. He had spotted a shed on their way into town and figured there might be some extra fuel in there. Gasoline or something would really light the place up. "I'll drag the locals down here," Charon told Olive. "You start yanking the bodies from the freezers and put them in a pile."

"But...I..." Olive was at a loss for words. She didn't want to be left alone down here!

The ghoul, though, was long gone before she could get her tongue in working order. "It's just some dead bodies," she whispered. "I've been around plenty of dead bodies. Even exploded bodies." Opening a freezer, she yanked out an arm before tossing it to the floor with a shiver. "Just imagine they stepped on a land mine. It's just a normal, exploded body. And ghosts don't exist. No ghosts here."

Thumping from the stairs made the girl scream and stumble backwards into the side of a freezer.

All it was was the headless body of Jack being thrown down the stairs.

"Damn-it, Charon! You scared the fuck out of me!"

The ghoul didn't respond and more bodies came tumbling down. Olive did her best not to look at the lifeless forms of the two children. They didn't deserve this. It wasn't their fault their parents were vile monsters.

Still, Olive was thankful Charon was with her. She wouldn't have had the guts to do what needed to be done. She would have run – put as much distance between her and this place as possible. They would have been left to continue with their filthy diet. The ghoul may have gone a little overboard – killing both of the children and an elderly man – but deep down, Olive was glad he did. That small voice in her head was screaming for their blood and Charon had fed it.

Maybe Ely would stay away longer due to that.

The dead grass and dirt crunched under Charon's boots as he approached the decrepit looking shed. No lights shined, but the ghoul had no problem seeing where he was going. The moonlight was all he needed.

Small bugs, ones unmutated by the radiation, cried out in their nightly chorus and Charon felt at ease. He had always preferred the night. It was as if the slate was wiped clean and everyone was equal. There were no brainwashing employers, no cannibals, no raiders – everyone was just human. The ghoul knew this wasn't true, of course, but he preferred to keep this one ideology alive – if only as a way to humor himself.

Charon knew before he reached the shed that it was locked. The only part that looked fresh was a simple padlock holding the metal door in place. It gleamed and glistened in the moonlight, much like a puddle reflecting the solar rays.

The simile struck the ghoul as odd. He was pretty certain that no time in his life had he compared something to a puddle before.

Maybe he was going mad.

One quick shotgun blast was all it took to send the small lock into a thousand pieces and a few well-placed pokes with the butt of the gun and the door creaked open just fine. One small light bulb hung from the ceiling, barely illuminating the contents of the shed.

Charon's breath came out in white puffs due to the shed being almost a freezer in description. An exceptionally large puff escaped him as he sighed at his surroundings. Two dead Wastelanders lay undressed on separate tables. They couldn't have been more than twelve hours dead. Both were male and in various forms of previous bodily health. The dark skinned one, almost pitch black in color, had pale lacerations all across his body – signs of unwash and parasites. The second male was heavily tanned – or extremely dirty – and a foul stench rose from him. A closer inspection revealed what looked to be a brown skin fungus that covered almost 80% of his body.

The ghoul scowled at the dead men. The water may have been irradiated, but taking a bath every now and then would not kill someone. As it stood, Charon had no desire to touch these men – much less drag them across town. The thought: 'what if I catch something' actually floated across his mind and Charon laughed loudly. How many times had a Smoothskin thought that about him?

A note tacked into one of the structural beams next to the tables caught Charon's eye and he plucked it off.

Jack, what the fuck is this? Are you trying to make us sick? We're not eating this disease-ridden filth. Get them the hell out of my shed and dispose of them and their clothing before something starts spreading. And wash the tables down when you're through. This is disgusting.

The ghoul had to agree. This was probably one of the most disgusting sights he'd seen in decades. Now he understood why Jack was so excited to see Olive. She wasn't just food. She was healthy, lively food that would make up for this mess.

Speaking of Olive, Charon realized he had been gone a while and that dull ache of needing to protect his employer began to echo in his stomach. It also reminded him why he was in this fucking shed. He spotted half a dozen plastic and metal gas cans in the corner of the shed and poked them with his foot. Three were mostly filled and he hauled them outside. The last three had enough gasoline to douse the two bodies and the wooden beams, and after lighting a match and making sure the gas caught, Charon carried his containers back to the house, ignoring the crackling of wood and the collapsing of the metal exterior. He would tell Olive it was an accident. That would be enough for her.