What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
T.S. Eliot – The Waste Land
xxx
IX
Soft shuffle, scuttle sounds of tiny things in large, silent rooms. Freeze. Was that noise from me?
xxx
The girl searched slowly and meticulously through the nooks along the subway line, as Charon hovered nearby listening for disturbances. Her dirty fingers sifted through drawers and lockers picking out lone caps and shoving them in her pockets, inspecting a bent cigarette before slipping it into a half-full pack, grabbing up any loose bullet she could see.
"Is each little object of such value we must stake our lives on their collection?" Charon whispered to the girl when she'd finally decided the latest room was picked clean.
"Would you like to keep eating?" she whispered back, then after a moment, continued. "How do you think I payed for your contract?"
After a long journey through the tunnels, the trip drawn out by the girl's searching eyes and probing fingers, they approached the exit they had been looking for. She could see better in here, Charon thought. Her eyes were adept at finding nooks and crannies in the uniform, repetitive underground construction, sensing things out of place, seeming to be able to sort the useless junk from the bits of treasure hidden amongst the subway tunnels.
"Here." Charon pointed to a faded sign. "GNR outpost," he read. "That what you're looking for?"
"I guess it must be." The girl shook her head. "I must have been too panicked to notice it and walked right by last time." She scratched her head, then pointed. "Yeah, see?" She ran her thumb over a patch of rust-colored, dried blood smeared on the concrete wall, and then gripped her upper arm. "Must've been sliding along the wall after I hurt myself. I remember that."
"What is this?" She traced the symbol with her forefinger.
"Brotherhood." He looked down at her. "Like the ones outside the monument."
The girl's brow tightened in thought. "Didn't ask many questions there. What do they do?"
Charon shrugged. "Take shots at your feet and pretend they thought you were feral." The girl gave him a wide-eyed look of shock. "They're para-military. Trying to control the Super Mutant population or something."
"Are we going to have to... fight them?" Her face was pallid again.
"No," the ghoul replied. "They like you smoothskins."
It wasn't long before they found the gated subway exit.
"We should stop for the night," Charon said, peeking into a small office off the path. "We'll have to cross through a couple blocks of city and it's not a good idea to do it drowsy."
The girl looked up at him for a moment, swallowing hard. Her face seemed to pale. "O-okay."