Calista rolled over, shifting to try to get comfortable, but a sharp ache shot through her arm. She jolted back from it, looking down to see—

"Why do you do this to yourself?" Joshua asked her.

"Do what?" Calista asked, the words coming out too fast, too defensive.

He held up a single, long, slender needle. The tube attached to it had once contained Med-X, but was now drained and devoid of its contents. Without the pale blue substance inside, it seemed cold.

"What's that?" she asked. But Joshua knew better. She could pretend to be oblivious all she wanted, he would still know what she had done.

She knew that look, the one where he stared into your soul and you knew he was raising an eyebrow somewhere under all those bandages. A shiver ran through her as she dropped her eyes to the ground.

"I just wanted to try it," she muttered, staring at Joshua's shoes as he moved to sit on the ground next to her. "I heard some of the caravan men talking about the way it makes you feel better and I wanted to try it."

"Calista," he started, his tone soft, "this is a dangerous thing to play with. It can lead to a dependency, a reliance on chemical substances that you don't need."

She rolled her eyes, waiting for something about "God." A story from the bible that, somehow, related exactly to the moment. A psalm to relax her when she just wanted to roll around in the dirt and think about funny-colored geckos instead.

"I understand your curiosity; it's only natural," he said, continuing when she said nothing. "We all have things we have done to satisfy an itch, a craving. But we often come to… regret such things, later in life."

"Oh yeah? Well what have you done that you regret?" she jabbed. She could see the flash of some emotion in his eyes, but it was gone as fast as it came.

"No. But I have come to question my past actions in regards to many things," he said, looking down at his hands, folded between his knees. "I only hope that you will learn faster than I did that not all things lead to the end we desire."

"It's not like anything even happened," she said with an angry huff.

"Maybe not, but you could have hurt yourself." He kept looking at her, but she refused to meet his gaze. He put a hand on her shoulder. "I need you to promise me you won't do this again."

"It's not even a big deal!" she said, raising her voice. She tried to throw his hand off by rolling her shoulder, but he gripped it tighter. It hurt just a little, but she didn't say anything.

"Calista," he said, his voice heavy, dripping with the demand of compliance. He didn't bother to ask a second time.

"Fine, whatever," she said with a groan of frustration.

The hand didn't move.

Calista chewed on her lip. It was becoming obvious that Joshua wasn't going to give in; he rarely did. "All right," she said. "I promise."

Joshua sighed, letting go of her. He crossed his arms and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward. "You're not the only one to do wicked things in this world; I only wish to help you avoid them, as much as you can."

"I know," Calista said, but her heart wasn't in it. "I just wanted to do something different."

"Why don't you find Falling-Waters? I'm sure she'd—"

"Joshua! She's so young!" Calista interjected.

Joshua laughed, dropping his head. "She's already almost eleven."

"Yeah," Calista said pointedly, "and I'm fourteen."

"Well," Joshua said, still laughing, "I suppose she is a bit young for you right now. Perhaps the Lord needed a more… obvious way to show me that it's time you learn a trade."

"A trade?" Calista asked, sitting up straighter. Anything to change the monotony of day-to-day life.

"Yes, a trade. What would you like to do?" he asked, glancing towards her.

"Anything?"

He nodded.

Her options seemed endless, with the door thrown open to the world around her. If she could be anything she wanted –a healer, a scout, a warrior, a craftsman– then she had to think carefully.

Being a warrior sounded the most interesting; she could finally prove to the rest of the Dead Horses that she could be good at something. She was sure that if Joshua taught her, she could do almost anything. But warriors often had nothing to do, aside from sit around and listen to Joshua or share old war stories amongst themselves. Having something to fight with would make her stand out, but she hated the thought of downtime.

"What about hunting?" she asked, the words tumbling out of her mouth as soon as she thought of them.

Joshua gave a short, half-hearted laugh. "You wish to hunt? To learn to kill, day in and day out, for the rest of your life?"

"Well, I mean… I just want to know how," she said, looking around. "It would keep me busy, and I could be helpful."

Joshua hummed to himself, thinking. "You are able to keep quiet. You have a habit of sneaking up on others as well, and you do know the land as well as any scout here."

Calista's heart pounded in her ears, every noise around her growing louder and louder – the wind, footsteps, laughter, the clashing of war-clubs.

"I suppose this was bound to happen, one way or another," he said finally. "God willing, you will learn to hunt for your people."

Calista squealed with happiness, throwing her arms around Joshua and nearly knocking him over. She was too happy to care about muttering an apology.

After a brief moment of excitement, it appeared that Joshua had had plenty of Calista for one day; she was used to being too much for him, even though there were times it upset her. "Enough," he said gently, prying her off his shoulders. "We will deal with this tomorrow."

"Oh but Joshua, it's not even dark yet!" she said, disappointed.

"It can, and will, wait," he said, standing up. "Until then, think about your decision. You need to be sure that this is what you want."

"But—"

"I will see you at dinner," he said in a firm tone, ending the conversation. He looked down to see Calista just as she went back to staring at her dirt-stained bare feet and picking at the grit under her fingernails. "I expect you'll want to tell everyone about your decision then," he said, his voice softer.

Calista grinned, looking back up at him and nodding. "Falling-Waters is going to be so jealous."

Joshua sighed and shook his head, but Calista knew he was grinning. He turned and started the walk back toward the camp.

"And Calista?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Yes?"

"You always bite your lip when you lie."


Calista's gaze fell back on the empty syringe on the ground beside her as Joshua walked back to the camp. With a frantic twitch she wondered if he knew about the other one, still full, tucked away at the bottom of a box near her bed. Her legs moved beneath her before the rest of her mind caught up, snatching the empty with one hand as she started to silently run toward—

"Come on," Jay said, shaking her shoulder. "Time to get up."

She groaned, rolling her head to one side. It was early, the sun not yet high enough to shine off the water. With bleary eyes it was hard to even tell that the sun had come up at all.

"I told ya it wouldn't be that easy to get up after the first shift," Jay said, grinning. He was holding a banana yucca. "Saved you the last one."

That helped. Calista sat up slowly, pushing herself up with her arms. She stayed leaning back on them, taking the fruit with a smile. "Thanks." Her blood felt muddy in her veins, her movements sluggish.

"If you see any more along the way, don't hesitate to pick them. They're good travel food. Last a while."

"Alright." Her thoughts struggled to reach the surface, as though her mind was stopped up by something just as bad as her blood. Lack of sleep always made her groggy, but this was different – more mellow than exhausted.

"You feel alright?" Jay asked, leaning forward, sitting on a rock. "I don't mean to be rude, but you look awful."

"Fine," she said quickly, "just tired." She worried that she'd spoken too fast, but Jay didn't seem to notice. Even if she did feel sick, she wouldn't tell him. If they had to take a day to rest, especially with Clarabelle moving so slow, Jay would be too obnoxious to handle.

"We've got to keep on schedule, Cal," he'd said. "If we fall behind, people get worried. Lot of dangerous things out in the world."

Calista rolled her eyes at the memory. The paths were nearly devoid of life most of the time. When they weren't it was mostly that animals were down at the river to drink, which made them spook easily. Still, the thought of genocidal maniacs wasn't the first thing to come to her mind about what she might find if she went off the main trail. Her heart began to beat harder in her chest.

"Today's gonna be a bit strange," Jay said, taking off his faded red baseball cap to run a hand through his greasy hair. "We've gotta get up top to avoid the radiation in the camp itself, but we have to stay close enough to see the path and follow it."

"It should be fairly contained at least," Calista said, hoping it would lighten his mood at least a little.

"True that. But we should still give it as much space as we can manage. I don't wanna risk it at this point. We're low on both Rad-X and Rad Away, and they're both pretty hot sellers near New Vegas. I'd rather save them to sell if I can."

A cold jolt ran down Calista's spine. When had he checked their medicine supplies? And why hadn't she noticed if they were running low on something?

"I thought you said we were all set on supplies the other day?" she asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

"We were. Things are different when you're talking about walking through a canyon than when you're walking through an irradiated village. Bullfrog Bay Camp was home to a good number of people. It'd take a pretty good size bomb to flatten the place, but since we haven't seen anyone it is possible that's what happened."

He shifted, flipping his hat around in his hands. "Now, judging from the direction of that 'shroom cloud, I'd guess that was Stanton they blew up. It's possible that Marin wasn't touched. I'd doubt it, but it's possible. Who knows about the Dock though." He scratched his head again.

Calista wasn't sure where he was talking about, tried to keep track of it. "You think some people might have survived then?"

"Can't say," he said, his tone somber. He put the hat back on. "All I know is that I wanna keep moving. I've been feeling like we're being watched all morning."

Wordlessly, Calista chewed down the end of the banana yucca.

When she was done and had stretched, the pair silently agreed it was time to move on to their next stop. They rushed to pack up Clarabelle and started their trek up the cliff. Neither spoke as they worked, Jay working to pack up her left side and Calista her right. Calista's fingers kept slipping as she tried to belt the different packs onto the beast, watching the ribs move under Clarabelle's skin in disgust. She tried not to think about what the radiation would do to the human body. To the bodies of the Bullfrog people.

Jay carried a few of the bags up the top of the cliff himself when the brahmin started struggling. Once there on flat land again he loaded her back up, and she made no protest. He pressed on at a faster pace than they had the day before.

"How far do you think we are from the village?" Calista asked, absently rubbing a sore spot on her forearm as she walked.

"Maybe an hour away, not far. If the terrain is as flat as it looks, maybe not even that." Jay led Clarabelle along by her lead, the rope hanging slack between them. She was used to walking along behind him after so many years of travel up and down the canyon. She stayed closer to him than normal though in the unfamiliar territory, wheezing as she clambered along.

The upper level of the cliffs was fairly low where they walked, lowering down gradually to meet the bay again in the distance. The wind was harsh, blowing hard against them as they followed along the direction of the water. Calista pulled the bandana from the previous day out of her pocket and tied it over her mouth and nose to keep the sand out of her lungs. She quietly hummed songs to herself to pass the time, and keep her from constantly worrying about being followed; up on the cliff-top there was nowhere to hide anyway.

Sooner than she'd expected, they were within sight of the bay. Calista hadn't seen it before, but had been told about its size and beauty by traders she'd met throughout her life. None of their stories did it justice; Bullfrog Bay was the most beautiful thing she'd set her eyes on. The still water was a perfect reflection of the morning above with clouds seeming to ghost across its surface. Near the shore however, the tall red mesas crept right into the bay and touched the sky.

It was the single largest body of water she'd seen in her life. From the highest tops of Dead Horse Point, she'd seen – even bigger than Od Hop early the day before, which they'd had to cross with a ferry operated by a small tribe of boatmen.

"Why do we have to go up here?" Calista asked, the sound of her own voice almost surprising her. "Don't we have to keep heading South? This is North…"

"True that," Jay said, staring forward. "And we probably don't now. But if anythin's left at Bullfrog Bay, we need to know about it. They have one of the biggest cities in Zion, and definitely the biggest around here. Used to say it was becomin' the new New Caanan. 'Newer Caanan,' they used to call it."

As they crested a shallow hill, they looked down towards the water. Calista gasped, her eyes growing wide as she saw the city he was talking about.

"Yeah," Jay said, the back of his hand moving in front of his mouth as his expression turned to disgust. "Used to."

The destruction was near total. It would have been better, Calista thought, if it was completely destroyed, but she could see traces of life having been lived there all too recently. A grey cloud hung through it, an all too real presence of the death the ground reeked of.

Skins of animals lay tethered to shattered tanning racks all around, only part-way through their stretching. Tents, clothes, beds, and more were all made from hides, laying patiently in the sun. Bones were used too, an eerie looking pile lay near one tent, along with several sacks leaking seeds and scorched fruits onto the ground.

"Holy hell," Jay hissed under his breath. "I thought I'd seen everythin', but this? This tops the list. And I've seen some downright disturbin' things."

Calista, on the other hand, hadn't seen many disturbing things in her life. She'd heard stories from Joshua, or whispered ones about him. She'd been on hunts, butchered her own kills. She'd even seen a boy get his arm torn off in the jaws of a yao guai while trying to become a man.

It was all nothing compared to the cruel hand of the nuclear explosion.

Jay had been right, the nuke was only part of the explosion. It looked like it had gone off right in the center of the city's main area. Everything directly facing it had been reduced to ashes. The initial explosion had triggered a series of smaller ones in long, straight lines that destroyed everything else in the village.

Nothing had been spared. Near the water lay the remains of several boats, lined up along the shore. Shards of some had blown into the bay itself, floating lazily along the still water. The stench of rotting fish wafted in the slight breeze from tents nearby them, the leather badly charred or destroyed on the side facing the village.

A dead man floated in the water, his back facing the sun. Seeing him made her realize what she hadn't seen: the bodies. She looked again, despite her better judgment, and felt the sting of bile rising at the back of her throat.

Everywhere, between tents, in them, out in the open. Corpses: charred, twisted, limbs scattered and bent at odd angles. No blood even littered the already red earth, wounds instantly cauterized by the heat of the blast. All sizes. No one, not man nor woman nor child had been spared.

Calista had the sudden, sharp urge to vomit.

Work areas and fields alike were ruined; meager crops burned down by either the blast or a fire following it, mud-brick buildings and leather tents all razed to the ground. Fenced in pens were scattered with dead bighorners and brahmin. A few partially butchered geckos lay nearby as well.

In a large, open area not far from where she and Jay were walking, two children lay face down in the dirt. One looked like a little girl, her skin ravaged, was still clutching a doll in one hand. Her hair had burned up and scorched her scalp. The other child, several yards back and closer to the city, must have been nearly on top of a dynamite explosion and was unrecognizable; one of its legs lay several feet away, the torn-up foot hanging on by only a few strands of tendon.

Calista ran towards them, stopping only when Jay called out to her.

"Murderers," she said, hardly able to speak. "Vile. Unspeakable—"

"Yes. Yes they are," Jay said, his voice dark. Calista turned back to look at him.

His eyes lingered near the center of the city, where the only thing that remained of human life were the ashen shadows of those too close to be at all shielded from the bomb's radiation. "These were good people, a peaceful people. There was no reason to do this to any of them. Even their meanest man would cry at a meaningless kill."

Calista moved again towards the body of the little girl, a pang of grief pulling at her gut. Her eyes lingered through blurred vision on the small hand clutched close with the doll. The girl's tattered skin flaked away piece-by-piece in the strong wind.

"Don't," Jay said warningly.

"I want to bury her."

"I know you do. But you have to leave her." Jay's voice was heavy with regret.

"Why?" she asked, eyes widening as she spun back around.

"Because if you do, and they find out, they'll target you. And even if it weren't for that, the radiation might kill you by the time you dug even a shallow grave. You're too close already." A grimace distorted his features as he tore his gaze from the tiny body. "I'm sorry," he added. "But we really can't. We have to keep moving."

Even standing in the heat of the midday sun, Calista felt cold.


A/N: Progress! This month has been much more hectic than I'd expected. If you want to buy a shirt for the writing club I run at my college, or run in a race with us, or work with us for our writing for charity project: I've got you covered. Otherwise, everything has pretty much been on hold. I finally decided to stay up late these last couple nights and finish this up. Because I love my readers and don't want them to leave me. *clings*

I've been posting notes and things relating to my writing of this story on tumblr (adira-tyree) and LiveJournal (legate-adira). More about my crafty fallout-props on LiveJournal and more about the writing on tumblr, but hey. It all works out. If you ever have anything you want to talk about, feel free to shoot me a question on either site. I'm always down to chat!