Chapter 11

"That was close," Andy said when he had enough breath to speak. They were just passing a cliff he recognized: the one with the solitary tree trunk sticking sideways out of the top. They must have run several miles. There was no sign of the Enclave. He doubted they would follow them. They were after that girl, not them. It was too bad she got away, though. Grouse would have a fit. That would be the third collar that he and Shin had lost, and they weren't cheap. It would only be the first, he thought glumly, except that that woman is a fool with the emotional control of a toddler. It seemed like she ended up killing half the people they captured. Not for the first time, he half hoped she'd get herself killed before she got back to Paradise Falls. He needed a new partner.

"That was some quick thinking on your friend's part," he said. "We'd be little more than stains on that car right now if it wasn't for her."

The ghoul didn't respond. Andy hadn't really expected him to; he was talking more to himself, anyway. The girl, Lydia, hadn't really seemed to understand the seriousness of her situation, but the man certainly did. At least he hadn't tried to kill him. That happened every once in a while. It always made him a little depressed. It was just so pathetic.

Still, he always made sure to stay behind the ghoul and keep his weapon in an easily accessible place.

"You're not mad at me for leaving her behind, I hope. I wouldn't go up against one person in power armor, let alone four." He watched the ghoul's back moving rhythmically with his steps. He showed no acknowledgement of Andy's comments. "I got the impression that you were someone she'd hired to escort her. But if that's the case, why are you sulking about her being gone? She didn't pay you in advance?"

He heard the ghoul let out a small sigh.

"No... Is she a relative? Sister? Daughter?" He paused, considering other options. "... Lover?"

"If you don't stop talking, I'm going to kill you," the ghoul said matter-of-factly.

"Hm," Andy said. "Rude." He smirked triumphantly at his reaction, but discreetly slowed to widen the gap between them.

-lll-

Lydia would have given anything to get those sunglasses back. Right about now they were probably on the head of some Wasteland scavenger. She held her hand up on her brow to block the sunlight. She had walked for long enough that it was low in the sky now, shining directly in her eyes, and she could hardly see where she was going. She'd been so excited to see the sun when she was plotting her escape from Vault 101; now all she wanted was for that damn yellow orb to go away. She might have laughed at the irony if she was in a better mood.

Her stomach growled. Thirst and hunger were creeping up on her. Perhaps she should have taken some water from the Enclave stores. But then, she didn't know where they kept it, and she had already taken the time to get the slave collar and a gun from Carmen's tent. It had probably been a good idea to quit while she was ahead and get out of there.

She checked her Pip-Boy again to make sure she was going in the right direction. Not that she had any idea where Paradise Falls was, but for the entire time she'd been traveling with Shin and Andy they had been going north-northwest, so she continued in that direction.

She had spent about half a day at the Enclave camp, but she hoped that if she hurried she could catch up with Andy and Harris before they got to Paradise Falls. Andy walked almost as slow as Shin, and he slept for a long time. Still, the result of this was that she was walking much quicker than usual. In her eagerness to get away from the camp, she'd already run for a mile or two just after she left, and she'd never really recovered.

She knew that she could only ignore her thirst and hunger and the pain in her side and eyes for so long. Unfortunately, there had been no conveniently placed defunct grocery stores on her journey so far. She and Harris had passed plenty of places like that before they ran into Andy and Shin. She supposed that he knew where they all were by now. It was obvious that he knew his way around, even without a map.

However, going back was out of the question. There wasn't enough time to go to one of the places on the map and still come back and free Harris. Anyway, she didn't want to run into any of those soldiers again.

She kept going after the sun set. Hopefully Andy and those soldiers would stop not long after it got dark. It seemed that everything out here shut down when the sun went down. Probably because they didn't have clocks. Or lights, a lot of the time. That reminded her, she could turn up her Pip-Boy brightness to the high setting. She went to change it, but thought better of it. With her luck, it would attract animals or raiders.

Ugh. She'd almost forgotten about the raiders. And the wild dogs. And the Yao Guai. And the super mutants. She stopped walking. When she looked at it that way, slavers and the Enclave seemed to be the least of her worries. She'd probably die out here before she'd gotten halfway to Megaton.

Suddenly she remembered her first night out of the vault. She thought she was going to die then, too. It was weird, but she had totally forgotten about it. She checked her radiation level, and it still read as over a thousand rads. Well. I've cheated death once, now. Maybe I can do it again.

She looked at the pistol she'd stolen from the woman, Carmen. She'd gone to her tent to get the collar, but as she was leaving she saw an ammo box by the door. Amazingly, it was unlocked, and inside was this pistol. It looked funny, almost like a toy. It had a glowing green tip like the others the soldiers had used, and it was almost as light as the laser pistol. She held it up experimentally, feeling the grip and the distribution of weight. Pointing it at a dead tree trunk, she pulled the trigger once. There was that echoey sound, and something green shot out of the barrel. It left a blob of green goo on the wood, but it quickly dissolved, eating through the tree in the process. When it was finished, there was a wide hole left in it. "Now that's something I haven't seen before." The edges of the hole were glowing green and dripping bits of goo and liquified wood. There was an iridescent puddle inside the hole. She resisted the urge to touch it.

Setting the pistol aside, she sat down and took a closer look at the metal collar. It was a fairly simple device, really. It didn't take long to figure out how it worked and how she could get it off safely. "If only I could do the same with my Pip-Boy..."

It was another few miles before she finally came upon the first building she'd seen all day. And it was an odd one, huge and all by itself out in the middle of nowhere.

Wait. Hadn't she seen this house before? She stopped at the fence that surrounded it and looked at the debris scattered around the yard. That jet addict's house. I wonder if he's gotten ahold of any more mines. She didn't even know what mines looked like, actually, but she searched the yard for them anyway. She circled around to the front of the house. There was an opening in the fence there, and a path leading to the door. There wasn't anything that looked like it might explode if she touched it, but still... She picked up a handful of gravel and threw it into the yard. Nothing happened. She got another handful and threw it to the other side of the path. She did it again and again until she'd covered everywhere near the path.

Taking a deep breath, she tip-toed to the porch. As luck would have it, there were no bombs lying in wait for her. Just as she reached the porch, something to her right made a noise. She jumped, but it was just a radroach emerging from under the stairs. She watched it scuttle off down the path, then approached the door. She knocked. There was a window next to the door, but it was boarded up. She could see the cracks between the planks darken, though, when someone moved behind them.

"Who's there?"

"Um...my name's Lydia, I..."

"Speak the hell up. I can't hear you."

"My name is Lydia," she nearly shouted. "I came here with Harris a while back."

"...Harris?"

"Yes."

There was a series of clicks and scrapes as various locks on the other side of the door were undone. The door opened a crack and the man's face appeared. He was even more haggard than she remembered, though he looked more sober. "You bring more jet?"

"Uh...no."

His face fell. "Oh. What do you want?"

"I...need some help. Harris and I were separated yesterday when I was kidnapped by the Enclave."

The man nodded. "Those black armor guys. I saw them come by here."

"Yeah. I escaped, but I've been walking all day and I haven't had anything to eat or drink since yesterday. So...I was wondering if, you know, you had any water..."

"What'll you give me for it?" He didn't seem fazed by her being kidnapped. Perhaps it wasn't an unusual occurrence.

Lydia currently had exactly two possessions aside from the clothes on her back-the unlocked slave collar and her stolen gun. She held them up, but he shook his head.

She scratched a dry spot on her arm anxiously. "I haven't seen any water for miles, and you're the only person who lives around here. Please, it's just this once."

"Why would I give up some of my water to some chick I hardly know?" The man gave her a hard look. "Pretty wimpy kid, aren't you? First mooching off the ghoul, now you're trying to mooch off me."

At this point, Lydia was tired, hungry, worried about Harris, and had a dehydration headache and a side ache. Her temper was shorter than usual. "I'm not mooching." She regretted it as soon as the words were out of her mouth, but a momentum of righteous anger was building up and it was hard to stop. "What do you know about it, anyway? Do you ever even leave this house? I bet you never worked a day in your life. You probably inherited money from someone and now all you do is waste it away obsessing over chems." She huffed for a moment. "Fine, then, if you're really that selfish. Just don't accuse me of the same thing." She stormed off.

When she was halfway down the path, laughter erupted behind her. She turned in confusion, and the man was still standing there in the doorway, cackling.

"What?" she nearly shouted at him.

"Do you know, the first time I met Harris, it went just about exactly like this?" he said as his laughter died down. "We had almost the exact same conversation. He was a kid then, even younger than you. Don't worry. He grew out of that kind of temperamental crap. So will you." The humor slowly left his eyes as he regarded her, and his face was returned to its previous perpetually tired and depressing state. "Just wait a minute. I'll be right back." He retreated into the depths of the house, locking the door behind him.

After a time he reemerged, holding several objects. He held out a bottle of water to her. Without thinking twice, she snatched it and drank the whole thing all at once. It almost hurt her dry throat as she swallowed, but she gulped it down anyway. The man watched her wipe her mouth on her sleeve, and handed her a bag of chips and a a carton of dried apples.

"Thank you," she said as she opened the apples.

"It isn't charity," he replied. "I expect you two to be back with more jet, and I'm not paying for it this time."

"Fine," she said. "I'm sure that's fine."

"You are going to find him, right?"

She nodded, biting a chewy chunk of apple. "Yes. I'll find him," she said resolutely, assuring herself as much as the jet addict.

"Mmm-hmm. I hope you do. Not just because of the jet, either. I'm kind of attached to the guy. He's not a bad sort. It's a shame for him to become a slave. He's got a sense of... whaddayacallit... integrity. He won't try to cheat me, I think. That's hard to find in a trader, let alone a chem dealer. And it's a pain having to find a dealer in the first place."

"Integrity? That's not a word I'd expect to hear in congruence with 'chem dealer'."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're too good for chems, huh?"

"I don't approve of abusing them."

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. In any case, you're gonna be a dealer too. If you plan on keeping your promise, anyways."

"That's different."

"Oh, it is, huh? Just remember, we all do what we have to to survive: you, me, Harris, everyone. It's really none of your business whether I use jet or not, and if I didn't get it from you, I'd just get it from someone else." He chuckled a bit. "Anyways, if it wasn't for people like me, there'd be nobody left for you to feel superior to."

Lydia set aside the empty apple box and tore into the potato chips. Suddenly she remembered something he'd said earlier. "How did you know he was a slave? I didn't say that." She was eager to change the subject, anyway.

"It's not hard to guess," the man said, gesturing to the collar she held. "And... I saw him go by here earlier."

"You saw him? How long ago was he here?"

"Few hours ago. Had some other guy with him. It's weird; usually slavers go around in gangs. You see either a group or none."

"Why didn't you help him?" she exclaimed.

"What am I, his mother?"

She stared at him. "You are a horrid person. Really."

"It's not like I could get the collar off anyway. I don't know how you managed it, but if you could do it again I'd appreciate it. I really don't want to have to find another dealer. I'm getting too old for wandering the wastes."

"I will." She stood and dusted chip crumbs off of her clothes. "Not for you, though," she assured him.

"Fine by me, so long as you do it. They went that way." He pointed. North-northwest. She followed his arm with her eyes, looking out at the horizon.

"Thanks."

The slam of the door was his only response.