As the mercenaries, now ten instead of twelve, made their way stealthily through the old settlement circumventing the sentry posts Tycho felt really bad about his plan. The best he could think of was to sneak inside the main building, start firing and watch the doors, hoping to bottle-neck the foes. He felt that the plan they went into the old factory with was sounder than this, and it didn't go well. Besides, he was with more capable men back then, some of the best of Crimson Caravans. And now Hailey and Ian were dead, Tabitha, as hard to get along with as she was, was back in the Hub doing nothing, and even Charlie decided to stay put for the moment. He might not have looked like much but Tycho remembered he was one of the only two survivors of that other mutant hunting team, and the other one had to have his leg amputated by Matthew. The mercenaries he was doing this with now were all either inexperienced or, as he pretended he didn't see, high on buffout and psycho, now anxiously waiting to make all hell break loose.
It's the Hub, the ranger thought, one of the most problem-ridden settlements he'd ever come across. Provided, he'd seen worse, but in smaller settlements, and in the Hub he'd meet people with something very wrong about their morals almost every day.
He shook his head. Maybe it's better not to get involved. Maybe it was time for him to retire.
He shook his head again. None of that now, he was on a serious mission.
What was left of the pre-war structures didn't exactly offer much cover and they moved from one collapsed building to another in pairs while the rest kept watch. Or rather, Tycho and maybe two others kept watch; he knew better than to trust something like this to people on drugs. Hopefully, it'll at least be handy once the bullets start flying. It's their life they're fucking up, not his.
He shook his head to dissipate another thought before it materialized.
They reached the old dormitory building without incident, at least as far as Tycho could tell, and everyone tensed up once inside. All was quiet except for the occasional shuffling of a pair of massive legs in one of the echoing corridors. The mercenaries were all but ready to start firing but Tycho instead led them to the stairwell and down: according to the Hub's Sheriff if anyone in the town survived they would be hiding in the basement underneath this very building. They found the trapdoor under some discarded rags and plywood just like the Sheriff described it and knocked five times. The latch was opened quietly and the trapdoor opened slowly. The mercenaries went in as silently as they could.
It was pretty dark inside, the cellar illuminated only by a single dim oil lantern hanging by the ceiling, casting shadows upon the faces of the dirty, frightened survivors that made them seem older and more ragged than any man had a right to be. There were about two dozen of them and all of them cast their eyes upon the mercenaries, hopeful, hungry for salvation. That was deeply unsettling. Every time Tycho had ever found himself in such a situation, coming to rescue folks, they would be ecstatic, all too eager to get out. But these people just gave him and his comrades hopeful looks, and some even shuffled deeper into their corners as if afraid to take a step outside, towards the salvation. The ranger realized that these people must have gone through hell to make them react to their saving so stiffly.
"Man are we happy you guys came," the man who'd let them in, a middle-aged farmer with a handlebar moustache, offered a weary smile. "I'm Henry, by the way. We've been holed up in here for two weeks now and most of our food and water is gone, even after we started rationing it. You've come to get us out of here?"
The ranger nodded," we are. Anything you can tell us about the mutants?"
"Reckon you'd know more about them than we would, seeing as how you fought them," Henry smiled. "But as for the bunch that... destroyed our town... We haven't been able to keep an eye on them and we only know what little we've seen and heard through the cracks of the window panes. Their leader is some sort of a special mutant called 'Night-Kin'. I heard the mutants talk about these night-kin with... I don't know, respect? It was as if they feared them."
"These night kin," Tycho asked, "are the blue-skinned mutants, right?"
"Yeah," the man confirmed sullenly. "We didn't know for sure until we've seen one of them through the window... This huge blue monster, it would leave the dorm every day and start smashing down the buildings with its bare hands!"
"Why?"
"It was the robot!" A ragged woman suddenly jumped up from the floor, her eyes and voice feverish. "There was a robot with her, every day! A small floating one, like a metal ball! It would talk something about 'destroying the old and making way for the new'! It would tell the mutant to smash our homes because 'it was needed for humanity to move forward', to 'let go and evolve'!"
The ranger's guts turned. That fit disturbingly well with what the Children of the Apocalypse were talking about.
"'Her'? How do you know it was a she?"
"The robot! It would refer to has as 'mistress'!"
"Is this mutant the leader?" Tycho asked Henry.
"No. Judging from the conversations we overheard, it... she isn't. It's some other mutant, they'd call him their 'Corpse'."
Corpse? What was that all about?
"Anything else?" The ranger asked, deciding not to dwell on the finer points of mutant behaviour. "Something that could help us?"
The room went silent.
"Okay. Get ready to leave. We pull you out of here and attack the mutants once we know you're safe."
The people stood up heavily and quietly, reminding the ranger just how bad their situation was. And just how difficult a battle he was up to. He had a hunch these people didn't really know that the blue mutants, the 'Night Kin', could turn semi-invisible, and for a moment he deliberated informing them before deciding he did not want to make them any more panicked.
"Ranger, Sir?" Kyle tapped him on the shoulder. "May we talk?"
The two men returned to the first floor while the townspeople gathered their belongings.
"Is this the right way to go?" The mercenary asked, his voice quiet but emotional. "If we try to sneak all these people past the sentries and sneak back in again... There's a good chance we'll fail and..." He couldn't say the words. A shame, the ranger thought.
"You would suggest we tell them to stay low while we fight?"
The merc nodded.
"So if we should fail," the ranger said evenly, making the mercenary tense up at the mention of the likely possibility, "these people would have to stay down there for God knows how much longer while they barely have any food or water left."
"We will fail and all die if we are found!" Kyle argued, his voice almost breaking. "And there's a good chance we will!"
Tycho looked the man in the eye. He didn't look away, defiant. Pride, the ranger thought. Pride is what's keeping him from averting his gaze. Sad, when you think about it.
"I'm sorry. We're taking these people to safety first," the ranger's voice left to space for argument. "There's more of those mutants out there. We can't risk two dozen peoples' lives in order to kill a dozen of them."
Kyle looked away, angry. He'll flee, Tycho thought. He'll flee as soon as things go bad, just like Carl and Tessa. He's been around long enough to know this for sure but still didn't know how to deal with it. Others, he knew, would have tried to bribe him or intimidate him, but those others were ruthless bosses of mercenary bands or chiefs of settlement guardians who were no more than ruffians and extortionists. The ranger had nothing to bribe the man with and did not believe he could intimidate him, he'd never tried to intimidate anyone, that wasn't him. But goodwill and understanding should do the trick. If he could make Kyle see things the way he did, surely he would come around...
Doubt wash over him as he opened his mouth.
"This is the right thing to do. Life takes priority over death," he hesitated. "If we're found out, we run," Kyle suddenly looked him right in the eye. "The journey back to the Hub is perilous and the people will need protection. Besides, if we can't surprise them we likely can't win and, as I said, life over death."
The mercenary held gaze upon Tycho, as if looking for something, a hint of lying, most likely. He then looked down and up again, sighing in resignation.
"Okay. You're the boss. But we run if things go south."
"We run if things go south," Tycho confirmed.
Five mercenaries walked ahead and behind the column of survivors through the silent corridors, Tycho taking point beside Keith, the owner of one of the sharpest pairs of eyes among them. Some mercenaries were still twitchy from the drugs they'd taken and some were coming down by the fatigue in their eyes and the shaking of their drawn guns. Wonderful. Would it be better to just head back to the Hub even if we lead the people out unseen, the ranger wondered. With mercenaries in such states there was no way they could win a battle against the mutants. But then Tycho thought of Kyle. The man has his nose up in the clouds because he was, in name, a member of the mutant hunting team way back. If these mercs go back to the Hub without facing the mutants, just how cocky would they become? It might not sound like the best reason there ever was to lead people to a very dangerous fire-fight but that cockiness could do a lot of damage.
Tycho's train of thoughts came to a screeching halt. Was he really considering making the mercs fight the mutants just so they wouldn't get cocky? He never thought like that in his entire life! Though it did made sense, these mercenaries getting their head in the clouds could seriously hurt the Hub...
I'll cross that bridge later, he decided, if we ever get out of here. And, looking at the stressed and drugged-up mercenaries Tycho found he could see why Kyle was so certain they'd all get killed. Damn it, he couldn't even tell if they could be relied upon to not run away at the first sight of a mutant. Sure, he assured Kyle they'd run if things went south, but the ranger estimated the young merc would draw the line at the distant shape of a mutant on the horizon.
Maybe they shouldn't attack. Maybe it's better to just get the people out of the town and return to the Hub, and not approach the mutants. He could talk to the Sheriff and Demetre, make them understand just what sort of mercenaries these men and women were, tell them they're so bad that Tycho couldn't even picture engaging the enemy with them as his forces. That would teach these mercs a lesson, and the other mercs in town. But wouldn't that harm the mercenaries, ruin their reputations? If a ranger spoke badly of them, would they be able to find work? Or could he make the Sheriff and Demetre just consider them carefully instead of writing them off? He wasn't sure. He looked at Keith. The man was was scanning the town before them from the doorway to the dormitory with his binoculars, his lips a thin line and his eyebrows tilted to a frown above the binoculars, concentrating. He was comparatively calm, concentrated, professional, and not high on anything. Should Tycho berate the other mercenaries in front of either of the two presently most important people in the Hub, decent mercenaries like him would suffer, even if he singled them out. He could lie, of course, but these mercenaries having a good reputation was a disaster waiting to happen, like Kyle leading bands of mercenaries.
Keith nodded and Tycho broke the train of thoughts, trying to concentrate. Damn, since when was it so hard to stay present? Was it age, or was the situation just getting to him?
Tycho and another merc, Joel, crossed the narrow street and made it past a dilapidated building into a small cover tugged between several piles of debris as quickly and quietly as they could. They were followed by two more mercs, then two of the townsfolk, and so on until all of them made it to the cover and Keith arrived to the safety last, having kept an eye on things as the people moved. Tycho sighed. One point reached, maybe over half a dozen more to go.
They moved to another cover and then again, now finding themselves near the edge of the town where the cornfields began. The ranger reckoned they would be able to move faster while in the cover of the tall crops, though they would have to be careful not to disturb the stalks to the point of getting spotted.
"Let's take a break," Tycho said quietly, reasoning they could use the rest, leading the people into a small cellar underneath the destroyed building they used for cover. It was cramped but it would serve, especially before the long run. The floorboards of the house's first floor were more or less smashed, the debris from the walls and ceiling punching their way through old wood on their way down, settling into heaps around the ceiling's walls, making it look more like a crater with some wooden boards above its centre.
The mercenaries were either restless or very tired, and the people of Irwin were both, in different measures.
"I'm hungry, mama," he heard a child complain.
"Hush, sweetie," came a tired voice in reply, "be a good boy and listen to the ranger and we'll be safe soon. We'll eat then, I promise."
Children. The ranger couldn't stand to see them suffering.
A desert ranger, though, was always prepared, and Tycho unslung his backpack and produced a strip of dried jerky.
"Here," he offered the meat to the kid, who immediately jumped on it without so much as a thank-you. The kid's mother, a tired-looking woman, smiled faintly and nodded in thanks. Tycho smiled back. It usually felt better, helping people like this. Was the life around the Hub really this depressing and thankless or was the problem within him, that he was troubled and weary?
"Mister," he felt a child tugging at his trench-coat, "I'm hungry too."
Tycho smiled and gave him a strip of jerky, upon seeing which a burly and mean-looking farmer exclaimed, "my child is hungry as well!"
"Ranger, my child is famished!" He heard a woman say, echoed by several others, the sudden ruckus underlined with constant whispers of 'food? Who has food?'
Tycho's face dropped and as he distributed the rest of the jerky he had unable to smile. He noticed Keith tense up at the sudden clamour, recognising the danger it posed. The ranger tried to hush the voices.
"Ranger! Ranger! What about my child?" A woman demanded loudly.
"Hush," the Tycho tried to silence her. The woman tensed up, looked around and continued quietly, "my child hasn't eaten in days!"
"I'm sorry, I don't have any more," he apologised, "but we have some supplies in a gas station outside of town..."
"Ranger, Sir," Kyle tugged at his shoulder, "if we start sharing our food we won't be able to resturn to the Hub. There's too many of them."
Anger washed through the ranger. They would make do! They can ration and they can hunt, some people wandered the wasteland their entire lives in packs as large as Irwin and managed to live off the land! Tycho was about to reply when the woman he just spoke to addressed another townsfolk rather loudly, "my kid is hungry, share your food with him!"
The ranger turned his head and saw the man she was talking to bite down half a strip of jerky, the other half being eaten by his child. Anger and sadness washed over him, quickly replaced by tension.
"Simmer down!"
"We're hungry, we need food!"
"Quiet! Listen! If you keep shouting like that..."
"Why did he get a strip and my child didn't? He's eating it himself!"
"Shut up, bitch, I've been giving all of my meals to my kids for three days!"
"Like hell you were!"
"Shut up and listen to the Ranger!" Kyle exclaimed, trying to shock people to silence. It didn't work.
"This isn't fair! Why did her child get to eat and mine didn't?"
"The ranger can't be the only one with food, hand it over!"
"Yeah! Hand it over! We can't walk without it!"
"What sort of saviours are you?"
"We've suffered so much, please, a bite of food!"
Tycho's mouth was agape. Never in his life had he encountered a situation like this, people forgetting about their safety in order to hassle some food from others. He wanted to believe it was because they cared deeply about their children, but with so many parents sharing food with the children, the way these people demanded to be fed like it was their right... Maybe he was getting old and cynical but for some reason he couldn't believe it was all good intentions.
He felt a light tap on his shoulder. It was Keith.
"I think we should hide."
Tycho was shocked all over again by the calm, quiet, suggestion. The mercenary looked at him and moved away, crouching and climbing up a pile of debris lying on the cellar wall. The ranger started after him but just as he reached the centre of the cellar Henry, the leader of the survivors, grabbed him the collar.
"I don't want to die!" The man hissed angrily. "You're a ranger, do your fucking job."
Tycho pushed the man away, his head ringing, not realizing what he was doing.
And then, a woman screaming and a hiss, like a gas leak.
He ducked and turned his head by instinct and saw it. A super mutant, blue skin, dark leather clothes, a flame-thrower in his hands, squirting fuel. The next moment, he saw Kyle bursting into a run away from the mutant, pushing over several women on his way, not even looking back as the shocked women fell flat on their backs. The next moment a tide of panicking people washed over him, pushing him on his back and tripping over, then falling on top of him. The world suddenly turned yellow behind them and screams too horrible to describe pierced through the ringing in his head. A woman was lying on top of him, two more on her. The air was permeated with the stench of fuel, burning cloth and charred flesh. The woman was screaming, trying to writhe out from underneath two other unfortunates while her burning clothes slowly cooked her skin. He could feel her screams, the way her lungs vibrated as she was pressed against the ranger's flesh, her eyes shot up in pain so high only her whites could be seen. Tycho could feel it too, the fire licking his trench-coat, his left temple, the heat of the clothes of the people on top of him, burning. His screams joined the chorus and soon the yellow disappeared, soon to be replaced by black as the man passed out.
Junktown
2161-04-01 03:37 PM
He could've sworn Tabitha smiled a bit when she offered him the third Rad-X pill.
"You sure you'll be fine?" She asked in an amused, teasing tone as Charlie swallowed the pill and sighed, expecting the nausea to wash over him any moment now.
"I recover quickly from these things," he assured her, "probably all the whiskey I've been drinking made me more resistant to stuff."
"Macho bullshit," Tabitha rolled her eyes and sat down on the other bed in the room.
"So if I get caught?" Charlie asked.
"I start shooting," Tabitha called back, not exactly reassuring. "Otherwise, if you fail to take the journal while I have them distracted, we'll do this your way. It'll take ages but it's better than nothing. Though that also means you don't need to bust your ass off."
Tabitha had dressed him up as a Junktown citizen who suddenly decided to be a wasteland mercenary: in stinking, itching old rags and a set of torn leather armour. He attached a small pouch of bottle caps so he wouldn't be turned away, and he'd hid a switchknife in his boot just in case.
"Anyway," Tabitha grinned evilly, "you have to admit my plan is better than yours."
"Yeah, and way more risky."
"That's part of the job. Besides, you're just a lazy drunk."
"Bite me," he smiled. "I do quality work, not fast and shoddy."
Tabitha looked at him as if she was thinking whether to ask him what she had on her mind, though she decided not to. Charlie sighed. He couldn't stand intrigue, tension, and things not being a hundred percent clear between people.
"Just ask."
"What?"
"You wanted to ask me something. Just do it."
"Promise not to take offence?" She smiled mischievously. She could be a real bitch when she was in a good mood, though he knew most would disagree: it was Tabitha in a bad mood that people feared. Yet Charlie preferred dealing with angry Tabitha. At least when she was in a bad mood she didn't play with people and was straightforward with them.
"Go on."
"I just wanted to ask how someone as... uh, cautious as you made it back from that Super-mutant hunt."
Charlie looked at her with irritation though the wave of nausea that washed over him made him turn away.
"I'm cautious. Not 'cautious' like you said when you meant cowardly," Tabitha looked at him as if she was insulted by the unfair assumption. "Just taking things slow and steady."
"I see you're extra cautious about not getting something nasty from some two-bit town whore."
"I just live it up while I can."
"'cause you could die at any moment?"
"We could all die at any moment."
She narrowed her eyes, "then why don't you make sure you survive instead of fucking around?"
He threw up.
In a couple of minutes Tabitha had dragged him as close to the Children building as she could and set him on his way. He went towards the building, taking one step after another, trying to save his vomit for the Children. He wasn't a big fan of marching into enemy territory on covert missions he was no good at, though Rad-X poisoning sort of drowned out those worries.
"Greetings, friend," one of the Children by the door greeted him, looking him up and down with concern. "You need assistance from us?"
Feeling a bit cocky, which made him think it was a good idea at the moment, he puked all over the man's shoes.
"Fuck!" The young and seemingly timid man's eyes went wide. "You should go inside! Doctor Reynolds!"
The young man led Charlie into the Children office and laid him down on the bed in the back room. He absent-mindedly noticed that someone freed him from the burned of his cap bag in the process. A doctor ran up to his prone figure and started asking questions which Charlie ignored, offering nothing more than a ragged croak, "Rad-X... too much... Rad-X"
He was surprised how easy it was to sound so sick and, at the back of his head, realised he'd really fucked himself up with those drugs.
The Children offered him some pills and a lot of water and he took those despite his distrust of those people, and the next hour was spent drinking water and vomiting violently. Before he passed out on the bed.
He came to a few hours later courtesy of Tabitha screaming her lungs off in the other room.
"Those mutants took my Bobby, you tell them to bring him back you cock-sucking rad-fucker!"
He smiled involuntarily but had to control his smile. It was already night time and sleepy Children started coming from the cellar to check out the ruckus. The woman was making quite a scene and that drawing so many children from the cellar was unexpected. He had to admit, he feared Tabitha wouldn't be able to play her role properly since she was in one of her 'good' moods, but he had to remind himself that she was a tough-as-nails professional and there were few things she couldn't do.
She started sobbing, he'd heard, and her screams became sharper though further in-between. He wiggled his fingers and toes and decided he would somehow manage movement. Sliding off the bed and crouching on the floor made his guts turn but the worst of the poisoning had already passed and he was able to shakily sneak up to the trapdoor in the corner, open it and take a look inside.
The cellar was divided into three parts by chest-high paper screens: a large sleeping area on the right and two small rooms on the left, an office and a storage area. Two of the Children were still sleeping on the right and Charlie drew his switchblade before heading down.
"Who's there?" He heard a sleepy voice as his feet touched the ground. He ducked and came as close to the door to the residential as he dared. The man who called out was approaching the doorway to check out the noise. Charlie brought his knife to eye level. He steadied his breath and concentrated, then, as the man came into his view he sprung to an attack.
The funny thing was, while most people considered him to be a friendly and compassionate person, whenever he was in combat he would see his enemies as nothing but targets, sort of like dummies, things to be shot down as quickly as possible. He hated close-quarter combat since if it dragged out he would have to observe his enemy and take into account their tells of intention and emotional state, which just made him feel shitty. With that in mind, he simply drove his knife between the man's ribs and into his heart, then cast the body aside, stepped into the room, saw another man standing up from the bed, ran up to him, slit his throat, threw him on the bed and pressed his palm against the man's mouth so he wouldn't scream. He swore as he got blood all over him.
Adrenaline pumping through his veins Charlie strode quickly into the office and started rummaging through drawers. It took him a minute to find what he was looking for – a small pre-war notebook that belonged to a 'Doc Reynolds', a higher-up as he was led to believe earlier – and as he hid it inside the leather armour he heard another one of the Children descend the ladder.
Another rush of adrenaline made his hand tremble. He was deep inside enemy territory, with only stealth as his weapon, and he had no skill at it. He ran up to the descending man, put his hand to his mouth and pulled him from the ladder at the same time as stabbing him in the stomach. He got even more blood on him and cursed again.
It was time to go. He was going through possibilities of getting away from this frantically when he caught himself panicking. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He ran through the situation again and came up with a possible solution quickly.
Without flinching he knelt by the last killed cultist and took a mouthful of his blood from the wounds. It tasted foul but he didn't find it particularly disgusting, probably thanks to his wishing to get out of here as soon as possible. He hid his knife and ascended the ladder, then scanned the room. There were no children in the room where he was put to bed, and all the remaining ones were in the first room, standing around Tabitha, who was weeping on the floor. Charlie cursed in his mind at the fact that there were no windows in the building and went ahead with the plan.
Eyes bulging and a shuffle in his step, Charlie stepped out into the room, making all heads turn at him and all eyes go wide at the sight of blood on his leather armour. He stopped, looked at them, and let a portion of the blood in his mouth run down to his chin, armour, and then the floor. A second later he started walking fast and clumsily towards the door, pretending to be a man in panic and spitting out the last of the blood from his mouth. Tabitha was staring at him like the others but a second later she jumped up from her feet, started screaming, exclaimed something about having known that the Children were monsters, and ran away a second before Charlie shuffled outside, hastening his pace.
"Hey, stop!" The young man who met him at the door earlier ran after Charlie who was making for the nearest alley "Hey, are you okay? What's wrong? We can help you!"
Charlie dove into the alley with the man just a step behind him. He stopped and leaned forward as if to puke, his hand creeping to the knife in his boot.
"It's okay, don't-"
The man was suddenly cut short by Tabitha, who appeared out of nowhere behind him and grabbed him in a choke-hold. Charlie grabbed his knife and plunged it into the man's eye socket, killing him.
"What the fuck?!" Tabitha demanded angrily.
"Had to kill a few of them," Charlie replied. "Sorry."
"Next time we do something like this, warn me of your lack of skill before we go in alright?" She jabbed and walked away to their hotel hastily. Charlie smiled and followed her. Of course he'd warned her but she decided not to listen for some reason.
They collected their stuff quickly and changed their clothes, making it to the main gate within twenty minutes. The woman crept up on the guard, watching the wasteland instead of the town, knocked him out with the butt of her .44, and the two of them took off.
They spent the night in the wasteland, further away from the trade route to the Hub. Charlie passed out almost as soon as he lied down in his sleeping bag but he still managed a smile and a thumbs up before that.
"Go teamwork!" He called.
"Go Tabitha salvaging Charlie's horrible 'plans'!" She laughed.
"Go snark!" Charlie rolled his eyes and passed out.
The Glow
2161-03-31 07:11 PM
Steven barely managed to keep up with Matthew as he raced through the hallways of the abandoned facility. When they were not moving, inside the elevator, the blonde decided against trying to stop him. Let's wait and see, he thought.
The rope they'd set up has been cut down. Matthew looked at it for a second before attempting to claw his way up, causing an avalanche of sand. Steven in the meantime dragged one of the surprisingly light metal desks to the sand pile.
"Matt!" He called out. The other vault dweller looked at him and understood what he was trying to do. The two men carried the table up the sand pile and settled it unsteadily by the wall. Steven took point, being more physically fit than the physician. He jumped from the table and grabbed a piece of rebar coming from the base's outer shelter. He swung himself sideways and wrapped his feet around another piece of rebar on the other side of the hole. He then lithely jumped from that piece of rebar to the one he held on to with his hands, stood up, and put one leg back on the other foothold. Alas, there were three more meters of sand above him.
"I need something as close to a shovel as you can find!" Steven asked and five minutes later he was punching the sand with a metal broomstick Matthew had found. Sand rained down upon the pile below and Steven didn't let up until he'd made something resembling a grotto right above the facility's outer shell. He then moved on the concrete and started pounding the sand above, then the sand at his chest level again. He soon discarded the broomstick and started digging with his hands, trying to dig a walkway upwards in the sand, immediately after pulling Matthew up to help him. He thanked god for climate change and lack of water in the region that made all the digging possible as half an hour later two very sweaty vault dwellers had dug a diagonal walkway up to the ground level. They barely stopped to catch their breath one back on the surface.
"These are our footsteps?" Matthew asked, pointing at a set coming from the north.
"Probably," he replied, his vision going a bit hazy. Another set of footsteps led east and then south up a narrow mountain trail. Matthew ran as fast as he could and his companion, despite being more physically fit, lagged behind due to fatigue.
A landslide must've occurred here some time ago as the mountain terrace they were walking along suddenly got no wider than half a meter ahead and Sophia's captors were resting on the other side, fifty meters away. Sophia was on her knees in the middle of the circle, her entire torso wrapped up in a rope.
Ghouls. There were three of them, all dressed up in rags, carrying some sort of rifles. They were talking about something but Steven couldn't make it out.
The vault dweller almost jumped up into the air when a gun rang out right beside him. Steven scolded himself for not noticing Matthew getting down on his stomach, taking aim and firing at a ghoul.
Sophia reacted first and no sooner had the pieces of the ghoul's skull hit the ground than the woman had stood up and jumped behind a rock further away from the gorge. The ghouls took cover from Matthew's fire as well and one of them fired a load of shotgun pellets at the rock where Sophia had been a second before.
Steven ducked and shook his head. Concentrate, he thought. The ghouls were behind cover on the other side, and Sophia was behind another one further away. The abductors couldn't come over to where Sophia had run to without exposing themselves to Matthew, but the two men could not get over to their side and flank them either. Steven drew his assault rifle just in case but he'd already figured how this was going to play out.
"They'll wait us out," he stated solemnly.
"We'll see about that," Matthew replied with determination.
"Since you lost your doctor's bag the only radiation drugs we have are with Sophia. They can wait until we die, even if it's the three of us."
His companion didn't reply. Steven didn't know what else to say. He sighed, forcing himself to think. For one of them to try and make it across was folly: the ghouls were poised behind rocks only several meters away from where the ledge turned into a proper terrace again. Either of them taking the narrow ledge to the other side would make them easy prey while walking across and then again once on the other side, due to the ghouls being behind cover.
He wanted to go across, he really did. Probably even more than Matthew, who was visibly seething with anger, waiting anxiously for one of the ghouls to make a mistake and give him a clear shot. Even if it meant his death he could at least draw the assailants from their cover so his companion could kill them. It wasn't even for Sophia's sake, he realized, he just wanted to go across and give the ghouls what-for, go out in a blaze of glory if necessary. After all, Sophia could do far more good to the world than he could...
No you won't!, he scolded himself in his head, the rational part of him taking over. That sort of thinking is not constructive! He closed his eyes for a few seconds, calming down as the wish, for he realized that was what it was, to go across subsided.
We should let it go, Steven thought, his head now clear. There was no other way. They probably won't succeed in killing the ghouls, and once they're dead, they'll take Sophia away and do whatever it was they intended to do with her. Probably eat her. It was simple arithmetic really, risking three with terrible odds or giving up one. He didn't like it but he felt he could probably live with it. Well, he could function with it anyway.
He sat down, his back leaning against the cliff and his rifle on his knees, pointed at the rock on the other side. He was looking at Matthew and Matthew was looking at the rocks through his scope, his brow furrowed and lips pursed. There was no way of talking him out of this.
He sighed, a myriad of reasons to back off running through his head, but none of them spoken, not only because Matthew would not have any of it, but also because he suddenly found himself not wanting to admit it.
Damn it, he thought, I've been through worse, this decision is easy in comparison. But why was he stalling? His suicidal wish to just run across and shoot until either they or him were dead was in check, so what was holding him back?
"What's your plan?" He asked quietly, not really sure what he was getting at or exactly what he would suggest.
Matthew didn't respond.
"You do realize we need to do this quick or else we'll die of radiation poisoning?"
No response.
"There's no use in all of us dying here. The two of us can at least make it out of here," he tried prodding.
"She might need time to wiggle out of the ropes."
"And then?"
"She might try to run for it."
"She can't get out from behind that rock without getting shot."
"She can shoot them from there."
"They won't have left any guns on her."
"Then what do you propose that we do?" Matthew snapped his head at him, furious.
"You know what," Steven replied calmly.
"Fuck you," the brunette replied hatefully, his eye returning to the scope.
Steven paused.
"And what would happen if we left?"
"They'll kill her."
"But not us."
"We're the only shot she has."
"She won't care if she's dead."
Matthew fell silent. Steven wasn't good at reading people but even he knew that what he was about to say was pushing it.
"If she dies, she won't feel a thing. You will. You'll feel like a failure."
Matthew didn't respond for a second until spitting through his teeth, "this isn't about me."
"For every person it's only about them. Don't deny it."
Matthew shifted uncomfortably.
"I couldn't live with that."
"But you would live."
"I'd rather not."
Suddenly, Steven was sure whether he wanted to save Sophia or flee.
"Stop being a drama queen!" He snapped. "Both of you, you go around acting like you're some sort of victims of a cosmic rape when barely anything has happened to you! Your comrades died, not you! Decker died, not you."
Matthew flinched at that. The angry blonde continued.
"You think you can't live with it? You can, trust me! There's much more horrible shit out there than your little 'tragedies', and if you weren't totally clueless you would know just how pathetic your little dilemma is!"
Saying that made Steven feel reassured of his choice but Matthew would have none of it.
"And I have only your word on that," he spat. "Maybe I haven't seen the worst of this world but that doesn't mean I should just abandon friends because there could be worse situations than this!"
"I know you want to be a hero and do the right thing. And I know how mad you are seeing as how all you did ever since the Hub is act like our father, but like I said: you walk away something bad will happen to her. Not you, but her!"
"Fuck it. If there are worse things out there than this then I'd rather die right here and now than see them so I could become an asshole who leaves his friends behind," Matthew accused as he stood up and approached the narrow walkway. Steven got up on his feet and grabbed Matt by the shoulder.
"I'll do it," he said.
Matthew turned around slowly and looked at him with disbelief.
"Say what now?"
"You're gonna do it either way so let me. I've got an assault rifle, way better than a sniper rifle in that situation. And I'm better at this."
"You just told be to leave her behind," Matthew looked at him with suspicion. "What the hell are you playing at?"
Steven opened his mouth but couldn't find any words to express his thoughts. He knew exactly why he wanted to go himself instead of letting Matthew go, but he just couldn't say it. Maybe his rational side didn't let him say it. Because that side of him was afraid of saying it out loud.
"You haven't seen half the things I've seen," Steven said quietly, squeezing words out of him slowly. "It means you actually want to live more than I do."
He cursed in his head. Admitting that made him feel weak. He was affected deeply by the things he was forced to go through in the surface world, to the point of having less of a will to keep living, but as long he at least didn't say it his rational side could somehow keep it in check. But now, having said that...
"What kind of things?" Matthew asked, suddenly much calmer and even slightly concerned.
"Doesn't matter."
"What kind of things, Steven?" Matthew insisted.
A part of him wanted to say it. Probably because he'd never told anyone and he wanted to get it off his chest. Probably because hiding that, as well as never revealing his state of mind, formed a gap between him and his companions, always made him the outsider, the stranger. But at the same time, his rational side was screaming at him to keep his mouth shut, to keep his shit together and not go sobbing because the world wasn't a fair place.
"There was a ranger," Matthew started slowly. "Tycho. He would say the wrong choice was the easy one. That instead of doing things the easy way I should try and do it the hard way. The right way. You said nothing bad ever happened to me and Sophia. That's not true. We were doing things the hard way since the beginning, not running away so we'd at least live no matter the cost. Like you," he spat as he pushed his companion aside and walked up to the narrow ledge.
Steven's stomach sank. He knew he never was on the same wavelength with the other people but this was just ridiculous! It was as if they were talking about different things altogether. He looked up at the man slinging his sniper rifle on his back preparing to cross the gap to the rocks. He's never seen it, he thought, that's why he doesn't understand. But then again it wasn't like Steven could think of a single valid argument against what Matthew had said.
It struck him then that ever since leaving the vault he'd seen different things than his two comrades. Due to all that experience his way of thinking was now different from theirs. And without them having that same experience they'd never understand him while he, with that experience, couldn't see them as anything more than fools who don't get things.
People are all different, he thought. And it's impossible for them to fully understand each other. It's not like telling them about what he'd seen out there would make them understand. It's not like that distance between him and his companions could be bridged by talking. They would never understand him and that was it. At least, until they'd suffered as much as him.
"Will you cover me?" Matthew asked, his voice and gaze betraying that he didn't really expect him too.
Steven looked him in the eye and nodded non-committally, crouching down and aiming at the other side of the gap.
Matthew nodded and approached the narrow pathway. He drew his 10mm pistol, pressed his stomach against the sheer cliff and started inching towards the other side slowly.
Steven's gaze was drifting between the physician and the covers of the foes. He had basically rammed his cheek into the stock of his assault rifle, forcing himself to concentrate instead of letting his mind drift with the thoughts inside his head.
He re-evaluated the entire set-up of this confrontation. Maybe Matthew would be able to make it to the other side without exposing himself to the ghouls. It was a small chance but he found himself clinging to it. Even though he would've preferred the two of them just walked away he also understood Matthew's point of view. If he died, it wouldn't be something that would happen to Steven, he wouldn't be the one dead, but damn would it be hard. Not the hardest thing but...
Or was it that Steven really wanted to inflict the story of his journeys to his companions because he'd grown to care about them and the fact that they weren't as close as he wanted to?
He bit his lower lip, forcing himself to concentrate on the situation before him.
The brunette made it to the other side and Steven clutched his assault rifle tighter, aiming at the rock further away from his companion, reasoning that if something happened Matthew would shoot at the one closer to him first. He held his breath.
The ghoul further away from Matthew poked his head out from behind the rock and trained his weathered hunting rifle at the physician. A quick salve from Steven's assault rifle brought him down.
At the same moment, two sounds echoed left of the ghoul. One was the report of Matthew's pistol going off, the other was the crack of a shotgun. He didn't see what happened to the ghoul, but he did see Matthew stagger backwards a couple of paces from the impact to his chest, and then fall flat on his back.
Steven froze, his limbs going numb.
He knew this would happen.
That felt worse than he imagined.
Should he run?
It was hard to, somehow. Maybe these two and their life in what Steven considered to be a soap bubble of ignorance was rubbing off on him but despite knowing what the rational choice was he couldn't help but approach the edge of the gap and frantically follow the physician's path to the other side.