I don't normally put trigger warnings in, but I think this chapter needs one. Trigger warning for extreme violence.
Lessons in Sniping
We started at the top of the obelisk. After demonstrating with his own beloved sniper, MacCready helped me set up my new rifle, teaching me how to brace it for long-range sweeps of the scope. When we located our first target, a mutant hound, he guided my arms, pulling the butt of the gun snugly against my shoulder, hands overlapping mine cradling the barrel. We breathed together, his chest against my back, timing the trigger squeeze for the natural pause at the end of an exhale. Even knowing I had V.A.T.S. as a backup, I was stubbornly determined to learn how to use the weapon properly without it, when the danger was less. After all, I have a trained sniper willing to show me how to use this thing properly.
The first round hit, but only crippled the beast. Quickly, I lined up a second shot, which crumpled the stationary animal's head into a bloody mess. "Not bad," MacCready assessed, "you're not using your Pip-Boy, are you?"
I shook my head. "I'm trying to learn not to. If those Institute Synths can home in on it, the less I use it, the better."
"Huh. Good point, though don't hesitate to use it if you need to." He stood up to scan the visible area with his own scope. "Better to use it and stay alive. We can deal with the Institute response if and when it happens." Lowering the scope, he motioned for me to pack up. "Nothing else out there from this vantage point. Let's move along to another one, boss."
Moving from rooftop to rooftop, we traversed the general route from Bunker Hill to the Old North Church, taking out any opposition we saw from our greater vantage point. The benefit to sniping from such a lofty position was that our targets, mostly Super Mutants this close the center of Boston, were unaware of our location, and would generally mill around in confusion, allowing us to take our time lining up the best shots. The downside to sniping from on high, I thought, wheezing as we ascended yet another flight of creaky steps, is having to climb up and down so many stairs. My legs are going to be so sore tomorrow. MacCready had already set up at the corner of the roof, the lessons quickly escalating into a friendly competition between us.
"All right, boss," he grinned. "Looks like we have a camp of Super Mutants blocking the street over that way." Waiting for me to set up, our rifles adjacent, legs touching as we took advantage of the same sight line, he whispered, "The church is the next building over from that one over there, so this should be our last fight before we reach it. I hope Desdemona will appreciate what we're doing for the Railroad with a little tangible thank you." He rubbed his finger and thumb together in an obvious monetary gesture. "I can't buy ammunition with goodwill."
"We'll just have to see, Mac." Relaxing into an almost trance-like mental state, I whispered, "Sight on the one by the burning barrel. Ready?"
"Born that way."
"Take 'em out."
The crack of our sniper rifles heralded the usual boiling confusion as our targets scattered, trying to locate the enemies who had just taken out one of their own. At first, I focused on crippling the giant green humanoids, knowing they were too tough for anything but a perfect head shot to kill them instantly. If they were unable to move, however, I had the time to fill them with rounds. MacCready, living up to his reputation as the best gun in the Commonwealth, took out three times as many targets in less time, using much less ammunition. Once the last of the visible Super Mutants had fallen, we concentrated on scanning the area around the blockade for any survivors.
"Anything?" I asked my companion. I hadn't seen any movement, but MacCready's eyesight was vastly superior to mine.
"No. All clear." He grinned avariciously, "Let's go grab the loot."
"I don't think so, rookie!" A deep gravely voice called out from directly behind us. Simultaneously, a boot connected with the side of my head, stunning me. Through the haze of pain, I was vaguely aware of my arms being wrenched behind my back. Raiders!
MacCready tried to roll to his feet, but a gunshot immobilized him as he clutched desperately at his leg with a scream. "Shot my knee out!" A second shot cut his yell short and he crumpled to the rooftop, crimson blooming under his body.
"MACCREADYYYY!"
Shrieking in agony, I thrashed violently, trying to reach him without success. In my head, one word endlessly repeated in a frantic fugue, no no no no no no no... Tears streamed down my cheeks unchecked.
"Grab those rifles and the girl. Leave the dead meat," the voice ordered, ignoring my sobs. My wrists were bound tightly and I was dragged away by my arms, face down, stunned, in shock, desperately trying to struggle, to fight my captives. I was gasping in reaction, seeing my partner, my friend, my lover, left crumpled in a pool of blood on the cold roof. Another blow to the back of my head had me seeing stars. "Shut the fuck up!"
"No!" I screamed, rage and pain and anguish shrieking through every word. "No! Let go!" I kicked out frantically, trying to get purchase with my feet, to slow our movement, to get free. It happened so fast! Oh, RJ... No! He might still be alive! I have to get back there! I hooked one foot around the railing of the stairs my unknown captors were descending, stopping us from moving further away from MacCready. "Fuck you! Let go of me!" I held on as hard as I could, trying to jackknife my body free, ears ringing.
"Such language from a laady," the deep voice laughed nastily, echoed by at least two others. "Listen here, you little goody two-shoes bitch," he hissed into the back of my drooping head as a vicious kick freed my foot and we started moving again. "You and that paid gun of yours can't just go traipsing around downtown 'cleaning up the Commonwealth' without consequences. You waltzed into my building, my territory, and didn't even pay the toll." He briefly dipped his face into my blurred field of vision; rough brown stubble framed a ruddy complexion and a gap-toothed evil grin. Black eyes glittered with drug-fueled emotion, surmounted by wild eyebrows and long, shaggy hair. "You're gonna pay now, sweetheart," and his slurred voice dripped with menace.
We turned into a short hallway leading to a series of rooms. The man who had been carrying me roughly tossed me into a bare corner in the last of the rooms, arms still bound behind my back. I curled into a fetal position, wracked with tearing sobs, the physical pain a bare echo of my emotional agony. What does it matter now? I thought. Trying to help the Commonwealth, ha. MacCready's alone, dead or dying, and it's all my fault. I'm as good as dead as soon as these assholes get bored with me. Why...
My spiraling thoughts were cut short as the leader strode over to cut my wrists free, tearing the pack from my back as he did so. Any thought of fighting back was immediately curtailed as he grabbed my left arm to haul me up to my tiptoes, using his free hand to backhand me across the face. "Shut it, bitch!" He prepped for another strike, then paused, staring at my arm. "Ho-ly shit!" he exclaimed, shoving me back down, but keeping hold of my left arm in both hands. "Hey boys!" he called excitedly, "We just struck it rich! Lil' miss do-gooder here has a Pip-Boy! And it's a super fancy one, too!"
A group of four raiders joined their leader as he wrestled with the fasteners holding the device to my arm. One of the other raiders, a nearly identical copy of his boss's rough, drug-addled living, put me in a headlock to keep me still. As soon as the raider boss managed to unclasp the armband, he pulled the Pip-Boy free.
At least, he tried to.
"What the fuck?" he exclaimed, tugging again at the device. Though the armband dangled free, the Pip-Boy itself remained attached to my forearm. I felt the pull through the pins that invaded my body, an unpleasant pressure deep in the marrow of my bones. "What the fuck are those?" the leader asked intelligently, finally noticing the buried cathode wires in my hand. "Got ourselves a fuckin' Synth or something!" A harder tug on the casing resulted in nothing more than an additional painful jolt radiating up my arm from the buried pins.
"Synths don't have Pip-Boys," one of the other raiders ventured. "Only Vault dwellers."
"Fine! A Vault Synth for all the fucks I give." He snarled, lifting me by the Pip-Boy, letting me hang dazedly. Damn he's strong. Gotta be the drugs. "Point is, a fancy Pip-Boy like this one will get us enough PsychoJet to last a year! Just gotta get it off of her." Hauling me up to bring his face closer, he spat at me, "You can take this thing off, yeah?"
I shook my head, not daring to answer aloud. My breath was coming in short gasps due to the growing pain in my arm and head. I guess it can't be removed unless I want it to be. Serves those assholes right for killing Mac- Another sob escaped my throat and I closed my eyes, overwhelmed with grief.
"Fucking bitch," he snapped suddenly, dragging me back into the bare corner. "Hold her steady," he ordered two of the others while he disappeared from view for a few moments. When he returned, arms full, I knew I was in trouble. A handcuff was snapped around my right wrist, the other end linked to a bare pipe exposed through the crumbling drywall. A second cuff tightened over my left wrist, pulled taut with a chain looped over one of the ceiling joists, and the end tied off. I was compelled to sprawl ungracefully in a painful half-crouched position, left arm angled upwards. Suffering from an almost certain concussion, I could barely focus my eyes from the pain in my head. I can't think straight. This is happening too fast!
The raider leader grabbed my raised arm in one hand, laughing in a low, menacing tone. "If you can't take it off, I'll just have to remove it for you." Suiting action to words, he brutally jammed a flat-bladed screwdriver in between the casing and my arm. Heedless of my tortured screams, he pried viciously up on the casing, gouging the blunt tip of the tool into the flesh of my arm over and over, trying to find purchase. Blood seeped out from underneath the Pip-Boy to run down my arm into the fabric of my shoulder. His first attempts futile, he stabbed in from a different angle, then from the other side. Each time, he gouged further into my flesh with the dull blade, trying to pry the device free with brute force.
Trying yet a different angle, he stabbed in towards the center of my arm, finding the line of pins anchoring it in place. With a triumphant grunt, he pried up while twisting the screwdriver to try and slip between the thin line of receivers in my arm. I was panting in agony, weakly thrashing against my bonds in a futile attempt to stop the pain. The trickle of blood expanded to a steady flow when the raider boss finally yanked the screwdriver out from within my flesh with a curse, throwing the ineffective tool across the room. And still the Pip-Boy was locked in place. Furious, my torturer stomped away to join the others. Fuck you, I'm not letting it go! The thought snarled up even as my vision grayed out briefly.
When my sight returned, I saw the raiders ransacking my pack, dumping it on a table to sort through the contents. The men cackled gleefully when they reached the pocket containing our medical supplies, immediately shooting up with every last stimpak and Med-X contained within. No! Any tiny spark of hope I had of surviving died in the quiet hiss of wasted injectors. Not that. Without stimpaks to heal even the most grievous of wounds, there was no way. I slumped into the drag of the chains, my throbbing arm and the disturbing warm trickle soaking to my shoulder ignored. Those were our only chance.
Fully healed and high on the excess painkillers, their leader came back over to me. "I want that Pip-Boy," he snarled, a string of drool tracing down the corner of his mouth. "And I always get what I want." Giving my left arm a vicious blow that translated all the way through my battered body, he strode off towards a table piled with weapons.
You want it so bad? You'll have to cut it from my cold, dead body! A tiny spark of anger snapped inside me.
As if psychic, the raider boss swiftly grabbed a wallboard saw, a foot long thin blade tapering to a wicked point, from the table. Grinning a psychotic, drug-fueled, predatory grin, he stalked back over to stand before me, toying with the serrated blade. Almost hypnotically to my concussed mind, he waved the saw slowly back and forth in front of my blurred gaze. When he was certain he had my full attention, he maliciously took hold of my left arm, sliding the point under the casing and into my arm.
A deep furrow peeled open in its wake as he shoved the blade deeply into the tortured flesh of my arm, followed by a sawing motion as he attempted to sever the pins holding the Pip-Boy in place. The blade was so razor-sharp that I didn't feel the pain at first, only the rush of hot blood pouring from the open channel in my forearm. Once he started to saw at the pins in my arm, the pain brought me to my knees, whimpering in shallow gasps, unable to scream.
A commotion in the outer rooms distracted my tormentor from his determined sawing. I hadn't noticed when the other raiders had dispersed to revel in their drug high, and whatever was going on sounded a lot like fighting. One man stumbled into our room, limping heavily and bleeding from a deep wound in his chest. "Boss!" he managed to gasp out before a blur of motion tackled him out of view. A quick scuffle and a gurgling sigh were the only sounds I heard over my own shallow panting and the steady drip of blood onto the floor.
"Shit!" the raider leader cried, whirling to face the direction of his underling's demise, jerking the saw free in a burst of crimson as he did so.
A lean, almost scrawny bloodstained form stalked into view, tattered duster belted snugly to his slim waist. Expertly flipping a wicked-looking combat knife in one hand, he snarled savagely at my tormentor, cold blue eyes glittering in the faint ambient light. "If you let her go right now, I'll make it quick." MacCready's voice was hard, uncompromising.
"MacCready!" the name leapt from my throat. He's alive? He's alive! I nearly fainted at the rush of pure relief that overcame my senses, almost missing when the raider leader reached to grab at the pistol he had tucked in the back of his trousers. Without thinking, I invoked V.A.T.S. in a rush of searing electrical pain, aiming a roundhouse kick to the side of his knee. The raider boss staggered from the blow, dropping his pistol, left holding only the bloody wallboard saw. I fought to stay conscious through the pain, the room appearing to fade into a hazy gray mist.
MacCready charged forward, combat knife a bright blur. Ducking under the hasty off-center strike of the raider leader, he brutally stabbed into the man's already injured leg, disarming the saw with ease, tossing it out of reach, and kicking the pistol away. "Slow it is," my partner rumbled once the man was immobilized. With calculated brutality, he sliced in an arc across the man's belly, cutting just deeply enough to expose the slick twist of intestines. To my absolute shocked horror, the man who showed me such caring gentleness suddenly displayed a frightening ruthlessness I didn't know he possessed, as he grabbed a handful of viscera and pulled it out to land on the rubble-strewn floor with a wet splat. He roughly stepped around the slippery bloody mess to dig into the boss's pockets, pulling out a small key.
Disdainfully ignoring the dying man's hoarse whispering grunts, MacCready rushed over to me, unlocking the handcuffs holding my arms outstretched. As soon as my wrists were free, he grabbed me close in a fierce embrace. "I've got you, angel. I'm here. No, don't look," he murmured, gently turning my head away from the grisly sight, tucking my face into his chest. Still reeling from his vicious display of cold-blooded killing, I instinctively tried to resist, trembling in reaction. Yet this was the man I loved, the man who just single-handedly took out a small camp of raiders to get to me. With a confused sob, I slumped into his embrace. He held me until the unceasing flow of blood from my arm became too much to ignore.
"RJ! H-how?" I sobbed faintly, overwhelmed with his presence, the tender yet firm way he wrapped my arm to try and staunch the bleeding. With my free hand, I patted at his side, his shoulder, reassuring my bewildered mind that he was here, he was really here, and really real. Trying to forget what he had done not five minutes before, I focused on his deft fingers as they held the makeshift bandages. "I saw you... fall," I whispered, my voice hoarse with emotion.
"Not the first time I've been shot in the back," he responded grimly. "Keep a couple'a stimpaks on me at all times, just in case." He pressed his forehead to mine, one hand cupping my face. "Next lesson: I will always come back for you, angel," he promised fervently. "Always."
In what would normally be a ridiculous pose, he placed my left arm on top of my head to rest there. "Stay here for a sec. Keep that elevated until we get a stimpak in you." The bleeding had slowed, but not stopped, and I was more than willing to just prop against the wall to regain what strength I could. Then his words filtered through my addled brain. Stimpaks?
"RJ?" I called hesitantly as he searched the room, recovering our weapons and packs, stowing every cap and valuable he could find in them. "There are no stimpaks. They used them up."
"Dammit!" he cried, voice cracking with anger and sudden panic. "Damn drug addicts!" Stomping back over with our gear restored, he stopped only long enough to kick the now-dead raider boss in the back before reaching my side. "I used mine, I had to." His blue eyes were apologetic, glittering with tears. "We have to get you out of here and to a doctor, fast."
"Doesn't the Railroad have a doctor?" I asked, not sure if I remembered correctly or not. My thoughts were fuzzy.
"I think so," he replied with hesitation. "If not, they're sure to have stimpaks." Crouching down, he pulled my right arm over his shoulders, heaving me up to stand unsteadily, his left hand grasping my belt in additional support. "No, keep your arm up. I've got you."
Through the gathering haze in my head at the change in position, I added wryly, "At least we cleared the way." I was grasping desperately at sarcasm to keep from screaming in horror.
MacCready's smile was grim. "We have now, anyway. Can you walk?"
