BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP
Pain. If there was one word to describe everything he was, at this moment, it was pain. The air, a mix of toxins that spelled doom for men and women whose faces were known to all of America. The gas turned idols into monsters, dragged out everything that made them adored by their fellow man, and turned them into things so much less. And the gas burned his lungs like acid as he ran away from the things. It hurt. It hurt him like he didn't even know he could hurt. But waiting meant certain death. So he ran through the heavy sulfur fog up the gateway stairs.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BANG BANG BANG BANG
BANG
He gripped his browning automatic rifle and raised it to his shoulder slowly, arms like molten lead, gripping the gun with new desperation, and exhaled, squeezing the trigger. He'd killed the green-eyed monster, four rounds of ammunition designed to kill men from over a thousand hundred meters away merely knocking it unconscious. Despite how many of those things he killed, he wasn't used to people-shaped objects not dying when their entrails were littering the walls. By reflex, he always stopped shooting at that point. But that didn't kill it, so he but another between the things eyes as it went down, putting a huge indent in the gas mask and making the back of its skull open up like a popped blister. He could hear fireworks in the distance. Fireworks, the singing of Vera Keyes, and horrible, gurgling, inhuman screaming. He wasn't sure he had enough ammunition to make it out alive. Three-Oh-Eight was heavy on your hips and hell on your arms.
BEEP BEEP BEEP
No, stop that. Stop thinking. Move.
Jogging up the campanas stairs, he painstakingly kept the BAR sights in front of his eyes as he swept the area. He counted three pairs of green orbs on the marble awnings turn towards him, loping, twitching monsters wearing shredded brown jumpsuits and spread out from each other. He cursed under his breath and ran for the space underneath the columns as the screaming got louder, but not before putting several more rounds into the ghost on the right. He ducked and rolled behind a pillar, opening up several cuts and scabs on his knee but avoiding amputation by the spear that almost wholly embedded itself into the ceramic and concrete floor to his right. Leaning himself and the sixteen pound gun against the pillar, he crouched, aiming the BAR upwards, letting out a deafening staccato of lead into the wood and marble the ghost was hiding behind. Confident it was dead, or just hoping, he stood up and began jogging again, rifle dropped and hanging around his chest in a two-point sling. He ducked into one of the doors to what might've once been small apartments for rent below the awnings, and closed the door behind him. It was possibly the pinnacle of pre-war sophistication. A rosy silk and linen made bed, embroided carpet depicting kings and emperors lounging in a bathhouse, being fed grapes by servants, lovingly carved wooden nightstands, even the lamps were laden with cleverly forged bronze, showing all sorts of geometric shapes. It screamed luxury, even if it was small.
A shame he was going to destroy it all.
He emptied out a dresser of all it's silky smooth pajamas, and dragged it to the door, pushing it sideways and setting its weight against the entrance. He tore the sheets from the mattress and barricaded the door with it, before doing the same with the bedframe. He hurried into the room on the left, a kitchen, and emptied out the fridge, stuffing some pre-war junk with too much preservatives in it inside his burlap sack, along with a bottle of absinthe and some water. He pulled the fridge down with a heavy *BUM* and the crack of ceramic tiles, as loud as breaking glass. "Shit." He swore under his breath. Pulling it to the door with all his remaining strength, he pushed it back up. The door was completely covered. Not wasting a moment, he pulled out a knife from his belt and began cutting a long strip out of the bedsheets.
BAM. BAM. BAM.
Fuck. He grabbed the bottle of absinthe, and unscrewed the cap off. He walked over to the mattress and poured some on it.
BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM
The door was splintering. They smelled it. It pissed them off. He scavenged through his burlap sack, pulling out some turpentine, and an engraved lighter, trying to recreate in seconds what he preferred to do in minutes without shaking hands and acid-filled lungs. Emptying the bottle of turpentine, half in the bottle, some on the rag, and a lot on his hands, he stuffed and filled it. Going back into the kitchen, he turned the stove dials up to 9 without waiting for the burner to light. Putting his nose close to the burners, he was relieved when he smelled the distinctive scent of petroleum.
*CRASH*
Shit. He turned one of the radios on the counter on and wormed his way into one of the sink cabinets, guns, bullet casings, sierra madre tokens, knives, and other junk he carried on him clinking far too noisily for his liking. 'If I get out of here alive, I'm ditching all of this stuff.' He closed the door, and not a moment too soon.
Khhhh…shhhhh. Khhhh…shhhhh. Thunk… thunk… thunk…
"I'm tickled pink, the moon is yellow, and I'm your fellooow, tonight (Do-do-do-"
THUNK-FSSHHHH
"Haah, hu, haah, hu, haah…"
The radio might have covered up the sound of his labored breathing. It definitely wasn't now, because he was certain it just got skewered by a saturnite alloy spear. He could tell because his already cramped personal space in the kitchen cabinet was now being shared with a rusted kitchen knife a couple inches from his face. The only reason a yell didn't escape his lips was because he was painfully struggling to breathe through the toxin-laced air to begin with. Holding his breath, agonizing as it was, he waited, hoping his frantic hearbeat wouldn't give his position away.
Khhhh…shhhhh. Khhhh…shhhhh.
He whimpered, a little bit. They knew he was here, he was almost certain. The plan was to activate the gas, leave the kitchen, and then set the kitchen on fire. Was this really how he was going to die? Because of one missed step? That's… that's not fair. He was the man who killed Caesar. Caesar! Conqueror of eighty-six tribes! Emperor of Arizona! He was strong! Feared! He was-
Khhhhhh…shhhhhhh. Khhhhhh…shhhhhhh.
...He was alone. He was cornered. He was prey.
The courier did a few things simultaneously at that moment which he would forever account to sheer luck and extreme dehydration. Courier Six kicked the door open, lit the cocktail, dropped it, and ran like hell. The courier heard the too-familiar sound of spears missing his head by inches and penetrating the wall behind him. There were several ghosts in the living room. One of the masked freaks, holding a bear trap in his hands, lunged straight for him. He sidestepped by reflex, grabbed the BAR in the exact opposite way you were supposed to hold it, and swung the stock into its ribs as hard as he could. He heard a sickeningly loud crack as the ghost-thing's momentum carried it across the living room, another ghost-thing barely ducking out of the body's way. Three of the glowing-eyed mutants started rushing towards him, letting out horrible wails as they did so. He ran through the doorway, the door itself ripped to pieces by brutish force, and turned around, running backwards as fast he could while firing from the hip at the bottlenecked ghosts.
BANGBANGBANGclickclickclickclick
"Shit." His gun was dry. Without letting a moment go by he dropped the BAR to let it rest on it's sling as he turned around to sprint further north through a hole in the wall-
SHUNK
He stopped. It was hard to see even a few feet in front of him inside the scarlet cloud, but the pain between his ribs and the too-close green orbs made it easy to guess what happened. It was getting even harder to breathe. His lungs were punctured. He shoved his hand into the cloth sack at his waist, fumbling around for the familiar cold metal pinecone- until an unseen ghost dislocated his arm from his elbow. "GRAAAA-HAAA! Hurk, hurk, hurk, hurk-" He coughed blood onto the ghost's expressionless mask as his last, pineapple shaped hope of a quick death flew away from his limp convulsing hand. The ghost, wearing a burlap hood, looked at him, looked through him, with so many mixed emotions. Hunger. Pain. Curiosity. These things weren't men. It looked like a man, but wasn't. These were the dead. He fell to his knees, the spear keeping him from falling further forwards. It was here, he realized with clarity clearer than the pain, clearer than the heavy lead his muscles became, clearer than his acid-filled lungs, clearer than the numerous cuts burning with the cloud over his limbs, more real than his morphine haze, the broken elbow, or the knife in his ribs, here he was to die. Not a peaceful death of old age, relaxing on a rocking chair under the Mojave sun like he hoped for. No, he was never going to be so lucky. He would be nailed to the walls, slowly dying of blood loss but not infection as the ghosts forced him to eat and breathe the cloud, as they picked and cut whichever piece of meat they fancied from his body that day. He would be eaten alive over… who knew how long. Weeks? Months? He was losing consciousness, and when he awoke he knew this was going to be the least painful moment in the rest of his life. He felt a ghost tussle his hair and another picking up his legs, laying him down onto the brick of the madre. He forced himself to cough some more blood onto the ground, trying to lose as much blood as he could before they took him. Several more ghosts with burlap hoods crowded around him in a circle. He coughed some more. His fingers were getting colder.
"What… do you… want… from me?" He spit red on one of their boots. "Huh? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!" He burst into action, left hand going for his belt, right hand going for his boot. The ghosts were quicker, and took both from him, as another punched his neck and others held his wrists, starting a brand new sensation of pain as his dislocated elbow was scraped roughly across the ground. He couldn't breathe. Shit, he couldn't breathe. His throat was trying but he couldn't. "You… betrayed… us…" His own eyes, teary, blurred, and his vision fading, started becoming a greater detriment to his vision than the cloud. He tried to figure out which ghost spoke. Ghosts never did that. One to his left took off its mask. Half of its face was burned, the other bruised and cut like it decided to get into a boxing match with a deathclaw. It was angry. "No…" he whispered, almost to himself. "You're… you're supposed to be dead." A ghost to his right removed its mask as well, revealing the top of its skull blown open and a pair of sunglasses, stoically glaring at him. "Please," he begged, "No more. I can't take any more." Another ghost removed it's mask, but it had no face. Ashes came pouring out of where it's face should have been, along with a necklace. The ashes moved with a will of their own, crawling up his body and into his mouth. He was suffocating, and the ashes tasted like rubbing alcohol. Each ghost, one by one, removed it's mask. They all looked like corpses, but they died differently. One had the shape of a bear carved on it's forehead, it's eyes removed and covered with sutures. Another had no distinguishing features from anyone else, besides that it was missing ears and had a hint of facial hair. The courier felt his heart sink lower than lake mead. He cried.
"Please, no more. I was just following orders." The ghost in sunglasses started talking, "Orders? Weren't you the one who told me soldiers choose and slaves obey? Which one are you?"
"I… I... I never meant to hurt anyone. I just wanted to protect Vegas. That's it." The half-burned one spoke, "We took you into our home. We made you one of us, made you family. You murdered all of us, burned down our home. Burned down your home. Who did you protect? Can you name anyone alive who can thank you for saving them?"
The courier sobbed, the knife plunging deeper every time he breathed. He was cold as a corpse.
"Don't. Please, don't. I don't deserve to die like this. I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die." The one with no ears spoke. "Deserve? Boss, I opened my heart to you. Besides me, you were the only one who knows my sister ever walked this earth. I was an open book, boss, and you shot me in the heart. I tried my best to do what was right. I wasn't perfect, but I tried. Deserving had nothing to do with it. I don't ask too many questions, but what makes you deserve to live and not me, boss?"
"Please, a doctor, I need a doctor, please! I'm going to die!" The one with a bear tattoo spoke to him. "We all die someday, you know. If I had to prescribe anything to you, it'd be a bullet between the eyes. At least you get to die a free man. That's a better treatment than what I had."
"Just… just end it. Please." The sunglasses-wearing ghost reading a spear above his neck. "Alright. I did enough mercy killing in my life, I can do one more." The only ghost still wearing a mask put a hand on sunglasses' chest. "Whoa, whoa whoa, cool it, alright? This baby's mine." Sunglasses backed off, and the courier stopped moving, his eyes narrowing. He recognized that voice. It was muffled, but there was no mistaking it. "So the coward finally gets a bit of swing in him. Ain't that something. You know, I've met a lot of cold cats in my life," the masked ghost wagged his finger at him, "But you? You take the cake. I have never met someone who stabbed more backsides than you. If you woulda stayed in that cozy dirt-mound I dug ya, a whole lot less people would've died." He chuckled at his own joke. "You just can't let go, can you? Most people that get shot in the head and wake up, y'know, they would've realized they made a bad career choice somewhere down the line. Maybe use the scar to pick up some lovely dames. Begin again. You? You kill everyone you meet so nobody can return the favor. You're one sick puppy." The bleeding man growled at him. "Fuck you, Benny. You fucking bastard. I won't take that kind of talk from a snake who kills men for poker chips." The ghost laughed, and took his mask off. "Aww. And here I thought the Halloween costume would've kept you guessing. Your mind has all kinds of cool digs, did you know that? Anyways, let's get down to brass tacks. I'm not here to play dress-up or turn you into wasteland smoothie like your friends here are." Benny squatted down, hands resting on his knees. "I got a message for you kid. This delivery run you're on? Those mentat-smarties you're escortin' to Arizona? After that, the house isn't going to need a courier anymore. My advice is to run. Run as far as your little legs will let you." Benny reached into his boot and pulled out a snub-nosed revolver. "Your luck is awful, kid. But you've made off pretty well with yourself so far. So, a little piece of advice for you, from one lying snake to another." Benny aimed the pistol between his eyes, and pulled the hammer.
"The game was rigged from the start."
BANG
The courier's legs jumped in the air. "Welcome back, Owen. I missed you." The digitized voice of a relieved woman spoke to him. He felt sticky, and his hair was wet. Courier Six groaned, running his hand through his hair. "How much Med-X did I go through last night?" The suit responded back. "Oh, it wasn't too bad. Last night you had: Four. Doses. Of morphine, with each dose being: Two. Milligrams." His muscles ached badly. "Can you give me some more?" The courier pleaded to God. Or the suit. Whichever heard and responded quicker. "Sorry, you programmed me not to give you morphine on request anymore." He pulled a pillow over his face and groaned. After a relaxing but aching minute of laying in bed, Bonnie talked to him. "This is a great way of avoiding bad guys, but you have a job today, remember? You're taking me to Big Mountain. Go get ready." The suit reminded him triumphantly. The courier lay a bit more, listening to Roger Miller bragging about being a king on the radio, before a small "Yeah, okay," escaped from his lips. So he walked to the bathroom, getting a couple of pills from the medicine cabinet and putting them into the shotglass on the right side of the sink, before pouring absinthe into the left…