The raiders had known exactly what they were doing, Letters decided in wary admiration as their boots crunched on the hard-packed earth of the makeshift tunnel. To set up at the Statesman Hotel was a stroke of genius.
At some point during the Great War, a Delta IX rocket had crashed down in Vernon Square not far from the Hotel itself, bathing the area in radiation from what remained of its nuclear power-source and fuel. Consequently, very few people had ever come to Vernon Square aside from Ghouls, the functionally insane, and the outcasts of the rapidly expanding D.C. society.
And to dig a tunnel from the basement of the Statesman to the particular branch of sewer system that the Tunnel Snakes and Brotherhood had closed off and buried in order to cover up the remains of the leaking Delta IX rocket? Inspired. Insane and suicidal, sure. But inspired none-the-less. A hotzone like this would insure that no-one stumbled across their operation by accident.
Continued gunfire from above echoed after them down the Tunnel, sounding like distant thunder past the wooden supports and beams hammered and jointed into place to hold the tunnel walls in place. Strings of lightbulbs were connected by wires, daisy chained down the length of the tunnel and hung from insulated nails. Dark as the grave at this current moment, thanks to Ulysses. He still could fathom how a man who spoke in incessant dramatized prose had managed to evacuate an entire neighbourhood and sabotage the power to a building like the Stateman. But he guessed that the Courier was a friend of the Wanderer, and Ulysses was a friend of the Courier, so by extension Ulysses must be one of those remarkable people the Wanderer kept company with.
Ahead, they saw exactly what they expected to see from their direction of travel and a few educated guesses. The opening into the sewer line running beneath Vernon. Disconnected from the wider network that MARGOT monitored for them on a twenty-four-hour basis by the crater the rocket had left in the ground, severing the data-lines that ran through the adjoining Maintenance Tunnels.
They moved in two rough columns, hugging the inside of the walls as they approached the gaping hole that had been dug through the brickwork of the sewer tunnel, connecting it with the more recently excavated smuggler's hole. Butch and Jericho were on point, leaning slightly sideways on either side of the tunnel to cut the corner as they approached. To be at that special angle were their body was concealed behind the wall as they peaked around one inch at a time.
"Looks more like a maintenance tunnel than a sewer," Lani murmured through her gas mask, peering between the men ahead of her with her biotics marshalled for the first sign of trouble. It was giving her just enough illumination to see in the darkness, the faint glow bright enough to navigate by. Silver had thus-far remained within arm's reach to guide her and keep her from causing too much racket, though she could not imagine even the most wide-eared or perspective of individuals, aside from maybe the Courier, could make out footsteps over the sound of combat echoing far above. Far above, where the situation could not be accurately ascertained beyond guesswork.
Radio coverage was getting patchy past the thick foundations of the building above. Their transmitters couldn't reach Rook's radio apparatus to be authenticated, and thus transmissions were failing, which left them reduced to muttering through their gasmasks. Unable to even speak with each other through the radios.
The price you paid so that any tech savvy waster with a HAM radio set couldn't intercept your radio traffic, Letters and Rook had said on the flight here. Lani decided that she would have to assist their expedition's growing technical team in the creation of more sophisticated transmitters. There was only so much you could achieve with primitive radio waves.
Dispensing with the crude, server-based authentication method in favour of a decentralised and more flexible peer-to-peer encryption would be simple once she dragged these cavemen away from their chunky tech and introduced them to a more streamlined, and effective chip design. Though first, she would have to enlist help with one of the human technical specialists to help fill in the blanks in her own knowledge. She wasn't exactly an expert when it came to designing advanced electronics.
"They run parallel to the sewer lines," Letters clarified with the benefit of his wide-ranging field of knowledge in reply to her statement, "It's not just waste water that runs through these tunnels. Sometimes clean, sometimes greywater. Some of this was probably data-lines for city infrastructure. Space had to be carefully managed in a city as big as D.C. was, before the war."
"Pie it out," Sarge ordered those closest to the tunnel, unconcerned with the esoteric discussion. Butch and Jericho did so, peaking around their respective edges at the same moment under cover of their cloaking system. Beyond them was one of the many storage rooms maintenance personnel used before the war, tarnished with the signs of post-war occupation. Crates lined the walls, stacked on metal shelving.
Butch and Jericho both moved out of cover, following the wall and edging sideways through the room as Sarge and Letters passed them, moving straight ahead with weapons covering the other end of the room.
Behind them, the rest of the group followed, taking up sectors of the room as determined by their position in line. "Rasta, switch and cover the rear," Sticky commanded as he tapped Ulysses on the shoulder. Ulysses complied, knowing that he had not drilled or trained with these men, and leaving him on rear security was both simple and expedient in light of their requirements. He tucked Old Glory into a loop across his back and took up his borrowed 10mm Submachinegun with both hands, giving himself a more stable firing stance.
Sarge stopped suddenly, holding up a closed fist to halt the advance. He heard voices and the thumping of booted feet on metal grating on the passage beyond, behind one of the thick metal hatchways so common on the D.C. underground. "Audible contact front."
Letters and he padded softly yet swiftly across the room, a twin heat haze that took up position on either side of the metal door. They felt the reassuring emotional cue through the mental link that said that the rest of the team had already taken up firing positions, ready to cover them if required. Sarge slung his laser rifle and loosened the short-barrelled pump shotgun he carried in reserve for just such an occasion. As silently as he could, he cycled the pump, dispensing with his customary Israeli-safety and chambering a shell.
Then the doors locking mechanism retracted with a squeal of ungreased metal, and two figures hurried in with weapons at the ready. They moved quickly and with confidence, but not carefully. They spared only a passing glance to the corners of the room as they made towards the passageway back to the Statesman's lobby. They saw the heat hazes but did not grasp what they were until it was already far too late.
Letters put a round through the top of the rearmost raiders skull from behind with his Infiltrator, and as the second turned around to check on the muffled pop and clink of spent brass, Sticky Hand Jack sank a blade into his throat with one hand and clamped the raiders R91 rifle with the other, expertly flicking the safety on, so that the weapon could not discharge accidentally as its owner spasmed on the blade of his Trench Knife.
Sarge leant out of cover on the other side of the door and aimed his shotgun down the length of the newly opened door but saw no more raiders following behind the first two. It was a long, lonely corridor beyond, faint voices reverberating from further into the tunnel. Lantaya popped the muzzle of her submachinegun over the top of the crate she had scrunched up behind, having pulled back upon her biotics to restrain the glow. She loosened her hold once more, to reveal the bodies in the purple half-light, along with the two figures hunched over them.
She watched Sticky and Silver rifle through the belongings of the two dead men, a slightly morbid sight that she was beginning to get used to in the presence of Wastelanders. Nothing went to waste in a society that had only recently been beset by rampant shortages of everything from food to ammunition. They finished quickly, stealthily tucking small finds into pouches and pockets.
Letters cocked his head as he felt Sticky's presence behind him, holding out his hand towards him. A number of full R91 magazines from the raider Sticky had killed fell into his waiting palm, which he tucked into the empty mag-carriers on his chest-rig. They had been emptied by the firefight above as they covered Jericho, who had been the closest to Lani when she got knocked over. He sent a pulse of gratitude in Sticky's direction. Ulysses emerged from behind a stack of crates and made himself useful by dragging the bodies out of sight, unbidden, still covering the rear with watchful eyes.
They felt Sarge's intent to move up, and Butch tapped Jericho to let him knew. Once again, Butch and Jericho took point down the corridor, coming to a T-intersection where another corridor branched off from the first. Butch peeked around the edge of the edge with the barrel of his Infiltrator, pieing the corridor out. Satisfying himself that it was free of enemies before sending Jericho and Sarge through the intersection as he covered the second corridor. "Letters," he ordered the Second of the squad forwards as Jericho and Sarge continued on clearing down the first passage, "Take Ulysses, Silver and Sticky down this hallway and clear it out."
"Roger that," Letters voice hissed through his gasmask. He slipped past him and started off down the hallway, making sure to stay ahead of the others to take point with his heavier body-armour. "Stay safe, Boss," Silver muttered as she passed Butch by.
"Butch," the man in question grumbled. He waited until Ulysses, the last in line pulling rear security, passed him by before falling into step behind Lantaya, who risked a whisper to him through her own protective headgear.
"Which one are you?" she enquired of him, glancing periodically between the other two heat hazes further up the Tunnel, unable to tell which figure was which past the cloaking and the darkness all around.
"Captain Cosmos," Butch snarked, feeling as though he very well might ware out his own name if he kept having to repeat it so often.
"Butch," she said, recognising his voice. She fell into step beside him, her submachinegun held at a low ready position, the folding stock still pressed into her shoulder with the safety on. Her body glowed with a faint purple corona of biotic energy, held in reserve if she should need to pull up another barrier in defence of the two pointmen in front.
"I do not like the state of our communications," she stated without preamble, aware that they were in the thick of it, and she should not make the conversation overly long. "How do we correspond with the rest of your fellows up above if we run into trouble?"
"Rook will handle it," Butch replied. Sensing that she wasn't satisfied with the terse answer, he clarified.
"She'll be gathering everyone still up above and heading down here after us. Once she's in the tunnel, the radios should start transmitting again. Or not. Who knows," he said with an unseen shrug, "I ain't a fucking radioman. I'll take rear security; you move up and be ready to pop one of those shiny barriers if Sarge and Jericho need it. Worry about the barriers. There's a reason why everyone has their own job. Don't get bogged down in details."
Lantaya grimaced and did as instructed, quickening her pass as she had to acknowledge the wisdom in his statement. She was used to small, highly-trained teams of commandos. With so few hands to go around and so many years to make use of, in practise most Asari huntresses cross-trained in many specialisations. They built a wide base of knowledge, which became useful if one member of their team was occupied with another task. The Tunnel Snakes on the other hand seemed to be heavily specialised.
Aside from Rook, their technical specialist and radio operator, there was the Lettersman who served as the second-in-command. Sarge, who seemed to be well-versed in small-unit tactics. Sticky Hand Jack, who she had heard described as a 'Procurement Specialist'; in her mind, this acquired the same ring as 'intelligence officer' or 'spy', to use more uncouth terminology. He seemed to perform a similar function to the one Ulysses had performed for Caesar's Legion.
Obviously, she thought as she and Butch kept a set distance behind Jericho and Sarge with weapons ready as they navigated the corridor, Silver was a medic. Bryan Wilks, the only one of them who did not possess a nickname…. or, she thought grimly, the only one of them who possessed a proper name to give, was a marksman.
Latchkey seemed to be some sort of demolitions expert, as he had a great number of explosives on his person, including the lightweight mortar system. That left Butch, who didn't seem to fit in to their command structure in the typical way. She got the impression that he was neither one of their team, nor their strict superior. They followed him, as he had mentioned before, not because he was their Boss, but because they seemed to want to regardless.
Above and beyond all other functions, they all seemed to be trained in small arms, the use of cloak-assisted stealth, and small-unit tactics to some small degree. Impeccable physical training also she judged from their bulky frames and the ease that they moved underneath all that gear and protective body-armour. Although, some of that was probably a result of the genetic alterations.
She shelved this line of thought, adding it to the ever-expanding list of questions she had to ask of those around her once they had some room to breathe through the continual chain of new experiences and dangerous locales.
Their diminished team was approaching another metal hatchway. Butch's wrist-mounted Pip-Boy began to tick faintly in the darkness, a sound that he hastily shut off. Thank the Goddess for Rad-X, she thought privately. She knew exactly what this was, or at least what it was likely to be. The stretch of closed-off sewer tunnel which entombed the radioactive remains of the Delta-model rocket underground. The Raiders had managed to dig their tunnel into a maintenance tunnel adjoining that long-lost sewer pipe and had been using it to smuggle drugs from the city and sell them at prices inflated by the scarcity of such goods outside the city limits.
It had all been explained to her after they boarded the Vertibird in a rush at Pennsylvania Avenue. The trade of chemical narcotics, the Snakes had informed her, was almost entirely legal in Washington. They had neither the time, nor the inclination to pursue Chemists and dealers for their creations, with so many more serious threats to occupy their time. Not to mention, Chems were used extensively as a combat enhancer in times of great need, of which the Wasteland could provide in abundance.
There was one small caveat to this rule, however: None of the makers of Chems, food, drink or any other industry were allowed to sell their wares to Raiders. It was a loosely enforced rule, as the mechanics of how to stop such activities was nebulous at best and there were always way to sneak goods past the cordon. But it was done in the belief that to restrict the flow of goods to areas where Raider Clans predominated would motivate those clans to abandon the practise for a better life in the City.
They had even had some success with this practise, as Butch had attested to previously.
But this was not what had triggered such an overwhelming response on the part of the Tunnel Snakes. That was due to the nature of the method used to transport the goods out of the City. Their greatest defence was the ruins of the Old World. The interior of the city was unreachable if you could not navigate the Underground safely or had Vertibirds to fly over the rubble. One was defended by MARGOT and the Snakes, the other by the Brotherhood's numerous squadrons of Vertibirds and the massive Prydwen hovercraft. But an undocumented tunnel into Vernon Square? It gave anyone who knew of it a way past the watchful protectors that ensured the safety of D.C. and enforced the trade embargo.
And that was exactly what they found so unacceptable that it warranted this scale of assault. God only knew how this band of Raiders had concealed it from the rest of the Clans, Jericho had commented as she listened to them explain the situation. That there had been no attack already showed that the Raiders who knew of the tunnels existence wanted to keep the knowledge to themselves, likely to use it as a continuous source of profit for their erstwhile enterprise.
"But it's going to get out eventually," Jericho had said, nodding in affirmation of his point as Sarge copied the motion from across the Vertibird's passenger bay. "They'll sell the product at the market underneath Evergreen Mills. Best place to do it. Every Raider Clan goes there to trade. And it'll only be a matter of time before some bright fucker from one of the other Clans gets it into his head to follow them back. A few probably already have, but they'll have been caught and strung up. But it only takes one scout on a day where the guards ain't paying too much attention, and they'll know where the tunnel is. And they'll flood through into Vernon like fucking rats."
They stacked up on the metal door, ears pricked up to catch the voices on the other side, raised in anger. "Leave the damn Chems! They ain't worth getting caught over, Hudson. Snakes always move fast and the longer we wait the more danger we're in!"
"The two boys I sent to guard the tunnel haven't started firing yet! We're still good to load some more!" The second voice, belonging to the man who was presumably named 'Hudson' replied in a harried tone. The sounds of crates being stacked echoed through the door as Jericho cocked his head to the side from behind Butch, whose cloaked outline was closest to the door.
"Those stupid fucks are already dead! Snakes kill from the shadows and they all have silenced weapons! They could be right outside the door and we'd never know it," the first man replied with all the accuracy of a seer, "Come on, for fucks sakes! We got the Chemist! He's all we need to make more!"
Jericho tapped Butch on the arm as he uncloaked, already using his crude but serviceable grasp of Chinese sign language to convey his meaning. Target acquired. Target identified.
He then mouthed the words 'Junior Mike' as clearly as possible to make the name easily identifiable to anyone watching. Sarge sent his agreement over the connection between them, still cloaked and unwilling to dispense with it, as Butch considered this new piece of information. So, Junior Mike hadn't been the body they had found at the apartment building in Penn. Ave, after all. Probably just some flunky who'd died in the wrong place, at the wrong time, holding the wrong piece of paper for his boss.
There was a racket on the other end of the door, the sound of crates being knocked flying and the scuffle of grappling men. A series of curses as the two men tussled in the heat of the argument. A muffled cry. Butch motioned for Lani to stand next to him as Sarge and Jericho got into position. Sarge let his shotgun hang on the sling and grasped the locking wheel for the door. Butch raised a hand with three upraised fingers and started bobbing his head in time to a rhythm. He continued just long enough for the others to get a sense of the intervals before he dropped the first finger, in time with the beat. Then the second. Then, just as he lowered the last finger he whispered, "Fangs out."
The locking wheel turned, retracting the locking bolts on the door in a squeal of old and partially rusted metal, Sarge's muscles flexing underneath his heavy body armour and jacket.
"Don't you fucking do it!" A cry was heard from the other side of the door, terminating the sounds of grappling. None of them knew whether the foul-mouthed warning was aimed at them or at Junior Mike's unwise companion. What they did know and appreciate was the harsh click of a triggering wire-trap, audible over the sounds of the hatchway retracting into the wall.
A familiar click, which sent a rush of panic through the two Snakes present, who dived backwards to tackle Jericho and Lantaya out of the way. "Bomb!" Sarge yelled out in warning to the rest, having dived for Jericho to pull him back, missed the raider with his grasping arms as he toppled away from the danger. He needn't have bothered, as the wily old ex-raider, guided by his sixth sense for danger was already throwing himself back down the dark tunnel with all his force to escape the inevitable blast.
All three of them were tucking their limbs in behind their armoured torsos and hunching their necks to make use of their combat helmet's longer rear lip as they dived. Then the boobytrap exploded. It was a small charge. No larger than a frag mine, but it was packed within a sheet-metal container full of assorted shrapnel, the cheapest and most effective way to supplement homemade explosives in the wasteland.
The vast crump of the explosive was followed by a wave of screaming metal that howled through the air towards them on a shockwave of kinetic force. A shaped charge. Pointed directly towards them. Only to ripple in the air as a purple barrier interceded between them and it, the shrapnel fell into its rippling surface and compressed itself against the translucent shield. The shockwave rebounded, bleeding off energy as it did so and leaving the shrapnel studded barrier in place for a shocking moment as the three humans eyed it through wide eyes, before it disappeared, dropping the wall of compressed shrapnel to the ground in a shower of metal.
Sarge tried to get up but found to his dismay that one errant shard had managed to find his leg before the barrier intercepted it. It jutted from his upper thigh, pinning his pants to his leg as blood oozed into the clearly visible brown fabric. His stealth system must have been knocked out. He shook his head, trying to clear the sudden ringing in his ears. Damn tinnitus was acting up again. "I'm hit. Non-lethal, can't take point!" He shouted.
Butch was up, along with Jericho, both men striding towards the door with weapons at the ready. Their stealth systems still functioned, shrouding them from view. But they were visible from the distinctive trails they left in the floating clouds of dust tossed up by the explosion. Lani paused as if she was going to help the downed Sergeant, but he waved her off impatiently. "Push forwards, soldier! That's an order!"
Lantaya complied, despite the fact that she was not a soldier, nor subject to his commands. Something about the way the old NCO spoke in his loud, confident and booming voice demanded obedience without question. She hurried onwards with biotic corona blossoming around her body, as Sarge yanked out the shard and pulled out a Stimpack from his kit pouch. "Need to get myself ballistic fibre pants," he grumbled past the stinging in his leg, and slammed the needle into his thigh.
At the door, Butch hunched his shoulders and walked backwards through the smoke towards the entrance, shoulders hunched so the back of his neck was entirely covered by his combat helmet. As odd as this manoeuvre seemed, its purpose was immediately apparent as the first burst of gunfire slammed into his back. His own jacket wasn't the same reinforced Deathclaw leather as the others. It was his original, heavily-repaired leather jacket with a supplementary ballistic backing. But underneath he had heavy steel and ceramic combat armour, that ate rifle rounds like dainty hor d'oeurves.
And over his shoulder, while shielded from harm as Butch's defensive manoeuvre gave him room enough to take more careful aim, Jericho opened fire with his Xuanlong rifle, hitting the indistinct outline of the raider in the other room before they ducked back behind cover, cursing audibly through the dust. Butch rolled with the impacts, but kept his footing, gritting his teeth and soldiering bullishly onwards.
Once they were past the deadly chokepoint of the hatchway, they whirled away from one another. Lantaya came in behind them and raised a barrier to protect each of her companions now that she had caught up. A second raider tried to pop his head out from behind a crude dividing wall that had been erected inside the rather dilapidated sewer tunnel but ducked back as Jericho sprayed down the wall beside him with a thundering volley of bullets. Jericho decloaked as he did so, his energy cell finally running dry after minutes of sustained use without replacement.
"Hey, Mikey-boy!" Jericho yelled out as he ducked behind a stack of crates, popping out his spent magazine and letting it fall as he pulled out another to replace it. A bullet pinged off the wall beside him as a raider blind fired towards the sound of his voice, hoping for a lucky hit. Jericho didn't even flinch.
"That you, Jericho?" The voice of the much-mentioned Junior Mike drifted out from behind a metal cart filled with crates of Chems. His voice was strained, which meant he was probably the one Jericho managed to hit on his way in. Lantaya paused, glancing at Jericho as if to enquire whether they were fighting or negotiating. Jericho shrugged, holding up a finger to ask her to give him a moment.
"It's me, Mikey. You've landed yourself in the shit now, haven't you?"
A horse chuckle was the reply, laced with a tinge of wetness. Like a smokers cough, or Bobby the Tits phlegm filled throat. "Nasty sound in your voice, Mikey," Jericho commented idly as he pulled back the bolt on his rifle, making it ready. "I got you in the lung, huh? Or did you start smoking again?"
"You always was a good shot, Jericho."
Butch aimed down the barrel of his Infiltrator, trying to get an angle on the raider he assumed was named Hudson. He caught a shadow of movement off to the side, and his eyes widened as he recognised Murphy the Chemist. The ghoul was trussed up like a prize hog in thick ropes, a cloth gag in his mouth and a bleeding wound above his right eye, not seven feet away from him. He had been shielded from the blast by a thick stack of crates that Butch was currently using as cover, and the ghoul eyed the heat haze up and down and tilted his head in a motion that said something along the lines of, 'Took you fucking smoothskins long enough to find me. Little help here?'
"So," Mike began in a strong, calm voice. Still slightly wet from the blood welling up through his punctured lung, but full of determination and steel. "Been a while since I seen you last. We should meet up more often, you know? Catch up on old times. Hey, Jericho?"
"Yeah, Mike?"
"You remember that time, not far outside Arefu? We got pinned down with a few other boys in an old building. Brotherhood scouts caught us…" The voice paused to clear his throat with a wet, racking cough, before continuing.
"We had to bunker down and take turns firing to keep them from advancing on us. The rest of our guys were shitting themselves. But not us, right? We laughed the day away and shared a bottle of some rotgut, between shots, until it got dark enough to sneak away. You remember that day, Jericho?"
Lantaya alternated between looking towards the hidden enemies and glancing at Jericho, whose face was unreadable. In his mind he was replaying the event. One of the many days that he didn't think he'd make it back. And the man who he'd believed he was spending his final moments with. How they had laughed, and shared drinks together. To celebrate. It wasn't every day you died, after all. "Yeah, Mike. I remember. Wasn't long after the Brotherhood first came to D.C. if I remember right."
"What the fuck are you doing, Junior?!" Hudson's voice drifted out from somewhere behind the wooden divider, "You trying to bargain us outta this?"
Butch glanced back at a sudden twinge at the back of his mind, to see Sarge limp through the hatchway with his shotgun levelled at the divider. Sarge tapped the side of his shotgun with one hand and motioned towards the wooden divider. Butch returned his comprehension of the plan to Sarge across their link, already in motion with his cloaking system engaged.
"Shut up, Hudson. Ain't no bargaining with anyone now that Jericho's here. Jericho don't bargain when he don't need to. Ain't that right, Jericho?"
Another wet series of coughing. It was getting quite bad now. Like a man was desperately holding his head above water and coughing on the excess that managed to find its way into his mouth.
"Big bad Jericho, with the Biblical-sounding name. I see you got Tunnel Snakes with you, Jericho? What do they have to say about your past?"
"They say, 'How much to kill all your old raider buddies for us, Jericho?' And I say," Jericho paused as he gave a hand sign to Sarge as he continued to draw the raider's attention, "the price of a shot of Psycho."
"Because Raiders will kill each other for just a shot of Psycho," they both chorused together. Jericho had a faint smile on his face, enjoying the inside joke. "You're a fucking hypocrite working for them after all you've done, Jericho."
"Hypocrisy?" Jericho repeated, tasting the word that sounded too erudite to be sitting in his foul mouth, "You think after all I've done that I give a fuck about hypocrisy?" Jericho shot back in a light, conversational tone.
"Will you stop fucking yapping and shoot them!" Hudson yelled. Which was all Sarge needed to get a good idea of his location. He fired a burst of buckshot from his shotgun into the side of the divider, the shot barrel of the 12-guage causing the shot and wadding to bloom outwards in a wider spread than it would with a longer barrel. The discharge was immense for the same reason, as well as the muzzle flash that illuminated the tunnel in a blaze of flickering orange light.
It blew a gaping hole in the dividers side, and Hudson screamed in pain as he staggered away from the hole, his entire left side shredded and lacerated by the wooden shards and the flattened backshot pellets. Then Butch silenced his cries forever, aiming through the hole Sarge had blown in the crude wall and spraying the raider down with a burst of 5.56mm. Hudson crumpled.
There was silence for a brief moment, then Mike muttered through the ringing in their ears.
"Never liked that guy anyway."
Jericho sidled out from behind his cover and advanced on the cart. He stopped a safe distance away from Mike's hiding spot and eyed the metal cart with hesitation. "So, Mike. You gonna shoot me if I come around the cart?"
"Nah," Mike coughed out past the blood, "Go right ahead."
Jericho nodded as if that response was exactly what he had expected, then sprinted forwards. The ex-raider flitted around the corner of the cart, dodged to the side as the spray of bullets went past his legs and kicked the Type 93 assault rifle from the raiders hands. Then he butt-stroked the man directly in the face. He pulled the blow at the last second, so it only stunned Mike long enough for Jericho to relieve him of any other weapons.
"Ohh, fuck Jericho. Couldn't have pulled that one a bit more," Mike groaned through his now broken nose, grinning through his bloodstained teeth. He was an older man. Almost as old as Jericho or the Courier. Thickset and well-built. It was likely his hardy frame that had kept him alive for so long with a sucking chest wound, the flexing muscle structure keeping the wound from collapsing his punctured lung. The front of his rough clothing was awash with crimson fluid, pooling beneath him as the raider laughed silently. "Sorry about that, Jericho. Had to try, you know?"
"Yeah, Mike," Jericho replied, gazing down at him as he towered above his former compatriot, "I know."
Sarge limped around the edge of the cart and Butch went to check on Murphy. Lantaya walked tentatively around the corner of the cart and stopped at the side-lines of the curious scene playing out in front of her. Mike coughed wetly, a long string of bodily fluids emerging from between his lips and dripping, viscus-like down his chin, speckled white with roughly shaven hair. "Don't suppose you got a Stimpack on you?"
"Not for you," Jericho replied.
"Yeah," Mike mumbled, "That's fair. I suppose this is it then."
"Looks like it," Sarge agreed from behind Jericho. Junior Mike cocked his head to the side and stared at Sarge through the settling dust, eyes narrowed in recognition. "Damn, that you Doyle? Ain't this just a regular fucking reunion. Whose you're mutant friend? Have one of you been fucking Mirelurks again?"
Lantaya's expression instantly took on the look of coldest reserve she saved for her gravest of enemies. "If you were not dying in front of me in such a pitiable state, I would smash you into pulp like a piece of fruit," she stated, then paused as his words registered. "Again?"
"Don't judge him too much," Junior Mike spluttered through a series of short bubbling laughs that seemed to put him in a great deal of pain, "We were young, and really fucking drunk."
"Don't listen to him. He's a compulsive liar," Sarge supplied as he leaned up against the cart and slotted another round into his shotgun to replace the one he used to help Butch kill Hudson.
"Or am I?" Junior Mike grinned knowingly with a wide expanse of blood-red teeth. His face was pale and sweaty. He didn't look long for the world. "Guess you'll never know for sure. Always leave 'em guessing, right Jericho?"
"Right," Jericho agreed. The older of the two ex-Raiders hunkered down in front of the dying man, rifle slung and safety'd. Junior Mike stared at him, blankly, seemingly not understanding why the older man still remained. "What, you want something? Better ask quick, old buddy. Not gonna be around for much longer."
"Don't want nothing from you," Jericho stated, his face an expressionless mask. "Just thought I'd keep you company until you go. Can't do more. You were on the wrong side, at the wrong time, in the wrong place."
Junior Mike blinked, his breath wheezing through the chest wound. He glanced between Jericho and Sarge, the dried blood on his blood-drained cheeks making him look eerily like a forlorn clown making his last performance. He gave a brave smile, slightly mocking but still jovial. "Aww, shucks guys. That's real…" he spluttered and coughed again before continuing in a stronger voice. "…Real touching, taking some time aside for little old me. Guess honour still ain't dead yet, huh?"
"Not for lack of trying," Sarge joked, causing Jericho to smirk. Lantaya swallowed thickly. She wasn't sure she wanted to see this, but she couldn't look away from the intimate moment. She had the feeling that this wasn't something you saw that often, or at all. Like the dead raider she had forced herself to look at back at Pennsylvania Avenue, she forced herself to watch this small drama play itself out, unsure whether this was meant to be tragic or triumphant.
Jericho stepped closer and sat down next to Mike, knee to knee, shoulder to shoulder, and took the dying man's hand in his. No-one seemed more surprised by this than Jericho himself, who seemed uncomfortable with making the gesture, but maintained the pressure as Junior Mike glanced down at their hands on his knee. "My, my Jericho," he quipped, wearily, "Handholding? I don't know if I'm ready for something like this."
"Shut up," Jericho ordered, "You ain't funny, asshole."
"Shit man. I thought I was hilarious."
The three men lapsed into silence, broken only by the crunching approach of Butch and the newly untied Murphy, who stared at Jericho and Junior Mike as the seconds slowly ticked by. Murphy's face was unreadable, as most Ghouls tended to be on account of their hideously deformed faces. But he seemed to be respectful enough of the passing of the man who'd kidnapped and threatened him not to voice his obvious grievances, despite it all.
"I don't know if you feel the same way…" Junior Mike began.
"Thought I told you to shut up," Jericho growled.
"Nah, I'm being serious. Serious question, no jokes," Junior Mike clarified as his breathing became increasingly laboured. Butch watched, decloaking as he did so with his hand against his ear. There was some indistinct static on the radio that might have been a voice, but it was hard to tell.
"Do you ever miss it? The good old days. Back before the Brotherhood arrived from out West. All that shit we did, back when nothing we did ever mattered. All the murder, the stealing, the rape?"
Jericho nodded. Sarge had nodded along up until rape, upon which he didn't offer his input. Whether this was because he had never done so, or whether he was preserving himself from judgement was unknown to anyone save him and God. Or Jericho and Mike, who had been there to know the details.
"You don't regret any of it?"
"I ain't some pussy who gets cold feet after he's been caught with his hand up the ladies skirts," Jericho snarled in answer to the query. "I own every damn thing I've ever done, and I ain't gonna scrape my brow on the ground and apologise to anybody now that they're more of them than there are Raiders. Nobody ever gave a damn about rape or murder back then, or who was doing it. Raiders outnumbered the rest five to one, and anyone with a gun would take what they could the second they got the chance. I watched parents with children holding onto their legs hold up passers-by on the road with side-by-side shotguns, just to get another hit of Jet. But now everyone wants to pretend like all meant so damn much. Now that they got the numbers, they want to pretend they didn't all let it happen?"
At Lantaya's sharp look of outrage and dawning realisation, Jericho scoffed at her and cut her off before she could say a word. "Ohh, fuck you. You and your narrow blue ass, your books and your rules and your morals. You bring those here to our shithole and expect them to mean dick to us? You think people who ain't going to live to see tomorrow give a damn what they do during the day? Yeah, I did all that shit. What do you think people who can fight do in a world with no laws and no hope, huh? Be fucking boy-scouts?"
Lantaya had almost thought Mike's dying admission of guilt and the implied implication of Jericho in the acts of terror was another strange joke on the part of the dying human, but Jericho's unfortunately timed diatribe made her aware that everything she had just heard was exactly as it seemed. She glanced between Butch and Sergeant Doyle to see their faces as blank as paper. Then back at Jericho, who had stood up from Mike's side to stare her down.
"You dare," Lantaya spoke in a trembling voice, hands wreathed in a biotic aura that illuminated the entirety of the dark tunnel in a purple light, "To stand there and try to justify your actions? Murder and theft I could understand in light of the circumstances, but rape? What could that have gained you in the pursuit of survival?! You vile…" She seemed to have trouble producing a word heinous enough to describe him as she lifted her arm up to point at him with murderous intent on her twisted face, "…thing!"
But if she expected to see fear on his face, she was disappointed. He could not possibly mistake the fact that she was inches away from killing him, but all she received was a look of scorn and derision so intense that it made her blood broil. "Says the bitch getting all chummy with the fucking cannibal. He's a King, I hear. You think he needs to chow down on bodies to get a full belly every night, huh? You think he's starving nowadays, in his fucking palace?"
Jericho smiled with a look as plainly malicious and intent upon goading her as she had ever received from another sentient being. "You know what I think?" He spoke deceptively softly in the tense atmosphere in a clear attempt to goad her, "I think the reason you're so willing to let him slide is 'cause he wants to put his cock up your ass, and secretly, you wanna let him. How am I doing so far?"
Her hand blazed with purple biotic light as her heart filled with rage at his crude and deliberately false insinuation, but before she could set the biotic warp upon him, a faintly warm ring of metal pressed itself against her cheek. "Easy now, Blue. Let's not do anything we'll all regret."
Sarge stood to her side; the barrel of his shotgun pressed up against the side of her head just below the lip of her helmet. So, he was with Jericho, was he?
Understandable, they were both complicit.
It would make sense for the scum to stand together.
She weighed her words carefully before she replied, biotics still glowing in her outstretched fist. But even then, her voice was almost choking with the force of her pent-up emotion. "I think, at this stage, I would regret not having killed him more."
"Who asked for you to butt in, Doyle?" Jericho asked, calm as a cucumber in the face of what was likely to be his final moments, "Put that away before the alien bitch hurts you with it."
Sarge paused for a moment, looking as though he might oblige the ex-Raiders request, before the only other person in the room who might have an opinion to register, cut in.
"Don't lower the gun yet, Sarge."
Lantaya's jaw almost dropped, had it not been tensed so hard to keep her scream of rage from bubbling up from within. She turned her head to look at Butch, the barrel of the shotgun scraping the skin as she turned. Of all the people she would have expected to stand with her, she would have trusted in Butch above all the rest, save perhaps the Lettersman.
"Butch?" She whispered in shock, "You, also? Why would you stand in defence of this monster?"
"Cause he's got a point," Butch said, grimly. "You're doing that thing, you know, that thing…" He snapped his fingers a few times, the loud clicking sound amplified out of proportion by the echoing tunnel they currently occupied, biting his lip as he tried to remember.
"Bad time for a brain fart, DeLoria," he muttered as he looked between the parties involved, "Someone help me out here? This would usually be funny, but shit's gotten kind of heavy."
"A performative contradiction," Letters supplied as he decloaked in the hatchway, rifle aimed at Lantaya's head as the rest of those who had entered the tunnel alongside them filed in, uncloaking one after the other. Lantaya was startled by his sudden appearance. So far she had always been able to pick out the faint heat haze of the Snakes as they moved through the darkness, but it seemed as though it wasn't so easy a task when you were the one they wished to hide from.
"Yeah," Butch agreed, secretly hoping that was indeed what he had been thinking and that he wasn't making a mistake, "One of those."
Ulysses took one look at the developing situation, before sighing heavily and pointing his 10mm submachinegun at the nearest of the Tunnel Snakes, who just so happened to be Sticky Hand Jack. Sticky was himself pointing his weapon at Lantaya as well and glanced at Ulysses with a look of betrayal on his face. "Fucking seriously? Even after I told you that cool story?"
Ulysses shrugged, "Even then. Other bonds exist that need to be honoured. Older bonds. Courier Six would be displeased if her life was to be brought to an end. He and I are bound to the same Road."
"Wingman duty, huh?" the Procurement Specialist nodded knowingly before panning the barrel of his gun to point at Ulysses with an evil gleam of intent in his eyes, "I can respect that."
"Hey, Matriarch," Letters spoke from behind the barrel of his R91 pointed unerringly at her exposed face, holding up a hand to stay Sticky from doing anything rash, "Can we talk for a moment, just to clarify some points before we all kill each other?"
The corner of her mouth twitched at the stoic, black humour in his voice, the kind she had grown so used to during her time on the surface of this Goddess-forsaken planet. "As long as you don't expect me to lower my arm in the interim, please do. I can always kill him after you are done. Like civilised people do."
Surprisingly, it was Jericho who chuckled at her black joke, still staring her down from the end of her outstretched hand.
"We've had a chance to see those biotics of yours in action," Letters spoke in a clinical tone, devoid of undue emotion, "I think I have an idea how they operate, so make no mistake: I know you could just kill us all and do what you think is right anyway. Only reason why you aren't is because you don't want to kill all of us to get to him."
"Very astute," Lani ground out through gritted teeth, "You seem to have a firm grasp of the obvious. Do you also grasp the fact that you are defending a rapist and a murder from the just consequences of his actions? Knowing this, why would you choose to stand between me and him?"
"Because this isn't as simple as you think."
"Ohh? Is it not? I have been hearing variants upon that phrase so very often since I came here, used to justify the most atrocious of actions at every turn. And do you know what? I think that I am sick of hearing it. Rape is not complicated. It is a horrible act of self-gratification at someone else's expense. Killing this man would be doing the universe a favour."
"I got one foot in the grave and the other on a frag mine," Jericho sneered at her remark, "You think you can make me give a fuck what you think? How about you kill me bitch; or go the fuck back to fairyland where you came from!"
"You see?" Lantaya said as she pointed to the hateful expression on the ex-raiders face with the same hand that was threatening him with death, the finger of judgement about to exact recompense for his sins. She could just warp his skull in twain and all would be right with the world. "He does not even try to deny it. He does not feel guilt or remorse for his actions. He would do it again in a heartbeat if given the chance!"
"You don't see the forest through the trees, Matriarch. Jericho hasn't done any of that shit in years. And trust me, we'd know it if he did. You know what he has done? He's fought and bled for D.C. and every life that lives in it. You aren't qualified to make the call on whether or not he deserves death for what he's done in the past. It isn't your place."
"I am a philosopher, Mister Strayer. My domain is that of morality. I am exactly qualified to make this call, and even if I were not, it is not complicated enough to require one. Sometimes a situation is exactly as it appears. A few good deeds does not cleanse the heart. Nor does it change the past."
"A philosopher, huh?" Ted Strayer queried from behind his rifle. The nerves of all present were so taut they could be plucked and used as a violin string, but Letters remained as calm as Jericho seemed to be. "We don't have many of those left here. All we have are petty moralists who like to think they know what they're doing. And do you know what? I think I recognise a little of that in you."
"If you're intent is to make me wish to kill you along with him, I must admit, you are doing an admirable job so far."
"How about this," Letters said, ignoring the threat, "I'll philosophise with you, one petty moralist to another, and if you still want to kill him afterwards, then we'll step right aside and let you. Cool with that, Boss?"
Butch sighed, but nodded his head, placing his trust in the Lettersman to articulate what Butch knew in his heart but didn't have the words to describe. "Butch," he corrected.
"And how about you? You cool with that?" Letters asked Lantaya.
"By all means, try to change the mind of an almost four-thousand-year-old Matriarch who has been studying the philosophies since far before you were born," she replied acidly, "I could use a distraction, right about now."
"Don't I get a fucking say in all this?" Jericho growled.
"No," everyone chorused at once. This time, Jericho laughed at loud at the seemingly prearranged shout of denial, sending Lantaya's blood pressure up another few notches that he would dare to derive enjoyment from this.
The Lettersman paused as he ordered his thoughts, mustered his arguments, and lowered his rifle just far enough to lock eyes with Lantaya over the scope of his rifle.
"Then here is the situation as I see it: You're a rich girl, from an affluent background on an even more affluent planet," he began, throwing her for a loop. This was nowhere close to what she expected to come out of his mouth.
"The only thing you've ever struggled with in life was the process of separating your achievements from you upbringing. You became a philosopher because when a person doesn't have any real issues to grapple with and overcome in order to bolster their confidence and self-esteem, then they might as well study hard enough and long enough to invent a few fake ones and convince herself they're real. You joined the military on your world, right?"
Letters asked rhetorically and did not wait for an answer, which was just as well, since Lantaya was standing stock still like he'd just punched her in the gut. How did he know…?
"Figures. Probably did that to give yourself some credibility, put yourself in some difficult situations so you can say you've been there and done that. But none of them were ever really difficult, were they? Even murder and theft are easy to justify. You said so yourself. It just has to be them or you, then you're golden. Anything you might get up to in the military is simple by comparison. But it's all been put to the test the second you got here, wasn't it? A thousand years of living and yet you've never had to make a difficult decision in your life; on Earth you've had to make several every other day, and you're still not sure if any of them were the right ones. You know what my read on you is?"
Lantaya did not reply. Wrestling with the shock, anger and the embarrassment of being so thoroughly exposed by another person.
"You're terrified, but you're trying desperately to appear like you know what you're doing. Scared shitless that you're going native, that you're becoming a monster like Jericho here. That you can no longer tell where the line is drawn. That's the thing, isn't it? The one truth that every philosopher worth a damn knows: good people become terrible monsters one small step at a time. You fell in with a cannibal, and because you need his help you've let him slide on a… what was it you called it? 'A terrible act of self-gratification at the expense of another?' That's a pretty good description of his take on cannibalism to me. But you want to murder Jericho here over something in the same descriptive bracket, why? Because he doesn't feel fucking sorry enough? That's a pretty weak reason, especially considering the Courier doesn't feel a damn speck of guilt over what he does. At least as far as I can tell. And it's a blatant conflict of interest that the one you let slide is also the one with the power to help you get home."
Letters diatribe came to a halt as he paused for a deep breath, then waited for her response. Lantaya stared at him. The silence was deafening. Even Jericho was wincing in sympathy for the verbal beatdown the Matriarch had just experienced. "Well," Lantaya replied. Her voice was noticeably brittle.
"That is a fairly damning indictment of myself, my character, and my actions. One that I admit to having no ready defence against, at this moment. How do you know those details about me? You know things I haven't shared with anyone since I awakened here. Or… ever."
"Educated guesses," the Lettersman stated, evenly. And educated he was. To an extent that would have been rare even before the War, Lantaya realised.
"But, though they paint me in a very negative light," Lantaya started as evenly as she could muster, "You will agree that they do not make a case to absolve this man of what he has done, just suggest very strongly that I might be a fool and a hypocrite."
Jericho groaned, "Ohh, just get out the damn way and let her kill me, Letters. Save us all the headache. Nobody asked any of you for your fucking opinions."
"Well, tough shit," Letters said in return, "Because it's your turn next, Jericho. You want to know what my read on you is? 'Cause it don't sound at all like the shit you like to shovel about yourself. And if she's determined to end your life, she might as well know more than just the end."
For the first time, what brought a tinge of fear and caution over Jericho's craggy features were not the threats of an enraged Matriarch, the gunfire of raiders, or the face of his own certain death staring him in the eyes. It was the Lettersman, threatening to make a few educated guesses. He had known Jericho for a lot longer. Any verbal tongue lashing he could give the Matriarch was bound to be significantly more cutting when levelled against Jericho.
"Keep your fucking mouth shut, Strayer. You dirty fucking junkie, I'll skin your fucking balls myself then you won't act so damn smug."
Silver exchanged looks with Sarge as Jericho rattled off his threats in a voice heavy with the possibility of violence in the not-too-distant future. A vein twitched on the ex-raiders temple. She tightened her grip on her weapon, switching her aim from Lantaya to Jericho's forehead. Lantaya was watching the exchange, momentarily stymied by the sudden switch in the scholars attentions and Jericho's sudden and unexpected fear.
"You're a Raider boy Jericho, straight to your core…"
"Don't you say another fucking word, Strayer."
"…born into a Raider Clan at a time when the D.C. Wasteland had nothing more than a few specks of civilisation or law to speak of, and you wouldn't have been let into any of them. You grew up doing what all raider kids do. Getting fucked up on your parents leftover booze and Chems, watch your folks do horrible shit to other people for sport, and being made to do shit that no kid should ever be made to do."
"I'll fucking spit you like a pig, Strayer. Then I'll piss on your Papa Lopez's grave!"
"Lucky you weren't sold to the slavers at Paradise Falls for a quick bag of caps. But thankfully for little baby Jericho, your folks managed to keep themselves in Chems until you were old enough that keeping you around to kick in doors and pull triggers was the smarter play. And you got good at it too. Never felt bad about what you did. After all, everyone else is doing it. And why worry about tomorrow when there are so many things that are going to kill you today? You probably watched a lot of people you cared about get killed over the years; and couldn't do anything about it. And probably watched the people you didn't care about get killed by you and your folks, ain't that right Jericho? Seemed reasonable to assume you'd be next at some point. That being the case, why would you care about anything at all, least of all what you do to others? They'd do the same to you if given half the chance."
Jericho's hand went to his rifle sling, but Silver's finger squeezed her trigger once and sent 10mm Auto zipping past his head. Jericho ducked out of reflex, but his eyes didn't scream fear. They screamed anger.
"Don't touch that rifle," she ordered.
"Fuck you bitch! I remember you when you used to fuck and drug johns for Colin Moriarty," Jericho ground out through the murderous rage emanating from his face, "Steal all their shit from them while they were asleep. Moriarty paid me to toss them out his bar afterwards, so don't you dare fucking judge me, you two cap whore. I know you and every dirty secret!"
Silver remained silent, swallowing her own fear at the memories of what she knew Jericho did to people who made an enemy of him. Thankfully, Jericho's hand ceased its movement towards the sling.
"But then, one day," Ted Strayer continued his relentless summation of all that Jericho was in front of the spellbound audience, "the Brotherhood show up, along with this old fuck called Elder Lyons at their head, with his weird ideas about fighting for the little guy. And unlike those stupid radicals like Three Dog or the Regulators, the Brotherhood actually has the guns and the muscle to back up the shit they try to pull. And suddenly, you have the one gift to deal with that you never wanted. The certainty of a tomorrow."
Jericho had gone deathly silent, just as Lantaya had been when Letters had begun tearing her life to shreds in front of her with nothing but his words. You couldn't say that Jericho looked as though he had been punched in the gut. Jericho had been punched in the gut more times than he could count. He would just haul off and punch right back. He looked as though he had been punched in the soul.
"And your conscience starts to weigh on you. The screams keep you up at night. You can't tell yourself that it doesn't matter what you do to people, because all of you will likely be dead tomorrow anyway, anymore. After all, there's hope now. Now that people actually have something to lose, you taking it all away from them suddenly matters a whole lot more. You up sticks and start hopping to different raiders clans, trying to get away from the memories. But there isn't anywhere you can run that'll save you from yourself. But your old by this point. You've seen some shit. Done some shit. You don't know anything else. So you cope by attacking the idea of morality as a whole. After all, if there isn't any such thing as right or wrong, true or false, then you don't have to feel bad about it. It's easy to be virtuous in a world that rewards virtue. But these are the Wastelands, right? Nobody gets rewarded for good deeds. Not even the Brotherhood. They're slowly getting worn down, and no matter how many people they help, there always seems to be more. But you can't stomach the raider life no more, so you retire and head to Megaton. And ran into the one person a man like you should never meet."
Lantaya T'Rali looked at Jericho's wiry frame and grizzled head as if through new eyes. It was a truism in the world of sociology that a person was partially, or maybe even entirely, depending upon the school of thought you subscribed to, the product of their surroundings and their experiences.
If that was the case, then what kind of being did the Wastelands create? And could she really stand there and judge? She had grown up to be a good and moral person. But as Letters had so correctly observed, she had only ever been surrounded by goodness and morality. It was almost an inevitability that she would grow up to be as she was, in the absence of any outside stimuli to derail her course.
"The Wanderer. That crazy kid from 101. The first person you ever saw who managed to make good deeds work. And you get this nagging suspicion that maybe there is such a thing as right and wrong, no matter how much you keep objecting. And you did the only thing you could think of that might help with the guilt. You got up and started following him around the Wastes like a stray dog, killing anyone he told you to. You march across the bridge during the Battle for the Purifier as Mini Nukes rain from the air and Liberty Prime knocks squadrons of Vertibirds out the sky like swatting flies. You storm Adams Airforce Base in the face of a hundred power-armoured Enclave soldiers. And when he dies you throw in with Butch, and march into the Dark with the rest of us. But you never take the Patch. Because you don't want people to know that you feel regret. You don't even want to admit it to yourself. Because then you'd have to take the guilt seriously. And that's why you're here, Jericho. Begging Lani to kill you, trying to make out that it's because you're such a hard bastard that you don't care about dying."
Letters shook his head sadly, his eyes piercing through Jericho to the thing that dwelt beneath his skin. What was left of his soul. Broken, abused and blackened. But still there, even after all that. And in agony every moment of every day.
"Poor baby Jericho," the Tunnel Snake said mockingly, "So twisted up by what you've seen and what you've done, that you're scared of hope and looking for a death that doesn't make you look like you did it on purpose. So you tell me, Jericho: How am I doing so far?"
There was a final, equally deafening silence. The biotic glow around Lantaya's arm had gone out. Both of the Lettersman's victims looked desolated and destroyed from within, as if they had just run a marathon in gruelling condition, had placed dead last, and had subsequently been told that their loved ones had been killed in a tragic plane crash. Emotionally drained.
"So, Matriarch," Letters said as he switched his attention back to her without waiting for Jericho's answer. His eyes drilled through her like a high-intensity laser, "May I respectfully suggest that while I'm not exactly sure where the line is drawn either, in this particular instance, I don't think it's here."
They held each other's eyes, until one of them looked away. It wasn't Letters.
"Bow my head to the true scholar among us," Ulysses commented from the outline of the standoff, completely out of tune with the mood, "Your words, equal to the task. Nothing that fell between those lips was petty. Truth rings all the louder in this lonesome place."
Ted Strayer didn't look particularly pleased with himself, nor the praise. He just turned his eyes upon Ulysses, narrowing them into slits. "Do me a favour, Rasta. Stop pointing that gun at my friend."
The tribal looked downwards and realised that Sticky Hand Jack and he were still pointing guns at one another. They both lowered them, embarrassed.
Letters looked towards Butch, who didn't look at all surprised by what he had heard. He had always suspected. He'd just never had the words to confront it or do it justice. But that was what Letters was there for. To give Butch the words that the less educated, but more soulful man, lacked.
"Hey, smoothskins."
They turned to Murphy, who looked at them through his milky white eyes. "Once you're all done showing off how fucking smart you think you are," he stated, before turning his gaze to the body that lay against the side of the cart. Jericho glanced at Lantaya, who lowered her hand. He strode over to look at Junior Mike.
His pale face, smeared with blood, mouth curled in one last smile at a private joke.
He had died alone, while the rest of them argued over shit that now seemed so petty beside the unseeing, yet judgemental gaze of the body before them.
Jericho hunkered down before him and closed his old friend's eyes for the final time, before resting his elbow on his knee and holding his forehead in one hand.
"Here," Murphy produced a detonator with the safety pin still securely lodged in its place. He had pulled it from the untidy pile of weapons that Jericho had taken from Mike, "I was held here long enough to listen in on some of their conversations. Your friend Mike had the place rigged to blow from the start. Just in case anyone found the tunnel and tried to use it to invade the city. Not sure if it was because he cared, or just because if he couldn't have it, then he figured no-one should."
Murphy handed the detonator to Butch, who took it from the ghouls hands as if he wasn't sure what to do with it.
All assembled stared at the body before them. Lantaya hung her head. Doyle took off his helmet and tucked it under one arm, respectfully. Was it more Virtuous to be born a good man? Or to become one, through great effort and force of will?
"On all the gravestones I've ever seen," Sarge voice his thoughts out loud, "They've always written things like, Here Lies So-And-So. A Good Man. A Good Wife. Always did the right thing, or some other bullshit. I've never thought about it before, but… I don't know what the fuck they're going to write on my tombstone when I die. I sure don't know what to write on Mike's. He wasn't a saint, far from it…"
Jericho drew in a deep, steadying breath. Even now, he didn't let the tears fall in front of others. Wouldn't allow himself to. "… But I sure as shit ain't happy now that he's dead."
As always when people weren't sure of what words to use, it was the Lettersman who spoke up and gave them the words to describe the profound:
"Here Lies Junior Mike. It was complicated."