SQUID WAITS FOR IT
It was a hot, dry summer evening in Freeside. The slums were quiet enough tonight that Squid could hear the old neon signs humming as she strolled down Fremont Street, bathing in the golden light of the afternoon sun. The vagrants and junkies, the lost souls of Freeside, all looked at her as she walked. Their eyes caught first on her shiny Follower's badge, and then on the long, rusty knife in her hand, but nobody spoke to her. One of the Kings, members of the cult of Rock and Roll, waved at her as she passed by. She nodded back at him. The thin glass of a used hypodermic-needle cracked beneath her thin rubber sole.
Up past the King's School of Impersonation, she could see the crew she was looking for: Private Bayen and Beatrix Russel, the ghoul-woman with the big gun, the trench coat, and the cowboy hat. They had a patient on one of those fancy new stretchers with the wheels on it. And today, Beatrix was carrying some sort of rifle on her back. An NCR service rifle it looked like, which was funny, but not that funny, since she was a guard after all. Squid cupped her hands over mouth.
"Oye! Bayen! Beatrix!"
The two turned to find the source of the noise, and suddenly, a third one, "Killer Korty," with his… artistically decorated baseball cap, popped out from behind a nearby dumpster. They all started yelling different shit at her. Yelling and pointing at the dumpster.
"Hey, slow down! Slow it down! The fuck did I do?" Squid stepped up closer to meet the group, to try and understand what the deal was, and found herself being quickly ushered behind the dumpster by Korty. Even though his breathing was sort of creepy and his face was all scarred-up, Squid just rolled with it for now. Squid was dynamic like that. Her knife was still in her hand, so it was still clear who was really in control. She allowed the sound of the tiny little bloatflies buzzing around the dumpster to drown out all the yelling directed at her.
"... so what the hell are you doing here!? This is a shooting, we specifically didn't dispatch any cadets to this one!"
Well, almost all of the yelling. Squid peeked her head out around the dumpster to squint at Bayen.
"Could you quiet down, Bay-man? I showed up cause I live here. Heard you broadcasting on that high-frequency shit, that broadband shit, cause I'm hacked into your radio, right?"
"Not broadband," croaked Korty, from beside her. Korty, with over two hundred stick figures painted on the front of his baseball cap in various colors. Korty, who ate only blended Mac and cheese through a straw. What an absolute freak- Squid cast him an incendiary look.
"Hey, did I give you permission to interrupt me? Shut the fuck up, you stupid fucking cripple!"
A horrible little whistling noise escaped through the half-sealed hole in Korty's throat. Laughter? She'd address that shit later. For now, she pointed her knife at Bayen. "And you, stop prying all up in my personal business! Point is, I listened in on the radio, I heard the dispatch, and since this is my hood, right, I showed up! Gotta represent!"
Beatrix also peeked around the edge of the dumpster. She nudged Bayen in the shoulder. "Fremont is her street. A girl's got to keep a hold of her territory."
Beatrix was cool like that. But Bayen wasn't having it. Not for a minute.
"I don't give two shits if this is "Your Hood," or anyone's! See the dude on this stretcher?" Bayen shook the loosely assembled aluminum cot. Prior to this moment, Squid had not really given much thought to the patient, seeing as how it wasn't really 'her call.' But looking at him now, she saw that his nice checkered shirt, which had been cut open to reveal the brown skin of his chest, was stained all the way through with dark, wet blood. His pants were covered in it too. The telltale marks of rapid Stimpack healing were present in several angry red spots on his gut, and one spot on his chest. The orange catheter hubs from decompression needles stuck out both sides of his chest.
"Oh, shit!"
Bayen nodded. "Yeah. Our guy got shot up. We're waiting for NCR backup before we peek out of here, because this looks like it might've been a hit job- Guy has some NCR Tags, and they're weird."
Squid squinted to read the etched lines of text as Bayen held up the two tags on a cord. The little glowing bars at the bottom, which usually shone blue, shone green on each tag, illuminating the bloodstained nameplates:
ST. PIERRE
XAVIER, A (M)
ONEG; JEWISH
NUCL. WEP. DIV- 42nd
"So uh, he's an "Oneg Jew," and he's 42? And his name is… K-Savier? What's so weird about that?"
Korty laughed again, made that horrible little whistling noise with his throat. Bayen just pointed to the bottom line.
"The tags are green, and he's not 42; he's from the 42nd division, dude is a scientist or something. Those Nuclear Weapons guys are always up to some weird shit."
"Profannneeeee," confirmed Korty. Squid nodded along.
"Whatever. Is he still dying? Since we're just standing around, shooting the shit type of thing."
Bayen shrugged. "Well, If he is, then the injuries are too deep and too complicated to fix with just stimpacks and a strong arm. Doctor Vasquez will sort him out."
"And then he'll complain for twenty minutes about your treatment decisions- Because he'd rather have a dead patient than one who we practiced the wrong kind of medicine on." Before anyone could respond to her, Beatrix tipped her hat down over her eyes and spit on the ground. Clearly, she wasn't about to explain where that shit came from. Squid ignored her, and continued to eyeball the patient's injuries.
"Well, I say we should just leg it, but if you wanna dick around and hide while his blood pressure goes down the drain, that's also fine. I don't know the guy."
Bayen and Beatrix shared a silent look, the kind that let them agree to not grace Squid with a response. Beatrix spit on the ground again. The wind blew a plastic bag across the street like an urban tumbleweed, as the tension in the air grew. The sort of tension Squid preyed on. She could see that Korty was aggravated, so she started gaping at him like he was a stupid person. Just staring, completely unblinking, until she could feel the vessels in her eyes start to stand out. Korty's disgusting neck-hole twitched in response. His jugular veins were popping out of his skin like angry worms.
"Stupid."
Squid slammed the hilt of her knife against the dumpster. Korty had taken the bait. She got all up in his face, made sure to step on some toes.
"What's your problem, Kortenar? You know how Freeside is, you know I have to represent! I can't be seen hiding like this!" She stepped out from behind the dumpster. Seeing her home laid out before her, her loyal subjects gathered in the golden light on Fremont Street, between the shops and nightclubs, drinking, smoking, living, her heart swelled a little bit. She couldn't help but raise her voice. "You know, I think it's good for people to see me out here! Representing the Followers on Fremont! I'm in touch with the community, I am-!"
A series of pops, from far away. Angry fireworks. Instantly, Bayen collapsed to the ground, screaming, and dust and debris shot into the air. There was a horrible zipping and shearing noise as the cot collapsed forwards in a shower of green sparks, dumping the unconscious patient onto the ground. A tracer skipped off the ground. Chunks of dirt and asphalt showered every inch of Squid's exposed skin.
"Shit, Bayen-!"
Before Squid could say anything else, Beatrix had already fired off half a magazine. It was the loudest thing Squid had ever heard. She sprinted to take cover behind the dumpster with Korty, but as she passed by Bayen writhing in agony on the ground, her mind ground to a halt. She couldn't just leave the son of a bitch there. He was her partner!
"Help me out here, Kortenar! Korty, fucking help me out here!" She locked her arms under his and started dragging him, kicking and screaming, back towards the dumpster. Another hail of bullets crashed against the walls and pavement, shattered windows, and Beatrix fired back, from farther away. She was advancing towards the "Global Hotel" nightclub across the street now, popping off shots into one of the nightclub's open windows. Shouting, screaming, and barking dogs filled the short spaces between the shots.
"I'm here!" Suddenly, the load got a lot lighter. Together, Squid and Korty stumbled back behind the dumpster with Bayen and threw their backs against the hot metal surface. Her ears were ringing bad, but Squid could hear herself breathing louder than anything. Big, gulping breaths. The kind that were glad to be alive. She took Bayen's shirt collar in her fist, and leaned over his stricken form.
"Fuckin- Ugh! I dropped my knife! Korty, you got a knife?"
He did have a knife. Without having to tell him what to do, he was already splitting the sobbing man's shirt in two.
"Hands off," said Korty. Squid wiped the sweat from her brow.
"Bayen, man, gotta move your hands so we can see your… huh." She managed to move Bayen's hands from the wounds he was holding, but there were no wounds. Just some old scar tissue. She pointed at his pants. "Try his legs."
"No, it's not, it's right here! Right here! Please help me, please help, I can't fucking breathe!"
Bayen's face contorted in pain and fear as he clutched at the missing wounds once more. His eyes, filled with tears, were open, but he wasn't looking at either of them. He wasn't looking at anything, really.
"Bay-man, what's wrong with you buddy!? Are you high?" She was genuinely wondering. She'd never seen a bad trip quite like this, but everyone was different. Korty gave her a grim look.
"Not drugs." He pointed at Bayen's dog tags. With his shirt cut open, the old tags were exposed to the world. The blue holographic mark had long since stopped functioning, but the etched metal text was clear.
BAYEN
CONNOR, K (M)
APOS; PROTESTANT
MECHANIZED DIVISION- 32nd
"I'm sorry, I know, I know, but I- I feel like I'm dying. Fuck! God, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe…"
Barking dogs. People screaming. Across the street, another gunshot rang out- The last one. And there was a truly unforgettable noise as a corpse fell several stories and hit the concrete. But Bayen wasn't hearing any of it. He just kept repeating himself, endlessly, clutching at the invisible bullet holes.
"I can't breathe. I can't… I can't breathe! I can't breathe. I can't breathe…"
-break-
The sky was filled with stars, but no moon hung above the old Mormon Fort tonight; the only light came from the ever-present glow of Freeside's bars and clubs, and from the dying tire-fire that today's heroes had gathered to celebrate around. Squid, Korty, and Beatrix Russel all sat amongst a ring of their peers, drinking, laughing, and embellishing, although the party had wound down at this point. Only Bayen was absent from this equation. He was in the tent tucked in the South corner of the Fort, all alone.
The crackling and popping of the fire, the chirping of crickets and buzzing flies… the smell of burning rubber. Squid didn't usually like that kinda shit, that "quiet summer night" shit, but her nerves were shot; the desert ambiance fit her drunk soul like a glove tonight. And for tonight, it was good that she could only barely hear the distant call of Freeside's nightclubs. She didn't need that temptation. When she looked through the bottom of her empty beer bottle, into the foul-smelling flames, she could almost imagine figures dancing there. People who were happier than her. People who didn't even need to be drunk, because they had something better.
Squid lowered the bottle. She was shaking. Hours later, and she was still fucking shaking. She put her head in her hands.
"Another bottle?"
She heard Doctor Isaac shuffling beside her. "We're out, but you can have mine. I gotta walk home after this, and Savanna don't like to see me come home drunk." He handed her the bottle. The glass felt refreshingly cool as it made its way into her sweaty hands.
"Thanks, Doctor Isaac," she murmured. The cap was off, but the bottle was full. It was beautiful. A miracle. Doctor Isaac was a lifesaver.
Isaac just smiled. "Just promise you'll stay here tonight. You're in no state to walk down Fremont street like this."
Squid didn't respond to that. But if she was being real with herself, she didn't need any excuse to stay here tonight. This was more her home now than the ruined storefront on Fremont street, with the bug-infested mattresses and broken windows. And Tata. She didn't need any of that bullshit tonight. Just a nice warm tent, a sleeping bag, and enough alcohol in her blood to stop the goddamned junkie-tremors, whatever that was all about. The sooner she could put all of this out of her head, the better.
She put back a respectable amount of beer. Sunset Scotty's Hard Sarsaparilla. Lovingly brewed by Doctor Scotty on his little Brahmin ranch. They were supposed to not drink inside the fort, to not upset the recovering addicts, but tonight felt like a reasonable exception. As long as they did it in the dark, and Doctor Farkas didn't find out…
"What's the matter, Squid? You're drinking like you want to forget something."
Squid didn't reply to Beatrix, either. She wasn't ignoring her; she just had nothing good to say. But of course, Beatrix kept going, like people always had to…
"None of us were shot, the white-coats got an honest-to-god save with that patient, and I slaughtered that assassin in the Worldwide! We actually got some action today. And no one important got hurt, so what's the big deal?"
"Jobtown!" cried Korty, with what amounted to enthusiasm. He had painted another stick-figure onto his baseball cap- a white one. Presumably, it represented the assassin that Beatrix had smoked and dumped out of a third-story window, and who they'd briefly tried to resuscitate. It made her wonder about all of the other stick-figures on his hat; who were those people? How long had he been keeping a tally? Why did a few of them have X's on their faces? Why did one have a big, red heart?
"You're a total sicko, Korty," she said, with a grin. Korty grinned back at her. He had a few golden teeth that seemed to glow in the firelight.
But, just as soon as she put her head in her hands again, the smile was gone. And the truth was, she didn't have an answer to Beatrix's question. Why had this been such a big friggin' deal? What was the matter with her? With Bayen? She committed to another good third of the bottle while she put these questions through her desolated mind once again, knowing full well that there would be no epiphany this time either. She was practically throwing caps down a wishing-well.
"Miss Cruz…" Nurse Marwan was looking at her now. Actually, almost everyone was looking at her. Judging her. But Nurse Marwan was the one speaking. "You should slow down. You are going to feel like death tomorrow."
Squid took another big drink, and pointed the tip of her bottle menacingly. There was a cold sensation soaking through her shirt, where she realized she'd just spilled some. "I told you to call me Squid, asshole. Squid and only Squid. None of this other shit, this baby shit. Okay!?" He didn't reply. He just shook his head and looked away. "Good! Glad we're… clear."
Squid looked around her again. Mostly everyone wasn't even staring at her now. They were looking away from her. Everyone except for Doctor Isaac; he just looked tired. He reached out his hand.
"Give me the bottle."
Squid didn't fight him on it. She didn't even try to get one last drink in before the cool glass slipped out of her hand. She just watched like a scorned dog as Isaac poured the beer out in the rocks around the fire. Squid couldn't see his eyes through the orange glint of his glasses, but she was sure that he was still looking at her. He tucked the empty bottle into his coat.
"I think I'm gonna go home now," he said, after a few seconds of buzzing flies and crackling fire. There was a chorus of lazy goodbyes and waves. Squid muttered a quiet goodbye, herself. But she was focusing on Bayen's tent at this point. Her thoughts had shifted.
"I uh. I think I'm gonna head out too." There was a sudden tension in the air. She glanced at the small battalion of empty bottles beside her, and realized she should probably amend her statement so people didn't have a goddamn aneurysm. "Gonna visit Bayen I mean! Still, still staying the night."
Nobody said a word to her as she stood up. She was a little bit unsteady on her feet at this point, just sort of locomoting. Her head felt completely weightless, and there was sweat beneath her eyes. The tent came closer and closer as she stumbled forward.
"Bayen?" She parted the front flaps of the tent and peeked inside. Bayen was sitting on his cot, shirtless, with a towel draped over his shoulders. He was staring at the ceiling. He didn't have a pillow or blanket, and his sleeping bag was still bundled up at his feet. He didn't seem to feel any particular way about the sudden intruder. "Can I come in, Bay-man?"
"I don't care."
Squid entered the cramped interior and let herself fall onto Bayen's backpack, which lay zipped up on the ground. She blinked a few times as she adjusted to the lantern lighting, and to the sudden change in elevation. She suddenly felt sort of dizzy.
"Are you drunk?" asked Bayen. Squid nodded.
"Sunset Scotty brought some of that "Hard Sarsaparilla" shit. I'd have brought you some, too, but the bastards cut me off." She tried to wipe some of the sweat from her face. There was a considerable amount, actually. She looked around for something to use as a towel.
"Thanks, Squid. But I don't drink."
Squid stopped what she was doing to give him a good, hard look.
There was no way to read his expression. But his gray eyes were worn and empty. With the same look that they had when he'd been staring into the sky, repeating himself and clamping down on bullet wounds that didn't exist. Eyes from another world. She'd always respected how sharp and scary they could look; how when shit got real, those eyes were always completely focused. She never once saw fear or indecision in those eyes. But she'd never stopped to wonder what was behind them, either.
"What was different this time, Bayen? What happened back there?" She looked down at her own hands. Despite how much she'd drank, they were still shaking. "And what's happening to me? What the hell is going on with us, man?"
Bayen gave her a weary, knowing look. "First time anyone's tried to kill you?"
Squid clenched up and looked over her shoulder. Her brain lit up with a web of lies. 'Hell-to-the-no!' she wanted to say. Her entire image hinged on other people thinking she was a hardcore street rat! What would Bayen think if he found out that she'd never really been in 'the shit' before?
"I guess," she admitted, very quietly. An electrical impulse stabbed through her nerves. It didn't feel good to say. "Definitely the first time I've ever been shot at."
Bayen put his hands behind his girly red hair and leaned back. He sighed a heavy sigh, like he was working himself up to say what came next. Like he'd had this talk a few times before, and he'd do anything to never have it again.
"Alright. And when you realized you were getting shot at, how did you feel?"
Squid shrugged. "I thought I was probably going to die. The whole time, I was just waiting for the bullet to go through me, or for everything to just go to black. And, uh, I felt really stupid for standing out in the open like that. Deciding to drag you behind the dumpster took a lot of, like, I dunno. There was like a brain-block that stopped me from stepping over you. I had to get you out there before I could move. Otherwise I definitely would've just let you figure that out."
"And how do you feel now?"
Squid slumped back further onto the backpack. She looked up at the Nylon ceiling of the tent, watched it ripple gently in the summer breeze. Eventually, she closed her eyes. One single tear ran down her cheek, entirely without her permission.
"I'm still waiting for the bullet." She let out a shaky breath. "It's- it's so stupid, dude! It's crybaby shit! But I swear, I haven't stopped looking over my shoulder. These little noises are freaking me out, I'm seeing shit in windows! And I'm clean right now. I haven't used since that day at the bar, when I was… well, you remember! I'm trying to be better, Bayen! What the fuck is this!?"
"Someone just tried to kill you. You'll probably feel unsafe for a few days. Maybe a few weeks." Some smoke drifted across the tent. Squid looked over, and saw that Bayen had lit a cigarette without her noticing. "But you're a tough kid. Not like me- this'll slide right off of you, I promise. Maybe you'll see some little changes, but everything changes us. That's just life. You won't end up like me."
For once, Bayen's dog tags weren't hidden. He always kept them tucked beneath his shirt, but sitting alone in the tent tonight, he had them both hanging against his bare chest, between his constellation of scars. There were long, clean scars which were clearly from surgery, but there were also few that looked almost like burn scars. Like hot quarters had been pressed against his skin to brand him. Four of them, across his chest and abdomen. Squid had seen some scars on his back in the same places, too, but they were bigger and messier. Exit wounds.
Squid felt an aching in her chest. At the start of the war, the Legion fought with twelve-millimeter carbines and SMGs. The rounds were a shorter version of the anti-vehicle ones, which meant that they were really big. Tata kept one stashed under the floorboards, that he'd fire at the local junkies sometimes when they got too close. It was common knowledge that even if you were wearing armor, these guns would devastate you.
"I guess you got hurt pretty bad in the war…"
Bayen bowed his head. He'd clearly been expecting this. "We all got hurt in the war. But the soldiers who left Nevada got hurt the worst." Bitterness crept into his voice. Venom. "Everyone was an enemy. Everything was trying to kill us. There was a legionnaire in every little shopfront, every highrise, every dark alley. And our artillery, it didn't let up for three months. Day and night. Shelling soldiers, civilians, and slaves, until we ran out of rounds. I can't hear thunder anymore without getting sick to my fucking stomach."
Squid nodded impatiently. "Yeah, I get that part. But you got shot, right? You've got all these scars, you're all messed up."
Bayen took another drag of his cigarette. His eyes scanned down his chest. "Yeah. I got shot." He put a hand on one of his wounds. By his heart. "This one popped a lung. But I survived, and I recovered. Getting shot wasn't the worst part of that war, not by far. The worst part is the feeling that it left me with, that I'm never going to be safe again. That it's definitely going to happen again…"
"You mean you always feel like this?"
Bayen gave Squid a sad smile. He wasn't gonna say it twice. "You'll be fine, Squid. Thanks for pulling me behind the dumpster." He stood up. His cot creaked beneath him. "You probably saved my life. I'm sorry I made you do that. I really respect that you didn't come here to yell at me for what happened, because honestly, once I came around, I thought that's what our next conversation was going to be."
Squid stood up too. Despite the comical discrepancy in height and age, Squid could feel that this respect was genuine. She stuck her hand out.
"Think of something for us to shake on; I'm drunk."
Bayen appeared to think for a moment, before firmly grasping her hand. He had a very professional grip. It reminded her of a drug dealer she knew. "How about "Drinks are on me for the rest of my life?"
"Deal."
They shook hands. There was a satisfied silence after that, so Squid started to walk away, but as she left the tent, she couldn't help but laugh. "I mean, it's not really fair- I fuckin dragged your crybaby ass out of the trenches, while they were lighting me up and shit! And then, how often are we gonna be in a situation where you can cover my tab? It's not like we see each other outside of work, Bay-man! I'm a fucking street urchin, you're like, a grown-ass man, it'd be weird if we were hanging out! And you don't even drink! You're a square! Maybe you should just give me some caps."
"It's symbolic, Squid! When you save someone's life, they owe you free drinks for the rest of their life, it's tradition!"
"Screw tradition, I want compensation!"
They were both laughing and waving as Squid stumbled off to go find her tent on the North Wall. Technically, cadets didn't have assigned tents, but Squid stayed at the fort more than she did her actual house. It was her tent.
Once she made her way through the flaps and into the dark interior, she collapsed in a heap on her sleeping bag and started sobbing. She tucked her face into the pillow to mask the noise, but soon she felt an urge to shout, to scream, to howl like a wild animal, and she bit into the cloth as her sobs intensified. She dug her nails into the dirt.
"Let me go! Just lemme go!" She didn't even know what the words meant, just that she had to say them. She kept biting down on her pillow. "I'm done. Let me go. Please."
Sometimes, it felt good to let it all out like this. But not tonight. This time, it just made her cry even harder. Apparently her soul was full of terrified and meaningless gibberish. Crybaby bullshit.
'You're a tough kid. Not like me- this'll slide right off of you, I promise.'
Bayen had better be right about that. Because Squid was used to Purgatory, but right now, she felt like she'd finally been sent to Hell.
