8:13 PM
August 19th, 2286
Goodsprings Schoolhouse
Michael poured water into Joseph's glass as he took a seat, the four of them gathered around a table.
"So, just to make sure I'm getting this right…the Riders are planning an attack on Goodsprings?" Sunny drank from her own bottle of tequila, both curiosity and cautiousness written on her face.
"Exactly. They're running low on chems in their little cave, and they're hoping to loot some from the doc's and Chet's." Michael was a big man, with broad shoulders and a wide chin. His bronze skin was further tanned by the Mojave sun, and his hair was black, straight, and short, yet it was obvious he cared to it well. He wore a tight, tan polo with what was absolutely a ballistic vest underneath, as was given away by the outline of it from beneath the shirt. His blue jeans had been tucked into his combat boots, and on both sides of his hip were .357 Magnums, one white and one black. The frown on his face evidently had permanent residence upon his lips, as Joseph had not seen his expression change from it once since they had met.
"How do you know this?" Sunny tilted her head, as another woman, Shelley, jumped into the discussion. She wore a brown, worn jacket overtop of a blue button-up shirt and a ragged skirt that was the same shade of blue.
"I overheard it when I was passing by their cave earlier, bringing water back from the source. So I snuck in, listened closer. Paul was talking with the fat one, I don't remember his name. He practically explained their whole strategy. Store weapons and ammo at the gas station, send three guys to show up at the doc's at midnight, kill him and Maria, and then use the high ground of the gas station and the Doc's house to shoot at the rest of us."
"Fuck…" Sunny sighed, covering her face with her hands as she placed both elbows onto the table. "So…What do we do?"
"There's no time to mobilize everyone." Michael spoke up again. "We'll have to go to his house and keep him safely inside. When those three show up, we'll shoot 'em if they try to start anything. Hopefully that'll be enough to get the rest of the Riders to back off. But knowing chem fiends…"
"…It won't be." Sunny finished with a sigh.
"How many Riders are there?" Joseph suddenly cut in, speaking for the first time since the situation had been explained, drawing the eyes of the other three at the table.
"Joseph, this is our concern. We can't let civilians get involved, it's against our entire code." Michael looked him in the eye, having learned his name from an introduction right after the two met.
"No, wait…He's got skills. I've seen him shoot. Michael, we're desperate." Sunny advocated, and Michael sighed, thinking for a moment.
"Joseph, are you sure you want to get involved in this?"
"I can't sit by as the man who healed me gets hurt. I'm sure." He answered, and Michael nodded.
"Alright. Then to answer your question, we don't know. Could be anywhere between seven and fifteen. We never made sure because we never expected them to do something this stupid. God, I should have seen it coming though," Michael began berating himself, and Sunny looked his way.
"None of us could have seen this coming, Michael. What we did and didn't do doesn't matter anymore. All that matters is how we're gonna deal with this. We can stop at Chet's along the way, see if he'll let us borrow some ammo. Joseph, do you have a gun?"
"Not anymore. You think he'll let me borrow one?" Joseph answered, looking at the rifle in the corner of the room he had been shooting mole rats with only about an hour or so prior. It had, as they had found, been broken by the full weight of the mole rat's corpse landing on it when he had thrown the gun aside to better avoid the creature. It could be fixed, but not in the time that they had.
"I don't know, Chet's a…complicated individual." Sunny sighed. "We'll have to wait and find out. If not, though, I'm sure that the Doc'll have some guns in his house that you could use for the time being."
"Joseph. Before we do this, I need to know who you are. You're not…A legionnaire or anything?" Michael asked, solemn. Joseph could see hatred for the Legion written on his face; They had taken something from him. They had taken something from everyone.
"There is nothing I hate in this world more than Caesar and his army of bastards." Joseph answered the second question while dodging the first, and it seemed to work well enough, as Michael stood from his seat.
"Good. Then let's get going. We don't have long. Shelley, you coming?"
"I'll go around town, let people know to stay in their homes."
"Alright. The rest of you, with me."
"You know, me and Trudy always thought that Mike and Shelley were fuckin' or something every time he went to her place." Sunny sighed, leaning against the Doctor's house as her eyes scanned over the Mojave before them. They were against the wall facing the gas station, keeping watch over the darkened building to ensure nobody came in or out. "To think that they were keeping tabs on the Riders this entire time…If it weren't for those two we'd have no idea about this."
"Is this the first time something like this happened?" Joseph asked, the rifle that Doctor Mitchell had let him borrow leaning against the wall with the stock on the ground.
"The first in a while. Goodsprings had it's fair share of raiders in it's early years, but once the first settlers proved they weren't to be trifled with, the attacks cooled down. And then, about five or six years ago, we had a Powder Ganger issue."
"Powder Gangers…Those were the NCR escapees, right? The ones that took over that jail?"
"Yeah. A trader from the Crimson Caravan had picked a fight with a bunch of them, and they chased him here. We kept the trader safe, but the guy in charge of those dicks, Joe Cobb, didn't like that. This was before Michael showed up, so we were getting ready to fight a war we didn't know if we could win. And then we found a woman in the cemetery. Bullet in her head. The Doc nursed her back to health, and before long she was back on her feet and helped us kick those assholes outta town. Sounds familiar, right?" Sunny chuckled solemnly, but Joseph was focused on something else.
"This woman you saved. She was the Wraith, wasn't she?" Joseph questioned quietly, despite already knowing the answer. Sunny nodded, looking to the ground.
"We didn't know at the time what she'd end up doing…The person she was. We thought-" Sunny was cut off by a yelling from inside the house. "Hm. I'm gonna go check out what's going on in there. Stay here, keep watch." Sunny ordered, pushing off of the wall and picking up her gun, walking away to the front of the house.
Joseph stood alone now, surrounded only by the chirping of crickets, the cool wind of the Mojave at night, and his memories swelling up and circling around him. He missed his life, his home, and above all, his wife. He missed her warm embrace after long days on the farm, the way she'd lean on him by the fireplace, fire crackling as they read books they had found in the ruins nearby or sharpened knives or whittled little wooden statues. With a smile, Joseph recalled that memory further in depth. Those carvings elicited a great many visions of better times. They had filled shelves with them, rows and rows of memoirs of their lives, whether it was people they knew or creatures they had come across. They carved houses, they carved trees, they carved each other in contests and out of a need to create a vessel for their love for one another.
And then everything changed.
Joseph rejected those memories, forcing them out of mind and out of reach. If he were to need to defend Doctor Mitchell, the last thing he needed was to be distracted by things that no longer mattered. He sighed and leaned his head back, his back sliding down the wall until he was sitting upon the cold soil, lifting his eyes from the gas station to the stars for only a brief moment.
Many things can happen in just a moment.
A gunshot can hit it's target. A flower can be trampled underfoot. A man's life can leave his soul.
A group of Chem fiends, traveling under the cover of night, can slip up and correct their mistake before anybody notices.
"She still hasn't come back from the well!" Doctor Mitchell yelled, storming out of the house with Sunny and Michael quick on his heels. "I lost Andrea already, I'm not losing another wife!" Joseph turned his head to the three, watching the situation unfold.
"Andre, we can find her, but you need to stay inside! It's not safe for you to be out here!" Sunny pleaded, as Michael stormed past her and reached for the man's shoulder, hoping to stop him.
"Doc, this town needs you! You have to stay safe, the Riders are targeting you! Now, stop walking away and-"
"Why should he listen to you?" A male voice cut Michael off. Everyone grew dead silent and stopped in their tracks, all of them scrambling to hear where it had come from. "I mean, you've only been here…What? A couple years?" Finally, Joseph, Sunny, the Doctor, and Michael found the source of the voice, a five foot man adorned with a heavy leather jacket as well as a bulky bulletproof vest. His brown hair had been buzzed, and on the bottom half of his face was a goatee and a handlebar mustache with a soul patch below the lip. His head was tilted, looking down at the snubnose in his hands. He slid the last bullet into the now full cylinder, snapping it back into the main gun as he lifted it to Doc Mitchell. Joseph leapt to his feet and grabbed the rifle, lifting it to the stranger.
"Paul." Michael snarled, reaching for his own revolver, yet was stopped by Sunny, who whispered something into the man's ear that caused him to move his hand away from the iron on his hip. Seeing Michael stand down, Joseph did the same thing.
"Where is my wife?" Doctor Mitchell demanded, staring down the barrel with a mixture of fear and determination.
"She's safe…Back at camp. We'll let her go, depending on how we…solve this situation. Didn't expect to see you two here. Michael. Sunny." Paul greeted the other two with annoyance audible in his voice.
"Bullshit. You're just waiting for a moment to kill us without any of us shooting you." Michael snarled, to which Paul smiled, bemused.
"Really? That's what you think? Michael, I have men all around this place. If I wanted you dead, you would be. Now listen. You, Andre, Sunny…Whoever the fuck you are," Paul looked directly at Joseph, before continuing. "Walk away now, and nobody'll get hurt. If not…We'll kill the good doctor's wife." He offered, but Sunny wasn't having it.
"And what, just let you attack Goodsprings afterwards? How fucking stupid do you think we are?"
"This is your last warning." Paul hissed, and Michael spoke next.
"Put the gun down now, Paul."
"Fuck, man. I tried to negotiate." The Rider leader's finger reached for the trigger and Doctor Mitchell tried one last time to change his mind.
"Paul, please, we can talk about-"
The gunshot echoed over the town like a blanket of hurt settling upon it. The brain of the town had been cleaved from it, and Doctor Andre Mitchell could barely make a sound vaguely resembling the name of his wife, before he fell to the ground, blood spilling from the old man's chest and pooling around him.
And for a moment, everything was still. Before Joseph's mind could even process what had happened, his hands were already in action and lifting the rifle with Paul down it's sights. As his brain was just beginning to realize what had happened, his index finger was already clambering for the trigger.
Pain.
A burning, numbing pain. His fingers felt as though they had been broke, and though after a very quickly formed fist Joseph knew they hadn't been, he did see one thing that was broken: The gun in his hands, as well as a man obscured by the night standing out of his cover, holding a pistol. A cacophony of noise broke out, and Michael yelled a deep, hateful yell, lifting his gun and shooting at Paul but was too late, the man already having vanished into the night. He didn't seem to notice a man sweeping up from behind and putting a gun up to his head, though Sunny did and killed the nameless Rider before he could kill Michael.
Joseph sprung to action, the shock wearing off. While Michael and Sunny began firing away at the six Riders who had revealed themselves, the gunless Joseph decided to help in another way. He disappeared into the darkness, in spite of the colors of his new clothes. Where he lacked in killer aim or overwhelming strength, he made up for in his agility and ability to obscure himself from view in a moment's notice, blending in with the background chaos.
While Michael and Sunny stood almost still, the bullets whizzing past them as a result of chem withdrawal, poor aim, and the cover of night, Joseph snuck behind one of the Rider gunmen and grabbed him, throwing him to the ground while disappearing from the man's peripheral vision as he emptied his gun at the sky in panic, reappearing as soon as he heard the click. Before the Rider could even get a chance to reload, Joseph kicked the gun out of his hand and then stomped down on his face with the same leg. He continued to attempt to get up, though, so Joseph kneeled down and grabbed the Rider by the collar and lifting his neck and head, unleashing punch after punch to his face until his nose was practically in between his swollen eyelids and there was more blood on his face than there were Cazadors in the West. Joseph grunted, letting go of the man's collar and shaking off his fist, the punches only worsening the pain of having his gun shot in half while he was holding it.
The wastelander picked up the unconscious Rider's gun, a 9mm pistol. With a press of a button the emptied magazine within dropped, and as the gunfire around him ceased, he patted down the man's jacket pockets until he found what he was looking for and then some: Two full magazines for the pistol, a Jet, and some caps, all of which he took. Joseph stood as he loaded the pistol, looking around at the corpses that had been made thanks to the work of Michael and Sunny.
"Fucking Christ!" Michael howled, throwing his guns into the sand and balling his fists, his face red with rage. "Fuck! Fuck! God! Fucking! Damnit!"
"Jesus…" Sunny kneeled down, feeling the doctor's pulse before closing her eyes and exhaling all the air in her lungs. "He's dead. Jesus Christ, Andre's fucking dead."
"And they fucking killed him!" Michael began pacing. "I didn't think he'd be fucking stupid enough, Paul, that fucking rat faced piece of shit! We need to go into town, we need to get an army together and storm into that fucker's cave and-and…" Michael trailed off as the rage gave way to a silent, solemn sadness. Joseph watched as the man's face sank, and anger of his own began swelling in his chest. Here was a quiet and largely peaceful town, with no aspirations for war or violence, and this gang had ripped at it's heart.
It was an unforgivable transgression.
"No." Joseph lifted his eyes from the corpses to meet Michael's. "If we go into town, we give the Riders time to rest. Heal. Strategize. Right now, they're weak and we need to follow up. We strike now, we hit 'em hard and hit 'em fast and we hold nothing back." Joseph spoke with a new confidence. The man hatching this plan wasn't Joseph, at least, not the one that these two had become vaguely familiar with. This was the old him, the one he had swore to bury. And while he hated letting him shine through and tried to suppress these thoughts…They only felt natural. As if the Lord himself was whispering his will into his ear. God decides what stones are cast at whom, the man thought to himself, Joseph was merely the arm that threw them. "The three of us, we can corner them. Keep 'em stuck in that cave."
"…Like shooting fish in a barrel." Sunny caught on, now looking to Michael to hear his decision. The man realized that Joseph had a point and, glancing at his gun on the ground as well as the many other weapons the corpses had been carrying, nodded with a newfound determination crossing his face.
"Let's kill those sons of bitches."
He had begun to lose track of time. It couldn't be no more than ten minutes later that they arrived at the cave the Riders called home, though.
"Wait." Sunny drew Joseph from his thoughts of retribution. "Hold on, guys. Something about this feels…Wrong."
"You think there's a trap?" Michael asked, misunderstanding the woman's words.
"No, I mean, this. They're defenseless, and…Well they're assholes, sure, but there's no honor in killing them like this." Sunny responded. Michael sighed, looking to Joseph to see what the trio's newcomer thought about the whole thing.
"If you ask me, they lost their chance at honor when they shot Doctor Mitchell. Why should we have honor, when if they were in our shoes, they'd be mowing us down first opportunity they get?" Joseph retorted, letting go of himself a bit.
"Exactly. They killed Doctor Mitchell. They have this coming." Michael stood his stance, agreeing with Joseph.
"Because we're not them. We're not drug riddled addicts that shoot an unarmed old man for no reason, we're good people. As good as we can be, at least."
The stranger paused. He realized that Sunny was right. Lowering his weapon, he looked to Michael, but before he could make any suggestions on how else to resolve the situation a hail of gunfire rang out, and the trio were forced to dash away and behind an old, broken down pre-war car pulled over off of the road. Bullets clanged off of the metal on the other side, and into the dirt beside them as the three sat, all lined up.
"Well, this is a mighty fine situation we've found ourselves, huh gents?" Sunny cracked a smile, trying to break the tension of being shot at relentlessly, but the lack of response or even a hint of smirks served the purpose of letting her know that now was far from the time or place to be making jokes. "What's the plan, Michael?"
"Shoot back!" The man yelled, about to return fire into the cave with a revolver, but Joseph reached over and held onto his wrist, yelling over the gunfire.
"Wait!" He commanded, and though it was unclear what exactly he had in mind, it was clear by his tone that he had a plan.
"What?" Michael did not resist Joseph keeping him from shooting, but it was clear that he was growing impatient. In response, Joseph simply raised his index fingers to his lips, motioning for the three of them to be quiet. Shortly after the gunfire began to cease. Joseph lowered his head so that the top of it would not stick out and be visible through the shattered window of the car. The other two did the same.
Leaning towards the far end of the car, he listened for sounds coming from the cave. Sure enough, there were at least eight independent footsteps pounding against the Mojave dirt, meaning four Riders emerging from the cave. They were growing closer and closer, save for one that had stopped a bit back, and were becoming more spaced apart as the creators of the noise split up and cautiously walked to either end of the car. Joseph looked Michael in the eyes, the two of them still as the Riders creeped ever nearer.
The moment Joseph gave the nod, all hell burst loose.
Michael immediately sprang to action, taking the men on his side by surprise. There were two of them, two guns in his hands, and two spurts of blood and cries of pain as he ended their lives before they even managed to react.
Joseph had only one Rider to deal with, identifying him as the skinny one he had seen outside of Prospector's Saloon. He didn't let that make him hesitate though, firing a shot into his leg and immediately following up with a shot to the Rider's shoulder. The man went down but was not dead, pointing his own Caravan shotgun at Joseph, no doubt stolen off of some wandering merchant's freshly made corpse. The Rider's finger went for the trigger, but Joseph lifted his foot and slammed it into the gun, kicking it away from the man as the slug flew past the wayfaring stranger's head. Joseph looked up at the cave, seeing the fourth and final man with a rifle in his hand, aiming down the sights directly at Joseph. The man silently cursed himself for being so focused on the enemy on the ground. Contrary to what he expected, the next gunshot that rang out was not the man's headed for him, but rather Sunny's, hitting the Rider dead in the chest.
"You sons of bitches!" Michael shouted, running into the darkness of the cave, and though neither of them could see what was going on, the stream of gunshots and stray bullets hitting the dirt gave both Joseph and Sunny a pretty good clue.
"Michael!" She yelled, trying to get him to stop his anger-fueled advance, but it did nothing. Joseph grunted and grabbed the bleeding but still conscious man on the ground by his leather jacket's collar.
"Can you stand?" He asked, trying to bring him to his feet, but was met with resistance and a huffed "fuck you". Joseph lifting the barrel of the pistol to the man's head seemed to earn the Rider's cooperation. Joseph wrapped his arm around the man's neck, staying just behind him as he directed the limping man into the cave, his gun visibly placed against the Rider's right temple.
Sunny, seeing what Joseph was doing, stood behind him as well, aiming down her rifle over the hostage's left shoulder.
"Michael, stop shooting!" Joseph shouted as they fully entered the darkness of the cave, and in a few moments, the fighting came to a halt. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the inside of the cave.
There were multiple guns, arms, heads, and foots sticking out from cover behind steel, pre-war boxes and less well made wooden crates, and doing a quick count, Joseph could deduce that Michael's highest estimate of fifteen (twelve now) Riders was correct. To his right was Michael, also taking cover, and ahead of him, some twenty feet away, stood the fat man that had been besides the hostage at the bar. He stood now with a bulky 10mm pistol pointed at Joseph and the hostage, a scowl upon his face. Beyond him, the cave took a sharp right, the roof significantly lower.
"Shoot him! Shoo-" The hostage yelled out, being silenced by Joseph moving his free hand over the man's mouth.
"What the hell do you assholes want?" The fat man spoke, more annoyed that three of his men had just died than anything.
"To talk. Where's Paul?" Joseph answered, barely peeking out from behind the hostage.
"Long gone! He already left, and you three idiots are never gonna catch him!"
"I'll ask you again, then. Where is he?"
"Why the fuck-" The man began to break out laughing. It was a gross, wheezing laugh, as though his lungs were being squeezed by invisible hands. When it subsided after a couple seconds, he finished his sentence. "Why the fuck d'you think I'd tell you that?"
"It's not you or these men we're after, it's your leader. But if you don't tell us where he is, we'll kill you all the same." Joseph countered, certain that this statement would get them the information they needed.
"Fine…Fine. If that's the case…"
Before Joseph could process what he meant by this, the hostage went entirely limp as a shot from the fat man passed through his head, the blood splattering onto the side of Joseph's face as the bullet, brain matter, and skull fragments all shot out the other end, just barely missing the man. He stumbled backwards and leapt sideways into cover next to Michael on the right side of the cave, as Sunny slid behind a wooden box parallel to Joseph and Michael's.
Michael had already lifted the top half of his hand and both arms out of cover, blasting anyone who peeked out to shoot at him.
Joseph took advantage of his cover fire to jump out from behind cover and run forwards to another wood crate, this one a good few ten feet away from Michael. The fat man was gone already, but the stranger didn't have time to stop and think about where he had gone. He knew a Rider was hiding on the opposite side of this box, as he had seen a gun and and elbow sticking out when he first entered the cave.
Placing the barrel of the gun to the center of the crate, Joseph took a deep breath and fired four times in rapid succession, a yell of pain at the fourth shot stopping him from continuing. Joseph peeked through the nine millimeter holes he had created in the box and saw the Rider writhing on the ground, alive still. Satisfied, he turned back to Sunny, shouting out to her.
"Cover me!" The woman gave a thumbs up, setting her rifle and her chin on her own box to achieve steadier aim. Joseph sprang out from behind, sliding over the box. A man further back brought himself out of cover, only for Sunny to open his throat with a well-placed shot. Joseph landed next to the man he had just shot, who held a repeater akin to the type one may find in an old, pre-war cowboy novel. Joseph ripped it from his hands and slammed the stock into the Rider's face, knocking him out cold. He held the repeated in one hand and the pistol in the other, running forwards towards the next metal box.
As he pushed himself against it, he caught a wayward glance at a Rider behind cover that he had passed without noticing. The two stared at eachother for a split second but Joseph was the first to act, firing the pistol. The bullet passed through her gun-holding hand and landed in between her collarbone and her shoulder. The woman howled in anger and pain, falling to the side with her head out of cover, allowing Michael to finish the job.
By now there was almost no gunfire from the opposition, but Joseph was not about to fall for the trick he had pulled on the riders not minutes ago. He set the repeater down on the metal box, gripping the pistol tightly with both hands as he slowly lifted himself from cover, raising the pistol to chest-level as he creeped to the left, of the cave, sticking to thr wall while walking past cover, keeping the gun trained on them as he passed in case there was still life behind them.
The entire cave was silent now, for Michael and Sunny had ceased fire, now fresh out of targets. The only sounds audible in the cave was Joseph's footsteps, cavern water dripping, and a third, odder noise.
But before he could investigate, a woman jumped out from cover with a modified assault rifle, like the type that the NCR soldiers carried back in the day. She had it trained on Joseph within a moment, and while the man's shot was off by about a foot, her aim was bound to be deadly.
Fortunately for Joseph, he had what she didn't: Living or otherwise conscious partners. As she went for the trigger, Michael and Sunny hit her at the exact same time, Sunny's shot taking off one of her arms and Michael's passing through her head. The corpse's remaining fingers reflexively held the trigger in place as it fell, the automatic gun firing a line of bullets at the wall beside Joseph, only stopping once the corpse hit the ground.
Now that she was dead, Joseph had checked behind every possible cover spot, ensuring that no Riders were alive, and yet the noise persisted. After a quick look around though, he found the source.
The fat man's lower half was sticking out of an especially tight part of the cave, his legs flailing about as he grunted and whimpered, trying to wiggle through deeper into the cave. Joseph sighed and looked bsck at his allies, waving them over. When they arrived, Michael rolled his eyes and Sunny tried (and failed) to hold back a laugh. Joseph and Sunny grabbed one of the pantlegs of the man, while Michael grabbed the other, and one the count of three they pulled, forcing the man from the hole with an accompanying plop.
The fat man laid stomach down and with his face against the stone ground while he caught his breath, slowly flipping himself over. "Man! Those assholes were annoying. Fuckin' come in here and try to find Paul, even after he left for Novac. Can you believe it? I heard them screaming, you guys did go-" He cut himself off after fully sitting up, realizing that the three standing over him weren't his allies, but rather their killers, all with their weapons pointed at his face. A look of utter horror crossed his face. "Uh, you…didn't hear that, right?" He forced a chuckle. "Hey…You wanted to talk, right? Let's talk."
Joseph had no time for slimy, two-faced dirtbags like the one that sat before him. He knew where Paul was going. That was enough for him.
Joseph pulled the trigger.
The harsh winds of the Wastes keep blowing. The critters and creatures keep skittering back to cover at the slightest hint of danger. The fighters keep fighting. The bodies keep rotting. Nothing has changed. So then why do I feel so bad for what I did?
Maybe it was that I betrayed a promise to myself. A promise to be a better man, to change my life and return home, where I could live free. But I couldn't take it anymore. The Riders were liars, cheaters, and killers. Killing the nameless fat man, I didn't feel bad for in the slightest. So, then, I suppose it truly must have been anger and fury at myself for breaking that promise. But it was bound to happen eventually.
After all, nobody survives like that for long in the Wastes. Kill or be killed, and I'm planning on doing whatever it takes to get back home.
