Chapter 42

Ghosts of the Past

The next day—Sandra stood just outside of Primm, staring at the old shack.

The small shack, Randall & Associates, sat vacant and abandoned for months now—but to her, years might as well have passed by, and she couldn't fathom that she was here so recently. She'd taken so many in—and killed so many more—finding victims, slaves, slavers and raiders—delved into so many lives, and worked so many jobs—since her final visit here months ago. It could've been a whole lifetime since then, since trading daily banter with Randall and traveling the Mojave with her friends. It all felt so far away, almost as if she'd always been alone, as if all those memories were nothing more than a distant, fading dream.

Honestly, she wasn't sure what brought her back here, but she simply felt the need to visit the place one last time before departing the Mojave. It was something of a farewell, a proper one, which she and Randall had been deprived of three months prior.

She wished she would've told him, despite him not being the touchy-feely type; she should've told him how much his simple earthy wisdom helped her in times of troubled confusion, and she should've told him just how much of a father figure he'd become for her. Back then, she never said it—felt it was unprofessional, or he wouldn't know how to respond—but now, none of those trivial problems mattered at all.

Sandra stepped forward, pushing the door open and allowing sunlight to bleed into the darkened room, dust visible on the air. The elegant painting behind Randall's empty desk—where she'd left the goodbye note for her friends months ago—now had no note pinned to it, as they'd presumably found it just as she intended.

The room truly felt like death, as if the simple way it looked—dark, abandoned, lifeless and dusty—was precisely the way it ought to, considering what had happened to the owner.

"That is quite the painting," a low, deep-based voice spoke from behind her.

Sandra nearly jumped, turning and seeing that another person in a duster was peeking into the doorway alongside her, a man in a hat, light orange hair, piercing blue eyes, and a thoughtful look on his face. He smirked at the painting, then turned to her.

"Hate to see it abandoned now," the man said. "Kind of a shame, honestly."

Sandra slowly nodded, squinting at him strangely. "Ah-huh. Who're you? One of his old bounty hunters, or…?"

"No, no… but I've heard a lot about him," the man replied. "I've done some hunting in my day, but… I don't actually live in the Mojave. I'm here on temporary business. Not any business that would keep me around like bounty hunting would."

"Oh." Sandra paused, giving him another curious look. "Why'd you come here…?"

The man leaned on the other side of the doorway, pocketing his hands and giving her a deep, investigative stare.

Sandra took slightly back, instantly sensing something was amiss. "Okay, lemme rephrase that. Why'd you come to me?"

"And… that's the right question," the man replied with a nod. "Though I scarcely imagine you're gonna like the answer. Put your hate on hold for a second… and you just might get a free ticket straight to Marko."

Sandra glared at him questioningly.

"I'm Virgil," the man introduced himself. "I'm under the employ of our mutual… friend? Enemy? Whatever. I know you're 'the courier' around these parts. Not a very imposing alias… which makes me think your victims have a lot of mixed feelings as they're dying at your feet. I mean, really… think about that. What must it feel like to be downed by a courier? It's like; hey, here's your letter—oh, now you're dead. Heh."

"Yeah… okay," Sandra mumbled oddly. "So… can you like… skip to the part where you tell me what you want?"

"What I want? Well… what I want is peculiar, not unlike your own ambitions," Virgil replied with a laugh. "Here's what I want. I want you to listen to me tell a story. I wanna show you something. Then I want you to follow me to Marko."

Sandra stared at him. "You're about as subtle as a brick to the face."

"Yet another thing I suspect we have in common," Virgil chuckled. "But, in all honestly… the majority of this is under Marko's orders. It's not so much what I want… it's what he wants."

"Why does he want me to go to him?" Sandra asked. "He knows I'm gonna kill him, right?"

"He… actually happened to be in the Mojave on business, same as me," Virgil replied. "Just tying up loose ends before his retirement… but, then he heard a little birdie mention Sergio's death at a saloon yesterday, so… he headed back home, and he instructed me to stay behind and find you."

"Riiight… if he wanted to face me, he could've just done it while he was here."

"He could have. If he was an idiot," Virgil replied with disdain. "This is your territory, Courier. Everyone around these parts is likely to back you in any given situation… whereas Frosthill, on the other hand, is a new environment for the both of you. You'll be facing each other on neutral grounds… on neutral terms. Simple as that."

"Uh-huh. So, what… you're just here to escort me?" Sandra uttered. "I planned on going there regardless. I don't need a babysitter when I go."

Virgil's eyes narrowed. "Do you know anything about Frosthill? What county it's in… where in the mountains it resides? Do you have the faintest idea of how to actually find it?"

Sandra fell silent, sighing and thinking of no response. She hadn't given it much thought—but now that he mentioned it, she knew it was true. She had no idea how to actually pinpoint this town in northern Utah.

"You play along… and I'll take you straight there," Virgil promised.

"Fine… fine," Sandra grumped, swatting the air. "Do whatever you want."

"Excellent. Now… we've got a bit of a walk ahead of us," Virgil said, starting down the hill. "So let's walk and talk at the same time."

Sandra swallowed a groan and trailed after him, and they both trekked away from the shack.

The two were silent until they passed by Primm and followed the road south, the Mojave Outpost slowly coming into view in the distance.

"Marko wanted me to tell you a few things… and show you one of them," Virgil finally spoke up as the two of them headed down the broken road. "You remember the late Tom Quigly, right?"

Sandra waltzed along with her hands in her pockets, pondering on this. "Rings a bell…"

"Your first bounty," Virgil reminded her. "A sniper crazed with syphilis, popping off caravaners for cash."

"Oooh… right," Sandra nodded. "Yeah…"

"Well… though he was a lunatic, he still sent money from his robberies off to his family in outer Vegas, a wife and three kids," Virgil informed. "But, since he died and the money stopped coming… his poor old wife was left with a failing farm and three starving kids. It wasn't long before a proposal was made to her… and, desperately, she took the offer. She sold her daughter off to Caesar's Legion, which kept her and her two sons from starving to death on those outskirts."

Sandra fell silent for nearly a full minute, the only sound being the gentle thump-thump of their boots marching atop pavement.

Virgil turned his head, squinting at her with intrigue. "No reaction?"

"No," Sandra replied emptily. "I don't care."

Virgil raised his brows. "Well, that's noble of you."

"Not noble," Sandra mumbled, staring straight ahead. "And not trying to be."

"Ah… the off-switch routine," Virgil understood. "Very good. It's a reliable method for keeping guilt at bay… especially when you set those kind of things into motion."

"Oh yeah," Sandra griped sarcastically, nodding and scoffing out a laugh. "Yeah—some fuckwad snipes random people, and some dumb whore sells off her daughter—and both of those things are somehow my fault. Sure. M'kay, buddy. Try again."

"With pleasure," Virgil continued as they both ventured toward Nipton. "Marko also wanted me to inform you of what happened after the untimely passing of Eileen. You remember Eileen, don't you? The psycho-bitch castrator of all the fiends in the Mojave. You took her out, too—and honestly, I can't blame you, given what she did on a regular basis. But, here's the thing; Eileen actually kept a lot of the worse fiends in line with her actions. When she died, the NCR told folks that the houses on the outskirts were finally safe to live in—but the fiends had new psychos rising up in their ranks. A new leader named Troy took over, and he happened to be a chronic rapist, even worse than old Cook-Cook. The first family to move into that neighborhood got viciously raped and tortured to death."

Sandra marched on, the two of them wandering past the empty buildings of Nipton, and she didn't speak a word.

"Another thing you set into motion," Virgil disclosed. "Whether you see it or not."

"Ye'ap. I guess the next time some psycho bitch is running around cutting people's wieners off, we're all just supposed to stand there and let it happen," Sandra quipped in response. "Good moral of the story, there."

"I guess I shouldn't be too surprised at your inherent apathy… given that you have no idea if I'm even telling you the truth," Virgil figured. "However… the last thing I have to show you can be observed with perfect proof. See, the man who originally arranged the slave trade with Quigly's wife happened to be a member of the syndicate. You remember them, right? Well… after you killed off Zimmer, the few remaining syndicate members struggled to cope during the time thereafter, and their financial endeavors ultimately suffered. That's why they began reaching for new methods of drumming up business, and they began arranging things as a third party for the spies of Caesar's Legion scattered throughout the civilized portions of the region… which is how Quigly's daughter ended up falling into their possession at all."

"Mhm," Sandra mumbled disinterestedly, she and Virgil now trekking up a long, steep hill beyond Camp Searchlight.

"And… you remember Judge Richter, the man who feared no one but Marko," Virgil went on. "Pederass and child-smuggler… yeah, he deserved to die. But, shortly before all these events came to light… he actually had a special favorite child in his possession."

Virgil sped up his pace, now leading Sandra up the steep hillside.

"A redheaded child… who Zimmer actually felt pity for," he explained. "And, in a moment of empathy, Zimmer decided to buy the child from the Judge. He had the child with him until he was killed… by you."

Virgil slowed to a stop at the top of the hill, couching down and motioning for her to do the same, almost as if they were now hiding from something.

Sandra gave him a strange look, then knelt beside him.

Virgil pointed outward, just over the hillside—gesturing to a hidden Legion encampment just outside of Cottonwood Cove, surrounded by a fence and complete with a few red tents, several crimson-clad warriors strolling around down below, and a group of children were working the small garden along the fence's edge.

"That child's name was Robbie," Virgil told her. "After his adoptive father was killed, the syndicate had no reason to care about him any longer… and he was sold off, too."

Sandra squinted, adjusting her eyes and observing the slave children from up high—and closest to the edge of the fence, there was Robbie, disheveled, trembling, and looking rather skinny and pale, thick slave collar bound tightly to his little neck, pulling weeds from the garden and frowning miserably as he did.

She stared down the ravine blankly for a moment.

Then, she sighed and turned to Virgil. "Are you done?"

Virgil met her eyes and gave her a thoughtful stare.

"Wow," he breathed. "Even Marko's not as far gone as you are. He at least cared about his brother. But you… you don't care about anything, do you?"

"No." Sandra slid down the hill and pushed swiftly to her feet, marching off at once. "You can't begin to wrap your head around it—but I have plans, and those plans are gonna wipe the Legion off the face of the earth. All the kids and all the slaves are gonna be fine shortly down the road. So—no—I don't care. And I don't need to."

"Aaah—yes, leaping off of Off-Switch Avenue and jumping right onto Rationalization Lane," Virgil smirked, pushing off the hill and following after her. "Hah, I love it."

"Dude—what is your damage?" Sandra snapped, wheeling around and facing him. "Are you sure Marko put you up to this? Because you seem like you're enjoying it an awful damn lot, and I don't need your ghost-of-Christmas-past bullshit anymore."

"Oh… have I struck a nerve?" Virgil replied nonchalantly. "Look, you can shrug it all off and explain it all away… but deep down, you know you caused all this. You cause havoc, you ruin lives, and you've gotten to the point where you don't care who you kill anymore… which, if I'm not mistaken, is probably a pretty apt list of all the things you hate about Marko."

Sandra stormed forward, glaring daggers into him. "So—the fuck—what?"

Virgil breathed out a laugh. "So—you're no better than him. I'm sure that's all he wishes to illustrate to you."

Sandra gently tilted her head, flashing a hint of an icy half-smile. "And… at what point did you ever think I cared?"

Virgil took slightly back, his visage now unreadable—eyes suddenly as intense as hers.

"I'm not aiming for hero," Sandra told him firmly. "I'm aiming for survivor—and that only extends to the people I give a damn about. Not my fucking enemies—and not the people who are a threat to the people I give a damn about. There's us—there's our enemies—and there's me, trying to make sure we win the right to live in the end. And there's not a damn thing I care about beyond that. Period."

Virgil glared into her for several tense seconds.

Then, he cocked his head, squinting interestingly at her. "So you have your own Sergios."

"Yeah—and good luck fucking finding them," Sandra snarled, marching down the hill again and tossing up her hand. "'Cause you and Marko don't have a single goddamn shot in hell of getting to any of them now."

"Well… lucky for you," Virgil murmured, eyeing her heatedly from behind. "That's not what I came here for."

At that—the two of them marched off, and they walked deep into the night, all the way back up north, neither of them speaking a word all the while.

When they reached the Northern Passage, Virgil led her down a different tunnel, a far narrower one that she didn't remember seeing during her first trip to Utah. But, nevertheless, she followed—and the two of them headed directly into Utah at once.