"So, what do you know about this Wade guy?"
"Well, he's a Survivalist like everyone else who was from Hope County when the bombs dropped. He used to run a place called the Fang Center, which was some kind of animal rehabilitation center." Carmina explained.
"How do you know that?"
"Because he was always going on about it. Especially when he was drunk. One day though he decided to rebuild the Fang Center and got to work setting it up at some old church and cemetery."
I recoiled a bit from that. Most would be more hesitant about building on top of a church and gravesite. Even some raiders were superstitious about God and the Dead.
"He set up there?"
"It was more about the animals to him than the location. From what I heard he was trying to re-domesticate some wild cows, dogs, horses, had snakes to harvest venom, and some other animals he found and tried taking care of."
"He sounds obsessed."
"Mmm . . . we tried considering it passion, but you're not wrong. Regardless, if he's able to domesticate some animals for Prosperity that'll go a long way for the whole County."
I couldn't argue that. Milk, eggs, pack animals, antivenom, that stuff will really help this community. Otherwise, it's continued hunting and cultivation. That isn't bad, but there are drawbacks to those things.
My thoughts though were interrupted when I saw something in the middle of the road.
A lone Highwayman. He was just kneeling in the middle of the road. Closer inspection through the binoculars revealed he was scavenging a dead survivalist.
"A scavenger." Carmina spat. "Careful, these guys are real chickenshits. They see you, they'll immediately run for it instead of fight. They're only job is to rob whatever's left behind in battle or on random corpses."
"So they'll likely have good stuff on them." I realized.
Carmina smiled. "Pretty much."
I pulled out my bow and lined up my shot. His back was toward me, exposing his head. I breathed and pulled the arrow back. The shot was perfect! The raider dropped after the arrow embedded in his neck, severing his spined from his skull.
After making sure the shot didn't draw attention, we walked toward the two bodies.
"You know him?" I asked about the dead Survivalist.
Carmina looked at it for a bit before shaking. "No. Just some poor bastard that wound up unlucky."
I nodded. Sometimes that's just how it was. Checking him, the Survivalist didn't have a thing on him, likely picked clean, but the scavenger had a ton of stuff that would be useful to Prosperity. Rounding up all the supplies, we dragged the bodies to the side of the road. We placed the survivalist next to where we hid the supplies and left the Highwayman in the ditch.
After informing Kim of the stash, we continued to follow the road.
"No matter how many times I see a dead body, I'll never get used to it." She commented.
"Even if they're H-men?"
She looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "H-Men?"
I scratched the back of my head awkwardly. "Yeah, short for Highwaymen. Figured it's shorter to say than the whole thing, ya know?"
"Hehe, yeah it is shorter. I like it. And to answer your question, no. When it comes to the Highwaymen, I don't see enough of their corpses. They're monsters. They only care about the now, never the future. They don't build, they don't dream, they just rape, pillage, and corrupt everything they get their hands on."
"They think the world is too fucked to make anything out of it."
"But Hope County is living proof that something can be built! So is the Rush Movement!"
"Doesn't matter. Everyone's got a different view of how the world works. To the H-men, none of what we do matters, so might as well do whatever the hell you want, damn everyone and everything, until the world burns into nothingness."
"Bleakness. I don't know how anyone can live like that. My whole life I grew up on stories about what the world was like Before. Everyone always talked about it with sadness and loss in their eyes, even my ow parents. I never had that. I was born into this world, it's all I know and yet I have way more hope for the future than Mickey, Lou and their shitty gang."
"I was very young when the bombs dropped. I hardly remember what the world was like Before." Though I have some very vague memories. "Yet, I'm like you too Carmina. The world was broken, but that doesn't mean we can't piece it back into something better."
Carmina beamed. I returned her smile. We both held a true belief that the world was a harsh and broken place, but that didn't mean we couldn't do anything to help it. It was nice to walk side by side with someone that shared that same hopefulness.
We finally got to the FANG Center and quickly realized it was now occupied by Highwaymen.
"Those bastards already took the animals. I don't see Wade anywhere . . . if they hurt him." She let that threat go unsaid.
"Let's just clear them out, then we can get answers." I pulled out my Claymore and lined my shot. "Go for that guy in the cage."
"Got it." She kept low and moved as quietly as she could. She had excellent footwork that showed care and cunning with every step.
Carmina struck the ground troop in the head, knocking him down and disorienting him. The noise quickly attracted the two sniper's attention, which I quickly shot one of them that I had in my sights. The second one managed to get off two shots at Carmina, but they were sporadic misses. I managed to keep my cool and calmly axed the last one.
Carmina placed her boot on the downed H-man and pointed her weapon at him. "Where's Wade?" She demanded.
"Who?"
Carmina stomped him. "Where is Wade!? The guy that runs this place."
"Fuck if I know! Place was empty when we arrived." The raider defended groggily.
"Bullshit."
"It's the truth! I swear! All we did was take the animals staying here. The bulls, goats, the dogs, a couple of snakes, that's all!"
I looked around. For the most part, there didn't appear to be any sign of battle. Not even a slight struggle. "Would Wade have put up a fight, Carmina?" I asked.
"To defend this place? Definitely."
"Then I think he's telling the truth."
"See? Now will you let me go?"
Carmina raised her other foot and stomped on his head three times until there was a loud, bloody crack. "No."
"Let's look around. Maybe this Wade guy left some clues for us to follow."
We looked all over the place, but the only disturbance was the Highwaymen littering. Weirdly, this place was set up like an old-world petting zoo. Pens were fashioned to hold big animals, with large toys for them to play with, equipment for them to climb and there were empty cages, big and small out. Whoever this Wade guy was, he was dedicated to his work. I found a stand near the entrance of the buried church and it had a sign that said "FANG Center" on it with a smiling bear's head next to it. On the stand were toys like teddy bears and baseball bats.
When I found nothing on the ground level, I thought about checking the roof of the ancient buried church. The belltower seemed promising.
I found our first clue up there. A journal that seemed to have been dropped near the bell. I skimmed through it and found that this Wade-guy was more than obsessed with the Fang Center. He was trying to make a new Cheeseburger by training a bear to come whenever the church bell rang. And he gave the animal a key to a stash he had hidden on the premises.
"Carmina!" I called her.
"Captain, I found something!" She called back.
I exited the bell tower and saw Carmina crouching randomly about ten yards from the church. Walking down to her, she apparently found a puddle of dried blood. Shit.
"Think it's too much to hope it's a Highwayman's?" Carmina asked.
"You might want to look at this." I showed her the journal. She read through it and her brow tensed worriedly.
"Oh, Wade, what have you gotten yourself into?"
"Something tells me this bear has something to do with Wade's disappearance. Our best bet to find him is to find the bear."
"By ringing the bell three times?"
"Yep. We'll leave an H-Man out as bait and follow it to its lair."
Carmina nodded. "Let's do it." Once we left a corpse out in a spot we could see, Carmina and I hid in the bell tower, waiting for the beast.
We rang the bell three times and almost immediately, it came out of the woods. The bear sniffed around and then scanned the area. When it felt everything was fine, it picked up a body in its mouth and turned around.
Carmina and I sprung out and followed after it, keeping a far enough distance to not spook it or aggravate it. I had out my Claymore and Carmina unslung her rifle as well. We weren't going to take any chances of that thing getting close. If it spotted us while we tailed it and charged, we'd take it out.
We followed the beast through the forest for a while now. Carmina said we were deep in wild territory and that we should be careful of attracting other wild animals that'd like to eat us.
A couple times the bear turned back, almost spotting us. Carmina and I hid behind trees before it could see us. It carried off that body quite a long ways; I think we were out from the Fang Center by a mile.
The bear finally stopped at its den. Its home was a dugout hole under a rock. It placed the body outside the den on a pile of dead grass . . . next to another body.
"Think that's him?" I asked Carmina.
She peered through my binoculars. "I can't tell from here, its facing away."
"Alright." I setup my Claymore. "Time to put this bear down."
The beast was snacking on its new meal as I lined up my shot. After adjusting for wind and precision, I took the shot. My weapon's boom echoed and the bear roared in pain.
"It's still alive!"
"I know." I said.
"It's charging at us!"
"I know!" I said irately.
The animal was running at us. My first shot got it in the neck, but old world bullets weren't always reliable. I fired again, getting it in the shoulder. Despite slowing down it was still coming.
"These things are tough!"
"Captain!"
"I got it!"
The damn thing was close and if it weren't for my last shot it would have been on me. Thankfully, the third shot pierced its skull and it was down like a bag of bricks. I calmly stood up, while Carmina catched her breath. I found the key mentioned in Wade's notes and yanked it off the animal's fat neck. The key had the image of a snarling dog on it.
"Come on, let's go check the den."
We walked away from the bear and looked inside the bear's hovel. We found the fresh raider corpse, the body of a deer, and . . . a man.
"Carmina? Is that him?"
The girl approached and turned the body over. There was hardly anything left. The bear had ripped pieces off of him, his clothes were in tatters, his arms were ripped off in bloody chunks, nothing left but cracked bones. The face was, however, remarkably intact.
"Yeah. It's him."
"I'm sorry." Carmina just sighed and just continued to kneel there in front of Wade, staring. I could hear her breathe deeply, trying to fend off sobs. I could tell this wasn't the first time she's seen a dead friend . . . and it won't be the last.
"Carmina, what do you want to do?"
She didn't answer immediately. When she did, it was somber. "Let's take him back to the Fang Center. He'd want to be buried there."
"Okay." I stood up and pulled a garbage sack from my bag.
"We need to take that bear too." Carmina suddenly said, standing up and turning in the direction of the dead bear. "Bear hides, meat, and claws fetch a good price in Prosperity."
"Uh, okay. I know how to skin animals, I can—"
"I'll do it."
"You sure?"
"I will do it." Her tone of voice said there was no arguing. "Can you . . . pickup Wade, while I take care of the bear?"
"Sure."
She drew her knife and approached the bear. I watched her walk the whole way. When she reached the carcass, she just looked at it for a minute. As I picked up the pieces of Wade I could hear Carmina, skinning, a little more roughly than any hunter needed to be.
Five minutes later I collected all of Wade. Carmina was still taking apart the bear. She was doing a professional job, but the way she held the knife and the look she was giving it as she stabbed and sliced . . . it was like she was trying to get revenge.
Carmina would eventually finish. She couldn't take everything of the beast; it was a 300-pound bear after all. She collected its hide, its claws, skull, and some of its meat. Her pack was completely full when we started moving.
I walked ahead, leading back to the Fang Center. I could feel Carmina's eyes on my back. She was no doubt thinking a lot of morbid thoughts.
"Did you know Wade well?" I asked, thinking talking about it would ease her mind.
. . .
When she didn't answer I tried another question. "Does Wade have any family we should tell?"
"He had a brother." She answered quietly. "He died on the day the bombs dropped."
"I see." Well, that made the job a bit easier, I suppose. I had no other questions, but Carmina tried talking more.
"You remember I said that there weren't many teens in Hope County?"
"Yeah?"
"I was raised not just by my parents, but a lot of the adults here. I grew up knowing nearly everyone. They protected me, they taught me, they fed me, clothed me; because I was a Rye's daughter everyone looked out for me."
"Wade . . . he taught me a lot about animals. He told me stories about the Fang Center and his favorite bear in the whole wide world: Cheeseburger. He would share with me his dream of setting up a new Fang Center, to protect and heal animals. I told him I wanted to see it one day and I promised I'd be there to help him . . . a stupid child's promise. Maybe if I was here when he started, I could have talked him out of that dumb bear-key idea."
"You shouldn't blame yourself." I said. "You said so yourself, he was obsessed. He was too nostalgic for the old world, the way things used to be. His own mind and the bear killed him, not you."
"But how cruel is that? His own dream killed him." She looked at the plastic bag I was carrying. "You say it's not my fault, but I told him to build the damn place."
"Something tells he was going to build it regardless. In this world, we can't always control what happens to other people. Sometimes they're just stuck on the path they're on and can't get off. Blaming yourself won't change what happened."
"What do you suggest?"
"You keep walking down your own path wherever it leads." We finally returned to the church. "And you stop every once in a while, to see those that are at the end of theirs."
We buried Wade in an empty spot. Most of the old graves were covered in dirt, but we managed to find a spot we felt was out of the way of the others. While Carmina took her time mourning, I got on the radio and reported to Kim.
Needless to say, she was also sad and angry at what happened. She then told me to return to Prosperity with Carmina as night was nearly approaching.
By the time I was done with the call, Carmina was finished paying her respects.
"Before we leave," I pulled out the crypt key. "You want to see what's in Wade's stash to see if there's anything useful?"
"Sure."
We found the hole that Wade dug up that led to the crypt spoken of in his journal. There was a set of makeshift stairs that led to a locked stone and metal door; it had an interesting lock that was in the shape of a guard dog.
I put the dog-key inside and gave it a strong turn. Gears clanked and tumbled, unlocking the door. I gave a strong push and the door slid open with a loud scraping against the stone floor.
The tomb actually looked pretty nice . . . you know, for a tomb. Wade set up lights everywhere and had a cot in the corner. He had a locker filled with food, a duffle filled with clothes. Very livable. There was also an open safe that had some materials that Prosperity could use. And at the very end of the room was a large sarcophagus.
As I was collecting the contents of the safe, Carmina was going over Wade's things. No point in just abandoning them here. Rummaging through the safe I found something peculiar.
"I Loooove Cheeseburgers."
It was a bobblehead of a shirted bear standing on a cheeseburger. It apparently had an intact voicebox that had a deep dopey voice. I picked it up and examined it.
"What is this?" I asked, kinda loving it.
"That's Cheeseburger. Years ago, Wade took care of a grizzly cub and named it Cheeseburger because that's what he liked to eat. He was apparently a local celebrity in Hope County." Carmina explained.
"So, this is what he was trying to remake." The toy looked intact and I got a bit amusement out of tapping the bobbling head. I stuffed it in my pack and also collected the rest of the materials in the safe.
Once I was finished I saw Carmina sitting on the cot, going over a book.
"What's that?"
"Another of Wade's journals." She answered.
"Anything interesting?"
"Only that he was excited to show me the Fang Center. He goes on and on about how he can't wait to see the smile on my face when he finishes the renovations and shows me the new bear doing tricks."
She then promptly threw the book against the wall.
"Still think I'm not to blame for his death?" She asked bitterly.
I picked up the tossed book and started skimming over it.
"So, he was doing all this for you. Is that so bad?"
"What?"
"He wanted to share something he cared about with you. You said so yourself, that you two shared the dream of the Fang center being built. While the bear thing was all a terrible idea, to me it seems like he wanted to make another Cheeseburger for you too."
"But he still—"
"Yeah, maybe this whole thing got him killed, but so what? Sounds to me like he was willing to risk anything just to make this place. To make himself happy and to make you happy. And in this world, is that really such a bad thing? To search for something to make you happy, and share that happiness with others?"
Carmina was about to say something, but stopped herself. She seemed to think over my words, her eyes shifted from the floor to the wall corner and then finally back to me.
"I guess . . . I guess that is true. Where'd you learn to be so wise?" She smiled wryly at me.
I smirked. "Experience." I handed her back the journal. "I know it's hard now, but trust me, and I know this is cliché, but all the pain will make you stronger. I swear."
She took the book from me with a sweet smile. "I believe you."
"Come on, night's almost here. We should get back to Prosperity before your mother freaks." I chuckled.
"Right behind you, Captain."
Far Cry: ND should have had a better collectables set. What do we collect in ND? MP3 players? Who uses MP3 players anymore? I know Hope County's a bit old fashioned but they're not a third world country. To that end, I'm adding collectables of old world items. Think like what Ellie does in TLoU1 where she grabs anything interesting. Kieran will do the same. The Cheeseburger bobblehead is one of those collectables. I already have a list of things the Captain can collect, but if anyone has any ideas please let me know either in a review or PM me.
Also, I've renamed the Scavengers the Survivalists. I don't know why Ubi thought Scavengers sounded like a good name to give to the people of Hope County. It sounds so crude and vile, "Survivalists" fits them far more as they are surviving and a lot of the people here are known for their survival skills.