18
The window led to an alleyway with only one direction open. That direction, Patience breathed in relief, was back towards the street upon which was the original way they were aiming for. She took up position at the corner of the building and peeked out.
Across the street and back half a block, she could see the radiation crater that Vincent had pointed towards. A large hole in the ground that fell far below her line of sight, with vapours of some kind drifting upwards, adding to the hazy atmosphere. She wondered how it could still be emitting radiation after two centuries, but she doubted that Vincent would call it a 'radiation crater' if it wasn't still radioactive. Once again, it made her wonder if the Chinese had developed some kind of strange new form of nuclear weapon back in the twenty-first century.
She felt, rather than saw, Gia slump against the wall behind her. Turning, she caught the young girl before she toppled over. Helping her to sit down, she looked into Gia's eyes once more.
"Gia! Do not fall asleep. That's an order." She lifted Gia's chin and saw the girl's face, bleached and sickly.
"I just feel a little woozy." Gia's head flopped to the side and Patience knew she needed to get her moving. The last thing Gia needed was to fall asleep.
Taking one of the spare magazines for her sidearm, she handed it to the ex-raider.
"Listen. I need you to do something and it's very important. Okay?" Gia's eyes appeared unfocussed, but she smiled up at Patience. "See this magazine? I need you take all the bullets out to check them and count them, then put them all back in again. Okay? Count them out loud when you take them out and then count out loud again when you put them back. Can you do that?"
"I sure can. 'Cos I'm smarterer than you think I am, boss lady." She slurred her words a little, but took the magazine. It took her a second to get her fingers working properly, but she slipped the first bullet out. "That's one. One bullet."
The reason she gave Gia the task was to keep her mind occupied. If she was thinking and counting, she was less likely to fall asleep and Patience simply did not have the medical expertise to deal with a concussion. The other reason was to make sure she could hear that Gia was still awake as she tried to spot Vincent and Valrie.
Once again, Patience popped her head around the corner only to find her vision blocked by something running towards her. Without even thinking, her hand dropped to her sidearm. With the figure so close, she wouldn't be able to raise her rifle fast enough. Her pistol could be out of its holster and fired from the hip much faster.
"Hey! Hey! Woah!" It was Vincent, suddenly wheeling to the side out of the pistol's line of sight, his arms raising in surrender. "It's me!"
"Fucking idiot! I could have killed you!" She holstered her weapon and turned back towards Gia. The girl's counting had slowed. "Where's Valrie. If she's hurt, so help me ..."
"She's fine. She's hidden over the way. I saw you look out a second ago." He looked down towards Gia and frowned. "What's wrong with the kid?"
"She fell. Hit her head. I think she's got concussion, or worse." Vincent crouched down beside Gia, put both hands on her head and traced his fingers under her hair.
"That's a hell of a bump! I could give her a stimpak, but that would be overkill." He rested his elbow on his knee and rubbed his chin with his other hand. "I know what would keep her awake until her head settles! Mentats. I'm pretty sure the old mouth has some in her coat. Help me carry her."
Together, they managed to stand Gia up, wrapping the girl's arms across each of their shoulders and using Vincent's rifle as a seat. Patience took a quick look out on the street before leading the way. They took their time navigating the rubble strewn street, weaving between broken and twisted automobiles, until they reached the other side.
As soon as they neared the radiation crater, Patience heard a crackling sound emerge from the Pip-Boy she had forgotten to turn off.
"Geiger counter?" Vincent huffed as they carried Gia down the side of the crater. "Don't worry too much. As long as you don't go in the crater, the radiation up here is negligible."
"Nice to know. I'd still like to get the hell away from it, though." She took a look into the crater, but the hole fell deep into the Earth, far beyond the city foundations.
They soon reached an alleyway leading off to the side and the crackling of the Geiger counter lessened and then stopped. Rushing to a ninety-degree corner, Vincent brought them to a halt in front of a pair of yellow dumpsters. With care, they set Gia down upon the ground, the girl's eyes almost closed. Vincent lifted the lid of one of the dumpsters revealing Valrie inside.
"About fucking time! Next time, you get to sit in the fucking trash. Asshole." Valrie threw a leg over the edge of the dumpster and, with a little help, clambered out. She saw Gia, sheet white and almost unconscious. "Oh no. What happened?"
"She hit her head, probably concussed. Vincent says you have something called 'Mentats' that might help?" Valrie didn't even protest, she rummaged around inside her coat and pulled out a metal box, faded green art and yellow letters on the top.
"Sure. Sure. They'll wake her up alright." Opening the box, Valrie fished out two yellow pills. Holding Gia's cheek, she pressed one and then the other into the girl's mouth, lifting her chin and rubbing her throat until Gia swallowed. "It'll take a few minutes to kick in, but then, hoo boy, her mind'll be sparking like it's mainlining electricity."
Patience nodded, smoothing back Gia's hair, rubbing her forehead with her thumb. She leaned in and kissed the top of Gia's head, then stood up, taking Vincent's arm. She pulled him to the side and ran her fingers through her hair, trying to decide how to tell him what she had seen. There was no better way than to tell him.
"Listen, in that building. We found something." She pinched her bottom lip. She had no idea how he would take the news. Would he care? "We found one of your Brotherhood friends in the basement. Dead."
"How could you tell? If their fusion core had run dry, they probably couldn't move ..." She put a hand on his chest and told him what she saw. The ghouls, the open power armour, the broken leg, the way she looked starved. "Shit. That's no way to die. I mean, we've lost people, a lot of people, but to die like that. Shit."
"I'm sorry." Patience put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "If it helps, she took out about seven ghouls before she died."
"It's alright. Part of the job. At least the Brotherhood can get her body back." He slipped out from under Patience's hand and scratched the back of his head, then he looked over at Gia. "That's if we live through this and get back to GNR."
Patience understood that feeling. She looked at Gia, herself, watching the young girl begin to stir, her head starting to lift, colour returning to her cheeks. Valrie turned round and gave Patience the thumbs up and a wink. Patience, however, couldn't help but feel concerned. Several times, now, Valrie and Gia had almost died, all for Patience's need to find out about her past.
How long before she lost one of them?
Gia started to look better. Much better. Colour had returned to her cheeks and she seemed to have regained control over her body. A quick look into her eyes showed both pupils dilated, although she didn't seem to be blinking as much as she should and her eyes darted around as if she were trying to see everything. Patience wondered if the Mentats had brought them another problem to take over from the concussion.
"So, then I looked down and it was like everything went into slow motion and I couldn't do anything but watch as the floor just kinda gave way and then I fell and it felt like I was falling forever and then I was spinning in the air, like this," Gia's words tumbled out of her mouth as she described to Valrie what had happened in the building. She threw her arms out wide and pinwheeled where she stood, spinning around and around. "Then I hit the floor below, like, wham! And then I must have blacked out, or something, 'cos then Patience was right next to me, pulling me away from the edge of another hole and she was all, like, 'I got you', and I kinda ..."
"Hey, I know you're mind is on fucking fire, right now, but you have to get a hold of yourself, kid." Valrie, holding onto Gia's shoulders, tried to get the girl to calm down. "You need to breathe, breathe deep and try your best to relax."
"Ooh! And I saw one of those power armour things as I fell." Gia pointed at Vincent, wagging her finger, fast and agitated. "And Patience laid down on the floor and made that thing on her arm shoot out this red light and it went voosh, voosh and told her there were bodies down there. Dead bodies. And she was all 'I see power armour' and I wondered if she was gonna climb down and, like, pick it up, or something. Oh! And before we went into the building ..."
Vincent shook his head as Gia continued rambling. Patience understood his thinking. With Gia like this, there was no way they could continue on towards Vault-Tec HQ. She was being too loud, too hyperactive. That kind of thing would be like a spotlight on them all.
"Listen, I'm glad she's feeling better, but she's going to get us all killed if she doesn't calm down." Vincent had already moved from one end of the alleyway to the other end, twice, checking to see Gia hadn't called attention to them. "If there are Super Mutants nearby, they're going to hear her."
"And what do you suggest we do? Leave her here? Alone?" She understood his thinking, but she couldn't agree with it. "Or, do we leave Valrie with her? That'll be two untrained, mostly unarmed people out here while we go into the HQ. Or, perhaps, one of us should stay, hmmm?"
"Neither of us can stay with her. I need to get the information for Moriarty, and that Pip-Boy of yours is the only thing that can help us get it." His head snapped around as Gia made another noise to illustrate something she said to Valrie.
"Exactly. And I'm not leaving Gia and Valrie out here alone." Patience looked over to Gia who didn't seem to have enough fingers to describe something to Valrie. Valrie glanced around, raising her eyebrow. "We'll give her a few minutes. This is probably just an initial rush. You head out and do some recon ahead. See what we're up against next."
Vincent tightened his lips for a second, then nodded. He took one last look at Gia, then set off down the arm of the alleyway towards the Vault-Tec HQ. Patience smiled. She caught the look in Vincent's eyes. He felt annoyed, that was for certain, but he also failed to hide the genuine concern he felt for the girl.
Patience could understand that, too. They'd only known her for a day, or so, and the girl had already found a place in Patience's heart. Brave, loud, full of a zest for life, funny. Patience couldn't imagine the girl not being around. Battles and being in terror had a way of doing that, bringing people together. Making strangers in foxholes the very best of friends.
"How are we doing over here?" Patience crouched beside Valrie and Gia.
"She's getting there. Fucking Mentats. It's like having adrenaline pumped into your brain." Valrie clicked her fingers in front of Gia's face as the girl tried catching something that didn't exist from the air. "Still, it's a damn sight better than the girl fucking dying."
"You! You called me 'sweetie'. I liked that. Not sexually, 'cos your, like, a million years old, you know? But I liked it. 'Sweetie'. 'Sweetie'. 'Sweetie'." Gia said the last three 'sweetie's' in different tones of voice, one high and two progressively lower. "Not that you aren't sexy, because, wow! You totally are! Have you seen your ass? You should! I could bounce caps off that ass."
Valrie tried to stifle a laugh into the crook of her arm, glancing towards Patience. It was funny, Patience had to admit. She didn't know whether to feel insulted or flattered and settled on bemused instead while trying to stop Gia reaching around to pinch her behind.
"This is getting there?" Patience pointed towards Gia, who seemed to have forgotten how to open her eyes and her mouth at the same time.
"You should have heard her a minute ago while you and Vacant were talking. She swore blind there were Bloat flies buzzing around her head singing 'Meet me in St. Louis'." Valrie pushed her football helmet back. "Where she heard that, I have no fucking idea. Three Dog doesn't play it, that's for sure."
Gia did seem to be calming down. If only a little. She had stopped taking so fast her lips couldn't keep up and her eyes did seem to be moving around in a much less frantic fashion. If she continued calming down at this pace, they should be able to move out within a few minutes, but that would bring other problems.
She feared the possibility of more Super Mutants. Here, deep inside the ruins of downtown D.C., the chance of a running battle with the outsized monsters caused her a great deal of concern. There were far too few places to take cover. Far too few spaces open enough to take advantage of being faster than the hulking brutes. Tight spaces worked to the advantage of those with longer reaches and getting in close to fight would be pointless against something that didn't feel pain the same way as humans do.
So many factors worked against them. The only factors she had going for her were her Pip-Boy's ability to mark out targets on her enemies and the training that she didn't remember taking but, she felt so happy to know, came as natural as breathing. Those had helped against two of the creatures attacking at separate times. If more attacked, at the same time? Patience wasn't so sure they'd get out of that alive.
She spotted Vincent returning from his recon. Standing up to meet him half-way, she saw that he appeared puzzled, rather than concerned, resting his rifle over his shoulder in a lazy, lackadaisical fashion.
"You look confused. What did you see? Aliens?" It was an inappropriate joke, but she said it anyway. She'd spent far too much time around Valrie.
"No. It's ... unexpected. Yeah. Unexpected is the best way to describe it." He looked down at Gia and smiled seeing the girl had calmed down.
"I take it, it's not bad out there, otherwise you wouldn't be so relaxed." Patience frowned when Vincent shrugged and raised his eyebrows.
"No. It's nothing. I mean, almost literally, nothing. I was worried that there'd be a whole bunch of Super Mutants back there, but there's just nothing." He scratched the back of his neck and half-turned back the way he came. "You should see for yourself."
Valrie waved her away as soon as Patience looked. Gia would be fine, the older woman was saying, go. Taking a grip of her rifle, Patience followed Vincent down the alleyway. He may have relaxed, but something told her that, whatever training she had undertaken, relaxing in the field was something dead people did.
They edged out of the alleyway taking careful, measured steps into the square. The first thing Patience saw was the large, four-sided statue directly before them. Two of the heads had fallen to the ground, reduced to rubble adding to the large amount that already littered the area. As Patience circled around, she saw the remaining two faces. Grim, stern faces that would once have looked down upon the many passers-by like disappointed gods.
Beyond the statue, they found several sandbag walls, built up into a square formation, within which Patience could see a number of large, heavy treaded tyres that almost looked like seats and a metal barrel, still smoking from a fire that had been lit some time before.
Patience could see string bags, tied up and dumped in a pile outside the sandbag square, where she could see body parts mashed and crushed together inside. Arms, legs, heads, torsos, ripped apart and stuffed, without any ceremony whatsoever, into sickening bags of gore.
She heard retching behind her. Turning, she saw Gia's face turning pale as she held a hand to her mouth, staring at the gore bags. Giving Valrie a look, the older woman guided Gia away to the side, out of sight of the horrific display. Gia had begun acting more clearly, but, strung out on the Mentats, seeing something that terrible must be even more awful for her.
"There's blood over here. Super Mutant blood. But I don't see any shell casings." Vincent led Patience onto the street a few feet away, pointing at the ground with his rifle. "If I were to make a guess, and I'm no expert, I'd say they were decapitated. See the spatter pattern here, and then a big pool of blood here."
Memories flashed through Patience's mind. Of the Super Mutant king and the great sword-like weapon he carried. Of the Super Mutant that had touched her and lost its head for doing so. She'd seen, first-hand, what the King's blade could do. She'd seen the fountain of blood.
"I think you're probably right." She scanned the area, using the barrel of her rifle as a pointer. "Smoke. Over there in that dumpster."
She led the way over to the dumpster. Its once yellow construction now freshly blackened and burned. Continuing to keep her eyes moving all around, she took a swift glance inside and almost retched herself. The smell was disgusting. Cloying. Like barbecue meat gone bad. Vincent took a look himself and followed Patience's example, almost vomiting from the smell.
"There must be pieces of two or three Super Mutants in there." He moved away from the dumpster, desperate to catch fresher air. "Who could do that to Super Mutants?"
"Another Super Mutant. A super-Super Mutant that calls himself, itself, the 'King'." Patience had enough of the smell from the dumpster. She headed back towards Gia and Valrie. "I've seen him, it, in action. It's a harsh disciplinarian. Whatever these did, I'm certain this was the King's idea of making an example to others."
"But, why? There its own soldiers." Vincent shook his head, furrowing his brow.
Valrie and Gia were now leaning against the four-faced statue. The young ex-raider seemed to have staved off her nausea for the moment, tilting her head upwards to look at the stone face above.
"Valrie. You didn't seem surprised about those bags. Have you seen them before?" Patience hooked a thumb over towards the gory, string bags.
"Oh, yeah. Used to them all the time, not so long back. It's a Super Mutant thing." She dropped her eyes, looking sheepish. "I hate to say it, but I've scavenged through a few in my time. Well, it's not like the dead fuckers are going to miss their stuff."
"'Not so long back', you said. So, you haven't seen them in a while?" Patience had an idea. The end of a string of a thought.
"Nah. Not long after Three Dog started telling us the fucking Super Mutants were organising, those body parts bags seemed to just stop being around." Valrie pulled out a pack of cigarettes, offering them around before lighting one herself. "I've snuck into Super Mutant camps for years, when they go out doing whatever the fuck it is they do, always seen them bags. Not lately, though. No."
"And we've seen them take prisoners. Gone out of their way to keep them alive." Patience paced around, running her hand through her hair. It was only speculation, but it seemed right. It felt right. "You said they turn people into them, Moira mentioned this Forced Evolution Virus. What if this 'King' is making even more Super Mutants? What if he killed those in the dumpster because they killed people, stuffing them into those gore bags, instead of taking them to the King to be made into more Super Mutants? More soldiers?"
"Maybe. I don't know. I mean, yeah, it's plausible." Vincent shrugged. Valrie shrugged. Patience needed input on her idea, not disinterest.
"Gia, how many raiders have been captured by Super Mutants lately?" Patience nudged Gia's arm and the young girl's head snapped down from looking upwards.
"Oh, yeah. Lots. I mean lots and lots. There were about twenty-five in our gang. Super Mutants have taken about fifteen of them, killed the rest. Apart from me and Darrin." Gia put a finger to her lips and made a dramatic 'thinking' expression. "Now I come to think of it, the other gangs have been getting smaller too and those in my gang that got killed were more because they were fighting to get away. Yeah. Those damned Super Mutants have been fucking busy."
"What have I said about your fucking language?" Valrie didn't hit Gia, this time, but the young ex-raider dipped her head and mouthed 'sorry' to the older woman. Valrie finished her cigarette, dropping the butt to the floor and crushing it with her boot. "So, what does this all mean?"
"War." Patience made certain she caught all their eyes to drive home the point. Even Gia seemed to realise this was important. "This King of the Super Mutants is making an army and war is coming to the Capital Wasteland."
"Yeah? Well, right now we have information to retrieve." Vincent threw his hands up, urging Patience to hear him out. "I know. I know. Your hero complex means you need to do something about this possible war, but we have a mission. We've nearly finished. Vault-Tec HQ is right there. Let's get this done and then we talk to the Brotherhood about the Super Mutants. Okay?"
Patience considered this. He was right. Across the square, almost hidden by the rubble and the ruined vehicles, she could see the top few letters on a building. 'Vault'. They were only four people. Only two of them any use in combat. Help Vincent, she thought, and the Brotherhood may feel they owe her. Or, at least, the Wasteland.
But one thing continued to run through her mind. The voice of a man in a dream. The dream she had woken from to find herself dying under a dead sky in a world she didn't recognise. The man's words echoed in her mind.
"War. War never changes.", "The methods may change ...", "What if we could make a difference? Just once."