CHAPTER 2.
When Your Home's a Gas Station.
The highways that once linked all the industrial sectors of Boston and Worcester, and ringed alongside winding railroads, were now nothing more than dusty shells of their original capability.
Guard rails browned with rust and caked dirt wilted like dying serpents on the sides of the roads, those stupid, looming, dead cars of the old world dotted everywhere, trucks still lay on their sides or in ravines when their great bulk could not stand to the nuclear devastation.
Military vehicles also thinly stuck out in the landscape, and some of them were older than others.
Sanford had heard the Military had tried to regain stability before its inevitable disbanding after the war, soldiers in experimental power armor stalked by small columns of armored vehicles, utility platforms and even some tanks.
That was generations ago, but, the point was, some of these army wrecks hadn't been partially buried from their sheer weight for as long as the city of Boston itself.
Nowadays it was useless to try and salvage anything from the cars or the military pieces sprawled around, as they had all been stripped and re-stripped multiple times throughout the years, most of them noticeably didn't even have engine blocks anymore.
The sun shone brightly in the cloudless sky above the rolling, dirty hills that were jutted with rows of dead or mutated tree husks, brown and grayed ferns hugged the land like wads of fur, and the shadows of hollowed buildings hung everywhere.
There was no ambience other than the hissing of the wind, the occasional scavenger bird.
Earth had really been reduced to a dump, and a BIG one at that.
"You know, strolls like this would have been all the rage with the boys in Guam..." Hancock ranted. "-Cept', ya' know, without the constant risk of getting shot, or eatin' by shit..."
"Great morale-booster there." Sanford said sarcastically with a slump in his shoulders.
"Morale is for women!"
"Sexist."
"Mother-lovin' commie!"
"Screaming, airborne trash-can."
"Banana-suckin' primate!"
"Bolt-rattling, tin-can."
"Hairy meatsack!"
"Cracked cesspool tank..."
"MONKEY!"
Sanford stopped in his trotting, turned slowly to the flying robot, and grinned evilly over his shoulder.
"OB-SO-LETE."
"Herbivore-lov'-" Hancock went silent, lowered in his flight a tad, and narrowed the lenses of his eye
apparatus's. "YOU, are a cold, COLD little man..."
"I do my best."
"A-HA! HA! A comedian! Ha-ha! Shut your mouth, monkey-savant!"
"Oh boo-hoo, the talking wood-chipper was mean too me! Mommy!" Sanford whined in mockery, frilling his hands in the air over-dramatically.
"I'll set you on FIRE."
"Who's gonna fix you then, Han'? YOU? I think not."
"I'll find a mechanic! Or a plumber! Or an engineer!"
"Where? At the TOILET-Store?"
"FINE! Be that way, you hell-wench!"
"Violent."
"-And daaaammmmnnnn-effective at it!"
"Supreme killer..."
"Hancock and Sanford! The duo to undo all DUOS!"
"Get a grip!"
"-Of the world's throat?! YESSIR!"
"Ugh..."
Sanford's only friend wasn't garnered into his daily grind in a... 'Normal' fashion, as one might describe meeting a long time companion.
'Normal' being, you were walking down the street one day, bumped into some dude, and struck up a conversation with him after the initial apology, and, BAM, a few years later and you're both still hanging around.
'Normal' being, you're eating lunch one day and somebody asks to sit with you because all the other tables are full, you strike conversation city, and-PRESTO! Friends for life!
'NORMAL' being anything OTHER, than how Sanford was introduced to the Mr. Gutsy robotic mayhem-spree that was Hancock.
After all, being locked in battle with a giant, bloodthirsty mutated bear, and spontaneously having the thing explode into a red wad of giblets right as it gained ground on you- Was a pretty dramatic switch of the turned tables.
All of a sudden this freaky military robot swings around the corner, laughs about 'Mother-lovin' commies' and bathes the dismembered monster in flames from a handy thrower for a third arm- So before you know it-
BAM!
PRESTO!
-Whatever examples he had thought of before...
THAT, was where Hancock and Sanford came from, the team to beat all teams, according to the robot.
Heck, maybe if Sanford wasn't so in the dumps, he might have agreed with the Mr. Gutsy's summation.
"So, cappy-tonn," Hancock started. "-The plan for our newest toy of freedom?"
"Fix it, put some better internal parts in it, readjust the sights, clean it, shoot stuff with it."
"Simplistic. I LIKE it!"
"We'll start to rake it in, Han', I know it."
"I have full confidence in our bloodthirstiness, sir! My only concern is, when will our next victim come up!"
Sanford waved an arm about the surrounding wastes.
"Do you see anything?"
"Negative."
"Well then, our next 'Victims' are not for now..."
"Drats upon drats in Roosevelt's suit pocket."
"Lemme ask you, Han',"
"Aye, sir?"
"When was the last time we came across people? FRIENDLY people? Besides the merchants and the occasional traveler... I can't remember the last time I just... Socialized..."
"Socialization is for pansies."
"Seriously for a second? Han'? It's bugging me... It'll... It'll effect my COMBAT ETHIC, eh?" He tried to get the robot to realize the sincerity he asked with, maybe foolishly.
Hancock made a staticy garble- What could be discerned as a sigh from his vocalizer vents.
"Sir, the last thing I'm required of, is... COMPANIONSHIP," If Sanford didn't know any better, he'd say ole' Hancock spat that. "-My systems can't process emotions of human beings."
"This is the most serious you have sounded in months."
"You asked for it. You ARE my friend, on some strange whim... And don't get USED to it, latrine-rat!"
"Uh-huh. So you're saying?"
"All I'm saying, sir... Is that you're so alone, the radroaches would make better companions than what ya' got! Besides... ME, of course..."
"Again, that sure is morale-boosting..."
"When was the last time I've EVER screwed up on you, sir?"
Sanford stopped dead in his tracks, turned around, and stared long and hard at the robot.
Hancock jolted a tad in his levitation, and made that sighing sound again.
"OUTSIDE, of a combat situation that I haven't made amends for with a badass explosion!"
"Outside of that? I can't say you have..."
"Ah, see that? Friends truly are knitted by the ability to spawn napalm-induced mushroom clouds!"
"I told you about my father, right?"
"More times than I can count, sir. Brave man he was."
"And ma'?"
"I'll reiterate the lack of count, sir. Passionate lady."
"Ah..."
"Sir,"
"Hancock?"
"This depressive state will kill you. Sir."
"I know..." Sanford slung the laser rifle over his shoulder, and sighed at the bulging blotch, hunched, and cragged in the layered earth, that was home. "I know."
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The Red Rocket Gas Station...
Sanford remembered when his father would stop here for a quick tank refill whenever they were on a road trip, or even just out for errands.
"Son, I'm trying to prepare you for the responsibilities of life," His father said to him on one of their usual banters. "You see how much money that tank of gas cost? That's money you'll have to earn and work for. Life isn't cheap. But life also, isn't bad because of how hard it can be."
The family cars were long rotted away, and so were the gas-pumps he and every other citizen of the urban area used to fuel their machines.
Most of the hardware and electronics, including the heating, had been ripped out and carted away when Sanford stumbled onto the gas station years ago. For the most hauls of his scavenging, he had built sheets of any metals he could find.
Stockpiling these building blocks, a decently thickened barricade ringed around the stout shack and pump-shade roof, breaking for a wooden gate that could be opened from the inside via-crank wheel by the shack's front door.
Usually, Sanford had to rely on Hancock from within the barricade to let him in, but, since the robot was WITH him at the current interval, he was forced to use a 'Manual Override' of sorts.
Stepping over to the gate, Sanford rubbed the twin wooden panels for the hidden addition with both palms, giving off a tiny 'Ah!' when he found the indent in the surface, and dug into the thin square outline with his fingers.
The wood made a plastery-snap, a panel flipped off onto the ground, revealing a small calculator-like console duct-taped into the thick block of tree-born material.
Sanford flicked a light-switch he had wired into the keypad as a substitute for a power button, saw the little black monitor buzz alive to a hue of drab, and clicked in a quick code of '551' into the white keys.
It bleeped, the gate shuddered, he reached down and retrieved the dislodged panel, raised it to view under his nose to ensure the adhesive putty on the other side still had life, and slapped it back over the console before the gate parted.
The wooden pieces lurched a bit, dragging down small pulley-tugged aluminum frames to the left and right, revealing the little courtyard around the station.
"Home, sweet home…" Sanford clapped his hands together. "You want to open the garage for me? I gotta check the crops."
"Affirmative! That steel door won't know what hit 'em!"
Hancock sped in a burst of his single thruster jet to the front entry of the station, going right through the ajar door, and swinging down the left to the garage door where he kept the work supplies.
The little fortress was a neatly set up shop for what it was built over.
Sanford's metal barricades kept out the usual fodder of the wasteland, automated, electrically powered machine turrets wired with drum-fed assault rifles had been wired and set in the roof of the gas-station and the pump-shade.
A large solar-powered generator he had taken apart and rebuilt from a hydro-plant on the farthest outskirts of Boston's ruined agricultural epicenters, over the course of a week- Ensured the nearly never-setting sun of the wastes kept the turrets working 24/7.
The only shortcoming with the turrets was that they relied on projectile ammunition, which, in the worst of days, was pretty hard to find when bootleggers had shortages of newly made rounds to sell about.
Right now though, the side-mounted drums allowing the things to actually function as TURRETS, were full, seeing as the last time anything had attacked his home was… Well, probably a few months back.
The biggest problems came from Raiders, and on one occasion, a group of them almost breached the wall with a few fragmentation grenades and some home-made explosives. Hancock's plasma gun and Sanford's pipe weapons ensured the thugs that DID get through did not get many steps deep.
Half the turrets ran out of ammo that day, and there were around fifteen bodies they had clean up, which, was pretty easy with Hancock's flamer.
He had to figure out a better defensive perimeter to keep others out, but, in the mean-time, THIS was what he had, and at least it worked.
Still, instances like that were frightening- More so than getting shot at in general, which, understandably, was pretty scary. Close calls showed the kinks in a defensive perimeter, reminding even the heartiest of siege-planners that people normally did learn the hard way.
Something to dote on, albeit.
"Well, at least the food is still coming..." Sanford sighed, stepping into the center of the pavement square marking the area where cars, in the forgotten past, used to pull up to get a fresh tank.
Cleared of the pumps by looters, and preventing of any nasty wildlife like molerats or scorpions from burrowing underneath his ramshackle stockade, a large, square-shaped planter filled with mulch held a series of tangled roots from fruit-producing plants.
A melon vine, the strange potato/tomato crossbred plants the locals called 'Tatos' in a handful of limbs, and a pair of corn stalks, those last two being the least-numerical producers.
Growing this stuff was hard enough in the blasted world, the fact he had to clump it together made it harder, so, those stupid tatos were starting to override the measly corn and the few melons. He hunted for the meat, and, since Hancock was... Well, HANCOCK, he didn't need food, and rations were pretty easy to divide.
He was always thin for a reason, even when Earth wasn't in the farthest drain of the crapper.
Reaching down to stroke a tato-plant leaf in his fingers, he creased his lipline, reached down, and picked up two anti-freeze bottles that had been flushed and filled with different substances. A blue one held water, and one with a marker-drawn red X held plant-food he'd picked up in a Super-Duper Mart.
Whistling, Sanford drained some of the water in a sprinkle over the resilient plants, and then shook some green pebbles from the plant-food bottle over them.
"Dad always did think I had a gardening side too me..." Sanford mused.
"We're all set, sir! Modification city, YEE-HAW!" Hancock's echoing cry emitted from the gas station, followed by a hollow clanking of shifting chassis as the robot practically hurled himself through the side window of the shack.
Luckily, the glass had been blown out for two-hundred years, so, all the Mr. Gutsy hit was a soft patch of sand that ringed around the immediate base of the building with a kick of dust, and comedic, anti-climactic PFFT of impact.
"U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!" The robot chanted with a raised claw from his sprawl on the ground.
Sanford put the bottle back by the planter and clapped his hands to dust them.
"-Has been dead. -Has been dead. -Has been dead..." He finished for the robot.
"What do YOU know anyway, plebian?!"
"Probably not enough..."
"Aye! Now, let's fix up the new destruction-engine!"
"Yep, we'll wipe out the Super Mutants in one shot, huh?"
"If you'd let me use Clarice more, we would! Sir."
Hancock had a thing with referring to his portable anti-armor rifle RPG attachment as 'Clarice' and, the reason Sanford always discouraged the use of it, was because if there was one thing Han' HAD figured out in the mechanical field- It was how to modify missile warheads.
The Mr. Gutsy had warheads stuffed with shrapnel, napalm, chemical adhesives, and one time, the freak had made a missile filled with plain gunpowder, and he shot at a house filled with Super Mutant scouts that had camped on the road they traveled.
Needless to say, the Super Mutants had been obliterated, Sanford had been tossed onto his backside, and Hancock laughed the hole time, even as he was tossed three feet away from the miniature mushroom cloud his ordnance created.
If the description didn't say it for you, than Sanford would be the first to tell you that the house, and the trees near it, were no longer part of the landscape in said alley of the wasteland.
Wincing at that recollection, the man strolled past his dirt-felled robotic friend with a shake of his head, and stepped through the doorframe of the shack's front face.
He took a quick right into the small bike garage that the station had since its construction.
A tools-bench was in the corner of the room, ringed with chests and wheeled containers holding all sorts of wrenches, drills, ratchets and welding apparatus he had scavenged over the years, a saw-blade mounted table was next to it- The weapons workbench.
Other than that, a chest, drab-leathered, and blazoned with a faded U.S. Army star filled with fixed guns and spare ammo boxed in the farthest corner by the garage door.
Reaching back to the sling over his shoulders, he clenched hold of the laser rifle's stock, wormed his arm back over his head, and held the equipment before him at the worktable.
"Tsk tsk... Girl's pretty beat up..." He looked back out the doorframe to the window viewing the pump-overhang's lot. "-Yo! Han'... You think rapid-fire? Or precision?"
"When in doubt-!" Hancock called from the ground. "-Pump the entire area full of holes and hope God sorts'-em' out!"
"Fair enough... And, speaking of... Good God man! Get outta' the dirt!"
"Pansy!" Came faintly back from outside.
"Ugh..."
Sanford stepped over to the workbench, laid the rifle down across the flat calmly, and opened one of the tens of tiny drawers to sift through an organized pile of washers and bolts.
"Let's see... I need... A General-Atomics model 3a-vis... 3a-vis... 3a-VIS! Ha! Found it!"
He took out a wad of the appropriate bolts, slacked the tiny drawer shut, and opened another.
"I should have another crystal-amplifiiieeerrr...-HERE. Ah, there we are."
That drawer closed too.
SHKSHK
"And... Some sub-atomic resonator coils... THERE."
SHKSHK
"-A few G-A model 4a-vis bolts..."
SHKSHK
"Some cheap knock-off model 56g screws..."
SHKSHK
"-Finally, a roll of spare copper wiring, always comes in handy..."
SHKSHK
"Then, of course, wonderglue and tape. A scavenger's best friend."
SHKSHK
" Hey! Han'! Get your tin-can in here and hold this for me!"
"Blow it out your ear, grandma!"
"Don't get your engine-coolant in a flush, let's go."
"You're worse than my dead sarge'!"
-0-0-0-0-0-
"I hate this sludge..."
PLK
PLK
"-It makes my heels chafe..."
PLK
PLK
PLK
"I wouldn't BE in here if I wasn't hiding like an insect..."
PLK
PLK
"-And I most CERTAINLY, wouldn't be here, if these-"
PLK
SQCHH!
"-FREAKING APES JUST LET ME BE!"
There was a horrendous squelching sound, kind of like if you picked up a wad of mud, and tried to stuff it in a tiny cardboard box that would hold, oh, say the size of an ink-cartridge for a printer.
It was a nasty, repulsive slapping shift, caused by nasty, repulsive, unspoken-of things that were flushed down two-hundred year old toilets, and left to fester.
Kindly, most of it had rotted away, or, had become SNACKS for the local mutated crustaceans, and did not crust and gather in the winding tunnels anymore...
UN-Kindly, a lot of the stuff was still pooling in the center of the passages, and, if you stopped traveling down the mounds of dirt or the concrete service-ways, you were BOUND to step in something just bare-bone ugly.
Ironically, she supposed a lot would think SHE was bare-bone ugly...
But, without that thought gracing the mind at the current second, all she could really focus on was the initial shock of sinking near waist-deep in ape crap.
Which, with no exaggeration, was exactly what befell her in that moment.
With arms spread in sudden lack of belief, palms pained from clenching fingers, and digging sheathes of nails- A seven-foot tall figure aimed her head down at the sloshing muck, and pursed fangs under leathery chops.
She inhaled, exhaled, and finally, let loose a torrent of vulgarity-
"Mère putain, sans valeur, les rongeurs de vie sucer! Spawn de l'enfer! JE VIENS DE LE FAIRE!"
SHLK
All her height was exposed as the tidal wave of- Awkwardly- French cursing came to a barking close, she leapt out of the depths, and flicked her backwards angled legs to rid herself of some of the horrible residue.
Examining herself in horror, the being groaned tiredly, and dragged elongated, thin fingers down its face, past a set of twisting ivory from its temples. Cream eyes shut, and a shaky breath left its chest.
To the normality, incidents like this were never important, they NATURALLY wallowed in filth.
But when the good creator above granted you the ability to have self-preservation, no matter WHAT you were, taking a dip in poop made you angry.
Poop, and whatever else this toxin was meshed with...
The thought alone just mulled her very spirit.
"Je ne peux plus prendre ce..." She muttered into her palms. "-When will it be over? I want out..."
Flicking her legs again, a third lower appendage swung in tired arcs behind her waist line, and the darkened tunnels seemed to stretch in more distance as she gazed down the one she traveled.
"I want OUT..." She complained to no one in particular, limping a little as her self-consciousness prevented her stiffened hips and lower from moving effectively after the bath from hell.
Going under the sewers of ruined human civilization as a highway route was more dangerous than any kind of nighttime excursion she had mounted in the past above-ground... IF, you were human, of course.
The night was always the interval she'd move under to avoid being spotted by anyone, or anything. Life had taught her that the world already was unfriendly, and, because she was, what she WAS, it was specifically unfriendly-ER, to HER.
For, mind you, it wasn't just the healthy shade of drab that made her thin, serpentine hide, or the curling ivory protrusions that rounded on both sides of a long, thin-jawed head with a mouth-full of fangs and a twisting tongue- That made her stick out.
The third rear appendage between her upper buttocks to provide her balance when speed on all fours was needed, the claws sprawling from sets of four rounded toes on her sleek feet- The claws that were longer than a human's forearm winding from each of four fingers...
There was a list that rolled out and went down the tunnel she trekked, of why not just the apes who built this complex, wanted her to stop living.
Indeed, man, the ones who ruined the world they knew, to create the one SHE knew- Wanted her dead, and, since they were uninformed, she supposed with good reason.
Her kind had a large gap in both numerical superiority, and interaction with other races, between those who had been deemed 'Intelligent' and those of the common 'Pack-Mentality' stock.
Most of her race were animals, smart, but still animals.
And notably, for the reasons here- Most of her race were VICIOUS animals, predators, carnivores, things that hunted others, including people, and tore them apart to eat the remnants.
There was a reputation, that labeled her kind as blood thirsty, territorial beasts that killed for the sheer sake of killing.
A reputation, that they brought death, from the ends of claws that could rend through plates of steel.
Those same claws she was also 'Gifted' if that- fiddled in side-drawn swipes to each other as she kept pace with uneven, lumbering, depressed footfalls.
She sighed.
This had been going for a week now.
The running, the hiding, the trudging through the ass-cracks of the world...
All because the most daring, persistent, and cruel humans she had ever encountered, were hell-bent on taking her in a containment cell, or a containment CASE, should she resist.
She knew who they were, their identities were held as fable to most other people, the commoners, that lived in the wastes and the destroyed cities of past civilization.
Clad in mountainous, hulking suits of atomically powered protective suits of armor, shielded under invisible barricades of electric ion fields, and carrying weapons capable of leveling entire blocks of urban clutter- Groups of these hunters, these 'Enclave'- chased her day and night.
As far as she could tell, it was the same 'Squad' that was tailing her all the way, a group of no more than ten.
But, ten or not, they were with the same human beings that had forced her into solitude, and killed all those she held in the same esteem she did herself. And, with no dramatic sense in the grim reality- These beings had stolen a lot from her.
The stinking heaps in these tunnels paled in comparison to the thefts dealt against her... The lives of her social group, the destruction of her home.
It had been years worth of a cycle- she had no idea specifically in length how long- but this 'Enclave' had known she was one of the rarer of her kind, and they wanted to do horrible things to her, she just knew it.
Days went by where she physically hated who she was.
And days went by when she physically hated who everyone, and everything AROUND her, was.
Yet through the pain, the facts still stood.
The Enclave wanted to see what made her tick, and they would do anything in their power to capture or kill her.
Perhaps... She considered, flinching at the stench now emanating FROM her. This garbage is the easy part...
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