CHAPTER 4.
Swarms of Spasming Freaks.
Sanford had never been partial to running away from problems before he was brought to the hellish modern day.
Back in his youth of youth- His time as a child- Problems were always something he wanted to tackle head on, get it over with, and solve the dilemma right then and there, it was better than watching it grow.
However, the problem, with THIS problem, was that said PROBLEM, ran on two legs, had claws that rend your throat out, and had teeth designed for tearing away chunks of your flesh.
As accordingly, without the proper tools to DEAL with this problem, running from it, wasn't such a bad idea in the retrospect of it all...
"-HANCOCK!" Sanford belted out, hand fumbling behind his canvas bag as he sprinted like a deer over the hills and upraised mounds of dust. "HANCOCK! KILL IT! KILL IT!"
"EAT THIS! ZOMBIFIED MONKEYS!"
Whilst Sanford stumbled over the terrain of the blasted wasteland, he almost dropped the drum he had yanked out from its hold behind him.
Gasping heavily, his boot caught on a tendril of dead plant life with a crackling tug, and the immediate result was him surging forwards on uneven falls of heel.
"SHIT!" Sanford cried, flinging out his gun and his wrists to block the fall.
The earth flew into his upper half at that instance- His arms and weapon bucked under the impact, and he rolled to the right with a heavy grunt, a string of soil flinging from a brief clench on his gun's side.
He scrambled in a backwards peddle on the ground, shoving the second drum into the ammunition receiver of the SMG, trying not to become distracted by the fact that Hancock was, in fact, keeping him alive.
Green swathes of energy continually flew over where he had fallen, and a Ghoul dropped dead close enough that its claw brushed past Sanford's boot.
Jerking back faster, he snapped the drum into place, pulled the gun's bolt, and knelt to a half-height.
More Ghouls were still running in their direction in disorganized clumps, the main group having scattered a bit to overwhelm both he and his robot, who, still was screaming obscenities about the monsters' mothers.
Sanford aimed down his sights, compressed the trigger.
A rapid clacking of tossed bullets, and pocked impacts dotted a trio of Ghouls, where they fell into twitching heaps of eventual stillness.
He reoriented another target, fired, dropped it, and found another- Then dropped that one too.
The Ghouls started to whittle down beneath the popping pattern of Sanford's submachine gun, and Hancock's precision shots with his Plasma gun.
"You see any more?" Sanford called, draining the last of the drum with a hold on the trigger- A duo of Ghouls flung backwards right off their feet as the rounds landed in their torsos and heads.
"Negatory! VICTORY!" Hancock cried, zooming over to one of the felled zombified beasts, and literally blowing its face open with a coup-de-grace shot of his Plasma gun. "-Take THAT, Commie!"
"We did good, but..."
"There can't be any 'BUTS'- You ungrateful sod! That was the best scuffle-n-tuffle we've had in months!"
"Maybe weeks."
"Whatever!"
"-And there is a BUT- Because YOU, friggin' stumbled onto Ghoul city! What the hell did you do?! You blew something up didn't you?!"
"Did you HEAR this phantom explosion?"
"No?"
"I'm INSULTED, that you would assume ANY, explooosion' of mine, would be anything BUT LOUD!"
"Well then how did an army of freaks get tipped off to you?! Huh?"
"I went in the back! They were sprawled out everywhere! You know as well as me and UNCLE-Sam, that trying to silently kill napping zombies, NEVER WORKS!"
"So, what? You just started shooting them?"
"Precisely! Got a good kill record too!"
"You couldn't have warned me?"
"No time for skullduggery! Time for DESTRUCTION! BABY!"
"God almighty... Y-Ya' know what? You suck. You. SUCK."
"Stick it, primate-boy!"
The jests might have continued, had a blaring blotch of rumbling echo not droned throughout the air.
Sanford spiraled back to the green-hued stain growing across the sky, and now saw, that it was frighteningly closer than before, and he was starting to see streaks of yellow-tinted electricity in the tainted clouds.
The very atmosphere flashed white, and the man's legs propelled him in the air in a rushed, startled jump.
"We gotta' go!"
"I CAN TAKE IT!"
"-Nonononono! Not the time for your hopped-up adrenaline, Han'! C'mon! That stuff will KILL me, which means, it'll eventually be the death of YOU too!"
"NEVER! NO! I STAND AGAINST YOU, GREEN-STAIN!"
"God-DAMN IT, HAN'!"
"THAT'S RIGHT, BABY-CAKES!" Hancock flew over behind Sanford, and loosed off a few pointless blasts of his Plasma gun in the general direction of the storm.
CLAK
CLAK
CLAK
"-I'M READY!"
"That's it, I'm using the manual override... I'm done."
"C'MON, STORM!"
CLAK
CLAK
CLAK
CLAK
"BAAATTTHHHEEEE MEEEEEEE-!"
SHK
"-WOOOAH! THAT'S-! That's-!... O-Oh... OH... You... Dirrrrtyyyy... Bassstttaard..."
Sanford was amazed that the robot had such a personality like that.
Because Hancock had gotten SO into his little fight-mood, that he hadn't even noticed his friend come up and pry open the circuit board of his inhibiter unit- The black circuitry bundle above his storage compartment.
Sanford shoved the square cap into his bag's side pouch, found the green wire- The one that functioned cognition programming- And yanked its plug from the sprocket with a tiny click of sparks.
Right after that, Hancock, the unbeatable rage-show, collapsed like a pile of bricks onto the dusty ground with a hollow series of drum-like beats from his chassis.
Sanford looked down at the 'Knocked-Out' Mr. Gutsy, sighed, grabbed one of his arms, and started dragging the robot across the ground back towards the garage.
With the metallic hiss of Hancock's metals grinding against stone and dirt at his rear, the man reached the frontal garage doors, ignoring the bucks his rattling companion made- And nudged the lift-handle with his foot.
The aluminum entry creaked from the lack of use, and, nothing blew up, and no sirens went off... AND, he was dragging a sixty-pound robot behind him, so, it HAD to be safe.
Sanford grabbed the handle with his spare hand, and lifted the squeaking, ancient garage door ajar with shrieking gears and pulleys.
The inside of the garage was just as messy as the outside, and, like Hancock had said, several dead Ghouls littered the immediate area towards the back of the establishment.
Lifted via crane-crank, a rusted corpse of a convertible was held up near the center ceiling, looted tool-chests were strewn alongside worthless contents on the concrete floor. An upper-level beside the work area held piles of spare parts and ruined shelves.
As long as he kept his gear on, and shut all the doors, the rad-storm outside wouldn't harm him any more than the usual dosage of the poisonous air of Earth DID already.
Not a bad deal.
"Held up in Mobley's Garage..." Sanford tsked. "What have we come to?"
Grunting in effort, he slid Hancock inside the garage door, reached up for the inside handle, and yanked the aluminum door down, echoing creaks from rusty mechanics making him wince from the ungodly ambience.
The door shut in a thwacking sound.
And then that horrible, familiar, and alien silence that cursed the wastes of the world eternal, found its way inside this insignificant little garage.
Sanford looked down at the sorry, collapsed heap of metal and electronics on the floor, sighed, and knelt down to examine the rear of the spherical chassis.
He found the wiring he'd snapped, reached into the circuitry, and shoved the tiny plug back into the slot it belonged in, he clenched the wad of wires to bunch them together again. Reaching into the side pocket of his canvas bag, he took out the small cap that covered the internals of the box.
Slipping it back on, he clicked it into place, and stepped back to begin shutting all the entries to the garage while Hancock sputtered back to life on the floor.
A thin sheet of dust-bunnies on the concrete cast away as filtering vents reactivated, a thrum of active machinery when Hancock's engine levitations came back to life.
"WORKING." Came in the monotone 'Default' personality for RobCo robotics, Hancock gradually floating into the air, his limbs draping from his lower epicenter.
The three eye-stalks flung up, the lenses blinked, the arms twitched, and started to move and examine before the eyes.
"-I-I think... I think I drank too much in the pub..." Hancock muttered, ocular devices swinging around the interior of the garage to see Sanford shutting the rear aluminum doors, and walking back to where he had left the Mr. Gutsy.
"You're alive, excellent." Sanford grinned.
"Y-You... Conniving little shrew... YOU SHUT ME OFF!" Hancock barked. "How... DARE-You..."
"You were having another rant episode."
"I SHOULD- Oh... How bad?"
"Shouldn't you know?"
"All I saw was red."
"Uh-huh. Pretty bad."
"Ah. Than by all means, it was required... For LIBERTY!"
"It looks like we're stuck in this stupid place until the storm passes."
"CAN I LIGHT THE BON-FIRE?!"
"No..."
"-Marxist..."
"Got a lighter in that storage-heap?"
"Yyyyeeep!"
Hancock's unit slacked open, and he started digging with his claw.
As the robot busied himself- Sanford started to look around, and, what he saw was what was happening more and more across the wastes.
All that fighting, all those Ghouls, and there was literally NOTHING, inside this place worth anything of merit or value.
Kneeling down to the side of the garage area, Sanford sifted through the pile of tossed papers, folders, boxes and rusty tools quietly, checking round a fallen tool cart.
"-Ah-HA!" Hancock found the source of a fire in that pit he shoved all kinds of objects into.
"Got it?"
"Got it! And it even has FUEL!"
"I'd certainly hope so..."
"-SIR! SIR! Can we burn the bodies? Please?"
"You may not have nostrils, but I DO. And besides, that's what Raiders and cults do!"
"Ugh, FINE. Change your panties and find me when ya' got the backbone!"
"You've been telling me to change my panties for years..."
"Oops."
"Gimme' that!"
Sanford flicked the lighter to life, looked at all the paper fluttering around on the garage floor, and set about bending down to pick clumps of it up.
All the while, yellow-tinted flares sparked from the windows and door hinges, and droning bursts of radioactivity rumbled outside.
-0-0-0-0-0-
Darkness matted into every corner, crease, and crevice of the winding passages like a thick smog, only remaining broken from barely functioning lighting fixtures that flickered dull reds or yellows.
A hollow moan of empty space paralyzed the ringing silence.
Keeping herself hunched in as predatory a stalk as she thought possible- her claws were unsheathed, teeth bore, she kept the physical grimness presented throughout her entire trek into the tunnels.
It was a natural defensive tactic, seeing as the last thing she really wanted at the current moment, was to make an obscene amount of noise fighting off and killing some stupid animal that thought she was easy prey.
The sewers were already infested with the worst of the worst, but now, there was a storm of some sorts outside, above ground- and those usually drove some form of fauna deeper underground, where specimens inevitably became trapped to stalking the passages.
Already, at least once, she had warded off some sort of creature that had stalked her for a few tunnels- she'd seen its hunched shadow, and a growl was emanating from the vicinity.
Of course, with her status in the hierarchy of predation- all she had to do was look at the thing and snarl at it for it to run off in a whining mess.
That was one part of the isolation that she could actually appreciate to some degree.
YES, she was always a tad lonely with the single-bodied traveling and living, but all the creatures and living things around her weren't exactly company worthy.
Most of the time, she enjoyed the quiet, because she had a very negative outlook on the life forces surrounding her, and her being HER, made most of them stay away on first sight. The run of the mill fauna would soil themselves and scurry away when she walked by.
Even others of her kind, the unintelligent cousins, respected her as a roving independent not to be trifled with.
She had these points with her being that she enjoyed thoroughly, but also had points that did nothing positive for her. It could be worse, but she still never told herself that.
In the maze-like corridors of the sewers, she kept traveling east, or, what she THOUGHT was east.
Staying underground for the whole trip had been difficult, because, since war had been what destroyed the world- many sewers were entirely caved in, entire passages didn't exist anymore, and countless tunnels were capped with dead-ends.
Not to mention, for some select hell-holes, sometimes it was MORE safe to travel above ground, than it was to navigate understructures infested with larger creatures- like Mirelurks, or Radscorpions.
When she had been in her social group, her tribe, before the Enclave killed them- word had rebounded a few times in her direction that even worse monstrosities lurked the farther south of the 'East Coast' of old humanity you went.
There was a thin outcrop into the ocean she had observed, an island, connecting to a large metropolis called 'New York'.
While New York itself, and most of the surrounding area, were nothing but a lifeless indent in the world's crust, if you went around the radioactive crater, across its rims closer to olden Florida, or in the farthest outskirts of dead Connecticut- abominations that would even haunt HER were said to live.
She had killed many large beasts that had challenged her in the past, and they all had their traits and habits that had made lasting impressions, and lessons, on her.
But the idea that something out there was so horrible it could undo OTHER horrible things?
Yikes.
She blew out an annoyed gust of air from behind her fangs.
For the longest of times, she had made habits of muttering to herself, and, quickly, that grew agitating- so a new habit of consistent internal reminding, debating, note-taking- became commonplace. Sometimes all she did was think.
It was, really, some measure of banter with another being, her own mind.
Which was also worthy of the word prior- Yikes.
Stopping in her trek, a towering blockage of darkened gloom began to recede the dimmed few lights over surfaces of man-made brick.
She took a last step, and tested the air with her snout.
The air seemed cooler, and the smell of plant matter, clean(er) water, kempt soil filled her enhanced sensory reception.
Trailing cream eyes at the wall, she could determine the structure was a large ledge, and its foot was scattered with a mound of offal, waste, and glowing fungus that thrived from it. Dragging stains of green clawed down the top of the wall all to the bottom, and light was barely visible in slivers at the ledge up there.
The illumination looked gridded, a hundred pillars shown through a grate cap or cover.
Feeling her shoulders slump, she cocked her head to the right wall of the passage, then the left one, and then behind her to the snaking passage that, up until this point, had been a single-route main service way.
A few other entrances she had found had delved into the bowels of sewage processing facilities, surface structures' foundations, and some tunnels that lead more to the north, not east, where she needed to be.
This was a dilemma.
She didn't exactly find it reasonable, nor appealing, to turn around...
She had to go up.
"-It's away from the ape-excrement, at least..." She mumbled under clicking jaws.
Leaning back on her hind legs, her tail rigidly stood upwards, and with the bioengineered musculature her mutated evolution had granted her, she leapt like a cat targeting a precipitous ledge, hailing into the higher air before the ceiling.
She soared for a brief second, claws extending from her reptilian fingers- she caught onto the top ledge of the wall with twin CLK! sounds, and the gradual tiny crumble of dislodged pebbles.
Palms clasping the rim above her, she hung from her limbs, placed the heels of her feet into the wall, and hoisted herself upwards.
-0-0-0-0-0-
When the barricade had folded away, the sky had lacked even a sliver of sunlight, the clouds were grayed and matted, and the signs of lethal sparked radioactivity had ceased.
So they packed up the few meager finds within the garage, stomped out the fire-(At least, Sanford did)-stepped outside, and resumed their travels for where they had ORIGINALLY, intended to go and search for materials.
Sanford was actually a little annoyed more than relieved, because, yes, they had avoided the storm- but it also provided yet another setback.
And that setback repeated itself many times over, and would continue to do so.
Radiation storms may have been quick, and fickle, but they happened every few days, there wasn't a week that went by in old Boston where a Rad-storm DIDN'T wash over the landscape, and on top of that- if you went the farthest south, the Glowing Sea was a GIGANTIC Rad-storm that never ceased.
Add that to the roving groups of dirtbags hoping to rob and murder, the hungry mutant monsters, the man-eating Super Mutants, and walking to-and-fro from needed locations was a complete disaster on the worst days.
Not everyone was equipped like the friggin' Brotherhood of Steel...
"I need a vacation..." Sanford dragged a tugging hand down his mandible. "-I need a vacation, and a bigger gun."
"Speak for yourself," Hancock chimed. "I get to fry things with Clarice! HOOWAH!"
Sanford had learned long ago how to cope with the daily cries, insults, and chaotic behavior of the Mr. Gutsy, so, whenever Hancock started one of his rants about pretty much ANYTHING, Sanford could tune it out.
He just kept his feet moving uphill on the sloping land, minding to watch the horizon.
Dangerous things tended to be simplistic.
Thus, Hancock's complex dialogue was easy to blur out for the task at hand.
As Sanford thought this, he felt a nice grin coming across his features as he daydreamed at the ground in front of him.
"HA! See THAT! That right there!"
CLAK
Sanford whizzed his head around just as Hancock fired a single blast of Plasma into an oversized insectoid abomination that buzzed over a nearby rise of land.
Basically, a spiky, overgrown mosquito, the 'Bloodbug' burst into a green paste that splattered in a miniature geyser from the point of direct impact, its proboscis- also its main weapon- flew off in the distance a whipping, green-trailing chunk.
Hancock would've started to mock his companion about the lack of kills, but as he did this, Sanford's arms jolted up, and he aimed down the sights of his submachine gun.
The weapon clattered, dust flew up from a group of new targets, and before either party knew it- a pair of the large mosquitoes fluttered down to the earth in green-stained, chunk-matted corpses.
The robot examined the bodies ahead of them, lowering his gun, glanced at Sanford with an eye-stalk, who smiled like a comedic.
"-Guess you can't call me out on kills this time, huh?"
Hancock darted back to view the dead bugs, aimed his gun, and planted a single bolt of plasma into one of the heaped mounds.
It sizzled on impact, and more green gore flung up repugnantly.
"Nope! I have TWO kills! HE was still alive! HOO-RAH!"
"You're full of it."
"It TWITCHED!"
"YOU twitched..."
"It's a sign of being a stalwart veteran!"
"Oh Christ..."
Sanford wheeled around on his heel and kept walking.
Stunned from the lack of response, and subsequent back-forth snaps between them- Hancock floated in place with a narrowing of his lenses.
He 'Pff!'d, with a hint of garbled disruption- and followed with a quite noticeable unconformity.
Around the raising degree of height in the landscape, very soon, held in the winding, tendril-like grip of crisscrossing dusty roads, a collection of metal trailers and portable structures sat in a clearing silently.
A parking lot holding the dilapidated hulks of several cars and trucks sprawled to the north, and already, they hadn't even entered the Green Estates- and they could see the shuffling, ape-like shapes of several zombified horrors lurking around in the darker corners.
Sanford checked his ammo with a quick dislodge of his clip, and Hancock released a hissing-sound from the warming nozzle of his flamethrower.
"I LOVE my job, sir." Hancock sighed happily. "-And the smell of napalm."
"Then let's get to it, Han'."
"Like always?"
"Yep."
"FOR LIBERTY!"
-0-0-0-0-0-
In a whine of misused, beaten servos- a iron-wrapped cage of encasing footwear, a robotically powered and supported boot- stomped over a final height of wood and plaster debris with a great belch of dust.
The boot's twin lashed out, kicking away a crumbling mound of bricks that clabbered down the piles of rubble like hundreds of tiny boulders, gloves of metal reached out and tore away a flimsy, twisted sheet of aluminum with a wretched screech.
Smog from the prior undisturbed mound kicked up in a cloud, which, eventually, was parted in two by the thudding, bulky hunchbacked form of a titan.
Raspy breathing emanated from long broken oxygen vents, caged slatted metal wrapped raggedly over arms of the servo suit beneath, a broken, dent-riddled chest piece of pre-war military-grade was augmented with street signs nailed over its bottom and top lips.
The beast's legs were partially outfitted with the original leg-pieces of the military suit, with the servo-suit areas exposed protected with more cage armor.
A helmet made of a hollowed conglomerate of wrapped, bolted steel, capped on the cranium with a large, industrial washer- angled back and forth through the flurried mist.
Grunting, the user of the suit waved a burly, armored arm forwards, and as he trotted down the debris, several other thinner, smaller, combatants followed him, faced obscured behind gas-masks, biker and sports helmets painted with vulgar script and profanity.
The Power Armored head of the assortment jabbed a plated finger ahead of himself.
"Found it." He said. "We got it."
Flexing his fingers towards his cronies, one of them snickered manically, hands and body twitching from lack of fix from some sort of narcotic he'd addicted himself to- and scurried off under predefined orders.
The Raider leader took a few steps forwards, toward a blocky, wheeled contraption firmly lodged in the collapsed remains of a brick building.
Reaching up, he brushed his steel palm down the bullet-dent laden armor plating of the vehicle with a hiss of titanium. He kicked the rear-bed door with an ear-wrecking THRUMMM- and was met with little success other than agitating himself.
"No'n else could cracl 'er..." One of his subordinates sneered. "-How'll we'?"
"Blow it open."
"Won' that smash the good's in tha'?"
"Maybe."
"Well whatta' use is that?"
"A use to no one else."
"Peh..."
"I don't split the loot with all of you to hear you complain. Now where's that drug-hopped rat?"
"Comin' bac' with the launcha'."
"Mm."
"Whaddya' think's inside?"
"Don't know. But I want it. It's military."
The warlord paced impatiently by the rear of the military vehicle, observing the worn, drab-colored paint livery.
If the transport was of the same age the rumors SAID it was, than something pre-war was still locked away in its hold, and, when it came to pre-war army tech, there were many delicious possibilities.
Maybe it was guns, A gun, armor and supplies... Or it could have really been nothing.
But it was worth the chance.
It HAD to have been, because the last thing he was doing was wasting all this time and effort to simply turn back.
The man inside the raggedy, pieced-together armor had a feeling of something very valuable in this APC, why else could no one break open? Sounded like fate to him. And luckily, he figured even fate could be blown away with a few AP-warheads.
His band would go back for reinforcement now that they knew where the thing was.
It was only a matter of time, and how many rocket's they'd be forced to use.
-0-0-0-0-0-