CHAPTER 5.
I was doing this, when suddenly I heard that.
Sanford's phobia for the 'Uglier' and the more 'Hideous' fauna for the wastes had, at one point, faded away for his drive of survival.
In a long fabled day in the day, Mr. Tobs actually was so dreading of the worse horrors lurking the destroyed remains of Boston, that he actively tried to cut corners to minimize chance of meeting them.
That was a key player in his 'Missed Opportunities'- that his rookie self experienced many times over.
But now, that it had been a few years, and now that he had shot so many of those things- some of them up close- than he could count, Sanford had a lot more confidence in himself about it all.
His 'Doctrine' if you will, was designed for him and Hancock to take on many times their own number, so, they used guerilla tactics- hit and run, see them before they see you sort of thing.
The few human individuals they had come across had proven their strategy effective to a large degree, in fact, for the bands of Raiders and lawless marauders they had encountered, there had been firefights where their enemies hadn't even SEEN them the whole time.
Sanford had gotten a knack with mid-range carbine weapons, and Hancock had become marksman-level with his Plasma gun, and some of that skill respectively came into Sanford's rapid-fire weapons, and Han's missile launcher.
Bluntly, they were getting much better with their guns, and certain 'Pests' like large insects, or mutated animals, that might have proven lethal in their beginning years, were now devolving into target practice.
It was an empowering thought.
"-Got him!" Sanford cried, rearing back the barrel of his SMG to change the clip.
As he did this, a Ghoul, ANOTHER Ghoul out of all the ones they seen today- flipped forwards onto the cobbled decking of a trailer home, and twitched a few times before trailing to stillness.
Hancock's gun went off in one of the nearby trailers, and a Ghoul's wet scream ended with a few jerking hacks, and the tumbling of wood and breaking glass.
"Take THAT, you fatherless-peapod!"
"Scans picking up any more?"
"Nnnnnegative!"
"Thank God..."
"HOO-RAH! U.S.A! U.S.A!"
The Green Estates hadn't been AS infested as when they had first showed.
In fact, the constant forays they made into the housing complex was the reason for that.
For awhile now, Sanford and Hancock would show up and kill as many of the Ghouls as they could, then they would fall back, and come back again to do it all over.
Eventually, the Ghouls started to dwindle, so, this final attack had been executing what was left.
As such, Ghoul bodies were sprawled in a bunch of the trailers, and the street ringing the compound was laden with twenty or so of the zombified freaks, flat on their faces- if they still had heads left, at that...
Hancock started to zip around and empty out the trailers, humming another patriotic tune as he did so- the hatch on his storage unit was flipped open, and all sorts of metal objects, sources they could use for limited materials- like aluminum or copper- were tossed into the black abyss.
The robot really made his life a lot easier... He helped him fight, was a good guy overall, and helped him scavenge better than any single human could.
Not a bad deal... Except for his unhealthy obsession with explosives.
"Aye, sir! Some old' coot had side-arm ammo in here!" Came from one of the trailer windows. "-All SORTS o' calibers!"
"Good thing. So take them." Sanford called, stepped around a group of dead Ghouls on the patio, to step into the trailer he faced.
"Alright, alright... Makin' me a packmule and such... OooOOH! HEY! I found a watch!"
"Gold?"
"Silver!"
"Awesome."
"Awesome?! My-can! This- is AMAZING."
"You- are a FREAK."
"Proud and loud, baby!"
"This trailer smells like ass..."
"There WERE zombies livin' here a few seconds ago."
"Meh." Sanford stepped over a ruined, matted roll of carpet by the door-frame, clenched the handles of a cupboard drawer and yanked it open with a wooden rattle. "Aw, hey, Han', I found some girl's bloomers in here."
"-Are they spotted?"
"... Uhm... No, here hold on... Yeah... I don't- OH-Oh! Hey-Hey! Here's some! Pink and white!"
"WOOOOO! Sweet-mama!"
"What do YOU know about 'Sweet-mama' huh, robot-man?"
"Don'tchya remember that trip to Goodneighbor?"
"...You mean where we killed a group of guys trying to mug us...?"
"Yessir! That night was beautiful!"
"There's a reason people there are a tad wary of us, Han'..."
"Beside the point! Point being, I saw some Mrs. Handy in that knick-knacks store that made my sprocket-pump go- CLAK!"
"There was no need for me to know that... At... All..."
"Well now ya' do! Oh and, look at this dashing wig!"
"A... Wig...?"
"Yessir! The G.I's office could use this baby!"
Sanford leaned out the window of the trailer to see his robot proudly holding a white, fluttering object out of the doorframe in his search-area.
Sanford squinted, frowned.
"That's not a wig."
"Well then what is it, smart-man?"
"A chef's hat."
"... You mean... Like mean-cuisine?"
"I guess?"
"Hot-dog! I'm keepin' it for liberty!"
The man sighed dramatically, and went back to duck into the trailer again.
How long exactly had that freaking robot been his second in his years out here?
Half the time? A quarter? A third?
It actually nagged at him a bit as he thought this. So, opening his mouth, Sanford went to ask the Mr. Gutsy about what he thought on it.
Then he stopped mid-swing of his tongue, squinted, and remembered the exact clocked time-and-date Hancock had provided with his 'Take-Out' still rotting in his back. Perhaps, for the sake of his sanity, he SHOULDN'T ask this query.
Sanford shivered, and finished his scowering of the trailer, stepping back to start out the doorframe.
Keeping his helmed head low to avoid hitting the top rim, he hopped off the top of the three-step lip of the frame, and jogged over to where Hancock still was rummaging through his chosen spot.
Discarded, ruined clothes, cans and bottle, all sorts of garbage flung out the rear side window that faced Sanford- inside, the robot was rambling about poor housekeeping, lack of pants, and untoward promiscuous nature of Communist mothers.
"Han'? You almost done? Anything else good?"
The Mr. Gutsy zoomed over to the window, two of his eye-stalks protruding from the frame, his claw snaking out from the bottom of the square-opening to hold out items made of needed metals.
Sanford nodded, clenched a wad of cutlery, the watch, and a bundle of wiring
"You're good at this..." Sanford started to congratulate, but then trailed in his own speech when he saw his robot wearing the chef hat he'd found over the top of his ball-like chassis, between the three eye-stalks in a cap.
The young man's brow twitched.
Hancock must have noticed the unconformity in his friend's demeanor, blinked his ocular covers, reached up with his claw, and adjusted the hat.
"I'm KEEPING it." He stated matter-of-factly with pride.
"Ah-hah... Yeah... I'm walking away now."
"Check it out, sir! I'm a POSH-BASTARD!"
"What a flying case of mental-disability..."
"Don't insult my sense of style!"
"Uh-huh. Style. Yeah."
He couldn't help the helpless slump in his shoulders as he stalked away from the confused robotic companion of his.
Sanford couldn't quite put his finger on it, but Hancock seemed to be getting crazier every year he was with him. And indeed, it wasn't something that increased quickly, it was like a slow digress into whackjob-ville.
Scratching his scalp, he supposed it was a better assumption to think the robot being himself as always.
Again, it was another process that would only benefit his health.
"Aye, sir?" Hancock called from the side of the trailer as he levitated out the doorframe. "-A question."
"Shoot. NO- Not literally! Just- Ya' know... What is it?"
"Damn! Caught me..."
"What's the question, psycho?"
"How long 'till these scavenging jobs run dry, do you think?"
Sanford didn't like his own answer to that, because, it wasn't GOOD, or comforting in the slightest.
Just like the Europeon Commonwealth had run out of oil before the Great War, the scavengers of the current wastelands would one day 'Run Out' of scavenge as all the locations in the world gradually lost their mystery and unmarked statuses.
There were only so many old houses, business, and cars to loot before ALL of them had been torn through.
So, what DID they do then?
Sanford chewed his tongue, suppressed his need for outburst, and simply shrugged.
"I don't know."
Hancock didn't press for details- he just floated there, quietly, and made a 'Hurumph.' of acknowledgement.
The Mr. Gutsy may have been a freak, but, he was a good friend... For a freak, at that.
Whenever Sanford wanted the talking to stop, Hancock shut his broadcasters.
"Decent haul," Sanford commented to switch the ground gear. "Help me dig up the rest of the trailers, eh?"
"Yes sir."
"Keep your flamer' handy... I dunno' if we got all of them."
"The smell of charred flesh... Sign of capitalism!"
"You don't have nostrils."
"Why MUST you shit on my parade?! Friggin' Commie!"
-0-0-0-0-0-
What is it?
Detecting the communications in the forgotten, sensory recollections they relied on, she smelled his quizzing from directly behind her.
Misted with the lowly whistling air careening about the tall crag, his question was dulled in the actual wind, like a blood hound would lose a scent on a stormy eve.
Turning over her shoulder, she simply raised her arm blades upwards, and downwards in a gathered, and receded slump, whisking her eyes back at the anomaly he had originally asked her of.
Snorting indignantly, he did not pick up on the cultural iconography she had shown, and grew impatient.
Hello?
Huffing, her nails began to itch at her from the irritation.
Shifting from her hunched squat on the tip of a protruding, stone ridge- her gargoyle appearance tilted forwards to angle her chops in a frown to him.
I just SAID. She released.
Testing her tone with his nostrils, he appeared confused.
No. You did not. You looked at me.
And shrugged.
'Shrugged?'
Yes.
Is that... Simian?
Human?
...Yes.
Yes. It is.
The male cuffed his knuckles under his jaw in a display of uncomfortable idleness, trailing vision from her, to the object she had been observing.
I don't understand you.
If jabbed from the statement, she did not show it. Merely repeating the same 'Human' gesture she had before- the female disregarded his concern with a feigned hiss of amusement.
Not many do.
The Oldest do not understand either.
Shocking.
You are so different from us.
I'm not from the same place as all of you.
I understand that.
And?
And... His pheromones trailed. I do not know.
Look- She interrupted, nodding her jawline back to where she had originally been facing.
The male stepped atop a flatter boulder beside her vantage point, watching alongside her as a small, spherical object, glinted with metallic likeness, zipped away from the clear land down below with a kick of cloudy dust.
The tiny object whirred away over a nearby hill, a green, flashing dot gathering from a thin protrusion jutting from its top.
The female appeared distressed, and he cuffed her with the back of his claw lightly.
What is wrong? What was that sphere?
A robot.
He was taken aback by the alien word.
'Ro-Bot?'
Yes.
What is that?
"A machine," She snapped, completely dropping her usual sensory commune, she growled at him in shaped vocals that he had never heard from another of their kind.
He blinked at her, and opened his mouth to mimic what few speech he had learned.
"Ma'.. Sheen?" He tried. "-Doe'... Doe-Do-Do... Not... Do not under-"
"'Understand'?" She finished for him.
"Y'... Ye... Yes."
"Expected."
"Shew'... S-Shou'- S-SHOULD... Wee... T-Tell, Olders?"
"Yes. That robot scanned us..."
"S-Sca'-?"
"Come on."
She leapt down gracefully onto the rocky earth surrounding the ridge, looking at him at even level for the first time in the encounter.
"The robot gathered... Data, on us. Do you know what DATA, is?"
The male didn't even bother trying to word it, and just shook his head.
"Ah-hah. Maudis-moi..."
That wasn't your usual voice. He remarked back in scent.
"It's another language."
You know two human speaks?
"Yes."
"L-Leeern... T-That... We-WHERE, come from?"
The female stood silent for a second, and responded beside a curt first few steps away from him.
"Yes."
CLANG!
A mesh cover obscured the surface on ruined bolts and screws, and thus, it was completely child's play for her to shove the piece of steel out of her way.
Hissing from stinging, newly exposing light from the grayed sky above, she fingers enwrapped concrete hinges that the mesh cover had been slid and bolted into, and she hoisted herself out of the dark, square-shaped delve into the earth.
Ravaged, human-made, block structures of brick, stone, metal and wood formed aisles up and down the passage between their girths that she had come from. The ground here was blackened with pavement, walking paths, clutter in the form of lighting poles, dispensers of all kinds, and rusted hulks of machinery.
Most of these things she recognized from her brief examinations of human culture, and, despite her need to keep mobile as fast as possible- she felt her curiosity eating away in a nagging sense within her gut.
Eyes drew over the constructed, now ruined, wonders of a long dead civilization- questions started to flood her mind, as they always did.
She had always been too curious.
It was why that Enclave 'Eyebot' robot had been able to pick her and that male up so easily atop the hill.
That instance had been YEARS ago, so long ago, that she actually found it becoming fuzzy as time went on.
The other of her kind, the male- he didn't really have much of a title to her outside of her recognition to his identity, and he had been the only real source of social grandeur she had experienced in her time with her Pack.
Companionship was never meshed with her life outside that other member of her kind... She had started to become less and less annoyed with his honest desire to understand her as the time in the Pack expanded.
There had been a day where she started to feel... Lively, about him, if with no other description.
Why do you always feign this concern? She used to ask him venomously. I'm not 'Normal' by any race's standards. Why won't you accept that?
I do accept it... He had responded with hurt.
Then WHY do you continue to approach me?
You intrigue me. I want to understand you.
Well STOP being intrigued.
That hurt her.
It had been such a long time, and the discussions were material of fable to her, and she felt so horrible about the way she treated him.
He was just as intelligent as her, he could process everything she could, interact with everything she could... But the social barrier, and the reality that they had developed as sentient beings in two totally different worlds- limited his cognitive quickness with her, and likewise.
And now, it was too late to make amends for her hostility, because, that male, and her entire Pack, had been killed and carted off by the Enclave.
She saw him die. It was a cursing memory that painfully did not receive the same time-born blurring the pleasant ones did, but she had indeed seen his demise at the hands of those armored behemoths.
It made her twist, emotionally, and her insides crawled with grief and anger, resentment and depression- they shot him. They REALLY shot him. Pieces of him were taken off.
Her cream-hued eyes did not have the same expunging ability she had seen in humans in their times of mourning- but if she COULD, moistness would have still cascaded from her every single day she thought of him.
He had been a blessing- and she shooed it away until it could no longer be shooed away.
What a horror.
She took lumbering, slow steps across the black pavement of the street, she checked her left, and she checked her right, and she began to stride through the less spaced divisions between the buildings. Her doting made her want to physically move faster, to RUN.
As she covered the trek to an alleyway between a duo of collapsed residential structures, she leaned forwards to begin using her palms as a second apparatus for the sprint, sinewy, lean musculature throughout her scaly hide rippling.
The all-fours run carried her through the aisle with a flurry of movement, and whimsical trails of dust followed weakly in her wake.
She had a reputation back in her past life for speed- beside all the prior mentioned alienation from her kin- in fact, she could outrun the fastest, lithe members of the Pack without much effort, which, was also why the sewers felt cramped to her no matter how large the tunnels were.
Underground was so confined, it never had enough space to simply utilize her ability.
The surface world though, all the open hills and forests, even the human settlements and their streets- provided a haven for her to release the pent up dread and negativity that festered while she was forced underground.
The feeling of wind flinging past her facial features was exciting to her, it reminded her of when she was careless and life wasn't so hard.
It also distracted her on an astronomical level.
Her eyes bugged when a raspy, phlegm-laden screech resonated from ahead of her- her claws digging into the soil of the dirt-topped alleyway, she skidded to a halt, kicking up gravel, and standing to her full height.
The taller urbanized buildings gave way for a larger, open expanse dotted with a duo of houses and rusted industrial vehicles- yet blocking the view of the outskirts of the city, was a wrinkled, raggedy, thin creature that gazed at her drunkenly.
Two yellow little eyes hidden underneath a deformed mug narrowed, crusted nails flexed where they invaded the thing's fingers- and the Ghoul bore a set of rotted fangs in a hiss.
Reclining her head repugnantly, she gazed over the monster's shoulder to where she had been heading, and sighed in annoyance.
"I suppose, you can't just MOVE, can you, monsieur?"
"WEGGHH!"
The Ghoul hacked a bark at her, arms flailing, and sprinting.
"Uncivilized, really..."
Her claw struck out, and the Ghoul gave off a characteristic 'ACHK!' of ruin to its vital systems.
Twitching, with three, curved, forearm-length talons emerging from greenish-red gashes in its back, the creature died in a quick, silent spasm, and, sneering in disgust, she dismissively flicked her fingers- sending the corpse sprawling to the side of the alley.
Taking a note of her now blood-stained weapons, she deflated in annoyance.
"Now I smell, AND look filthy."
The scariest part to her was, she was in the wasteland, HELL, essentially- where the filthiest of the filthy lived, happened, and festered- it was no longer the secluded, calm existence in isolation with a Pack.
Simple things that the explorers in her group would have scoffed at, made her cringe, or outright become horrified.
Raising a brow at the Ghoul in loathing, she examined the gashes she'd made through its torso, noting the extra tear in its body that she had NOT made.
Leaning closer, the smaller hole looked inflicted by munitions- a human bullet.
There was a distant, echoing clacking sound, her head rising to view out into the empty expanse before her.
Quite far-away gunfire, a wounded, wandering Ghoul... Sounded, and looked- like some humans were venturing out into the wastes for glory, or wealth, or whatever it is the apes did war for nowadays...
She didn't have time or patience for it.
Dragging her talons down the brick of the wall with three scrapes, she resumed her sprint out of the alley, and vanished in a blur of movement towards the side-roads ringing the farmlands closer to the city.
-0-0-0-0-0-
The warlord grew impatient when his lackey did not return with the other scout parties, OR his launcher.
He stood silently for a good while, the armored boot of his suit ringing metallically with testing raises of the heel. Like always when angered, his breathing grew heavy and raspy, but not loud enough to be considered panting.
The armor shifted when he spun around to view the outside of the rubble-pit they stood idle in.
"Where IS he?" The leader snarled.
"How far did we spread out?" A woman obscured by a gas-mask and plated, bolted armor asked.
"Not far enough for that little shit to get lost..."
Drawing his eyes across the rear hull of the military vehicle smashed into the debris-laden earth, the band's leader began to trot up the hills of bricks and wood towards where he had sent the ragged soul under his command.
As he neared a good vantage point, another of his group- One he recognized because of his iconic bikers' helmet he had painted neon green- rushed to the top of the rim of rubble, and held his hands out in exclamation.
"What the fuck?" He called. "-We found it?"
The armored lord stopped dead in his tracks, his brows aching from how high they stood.
Behind the first man, three more armed individuals garbed in leather and metal attire gathered, faces twisted in confusion.
"Were you not notified?" Their boss grumbled.
The neon-green helmet of his man shook dumbly.
"Na'. You sent someone?"
"I did."
"Where'd he go?"
"He's dead."
"Well... Wait then' how-?"
"He's dead when he returns."
"Did ya' send old druggie?"
"Oops."
"He's probably stickin' needles..."
"Fuck him. Find the heavy-weapons team, bring us the shell-cracker."
"Aye-aye. We thinkin' something good?"
"Pre-War military tech, what could go wrong?"
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