There was some point in Carolyn's past where she'd experienced a concussion firsthand, maybe when she was around fourteen years old, not that she could remember it at all, it was everyone else in the family telling her all about what had happened. It occurred when she'd played baseball for the same team as her brother Ronny, it had been mixed gender with both boys and girls, pretty liberal for the time, but the argument still stood for most that girls and boys had no business playing on the same field, something about girls not being able to take a hit. While Carolyn herself was nowhere near prolific in her own practice as a batter; (she would have considered herself quite average), she often would argue in favour of mixed teams if only to stick close to her brother. It was on that particular day that she can't remember that she'd proved to the parents, coach, and the rest of the nay-sayers that girls could in fact take a hit.
Ronny never told the story straight, it always managed to change, but her favourite version was that their pitcher, Arnie, had a crush on her that would shame a junior high prom queen. Every time she stepped up to bat, he couldn't throw worth a damn and the coach would either give Carolyn the first base or send him to the bench. What happened then, according to Ronny, was that the umpire started making fun of Arnie for his little crush, and Arnie had, in a mortified rage, thrown the ball at the umpire with the intent to hit him anywhere it hurt. However, throwing the ball in a fit of rage only ensured its total inaccuracy, its actual target ended up being Carolyn's face.
As the story goes that's also why he quit the team and switched schools, Ronny was certain that somewhere out in the world that that horrified expression was permanently plastered to his adult features.
Considering the outcome, she knows what it feels like to have a concussion and waking up with one is nowhere near as pleasant as waking up from cryogenic freezing, especially when you wake up folded over someone's shoulder like a rolled up length of carpet.
It's barely sunup from what she can tell when she first opens her eyes into blurry painful haze, but it's not what she first notices about her immediate predicament. Her head feels like its splitting open, a gash of pain arching from her eyebrow diagonally across to the back of her neck, only intensified by the stiff aching muscles in her back and shoulders, and the pounding of blood pooling in her head from being half hung upside down. Her skull feels like a large red balloon about to pop, she may very well throw up again, not that she'd put much in her stomach last night, she found she could barely eat a morsel of food that Don had found for them in an old basement cellar. She swallows the saliva beginning to pool in her mouth, only to find her lips and cheeks plastered to a length of duct tape.
Yes, throwing up right now would be a very bad idea.
Squinting, trying to see through the headache, her hair is hanging in her face and effectively cutting off her view of anything besides the rear and back steps of whoever is hauling her. His boots caked in mud, crunching gravel and grass under his heels in a slow swaggering saunter, most likely from having to carry Carolyn. Around his belt are braided pieces of leather, pockets stained and blackened from use, full of angular bits and pieces, what she guessed might be ammo.
With a single readjusting hoist, the man carrying her reawakens the discomfort in the rest of her body, she's suddenly painfully aware of the sharp prod sitting against her lower abdomen, what must have been previously numbed by the consistent pressure from the plate of metal sitting across the shoulder she's laying across. The jolt crawls across her waist and up her back diagonally with a slow burn, aching against where her arms are bound. With every second step and low swagger it only worsens, she's suddenly thankful the tape over her mouth is muffling any sounds of agony she's failing to conceal.
Tears pooling and running up the length of her forehead, she tries to remember how she got there but her head hurts so terribly all she can think of is the relief of being upright.
Suddenly, from a distance, she can hear a somehow familiar howl, a group of people ahead calling out and whistling, catcalling whoever is carrying her upon their approach. What sounds like humanoid wolves in a stadium, cheering on their warrior before a battle, surrounding them from above. Through the noise, she can hear a nearby motor running, a beam of light that passes by the man's feet, and at his side stacked sand bags and building debris tossed aside to make a wide path.
Carolyn gets the sudden terrifying notion that she's arrived at the intended destination and that the intentions are nowhere near pleasant. She's in really big trouble with no recollection as to how she got there.
Ahead of them, the creak of a metal door on rusty hinges pierces her ears, escalating the throbbing her head almost already at its peak to the point where she wavers in and out of consciousness over the next few moments, so much so that when she's finally still, she has no idea how much time has passed and probably won't know until she can reorient herself. Her head is full of static, she can't think or really process why she's stopped moving forward, but she can hear the voices around her echo in the space that smells like an extra large car garage.
"Jared, I got another one!" The man carrying her calls out, Carolyn recognizes the voice but she can't quite place it, a low gravelly voice broken down into something almost sickly, it vibrates from his chest and strikes a sudden bout of fear at the implication of not being the first one captured.
From above them, she hears the sound of boots stomping on metal, slow to approach until they come to a halt with the sound of a hand slapping on a metal hand rail, the sound reverberating down the length of the room and etching a blind picture of the platforms expanse. The man calls down after a few seconds of silence, his voice almost cleaner than the first and one she absolutely doesn't recognize, "Where'd you find her?"
"Her and her boyfriend were wandering around some pre-war houses up north, fresh out of the vault looks like, real clean looking, I think the boss is really gonna like this one." The man pats the back of Carolyn's thigh twice, planting his hand on the plump flesh and spreading his fingers wide to grip tight, even through the fabric of the Vault suit, her skin shutters, sending a trail of goose bumps straight up her spine and twisting her stomach in immediate dread.
The man he called Jared sounds more like he's talking to himself when he responds, "He fuckin' better, I ain't runnin' a god damn charity. I got other important shit to deal with."
The man carrying her lets out a low annoyed grunt, mimicking the other's tone and volume, "Yeah, wouldn't want to ruin your project for the fucking science fair..."
"What the fuck did you say?" Jared snaps.
"I said you have beautiful fucking hair, you want the bitch or not?"
Jared lets out a tired groan and Carolyn can feel the man's chest rumble with a chuckle under her stomach. He readjusts his grip; apparently receiving a silent confirmation from Jared that she didn't see, and proceeds to haul her up a set of metal stairs at the left end of the room, he sounds exhausted as he proceeds, his pace slowing significantly until he finally gets to the top with a huff. She can smell the sweat and pungent body odour he's emitting, what smells like a mixture of gasoline and oil on top of everything else, and something close to what she fears is blood. He's had to carry her for a while, which means he might be tired enough for Carolyn to fight him off if she needed.
"Where do you want her?" The man asks as they walk across a grated platform and extended bridge hanging above the floor ten feet below, Carolyn is able to turn her head only just to make out the factory floor of a vehicle manufacturing plant. Pre-war vehicles lay disassembled and rusted on their conveyor platform stations, large red girder pillars are placed throughout around the boarders of the different assembly stations, and a large caged off power station sits central.
Her heart begins to race with anticipatory adrenaline; she recalls coming here as a girl with her class to see the factory in action, a school field trip courtesy of a General Atomics International partner. She remembers asking questions about the vehicles nuclear core, and jotting down notes for an essay due that week on a subject of choice.
She knows exactly where she is, the Corvega Assembly Plant.
"Just toss 'er in the corner away from the equipment," Jared responds as the floor disappears behind the walls of the office that overlooks production, "I don't want her near this shit, I'd throw 'er in the basement if I wasn't sure that she'd be torn to pieces by the strung out pieces of shit we decided to recruit."
Torn paper is carelessly kicked aside as she's carried across the room, a few empty tin cans and bits of scrap metal lay in piles that he steps over, "I like how you say 'we' like I had a fucking say in who you decided to let in, you just wanted to fill space and didn't give a shit who filled it."
"Sounds like your Ex." Jared jabs with a smirk.
The man cackles, "Yeah, fuck off."
He stops, kneels down, arches his shoulder down, and literally throws her body to the side and right onto the cold metal without a hint of ease. Her shoulder and elbow crack against the floor, sending a bolt of new pain into her joints and a jab right against the burning pain crawling up her back like fresh blood. She can't help the cry of pain that she emits against the duct tape.
Neither of them seems to notice her, either that or they don't care too much. He only stands right back up after unloading her without so much as a sideways glance, stretching out his back with the dull crackle of cartilage in a half dozen places.
"It's nice to know you don't think I'm also a strung out piece of shit, though," He pulls out a half crushed and stained white box of cigarettes from his back pocket, pulling two out and offering one to Jared, who accepts after a short break of annoyance.
"Y'know what I mean, Gristle," He growls, "You ain't like them other assholes."
He turns to glare at Jared without a response. Carolyn, now lying down, finds her head beginning to clear if only mildly, and is able to take in the two standing before her, and they're quite shocking in appearance. The man that carried her all this way, Gristle, is plastered in bits of orange welded metal covering the majority of his torso, the sharp shoulder armour explaining the pain in her abdomen. His bare arms show an array of scars all healed in different progressions, from one that looks to be years old to another that is startlingly recent, perhaps hours ago. His hair is shaved into a four inch pail blonde, almost white Mohawk, and his eyes are black like charcoal. His face displays the level of filth he's accumulated in patches ranging all over his pants, like a mixture of blood and caked oil or engine grease.
Jared waits as Gristle lights his cigarette, his own appearance very contrast. He's wearing a worn black leather jacket and tattered jeans; on his arm is a piece of welded orange plating similar to Gristles that's strapped on and across his chest. His hair is the same cut, but only half the length and black, and on his face, instead of an accumulation of filth, is white tribal face paint illustrating something resembling a skull. It's so stark against both his dark pigment and the lighting in the room that when he speaks, she almost can't see the skin behind the makeup.
"Lucky me," Gristle mumbles with the smoke billowing out between his lips, he grabs Jared's arm to steady himself as he leans in and presses the end of his smouldering cigarette to his, lighting it with a second or two of contact, "Those other assholes get to be your guinea pigs."
"The fuck do you care?" Jared exhales smoke sporadically as he barks.
Gristle crosses the room to a metal desk sitting under a large open window overlooking the factory floor, next to the large computer terminal sitting in the center he unloads a handful of ammunition from his front side pocket and pours them into a messy pile, they look like a collection of random types to be sorted, "Just feels like a matter of time, soon you'll run out of them and decide to slip a little something into ole' Gristle's morning bourbon as contingency."
"You fuckin' idiot, you really think I'd risk killin' you?" Jared marches up and smacks a hand on the desk next to him, cigarette in his fingers, and points out the window to nothing specific, "I got these fuckers linin' up for the shit I give out, I can call in dozens of 'em with the promise of free chems, but you're the only fuckin' person around here I don't wanna string up like Christmas lights!"
Gristle grinds something into the desk under the palm of his glove, "Yeah, I'm real fucking honoured, Jared."
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Jared snaps, "I'm tellin' you I trust you enough that I ain't gonna shoot you up fucking sideways and you get all fuckin' twisted!"
Gristle turns to face him, "Funny, you said you trusted Lonnie too."
"Lonnie was a fucking cunt," Jared fires back immediately.
"Yeah, 'cause she wouldn't fuck you, right?" Gristle's voice glowers, "That what you're going to say about me when I'm dead, too? Gristle was a fucking cunt, I always hated that asshole?"
Jared snarls and throws his fist up in a flash, punching Gristle across the face with the heavy slap of flesh. The smoke that had been hanging the man's mouth flies across the room and smothers against a pile of shattered ceramic. Carolyn finds herself flinching back as an empathy response as Gristle doesn't so much as react, as he mechanically receives the blow like he'd been trying for it.
The other man pushes himself from the desk and paces back across the room, running a hand over his forehead back across his short dark Mohawk, smearing his face paint in the process but not paying it much mind. His smoke is reduced to a mashed glob of paper and tobacco, he tosses it to the ground and finally turns back to Gristle, speaking in cold and reserved tone, "All I told you to do was nab the old bitch and bring her back here, I don't expect you to fuckin' like it, and I didn't ask for your fuckin' opinion. Get outta here and do your fuckin' job."
Carolyn can hear Gristle exhale from where she is, and it sounds like a low growl. She fully expects a retaliation, in fact she pulls herself into a smaller ball in preparation, ready for the other man to lunge out and attack, but all Gristle does is open his palm from its white knuckled fist and tap the desk next to the pile of random bullets. He then straightens himself back up and rubs his jaw where he'd been struck.
"I'll have her here before dark," He states lowly, not waiting for a response before he exits the first room and crosses the next quarter platform into another adjoining office.
As his heavy footfalls descend the stairs and fade into the expanse of the factory, the room is plunged into the quietest silence that Carolyn has ever experienced; she eyes Jared cautiously, waiting hesitantly for him to react, or move, or do anything that doesn't include glaring at an old poster plastered to the wall in ribbons of moldy coloured paper.
Finally, he turns his head to look directly at Carolyn. That single unwavering acknowledgement of her presence is enough to freeze solid all the blood in her body.
He turns and tucks his thumbs in the leather belt roped through the rungs of his jeans, for a moment he just studies her, eyeing her up and down with a sharp glare of intelligence, Carolyn can feel her skin prickle even under the fabric of the Vault suit. She doesn't move a muscle, she doesn't dare to, she's only thankful that her body is totally covered by the stark shade of artificial blue, even if it's tight enough to leave little to the imagination. Even with that little reassurance, she still feels, under his gaze, that she's wearing nothing at all.
"I don't want you tryin' anything stupid, got it?" He finally sneers and lifts a hand to jab at the ground under where she's sitting, "You stay right fuckin' there. Don't move, don't talk, don't even fucking breathe. I don't even wanna fuckin' know you're there, and I ain't got a problem tossing you to the wolves in the basement if you pull any shit. I don't want you here, and if I'm lucky, you won't be for very long."
Carolyn stares up at him with wide and terrified eyes, Jared raises his brow and inclines his head expectantly awaiting her acknowledgement, "You got it, bitch?!"
She flinches back and nods quickly, her hair falling askew in her face as she does.
Jared lets out a guttural and disgusted scoff, "You vaulties are fuckin' soft. The Commonwealth's gonna tear you apart, bitch. Just wait 'til the boss gets a hold of you and you won't look so fuckin' scared by a half decent nab."
Carolyn watches as he turns to the metal desk and swipes off the pile of bullets directly into the trash can next to the desk, along with a torn sheet of yellow stained paper and half a pencil. He then turns to walk in the direction where Gristle disappeared. She listens intently to the sound of his footfalls as they recede, but don't fade. It sounds like he stops in the next adjoining office from across the other metal platform.
For a moment, all Carolyn can do is sit in silence as the total reality of her situation hits her, she first looks down to her legs bound by silver duct tape in three different places, her ankles, calves, and thighs. On the right side of her Vault suit, there's mud smeared from her knee all the way up her hip and what she can see of her arm, dried and cracking in most of the affected area. She can't remember falling in the mud at any point, which worries her as much as not being able to remember what had happened to get her to this point.
All she can recall is last night, what she hopes is only last night, she's standing at the door of her old home unable to take more that a single step inside, wanting so badly to turn around and close the door behind her to shield what had become of it. She remembers Codsworth giving her that Holotape, the one with Nate's writing on it that turned her stomach into stone. She had put it in her pocket, something she'd been wearing over her Vault suit, an over coat, or a jacket? Did she take it off?
There's a flash, a burst of something yellow and electrical, something startling, but everything after that is a blur; she can't remember Codsworth following her back to Rosa's house, or Don past watching him curl up on the floor near the door on a makeshift sleeping bag and falling to sleep with apparent relative ease, something she recalls envying in her numbed state.
This begs the question of where they are. She knows neither of them would have given her up without a fight, what if something awful happened to them that resulted in her kidnapping? The very notion terrifies her far more than her predicament; her panic is rising back into hysteria. She begins to twist her legs against her restraints, curling the tape into an ugly wad that further seals her binds. She muffles a cry into the tape across her mouth, sweat and spit coating her lips and leaking the taste of the chemical glue into her mouth. Her arms are pinned at her sides with another length of tape around her torso and under her breasts, her forearms bound square to each other against the small of her back with an angle that aches in her shoulders.
Immediately she begins scanning the room for anything sharp, only then realizing that everything passed the doorway onto the metal grated platform is blurry, she tries to blink away the haze, but she quickly remembers her vision impairment following the absence of her glasses. Considering how she got here, they could have easy fallen off while she was unconscious.
She mutters a desperate groan under the tape, twisting her upper body to find some form of give in her binds but to no avail. All it does is reawaken the burning ache across her back and prompts her to stop struggling the moment it builds to an unbearable peak.
Falling back limp against the floor, she squeezes her eyes shut. She's bound so secure that, even in the best case scenario where she'd find something like a knife; she would have no means to cut the tape away without help. There has to be something she can do, she can't just lie here helpless when she doesn't know if her friends are alright.
In that moment, she can't conceive a plan, all she finds herself doing is allowing hot tears to pool and run down the corners of her eyes and into her hair.
Outside of Corvega, the blue steel door leading directly onto the street bursts open and almost tears from its rusted hinges in the process, immediately following, an angry lieutenant strides out onto the road. The clouds are starting to rumble overhead with green and gaseous radiation, a clap of lightening ignites the distant trees under the mountains. Even after the sunny morning he had to sweat through, there's one hell of a storm coming and he'd better get his ass moving if he doesn't want to bunk down for the afternoon in an old bus or under a bridge. Those ferals always shadowed weather like this and he doesn't feel like dying tonight. Damn weather is so fucking moody.
Gristle marches out onto the road leading into Lexington like the trip here didn't totally wipe him out and warrant a meal, drink, and a good night's sleep. He didn't really expect Jared to listen to him about stopping all the shit he's pulling with those experimental chems, he was hoping for some kind of reassurance, but all he got was Jared being the same fucking asshole as per usual.
What frustrates Gristle the most is how fucking worried he is about him, at this rate he's been using the drugs himself too and he's going to get himself killed if he doesn't find the answers he's looking for. That's a whole new can of bullshit that Gristle doesn't even want to touch, he puts no stock in fortune tellers or anything in the like, but Jared believes it so feverishly he's going crazy as a result. Maybe if he just gets the old bitch to Corvega, he'll find his answers and things will go right back to normal.
After Lexington, Gristle heads Northwest up the road alone, the people who'd followed him up to the factory in the first place had been left behind to make sure that the exchange happened with no complications. The delivery was behind schedule, but the Triggermen had rejected everyone before this Vault Dweller on account of decent taste. Gristle didn't give two shits because all women look the same to him. This vaultie though, she looked good enough that even he would have looked twice at her, even if the little bitch managed to get him good when he swiped her, gave him a bloody nose and a gash on his arm. For someone that looked so fresh out of the Vault, she could put up one hell of a struggle. He doubts those trilby hat motherfuckers will say no this time, but they'd better keep her in restraints if they know what's good for them.
The time constraint for returning to Concord isn't urgent, so he plans to stop by the Diner he passed on the way out for some grub, however when he gets within five minutes of the town he finds that it's real damn quiet up the road. He expected to hear some yelling, a few shots firing into the air by a few of 'em fucking around, but there's nothing besides the howling of wind through the tree's that whips leaves against his metal chest armour. With the way weather is acting too, he doesn't want to leave it to chance. Not that he believes in signs or omens, but he's got a real bad feeling in his gut.
Could be they finally took care of the settlers and were packing in for the storm, they better not have killed off that old hag, if Gristle hopes to help Jared at all she's his ticket.
Against the wind, it takes several minutes to make it up to the town, but the second he steps out into the street where his crew set up barricades next to some of the old streetlamps and vehicles, he knows that some serious shit went down while he was gone. Down the length of the road all he can see is blood splattered across the cement for its entire distance, the dozens of bodies in view belonging to his crew, all lying out to rot in the open air.
Standing in the intersection in front of the Museum where they'd trapped the settlers, Gristle steps down the road and can finally see the extent of the carnage in a mixture of disbelief and enraged confusion, they aren't just dead; the bodies are in pieces. Plastered to the buildings as high as the second floor windows, chunks of red gore, both remnants of tattered limbs with protruding bone, and the linings of bloated intestines paint the old wood like holiday decorations. Smeared across the road, becoming the new layer of concrete, are the bits that hadn't stuck to anything vertical. The only things distinguishable amidst the deep scarlet ooze are the weapons and armour pieces they'd been wearing before the battle.
A billow of wind from the impending storm runs up the length of the street, the stench of death hits Gristle like a punch, it's not a smell he's unfamiliar with, but the blend of both that and the sight before him curls his stomach like he hasn't experienced in decades.
There's no way in hell any of those settlers could have done this much damage while he was gone. Their main defence had been a laser musket from the balcony above him, not whatever had sliced up his men into ribbons now hanging on the pre-war shops like Halloween decorations. This was the work of something a hell of a lot more aggressive than a few trapped and desperate people.
Gristle suddenly regrets not bringing any more men with him on the way back.
Stepping back from the gore, he carefully pulls out his shotgun, listening to the howling of wind through the old buildings. The clouds overhead are beginning to swirl with supercharged radiation, rain swelling and wafting the scent petrichor through the air around him. Strangling the sun from its position above him, chilling the atmosphere and prickling his skin with a shiver that crawls up his neck like a large multi-limbed insect. He resists the impulse to reach back and smack the skin effected. Instead he continues to walk backwards towards the museum, stepping over any carnage that's under his heel, scanning the rooftops overhead for movement. A distant howl bellows, sounding like a ghostly moan, but only increases as a single approaching gust of wind funnels down the street towards him, carrying with it leaves and the stench of the innards of his men.
BAM.
Gristle hollers out in surprise, spinning on heel to shoot with an inaccurate stumble, the source of the alarming sound and his inevitable target being a door of the museum that had slammed shut by the force of the wind storm.
Emitting a frustrated growl, he throws his arms down and circles a few short laps to shake off the jitters, cursing aloud at his own nerves getting the best of him. He marches up to the door as it swings loosely on its hinges, grabbing the flaking wood and slamming it back shut on its frame. Immediately, he jerks his hand away, the sight of dramatic damage sending his stomach into a writhing ball of fear. Four large gouges rake the splintered wood, diagonal and stretching from one corner of the door to the other, as wide as the palm of his hand and so deep that there's small fractures in the wood that visibly display the inside of the building. The door is in one piece by nothing more than splinters, one more hit with his shotgun, or another strong gust of wind and the door would have shattered.
If he were any kind of sensible man, he'd turn on his hide and sprint back up to Corvega, let Jared know that the old broad is dead along with the rest of his men. Even if he hadn't seen her body, if the thing that attacked his men had gotten in, she and the rest of those fucking settlers should be hanging in pieces off the rafters. The issue stands, however, that Jared needs her, and this means that Gristle needs her too. He'll need to make sure she's dead or grab some kind of evidence. Hell, maybe the thing is long gone and he can also grab that cowboy's fucking hat while he's at it.
"You owe me one Jared," Gristle snarls.
With a preparatory inhale, he pulls it open again with the long eerie whine of its hinges. He lets the barrel of his shotgun poke through first as he observes the first few feet of the museum floor; initially it's more of those same claw marks, but shallower and less aggressive. Around the trail, leading up the wall and pillars supporting the first floor balcony are sporadic patterns of deep grading bullet holes shredding the wood like paper, the cause being what looks like some serious firepower.
Above him, the shattered glass top ceiling still open to the dark green clouds pooling overhead strangle any light trying to make its way through and casting deep ominous shadows over most of what Gristle can see aside from what's being lit by a single overturned lantern sitting at the base of a right side pillar. However, the crackled glass containing its small burning flame casts up spidery shadows against the wood of the large wooden toll gate, making any practical visibility difficult.
What he does see, as his eyes follow the trail of score marks and bullet holes, are streams of dark ooze that appear to source from a large dark shadow sitting atop the first story balcony overlooking the top of the toll gate. With the reflection of a dim orange glow, the ooze appears to have the same appearance and consistency of warm tar as it pools at the walls base.
Gristle approaches, listening to the deep groans of the building shifting against the howl of wind, waiting to hear anything that would indicate he isn't alone. He first picks up the lantern with a rusted handle that squeaks when it moves, and turns the dial to increase the flame size and brighten the room around him.
He turns to inspect the tar-like ooze on the wall, but spots something hanging just over the top of the wooden gate. Squinting, he lifts the lantern to see the blackened limb of something large and reptilian, the texture viscous and scaled with foot long claws protruding from its toes.
A single clap of lightening suddenly bursts directly overhead through the open ceiling, and casts light into every blackened corner of the exposed building, lasting only for a second or two of continuous claps that illustrate the beast hanging against the balcony with sudden horrifying clarity. A large Deathclaw in mid-climb to reach the second floor balcony with high reaching limbs now dangling limp with the perch of wood impaled through its leg and chest, the source of the tar-ish liquid. Its head hanging down and out of view, but its large curved horns place the silhouette into completion.
Gristle emits another startled scream and clambers backwards, his internal alerts blaring at the sight of even an apparently dead Deathclaw, dropping the lantern in shock and raising his shotgun for a kill shot before he trips on the two or three steps leading onto the higher bit of stage flooring. He fires a round directly upwards, splintering a flag pole and piercing its pre-war flag, before the weight of his armour sends him directly onto his back with a noisy slam.
He scrambles back, getting one or two meters away from the toll gate before he pauses, waiting, and realizing that the ten foot irradiated lizard isn't moving a muscle even after he'd made all the noise in the world. Carefully, Gristle gets back up to his feet, eyeing the bits he can see in the light of his abandoned lantern, waiting for it to twitch or gargle, to do anything to indicate it's alive or not.
PING!
Gristle shrieks, bounding upwards in a graceful spring of terror as the flag pole he'd accidentally shot hits the ground within inches of his left foot. He sprints out of the Museum, forgetting the six steps leading up to the door and crumples the second his outstretched foot hits the pavement.
Scraping up his right arm and socking his skull against the unforgiving surface, he rolls once to compensate the momentum and then stops belly up, facing the sky with his shotgun locked against his chest in a vice grip. For a long minute, through the ache of the fall, he just stairs wide eyed as the sky churns above him and at this point is absolutely laughing at him, his temple begins pulsing with a mixture of fear adrenaline and total unmitigated rage.
He isn't a fucking coward, no way in hell. He ain't about to let some god damned dead mutated lizard, fucking wind storm slamming a fucking door, or a god damned fucking flag pole, stop him from getting his fucking job done.
God, he's starting to sound like Jared.
Gristle hoists himself to his feet and storms back up the stairs. He boots the door against the twist of the hinges and sends the unstable wood flying, splinters disappearing into lobby of the museum. Back inside, he also kicks the flag pole away as hard as he can, send that into another corner of the left end of the room.
He comes to a slow stop just in front of pools of blood the beast is still seeping, gazing up at what he can see through the soft glow of the lantern. It's fucking dead alright, and judging from the stench, it's been dead for hours now. Those settlers let this fucking thing take care of his men, and then they stood back and finished it off with some kind of heavy gun they found. Gristle can't wait to get his hands on the lot of them; he's going to make them wish he had been there while they let the Deathclaw tear them apart.
Gristle growls low, turning his head back towards what he reduced the door to, those bastards have been heading North since Lexington, and there's only one place that he knows of that's further up the road. Those old pre-war houses where he found that Vaultie and her boyfriend, if he were a settler, that's where he'd go for shelter from the storm.
Sanctuary Hills.