Preston Garvey flattened himself against the wall as the bullets wheeted past, wincing as one sent a fine haze of plaster dust into his eyes. Behind him, Mama Murphy was practically chanting, "And the Handmaiden of the Vault shall come anointed with cedar and with citron to lead us into Sanctuary, where there is a verdant garden planted, a green paradise where milk and honey—."
Whatever kind of chem the old lady had picked up when he wasn't looking, it had to be strong. What she was saying made no kind of sense, unless you knew something of the Bible. It wasn't that popular these days, mainly because it was clear the events from Revelations had come and gone, and those left on Earth were not the saved. However, he'd had a decent education, which was more than a lot of people could say, and he recognized jumbled up Scripture when he heard it.
"Old woman," Marcy Long gritted out from across the room, "will you shut up already? Let us die without your damn voice babbling on and on in our ears."
"Nobody with us here now is dying today, or anytime soon," Mama Murphy assured the woman. "They're coming. I can see it. In fact," Mama smiled—he wasn't about to turn to see her face, but he could hear it in her voice. "They're here."
Preston realized that although the gunfire had not stopped inside the Museum of Freedom, the sounds from the street below had stopped. No more shooting, no more shouting.
He turned his head. There, among the rubble and the dead both recent and long past, was someone who hardly looked different from the raiders, because he or she wore road leathers and piecemeal armor. The person was creeping from cover to cover, avoiding possible lines of fire from the raiders in the museum, but then she or he was armed with a syringer rather than a real firearm.
Syringers were only good for slowing people down, not dealing real damage. However, if someone had one, it was a sure thing they made their own ammo for it. So: not a gunslinger. A chem trader? He didn't know. He didn't care. Help was help.
"Hey, you there, with the syringer! We're up here with a group of settlers and the raiders are about to reach us! Grab another gun and help us, please! There's a laser musket on the ground about ten yards ahead of you!"
The person nodded—he was about seventy-five percent sure it was a woman from the way she moved—and darted across the street in a cautious sprint. A dog followed closely at her heels, and soon they disappeared from view again.
The raiders redoubled their attack, forcing the Minuteman and the people he was so desperately trying to protect further down the hall into an office. However, he could hear when the raiders turned their attention from attacking to defending, their threats and bravado turning to paranoia and panic. He also heard the angry barks and snarls of a big dog, accompanied by howls of 'Yahhhgedditoffame!', followed by a crunch or a gurgle. Eventually, silence.
Silence inside the museum, anyway, except for someone, or more than one someone, picking their way through the building. "Hello? Anyone left alive?" a woman called out.
The uncertainty in her voice convinced Preston she was not a raider. "Here!" He nodded to Sturges to open the office door.
There she was, the one he'd seen from the window, accompanied by a dog he'd seen pictures of in books but never in life: a German Shepard.
"I don't know who you are," he said, in gratitude, "but your timing's impeccable. Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen."
"Glad to help. Raina Queen, agroecologist," the woman replied.
Marcy Long broke in, pointing to the canteens on Queen's bandolier. "Is that water?" she asked through cracked and dehydrated lips.
"Yes," the agroecologist replied.
"Please, let us have some! We ran out this morning!" Marcy pleaded.
"Of course," Raina Queen unclipped the two sturdy cans from the strap and passed one to Marcy, the other to Mama Murphy. "Are you hungry? I have some cornbread here." Her hand dipped into a satchel and came out with a parcel which she unwrapped and broke up into chunks.
"Thank you! We haven't eaten since yesterday." Jun Long took some of the bread. Mama Murphy passed Preston one of the canteens and, God be praised, a chunk of cornbread. Not a big chunk, but still it was food.
"The water's clean," Raina explained. "No rads, no bugs, no bacteria. I distil it myself. The bread is from last night, so it's a bit solid now."
"Solid is good," he said, with fervor. "Solid food is the best." He bit into it and chewed. Hunger always made food taste extra good, but this would have been good cornbread at any time. Rich, sweet, and golden yellow rather than bluish grey, it tasted better than anything he'd ever eaten in his life. The water tasted of nothing, but it was wet and it was water. "S'good," he said around a mouthful. "S' really, really good."
Mama Murphy was picking up cornbread crumbs with a wetted finger and devouring every morsel. "You've been afraid you'll fail your mother and your sisters," she said, in the voice that said the Sight was talking clearly, "but you won't. As you're feeding us now, you'll feed all the Commonwealth, and more, before you're through. That isn't all of your destiny, though."
Then the elderly woman squinted at the dog. "You've named him King," Mama Murphy said in surprise. The dog was sticking close to the woman with the syringer. "I didn't see that. He likes it better than 'Dogmeat'."
Raina Queen glanced down at her dog and then at Mama. "You know King? His owner was dead, so I guess we adopted each other. Who names a dog 'Dogmeat'?"
"It doesn't matter now. He's King, and he's chosen you," Mama said. "What's that smell?" she asked.
Sniffing the air, Preston got a whiff—a very strong whiff of what she meant. It was a smell that made the eyes water, but not a nasty odor. It was more like industrial strength Abraxo plus something else, so clean it burned.
"Insect repellent," Raina Queen replied. "I make it myself. Keeps away bloatflies, stingwings and bloodbugs, though the bloatflies still spit from a distance. It's no good against radroaches, though. Or anything else. It's just cedar oil and citronella."
"Cedar…and citron," Preston said, remembering what Mama had said before. "Um, it seems ungrateful after you've fed us and helped us out already, but we're all in this together now. Those raiders had friends. They're even worse than that bunch, they're on their way, and they're going to be real mad when they see the dead. Now, we came here on account of what's on the roof. Sturges, this is your department."
Sturges duly explained about the crashed vertibird, the suit of power armor, and the minigun. He also explained that the armor needed a fusion core in order to function at all, and the agroecologist's face went pale and strained.
"Why am I the one who must do this?" she asked. "Is my life any less valuable than any of yours?"
"I know it isn't fair," Preston said, "but the only food and drink we've had in days is what you gave us now. None of us have the strength. After this, whatever help we can give, whatever you need or want done, just name it."
"I don't like heights," Raina said. "I never have."
"Don't worry," Sturges said, "When you're in power armor, you can fall any distance and walk away."
Mama's face now turned stark. "You better get going, Raina. Something big is coming, and it's angry. I've seen it."
"That isn't helpful," Raina said. "However, I have a fusion core with me already. Keep King here, I don't want him to follow me and get hurt. 'If it were done when tis done, t'were well it were done quickly.'" The last bit sounded like something she had learned, some snippet she recited.
While they were talking, eating and drinking, the raiders had returned. Now the gunfire and the jeers started up again.
She went. Mama Murphy held King by the collar, though he strained and whined to follow his owner.
"She's not going to be your Minutemen General, Preston. Not now, not ever," the old lady told him.
Up on the roof, Raina found the empty power armor, installed the fusion core, and watched it open like an orchid blooming.
Sturges had told her it was designed for use even by lowly privates in the military and moving in it would be instinctive, but what he did not say was that those privates had six to eight weeks of training in the use of power armor before they faced enemy fire in it, and he did not take into account the fact that the power armor had stood exposed to the elements for two hundred years.
The armor did not want to move. It groaned and screamed around her in protest. Instead of moving easily with her, it ground together for the longest time, then yielded and sent her staggering. Raina barely managed to grab the minigun before she tumbled from the museum roof. She landed face down on the sidewalk, which now had an armor sized impact crater in it. Scrabbling for purchase, she shoved herself up to a kneeling position. Pieces of the armor plating broke off and fell away, and she could taste blood in her mouth from where she'd bitten her tongue. She wasn't hurt, Sturges was right about that, but she had had the wind knocked out of her.
The raiders were jeering at her. "Widdle baby fall crash-go-boom?"
However, she had managed to keep hold of her syringer.
While they waited, they heard gunfire, then a huge crash which shook the building. King tore free of Mama's grip and darted out the door, then down the stairs.
Preston dashed for a window, and looked out to see a battle that would have been ludicrous if it were not so deadly. In the power armor, Raina moved like a Brahmin wallowing through thick mud, a target for all the raiders' potshots. However, she had the minigun and she was spraying bullets around wildly, gradually blasting the raiders to bits.
When they were all dead, he opened his mouth to cheer, but then…
His fingers gripped the rotting window frame, rending it into splinters, and his heart hammered in his chest because now he heard a roar which made him want to curl up and hide under something immovable, because everybody in the Commonwealth knew what made a sound like that. A deathclaw.
It burst from the sewer like a demon spat forth from the bowels of hell. Raina was the only living, moving thing close to it, and so it focused on her. She raised the minigun, peppering it with bullets, but the rounds were no more to it than birdshot to a Brahmin. It struck out at her, sending her sprawling across the street, coming to a skidding halt. If she were not in power armor, she would have broken bones.
She struggled to get up, but the ungainly, damaged armor wouldn't let her. She was a turtle on its back in the hot desert sun, fighting to right itself.
The deathclaw seized her and shook her, the minigun crashing to the ground as she lost her grip. The armor plates were buckling and breaking—. It threw her across the street again, where she wound up wedged between two rusting cars. The deathclaw followed, and now it tore the armor to pieces, sending the helmet flying as it shook her like a kitten playing with a catnip toy.
"God," Preston groaned. "She helped, and I got her killed. I got—."
Mama Murphy swatted him across the back of his head. "Keep watching."
Then Raina Queen appeared in the corner of vision. How had she done it? When had she slipped out of the armor? From behind the cover of a car, she raised her syringer. It wasn't likely anything she had in it could do more than irritate the beast.
He couldn't even hear the chuffs of the syringer firing over the roaring and the clashing, but he saw what happened. Three darts, four darts hit it. Then the deathclaw stopped, swayed, fell over, and began convulsing, its claws tearing up chunks of asphalt. Bloody froth poured from its mouth, its nostrils, its eyes and even its ears. It tried to roar, but what came out of it was merely a rattle.
Then a final sigh and welling of blood from its mouth, and the deathclaw lay still.
Okay. He'd just learned something. Syringers weregood for more than just slowing people down...
A/N: So, after some editing, this version without Nora is posted. Lots has changed, and it would be a good idea to go back and re read chapters 1, 3, and 4 as well as this one..