"Luckily I had my bagpipes with me, so—," Deacon lied happily, but Des had that look on her face, the one that said her tolerance for 'creative conversation' was wearing thin.
"Deacon," she sighed.
"What, you don't believe me? Okay, okay. When it all went down, it went down like it was timed. Dominos falling over, you know? I was enjoying the music, but that didn't mean I wasn't keeping an eye on Kellogg or the Courser, the guy I knew then as Exodus. I noticed when Kellogg got up and left the celebration, but since the synth wasn't moving, I figured the guy just had to take a leak. I mean, who doesn't, now and then? He came back a few minutes later, casual as anything, and he had a second bowl of stew while Raina sang. So did I, but his had a little something extra in it…"
Just as the number ended, Kellogg got up hastily and legged it in the direction of the latrines, moving like somebody who was about to paint the town brown. At almost the same time, the Courser was turning greenish around the edges. He'd looked faintly disgusted when he sat down, but then he always looked like that. After his second cider, he looked like he was going to gag, and that wasn't like him, but then he hadn't had to rub elbows with strangers until then.
When the mom with the baby sitting next to him started breastfeeding right there in front of everybody, Deacon wanted to smirk, because the synth looked like he was ready to hurl.
Then he really did hurl. 'Exodus' leapt up, nearly falling in the process, and barely got clear of the table before he heaved his guts up. The people near him had things to say about that, and Deacon overheard some of their remarks, like 'Well, he said he had a weak stomach,' 'Poor lad,' and 'How do you get puking drunk on just two pints of cider?'
Suddenly, Nick Valentine was there, hauling Exodus up to his feet. "C'mon, kid. Let's get you cleaned up and find someplace where you can sleep it off. Just don't do an encore on my trench coat, okay?" Exodus looked up at him without his glasses, puke dripping off his chin, and tried to say something. Without his mirrored shades, he looked very young.
Then he bent over and heaved again. Nick leaned away to avoid getting splattered, and frog-marched the Courser away somewhere.
Right then, Carla staggered up to the tables, holding her side where a bloodstain spread out like a gory Rorschach blot. "Stabbed me," she whispered. "Rotten motherfucking son of a bitch. Didn't know the padding was ballistic fiber."
"Carla!" Everybody was freaking out, but Raina leapt to help the old trader lady. "What happened? Who did it?"
"Guard," The old woman managed to gasp out. "My…guard."
"Which one?" Preston Garvey asked as he stood up, a frown like a thundercloud gathering on his face.
"It can't be him," Raina nodded in Deacon's direction. "He never left the table." That was really nice of her, and his estimation of her went up again.
This moment called for a bullshit artist, and he was the best. He seized the cue and the moment. "It had to have been Post. Exodus is just a kid, and he wanted the job so's he could break in. He never did this. Oh, man, I knew Post wasn't happy with the pay, but for him to do something like this?"
"The big one with the scar, then," Garvey said. "Sturges, can you help? Did anybody see which way he went?"
"He was headed toward the latrines," someone offered. "He was in a real hurry, too, like he was going to be sick or something."
"I think that's where Nick was going with the young one," Raina said. "Here, Carla, I'll patch you up. This way. Don't try to talk. Just hang in there. I've got stimpaks and blood packs."
"Let me help," Deacon crossed the distance between them. "Both of them were hitting the bottle earlier, so I'm not surprised they got sick. I mean, cider on top of whiskey isn't going to be a good combo. I feel sick just thinking about it."
"All right," Garvey raised his voice. "Folks, it's a shame this happened, but it looks to be a private dispute that went bloody. We'll deal with it, and there's no reason to let it spoil today for everyone. Please go back to enjoying yourselves, and we'll let you know what's going on when we get back." Then he turned and called out, "Valentine, can you hear me?"
"Yeah, I heard all of it," the raspy-voiced synth yelled back. "I've got the kid in one outhouse heaving up everything he ate for the past week and what's his name in the one next to it, even sicker. I've got a gun on them, but I don't think I'll be needing it—not right away, anyhow. You, uh, might wanna fill in the holes and burn down the outhouses when they're done, though. Nobody's gonna want to use them after this."
The humor did the trick, turning the crowd from nervous verging on scared back to a celebration again. "Codsworth, could you and Jonny start serving the honey cakes?" Raina asked the hovering Mr. Handy. "I'll be back as soon as possible."
"Of course. Anything to help, ma'am." The bot went off in the direction of the food serving areas.
Raina turned back to him as they stood supporting Carla. "This way," she said, pointing with her chin.
"Anywhere you say," he told her, and together they got Carla to a prewar house which had been patched up pretty well. "Your place?" he asked.
"No, Codsworth's. Or it was his family's, back before the war. He lets us use it as an infirmary since he requested a reset," Raina explained. She took Carla into a room and slid a curtain across the doorway, separating him from the two of them.
The next few minutes were taken up with sounds like grunts of pain, the hiss of a stimpak and short conversations about where it hurt. From outside he heard Garvey say, "No, take them down to the creek. If you clean them off under the pump it'll seep down and contaminate the well water. There should be a couple of old blankets or something they can cover up with. And see if you can find some buckets."
About the same time that Raina pulled back the curtain, Valentine, Garvey and a third man, the Sturges who got up when the Minuteman asked for help, were escorting Kellogg and Exodus into the house under armed guard. It hardly looked necessary, as Kellogg was bent over, holding his midsection and looking like he was going to break while Exodus was ashen and wobbly. Both were wearing old blankets, Kellogg from the waist down and the Courser around his shoulders.
Ill as he was and without his mirrored sunglasses, Exodus looked very different from the impassive, inhuman and inhumane pursuit machine Deacon had spotted at Bunker Hill a week before. He looked much younger. About the same age Deacon had been when he was still running with the UP Deathclaws, in fact, which was young enough to be a real idiot and do terrible things without considering what they meant, or what they were turning him into.
"I gotta ask, Raina. What was it they took, exactly, and how much?" Valentine asked.
"Castor oil blended with fig syrup in the stew—it's a treatment for constipation. The castor oil provides immediate relief while the figs make it taste better and work longer. The usual dose is five milliliters, or about a teaspoonful, and I tell people not to go too far away from their privies or wear clothes they can't take off in a hurry after they take it.
"I think he," she indicated Kellogg, "got about ten milliliters in the first bowl and about forty or fifty in the second. He'll be sick all night. Then there was ipecacuanha syrup in the cider, because the cider would mask the bitter aftertaste. It induces vomiting at high dosages. At lower dosages, it's good for amoebic dysentery and certain cases of cough. Most medicines are poisons and vice versa—it's all a matter of dosage."
She looked at the two sick men, assessing their condition. "I might have overdone it, but you said you wanted them incapacitated and not lethally." Kellogg looked like he was going to say something, but he doubled over and groaned instead.
Deacon whistled. "Remind me never to get you mad at me."
"Would somebody mind telling me what the hell is going on?" Preston Garvey asked.
"I can provide at least half the answer," Valentine said. "That's Kellogg. He's the Institute's hired gun. I don't remember much about the place, but I remember him, so I asked Raina for something to take him down but leave him able to answer questions. Then this guy," He pointed at Deacon, "volunteered the information that both of them were trouble. I took his word for it, and gave Codsworth the medicines."
"I can tell you the rest," Deacon jumped in. This was not the time for lies. "You're right, that's Kellogg, and there's no telling how many people he's killed over the years. This guy is a Courser, a synth who hunts down and either recovers or kills runaway synths." Valentine tensed up at those words, which was only natural, but so did Sturges. Deacon looked at him with increased interest. Was Sturges possibly an escaped synth, or did he simply know one?
I—I'm with the Railroad. I spotted them back at Bunker Hill. Whatever they were up to, I knew it couldn't be good, so I signed on with their caravan."
Carla appeared at the door. "I didn't rat you out. I—." she paused for breath. "—didn't have a choice. They took in my grandson, to grow up like he was one of their own. He's a bright kid. Too smart to waste his brain sorting through garbage like me. In return, I agreed to keep an eye out for escaped synths. Not to turn in humans."
"Who were they looking for?" Preston asked, but even as he said the words, it was dawning on him. Raina, who spoke of medicines and cures and poisons he'd never heard of. Raina, who had better skin and teeth than anyone had a right to in the Wastelands.
"It's you, isn't it? They're looking for you. But why?"
"I was a Vault Dweller, from an Envirovault, and I have access to seeds, plants and knowledge they don't," she explained.
"It was only a matter of time before they caught on," Garvey said. "We were figuring it would happen sooner or later."
"Right," Valentine agreed. "Okay, let's secure these two, and then talk about what has to be done. Bring the buckets and the shackles."
A/N: Regarding the last chapter: Yes, 'nothing like as good as' is indeed proper English. Please consult the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary for further details. You'd use it when you want to say something like, 'These cookies are a lot worse than my mom's,' except you don't want to imply that your mother's cookies are bad and these are even worse. It's an old fashioned phrase, and since Kellogg is over a hundred, I used it to imply his age.
Because people don't always speak or think in proper English, writers are allowed some leeway in writing characters' dialog and thoughts for the sake of authenticity. For example, Anita Loos' Gentleman Prefer Blondes is written from the first person point of view of the main character, Lorelei Lee, who is only semiliterate, and the grammar and spelling reflect that. I quote exactly as it it written, 'Kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever.' (sic) It's the basis for the Marilyn Monroe movie of the same title. (I am going for my MA in Education. Sometimes it leaks out.)