A/N
Someone once told me, "You can't say 'Texas' without thinking about barbecue, whiskey, long stretches of hard and dry desert- and cowboys. Lots and lots of cowboys." ( cue Ennio Morricone tune )
So with that, I'd like to introduce you all to a little story within the main story that I've been working on for a while now. Credits where credit is due, I'd like to thank Blaze1992 for helping me come up with the characters, story direction, and overall inspiration for the twelve-county piece of Northeast Texas land I'd like to call 'Four Seasons'. This arc will also allow me the opportunity to experiment with some character-driven stories, instead of just plot-points to move the fic along.
To all you Western enthusiasts ( like me ), this is my gift to you :)
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One look at the map, and someone could point out the iconic shape of Texas and distinguish it from the rest of the Commonwealth. Though the years have been hard and long since the apocalypse, the borders of the lone-star state remain unchanged and clearly defined. It is shaped like a man's hand, with thumb and index finger stretched into a crude L. The end of the war against the Texan Chapter ushered in a period of rapid expansion and industrialization for the Dominion. Armed with a plethora of new war machines, resistance against their attempts to reclaim the state posed little to no threat. From thumb to palm, most of Texas had been conquered, and throughout the slowly transforming Wasteland the black standards of the Dominion fluttered proudly in the wind. Even Austin, which proved to be the largest waster colony in the Texas Wasteland, capitulated without a fight.
The former capital of the lone-star state had been reclaimed, and the long process of turning it into a livable hub for the Dominion citizenry began. Just as it was with Carlon, so it was with Austin.
But there was one area that remained unexplored since the day the Dominion first emerged from Vault 115. A twelve-county piece of land Northwest of Elysion, just under the border separating Texas from New Mexico and Oklahoma. There have been mentions of it in the reports of Judge Greene, who investigated the drug and human traffickers plaguing Carlon and the Gypsy Mile.
They called the place Four Seasons. It was an innocuous name, one that might bring to mind the image of a pleasant range of ranches or a sleepy farm town. In truth, it was named that way by some wasteland wit for the apocryphal four seasons that ravaged the land; drought, flood, blizzard and twister. Over the years, after the false seasons faded and gave way to the natural course of spring, summer, fall and winter; the land healed.
While the Dominion waged its wars against the savage people of the Wasteland, Four Seasons' population flourished and created its own unique society from the ashes of the Old World. Five great clans, whose roots run deep in Texas, tamed the wilds of the twelve counties and built the canyon city Salvación as a testament to their struggle to return civilization to the Wasteland. For the most part, their efforts were largely united in the name of survival.
The Dolarhydes held a monopoly on the raw minerals and precious stones extracted from their great-mines, which has made them considerably richer than the rest of the families combined. Gold, silver, ore and stone were the lifeblood of any civilization, and their value ensured that the Dolarhyde coffers remained full. The family was backed by the Crowe family, who jealously guard the great-mines as a sleeping dragon would guard its hoard. Their loyalty to the Dolarhydes was bound both in blood and in gold, through intermarriage and generously granted sums of money.
The Crowes dealt in gunrunning and acted as the main supplier of locally manufactured firearms in Four Seasons. Recently, they took their businesses up a notch and branched out into the drug trade.
The Jacksons were the largest clan in Four Seasons and provided both the land's work force as well as transportation. Their patriarch, Horace 'Big Daddy' Jackson, was an engineer in the Old World who patented a wonder engine that was meant to revolutionize America's railway transit. When the Commonwealth fell, the Jackson family survived the Chinese nuclear onslaught and braved the savage frontier with the use of Big Daddy's invention- the jet train. Built to glide above terrain through anti-gravity repulsor emitters, it was a locomotive without rails; a machine that used fusion in place of fossil fuel and a jet turbine as its main propulsion system.
Faced with the dangers of the Wasteland, the Jacksons armed and fortified the jet train, turning it into an unstoppable colossus. Lured by the promise of a better future with the alliance of the five families, Big Daddy pledged his family's services to the people of Four Seasons, to provide safe transport of cargo to and from Salvación in exchange for supplies to support the growing clan.
The fourth clan in the alliance was the Forrester family. Known as prominent farmers in Four Seasons, as they own the most fertile lands in the twenty counties. Together with the Kingsleys, who provide livestock and own the biggest ranch in Salvación, they ensure that Four Seasons remain the breadbasket region of Northwest Texas. The Forresters are neither large in number nor adequately suited to protect themselves, so they depend heavily on the Crowes and Jacksons to fend off the many raider factions lurking in the mountains around Four Seasons.
The Kingsleys, however, despise the Crowes for being associated with the Dolarhydes and by extension barely tolerate the Forresters for cowering behind them. This was due to a longstanding rivalry with the Dolarhydes, whom they see as pretentious cutthroats who hid behind a thin veil of propriety, and regularly antagonized them at any given moment. Their feud occasionally resulted in outbreaks of violence in the pubs and streets, which largely alienated the clan in the eyes of the townsfolk.
This tenuous alliance is held by the most basic form of trade mutualism, for each family depended on the other for the resources they controlled. For some people, things were fine the way they were and it would remain that way for the next hundred years. For others, Four Seasons was a powder keg with a short fuse.
And the fuse had already been lit.
An old man stood at the edge of the station platform in Four Seasons' Summertown, paced a few times over the common oaken floorboards before stopping to dig one gnarled hand into his waistcoat pocket. His wrinkled worker's fingers fished out the little bronze pocket-watch by the chain. With a practiced twist of his wrist, he flipped the case open and stared at the ticking hands. The long twisted gray hairs of his beard curled alongside the grimace of disapproval on his lips.
It was just about high-noon. The train was late.
He let off a huff of frustration and turned his head irately at the dented rust-bucket of a Mr. Handy hovering close to the station entrance behind him. The robot was only there to help sort out the expected merchandise and catalogue them accordingly. It didn't look very pretty, but it proved itself to be a reliable machine. Two decades past the apocalypse, and the thing was still kicking. Getting a replacement was expensive, and the station-master simply didn't have the money or time to get one. There was also the station protectron; modified with industrial treads, a cargo rack and additional fork-lift arms to help move cargo around the platform. It too was an unsightly antique but, just like the Mr. Handy, it did the job.
As the minutes ticked on the old man, Mick Thornberry, sat down on the bench and daydreamed about the last time he was behind the safe high walls of Salvación. He put his hand through the opposite pocket of his waistcoat and drew out a crushed pack of cigarettes together with the little bundle of matches. Mick lit the stick and smoked away the hours, thinking back to the moment he got a glimpse of the higher end part of the canyon city.
Like any city, there were the parts reserved for the upper class.
Hightown, the patch of heaven for high society. It was the home for the self-proclaimed princes and princesses of the Dolarhyde and Crowe families. Up there, there were mansions of oolitic limestone and rich hardwood that oozed elegance. The streets were paved with stones, power was run by fusion. People dressed in the finest silks, not rags, and were adorned in gold and silver. They dined on exotic fruits grown from hydroponics greenhouses instead of the hard-grown vegetation from the farms. They lived well, healthy and comfortably, while enjoying the crisp cool breeze blowing down the canyon and the beautiful view of the valley below.
Then, there were the parts for the dregs, the filthy and nearly forgotten Lowtown. It was the polar opposite of Hightown, a festering collection of junk shacks and cheap beechwood houses stacked together like sardines in a can. Electricity was rare, people had to get by with coal. The streets were unpaved, mud under rain and dirt in sunshine. If people weren't wearing patchwork rags, they promptly went naked.
After surviving the vaults and the Wasteland together before at last coming to Salvación, Mick's wife made him swear not to aspire to climb up the social ladder, like most men in Four Seasons did, preferring instead the hard but honest life they had. When she died of tuberculosis two years ago, there wasn't much keeping him from thinking about Hightown save for the memory of his departed other half. Sometimes he wished he got himself employed under the Dolarhydes, thinking that perhaps it would've made his wife's last moments comfortable, if not save her life.
He looked at his pocket-watch again. Under the lid was a picture of his daughter, Mary-Anne Thornberry. As her mother's caretaker, she caught her mother's sickness, but she survived. Little Mary-Anne, a fighter and a survivor, she works now as a housekeeper under them. Mick owed everything to the Jacksons, who helped him in his hour of need. They didn't have doctors, not like the Dolarhydes, but their women had good home remedies that were passed down throughout the years. He could stick around as one of the Jacksons' station-masters. Though he wished life could be better, he at least was working among good people.
Suddenly, there was a loud roar of a jet engine coming from the wilderness. The train had finally come, and Mick's long wait was over. Quickly stashing his watch back in his waistcoat and crushing the cigarette butt under his boot, the station-master got up and walked back to the edge of the platform. He adjusted the little visor hat clinging to his forehead, then braced himself for the dust cloud that was sure to rise after the colossus made its stop.
The jet train's silhouette grew larger and larger as it drew closer to the station. It emitted a powerful blare from its horn, announcing its arrival. Summertown's deputies, sitting idly in their watchtowers, peered nonchalantly at the approaching locomotive contraption and went back to watching the horizon for other potential threats. It slowed its approach, then came at full stop when it reached the station.
When the dust cleared, Mick saw that the armored colossus hadn't gone through the wastes without a scratch.
The Jacksons outfitted their trains with three layers of steel armored plating stacked together into slats, each about 30mm thick. On every freight car was a rotating turret, and plenty of retractable slits for rifles to poke through. The top parts had walkways for the crew to move around in case they had to repel boarders, and the crew always carried big guns. In spite of these defensive measures, the Wasteland was relentless.
Dents and bullet-holes the size of a man's fist were the usual sight on the Jackson trains, or on any vehicle in Four Seasons that ventured out of the safety of town walls.
This one had claw marks.
The armored door on the lead car slid open, and out came the train's operator. Heavy steel-toe boots thumped hard against the oaken floorboards, causing the loose bullet-chain strap around the man's thighs to jingle a bit. The operator was a giant, standing at a perfect six feet to rival any man in Four Seasons. As a result, there were hardly any clothes in town to fit him, and those that managed had to do with the bare minimum. The strap of his shoulder holster hugged his shirt to his body so tight that it looked like it could snap off if he breathed in a little too much. His hair was trimmed and held back into a neat widow's peak slick-back.
This was John Marcus Jackson or, as everyone else called him, Little John. He would be the young version of his grandfather 'Big Daddy' Horace Jackson, his spitting image in both looks and smarts, which made sense that he was being groomed to run the family business as appointed Railsplitter one day.
On this particular day seemed to have tested his capabilities a little.
"Everything okay, Lil' John?" Mick inquired of the marks on his train.
"Yeah, sorry for being late." John apologized, "Had a run-in with some critters that moved in on my route, nasty bunch. Nobody died, so at least this one chalks up to a win."
"Ya lose any of the merch?"
"No, they're all here. Just waiting for the Crowes to pick up as per usual."
Mick nodded and signaled for his robots to get to work. John's crew helped unload the stuff from the cars and into the station warehouse while he and the station-master had a little chat.
"What critters done the deed this time? Deathclaws?"
John shook his head and wiped the sweat from his brow with a dirty handkerchief. "Sandsharks."
Mick whistled in wonder. Among all the mutated creatures roaming the wilds of Four Seasons, there was never one so dangerous as the cunning Sandshark. Thought to be an evolved offshoot of the meek sandfish skink, the Sandshark was a reptilian abomination that rivaled even the legendary Deathclaws. Its powerful forepaws could rip through solid stone and just as easily with a man's flesh. It could burrow into the earth and swim through it as though it was made of water, where it would lie in wait for its prey to pass.
It was the region's apex predator.
Most Sandsharks were little more than the size of small dogs, but there were some exceptions that were the size of horses. Lately the activity of the trains seemed to have lured them by the dozens, if the bright minds of Four Seasons are to be believed.
John's dog, a mix of Czech and Sable German Shepherd, trotted out of the lead car with a piece of a Sandshark's toe in his mouth. Snowball sat down at his master's feet and placed the toe on the ground with a beaming look of pride on his furry face.
The dog's silver coat had the monster's blood smeared into its hairs, which spilled on him when Snowball bit down hard on the Sandshark trying to slip through the train door. Though his enemy was twice his size, brave little Snowball bit the reptile's foot off, crippling the critter so his master could finish it off.
"Good boy." John scratched him behind the ears. "I owe you a little bit of grooming when we get home."
"I'm glad yer in one piece, boy." Mick shuffled off, "So what's next?"
"Next? I gotta bring this over to the shop and replace the armor right quick 'fore them Crowes start to worry 'bout me missing my deadline." John stopped, "Oh, I almost forgot. Mail's not due today, but I skimmed one that had your name on it and thought you'd wanna have it early. Here."
He handed Mick an envelope with a letter from Mary-Anne.
"Oh shucks, thanks John!"
"'Tweren't nothin', Mick."
The old man sat down to read the letter while John drove the jet train towards the Jackson workshop in Summertown. A more apt description of the workshop would be 'junk-yard'. Scrap and slag collected from the ruins of distant towns and cities ended up in these places, and the Jackson family put the refuse of civilization to good use. If their trains needed repairs or spare parts, the workshops provided a good selection of materials from melted down scrap. Even slag had its use somewhere, and nothing was wasted.
"Come on boy, we got the rest of the day off." John said to Snowball after turning the rig in to be fixed, "Wanna head over to the Dove? I could use a drink, and I feel like spoilin' you a bit today. How does a slice of brahmin sound to ya?"
The dog didn't quite understand what his master was saying, but he was talking to him so he wagged his tail in excitement.
There were four major towns surrounding Salvación, each covering four counties, separated only by narrow earthen divides and rolling mountain ranges.
Springtown to the North, where the Forresters till the soil to feed all of Four Seasons, was a wide green valley smattered with odd ends of clustered cabins and barns. It stood close to the Levee, a tiny stream that over time became a raging river, which provided their crops all the clean water they'd need. Springtown's proximity to the river made it a hot spot for the water distribution industry. It also made it a target for raiders and critters. Water was a universal need, and so Springtown had to be fortified. The counties were marked off by lengths of razor-wire and patrolled by Dolarhyde sentry-bots. It made Springtown a little safer, and so their little operation toiled on without a hitch.
Summertown, South of Salvación, was where the common folk congregated, and next to Salvación it was a respectable place for any waster to build up and start anew. Trading caravans frequented Summertown as much as the canyon city due to its dirt-cheap but acceptable conditions, and it was always the place where one could hitch a ride with the Jacksons.
Autumntown, to the West, was home to the Jackson clan. A long time ago, two airliner crafts crashed into the valley where the town now stood. The planes cleared the forests and dug a great trench into the earth. Presently, their metal carcasses provide the foundation of the Jackson villa. A great amalgamation of steel, concrete and solid oak served as shelter for the growing family. 'Big Daddy' Horace had many daughters, and later had many in-laws. Eventually, the empty spaces of the villa gradually filled out. Their work with the jet trains attracted dozens of desperate workhands, which resulted in the villa's growth into a sprawling town of junk shacks and tents. Autumntown didn't look very pretty like the palaces of Hightown Salvación, but all the junk and unsightly mix of welded metals were built to weather storms, they were made to last.
Finally, to the East, there sat Wintertown. It used to be the home of the Kingsley family, but ever since they took to roaming the land like nomads the Crowes moved in and took over the town. They turned it into base of some kind, where the haul from the Dolarhyde great-mines underwent processing and refining before they moved it to Salvación.
As the name implied, Wintertown was inhospitable, especially to strangers. When a bunch of the meanest, murderous and vile sons-of-bitches gathered in one place, it made for one ugly and dangerous town- which was in a way the point of it all. It was an effective deterrent for thieves or raiders, who were looking to muscle in on the Dolarhydes' produce. That didn't mean they stopped trying. Every now and then, some poor fool would find himself swinging from the top of the old Wintertown mill.
If the thief or raider happened to be a woman, she won't be granted that kind of mercy.
Dolarhyde town, Dolarhyde law. You take their stuff, they take you and they take everything else. Crowes, the meanest and vilest men in Four Seasons, they liked to take their time with raider women. Stories spread faster than wildfire around Four Seasons, and pretty soon nobody wanted the Crowes anywhere near their towns. Barred from all other places except for Salvación itself, the Crowes kept to Wintertown. They way they said it, they liked having the place to themselves. They could do what they wanted, and nobody could tell them otherwise.
John slung his double-barreled shotgun over his shoulder, counted his caps, then disappeared down the dirt street towards the Dove's Nest.
The Dove's Nest was one of Summertown's finer establishments, as far as 'fine establishments' go. The talk of the town since its foundations were first laid. It was owned and run by Reese Dolarhyde, the eldest son of Bennett Barnabas Leighloch Dolarhyde Sr. The best and finest limestone and vinyl were used to build the saloon. Dolarhyde gold furnished all three of its floors, filling it with elaborately decorated Bohemian stemware, and expensive restored oil paintings that dated back to the 1800's. The bar was always stocked with strong spirits, and the air would always smell sweet with the kitchen's brew. Tables for poker, roulette and hold'em lined the back halls. Up one floor, a man would find himself among the lovely doves of the establishment. Up another, in the suites, rooms for both the weary and pleasure-seeking were available.
One could set foot through its swinging bat-wing doors, forget the harsh reality of the world behind and get lost in the fantasy.
Little John's mother will never approve of him frequenting the place, but the giant was far from the little boy he used to be. And as far as he was concerned, he was a grown man with a lot of needs.
The lively tune of 'The Entertainer' played from the deft fingers of the saloon pianist, and John found himself humming alongside it as he entered.
His eyes scanned the room, and he saw that the place was packed as usual. Afternoon players and customers, looking to win big at the tables or blow caps with the doves, crowded near every inch of the floorboards. John wasn't a rude man, he didn't like jostling his way through other folks, but sometimes it was plain unavoidable. He pushed through the sea of bodies like a stubborn steel barge, and with the gentlemanly gesture of saying 'scuse me'. Never once losing his balance with each person he had to brush aside, but at the same time never once sending another man or woman stumbling over.
He found a table for him and Snowball, then sat right down. From that side of the room, it offered John a generous view of the ladies leaning against the railing upstairs.
The doves, daughters of sin, or nymphs du prairie, were all young and pretty girls ranging from sixteen to ripe twenty. There were women there too, the top-shelf whores who knew all the ways to make a man happy. Most of the latter didn't last long in Summertown, though. Reese Dolarhyde habitually offered them a chance to work in Salvación, to earn more caps and live a more comfortable life servicing the upper echelons of Four Seasons society. Most accepted, and they were never heard from again. Those women were dubbed courtesans, a name that many aspired and continue to aspire to attain.
The ladies wore brightly colored ruffled skirts that were scandalously short, offering enough of their long and supple legs for the men to drool after. Under the bell-shaped skirts could be seen silk or net stockings which were held up by garters. Each dove was dressed in a unique fashion. But more often than not, their arms and shoulders were bare, their bodices cut low over their bosoms, and their dresses decorated with sequins and fringe.
There were waitresses in the saloon who were dressed as they were, though they didn't necessarily offer the same type of services as the doves. Doves were distinguished by their little lace chokers, which symbolized their indentureship to Reese Dolarhyde. Waitresses didn't have them, and therefore were considered their own women.
Sometimes, especially under the influence of drink, some patrons can't see the distinction.
Little John had eyes on a golden-haired minx, a lively little filly who went by the name of Molly Wes. She worked as a waitress in the Nest for nearly a year, but she and John went way back.
She used to be a skinny, straw-haired, freckle-faced urchin who loved to chase after the boys through the mud. Molly, like most kids in Four Seasons at the time, was an orphan. Little John's mother took her in, just as she always did with every kid who stumbled into Autumntown. Now, Molly filled out, and she filled out in all the right places.
"Molly, over here!" John waved, a pleased smirk on his dirty face.
The waitress heard his voice through the din of the establishment, and she held up her tray above the patrons' heads so she could squeeze her tiny body through them all without dropping its contents.
"Hello Johnny." Molly grinned, hand on her hip and the other balancing the tray on the tips of her fingers. She gave Snowball an acknowledging nod, "Snowball. Long time no see. How's the family doing?"
"Just fine, darling." John hid the blush threatening to form on his cheeks. Their meeting there played a lot smoother in his head, it's been a while since they'd talked. Making moves on someone he grew up with had been a lot easier when he was a young teen with plenty of hormones pumping through his system. Made him brave as a randy colt, reckless as all hell. He reckoned he lost most of those same hormones when he was pumping them into her.
Molly had been his first, and he was hers. He'd seen her grow, watched an ugly cactus sprout into a beautiful sunflower. He wanted her, damned all the consequences and took her behind the Autumntown workshop.
When they went their separate ways, it took some time before John tracked her down. Hearing about the Nest, it first boiled his blood as he thought she'd ended up working as a dove. Seeing her for the first time in years, relatively safe as a waitress, it calmed him enough to keep things civil. He'd been visiting her quite often since then, hoping to rekindle some with that same spark they had. "Your shift done? Wanna get outta here?"
"Whoa there, sugar." Molly put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed the taut muscles till they relaxed under her touch. "Girl's gotta earn her living. I ain't due to turn in 'till the clock says ten."
Ten o'clock in the evening. Reese's got her working overtime. "Why put the extra hours? Come on, darling, you know it's torture for me to wait for you."
Molly opened her mouth to answer, but a quick glance upstairs at the manager staring at her through his office window silenced her. "Well you'd better be comfortable, Johnny boy. I'm heading nowhere till the shift ends."
"Fine then." Little John relented. His rig wasn't going to be finished until the next day, so he had all the time until then to make it all right with Molly. "Be a dear and get me and Snowball a steak, will you?"
"Alright." The waitress nodded, "Want anything to wet your whistle?"
John looked at her thoughtfully, then grinned mischievously. "I'd like the whole bottle of fine Texas Whiskey standing in front of me, and I'd like her all to myself. How's that sound?"
Molly blushed and laughed heartily, "Real smooth, Romeo. I'll be back in fifteen, now don't you go starting trouble while I'm gone, y'hear?"
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