I asked Jericho why he did it, after I finally realized there was more in it for him than a warm hole to screw and an arm to lean on when we staggered back from a night of drinking. He made sure I ate—I'd gotten so bad I actually forgot I was supposed to do it every day, let alone more than just once; sedated me with vodka and sex at the first scratch of my pockmarked arms; even followed me when I started my weekly pilgrimages to the vault bearing my offerings of charcoal and blank pieces of paper.
He thought I didn't know, but I could hear the crunch of his boots as I slithered through the shadows under the moon, intent on leaving another sign for Amata in view of the vault door camera. I'm sure her father's ass clenched so hard when he saw me in the monitors he could shit diamonds, but it made me feel better to do it, even if it was as futile as shouting into the wind. Somehow, in some odd way, I thought she could hear me as I scratched her name onto my cobbled together posters, letting her know I hadn't forgotten.
One such night, on my way home from another silent vigil, I took advantage of the lack of moon to double back in the darkness. Jericho didn't hear me until I clicked the safety off the pistol I'd swiped from his shack, levelling it at his head. "Why me?"
I still remember his answer. Cause you're smart enough to think of ideas, stupid enough to think they're good ones, and fool crazy enough to carry 'em out.
Turns out there isn't piss all to do in Megaton when you're clean, other than drink and screw, and there's only so much of one you can do before it interferes with the other. Life turned into another crushing grindstone of routine—work, drink, sleep, then get up and do it all over again. Only thing of any interest in that place was the man I shacked up with.
Jericho. He was a goddamn rat bastard son of a bitch, and he made no apologies for it. He used to run with some raiders, doing all kinds of crazy shit up and down the wastes. When I found him he'd retired from that life, growing puffy with drink and numb with boredom.
He didn't know what to do with himself, and I couldn't stop thinking of what to do next. My brain, so long neglected and wrecked in a wash of chems and starvation, began to flex again. Amata never left my thoughts, every spare moment leading me to think of her out of the vaults, out here with me.
Each time I did that, I felt like shit. No way would I share her with Jericho—if he so much as turned his bloodshot eyes on her, I'd scoop 'em out with a spoon.
Which left me desperate to make it big, somehow get enough caps for my own place (our place, as I always thought of it) with more than enough left over so neither of us ever had to worry about work. I wanted to surround her with luxury and finery—only the best for my Amata.
There was no way in hell I could make that happen in Megaton, working for pittance and scraps. Desperate for suggestions, one hungover morning I finally asked Jericho how to make a killing in the wasteland.
He looked me over, stole the cigarette from my lips, and took a long drag. "With this," he answered in a haze of smoke, passing me a gun.
No more constraints of routine, left to the mercy of others to tell you where to dance, how long to do it, and what you'll get for being a good little cog in the machine. With a weapon in hand, and the untold bounty of the wastes beckoning to us, there was no turning back.
That is, once we solved the initial problem of finding a weapon I couldn't fuck up. No way could I go toe to toe with so much as a rabid dog—pouring all those calories down my throat each night hid some of my pointiest bones from view, but it didn't add any muscle. I was shit with pistols, worse with shotguns, and so bad with assault rifles Jericho tackled me to the ground rather than let me practice. He didn't want to risk losing his balls to a stray shot.
It didn't help I was a goddamned coward at first, popping off so many shots before the target was in range, I'd have to change out the clip just when it counted. Whenever Jericho convinced me to hold off and try aiming for a change, I'd hesitate so damn long there was a chance I'd shoot my foot off when I finally hit my mark.
He eventually sobered up long enough to choose the right gun—a battered sniper rifle with a slight veer to the left and a partially crooked sight. It took forever to figure out the problems with the aim, but I loved that fucking gun from the moment I got my hands on it. Jericho wanted me to call it something, said I should give it a stupid girl's name like Lucy.
I just called him an idiot instead.
What started out as terrifying small time hunting—capping bloatflies and misting mole rats—soon turned into something bigger than I could possibly imagine.
I finally felt in control of my life, and it felt good.
My ego flourished alongside my confidence as my aim got better. Each trip we managed to find something worth a few more caps, and each return home made me that little bit cockier. Soon I swaggered through town like a goddamned Butch DeLoria wannabe. Jericho made fun of me for it all the time, but I stopped paying attention to anything he had to say.
Big fucking mistake.
We left town one evening heading west, towards an abandoned diner Jericho once holed up in with his gang. The only thing waiting for us there was a whole lot of piss all, and we headed back to Megaton bickering our asses off, each trying to blame the other for our shitty luck.
Suddenly he grabbed my arm, yanked me to the ground, and whispered for me to shut the fuck up and run. I figured he was just pulling my leg, all set to laugh his ass off at the naïve vaultie falling for another one of his little jokes and fleeing in terror from a bloatfly. Instead of listening, I shook him off and slithered forward to a pile of scrap metal masquerading as a wrecked car. Popping my head up, I saw what he planned on teasing me about.
Just another mutated animal wandering the wastes way out ahead of us. Sure, it was twice as tall as me, covered in leathery skin, and had a mouthful of fangs, but I was so goddamned sure of myself that if it didn't spit bullets, it didn't scare me. Despite Jericho's wild signals to get the fuck down, I lined up the shot, taking my time to draw a bead on the creature's head.
Bang! The creature roared, rearing back and clawing at the air in pain. Jericho turned white and bolted, running back towards the empty diner. I adjusted the aim as cool as you please, not overly concerned with how fucking fast that thing moved other than to factor the speed of it in my next shot.
Bang! The second shot slammed into it, barely making the creature pause. My heart didn't even skip a beat as I readied another round, so convinced Jericho was being an asshole again I didn't care that he was running like a burning man towards water. Instead I took my time, aiming right between the charging animal's eyes, waiting until it was a stone's throw away before squeezing the trigger.
Bang! The bullet caught it in the eye just as it sprang, its dead body turning into a momentum laced meat bomb. It came down with a wet thump, slamming heavily against the hood of my cover before sliding off in a thick smear of blood.
"Nice try, jerk off!" Wild with victory, I leapt up from my spot and crowed at Jericho over his failed plan. "I knew it was another of your goddamned jokes. I fucking knew it!"
He didn't find it very funny, walking back to me without a word despite my continual gloating. As soon as he reached me he snatched the rifle from my hands, tossed it to the side, then decked me in the side of the head. I hit the ground so hard I bounced.
"You don't know shit, kid." He didn't give me another look, just pulled out his knife and went to work chopping off the creature's hand.
"What the fuck was that for?" Head still ringing, I attacked him the only way I could—I wriggled like a wingless bloatfly over to him, kicking him in the ankle with my boots. He kept telling me to knock it off, and I kept cursing at him from the ground and kicking the shit out of his legs.
"When I tell you to do something, you fucking do it!" Furious with my constant disrespect and fed up with my attitude, he taught me a lesson the hard way. He took the bloody paw he'd cut off, grabbed hold of my leg, and stabbed one of the claws in my thigh. It went right through my leather pants like they weren't even there, plunging down through the skin, the muscles, the tendons, until the tip of it scraped against bone.
I shrieked, slapping a palm over the hot torrent of blood pouring from the wound before blubbering like a baby. It hurt so much even after he pulled the claw back out, a lingering sensation of a thousand white hot needles jammed into that missing slice of my thigh.
"I don't care if you were king shit of turd mountain down in the vault, but out here you're worth less than shit to me if you don't shut the fuck up and pay attention. I ain't gonna get my head cut off because you think you're too goddamned smart to listen. Christ!" He sliced off the second hand, slamming it down on the dust-covered hood beside the first. "And when I tell you to run from a fucking deathclaw, then you better fucking run."
"You radroach fucking prick!" Despite his very salient points, I wasn't quite ready to admit my failings. I was too busy being furious at him and sobbing over the pain. "Gimme a stim!"
"Nah. Not until I hear you say it." With a click of his lighter Jericho wandered over to a twisted piece of guardrail, still vigilantly dividing the wreckage of road from the rubble of houses. He sat down on it, just a dark shadow shape of smoke and the bobbing red tip of his cigarette.
"Fuck! Fine. I'm fucking sorry. I'll listen to your bullshit from now on. Just give me a fucking stim!" My less than heartfelt words satisfied him. I think it wasn't so much what I said, just so long as he heard me choking on my pride when I said it. He tossed over a stimpak, which I promptly tore open and jabbed into my leg. Immediately the pain lessened as the wound started to knit together, the relaxation loosening my tongue. "You're such an asshole!"
"Yeah, but I'm your kind of asshole," he called back without missing a beat. As I lay there on the ground, recovering from the stabbing and watching him suck on that cigarette like a babe on a tit, I realized he was absolutely right—right about that, right about everything. It was so fucking funny it hurt—this raider asshole had looked out for me and taught me more about survival than my own father ever had.
We kept on scavenging and shooting, spending our down time coming up with plans to score bigger and better than ever. Both of us wanted to rob Moriarty of his stash—Jericho knew where the bastard kept it, and I still hadn't found a lock I couldn't pick, but we couldn't figure a way to do it without winding up with the whole town hot on our heels. So we'd spend our time 'reconnoitering' the place, drinking our caps away while pretending to accomplish something.
During one of those covert missions a far bigger plan found us. The smell caught my attention first. I whipped my head around as soon as it tickled my nose, trying to find the source. I hadn't smelt anything like it since the vault, and back then I'd have sworn it didn't have any fragrance at all. But out in the wastes, there's nothing else like it—the unmistakable scent of clean water.
It came from the corner, where a man dressed in a matching suit—a rarity in itself—sat on a chair and watched the bar through shaded lenses. I walked right up to him, saying the first idiotic thing that came to mind. "You're not from around here."
Hurr. Abso-fucking-lutely brilliant, Seleste.
Thankfully he didn't dismiss me, instead looking at me with rapt fascination. "Neither are you," he finally pronounced in this chillingly calm voice, before inviting me to join him for a little talk.
When I sat down with Mr. Burke, I was nothing but a two-bit scavenging raider with grand dreams and no way to achieve them. When I stood up, I was a wasteland visionary with a mission, my every goal nothing more than a button press away.