8

I turned back toward the guys in the corner. All of them had guns, but only one had a bandoleer. He wore his hair in a dirty tail and he had a .38 on one hip. Tied down. I sighed quietly.

"Ratliff?" I said. He turned around and I got a good look past him. There was a pale man with dark hair cut short sitting slumped in a chair there. He had a black eye that had split, and blood matted his eyebrow and ran down his swollen cheekbone. More blood ran out of his nose and down his chin. His uninjured eye was a narrow slit, and I couldn't tell if he was conscious or not. He wasn't big, but he looked wiry under his blue jumpsuit.

"Yeah?" said Ratliff. He licked the brass knuckles on his right hand to show me how tough he was. "You want something, Zombie?"

"Michael over at Crater Side said you were looking to hire," I said.

"That's right," said Ratliff. The other two men turned to look at me now. "You think you're tough enough to run with this crew?" He waved a hand at the other two. They were both dirty and both wearing the same kind of stained leathers Ratliff was. One had a lumpy nose, like it'd been broken a few times, and the other had a cauliflower ear. I thought it was going to take an awful lot of caps offered for me to spend more than five minutes with them voluntarily.

"Depends on the job," I said.

Ratliff snorted. "Let's see how tough you a - "

He blinked at the the end of the plasma rifle, which was now less than an inch from his nose. The sound of the rifle's power rising to maximum was loud in the sudden silence. He'd been showing off for his buddies, working up to some kind of threat. I'd stolen his momentum.

"Kind of a small hole, isn't it?" I said. "Funny how that is. Up this close it would turn your head into a wad of green slime. Lose ten pounds of ugly fat in half a second."

"There's one of you and three of us, you zombie bitch," said one of the others.

"Uh huh," I said without moving. "That's not gonna do much for Ratliff here. But there's a chance you might get that gun out before I blow you all away. Want to race?"

He didn't want to race. He was used to beating up unarmed guys with a comfortable advantage in numbers.

"Take off," I said.

"Hey," said Ratliff. "You can't - "

"I've decided I don't want to work for you," I said. "So blow." I took a step back and to one side, putting my back to a wall and giving them room to walk out if they were so inclined. Ratliff's two buddies looked at him to see what he would do. He worked the fingers on his right hand for a second. The dumb bastard actually thought he could get me before I got him, even looking down the barrel.

That's not what happened, though. What happened was that the man in the chair rolled his head around and groaned.

"Better put him down again, Thomas," said Ratliff without looking away from me.

"Don't do that, Thomas," I said. Thomas, who was evidently the one with the cauliflower ear, looked from Ratliff to me. The wiry guy in the jumpsuit kind of shook his head, like it hurt him. Then he came out of the chair so fast it bounced off the wall. Thomas made an awful noise, clutching his throat where the man had hit with his bunched fingers. The second tough might have succeeded in shooting him if I hadn't blown his gun out of his hand. He lost a couple of fingers, too. He staggered back with a surprisingly high scream, and then the wiry guy kicked him in the balls and then rabbit-punched him behind the ear when he doubled over. He hit the floor with a thud. All of it had happened in an eyeblink.

"So what's your problem with this guy?" I said. The man in the blue jumpsuit stood there, looking at my rifle and at Ratliff.

"Gary," he snarled between his clenched teeth. One side of his lower lip was starting to swell.

"That's my problem," said Ratliff. "The smartass won't say anything else."

"Huh," I said. I lowered the plasma rifle a fraction. Ratliff decided to try his luck. His right hand swept down for the .38. The man in the blue jumpsuit beat me and Ratliff. He brought both fists around and smashed his tormentor in both sides of the head at once. The revolver went off into the floor. Ratliff hit the wooden boards a second later. I powered the rifle back down and slung it over my shoulder again.

"Come on," I said. "Before Moriarty gets here."

"Gary?" said the man in the jumpsuit, and I heard his footsteps behind me as I ran for the door. I started to run down the walkway outside. About halfway down I heard a thump from behind me, and I stepped aside just in time to avoid having him knock my knees out from under me as he slid past. He fetched up on the first landing and rolled back into a sitting position, shaking his head. I followed him down.

"You okay?" I said. He reached back and felt of the back of his head. His fingers came away bloody. I got down on one knee next to him and unslung my rucksack.

"They bounce your head off the wall a couple times?" I said. He nodded, but carefully. "You dizzy?" Nod. He wiped at his bloody nose with his sleeve. "You've maybe got a concussion, then. Well, come on. Doc Church can probably fix you up."

Fervent head shake. "No,"he said. "Gary."

"Gary who?" I said. He looked at me with a squint in his good eye, like maybe he was seeing double. Then he held up three fingers.

"Gary," he said again. He was deadly serious. I didn't think he was being stubborn. I was starting to think maybe he couldn't say anything else.

"Gary Three?" I said. "What's that supposed to mean?" He turned a little away from me, resting his head on one bent knee so I could see the back of his jumpsuit. It had 108 in white letters on the back.

"That looks like a Vault suit," I said. "Vault 108?"

Another nod, this one very slight.

"Wait..." I said slowly. "I think I heard something about..."

Then I remembered. The rumor had made it all the way to Underworld, as rumors will. Some idiot had found Vault 108 with its door unsealed and gone in looking for loot. To hear him tell it, or at least to hear the secondhand version that got passed along, he barely escaped alive. The story was that the residents were violently insane. He was attacked by a mob with blunt weapons and fingernails and teeth less than two yards inside the door. He shot a bunch of them and got away. The detail that really made the story creepy was that every single one of the residents of Vault 108 was male, and they all looked exactly alike, same as twins. And not a single one of them spoke a word except for their own name.

"So you're one of the Scary Garys from 108," I said.

He raised his head and looked at me, tensing up a little, like he expected to have to fight or run. "Gary," he said, a little woozy now, and held up the three fingers again. Slowly. The hand was bloody where he'd wiped his nose and mouth.

"Gary 3," I said. "That's your name?"

He held up the fingers again.

"Just Three. Yeah, I wouldn't spread that around either, if I was you. Why don't you want to go to the doctor?" I said.

"Gary," he said. I tried to think of a good reason. If it was really true about the Scary Garys, all living in the same place and all looking alike and, most importantly, all about the same age, they couldn't be twins or anything like it. Not if there were as many as there were supposed to be. But you heard other rumors about the old Vault experiments, and some of them were supposed to have to do with...

"Is it because you're a clone?" I said.

This got me a slow nod, then a wince when that hurt.

"You think Doc Church will notice something like that while he's fixing up your busted head?" I said. "'Cause I don't."

Three looked at me. His face was all out of shape from the swelling and the bruises and the blood, but I could see the flat line his lips made. He wasn't going to the doctor. I could maybe wait for him to pass out and then drag him there, but I had a good idea what would happen if he woke up suddenly. I'd seen him fight like a demon without a weapon to his name.

"Okay," I said. "I've got some stimpaks. But then we've got to get out of town, okay? I don't know if you killed Ratliff - "

Three's little smile said he probably had.

" - But I wouldn't be surprised if somebody saw us." I dug one of my new stimpaks out of the rucksack and held it out dull-end-first. "You know how to use this?" I wasn't about to come at him with something sharp, not after what I'd seen in the bar. He took the stimpak, jabbed it into the back of his head, and pressed the plunger. It had to hurt, but he didn't make a noise. After a second he shook his head, then again, harder. As I watched, the swelling in his eye went down a little all at once. His nose stopped oozing.

"Need another one?" I said.

"Gary," said Three, which from the intonation I took to mean no. I got up out of the public walkway. Nobody had come by. Three stood up, graceful now that he wasn't concussed any more. We were about the same height.

"Okay, then," I said, and closed up the rucksack. "I'm getting out of town. If I were you, I'd get cleaned up and then do the same. Public restroom is that way."

I shouldered my rucksack and turned to go on down the next ramp. I turned off when I hit solid ground and headed across the bottom of the crater toward the steep exit stairs. (At this point I've asked my commentator why he got so quiet all of a sudden. He says he hasn't heard this whole part of the story before, since he left me outside Megaton before all of it happened. I say this for Fawkes, he does have the ability to shut up and listen once in a while.)

I was through the crowd of vendors outside and just turning toward the East when I heard running footsteps. I turned around. Three stopped a couple of yard short of me. We looked at each other. He was clean and he wasn't breathing hard, though he must have run fast to catch me.

"You want something?" I said.

"Gary," he said firmly. He tapped the back of his head with one finger.

"You're welcome," I said. "Was that all?" Three nodded. I turned around and started walking again. Three drew level with me a moment later, crunching along firmly in his Vault-issued boots. I stopped. He stopped. I started walking. He started walking.

I stopped again. "Three," I said. "Why are you following me?"

Same gesture. Tap tap. Great. Of all the violently insane clones in the Wasteland, I had to run into the one with the sense of obligation. I sighed.

"Okay," I said. "Suit yourself."

He touched the middle of his chest with one hand and raised his other one in the familiar three-fingers gesture. Then he pointed at me and raised his eyebrows.

"I'm Thistle," I said. "As far as I know I'm the only one."

Three opened his mouth and closed it. "Ga - " he started to say, and shut his mouth again. A muscle in his jaw twitched. I watched him struggle with it for another few seconds before he managed to say, "Gyaaaathis. This. Thistle."

"That's right," I said, and started walking again. "I'm going to Underworld. Have you ever been to D.C.?"

Beside me, Three shook his head.

"Good. Maybe none of your brothers has, either. While we're there we'll find you something else to wear. The 108 suit is a bad idea."

"Gary," he said cheerfully. If the hot sun bothered him, he showed no sign.