9

Nothing much happened for the next few days, bar me and Three walking and him not saying much. I'm not a talker ordinarily (this journal thing is about 400% more words than I would use if I were telling this story out loud) so I didn't say much, either. Sometimes he woke me up at night saying "Gary!" in a loud whisper, the kind of voice a kid will use when they're too scared to scream. The first time this happened I got up and found him curled up in a ball with his arms over his head, shivering. He was wrapped tight enough that a reassuring pat on the shoulder seemed like a bad idea. I sat down across from him and waited for him to calm down.

After a while he would sit up and look at me, sort of serious, and then he'd say "Gary," again in what I took to be a reassuring voice and he'd lay back down. (My commentator, which I might as well admit is Fawkes, says it's lie back down. I'm not sure if I believe him that there's a difference between lie and lay.) That happened about once per night. I think by Night Four I stopped waking up.

We ran into critters here and there. Mostly they left us alone. Things that will attack a lone person will sometimes leave two people be. Or maybe there was something about Three that they didn't like. (Do clones smell different than born people? Fawkes says he has no information on the point since his sense of smell is only slightly more acute than a human's. This makes it considerably better than mine owing to my only having part of a nose most of the time.) I saw at least one blowfly zoom in for a quick bite and veer off just out of his reach. The trip took maybe a little longer than usual because I had to swerve around the hot spots I'd normally walk right through, but by the end of the fifth day we were into the ruined outskirts of the city on the Western side of the Potomac River.

Anyone who's traveled much around here will tell you it's not so easy to get into Washington, D.C. A lot of the old on-ramps are collapsed or blown up, intersections are blocked by rubble (whether accidentally or on purpose), and if you run into a nice open stretch of road you'd better hit the dirt quick, before you get shot by raiders, mercenaries, or super mutants. Admittedly the last group mostly will leave us Ghouls alone, but you never can tell. Besides, I was traveling with a smoothskin. The average super mutant's view on normal humans seems to vary between "annoying" and "delicious."

I was looking around in the ruins for one of the less obvious entrances to the D.C. Underground where there used to be a working subway back before the world, or at least the old U.S. of A., blew up. About the only way to get across the Potomac that doesn't involve a bad risk of getting shot to death or blown up is to go through the subways. Those have risks of their own, whether animal or human or somewhere in between. (Which is where I would put the Ferals; the Raiders are too damn evil not to be human. My commentator here says that's an interesting bit of metaphysical reasoning. I get the feeling he doesn't totally agree but is being diplomatic again.) One of the first risks inherent is that the main plazas tend to be occupied by Super Mutants, so it's a good idea to keep in mind where the service doors are.

Three must've guessed some of this. He followed me without comment as I searched through the rubble, rifle powered up and being as quiet as I could. The clone was surprisingly quiet in his Vault boots, though I could still hear the soft scuff on pavement or an occasional crunch when we hit gravel. Clothing will make a sound, too, but if you wear soft fabrics that fit okay it's kept to a minimum. The Vault suit was a little loose for him and it tended to rustle.

There was very little sound. Sometimes I would hear the whine of a blowfly near us, or the quick scuttle of some smallish thing with too many legs – maybe a radroach. No birds sing in D.C. The vultures circle far overhead, patient and silent and permanent.

Eventually I found the stairwell I wanted in the back of a pile of rebars and broken slabs of concrete. There was a radroach in it. It rattled its wings at me and scuttled off. Three sniffed and looked at me. I nodded. The stink of urine was strong enough that even I could smell it. A person, or something like it, had been here recently. Not a Ghoul, or I'd have felt the rads. I stopped to tighten the straps on my rucksack and make sure it was on just tight enough before I went down the stairs.

I stood as far to one side as I could get without touching the wall. Then I nudged the door open with my foot. A dark hole opened behind it. I could feel Three behind me, a quiet breathing presence. This might have been more reassuring if I'd been able to think of him as totally stable. I let my eyes adjust to the dark before I went inside. There was a blind hallway there, short and perpendicular to the door. I could see the second door further down. That would lead through a set of small rooms and out into the main tunnel.

Three eased the door closed behind us. I looked back at him, to see if he was okay with the dark and the closeness of the walls. He nodded once. Maybe this was more natural for him than being out in the open. He'd grown up in a Vault, after all.

This hallway smelled like fresh cigarette smoke. Somebody had been here in the last few minutes. I swore, but silently. I could backtrack and look for another entrance, but that would take a long time and I'd probably find super mutants at the end of it. This was a risk, but it was the best available. I changed my grip on the rifle slightly, edged up beside the next door, and triggered it open.

There was a Raider standing right inside the door looking at me. He had on the spiky leather-and-metal armor they make for themselves and his hair was shaved half off. His eyes glowed faintly red. That was about all I had time to take in before he went for a knife and I blew his head into goo. The body staggered a step forward and I had to get out of the way, and then I heard the sharp pew that only a laser pistol makes. A red beam chipped the concrete on the back wall right where I'd been standing.

Back then I was used to only worrying about myself. I'd reckoned without Three. Maybe he knew that. Anyway, he brushed past me too fast for me to shoot him just by reflex. He dove into the room at about knee-level. "What the Hell--?" I started to say, and then there was another shot and I heard him grunt like it had hurt him, and I stepped around the doorpost with the rifle up.

I was just in time to see him do a dive roll between the legs of a tall Raider girl. She was about half-dressed in rags and so skinny she had to hold onto the laser pistol with both hands. She was starting to turn around when he popped up behind her, grabbed her head, and yanked it around until she was looking at me again. I heard her neck snap, loud as a gunshot. She was looking right at me when the light went out behind her red eyes.

I've seen that before, looking someone in the eyes while they die. I never liked it. I would think about that person just stopping, just gone, and it froze me down to the bone. It didn't matter if two seconds before they were trying to snuff me. Dead is dead. Even by that point in my life I'd had to shoot a good number of people. I never looked them in the eyes if I could help it.

I just stood there and stared until Three let go and the girl's body fell to the floor with a slithering thump. Three came up with the pistol. He must have caught it as her fingers let go, reflexes as scary fast as the first time I'd ever seen him.

I shook my head and turned to scan the room, rifle at the ready. My stomach steadied down as I made myself think about things that happen in the land of the living. There was nobody there. The two Raiders had probably been using it to shack up in. There was one mattress up against the wall with a rumpled, stained blanket wadded up on one end. I was prepared to see more bodies, but evidently they hadn't been here long enough to nail up their larder yet. I could see where one of them had been drilling a hole in the ceiling, probably to hang a meat hook. There was one metal table with a cigarette still burning in a chipped ashtray and a greasy pack of cards scattered over it.

"Gary?" said Three. I turned to look at him. He was looking at me sort of worried.

"I'm okay," I said. "What about you?"

He nodded. There was a scorch mark in the fabric of his jumpsuit up on the right shoulder. It might have grazed him, nothing more. Laser burns sting like a mother, though. I've had a couple. (Fawkes says not as bad as plasma burns. Meaning, I suspect, that he knows which part of the story is coming up here pretty soon.)

Three held out the laser pistol butt-first.

"Why don't you keep it?" I said.

He looked at the pistol, and at the dead Raider girl and back at me. He shook his head. "Gary."

"That attitude's gonna get you killed, you know," I said. I took it anyway and stuck it in my belt. "You're pretty goddamned fast. You're just not faster than a bullet."

Three showed me a weird little smile. He shrugged as if to say Who cares?

"You must care at least a little," I said. "Otherwise how'd you get all the way from Vault 108 to Megaton alive?"

Three raised his eyebrows, like maybe I'd surprised him.

"Come on," I said. "Let's make sure there's nobody else here."

The dirty little set of rooms – maybe it had been offices once – was still a dirty little set of rooms. It was dark and stuffy and full of overturned desks and dusty piles of junk. I was glad when we finally found the last inside door and it hissed apart to reveal the comparatively bright and airy tunnel of the White Line. The old directions on the wall are still there for those who know how to read them. Once you get under the Potomac and over to the East side, the White crosses the Black line and you can take that South to the Museum station. Underworld is there inside the Museum.

It's not that complicated, but it is a long and dangerous walk. I told some of this to Three as I looked up and down the tunnel. The Raiders had probably cleaned out whatever was alive in this area. The girl had looked pretty lean. I figured there hadn't been much to begin with.

"You up for this?" I asked Three. He nodded.

"Gary," he said affirmatively.

"Okay," I said. "East it is."