Chapter Two.

Traveling to Megaton under the cover of darkness didn't pan out like Moira had planned.

Walking past a picnic table, she tripped over something that grunted. After that, there was quite a bit of shouting, and soon a gasoline fueled campfire had been lit. Moira found herself surrounded by people dressed in spiked leather armor with equally spiked haircuts. All bore scars and haphazard tattoos, marking them as raiders.

"I was hopin' for a midnight snack," the biggest one said. He was bald and took Moira's magnum from her, shoving it in his belt while two smaller raiders held her still. They dragged her over by the fire where each member of the eight-man gang could stare at her.

Well, this isn't good, she thought. Maybe I can learn something about how the raiders survive out here, if I survive of course…

"She's one of them Megaton assholes," a short, brown skinned raider said. Moira was surprised, she had taken the raider for a man, but it was a woman. "I say we fuckin' skin the bitch."

"Yeah," one of the ones holding her by the arm said. "Teach those assholes to horde all the water."

"You're all fuckin' stupid," a raider on the other side of the hastily lit fire said. "Tie her ass up and haul her up to Evergreen. We sell the bitch there, buy some fucking good gear, and burn that shithole town to the ground."

They argued for a few minutes on the merits of buying gear versus simply stealing it, but eventually the one who was lobbying for her enslavement won out with the logic that buying was easy and simple if you had the money, which they would have once they sold her.

Moira wondered if her guide might also include a sidebar on raider democracy and began taking mental notes.

"How come we can't sell her to Megaton? Ya know, like ransom?" said another raider.

"I like that idea," Moira said. The comment earned her a slap to the back of the head and a curse.

Well, they're as mean as people say, Moira thought. At least that's one entry in the guide I won't have to change.

"Those cheap fucks won't ransom shit," the leader of the raiders said. "Jenker is right, we'll sell her ass to Evergreen Mills." He grabbed Moira by the chin and turned her face to the light. "If we market her as a whore, maybe we can get a little extra."

Moira swallowed hard. She had a bad feeling about where the conversation might now be headed. Thankfully, it didn't go in that direction, or at least wouldn't that night. The raiders tied her hands to her back with an old rope and tied her feet with a strand of wire. "Try to crawl off and we'll break your fucking legs," the leader said as someone threw dirt on the fire.

The raiders went back to where they had been sleeping. One pushed her down, hard, and kicked her as he went to his own sleeping mat. Lying on her back, Moira noticed they posted a lookout, the woman. She must have been asleep when I came through, Moira thought. She knew she couldn't crawl off with no one noticing, and began to turn her mind to how she was going to get out of the mess she was in.

***

Her salvation came in the form of death.

The sun had come up and the wasteland grew warm quickly. Moira had managed a few hours of sleep and was struggling to walk over the rough ground as she was led with her hands now tied by a rope around her neck. The small female raider was leading her and not caring much about tugging on the rope too hard.

She hadn't had a Mentat in what seemed like days, but didn't dare try to get one out of her jumpsuit pocket, not that she could anyway. Six of the raiders walked behind her with only the leader and the one leading her by the rope in front. The one directly behind her enjoyed hitting or kicking her whenever she stumbled, and she thought she might devote a large part of the guide to how to avoid being captured by raiders. They weren't very nice people at all.

One raider was still advocating her rape and dismemberment, and had just launched into another campaign speech when she heard a gurgled scream, followed by shouting and gunfire.

They all turned to see what the commotion was. Moira nearly fainted when she saw it. A deathclaw, perhaps the same one from the day before, had killed one raider and was in the process of disemboweling a second. They all began firing, their low caliber weapons putting bullets into the creature's thick skin. A magnum blast down the throat might easily kill a deathclaw, but with what the raiders had, it wouldn't go down quickly.

Moira ran.

She would never know how she didn't fall flat on her face with her hands tied behind her, but once the raider leading her let go of the rope around her neck, bolting seemed like the best option for her. As she ran, she heard the raiders scream and felt a bullet whiz past her ear. Nasty people, she thought.

Her only chance was to put as much distance between her and the deathclaw as possible before it finished with the raiders. With luck, it would take its time to eat them instead of chasing after her, but there was no guarantee it wouldn't go for the thrill of chasing prey over eating killed food. She lamented that she still knew little about deathclaw behavior, despite having witnessed them so close.

The wasteland could play tricks on the eyes. Much of the terrain looked the same, barren, rocky, strewn with bits and pieces of trash too worthless to be used as anything but fuel for a campfire. The effect could sometimes create an optical illusion; one moment you were walking over what you thought was relatively flat terrain only to find that your next step was off a cliff. This is what happened to Moira.

She fell forward. She had the presence of mind to tuck her head in and try to roll. It was also lucky the cliff she had walked over wasn't a straight drop, but more of an incline. As she rolled, the poor quality of the rope used to tie her hands came through and her bonds broke.

Battered and bruised, she got to her feet and saw that she had rolled down in back of a long, tin shack. There was nothing to hide in or under, so she ran with a limp around to the front, where she saw the shack had at one point been a house. There was a door, and she limped towards it, praying it was unlocked.

It was, and she nearly fell through. Moira frantically closed the door behind her and sat against it, breathing hard.

"You look familiar," said a blond woman sitting at the kitchen table to Moira's left. Moira thought she looked familiar too. Had she seen the woman in Megaton? Her hair was long, blond and wavy. Few people in Megaton, even the women, had the time to keep their hair looking nice. Even the prostitute that worked at Moriarty's favored a scuffled look. "Do I know you?"

The woman's voice had a distant tone to it. "Um, you might," Moira said, standing up and looking for the lock on the door. "Are you from Megaton?"

"Yeah," the woman said. "Name's Silver. That bastard Moriarty wants my ass, so I'm hiding…shit, you won't tell?"

"No," Moira said. "Say, you don't have a weapon somewhere around here, do you? There's a bit of a situation outside and I could really use your help."

"Weapon," Silver said, looking around the kitchen. Moira noticed a can of Buffout sitting next to a nearly empty bottle of whisky. "There's a knife."

Moira took a rusted butcher knife from the stove top and decided to take a seat at the kitchen table next to Silver.

"I do know you," Silver said. "You're that shopkeeper, Moira."

"Yes," Moira said. "Listen, like I said, there's a teency weency problem going on outside. There's at least one deathclaw running around and some raiders…well, probably just the deathclaw now, but we might be in danger."

Silver laughed, and took a swig of whisky. "You're not in danger, you're in the wasteland," Silver said. "It's like this all the time, trust me. I didn't know how good I had it in Megaton until I came out here. Say, could you help me? I owe that bastard Colin Moriarty a lot of caps and he wants my ass for it. Thinks I ran off on a binge…what does he know?"

"Uh, the economy is in a slump right now, and I need to replace some pipes," Moira said. She considered herself a nice person, and would help anyone when she could, but when it came to lending money, she had a policy.

"Oh," Silver said. "Well, can you just tell Moriarty I'm dead?"

Moira frowned. She didn't like the idea of talking to Colin Moriarty, much less lying to the man. Rumor had it Moriarty had dirt on everyone in town. Moira didn't know what Moriarty might have had on her, there was nothing she could think of, but it was a risk she was hesitant to run.

An idea occurred to her.

"I know," Moira said. "I'll pay Moriarty your debt, and you can work it off as my assistant."

Silver blinked, hard, and seemed to sober up slightly. "Your assistant? I guess…"

"Great!" Moira said, nearly forgetting the deathclaw likely prowling outside. "I could use another one, my last didn't work out."

Silver finished off her whisky. "Deal, then. I'm going to go take a nap, then we can head back to Megaton."

Moira watched her get up and stagger up the stairs. Moira felt tired herself, but knowing what was beyond the tattered home's thin walls, she didn't dare sleep and ate two Mentats instead.

To be continued…