The buzzards were still circling four hours later as I surveyed the bloated corpses. The Mojave sun was burning hot and the rest moved off the ledge into the dubious shade of the cliff. Upon our earlier arrival, each of them had taken a look through my binos at the black swollen corpses the Khans had left behind.
"I only see Grimes and Suarez, the other two guards," said Rex. "Willy is missing."
"Who's that?" I ask.
He is our brahmin driver. Mentally he is…simple, but he has a gift for handling animals.
"The Khans may have taken him prisoner, thinking they could trade him for the drugs. They will probably make contact with The Followers in a couple of days asking for an exchange."
"That is not a choice I would want to make. Thousands, tens of thousands, of lives could depend on the medicines we develop from R-37-81, and yet I am loath to let someone else die for a mere possibility." The doc's scarred face showed the conflict churning within him.
"It has to be your call, Doc," I said.
"Is there any possibility of rescuing him?" Asked the ghoul doctor.
I looked up at the birds circling overhead and say, "Maybe."
If there is one virtue you need in the wasteland, it is patience. I ignored the sweat beading under my armor as I continued my vigil. I hear someone crawling up beside me. I think it might be Annie, but it was just the kid.
"How is waiting here going to help Willy?" He demands to know. "We broiling here watching vultures fly overhead. Shouldn't we be looking for him, or something?"
"The Mojave is a big place, Kid. It would take months to search all the nooks and crannies here. Here is your first lesson about the Mojave. What do you see wrong here?"
Jason takes my binoculars and scans the desert below and says, "All I see is Blowflies and the bodies of the Brahmin and the guards."
"Yeah," I reply, "that's all I see, too."
The kid continues to look through the binoculars, studying the desert like it was one of his textbooks from school. Eventually, he put the binos down to wipe his sleeve along his brow.
"The buzzards," he says. "Why haven't they started to feed?"
"Because something must be spooking them." I reply.
"Something is alive down there? Could it be Willy?"
"Doubtful. The Khans are not likely to let someone live and we would have seen a wounded man out there."
"Then what's out there?"
"That's the second lesson about surviving in the Mojave Wasteland; know your enemy."
The kid gives me a puzzled look and I decide to help his education along by saying, "The Khans are the greatest producer of chems in the wasteland. It stands to reason, if they make the chems then they use the chems."
Jason waits for me to say more, but I don't he turns back to scanning the desert. Thirty minutes later he says in a hesitant voice, "I thought I saw the ground move."
I take the binoculars back and I am awarded in few minutes for my efforts. "You did. Now watch some more."
Rex and Annie, intrigued, crawl back onto the ledge. Annie is so close to me she is touching. She acts as if she doesn't notice how close we are and stares into the shimmering waves of heat coming off the sand. Within a few moments four people, buried in the sand under blankets, emerge from their ambush spots.
"Chems make you jumpy, Kid." I say softly to Cane. "Hard to lay still when your brain is twitching and squirming. We couldn't see it, but the buzzards were obviously seeing them moving. We are going to follow these bastards to their camp."
The Khans disappear into the rocks to our right. I lead the rest along secret paths to intercept the Great Khans. We arrive at an overlook just in time to see them disappear into the narrow mouth of a small box canyon. The sun is low in the sky and the canyons are filling with shadows. Jason starts to get up from our hiding position but I quickly pull him down. Once again I scan the scene through my binoculars.
"I see one on left side," Annie whispers, "hiding in the shadow of that large overhang with the white streaks in it."
I soon confirm the presence of the guard. I then say, "I got one the right, hiding in the boulders on top."
"I see him," Annie says. "How do you want to handle this?"
"Can you make a pistol shot from here?"
"Of Course."
"I will take out the guard on top. He might make some noise, if the other Khan sticks his head out, put a bullet in it, but wait until I take out the other guy, if you can."
Annie nods at my instructions and I give her my silenced 10mm. I then move out slowly to circle around the lip of the canyon. It takes me over an hour before I'm in position, but now I'm close enough to smell the stink on the Khan. He's young and bored and not paying attention too much in particular. He's armed with an old Chinese assault rifle, but it is leaning against a bolder. I crawl slowly onto the hot boulder he is leaning against and then I forego any subtle commando techniques and smash his skull with a rock. With a sickening crunch, the boy falls over and dies without making sound. I don't even here the shots, just the sound of a body sliding on the rocks.
I make my way back to my companions and we set off in the near dark. A few of the brightest stars are out now. Moonrise isn't for a couple of hours so we work I way slowly into the canyon.
A fire is burning and we can see the khans hunkering around it. I can see a bound figure lying on the sandy ground. One of the Khans is poking the figure with stick, its tip burning red in the night. The figure whimpers and the Khan laugh. Empty chem vials litter the ground. The Khans are hyped on Jet and are practically dancing around the fire.
"They are torturing Willy" the doc whispers to me, " we must help him."
"We wait." I reply.
"But…"
"We wait," I insist. "They are so hyped up they shoot at anything if we attack. But they are going to crash soon, and then we'll move.
Any wood you find in the Mojave is going to be as dry as old bones. The fire burns hot and quick, consuming the firewood the Khans have used and only coals remain. The rush of the Jet wears off and the Khans begin to crash, crawling toward their bedrolls.
Soon, the only sounds coming from the camp are two lovers wrestling under a blanket and making love noises.
"Wait here," I order as move into the camp. The lovers are reaching the height of their lovemaking and are oblivious to me until I pump half a dozen rounds through their blanket with my silenced pistol.
I move over to Willy, and I put my hand over his mouth to keep him from crying out and then I whisper to him, "Dr. Rex sent me to take you home. I'm going to cut you loose and we are going to have to be very, very quiet so we can get away. Nod your head if you understand."
Willy nods and I use my knife to cut the rawhide straps binding him. His legs are numb from lack of circulation and I have to help him to walk. Maybe we made a noise, or maybe the Khans were as far gone as I hoped, but we don't get very far before some calls out the alarm.
Annie opens fire immediately with her service rifle. I hear the pop of the varmint rifle as well. The Khans are confused and foggy from the chem, but they are recovering quickly. Dr. Rex runs forward to take car of Willy. With his weight off of me, I key in the V.A.T.S. function on my Pip-Boy. The neural interface highlights the threats and causes my body to dump a crap ton of adrenaline into my system so everything seems to slow down and my senses become heightened to almost superhuman levels.
My submachine gun comes up automatically and I start rattling of short bursts of 10mm bullets into the Khans. I get lucky as one of them pulls the pin on a grenade, and I shoot her before she has a chance to throw it. The grenade goes off in the middle of them and several go down.
The human system can only be supercharged for so long before nerve damage occurs. The V.A.T.S. disconnects and goes on a timer, allowing my central nervous system to recover. I can now hear the Khans firing and the whine of bullets ricocheting off the walls of the canyon. I feel a burn in my right leg, painful but not disabling, and I turn and run.
I drop down behind a boulder opposite of where Annie is and order the doc and the kid to move out with Willy. Born of battles fought together long ago, Annie and I lay covering fire as we retreat. First she moves back, and then I do, as we leapfrog in our retreat. This way we buy time for the civilians and slow down the Khan's advance.
I key the V.A.T.S program as quickly at it resets and more Khans fall dead on the sand. The Khans are tough, the follow us through the narrow passes firing wildly. But even the Khans will question the wisdom of following an unknown foe in the dark, eventually. Twenty minutes later the volume of fire slackens.
"Now's our chance. Let's go Annie." I whisper to her in the darkness. I hear only a low moan answer me. I quickly crawl to her position and as I reach out to her, I feel the warm blood flowing from her wounds. I sling her over my shoulder in a fireman's carry and I flee after my companions.
I'm soon reunited with them, and we make for a safe place I know about. As soon as we arrive, I drop Annie to the ground and key on the light on my Pip-Boy. Annie's face is ashen and her lips are colorless. I open her armor to find a bullet has gone into her armpit.
"It's gotta be artery, with this much blood," She whispers.
Dr. Rex shoves a needle in her arm and connects a bio-monitor to her wrist. He looks at the number falling on the monitor and then to me and gives me a slight shake of his head.
I cradle Annie's head in my arms, her blood soaking me, but I don't care.
"It's okay, John. It doesn't hurt anymore," she says to me, "but it's cold. Hold me, John."
"I got you."
"Why didn't it work out with us, John?"
"You left for me for that guy at the Silver Rush."
"He dumped me a few weeks later. I was too ashamed to come back to you and too afraid you wouldn't want me back."
"I would have given anything to get you back, Annie."
"You wanted a family and I said I wanted one too, but I was scared. Scared I wouldn't be a good mother. You always wanted a little girl."
"She would have been beautiful, like her mother."
"Do you remember the place we use to go, when we use to talk about our life together? The place with the desert flowers.
"I remember, Annie."
"There…"
Annie dies in my arms. When the day comes, we make our way to Good Springs. The Doc in Good Springs treats Willy's wounds and my own, which are not serious. Dr. Rex arranges to travel with merchant caravan watering their brahmin at the springs. Dr. Rex asks me to go with them, but I tell them I will catch up with him later at the Old Mormon Fort. He shakes my hand and leaves.
By the time the sun is going down, I have dug Annie's grave and put up a white cross marker with her name on it. I sit on the ledge and look westward at the crimson sunset. The same color is found among the flowers growing on the thick stand cacti that surround our old spot where we once talked of love and life and the future. It is beautiful here with all the vibrant colors surrounding us.
There is a saying among the settlers of the wasteland that the only reason anything grows here is because we water the Mojave with our tears.
