Codsworth met them out on the bridge between Red Rocket and the suburb, somehow managing to look frantic even without a face to emote with. Dogmeat was with him, teeth bared and every hair along his spine raised.
"Miss Rose!" Codsworth exclaimed. "Hurry! One of our guards saw a deathclaw headed our way from Abernathy farm… it will be here any minute!"
"Fuck," she growled. "Do we have any word on Abernathy? Blake, Connie, everyone, are they alright?"
"I'm afraid I don't know, madam. There have been no transmissions on the radio that we could tell."
She let out a wordless snarl of frustration. "Get anyone who can fire a gun over to the eastern guard posts. Hide everyone else in the supply cellar and bar the doors, do you hear me Codsworth? Don't come out unless you hear my voice on the other side!"
The robot didn't argue, hovering off as quick as his jets could carry him. Rose ran over to the nearest settler, who stared out into the darkness with a white face and wide eyes.
"You the one who saw it coming?" she asked. He nodded. "Just the one, right?"
"I… I think so, but it's so dark… I just saw a big horned shadow." His eyes were as wide as dinner plates. "Looked like a damn devil."
"That's not too far off," she muttered.
Off in the distance, the air vibrated with the sound of an angry roar. Dogmeat snarled gutturally, trembling with the urge to take off after the sound. The settler went even paler, shaking like a leaf.
"I've never fought a deathclaw before," he murmured, frozen to the spot.
Rose took one look at him, swore, and slapped him soundly across the face. The settler stumbled, the shock jerking him back into awareness.
"Get your ass up that ladder and onto the roof," she commanded, pointing at the house beside them. "Kick the ladder down when you're up there, and stay away from the edge. I can keep the deathclaw's attention on me so long as it doesn't see you." She glanced at Hancock. "You should really get up there too."
Hancock gave a quick laugh. "You serious, Sunshine? That ain't gonna happen. If you wanna keep ordering me around like that, though…" He winked.
Around them, more armed settlers had gathered. Spotlights popped on loudly, illuminating the area. Rose could feel the earth shake under her feet to the rhythm of heavy, loping steps. She shoved the settler towards the ladder and ran out to the edge of the spotlight, Dogmeat and Hancock on her heels.
The deathclaw hovered at the edge of the spotlight. It was easily ten feet tall- perhaps taller, with the horns. Small reflective eyes glinted out of its face, and it dragged its six-inch claws through the dirt as it evaluated the easiest target. More than any other creature of the wasteland, the deathclaw was a true monster, a dragon with a demonic anger and an insatiable appetite.
Rose remembered all too well her last encounter with one of these beasts, and that time she had a power armor suit. She pulled a dose of Psycho out of her back pocket and jammed it into her thigh, hissing through clenched teeth as the drug burned through her veins and sent her adrenaline production into overdrive. She hated using the stuff, but needed the extra boost if they were going to survive this.
The deathclaw stared her down, probably singling her out as the dominant alpha from her position in front of Hancock and Dogmeat. She met its gaze unblinkingly and refused to move a step, hard as that was with the Psycho pushing every nerve ending to explode into motion. The deathclaw would lunge at the first sign of flight, just like any other predator. She wasn't going to win this through sheer courage, though. Her fingers tightened around her gun, and she wrinkled her nose as the breeze shifted, bringing with it the scent of dried blood and carrion.
Perhaps another impossibly long minute passed, and then one of the settlers who was taking shelter on the roof panicked, firing off a shot. He missed, but the noise was all that was needed to break the spell; the deathclaw roared, loud enough to make their ears ring, and leapt forward. It cleared most of the distance in one bound, and Rose found herself quite suddenly staring it in the face.
She ducked and backpedaled, gasping as she felt the swish of claws cutting through the air over her head. She heard Dogmeat bark; the German Shepherd darted back and forth, nipping at the deathclaw's leathery hide. His teeth weren't long enough or sharp enough to puncture anything, though, and the deathclaw paid him little mind for the time being. Instead, the deathclaw continued after Rose, snarling angrily when she caught its shoulder with a blast from her shotgun. It lunged towards her, knocking her flat on her back against the concrete; she stared up in horror as it loomed over her, snarling with blood and drool dripping from its sharp incisors.
"Over here, ugly!" Hancock shouted, diverting its attention. He fired and caught the same arm Rose had; reptilian blood splattered and the deathclaw howled in pain.
The reprieve was brief, however. Rose rolled to the side and narrowly avoided getting stomped on as the deathclaw wheeled towards Hancock. He fired a second shot, but the monstorous lizard anticipated it and knocked the gun to the side. In the same motion, it swept its claws back and struck Hancock across the chest with its forearm, knocking him back into the house.
"John!" Rose cried out. Hancock fell to his hands and knees, all of the air knocked from his lungs; Dogmeat darted in between them to stand guard over him, growling bravely at the deathclaw as it moved in for a killing strike.
"I don't think so!" Rose snarled. She closed the steps between them at a brief run and leapt for the deathclaw's back, clinging to the large spikes that protruded from its shoulders. Before the beast could comprehend that it had a human woman scaling its back, she pulled out the knife she kept at her belt and drove all six inches into the space between its injured shoulder and neck.
Even a 10ft behemoth would notice half a foot of metal getting jabbed next to its collarbone. The deathclaw roared, flailing around as it tried to snag Rose or shake her off its back. Luckily, between its injured arm and the structure of its joints, it wasn't able to reach around to its back, so as long as she could cling to the center of its spine she was safe. Riding an angry deathclaw was about as easy as taming a supremely pissed-off, carnivorous bull, though; she clenched the hilt of the knife with a white-knuckled grip and did her best to keep ahold of the deathclaw's spikes, but couldn't free up a hand to get a killing hit in. In an odd moment of fear-induced clarity, she found herself hoping none of the settlers would try to shoot the thing while she was playing piggyback; they'd just as easily hit her.
Then the deathclaw made the mistake of bending over, in hopes of tossing her over its back. The moment gave her the stability she needed to yank her knife back out of its flesh; without giving it a chance to straighten, she shoved the blade into the base of its skull, putting all of her weight behind it. She felt the crack as the blade drove into its spine, and it toppled forward, hitting the ground with a thud like an earthquake.
Not willing to trust that the thing was truly dead, Rose quickly picked up her shotgun and put two rounds into its skull at point-blank range. Confident that the monster was truly dead, she slung the gun's strap around her shoulder and dropped to the ground, holding her head between shaking hands as the adrenaline burned through her system. She jumped a little as Hancock dropped to the cement next to her, and Dogmeat planted himself on her opposite side.
"You're fucking insane," Hancock said, his tone almost awed. "I didn't just hallucinate that, right?"
Rose groaned, not yet ready to talk. She could hear the settlers cautiously climbing back down from their vantage point on the roof, all chattering excitedly about what they had just seen. She was going to become a local legend at this rate.
"Was that me, or did I just see you riding that deathclaw?"
Rose glanced up to see Sturgis standing in front of her, looking pale but with a grin a mile wide on his face.
"Wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it myself," Hancock replied. "I think you might just be the first person in history to take out a deathclaw with a knife, Sunshine."
Rose grumbled something incoherent, but accepted Sturgis's hand to pull herself to her feet. "That was easily one of the scariest and stupidest things I've ever done in my life."
"I'm starting to wonder if you even can be killed," Sturgis remarked, and Rose looked at him darkly.
"Don't jinx me like that." She noticed Hancock holding an arm against his ribs, and frowned. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, think it's just some bruised ribs," he said dismissively. "Mighta cracked one or two. I'll be fine."
"Come on. Mama Murphy's got some stimpaks in her stash; that's a lot closer than heading back to the truck stop." She paused and looked back at Sturgis. "Are you all alright here?"
He nodded. "Yeah, we'll clean up. Might have to look into building another turret on this side… but you two go on ahead. You've earned the rest."
After making certain that Hancock was resting on Mama Murphy's couch with a couple of stimpaks at hand, she went to grab Codsworth and the other settlers out of the supply cellar. Dogmeat followed; the canine favored his front leg paw slightly and had a cut across his snout, but otherwise seemed no worse for wear. Rose had tried to get him to stay at the house with Hancock, but he stubbornly hadn't listened, refusing to let her out of his sight.
The settlers all balked when they saw her, and she could understand why; she probably looked like a terror, covered in deathclaw blood and dirt and God knew what else. She hung back with Mama Murphy while the others cautiously went back to their homes or over to check out the aftermath of the fight.
"Hey Mama, Sturgis was able to hook up running water to your place, right?"
The old lady laughed. "I take it you're looking for a shower, kid? Lord knows you could use it."
"I can't argue there." She smiled, and added, "By the way, Hancock slammed pretty hard out there, looks like he hurt a few ribs. I borrowed a couple of stimpaks from your stash; I hope you don't mind. I'll be sure to bring some over from my own supply before I leave."
"Ah, don't worry about it," Mama Murphy replied with a dismissive hand wave. "You two need 'em a lot more than this old bag of bones does. Take whatever you need; I'll resupply when the traders come through next."
"Thanks, Mama."
Later, alone in the bathroom, Rose relished the sensation of warm water as she watched all of the dirt and blood rinse off her body and down the drain. Sturgis, technical genius that he was, had managed to hook up Mama Murphy's bathroom- one of the few that was mostly intact- to the powered water pump that he had repaired several months ago. The water pressure wasn't great and the temperatures could be tricky, but after spending weeks where the only hygienic options were sponge-baths with rags and purified water or risking rads by jumping into the river, it was paradise.
She scrubbed her hair and skin as clean as she could get them, and tried not to think about how short-lived that feeling would be once they got back on the road. The warm water worked magic on her tense muscles, and a small moan escaped her as she rubbed her neck and felt the knots there release.
"You're not having too much fun in there without me, are you?"
Startled, Rose yelped and nearly fell. She pulled back the curtain and glared at Hancock, who was laughing.
"You scared me!" she said accusingly, before shutting off the water and wrapping herself in a patchwork blanket that served as a towel. "You should know better than to sneak up on me like that."
"I figured I'd be safe, what with you naked and distracted." He smirked, his dark eyes seeming to grow darker as he admired her form beneath the thin blanket. "You sure you don't want me to join you?"
She raised an eyebrow. "You're incorrigible. And I don't think those stimpaks have already worked their magic on your ribs."
"What are you talking about? I'm fine."
"Really?" She leaned in close to him and put her arms around his waist, but before he could lean in to kiss her she lightly pressed on his side. He jumped and cursed, and Rose backed up with a laugh.
"Yes, that definitely seems like you're totally healed," she teased. She softened the jibe with a quick kiss. "Get yourself cleaned up so we can try to catch a little more sleep before we leave. We've got a long trek ahead of us."
She changed into jeans, a tank top, and a worn flannel in the spare bedroom that Mama Murphy kept open for traders, while Dogmeat watched her tiredly from the bed. She had dosed him with half a stimpak as well, and she could already see the cut healing along the top of his nose. Exhaling slowly, Rose flopped on the bed next to him, absently rubbing his soft ears as she stared up at the ceiling.
"You think we could get just one day where something crazy doesn't happen?" she asked him. Dogmeat whined and halfheartedly wagged his tail, already half-asleep. "Yeah, guess that would take the fun out of it, wouldn't it?"
When Hancock came in a few minutes later, both Rose and Dogmeat were passed out on the bed, with the dog's head protectively across her chest. He shook his head and chuckled before taking a seat in the chair next to the bed.
"You win this time, pooch."
Dogmeat huffed, clearly having heard him, and Hancock rolled his eyes before pulling a hit of Jet out of his coat pocket. Before long the chems helped balance out any lingering adrenaline and eased some of the ache left in his back and chest, and he drifted off along with the other two.