Fear and Loathing in the Mojave:
Chapter 4: Interview With The Powder Ganger
I was stewing mightily as Holmberg led me out of the town hall. By the improvised barracks I could see Carlos doing brisk business with five off duty troops. Mona stood to the side somehow looking both alert and slightly bored.
"If you've got any Fancy Lads on you put aside a box for me, Mr. Rodriguez!" called Holmberg cheerfully. "I've been craving some of those for weeks."
"Will do!" answered Carlos with a friendly wave. I was glad our visit to this blighted town was going well for someone. If the way the off duty troops were jockeying to buy whatever small comforts Carlos' bags held was any indication then Nipton would soon be a stop on a lot of traders' routes. Just like NCR wanted.
As pissed as I was about having been played by Holmberg I couldn't find it in myself to be angry about that. If this town sat empty it would just become a hideout for raiders and bandits. If the place was leveled and lost to the sand then people would forget what happened here. And that left a worse taste in my mouth than the idea that the NCR would get what it wanted. Again.
I spat on the ground on general principle. Did I hear Holmberg chuckle when I did that or was that my ears playing tricks on me? Or the drugs? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. But it doesn't mean that every little thing you think you see or hear is someone plotting against you either.
Focus, man! Maintain. Maintain.
Holmberg lead me out past Nipton's houses towards a series of battered metal trailers. One had two restless-looking sentries in front of it and what were clearly recently improvised bars over the windows and a hefty bolt over the door.
"Howdy, boys. How's Shithead?" Holmberg asked.
"Complaining about everything under the sun, as usual," replied the hulking brute of a guard to the door's left.
"Keeps wanting more Med-X," supplied the other guard, a long-faced fellow with an obvious rancher's drawl.
"Of course he does," snorted Holmberg. "Hey, Shithead! You got a visitor!"
"Fuck you!" came the reply from inside the trailer.
"Just who do you have in there?" I asked as I fished a cigarette out of a pocket a lit it.
"A Powder Ganger. Got second in the Legion's lottery so they broke his legs and left him to tell anyone that came along what they'd done here. We found him in the general store when we arrived. He'd been surviving on the scraps in there since the slaughter. He couldn't walk but he sure could complain.
"So we did some jury-rigging and locked him up again. Did what we could for his legs too, of course. Which, honestly, wasn't much. He managed to halfway set them himself using rags and stray wood to make some crude splints. Our medics patched the bastard up as best they could but he's going to be walking with a cane for the rest of his life. Not good for a man who's going to get shipped back west for an extra long sentence once we get things in order here."
"Fuck your ass and NCR!" called Shithead from inside his trailer.
"And that charming attitude is why we call him Shithead," said Holmberg with another one of his cheerful shrugs. "Well, that and he won't tell us his real name. Said he called himself "Boxcars" when we found him. So we call him Shithead to piss him off.
"It'll do as a name until he gets shipped back west where they have the paperwork on all the Powder Gangers that were sent out here. It'll take time, but they'll work out his real name eventually. Then it's right back to his sentence with a heavy dose of extra time for all the trouble he helped cause out here."
"Just like that bunch of Powder Gangers that had been holed up in Vault 19," I mused as I took a drag off my cigarette.
Holmberg nodded. "Yeah, that bunch got smart and turned themselves in. I didn't hear how NCR got them back west but I did read a report that said they'd all gotten themselves an additional seven years. Rather light considering all the havoc Powder Gangers have caused in the region if you ask me. But the law has spoken.
"Anyway, let's see if I can get him in a talkative mood. Hey, Shithead. I said you got someone here who wants to talk to you."
"Yeah? Your mama wants my dick in her ass again tonight. Looks like they're both going to bed unhappy."
Powder Ganger or not I had to mentally grin a little at that one. Holmberg scowled for a moment but then his face shifted back to his annoyingly calm and cheerful look. "Very cute, Shithead. Now I was gonna have my men look the other way while you and this reporterwere talking so that you could chat. But if you want to go back to staring at the walls you're free too."
"Mind if I offer him a smoke?" I asked as I pulled a half empty pack of from a pocket.
"Smokes? That's different. Hell yes, I'll talk to the guy. I'll express the fuck out of my right to free speech for a cigarette!" yelled Shithead.
It was now my turn give Holmberg a shrug but he brushed it off. "All right. Give the cigs to Porter," he said, nodded towards the hulking guard. "Porter, slip Shithead his smokes through the food slot. Use your lighter to get one going once he has them. Huff, be ready in case Shithead does something stupid.
"You hear that, Shithead? You're getting a smoke break. But if you do something dumb like try and grab Porter through those bars you will regret it. Clear?"
"Crystal! Now hurry up. I haven't had a smoke in weeks."
Shithead didn't do anything stupid and dragging himself to the small trailer window offered me my first look at him. He was black and looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties but with a look about him common in men who lead brutish lives.
"You're free to get a little closer if you want to make talking to him easier," explained Holmberg. "But stay a least three feet from the window at all times. We rigged it so he can't do more than poke his fingers out of that box but he's still dangerous. We'll hang back a little but if for any reason I say the interview is over than it's over. No arguments. Got?"
"Roger that," I said in my old NCR soldier voice. That seemed to annoy Holmberg but he drifted off to the side to watch with the guards without a word.
Pleased at having pissed Holmberg off I strolled casually to precisely three feet from the trailer and pulled out my trusty notepad. "Afternoon there. My name's Duke. Um, R. Duke, that is. I'm with-"
"I don't need your whole fuckin' life story," growled Shithead as he scooted a chair closer to the window. "Just ask your damn questions."
"I don't suppose you want to give a name besides Boxcars for the story," I ventured.
"You suppose right, asshole. Though at least you got the courtesy to call me somethin' other than Shithead. I'll say that much for you."
"All right then. Let's skip the pleasantries. The Legion murdered this whole town. What the fuck happened?"
Boxcars took a long drag off his cigarette a blew the smoke out slowly. "It all started with Eddie. He organized the riot that got us all free. But once that was done we realized we were gonna need things like caps and food to survive. Us being the Powder Gangers. So he sends a bunch of guys out looking for resources. Places we could take over, caravans to raid and especially anyone who'd do business with us.
"A couple weeks after the riot we get word from a guy called Steyn. He was the mayor of this place. Now we'd been coming into Nipton to enjoy the local whores for a while. Didn't matter that we were escaped convicts. As long as we had the caps someone here had the ass for us. The only rule was we had to come into town during the day. The night is when off duty NCR would come here to get their fuck on.
"Anyway, Steyn sends Eddie this plan of his. Eddie supplies some of us as muscle to grab a few NCR with their pants down, Styen sells 'em to the Legion and we split the money. The Legion hates Gangers but they hate NCR more. So Eddie agreed and I was one of the guys that got sent out here. Only the Legion pulled a double-cross on us. The next thing I knew the head Legion asshole, some dude with a dog on his head, is making some speech about how we're all bad people and the legionaries are passing out those fucking lottery tickets.
"Let me tell you, that was one fucked up scene. People crying, others struck dumb they can't believe what's happening. Saw one guy piss himself right in the street. Of course, he'd just seen the Legion burn Steyn alive on a pile of tires so I can't really blame him.
"But you've already heard some of this from Lt. Dickhead over there, right?"
I nodded.
"No need for me to go over the rules of the lottery again. Anyway, despite what he said Dogman decided to fuckin' crucify every Ganger who got a death ticket. Said we didn't deserve a clean death. 'Crucifixion was good enough for criminals in Roman times,' he said. Whatever that means. He did keep his word on the two Gangers "lucky" enough to get enslaved though.
"As for me, as 'runner up' they took hammers to my legs and dumped me in what we left of the general store. 'There's food and water here. Survive or don't,' Dogman said to me. Then he went back outside to give Swanick, that's the loud as fuck asshole who was the big winner, a little speech or something. Fuck, I don't know. I was trying to figure out how I was going get any of that food or water that was still in the store with two busted legs and a whole world of pain.
"Not long after I hear Swanick yelling his head off again. I managed to drag my chair over to the door and open it up a crack. Out there I see Swanick talking with some white guy in leather armor and a cowboy hat."
I glanced down at my notepad and thought back to what Holmberg had said about the Legion squad responsible for the massacre in Nipton being killed by one man. It seemed our last player had entered the stage. "Can you describe this man a little more for me?"
Boxcars shrugged. "Tall and lean. Early thirties. Sandy blond hair. Exact description of the guy who'd been carving a trail through the Gangers for the better part of a week when I saw him. The Powder Gangers own Grim Fucking Reaper!"
"Uh, what was that?"
Boxcars gave me an irritated look. "Okay, see, a week before this all goes down a dude who looked just like that killed two of our guys at a camp near the skydiving place up the road from Primm. One of our guys saw the whole thing go down with his binoculars and told Eddie.
"Not too much later this same guy, one of our best scouts, he sees the same dude lead a militia in Goodsprings against about half a dozen Gangers who decided to take over the town. Reaperman blew ol' Joe Cobb's head to bits personally. I knew Cobb and that motherfucker was not the kind who would go down easy. Even worse was the scout telling us that this guy killed three other Gangers in *addition* to Cobb in that attack. I mean, about seven guys go in and one dude kills over half of them? That's just not normal.
"Naturally we're all kinda freaked by this but life goes on, right? And it did and I didn't think too much more about till I saw they guy here and knew by taking on look at him that it had to be the guy.
"Of course, Swanick was too stupid to put two and two together. Too busy yelling about having won the fucking lottery. So I see Swanick and the Reaperman talk for a minute. Then Swanick takes off down the road like he doesn't have a care in the world. Which is when Reaperman pumped three rounds from a 9mm in Swanick's back.
"After that I closed the door real quite and just started hoping the Legion who were still around would kill the guy. Sure enough a few minutes later I hear all kinds of hell breaking loose outside. Automatic weapons fire, dogs, explosions, energy weapons...You name and it was getting used.
"The it just goes quite and for a couple hours I don't hear anything. But I just stayed quite anyway. Then who comes strolling in the door but the Reaperman himself. I guess he'd been poking around town since the fight but I didn't really care. At that point I'd had enough for one day. Said I'd OD myself if he'd give me the pills instead of shooting me.
"But Repearman ignored me and just asked me about what had happened. So I told him. Guy got a funny look on his face when I mentioned that the Legion had taken some of us as slaves. Then, of all fucking things, the Powder Gangers own Grim Fucking Reaper saves he's going to go and try and SAVE those guys. If that shit ain't ironic I don't know what is."
"I told Reaperman I didn't give fuck if he saved those guys but he headed off anyway. I still don't know what he was thinking but he was gone and I was still alive and that was all that mattered. Then the next day he comes back and tell me he saved the Gangers the Legion took. Given what he did to Swanick I didn't ask what he did with them after he freed them.
"At that point I thought my number up again. But the guy just poked around upstairs, brought down some food and water for me and even gave me enough Med-X to almost make a party. Then he just heads off again without a word. Guess he figured I wasn't much of a threat with two busted legs. Hate to say it, but he was right.
"Anyway, the Med-X let me rig up some splints without passing out from the pain. I was hoping I'd be able to heal up enough to get out of here before NCR found me. But, shit, clearly no such luck."
Boxcars took another long drag. "Not long after they found me one of the guards told me they'd found all the Gangers who'd been crucified with a single 9mm shot to the head. Reaperman had put those poor fucks out of their misery. Guess Gangers rate at least a little mercy in his book after all."
"Thanks, that's all I needed," I said before turning on my heel and walking away. There were more polite ways to end an interview but Boxcars was a thug and thus didn't rate any of them.
"You get what you need?" asked Holmberg.
I nodded. "Quite the story."
"It is indeed. I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't seen with my own eyes. A lot of people out there would feel the same. But they'll believe it coming from you."
Ah, yes. My new role as a shanghaied NCR mouthpiece. Well, we'd see about that. But people did need to know what happened here and I didn't have to spin it in a way that made NCR look good. Holmberg had dropped the ball by allowing Boxcars to mention that the NCR troops had been coming into town a bang whores who by day were servicing vicious criminals the NCR was supposed to be hunting down. Whoever Holmberg answered to would not be happy he let that get out.
"I've got to go over my notes and think a bit," I said.
"Of course," replied Holmberg. "Just come back to the hall if you get thirsty. Dinner will be
there on the second floor in a few hours, by the way."
"See you then," I said with as much politeness as I could stand before heading off. Tool that he was I still needed Holmberg's indulgence for a bit longer. He'd already given me some rope but I'd need more if I was going to hang anyone.
I also did need some time to think as a though had crossed my mind during Boxcar's story. Just how many people were there in the Mojave could kill a whole squad of the Legion's best by themselves? Not many. And if you add that to the reports of a small group storming the Legion's HQ and killing Caesar, most of his inner circle and a fuckload of legionaries the by the Courier then it's not too hard to guess who Reaperman really was.
So the question remained just who was Mark Fisher? Who was this Courier and how much of what was said about him was true? And, just as interestingly, where was this guy now and what was he up to?
Then and there I resolved that I wouldn't go back to San Francisco until I knew.
Author's Note: The hardest part here was figuring out how Boxcars could have had any idea who the Courier was. That never really made sense to me in the game but I think I came up with a fairly reasonable explanation.