"Really, I couldn't possibly-"

"No, you've done so much for us. Here, take it."

I looked down at the four caps dropped into my cupped hands. Enough to live for a day. My heart hammered with the idea of food as opposed to chewing on irradiated grass again, but...

"You're sure? Really?"

She nodded earnestly, with a smile that showed yellow, worn down teeth. "You've earned it."

I swallowed. "O... Okay. Thank you."

The settler beamed, and with a cheerful goodbye turned and walked back into the dusty streets of Megaton. My hands closed into fists, gripping the caps so hard they left marks.

"What, goin' soft on me already, kid?" Jericho was leaning against the handrail of Craterside Supply's deck, smoking a cigarette stub. "That ain't gonna happen again. You gotta learn not to trust anyone."

I leaned my elbows on the rail beside him, trying to ignore the warping sounds the iron made under my weight. "So, just do the whole lone wanderer thing, you mean? Totally alone?"

"You got it." He pulled a bobby pin from one of his field jacket's pouches and raked it through his beard, combing for mutant fleas. "I don't trust no one. That's how I'm still breathin', kid."

"You trust me?" I asked as a few fleas hopped out of his beard to the street level.

He didn't say anything, just puffed on his cigarette and stared at the dusty brown sky, watching the vultures soar lazily overhead.

"Jericho, I said, do you-"

"You got caps. Let's booze it." Without looking at me he spun on his heel and stomped off towards Moriarty's, AKS-74U bouncing against his back as he tugged at the strap.

I scratched my beard, and followed.

We had been walking for a few hours, and it was nearly twelve o'clock, our shadows almost gone. I was thankful for that; having the sun at your back made it harder to spot land mines, your shadow being in the way and all that. But I didn't need to worry, because my new... traveling 'partner'... knew her way through the sea of mines like she grew up swimming in it. Still made me jumpy, though, watching her walk along with hardly a second glance to where she was going.

Damn was it hot. It was either burning hot during the day or freezing cold in the nighttime or radioactively... itchy-crawly under your skin... pretty much all the time. All extremes out here. Stupid ass atmosphere can't give anyone a break.

My leg was itchy all over. I didn't remember that being a side effect of a stimpack, but I was knocked out the only other time I had used one, so what do I know. This turned out to be a problem; even though she walking in front of me, leading the way, she still seemed to be watching me. Whenever I reached down to scratch my leg, she would stiffen and slow down- making sure I wasn't reaching for my holster. I probably should've guessed she wasn't keeping her Nagant M1895 in hand for a compass. But I sort of expected that sort of high-strung-ness from wastelander types. From what I had seen rolling with Jericho, one wrong move, word, facial expression- and it became a shooting gallery.

All that time gave me time to think. When I had a few feet of plain old non-explosive dirt underfoot, my mind would wander. How long had her band stayed in that town? They were terribly low on supplies- I mean, hell, for 'food' all she brought along in a backpack was a half-smoked pack of Marlboros and a few bottles of whiskey. Yeah, great. So much for a great trading opportunity. What was I thinking?

And I wondered about her. Didn't know her name, where she came from, what she was up to. Okay, I knew she had a sister (dead. Thanks to me. Great chatting material.), knew she had led that band. Didn't know enough to trust her, that was for sure. What else, what else. Sleeveless leather jacket with a bunch of holes, bandages all over her arms, long leather gloves going on to her forearms, ripped faded jeans. Short dirty hair roughly cut, but long enough to get a fistful of- rookie mistake. Okay, she obviously wasn't a hardcore soldier, that's a start. But I thought, hey, might as well try, right?

"Uh, hey," I began. She glanced back for a second before stepping expertly over a mine. "Guess we should get to know each other." She didn't say anything, but her grip tightened on the handle of her revolver. I took a deep breath, and continued. "So, my name's-"

"I don't care who the fuck you are."

"You sure? Don't want to know the name of your sister's killer? Really?"

Bad move. She spun, and for the second time that day, put that gun up against my forehead. I stopped dead, my eyes crossed in trying to see the barrel.

"I don't know how you're alive. I don't. Because you have a way of making everyone want to kill you. First Stan, the rest of my friends, me. You're pretty much walking corpsemeat," she hissed, pressing the muzzle hard enough to make me tilt my head back.

"Ain't that something. Looks like Stan- Dragunov guy- shotgun guy, your knife-crazy sister, and everyone else are dead. Guess people who want to kill me have this way of just- killing themselves all over me."

The morphine. I'm telling you, it was the morphine.

Her face went stark white behind the dust and grime, and she was biting down on a cracked and dry lip so hard it bled. She could've blown my brains across the wastes right there. At that second, with Jericho gone and hungry as fuck and my shoulder and leg itching, and damn it how the hell would I find Dad now without a guide- I almost wanted her to.

I lucked out. Instead of a bullet, I got a pistol whip. Now I had the bloody lip. Ha ha. "So what's your name?" I asked, licking the split in my lip, wincing at the sand stuck in it.

"You'll be dead soon. Doesn't matter." Yeah. Great partners. Great.

Now she got all angsty at me. Hurry up, watch it, keep your hands where I can see them. Just like that she was all talkative- if bitching at me most of the time. Hell, I couldn't take a piss without her yelling at me not to hit a land mine. What the hell.

But she was my only way out of that Bermuda triangle of explosions, so I put up with it. Jericho wouldn't put up with this crap, I thought darkly as she lit a cigarette. She had matches? Damn. Maybe this wasn't a total loss.

Okay, hour later. More walking, it s hotter than fuck, we make it to the top of a pretty high hill, and out of nowhere she hits the dirt. I hurry over the respectful ten-foot-distance we had been keeping and extend a hand to pull her up, when suddenly a thought hit me like a vodka with a golf ball at the bottom: sniper.

I panicked and looked around, but the second that thought entered my head she grabbed my outstretched arm and pulled me down to the ground. Spitting grit out of my mouth, I rolled off of her onto my stomach.

"The hell are you doing?"

She didn't say anything. Barely moving, she reached over her shoulder and drew her Dragunov SVD. Understanding, I slung off my Mosin-Nagant, feeling for the bandoleer with the 7.62x54mmR rounds. "What do you see?" I whispered.

And, as usual, she responded with... nothing. She just peered through her sniper rifle's PSO-1 scope, her left eye squeezed shut. I sighed, and squinted into the dusty haze of the distance. At first, nothing, just more desolate hills and plains.

But gradually, ever so slowly, out of those ground-hugging, scuttling and swirling clouds came three shadows. I blinked a few times, rubbed the dirt out of my eyes (and got more in, nice one), and squinted harder. But I could barely see, and the wind was picking up. The sky was blanketed with a fine mist of dust, darkening the world and leaving the sun a pale eye in the sky. I grit my teeth, growing more nervous by the second.

I couldn't take the suspense. I gently nudged her face out of the way with my forehead, and took a peek through the scope. The lens was all scratched up and smudged and there was sand on the inside, but for what I saw I might as well have been standing right there.

Three guys. Not just guys, men. Manly men. All wearing armor of leather and scrap metal and bone welded or sewn together in random places, bone spikes jutting out at every joint. The first carried a VSS Vintorez and OTs-14 Groza on his back, his body covered seemingly wrapped in bandoleers, his belt weighed down with maybe ten RGD-5 grenades. The second wore an eyepatch and had a OSV-96 anti-materiel rifle slung over his back- an ordinary fucking tank buster! How did he carry the damn thing?- and was covered in sheathes for more bayonets I could count. But the third...

Well... shit.

In the wasteland, as a raider, basically the crazier you look like, the more of a challenge it is to other raiders. So, a mohawk, piercings, tattoos, whatever? Yep, that's a challenge.

But this guy was just a level above that crap. He must've been seven feet tall, so buff it looked like his veins were going to pop out of his armor, and had a filthy beard that went to his fucking chest. But get this- his beard was braided into three huge-ass braids, and each one at a little skull carved out of bone on the end. His hair- fucking long as hell- was braided into weird dreadlocks, tied down with bleached fangs longer than your fingers as beads, and his hair and beard were braided into each other. His face was all scarred up, maybe from fighting, or maybe he did it ritually to show those tattoo punks how it was really done. His armor- oh, man. He had Deathclaw bull skulls on each shoulder, their horns curving like something demonic. His gloves were plated with skeletal Deathclaw claws, the talons going over his hands by a foot. A fucking spinal cord was wrapped around his neck like a necklace. Fuck!

On his back, a PK machine gun. On his front, a RGS-50 grenade launcher. In his thigh holster, a big revolver I had never seen before. His battle-scarred scrap metal armor, turned a gunmetal gray from wear and tear, was covered in pouches for 7.62x54mmR ammo boxes and launchable frag grenades. And bones. More bones, rattling away.

I felt my organs twist inside of me, just feeling the weight of all those bullets. I didn't want to die. Not here, not like this.

I pulled away from the scope, feeling sick. I put my Mosin-Nagant back on my back, and slowly crawled backward down the hill, trying to make as little noise and movement as possible. She looked back at me, her gray eyes burning with... I don't know. More anger. You pussy! Come on! Fight! I could see it in her eyes.

I just shook my head, and kept crawling through the dirt.

She spat, lit another cigarette, and took aim.

I was about to scream a cliche "No!" When I was interrupted by her gunshot, deafening in the waste's quiet. The second the round was fired, all three of the shadow raiders broke formation and dashed into cover. They wasted no time moving from rock to hill to stump, advancing easily, guns trained on the hilltop. They weren't just raiders. They were the result of every settler's- no, every wastelander's suffering, pain, hopelessness- wrapped into people-sized packages of senseless hatred, senseless killing. I felt my own presence in them as they slowly approached, yard by yard, that anger towards the very soil I walked on.

Two hundred yards. They were two hundred yards away, and she had already gone through two of her mags. She loaded the last one, biting down on her cigarette as she did so and sliced it in half.

A hundred fifty yards. She lobbed a RGD-5 to get them out of cover, but they just scattered tactically into different cover. She tried another, with the same result.

A hundred yards. Streaks of sweat cut lines down her ashen face, got in her eyes, dripped down her nose. She was panting, her cracked lips bleeding. I watched but couldn't fight couldn't die no way death is for squares and I am shaped like a gear just like dear old Dad-

The leader of the shadow raiders slung the PK machine gun from his back, and calm as could be, took aim.

She stood up, getting a bigger field of vision, firing wildly now, not even correcting her recoil. But he stood, unmoved, raised his finger to the trigger.

No way in hell, a hundred yards with a medium machine gun? Yeah right.

From a hundred yards away, a single bullet from a medium machine gun crashed through her chest, leaving nothing but a view of the sky behind.

She toppled backwards, rolled down the hill. I yelled something I don't remember and bound after her, stumbling over myself and my damn leg before I slid to my knees before her.

Her hands were clutching her chest, maybe looking for the heart that wasn't there anyone. But the light in her eyes was starting to fade, the sprays of blood spurting from her chest with less force.

"No! Stay- stay awake!" I screamed at her as her head began to loll back. I put a hand behind her head, my fingers tangled in her bloody hair. She looked at me like she had never seen me before.

"I- I-" What do you say to someone who's good as dead? "I'm so- sorry! For- for your sister, your friends, everything! God, I never said anything before, but... but... I can't get it out of my head!" My jaw hurt from talking so much. "Please- please- I'm sorry!"

She couldn't talk. Her mouth was full of blood. But her softening eyes and twitching lips said enough. "It's a wasteland, kid. Got to kill to live. But I'll never forgive you."

I remembered. I lifted her carefully and pulled the stimpack from one of her pouches. Gently as I could, I plunged the needle into her open chest and hit the valve- but she just shook her head, so weakly I barely noticed. Her left hand fell towards her side, brushing something long. I reached for it- my combat knife. I looked back to her eyes, but there was nothing there. The spurts of blood slowly came to a bubbling stop.

Kneeling in her pool of blood, I clutched my knife close to me. My other hand held hers, squeezing to the rhythm of a heart that wasn't there.

The shadow raiders came down the hill, weapons drawn, looking even more terrifying close up. Their leader had a deranged grin splitting his face in two. His teeth were sharp.

Maybe I'd die.