"Take it."

"Fuck off, kid."

"I said take it!"

There was enough booze in us to float the entire damn bar, and at this rate we'd be cutting each other to pieces soon enough. Jericho's eyes may have been totally glazed over, but they still held that

knife-point glint of danger that I had learned to be careful of.

The rest of the saloon's customers were trying to pay us no attention, drowning their sorrows in drink or just staring into the cigarette smoke. Random fights between drunks wasn't exactly a rare

occurrence here. Even so, Gob had tried to calm us both down; Jericho almost flipped out at the poor ghoul as Moriarty watched from the doorway of his office, smoking and smirking.

"You must think you's pretty fucking funny," Jericho snarled, his voice disturbingly clear for downing so much alcohol, "But guess what? No one's laughin'."

"Just take it, Jericho." I tried to keep my voice steady, but that warm scotch wasn't sitting too good in my stomach. I could feel it slishing and sloshing around. Man I had to piss badly.

Jericho had a foot on the first step of the stairs before he turned back to look at me, teeth bared. "You's new here, kid, so I'll let cha' off all nice 'n easy: you watch out for yourself, and no one else. That's it.

That's Megaton, that's the wasteland- that's the fuckin' world, dammit!" He spat.

"Yeah?" I took a few wobbling steps forward, hands curled into fists. Lucy West almost stood up to try and do something before stopping and sitting back down again- well, it was nice of her to almost try.

West had always been kind of nice to me- as far as nice in the wastes goes, anyway. "How the hell do you expect me to watch my guide die, huh? Tell me that!"

Jericho just looked at me like he wanted my brain all over his boots. At the top of the stairs, Nova leaned against the banister, arms crossed and looking very annoyed with me.

"Alright, you know what? Fine. Fine. I can't change you." I flung the condom at Jericho's feet and pushed open the door to Moriarty's, meeting a frigid and dusty night. Sitting myself in an out-of-the-way

alley, I knocked my head back against the wall and stared into the black sky.

Fuck. It had taken me the better part of a week digging through ruins to find it, and he didn't even care. Some guide.

"Take your pick, prick."

My hands felt numb. Not the cold kind of numb, more like the just-got-electrocuted kind of numb. What can I say? I was so excited I was nauseated.

Stretched before me was a wide wall of rack after rack of guns, and my eyes just wouldn't stay still. It wasn't exactly the most impressive armory out there- mostly bolt action rifles, crappy post-war surplus that had seen little to no maintenance- but it was still firepower.

Kind of funny, really. Just ten minutes ago I was standing face to face with my buyer, already hating the bastard, when suddenly I get a pop quiz:

"How many people you killed?" he had asked. He's tossing the detonator from hand to hand, looking at me intently. My eyes are glued to the big red button.

"Um."

"Um? I don't speak fucktard."

Scowling, I held out both hands. I didn't trust myself to speak.

"... You're shitting me. Less than ten?"

I nodded.

He groaned, running his hands through his sparse hair. "And their best fighter, too. Shit." He stopped juggling the detonator and squeezed it angrily instead, making the metal creak. I felt a heart attack coming on. "That's that. Slavers are slavers." He turned, starting back into the settlement-compound. I followed warily, looking around at the armed settlers that had come out to flank their leader. They sure didn't seem happy to see me. A good old fashioned wasteland reception.

I caught up to leader-guy, scoping out my new prison as I did so. Many seven or eight houses grouped together, most of them falling apart. Sheds of scrap metal were built up against them. The roofs of the outermost houses had been converted into watch towers. I've got to say, this kind of organization isn't something you always see. And when you do, it's usually the work of-

"Jim."

"What?"

"My name's Jim." Okay. Short, balding, dentally-fucked leader-guy is Jim. That's... good to know.

"Uh, okay. In that case, I'm-"

"A hundred caps."

"What?"

Jim doesn't turn around. That's fine, he walked slowly anyways. Short bastard. "A hundred caps. That's how much it took to buy you. That's fourteen months of fighting, trading, and saving like hell."

Well, shit. "That's really too bad; you got ripped off."

Jim spins around elbow first, catching me hard in the ribs just below my bad arm. Breath whistled through my teeth as I automatically grabbed onto his arm, twisted it painfully and drove my hand to his throat, pulling him in for a knee to the stomach-

Then he waves the detonator in my face. Fuck.

I let go of him, rubbing my side. Hunger pains didn't make fighting any easier. He shook out his arm, smiling his cracked teeth at me. "You can scrap. That's good. Can you shoot?"

"If it's you I'm killing, sure."

His smile widens. "That's good." He turns around and heads on towards one of the larger sheds.

I don't like this Jim guy already.

Right, so that's how we get to the armory. Musty, dusty, a few rays of light coming through the gaps in the sheet-metal roof. Sad to say that it was probably the best-constructed building there. So I'm scratching at the damn collar, looking the racks up and down, trying to ignore the other settlers in there staring me down, when I finally bother to ask-

"Why'd you buy me?"

"Pierre said you were the best."

"Who?"

Jim stares at me blankly. Buyer's regret. "Pierre. The creepy fuck who sold you."

Oh. The slavemaster, with the suit and shades and bodyguards. Of course. "Okay, fair enough. The best...?"

"Fighter, knifer, sharpshooter. He had to butter us up for a damn long time before we even considered blowing a hundred caps on your sorry ass." He flicked the detonator a few times. I flinched. "Red one

kills you, right?"

I didn't answer that question. "So, you want me to fight."

"Damn, and he's smart too."

"Fight... what, exactly?"

Jim groaned- I guess he was a groaning kind of guy- and stuffed the detonator into his back pocket. "If you couldn't tell, this is a pretty nice town. Raiders like to make nice things not so nice. So we shoot at raiders, they shoot back, we all have fun. We run out of bodies eventually. They keep finding new meat, we don't. We buy a... 'unrivaled marksman', as shitbreath Pierre puts it. To even the odds. Turns out those raiders and slavers are probably working together, figuring out how much we can spare. Raiders will come in, kill the men, rape and sell the women to Pierre. Following me, quick-draw?"

For a balding, unpleasant little waster, this Jim was actually pretty smart. Then again, the last thing I needed right now was a smart captor. "You figured that out pretty fast."

"I figured that out the second I saw you. Duster, thin as fuck, can hardly walk. We had been doing jack shit but hoping for a decent gunman at the least, not a scarecrow."

I grunted. Great. From rotting in a cage to fighting for some random assholes. Settlers? Bullshit. These were raiders with their backs against the wall. This was getting better and better.

So, just looking at that rack, I decided to make the best of things by helping myself to a M1 Garand. The sights were bent and warped and rusted, the wood tarnished, the stock unusually light, but all in all, it was a rifle. Jim nodded approvingly and set an ammo box on a nearby folding table.

"Enjoy."

"Yeah, sure." I dug around the ammo box, picking out as many .30-06 Springfield rounds as I could find. "You have any stripper clips?"

"Lost them all."

"Great." I pocketed a good twenty seven rounds- way more ammo than I was used to having for a single gun. The weight of the bullets felt good in my duster. One of the guys leaning against the wall glared at me as I tried to bend the sights back into their proper position. Yeah, nothing like fighting alongside friends.

Jim tossed me a round I had missed. "Usually, I'd have you shoot some soda bottles or something to see what you've got, but we can't spare the ammo." He glanced at my Pipboy but didn't say anything.

"Feel free to believe in me."

"Like hell."

Around nightfall I had gotten a pretty good feel of the place. A pretty good feel of a pretty bad place.

There were maybe seventeen or more people living here, not counting kids (maybe they weren't as extreme raiders as I thought), and all of them were in bad shape. I almost had to break a girl's leg to keep her from stealing my boots- I mean, shit, and Jim just looked on grinning. He wasn't kidding when he said it had taken them fourteen months to get all those caps- these 'settlers' looked like they forgot what food looked like. I almost felt bad for the bastards. Then some guy tried to grab my Pipboy and was pretty surprised when I drove the screen into his face. It took me a while to wipe the blood off.

I wasn't guarded. Okay, not in the usual sense: I had most of the outpost staring me down, waiting to see if I was the awesome sharpshooter that asshole Pierre claimed I was. I was pretty much free to go where I wanted. A weird feeling after the cage.

After scrapping a bit more and knocking loose some jackass's front teeth, I sat myself down in front of the armory, put my new M1 Garand across my lap, and waited. Not for sleep. Just for anything. Jim had said he really didn't know when the raiders would show again- hours, days, weeks, whatever- but he just said to stay on my toes. I could do that. Having a gun in my hands felt so good I was ready for anything.

Didn't feel as good as my knife, but nothing did.

They rationed their water pretty harshly too, but the small bottle I was offered by the end of the day looked like a fucking rainstorm to me. Even if they were raiders, they weren't complete assholes. Can't believe those words crossed my mind.

I shifted a bit and felt a bump in my pocket. I fished it out- that half pack of gum Sparky had given me. That son of a bitch. I was no better than he was, and I was no better than Jim or any of his ex-raider lackeys, but... I don't know. I couldn't forgive them.

A flicker in the shadows. I turned and shouldered my rifle, smiling for the first time in weeks. "Come on, I see you."

Half-starved and dull eyed, a boy no older than ten edged out of the shadows, his knuckles white as they gripped a crowbar. Kids these days.

I tossed the gum to him. He jumped back, immediately suspicious. "Relax. I can't chew gum." I pointed to my mouth. "No spit left."

Still watching me closely, the kid helped himself to a few pieces before sitting himself back into the shadows. Well, guess I did have a guard. Better than being alone, I guess.

The kid blew a bubble. It popped and I gave a start, the M1 Garand falling out of my lap. The kid burst out laughing.

I smiled too. I couldn't help it. For a second I thought I had died.