Enough talk about feelings. Gunplay and death abound soon, bet on it. Short chapter beforehand, though, so bear with it.
I sat there in the dust for a long time.
But I wouldn't gain anything from feeling sorry for myself. Not a damn thing.
I pulled my hands away from my face, sticky with sweat and salt. Rubbing at my eyes and nose, I looked down at my grime-caked hands only to find them lost in darkness- night had swallowed me up without my noticing, a chilly breeze cooling my sweat and making me shiver. But my thoughts were elsewhere- concentrated on the Colt M1911 sitting between my legs. Waiting for me.
I just looked at it. How many defenseless people had been shot apart by this thing? I shook my head. Why the fuck was I thinking about this now? When Jericho and I had stumbled across that old Mosin-Nagant, propped up straight in the sand like some sort of tribal totem or monument, I didn't bother to think of who had used it, or what is had done. But it was now- now that I had seen what Jericho had told me horror stories of, now I understood.
If it wants t'kill you, kill it first.
Jericho's first lesson had gone straight over my head. Why the fuck hadn't I listened? Why the fuck did I stay in my own little world?
Because I thought everything would be okay once I found Dad. I thought everything was my little metal hole in the ground.
I sighed, rubbing at my eyes again. Slowly, I reached out, jagged fingernails barely grazing the sand as I wrapped my fingers around the rough grip. I lifted it from the dirt like some long-lost treasure, wiping away streaks of dust, feeling the countless scratches criss-crossing the slide as I ran my fingers over it.
Jim got this from somewhere. Maybe, at one point, it was used... for a just cause.
It was a stupid, naive, childish thought, but it was the only one that I had left.
With a grunt, I pushed myself to my feet and stumbled back to Ashecroft's cabin-shack, pushing open the door and expecting to find her there- and she was, humming away by sputtering candlelight, sitting at her workbench, casually greasing the chambers of her Colt Walker.
She stopped her little tune as I entered, turning around- sliding a .45 slug into the chamber of her revolver, I noticed with a tightness in my chest- and looked at me hard, chewed-up unlit cigarette hanging off her lip.
"I had two mags for this," I said, flicking a finger against my pistol. "I'd have 'em back."
She grinned, slicing the cig clean in half.
Her father had taught her well. She was every inch the killer Jericho had wanted me to grow into. Bowie knives stabbed into the walls in neat rows, pouches of gunpowder, crates of military-grade bullets, a bullet press, for fuck's sake- this was more of an armory than a house. But that's how you live in the wasteland.
I sat down next to her and began field stripping the M1911 as Ashecroft slid the spare magazines across the workbench. "Thanks."
"'Course." She let the single round fall from her revolver's cylinder and continued to see to it, scouring the inside of the barrel with a bristley brush. "'Course."
We didn't say anything for a while. Just cleaned the bits and pieces and pins and springs of our guns, Ashecroft sharpened her knives, I picked out the rust from beneath my fingernails with my pistol's firing pin, all of this as that candle burned down and filled the cabin with the sick stench of brahmin fat. It was only once I was stowing my spare mags in my duster and stood to head to the outhouse did Ashecroft speak again.
"Glad ya changed yer way." I stopped at the door, looked back at her over my shoulder. She was still bent over the workbench, the glow of the lone candle giving her an otherworldly outline. "Wouldn'ta wanted 'cha to join th' back."
"You killed all those men." My voice was barely above a weak whisper.
"Men, women, children, y'name it. Feed th' cirtters to th' brahmin." That didn't surprise me in the least- those double-head cows didn't have normal teeth. What surprised me less was how she spoke of the dead- like talking of the weather. "Not a hair close t'my pap, though. Put a raider army in th' ground in 'is day."
I nodded, partly to myself, before stepping off the porch and making my way to the outhouse. Before taking a well-needed piss I just stared at those mounds of dirt and rock, wondered what she had felt when she took those lives.
Did she feel nothing? Just recoil, the warmth of blood, the give of flesh and bone? Was she... just like me?
I shook my head, and opened the door to the outhouse. It was only then I noticed out of the corner of my eye a spattering of sand dunes in the distance, more than twice my size. I had passed it on my way to Ashecroft's ranch, and spent a time looking at them during sunsets- the light caught on them beautifully. It was only then I realized...
That isn't sand. That's hard dirt and clay, braced with rock... just like those graves of hers.
It took a lot of self-control to not piss myself right there. Ashecroft wasn't shitting about her father. And I had called her collection of dead a mass grave... what a rookie I was.
Of course, I thought, as I pissed my stress away... maybe Ashecroft wasn't giving me the whole story. But there was only one way to really find out.
Buttoning up my ragged pants, I jogged back to the cabin. Ashecroft didn't look up as I came in.
"Ashecroft. I want to find the men who killed your dad."
She looked up. Her eyes were stormier than the skies that bled the waters of life.
We slept back-to-back that night, just like how Jericho and I did when we were out ranging (more accurately, struggling to survive) the cold merciless nights of the waste. However, Ashecroft had a few shaggy, bruise-colored blankets on hand- not too clean, but thankfully thick and warm.
What was I doing? Playing the hero? I had done that all the fucking time in the vault, always trying to end arguments and debates- usually failing, with some means of compromise that left everyone pissed or worse. My dad had always complimented me on it, if wistfully; he said that some things are best left to be.
Ashecroft shifted slightly in her sleep, brushing against the back of my duster. I tried to breath a bit more quietly, a bit more evenly- she was a light sleeper.
But I couldn't leave this. Not now. I had let others control my life since the day I was born- the Overseer, my dad. Once I was out of the vault, I was so lost I clung onto the only guidance I could find.
Jericho.
But now he was dead as could be, leaving me with his advice and skills, no matter how coarse they were. I was alone again. But now... I didn't feel so hopeless. I had a fucking mission. I'd find the fucks who killed Ashecroft's dad, and I'd butcher them like the shits they were. I'd pile them into an adobe grave that towered above all the others. I'd rip away the choking shadow that had been thrown over Ashecroft by her dad's death, the same way she ripped away the shadow of the underground from me.
I sighed. Tired as I was, I couldn't sleep. The cot was comfortable enough, but my blood was raging. I wanted to kill, and I wanted to kill now. I remember the way officer Mack looked at me back when I was escaping the vault, like he was looking at a dog that had to be put down. At first I thought, "How could someone ever come to think that way?" But now I knew. He had a cause he would die for. And now, I did as well. I just hoped it was a just one.
"No sleep, no fight, cowboy."
I nearly fell out of the bed at the sound of the soft voice. Ashecroft sat up, looking at me thoughtfully. It was kind of weird, really, seeing her without her sheriff's hat on. At least she slept in her duster, minus the pointy badge. "Uh... shit. Sorry. Wake you up?"
"Y' breath meaner than no mutie I dun seen," she said, a smirk tugging at her lips as she straightened the patched blankets a bit, giving me the less frayed ends.
I sighed, swung my legs over the side of the bed, held my head in my hands. "I'm sorry," I mumbled. "I just... never got used to this." I shrugged. "You know. Trying to sleep, but waiting to die. I mean- I tried to sleep with my eyes open, once, and it took me like three days to get all the sand out."
"Must'a been better 'n yer lil' home-hole." She reached out and patted me on the shoulder.
"Nah." The moon castes odd, rippling light through the dust of the night. I watched it make little nightmarish shapes on my bare feet. "I was no one in there. At least out here, I'm my own no one."
"Horseshit. Dun gimme th' "no-name" song n' dance. Ya need a name."
I didn't see why she was so... forceful about this. It's just a name... "You care because... ?"
"'Cause I do." She tucked a strand of blond hair behind an ear. She then leaned forward slightly, cocked her head to the side a bit, her eyes seeming to cast their own little moonlight.
"Gravesend."
I paused. "Grave... send?"
She nodded curtly. "Meanest o' th' mean come outta there. Up north. Raider, scav, reg, y'name it."
I just looked at her, suddenly so much more tired than before. Part of me wanted to argue, but...
"I like it," I muttered grudgingly, nestling back into the cot.
"Good." She pulled the blankets back over us, and in that close warmth, I felt an odd bond begin to grow.