"Wait, Ranjit," I hear the woman's voice say from behind me. "I want to go with them."
"Er…alright," the other soldier says, "go for it."
Footsteps rush up to us. I look at Kenji, his return glance confirming what I already know; this cannot possibly be good. But do we really have much of a choice?
Besides, if these mysterious orange-skinned people are in some sort of conspiracy, I might be able to learn a thing or two from this.
"I know who you are," she says once she catches up to us atop the peak of the ramp. "I know what happened between you and the general, and I want to protect you. My name's Sarah Wilkins…Corporal Wilkins, yeah."
"You know us?" I ask, sceptically.
"I've heard the rumours. Those stories about what you did to Randall Wayne himself…are they true?"
Slowly, I nod, putting on a smile. "Oh, yes."
Her face, dimly lit a faint tan-orange in the one electric light strung up from a nearby pole, lights in a puff of excitement. "That was great!" I can almost believe she's being genuine.
"So where are we going?" I ask at nobody in particular.
"This is why I wanted to come with you two. The Army got word of the incident an hour ago, and they're searching the whole town right now." Her voice softens to a hushed tone. "I'm not really supposed to talk about this, see, Zoe…but they've found a lead."
She leads us through the town – after Manahawkin and Barnegat, Forked River looks entirely familiar, a green-lined main street filled with shops only in being because of the Parkway. At this dead of night, the only illumination coming from the dim electric lamps and neon storefronts, all is entirely quiet, even the pairs of Army patrols, and the few dazed-looking citizens gawking at them. I hear the wind, and the faint, chirping claps of the crickets and radroaches in the grass.
We turn off on a side street, and pass a dilapidated subdevelopment seemingly in the process of being reconstructed, with some of the houses halfway torn apart and piles of wood and metal covering the street. A poorly lit sign rises from an endemic patch of overgrown weeds and grass ahead: FORKED RIVER MIDDLE SCHOOL. A half-crumbled building stands towering before us.
"The only people who've ever lived here are feral ghouls and the occasional raiders fleeing the Barrens," Wilkins explains. "But an hour ago Old Jenkins claimed he saw an odd group of four armed people escorting a middle-aged woman into that school. Now Old Jenkins isn't really the type of person that's known for seeing things straight, but…you know, it's better than nothing, yeah?"
"Yeah," I nod in half-sincere agreement.
On the far side of the car park, pair of Army soldiers stands watch bestride what seem to be the front doors, though they have long ago been torn off, perhaps carted away, perhaps just lost to the dusts of time.
"They're with the Army," Wilkins tells the two, "you don't have to worry." And they nod, one pausing for a second to gaze at Kenji, before she leads my friend and I inside.
I walk past some unoccupied desks and rusty lamps into a corridor that does not belong in New Jersey. Skeletons lie beside swinging, broken-down metal locker doors, the locks long ago rusted away. Their bones are uncleaned and untouched on the ground, as if I've stepped into a crypt.
"They're small," Kenji observes, before I see his hands go to his mouth, as if trying to hold in bile.
I feel an icy feeling creep up my spine. "Kenji…" my throat groans.
Further down, the rotting body of a giant ant that must have burrowed its way in covers half the corridor's width. Maybe it's just the sight, but I can almost smell the overwhelming death in the air. One soldier, a young man in ragged Army fatigues with tanned skin and a scar etched down the left side of his face, appears from beside me, rushing away. Seconds later, I hear him behind me, belching out.
"The Army's combing through the building right now," Wilkins says, seemingly entirely unfazed by all this. "There's something out back that you'll want to see. Come with me."
Wilkins leads us down to the right, past another, similar corridor. It's dark here – but the soldier pulls out some kind of fusion light. The sickly yellow light highlights a ceiling that has caved inwards halfway down, creating a pile of rubble we have to clumsily step over. She, of course, seems to be able to do it with absolute ease.
Two Army soldiers, one holding a lantern and both looking quite nauseated and pale-faced, climb out from a stairwell.
"They Army thinks they've gone underground, so they're searching the school fallout shelter," Wilkins explains, stopping in front of a singular standing door.
"That's silly," Kenji says, "those shelters have no exit. And surely those people haven't made their base here?"
"Exactly." Wilkins grins knowingly, "but these soldier types don't know that."
"Why aren't we going down there, then? We have to warn them!" I say, feeling the frustration start to well up in my stomach – a feeling quickly replaced by determination as, in that instant, the pieces of the puzzle starting to come together in my head, and I realise that, yes, I'd been entirely correct – about having made a colossal mistake.
My heart starts to race. I know I am about to pay, dearly.
"There is no time," Wilkins insists. "Come!"
She pushes at the door. The hinges snap and it falls away to the side. The light from her lantern reveals the cracked, weed-infested remains of what I think is the school gymnasium – at least, that's what the one standing basketball pole tells me.
A pair of radroaches are occupying in the opposite corner, one mounted atop the other. Each faint yet clearly audible crackling groan emanating from that corner makes me want to cringe. I gently try to push the three of us to the side of the room as far away from them as I can.
"Right," I stop her in the centre of the great room. "That's about enough. Who are you, exactly?"
"What do you mean?" she frowns.
"You're one of them. You all have that same, orange skin. And you're all from some…vault, aren't you? Let me guess…" I take a glance down at my Pip-Boy, where I can see the etchings. "Vault 98, perhaps? And you gave me this to track us, didn't you?"
Before Sarah Wilkins – if that is, in fact her real name – can respond. I hear a growl from the direction of the door.
"You people have hell to pay!"
A man now stands at the door, a pistol drawn at pointed at us. A cowboy hat sits atop his head, and a fabric poncho is draped over his shoulders. His unshaven face is filled with sheer determination - the sheer determination of a father who wants his child back, desperately.
"Oh," Sarah replies, almost spitting, "it's just you fool again. You should have just stayed in Timbuktu. You have no business here."
"Where is she?" the newcomer growls, ignoring her words.
Then, his eyes fall upon Kenji.
"Oh, mutie piece of shit, you took her, didn't you?" he screams. "You took her! I swear gonna tear you apart, limb from limb!" And with that, he pounces on Kenji like a tiger. The radroaches flinch, and flutter away, out a broken window.
"No!" I shout, and reach for the gun at my belt. But before my hand can reach there, Amanda grabs that arm's shoulder and half-guides, half-shoves me away from Kenji and this mysterious newcomer, out the back door of the gymnasium, and into the deep dark of what seems to be a large, open field outside.
The stars are obscured, as a row of clouds passes by overhead.
"Please, let me go!" I plead, but to no avail.
"I know that man," Amanda says. "There is nothing you could have done. Now come on!" The sweetness has faded from her voice; there is no empathy here. The military training I recognise so well has kicked in. And it's definitely something more than what the Republic Army gives its conscripts.
My stomach ripples in fear and anger and desperation – I've made a huge mistake, and I know it. But no matter how hard I struggle, Amanda's grasp tightens, like an iron yoke around my shoulder.
I take in my surroundings. There is another building about a hundred feet away, on the far side of the field. And intermittent lights past some trees - I cannot really tell. A cacophony of odd animal noises starts filling the air - I shut my eyes, even my imagination failing me as to what might lay out here. Radroaches? No, worse. Radscorpions? Perhaps.
"Don't worry, Zoe, this is the part of town no one steps in," Wilkins says nonchalantly. "It'll be just you and me now…and my friends."
She stops, and lets me go – just in time for her light to die. I turn my head to the side, and against the backdrop of the dim fires and electric lights from a row of houses beyond, I see a number of silhouettes approaching me.
"Oh, poor Zoe Jackson, oh, we warned you not to look around," I hear a voice grumble from that direction. "But no, you had to go and fuck around in matters that don't concern you."
A torch is lit, and I find myself staring into the faces of a half dozen people in leather armour, brandishing rifles, pointing at me with rifles and fiery eyes both – all with those same orange faces.
"You didn't get the mutant?" one of them asks: an elderly woman, her face twisted into a seemingly permanent scowl.
"He's not important," Wilkins waves her hand dismissively. "Plus, he's distracted brawling it out with that mercenary idiot from Timbuktu. They're both distracted, we can get out of this dump."
"Fine," the woman nods, turning her shadowed eyes me. "We have the snoop, and that's all that matters,"
I resign myself to my fate. At least, maybe I'll get to see the inside of a Vault. I've always kind of wanted to. Fuck, I hate irony.
"Give us your weapons now," Sarah Wilkins demands of me, a broad, maniacal smile forming on her face.
I sigh, and raise my hands, letting them feel me down and taking my energy weapon from me.
I can only hope Kenji's alright.