Local Demons
Jason could not believe his luck…
He pulled off an unbelievably lucky chat on the woman who had, intruded on him earlier and ran off before he could say anything about it, and restarted their introductions to one another all over again.
He spent most of the day talking to the locals, meeting people like Easy Pete in front of the Prospectors Saloon. The main topic being him mostly, like who shot him, how did he survive... quite the popular guy around here. And it reminded him of the dude in the checkered suit, where he could find his answers from.
He also paid a visit to the Goodspring's general store, and met Chet the shopkeeper, who had, due to Jason's own convincing voice and bartering skills, gave him an ammo-box of 9mm rounds for his pistol, a newly stocked Varmint rifle with a hundred of its standard 5.56mm rounds to accompany it, at the expense of two hundred and fourteen caps, leaving him with only forty caps left from Doc Mitchells bag of caps.
The ammunition was kept in Jason's ammo-box, which he had strung on to the back of his long-coats jacket belt, a small price to pay for lugging its weight around. But it made up for it in carrying his ammo, while his pistol stayed in its holster, and his rifle hanging by his shoulder, light in weight, and easy to carry around.
Sunny gladly showed him around the place, and warned him about the places he may visit around town that might be dangerous, like the towns local Schoolhouse, where it was plagued by a small infestation of, from what he heard, as Giant Mantises.
But, he fancied something to eat and drink, and Sunny recommended the best place in town where they were at, at the moment, they were at a table, drinking beers, in the Prospector's Saloon. The main hub of drink and booze in Goodspring's that provides for each and every villager that lives in the town. He couldn't see why anyone disliked the place, for it had the nicest of people around he had ever seen.
Just earlier, he shared a chat with the owner of the Saloon, a nice woman called Trudy.
She spoke with a crispy western accent, but it held intellect and strength, a trait that many people have lost in these times… no wonder she was practically the leader of the town.
He'd learned from Trudy that times were hard nowadays due to the actual location of where Goodspring's was, not attracting any signs of travellers to pay for any Bighorner meat or portable water along Highway I-15.
One of the main problems really was one of the basic wild-life in the Mojave. Gecko's… dozens of them, oversized desert lizards with big red and yellow eyes that continue to bite and bugger up the locals with wounds and injuries when they come to get the fresh water from their springs.
Another problem is more human and smart… only just.
Trudy, and the rest of the town for that matter, calls them Powder Gangers. Criminal convicts that escaped from their prison after an organized breakout was underway. Some call the NCR guards stupid and idiotic for giving them dynamite in the first place, but they were working to build roads and rail-roads back up by blowing up the rock and environment around them to set up a reasonable degree of long-distance trade to be set up along the Mojave quick… but it didn't turn out well since the Gangers killed the Guards, took their armour, and began roaming the wastes… causing havoc to any and all who come their way.
And just when the problems seem to stockpile even more… the NCR controlled-Quarry just north-east of Goodspring's, that lead along the way towards the city of New Vegas along the Junction I-15 roadway, closed.
Why? Because it was quarantined when a brood of Deathclaw's nestled into the Quarry and occupy the territory as their own nesting grounds.
When he asked what a Deathclaw was… Trudy gave the description out with shuddering detail.
They creep in the night with clawed feet, which can run at the speed of the wind, hunting down prey with big blood-red eyes that haunt you till your dying days when you see it coming. It's shadow tells the story of its demon like looks… the devils horns adorned to its head, with breath so foul even corpses turn in their graves as they catch it in the air, a mouth that honours a collection of murderous knives ready to plunge into your flesh, skin so strong and tough that bullets don't seem to slow it down… and probably the worst of all, is its long, razor sharp claws that it earns its name from… one swipe from its long talons, and it spells your death.
Jason shuddered at hearing these words, and definitely earned his rule number 2… if you see a horned creature with long claws… pray to god.
Then there were wild coyotes that hunt the land around Goodspring's in packs, hiding in any corner or bush the Mojave has to offer before it pounces out, and bites into your neck and rips out your throat.
The list goes on…
Jason was surprised at the number of problems that this town has, and was even more surprised when Trudy explained that this town wasn't that bad with problems, that there were other places in the Mojave even worse than Goodspring's. And he believed that he needs some training for it...
"You don't know anyone who could help me learn a few things about the Mojave before I leave to find the guy in the suit, do you?" Jason asked, and both of them looked at one another, with smiles on their faces.
"Well honey, I suspect you don't know much about Miss Smiles over yonder, hmm?" Trudy said warmly, but Jason crossed his arms and shook his head in reply.
"The thing is… Sunny is the town's locally independent ranger. And she is trained with skills to potentially survive the wastes alone, knowing every trick in the book to live in that death-zone out there." Trudy explained, while Sunny took another swig of her beer, her cheeks reddening again.
"You make me sound like I'm more important than most people…" she said, trailing off as she swung the top of her beer-bottle around in small invisible circles in her hand.
"Well, I'd love to learn a couple of things before taking off. I hope you don't mind me bothering…"
"Oh not at all. There really ain't much to do around these parts; it'll just serve me better with you doing some tasks alongside me… Trudy's told me that the Gecko's are looming over the springs again, so I could use a hand handling them." She replied, offering him a job he practically couldn't refuse.
"I'd be happy to oblige." Jason said, drinking the last of his bitter beer, and slamming the glass on to the table.
"Right then. Let's go." She said, gulping the last of her beer, and threw the caps on the table to pay for the drinks.
"What… now?" Jason said, surprised at the sudden haste of it all.
"Yeh… get your ass up and in gear, and let me show you what it means to live in the Mojave, Mister O'Reiley." She said, teasing him, and with her attitude, she really perked Jason's mood up. He smiled and said.
"Call me Jason, Sunny." Smiling at his reply and slipped out of the comfortable seat of the bar, following her to the back door of the Saloon, which lead outside to a small slope going to higher ground, where a trailer stood docile and uninterrupted.
He got a good look at what the town looked like, seeing the many houses that filled the town either standing or ruined, and the many animal pens that held giant, four-legged farm animals with giant bony horns protruding from their foreheads, and brayed with red ugly-faces, and licked at their brown-grey coats.
He guessed that they were Bighorners.
He saw the back of Goodspring's general store, with wooden-boards blocking out broken windows, crates filling the back of it with the words Sunset Sarsaparilla tagged on them, what he had heard was a delectable, honey-nectar like beverage that satisfied most of many people's quenchable thirsts.
In the distance, he saw the tall wind-mill of a Goodspring's farmer loom over the Prospector's Saloon, and in the sky, he saw birds loom over Goodspring's, seeing their black feathers, it chilled him to see them… a bad omen.
On the ground he noticed dust-bowls roll in the wind, with desert shrubbery littering several spots of the sand-dirt floor, and small prickly tree's spread out into the open.
It surely was a desert like area.
"Is this what the Mojave looks like?" he said aloud, and Sunny turned back to answer him.
"Sure is. Cut away the civilisation, this is what it is." She said, holding her rifle in her hands, and threw a look at Jason to his own rifle, who grabbed it the moment he raised his arms to his back to grab it, and began scanning the length of his own rifle.
"We using these?" he asked, looking up at Sunny, who was taking up a crouching position up on the small fenced-slope, and aimed down her sights at the brick wall of the Saloon.
No, not the wall, the bottles that were marked with Sunset Sarsaparilla company symbols, she aimed to shoot them down, and in one second, she took down one of the bottles, and then instinctively pulled back a bolt-rod at the topside of the weapon, then pushed it forward again as a round fell to the ground from its bottom. She hit it, butt first to the ground and smirked at Jason.
"Ready?" she asked, obviously offering Jason the whole Sarsaparilla Shooting range.
"For what?" he asked, curious into what she was doing.
"Training of course, now come on, you can probrably take down these mean looking bottles can't ya?"
Jason smiled, moved to Sunny, and went in-line with the shooting range, and did exactly what Sunny instructed him to do.
"All right. In your hands is an old farmer-jock's classic low-powered bolt-action Wessington 'Varmint' rifle, how you handle it is by how you wish to use it. To shoot, you put the rifles wooden-butt to your chest, look down at the rifles iron-sights, pull the trigger with gentle strength, and you'll shoot the target of choice at which the iron-sights tip will hit the target if you are aiming right and true… pick a bottle, and knock it's hat off." Sunny instructed, and nodded for him to do so.
As she said, Jason put the butt to his chest, his right hand holding the trigger area, while his left was holding the far end of the rifle, supporting it in weight.
"Hold the wooden caste before it finishes at its end, and distribute your strength and steadiness into your left hand." She instructed, Jason found himself being able to easily do so, and initiatively aimed down his sights to an unmoving bottle.
He fired, the bullet breaking the bottle into glass-fragments, and he, without any instruction from Sunny, pulled the bolt-rod back and forth to allow the empty round drop to the floor, before pushing it forward, and looking up.
"Nice… you're a swift learner my friend." Sunny complimented, obviously impressed.
"I learn from the best." Jason replied, allowing Sunny to avert her eyes away and blush a weak tint of red.
"Right then, take down some more bottles, see how many you get in four rounds." She challenged, and Jason returned to downing his sights on the Varmint rifle.
"Hey Joe… you hear about this fella down at Goodspring's? They say he got shot in the head, and then got buried, and he still walks on his two feet." One of Joe's Gangers said, interrupting him while he had a cigarette.
"Yo, !. You're interruptin' my smokin' time." Joe made apparent, and breathed in a lung-full of the cheap cigarettes deadly content, and exhaled it out into the air.
Joe lazily turned his head to the convict scum that was having the guts to chat to him, and offered a mere interest in his topic.
"What the ! you talking about fool?" Joe asked, getting up from his seat of a stolen goods crate.
"Well… this chump from nowhere got dug out of a grave, a bullet in his noggin', sent to the doctors, and got lucky as hell to come out alive. He's the talk of the town at the moment." The poor chump said.
Joe put more attention to the man, looking at him a bit more, seeing that his sodden form was covered in grey-cut shorts and showed his bare-chest, trying to look impressive with low-packed muscles, with bandolier belts holding the shorts up in support.
"What's your name !" Joe asked, inhaling his smoke's again.
"The names Richie, Joe." He replied.
He looked young to be one of the convicts from that damned prison facility, the NCRRF, the New Californian Republic Recuperation Facility… the hellhole that kept him and his boys locked up for months, with nothing to do but blow ! up with the boom-sticks they got holed up with.
"Look '!ie Richie', I don't give a shit about this guy, or his !in' luck, cause he's just one guy, that can be shot a few more times in the head… to be dead. Dig?" Joe cleared with the man, who stood shaking at him.
"Now… get the ! outta my face." Joe said, dismissing his fellow ganger, and started thinking about his mission here.
He was out for a guy, some poor ! that got away from one of their caravan assaults, and he was holed up somewhere… and it was Joe's job, to see that this )*(%-stain from the road gets cleaned off the earth for good.
That was his orders from the big guy in their personal fort in the wasteland, what used to imprison them, now defended them from the world, and all of its people that saw the Powder Gangers as evil criminals…
But Joe knew that they were much more than just that. They would expand, they would grow in number, let more scum from the road fill their numbers as fellow criminals across the Mojave, and see fit that the NCR, sees to its future destruction.
He was sure of that…
He inhaled the last of the cigarette, before its cindering end touched his hand, and threw it on the ground, while exhaling the smoke from his mouth. The taste of the grey fog feeling good and groggy in his mouth.
He looked around his hideout, where his boys had set up shop, some of them paired up in carrying wooden crates, heavy with TNT sticks of dynamite. Guns were lined up by the wall, plenty of rifles leaning on the rock of their cave hideout, while pistols were holstered inside their holsters, hanging over them on nailed spikes.
He looked up at some of the !ing !s that was in the room with him, figuring some were practical nut-head's, ready to pop open with their insane moves at a moment's notice, or the mention of a word.
He almost laughed at them, seeing the anticipation of the conflict that will occur soon…
The Powder Gangers, the part of the gang known as Cobb's Coyote's, where Joe's assortment of grouped convicts sat down around a fire that lit up the cavernous environment around them as they shared a cigarette's and bite of delicious, but dry foods. Some of them were burning to fight something; he could see a brawl coming from two guys over a squirrel-on-a-stick that heated over the fire. He sensed, no felt their eagerness to put some blood on the floor, their faces highlighted and deceiving their intentions as their eyes wildly moved from one spot to another by the campfire that boiled their squirrel stew that they'd been readying for supper inside a heating pot.
Joe was only hungry for one thing though… and that was to see that this ! Ringo will paint the floor in his blood after he'd riddled him with a dozen bullet-holes.
Joe walked up near to the hideouts exit, where he and some other Gangers had caught and tamed the wild and rabid hearts of a few coyote's and strung them up separate from one another so that they couldn't tear each other apart like, well, dogs!
The Gangers tame, and personally wild hound-dogs. They growled in hunger as they barked and bore their frothing mouths at him, as he and his gangers starved them all the while, readying them for when they could hunt this Ringo characters down, and have his hide as a carpet.
"That's right boys, Uncle Joe has got dinner comin' up pretty soon, you just wait your !-! mouths till you can munch on some Crimson Caravan !. I'm sure he'll taste delicious." He said to them, tormenting them as he pulled out a piece of coyote meat, and then ate it in front of their faces with a sickening grin, followed by an evil and insidious laugh.
Far away in the dim-lit schoolhouse of Goodspring's, Gully enjoys the satisfaction of tasting the crunchy exoskeletons of giant mantises, licking his grubby hands of the insects fluidic-blood, and relishing in the feel of food in his stomach churn once more.
He wheezed out a breath of rancid stench, seeming to make this abandoned ruin a little homestead before he had once again, moved on out to hunt for meat… and he fancied the taste of tender animal meat for tomorrows ravaging.
He moved on all fours, his knuckles scratched and bare from using them to hold his weight around, however, he was pleased to know that they provided a service being like this animalistic form, although his thoughts were blurred with paranoia and delusions at times, he still felt the human in the back of his mind revolt in his disgusting manner of travelling, and that he was demolishing his body even quicker than before.
Gully croaked out some air in the imitation of a laugh, almost forgetting how he could do so after, what… seventy years? He found it hard to believe the time registered in his mind, but dismissed it and cracked his ruined face in a possible smile, physically causing his skin to fall off and shed with age and desecration.
He couldn't help but seem annoyed by his slight loss of intelligence, not remembering how to speak fluently, his memories of his human still fuzzy and distant. He felt like a child locked in a cupboard, and felt compelled to get out.
In the schoolhouse, he hugged himself for warmth, not that he needed it with the radiation he contained inside of him, feeling its reverberating presence choke at his lungs, his heart, his brain, making his veins glow bright green, his skin following suit, and his eyes burning with the sight of his own shining body.
He hated it, and he felt the burning sensation of the radiation in his body burn inside of him more often in the last day, and punched the wall beside him, breaking it and unleashing a small emanation of sunlight, a curse that mocked him every day for the main part of the day.
His stomach still yearned for delicious flesh, meaty and juicy in all its forms, to consume, a physical depression appearing on his body showed with his ribs almost showing by the bone with him being so skinny and frail.
But he stopped himself from thinking too much, that would make his human stronger, and him weaker… so he barked out at the shadows of the room he had up-turned and fought invisible foes with his clawed, shrivelled hands, clawing at them reverently and chomping down on unseen flesh.
And so he went about fighting his demons for the night to come, and challenging the weak human in the corner of his inflicted mind to dare a challenge at him…
Such a pathetic thing, a human… he almost felt pity for himself that he had once been one.
"Not bad huh?" Jason said.
Sunny was astounded.
She has never someone who had no experience in gun's, get that good, in that small amount of time. He had four bullets left in his rifle, and had shot down four more bottles into glass-fragments, their bodies littering the floor as a hazard, but the netting beneath them kept them in a heap…
She looked once more at the guy, and still saw a man who was lost… but was finding his way.
Jason got up from his crouching position off the ground, and slung the varmint rifle over his shoulder.
"You couldn't teach me how to reload this, could ya?" he asked, smirking at her with a small glint of the sun in his eye.
"Yeh… sure." She said, going back to reality.
"Now, you practically do the same thing as when you're releasing an empty round… you pull the bolt-rod, disabling the lock on the guns ammo-clip. Pull it out, don't drop it… you might just find you can load it with more bullets for next time. And punch in a new magazine, then push the rod forward… and you're ready." Sunny said, demonstrating all the way through, and then watched as he was trying to do it.
He started off easy, but when he began trying to pry away the ammo-clip by force, when Sunny had noticed that he hadn't pulled the rod far enough, she walked up to him and calmed him to try and stop, but he wouldn't allow it.
"Let me help…" she said, and put her hands on his rifle's empty ammo-magazine… and she accidentally touched his fingers that were forcing the magazine to eject.
A moment of awkwardness followed, and she felt a little embarrassed, uncomfortable… and prayed to god that she wasn't turning bright red once again. She didn't expect that he was going to say something.
"How come you… always blush?" he asked her.
She was blushing.
"It's just that I-I…" she paused, trying to avoid the subject.
He put a step closer to her, trying to get a look at her eyes as her head had turned, and he perked her chin up to face him.
Without hiding under the brow of his cowboy's hat, she could see his glistening eyes of deep, cool pools of water, just looking into her fiery orange eyes, and the both of them looked deep into one another.
"You can tell me…" he said sweetly, and gingerly lowered his rifle that seemed to block the two of them.
Their eyes were meeting, and neither of them were averting them elsewhere.
Sunny felt butterflies inside her stomach, a warm feeling inside her that she was scared of… she didn't know what it was, and it was frightening her, she didn't know why, but being so close to Jason made her feel…
Fantastic.
"I… I-I…" she stuttered, her heart pounding out of her chest, her blood racing through her veins, and her head buzzing in the heat and moment.
What was this feeling? It feels… weird, ecstatic, and wonderful all at the same time… and it was because of him?
She had never felt like this, not in this way… not once in her life did she feel this… warm. She couldn't describe it. She felt like her spirit was being blown away by an invisible wind, her mind flowing out the fear. The concern. The emotions that ebbed and wove in her mind, flooding out everything that had happened to her in the past… and allowing everything in the present to take over her.
She didn't feel like her responsibility ridden self anymore, all of the duties she had to perform faltered as she was so close to Jason… he was like the key into opening her free self, locked in a cage of her father's duties that the old bastard had raised her for after these years…
She got closer to him, as he did to her, as the sun was dipping down into the horizon; they got so close that their noses were touching one another.
"I don't know why." She whispered, allowing her breath to meet his cheek, and his upon hers.
"That's all right… I know what is like, to not know why." He replied, his words met her, and she realized… he had no idea who he was, and she was scared about why she was blushing all the time.
Now she felt stupid.
"But it's okay…" he continued. " I know that someone else knows what it feels like too…" Jason spoke so convincingly, his voice not faltering, its volume loud enough for only her to hear, and its tenderness for her to feel.
Her cheeks were practically emanating bright red… and she didn't care. For once she wasn't scared to blush in front of a person… a person like Jason. He was so caring, so sensitive… so charming.
She didn't know why she had this feeling for him, and she didn't know what it was.
"Jason… what's this feeling I have?" she asked delicately, her voice sounded so weak that it would break in the wind.
He smiled, and he moved his lips to her ear, and whispered the answer to her…
"Love, Sunny… its love." His tender voice echoed in her mind, not wanting to let it go.
He dropped the rifle in his hand, and wrapped it around her waist, his other arm followed as well, and he cradling her in his arms.
Sunny closed her eyes, as did Jason… and their lips met.
Sunny could feel his smooth lips, as he could feel the touch of her cherry red lips too.
She was kissing him! She was kissing this guy, who she had no clue of who he was, is… or will be! And she didn't care!
She loved him. That's what she had felt about this guy, for so very long… ever since she had seen him, a bloody mess when he came out of that grave. That was why she had been crying when she had him in his arms! That was why she had stayed with him in Doc Mitchells all that time…
She was in love with him.
They kissed longer than they had thought… the sun was nearly finished going down in the horizon, and both were gasping for air…
"That was… amazing." She said, taking deep breaths for air.
He smiled at her. God that was a gorgeous smile.
"I love you Sunny Smiles." He admitted, still holding her in his arms.
"I love you too… Jason O'Reiley." She replied, and kissed him once more, embracing him as his lover.
Just then, Jason suddenly tripped on a protruding pebble, and Sunny broke from their kiss and screamed, but it was a short-made, for Jason landed on the slope, protecting her from the fall.
She looked at him, and he smiled again, and laughed. As did she.
She hadn't laughed in a long time… it felt great.
Come to think of it, she hadn't really laughed much at all in her life… she had never felt this good, this great, when she was born. The only person in the world that had come to love her was her mother… but she had left her with this man years ago, and never said goodbye.
He lay there, with Sunny on top of him, and he hugged her from his position on the ground, just resting for the moment.
Sunny closed her eyes, and rested her head on his muscular chest, and held his hand, combining their fingers in between one another, and she solemnly stayed there.
She didn't know why they were just laying on top of one another, but she just felt like she wanted to just exist, and just be left… be.
And she loved it.
"Jason…" she said weakly.
"Yes?"
"Are we… you know. A 'couple' now?" she asked, gingerly touching the subject, but only to be sure this wouldn't be a one-time thing.
Jason, even if she didn't look she knew that he was smiling, gazed up at the appearing stars that began to light up, the ever coming night sky.
"You know what… I think we are." He replied.
She was glad… all that time waiting for him to wake up had tortured her constantly, and it all summed up for this moment.
And they spent the night there, just holding each other.
Joe looked at the spread out map that hung from one of the hideouts rock-walls, staying up due to the support of some duct tape.
He had been holed up in this hideout for so long while his boys had spent the whole night scouting for the guy, going as far as Nipton to find him.
"Stanley… you checked Sloan for that !" Joe asked the man in the blue convict-shirt next to him.
"Yeh Joe… his ass ain't there, and I ain't keen on seeing those NCR soldiers there neither. !s have it closed down from a Deathclaw infestation…" Stanley replied, spitting out his hatred admitting about the NCR.
Joe stood there in a daze for a moment.
"NCR have a Deathclaw infestation? Damn… looks like Sloan is in some ! huh." Joe said, and took a swig at his beer, before returning his attentions to the map.
"What about Primm?" Joe finally asked, scratching his buzz-cut beard after cutting it down earlier.
"Nah. He ain't there… Jarvis is holed up they're doing some shit with the locals in a hotel, but the poor !s been cut off by the NCR being right outside his doorstep." Someone spoke out behind Joe, and he didn't turn around to see him, instead, he crossed out the mark of where Primm was circled at… leaving him one place left.
"He's there… that rat-! is holed up in this !hole here…" Joe muttered, gazing at the map's last location where the last of his assumptions he had left directed him like a silver lining towards him.
"Donny… what you make of this !hole now?" Joe asked the man who leant on an alcove, smoking a cigarette that was nearly at end, a black expression of skin the only detail he'd be interested to care about.
"Like you said… a !hole. A buncha farmers and hill-billies if ya askin' me, but this dude, he was found in a grave, and found shot in the head." He began, Joe suddenly cocking his head to the man's direction, seeing that he took the moment to inhale a mouthful of smoke.
"Yeh… his !-ass is hard-on, shoots like a total wu though." He finished, and Joe lost interest with him.
These poor !s don't know what the hell they're doing, and it was Joe's job to keep them in line.
"All right, we snooze for the rest of the day, cause tomorrow, we will hit that town hard… I'll go take a visit their beforehand, and see if the locals can be bribed to give up the cunt." Joe explained to them, their empty heads nodding in reply.
Joe motioned his hand to his favoured 9mm Pistol, and he drew it out, and felt a slight exhilaration when he shot the circle of which marked his next target…
Goodspring's.
Jason hadn't slept all the night when it came to getting up the next morning, he found himself wondering what he could possibly do to make the girl that slept silently on his chest, even happier.
He sat up staring at the stars all night, finding himself counting the many billions that hung up in the sky, and each one made him think of Sunny, with her bright-ginger hair unmistakable for whom it belonged too, hiding her beautiful face.
When the sun was coming above the horizon, Jason delicately motioned for his love to awaken.
"Morning…" he said.
Sunny's face rose from his chest, and the two smiled as they looked at one another.
"We should probably get going…" Jason made out, and Sunny nodded in reply, and got up from her position on top of Jason, which suddenly began to ache and suffer.
He blocked it out, wishing it wouldn't ruin the moment; he himself got up, and grabbed his nearby Varmint rifle that had been laying there for the last twelve hours or so. Sunny walked up to her loyal companion, and petted him softly, stroking back her cleanly fur with her soft hands.
Cheyenne panted in response, rolling on his back with his paws up in the air, and Sunny smiled brightly and played with her companion for a moment, rubbing her belly and laughing a little, before Cheyenne got up and shook her head and body of dust and dirt.
Meanwhile, Jason watched while he checked if his rifle hadn't been damaged overnight from Jason carelessly dropping it the afternoon before, where he had the best … and first kiss.
He could remember it now, and it made him smile, just how soft her lips felt on his, and how she glew bright red made her look even more amazing in the sun falling under the horizon that day.
He was sure that the door at the Prospectors Saloon was open, and that someone was watching them… maybe Trudy. But he left it at that, not bothering a second to ruin the moment.
Jason let his grip on the rifle loosen, and remembered something that Trudy had told him and something Sunny had said in the Saloon, before they had begun Jason's tutorial of varmint rifle-training.
Jason holstered his rifle to his back's rifle harness, and he got up from his position on the steep-like slope.
"Sunny! Didn't you say the other day; you n' Trudy mentioned something about Gecko's?" Jason asked, and then Sunny rose up, her face going pale and her eyes wide open.
"!" she cried, and began rushing off past the Saloon.
Jason hardly had enough time to catch her, she was so fast, and she zoomed through the side of the Saloon, and headed along the road.
"Come on!" she cried, urging him to run faster,.
Jason tried harder to push his legs into limberness, but it denied his response after being pressured for most of the night by Sunny. Even Cheyenne was faster than him! They were passing more houses by Goodspring's, and the road turned to the left… but Sunny kept going onward into the wilderness, passing huge boulders and craggy hills broken off in raised pieces.
In the distance, which was ever growing due to the incredible boost of agility Sunny has compared to Jason, he saw her pull out her rifle, and moves into a crouched state along a giant hill.
Jason caught her up as she was about to pass the corner, grabbing some air before saying:
"Sunny what the hell…"
"SSSHHHH!" she cried, and cut her hand in the direction of the corner, signalling something.
She allowed him to pass the corner, but put her hand on his shoulder and spoke a word.
"Gecko's." that was all she said, and it became clear…
She had rushed all the way, in such hastened time, to perform a job that had been given to her yesterday. Gecko's had proved to be one of the town's personal buggers, and if any got away, they'd come back to haunt the villagers for another day.
That was why she was here, priming her rifle, and getting ready to move ahead.
Jason sprang into action, taking his rifle from his backs harness, and pulled the bolt, checking his ammunition. Five bullets, good enough to kill a few of those buggers… so he heard.
On the count of three, the two nodded at one another, and stormed around the rocks corner, running towards what Jason saw, was a large, round pump-machine, with pipes coming out of the ground and fuelling what he saw, were square water deposits, small yet efficient, they were filled with plates and buckets and bottles that were capable of containing water.
Yet for some reason… there were no Gecko's.
Jason looked back at Sunny, where she too was walking toward the water-pump in confusion.
"Where are they? Have they already left?" Jason asked, but Sunny didn't reply, following something.
"Jason…" she called, waving him to come over.
Jason ran for a second, and stopped to where Sunny had called him, where she was crouching. He noticed something was on the ground, the discoloration not matching the desert dirt beneath their feet.
"What is it?" Jason asked.
"Blood…"
Jason cringed for a second, but Sunny shook her head at Jason's mislead belief.
"It's Gecko blood… something's already been here." She said, picking up a handful of the bloodied dirt, and letting it fall from her hands.
"What could it have been?" Jason asked, getting a feeling down his spine.
"From the tracks, it was human, but not like any I've seen… they match the size of a foot, not near the size of a Gecko, but the blood seems to be trailing off back to Goodspring's." she explained, examining further into the disturbances of the environment.
"How do you know all this, I can't see a thing on the ground except the blood." Jason asked, still eying the ground below for anything that seemed out of the ordinary for what the ground was like, which he was still unsure of.
"There's a disturbance with the ground, not to visible to most, but for people like me, I can check and hunt down a single pack of Gecko's by just smelling the air." Sunny explained, sounding quite the professional. No wonder everyone in Goodspring's thinks she's a great ranger.
Jason was about to ask on about her abilities, but he was disturbed by a scream coming from behind him, where a blonde-haired woman in her mid-twenties, wearing red settler clothes and leather-belts and pockets, came running towards him, her eyes streaming with tears, her face trembling in fear.
What the hell…
Jason couldn't determine what was scaring the woman, but he could hear her screaming out a word that he couldn't seem to recognize. "Demon!"
Sunny was calming the woman down as she came to them, but Jason had a feeling that something was wrong, and under the woman's cries, Sunny's calming words, and the constant chirping of desert insects hum and sing around them, the atmosphere just didn't seem right.
Out of the corner of his eye… something moved, above them on the hills, rocks fell down and a small avalanche followed where the thing had moved.
Jason wasn't going to let it go away just yet…
"I'll be back!" Jason cried back to Sunny, who was hugging the sobbing woman in comfort, she tried to call him back, but he couldn't hear her.
He felt compelled to see what the thing was that was retreating now.
It was fast, he could tell, but from the hill, it leads on somewhat of a trail of blood, an ooze of fresh red-blood in blood-drops leading to the thing which was retreating in the distance.
He followed the drops of blood, getting closer and closer to Goodspring's, and his gut lurched at the thought the thing would maybe attack or be a settler their…
He couldn't be sure of these thoughts until he found it.
Why am I saying 'It'? And not person…
For a strange reason, he didn't think on the thought, not deciding on what 'it' was until he saw first-hand who it was.
He found the trail leading to Goodspring's, the southern part of it, where a big hulking shanty-house made up one of the sights of Goodspring's, but he didn't find the trail leading to the inside of the house. The trail moved on towards another white building, Jason saw that it had an angled, dark blue roof with a small tower at its front door, surrounded by white-painted wooden fencing, and a tree growing by the inside of the fence.
A door on its side shut and opened in the wind, evident that it had been slammed shut, and the door didn't lock into place with the time it had to shut, and bounced back by the force of the slam.
Gotcha.
Jason had heard that the school-house was infested, filled with a small collection of giant mantises, little mean and green buggers that have enough bite to paralyse you, and he heard that they have sharp teeth that can cut into skin, also the giant spiked pincers and… but he doubted all the information could be true.
Jason readied himself to go in, holding on to the handle of his M&A 9mm in its holster, as he motioned from the wreckage of a house, careful not to alarm the thing inside the schoolhouse of his presence by snapping some rotten wood, on crunching on the dirt-ground, so he treaded carefully, and closed in on the door to the school.
The fenced-door to the school had been thrown off its hinges and left to drop on to the ground beside Jason, and on his right, he saw the big trunk and branches of a dead tree, residing there for all to see.
Happy with his sneaky entrance, he entered the building, his pistol raised up, although he hadn't trained with it yet, he seemed alright with being able to use it, he just felt a little concerned with how to reload it.
He stopped his thinking to concern himself with his silent entrance, so far so good, he was crouched to the corner of the school's giant room, and breathed in silently.
Okay… 1… 2… 3!
He turned the corner to find that no-one was there, only being in the presence of over-turned desks and chairs, a chalk-board, a safe, a green-hued computer that still hummed with active power, and several… eaten mantises.
The room stank with rotting flesh, a smell that Jason actually recognized, and wished that he knew why, or better yet, wished why he had known.
Even more weirdly, he saw the room was lit up in a strange green hue… but the computer seemed to not have that tint of green, or the brightness to fill all the corners of the room…
Why did he have the feeling that something was in here, watching him… waiting.
A creak behind him made him turn around in an instant, seeing nothing until he looked at the ceiling, and he hesitated to what he saw…
He could only describe it as a glowing corpse … its skin emanating a bright green, with veins showing how its blood moved around its body, its eyes lost its human iris's, its skin cracked and rotting off its body even now, and it had no sign of any nose or ears, all that was left was bare, broken flesh…
It roared at him, its skin glowing impossibly brighter, and barking out a horrid stench of sickening bile and carrion, its yellow teeth like an animals, nearly sharpened and lost, he could see its gums were black and infected, and its tongue glowed luminescent green
Discerning its features, Jason guessed it was male. It reflected an appearance of possible muscle and growing masculine features that you wouldn't see in a regular woman, its shoulders broader and wider apart from each other. Its width and length matched what he had believed would be the size of a man, cutting down its form of muscle, fat and skin by many a factor.
He felt like he could be sick…
Jason dropped his gun and fell back, his heart beating fast and his mind racing at how this creature could exist, or how it could climb ceilings? But then the creature didn't move, it just looked at him, but after a few seconds, it moved further along the ceiling, and jumped down to all fours.
Jason didn't move, he couldn't… he felt a cold wave of fear and adrenaline coursing throughout his body, and still stared at the creature, which moved ever closer to Jason…
Jason could practically see ever crack, vein, wrinkle, cut and wounded skin on its face, and winced away a little from its canyon-deep eyes, as it looked at him, its breath unbearably sickening, and its glow an ever alien warmth to Jason.
The creature 'sniffed' at Jason, and Jason winced again at the thought of it smelling him if he's good meat… but the creature shuffled back, and made a sound like phlegm was stuck in his throat. It moved back and jumped on a table, and grabbed a magazine… reading it upside down.
"What are you?" Jason found himself asking it, and it cocked its head this way, looking at him with a blank, rotting look.
"Gu-Guuulllly…"
Jason thought he was hallucinating, but he just thought he heard the human-thing talk. Or he thought he heard something like rock grinding down on another rock. He was hallucinating, he must be… right?
"Mee Guulllly, mee a ghhooulll…" this time Jason was sure he wasn't hallucinating.
He didn't know why, but a sudden fascination of this creature, no, 'ghoul' grabbed him into asking more about itself.
"Can you read?" he asked, and then 'Gully', barked, answering his question.
Jason got up off the floor backed up a bit to the computer, giving him and Gully some safe distance apart from one another, and leaned on a table, making himself comfortable.
"I'll take that as a no… how come you're a ghoul?" Jason asked, and put his pistol away in his holster.
"Mee ghhooulll… fromm da bigg boooomm." It replied, its voice so tough and dried, Jason thought it was a rock grinding rock at first.
"The big boom?" Jason repeated Gully's words, and the ghoul looked up to him.
"Da nuukleear raadiaashun… da bigg boooomm." Gully repeated, and Jason suddenly realized what he meant.
"You mean… the nukes from two hundred years ago did this to you? Jesus Christ… that's awful."
Jason can remember now, why the world he was living in was so desolate and dead… two hundred years ago, the world plunged itself into an unbelievable nuclear war, he didn't know why, but he knew that it ended up destroying the entire world.
Jason suddenly felt sick, just realizing that the world had been destroyed by humanity itself was a tough thing to cope with… his stomach churned, his mouth tasted sickly, and his throat hurt for direly needed air.
He gasped in the air and breathed heavily about it, calming himself down, and tried to think about the good things in his life… Sunny… Sunny…
That's all that was good. He didn't realize it… but he couldn't remember anything good other than Sunny in his time that seemed like a real buzz-kill, but for some reason…
He just smiled.
All this while, Gully had gotten bored of this short silence and started chewing the burnt pages of a book that had long been ruined by dust, age, and its ash-black burning. But this did not bother Gully, he seemed to like eating them.
"Gully… have you ever been in love?" Jason had no idea why he asked the question, and a question he asked to a ghoul that may have had the attention span of a… well, Ghoul, and was a complete stranger.
Gully paused in chewing the pages of the book, and listened to the human with ears that no longer existed, and still he leaned inward with interest.
"Have you ever felt like your life has been turned upside down by just one thing… one little thing, and it has changed you forever?"
It was a soft and interesting question, and it made Gully sag his head down… respectively remembering its human's memories, looking down a lane of dreams and nightmares at the time before the nuclear fire, and he saw what the human near him was talking about.
The moment was stopped when somebody kicked in the front door of the schoolhouse, and came charging in with a varmint rifle, and a growling companion.
It was Sunny.
Jason was about to introduce Sunny to Gully, when she shot him and didn't hesitate to shoot, and caught it on its right shoulder, sending it to fall away from the table and clench its bleeding wound… In cold-blood and in point-blank range, she shot him through the shoulder, and he fell to the floor crying out in pain,
Gully cried in a horribly animalistic pain, writhing its legs, scratching the floor with its scarred, cut feet, and sending it in a spasm he had never seen before.
Jason couldn't believe it… but he screamed out in anger.
"SUNNY! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!"
This caught her by surprise, and Cheyenne rose up in surprise, the dog's ear's going up, and Sunny's face lighting up with confusion.
"Wwwwhhhhyyyyy…." It whimpered, wheezing out the words like it was a worse pain than Jason's bullet wound.
"What…"
Jason bolted, and knelt down to the writhing Gully, suddenly feeling a touch of pain and pity for the creature.
He had been correct earlier, when he thought he was thinking about a person he'd been following here. But the person had the appearance of a monster, and the traits of one… but Jason could see another side of it, one that he thought might be human.
"Hey, hey, hey! Calm down! Let me help you…" Jason said to it… no, to him.
"Jason… what are you doing? That's a feral ghoul! It will kill you!" she barked, and Cheyenne copied her bark with her own.
"Gully… neeeeddd noo heelllppp…" it barked, pushing him away as it cried what he thought… were tears.
"Jesus Christ! It can talk!" she cried out, moving back in disbelief, and nearly slipped on a half-eaten Mantis body.
From what she was expressing both physically, and mentally, Jason guessed that a talking ghoul called Gully was not normal. However, he lost his way of discerning the normal from the impossible. And just went along with it.
"Gully? Is that its name?" she said, dumbfounded by him.
"Don't say it… Gully is a he, not it…" he said to Sunny, who seemed a little guilty and dumb from her actions.
"… Where does it hurt Gully?" Jason asked, impressed by how Gully took the pain, what with its weak structure and skinny limbs, and shocked at its way of portraying it in its animalistic condition.
The creature turned its body on the floor for Jason to see, continuing to spasm its legs further, but it was holding together where the wound was seeping through a green-ooze of what Jason had to believe was Gully's blood.
He tried moving his hand to the wound, but Gully caught it in its unbelievably strong hands, and stared at him with empty, milky-white eyes, and wheezed out:
"Loookkkk…" Gully pointed at the wound with its free rotting hand, Jason unsure of what it was meaning, but then a marvel occurred.
As Jason saw the wound, the ooze that emanated out of it seemed to harden, filling up the wound with a rubbery-substance… the muscles in his body seemed to regenerate further, small spider-webs forming inside the bullet wound, then they expanded and grew, forming sickly-green skin tissue, the layers of microscopic skin cells form over the wound in seconds, the only trace it left of the wound was a shaded green-scar that resembled a star.
"Amazing…" Jason said, his eyes widened in disbelief.
Sunny dropped her gun, and fainted to the floor, lifting a mist of stockpiled dust with her. With Cheyenne whimpering behind her, obviously scared of Gully. Jason felt like smiling, but held it in.
"Gully… gud." Gully said, and rose up from his position on the wooden-floor, and resumed a hunched, four-legged position that made him resemble an animal.
"How did you…" Jason started, but was interrupted.
"Mee, noo noooww." Gully said, wheezing the words out once more.
"Gully… what are you?" Jason asked.
"Gully… isss aa gghoul, hoo-man." Gully replied, and then spat out something disgusting that he didn't want to know what it was.
Gully the Ghoul? Seems a little too fitting for him…
"My name is Jason… sorry about my friend here shooting you." He apologized, pointing towards Sunny.
"Raghr?" it wheezed, a weak roar, and Jason realized he didn't understand.
"Oh… umm, 'she sad for hurting, you', ah?" Jason repeated. But Gully cocked its head, and suddenly barked at him with his claws reaching him.
"AAAHHH!" Jason cried, but then Gully rolled on the floor, like he was dying, throwing his feet in the air.
Jason realized that the Ghoul was laughing, the strange sound from its mouth sounded like he was choking, but he too laughed at his little scare. The ghoul had little intelligence, and acted like a child, maybe a dog, so Jason had to go about this simple for him.
"Are you a-lone?" Jason asked.
Gully looked back at him, his face suddenly felt like it gained a few pounds and dropped down in a sulk. Jason had to think quickly, before he could see this infant-intelligent cry down or maybe do another unbelievable thing and maybe blow up his head.
"Would Gully, like too come and follow me around?" Jason quickly replied, and Gully's head raised quickly, its face cracked and its lips stretched, Jason guessed it was a smile.
"Yooo friend off Guulllly?" he asked dryly, cocking his head.
"Yes Gully, I'm a friend." Jason replied, and held out his hand to the Ghoul.
The Ghoul didn't understand, but its human did…
Gully creaked its arm out to the human, and opened its hand from a sticky bond of its fingers, and he grabbed it. The human made his hand go up and down, and it looked stupid to the Ghoul, but his human told him what it meant… his human was good at that.
This is a hand-shake, where two grab their hands, and present their friendship with one another, by participating in a motion with their hand. Shaking it. So it is called a, hand-shake.
Gully didn't know what it's human meant… but he understood one thing. He understood that it had a friend, a human friend, not a human that threw things at him, shot him, cursed at him, try to hunt him for sport, or capture him for some human 'science project'. It was a friend who can look at him without disgust, or disbelief, but a friend who can talk to him like he was a real human being.
It made him feel… human… before he didn't like it… not knowing what it means to be human… but the Ghoul in Gully suddenly figured. 'I don't need to know what it means to be a human, I can just be one.'
This human… Hay-bon… Yay-zon… Jay-sun? Yes, Jay-sun… was one of a kind.
And it was a good kind.
Sunny woke up with a start, she gasped in surprise and frightened Jason, who had been sat next to her by what she recognized, was Doctor Mitchell's hospital bed.
Now he was waiting for me this time.
She smiled at the small ironic situation, and Jason asked.
"You okay?"
"Yeh… I had the weirdest dream of a talking feral ghoul… it shone with the strangest glow of green…" she stopped midsentence when she saw the glowing-green ghoul sniff at one of Doctor Mitchells books, and her eyes widened.
"GHOUL!" she kicked herself back to the scaffold of the bed, and hugged the wall in fear.
She tried to reach for a gun, but she couldn't find her rifle where it normally was on her back. She winced away as it turned to face her, with its disgustingly rotten face that was highlighted with a sick radioactive green.
"Sunny. Calm down! He's a friend." Jason cried, holding her hands and looking at her in the eye.
She hated them… she hated ghouls and she didn't want to be around them. They were horrible mutations of what were real people, who suffered the nuclear holocaust that was nothing short of a miracle, but they all soon suffered the fate of ferocious insanity… and that's what scares her the most.
She cried out, with deep gasps following soon enough as she felt tears roll down her cheeks, but Jason put her head to his chest, and let her cry. She heard his heartbeat; even under her cries she felt his warm embrace.
"It's all right. It's all right Sunny… I'm here. Nothing is going to hurt you… and neither is he."
She heard him loud and clear… but he didn't understand. This fear wasn't like blushing in front of people, nor was it the kind of being bullied as a child.
This was a nightmarish fear that kept her up for weeks at a time… suffering terrible, and inescapable nights of hiding in a corner of dark room, holding a gun for hours until the morning came and she would visit Dr. Mitchell for mental conditioning sessions.
She remembered that day… that awful rainy night when a horribly mutated band of ghouls came into town, one of them glowing just like this one was… and they hunted down everyone in the town, and all she could do was freeze up and see them hurt the people she loved and protected.
The Glowing one, a ghoul that glowed with unbelievable radiation, had charged at her… pinned her down to the floor… and bit deep into her, she was only twelve… and she felt its infected teeth bite into her flesh, every millimetre it went through burned her body alive with infectious radiation, its touch not only seared her flesh, but it made her sick too.
Had it not been for her father… she would have been dead by now…
This thing wasn't meant, allowed, nor should be alive whatsoever in any way on god's Earth…
But Jason insisted that it would not hurt her… but she felt her scar on her neck now, almost invisible and healed, she could still feel its small fire burn in her skin, the radioactive poisoning that sent her ill for years… and still haunted her even now.
"Izz sheee gud?" Gully croaked, and Jason responded without looking at him.
"Yeh… she's gonna be okay Gully. I guess all of us have our own demons to fall, and sadly, she has to face hers." Jason replied, and hugged her tightly as her crying fit continued for a long, long time.
When she finally raised her head, Jason could see her eyes, full of hate, fear, and desperation. Something that he hadn't expected with Sunny, but he could see it alright, and he too, can sense something similar in him, locked away inside of him.
"Sunny… Gully, is not, I repeat, not. A threat. He will do nothing to you, and I will make sure that I stand in between the both of you, got it?" Jason assured her, and she nodded in reply, but the nod was weak and slow, her fear freezing her in place so much.
Sunny didn't like it, but she could trust Jason, the one person who had made her life seem important, and relieved…
But this was something that might prove a problem in the future. She was sure of that…
Joe Cobb walked up the hill, cursing his lack of movement these past few days… but he decided the hour before that he would pay a visit to this town, and he would see to it that his little plot to bribe these yokels to choke out the information on where he was hiding.
The ! Chet, held something key to the plot that the big man in the NCRCF Prison HQ, was planning for the NCR, to get back at them for all they have done.
He'd heard the boss and his plan, and he licked it a lot, and volunteered himself and his own chain-gang to finding the key to the plan. He agreed under the sole condition that he would bring back the item that Chet was holding. This bastard had been a snake, and had slithered his way out of Joe's grip to many times…
Now the !ing ! was gonna get it.