Chapter 8: Whiskey blues.
A few days later, Rem's eyes slowly came open. The room was dark, and he knew it was night time, but he had no clue at all how long he had been out. After taking everything about the room in, he wondered if anyone was awake at this time. He couldn't hear anything, not even any activity outside in the hall, or whatever was out his immediate door, to be honest. He thought about getting up but for the time being, he wanted to relax. He wanted to get used to himself. So, he moved his arms around a bit, pressed against the bed, and moved his legs. He could tell where he had been shot, especially when made the motion to sit up. When he did, he gritted his teeth and let himself lay flat on his back again. Yeah, he had been shot in the stomach, and . . . somewhere else. He hadn't ever felt this before. It hurt to breathe, and it kind of worried him.
"Hello!" when he tried to yell, it didn't come out as loud as he would have wanted, and it hurt, too, because it put pressure on his lungs. He looked to his side and saw a table there, with a glass of water on it. He reached out to it and pushed it with his finger. It shattered against the floor and water went every which way, with glass, and in the barracks, Sandra's eyes opened. She sat up immediately and when she did, she noticed she wasn't the only one who had awoken. Casey's eyes were open, so were Gail's, and some of the other doctors, too. "What was that?" one asked, as Gail and Sandra stood up. Casey spoke, "Sounds like it came from one of the other rooms." Sandra responded, "Yeah." They stepped outside, and they found two guards inside, heading into Rem's room.
Casey and Sandra followed, and Gail looked out the door but she didn't go any further once she realized there were guards there. When they all stepped inside, they found Rem sitting up, resting his weight on his hands, watching them with small, tired eyes. Casey smiled when he saw it while Sandra was caught up with what Rem had done. He had taken off the monitors, and was even sitting up. Idiot. "Rem, glad to see you're finally awake." Rem responded with a tired voice, too, "How long was I out?" About just then, he started getting his bearings back. Everything started returning to his head. He remembered being shot, he remembered being saved by Casey's bodyguard, and then . . . then he remembered the girl he saved, standing over his bedside after having held something cold to his neck. He remembered the way she was crying, too. "Three days and some change. The doc kept you high on sedatives so you'd sleep through the worst of it."
Rem heard what Casey said but he was still thinking about the girl. The girl whose name he still didn't know. If it had been any other time, any other person, he'd have gone into a rage, but he understood that she was young. She watched her brother get eaten, watched him get ignored when he was screaming and begging for help, and had survived to grieve over it. She was young and she was devastated, and he could understand that much. It'd be immature for him to hold it against her, especially after she didn't go through with it. "Ugh," he reached up to his face and rubbed his temples as he thought about it. He felt guilty now, sorry that he hadn't been able to save her boyfriend, but if he had tried, all three of them would have died. "Are you alright?" asked Sandra, "Pain?" Rem shook his head, "No. I mean yeah, a little, but nothing to worry about."
At that point in time, the guards started exiting, and so did the other doctors. For the guards it was time to get back in their stations and for the doctors, it was time to get some rest. Casey and Sandra, however, stayed in the room. And then someone else came in. She stopped beside Casey, and Rem turned to look at her. It was Gail. "Thanks," he said, immediately, "Really. Thanks." Gail responded, "Don't mention it." She stared into his eyes for a couple of seconds and he stared back, and then they both looked away. Casey spoke, "Hey, uh, I'm really sorry for this to be the first topic of conversation, but we're all dying to know what happened." When Rem heard that, he exhaled, and it hurt, slightly. Fuck, he thought, "Whiskey, please." Sandra chimed in quickly, "It'll hurt." Rem shrugged, "If it does, I'll stop." Sandra stared at him, completely displeased by it, but when the silence endured and he turned an annoyed gaze her way, she caved. She moved towards one of the cabinets and opened it, revealing many medical supplies inside, including whiskey, which was frequently used to sterilize wounds. "Here," she handed it to him, and he took it. "Okay," he began, as he took a swig.
"It wasn't any wild life," he found it hard to start. Honestly, he didn't want to revisit this. He still remembered the boy's frantic screams so vividly in his head. He remembered the smell of a fresh corpse, and the sounds of it being devoured. And the guilt, and everything else. Everything. "They were man eating super mutants," after he said that, they all stared at him, like they were on the same page. "After I found the safe house, I figured it had to be some local wild life because there were no corpses, and there were subtle nuances of things being dragged. Wild life usually eats or drags what they kill to their home, which in the mountains, is usually a cavern. So, after I left, that's what I started looking for." They were absolutely enthralled as the story began.
"I found it about an hour later and I didn't treat it like they were super mutants. If I had had any indications that it might not be wildlife, I would have staked out the perimeter until someone either went in or came out. So, I went straight inside. Should have staked out anyway, I guess. The further I got inside, the more I started realizing that I had no clue what I was heading into. I had been really damn certain up until then but when I didn't see any drag marks on the floor, I knew I was wrong about something. Wondered what kind of animal in the mojave wasteland could lift a person and carry them back to their den. A deathclaw could, I guess, but I've never seen them carry anything like that." When he was describing it, he remembered everything. He remembered the cold feeling inside, and the smell. The smell especially, and how heavy the realization of not knowing what he was getting into was like. "I decided to leave, but it was too late. Some of those fuckers got there, and when I realized they were at the entrance, I did the first thing I figured I could do. Caverns usually have these small little crevices in them. Crawl spaces that radscorpions and giant ants might live in, and that was what I was looking for." He opened took another swig of the whiskey, sneering as it went down his throat.
"I felt that if they were deathclaws, and I knew it'd be more than one because Deathclaws are group oriented, I'd be fucked unless I hid somewhere. Going inside, I was ready to shoot anything, but there wasn't anything until I reached the last cave. I saw two youngsters there. In their late teens. A girl and her boyfriend." Casey interrupted, "He was her brother." Rem paused, raised his eyebrows, and took another drink from the whiskey to calm how bothersome the realization was. He didn't know if that was worse or not, however. Somehow, it felt worse. "Brother and sister then. They were tied up, and the moment I realized that, I knew these weren't no fucking deathclaws," he looked off to one side, after that, feeling like this wasn't particularly something he would have wanted to tell anyone. He didn't want to tell them he didn't have any time, and that he left them there to go hide by himself. He turned back to them, opening his eyes as he did, "I found a crawl space and hid inside. Would have brought them with me if I had enough time." Gail narrowed her eyes for a moment. She knew it. Rem was trash. Just another NCR piece of shit with no business putting responsibility on his shoulders.
"When they came in, I thought they were deathclaws. They were fucking tall, but I realized they were super mutants." He leaned back, pressed his back against the wall the gurney was up against, and tilted his head to the side. Yeah, he didn't want to go into this in full detail. At all, so he closed his eyes, "They ate the brother in front of his sister. Wasn't . . . it was disgusting," he said, as he became fidgety. He screwed the cap back on the bottle of whiskey, took it off again, and drank some more to help calm the nerves. Gail, as she watched him, became angrier than she had been in a while. She despised the NCR, and she despised Rem. "What were you doing while this all happened?" she asked, out of anger. Rem shrugged, choked up, "Waiting." Gail got louder, and Casey turned to look at her when she did, "Waiting? For what?" "For the right opportunity." Gail couldn't believe what she was hearing. "There were seven of them. All had either submachine guns or assault rifles, and the master had a minigun. I wouldn't have made it. All three of us would have died."
Gail stared at him. He was pathetic. He was fucking weak. He didn't have the right to try and help anyone. She turned away and left, immediately, because if she hadn't, she wouldn't have been able to control herself. Rem didn't look at her, at all, as she did, but Casey and Sandra did. When Gail went through the door she saw something in her peripherals, against the wall next to the door, so she stopped to see. Autumn was standing there, hugging her torso, crying as she stood there. The door closed and Rem sat there with his eyes aligned downward, "The right opportunity came after about three hours. Stole some bottlecap mines from them, blew one of them to pieces to get their attention away from the crawl space, and made my way out. Another two died to landmines, and while they stalled inside, afraid of the mines, I quote on quote escaped. They ran out after me and when they did, I went back inside and rescued the girl." Casey was listening, and though at first he was questioning Rem's decision to let the boy die the way he did, he reasoned that Rem did the right thing in saving himself, and especially the girl. If he hadn't done what he did, they likely wouldn't have been able to get the supplies either. Sandra felt the same way.
"Where is she?" Rem asked, and Casey responded, "In Sandra's room. She's sleeping." Rem nodded, thinking about her. He remembered the way she looked when she tried to kill him. She had every right to feel the way she did. He understood that she hated him, and that she was either too young or too shocked to understand that he had done the right thing in the end. But even so, he still felt so much like shit. Life didn't always go by logic, after all. Sometimes, it went by feelings. Irrational, immature, ridiculous old . . . feelings. That was the simple truth.
It had been two days since he woke up. Everyone at the outpost was nice to him because he had a hand in returning the supplies. Everyone except for Autumn and Gail, and at times, their disdain was all he saw. Honestly, no matter how many people came to him and patted his shoulder, and no matter how many people said thanks, he didn't feel anything, at all, like a hero. Every time he looked at Autumn, he felt guilt. Sometimes a bit of frustration because he had saved her life and he hadn't heard so much as a thank you from her. Then again, each time he felt that anger, he'd digress, remembering that she was young and hurt. She never stayed in his presence too long either, which generally made him feel unwelcome everywhere he went, but he could forgive that, too. He knew that he reminded her of what had happened, with just his presence there, and that it was okay if she wanted to get away from that.
Casey came through the door and found Rem standing just outside it, leaning one hand on the railing and supporting himself with a crutch. "Morning," he said, and Rem turned to look at him, nodding upwards at him to acknowledge him, "Hey." Then, he turned back to look ahead just in time to see Gail and Autumn walk by below them, on level ground. He stared at them as they walked by, and when Casey leaned up against the railing, too, he watched them walk as well. They were good friends now, Gail and Autumn. They spent a lot of time together. "They get along well don't they?" Casey looked away from them and started to clarify why, "Gail's been nice to her since we found her. She's always taken the extra step to help her feel comfortable and all of that. Autumn feels safe around her." Rem nodded slowly as he heard that. On the railing, there was a bottle of whiskey, and he took hold of it after leaning off the railing. Casey turned his eyes to Rem when he did.
"Been hitting the whiskey pretty hard lately." Rem took a swig and responded as he screwed the cap back on, "Yeah. Won't get drunk though." Casey smiled and nodded, "Yeah, I know. How much fun is that, anyway?" Rem shrugged his shoulders at the question, "It just . . . feels right lately. Feels good." Casey raised one eyebrow as he looked at him, and shook his head as he looked away. When Rem thought about it, Casey was the only one he felt comfortable around nowadays. He was the only one who knew the full story that seemed like he understood that the decision Rem made wasn't easy. "Been meaning to ask you," Rem began, as Casey listened. "When do you plan on leaving?" Casey stood up a little straighter when he was asked the question and responded quickly, like he had already been thinking about it. "I spoke to Sandra. I asked her if she would mind if Autumn stayed here and worked with the followers." After the pause, Rem spoke, "What'd she say?" "Well, she doesn't seem to have any skills. At least none that are . . . medical related." Rem looked ahead again, ruminating.
When he looked back at Casey, he spoke, "They could teach her." Casey nodded, "I said that but Sandra said that they don't teach at this outpost. If Autumn said yes to working with the followers, she'd send her to another outpost. An outpost where she could learn and a place where they're not too crowded." Rem nodded, "That sounds good to me. Don't know what else she can ask for. Then again, does she have any family?" "I'll ask her that when we talk to her today." Rem nodded to that, in agreement. "If she has family and she doesn't want to work for the followers, then you and Autumn can take her to them." Casey nodded to that, too, "Yeah, we would. Thing is, way she's clinging to Gail, I get the indication that she doesn't have anyone anymore." When that idea was presented to him, Rem agreed. It was true, she was likely alone now. He opened the bottle of whiskey and drank.
"I remember when I was a little girl, our house caught on fire. I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me up in his arms and raced through the burning building out on the pavement. I stood there, shivering in my pajamas, and watched the whole world go up in flames. When it was all over, I said to myself, is that all there is to a fire? Is that all there is . . . "
God, that Peggy Lee sure did know how to sing a damn song. She could even talk through one and make it sound really good. When the tune kicked in, to this song, Rem couldn't help but smile. He was sitting on a wheel chair with a radio next to him, the song playing on a relaxed volume. "Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friends, then let's get dancin'. Let's bring out the booze and . . . have a ball." Those lyrics made him feel something as he opened up another bottle of whiskey. He was buzzed, and this was usually where he'd stop, but . . . it felt right, for once. What the hell, he thought, and took a nice, long, satisfying drink. Man did it feel good to break free of the chains of reason. He turned his head from side to side listening to the song. That beautiful, convincing song. Peggy Lee's beautiful, regrettably long gone, voice.
Autumn walked in just then, followed by Casey, Sandra and Gail. Rem glanced up at all of them with a large, near drunken smile. Oh lord, Sandra thought. Casey watched him, wow. He was drunk? Yeah, he was. Rem took yet another drink, still smiling at each and every one of them, not minding the soreness between he and two of the women. Even Autumn stared at him for a couple of moments, but she went past him quickly, choosing to insult him with an abrupt exit. He was used to it. Gail followed and didn't pay him much mind either while Sandra stopped beside him, "Stop drinking." Rem nodded, "Alright, alright. I'm just buzzed." "No you're not. Stop it." Casey smiled, clearly amused by this, and shook his head. Sandra walked by after, and Casey patted Rem's shoulder. They went into another room.
"What did you guys want to talk to me about?" Autumn sat down on a chair and looked up at the three adults, curious, but not scared. Sandra spoke first, "To start off, I'd like you to understand that you haven't been a burden to us, at all, but the three of us have agreed that we should start talking about what you wanted to do hereafter." Autumn's eyes went small, sad that she was going to have to return to life so soon, "Yeah . . . " Sandra watched, and so did Casey as he leaned up against one of the walls. Gail approached, "Don't worry, we're planning on helping you as much as we can." She patted her shoulder and nodded reassuringly. "Do you have any family?" asked Gail, and Autumn answered by slowly shaking her head. Casey had been right. Sandra spoke after that, "Well, you could join the followers." Autumn looked up at her when she heard that, interested.
"Do you have any previous medical experience?" Autumn shook her head, but she was more animated now, "No, but I can learn." She spoke with enthusiasm, and all of them could see that. To an extent, they were relieved by that zeal. Sandra nodded, "Alright, if you choose to join the followers, I'll have to send you to another one of the outposts. We don't teach here and to be honest, we're overcrowded." Autumn frowned when she heard that, but Gail cut in before she could feel any worse, "Casey and I would escort you." Autumn nodded to that, agreeing with it, but man, she still felt sad. She had been denying that they'd push her back into life so quickly, but it was only fair. She wasn't paying for this treatment, after all. "Thank you all, so much," then she nodded. Sandra looked away and spoke to Casey and Gail, "Alright, well, I spoke to them today and they asked that we wait a while before we deliver her. I don't think it'll be too long." Casey nodded, "Can do."
Rem was taking another drink when they emerged from the room again. He was caught up in the music playing through the radio as they did, and when Sandra saw it, she shook her head. What an idiot. Then again, he didn't look like he could cause much trouble anyway, so she headed out. Casey walked up to him and stood there, "First time I ever see you drunk." Rem smiled, the way he only could when he was drunk, "Yeah." "Why?" "Feels good right now," responded Rem, as he looked towards Gail and Autumn. He got the same response from them. The cold shoulder, the disdainful glares, and the quick body language that made it look like they simply wanted to get away from him. Rem's smiled changed just then. His lips went flat, and he pressed them together tightly. Then he took another drink while he watched them walk towards one of the doors.
This is getting old . . . he thought. He didn't realize it, at all, but he was responding to their attitude differently. At first, it was understanding. He always thought that Autumn was young and hurt, and that she deserved to get away from what caused her pain, but the alcohol was dissolving that train of thought. That tinge of understanding, and even compassion, slowly degraded into aggression. He started to feel more so insulted than anything, and oh god did it start to sting. More than any bullet that he had ever been shot with. Both hands were squeezed, fists formed, his face grew red, and he raised one hand up above his head.
"I COULDN'T DO SHIT ALRIGHT?"
When he yelled, he slammed his fist down on the table. The sound resonated through the outpost and everyone in the room got startled while the radio shook and turned off, disconnected from its power source.
Autumn, at first, was startled. She slowly turned around to look sideways at Rem, over her shoulder. She looked calm, as if she hadn't yet managed to register the intensity of Rem's outburst, and the time that raced by in an inexplicably slow fashion started to churn that startled sensation, turning it into something else. Turning it into anger. It festered in her chest before it started seeping out, unable to be contained by such a small space, and stretched out into the rest of her body. She trembled. She gripped both her hands into tight fists and her eyes carved a tunnel towards Rem that blocked out everyone else. Honestly, after what he allowed to happen, how could he even try to lighten his fault? Rem . . . Rem wasn't human. After what he had allowed to happen without so much as lifting a finger, how could he have any humanity in him. The idea that he had even bothered saving her after Jesse had been eaten started to make her angry instead of grateful.
"Yes! You could have done something! You could have shot them! They didn't know you were there!" Rem retorted, angrily, "If I had - - " but was swiftly cut off. She yelled louder and quite simply, with more emotion than he. "Besides, you left something very fucking telling of your character out when you told them the story!" she gestured at Casey and Gail as she said that. "You know you did something cowardly back there. You know that if you told them, you wouldn't look as much like a fucking hero!" In his drunken haze, the words that she uttered somehow stung more. Rem's eyes were intense and his jaw was tight. The anger overtook him and he started to stand, sloppily, and he ignored the pain in his leg, the pain anywhere, except the one in his heart. "If I had shot anyone, none of us would have made it out!" Autumn responded, ignoring the statement entirely, "Tell them! Tell them! Fucking tell them what you did when Jesse freed himself from the cage and tried to crawl into your little hiding place!"
Casey and Gail were watching and listening silently, but when Autumn said that, they both turned to look at Rem. Rem felt their eyes, their questioning gazes, settling on his person and bringing manifest to the feeling of guilt he so deeply wanted to forsake. He gulped. For a while, he couldn't do anything other than stare at her. Autumn saw the pause as a victory, like she had said everything there was to say. Rem, on the other hand, started to remember the feelings he felt while he heard Jesse screaming, crying, and begging for help while he was being hacked to pieces by the machete. He remembered when he screamed his last scream, died, and then he remembered the haunting sounds of his remains being devoured. It didn't feel good, at all, to have heard all of that and to have not been able to do anything about it. Why was she so convinced that he had been cold and calculating about everything? Why was she so convinced that he didn't feel a thing for Jesse? Well . . . maybe because he hadn't told her.
"I didn't pull him in there with me," he began, as he stepped forward, "But it wasn't fucking easy!" As he yelled, he turned the table beside him over, sending the radio onto the floor in a loud, unceremonious crash. Casey watched it go but then he turned right back to stare at Rem. "It wasn't fucking easy for me to hide in there and watch your brother die! Do you think I fucking laid there, in that crawl space, with a sunset sarsaparilla in hand to pass the time! No, I was fucking terrified, I was ashamed because all I could do was listen!" Rem's eyebrows grew closer, his eyes shut tightly, "God damnit!" he yelled, just in time for two doors to open. Sandra came in wearing a night gown and a guard entered from the outpost exit. Sandra spoke, "What's going on here?" Autumn stared at Rem. Now, she was silent. Both of them were, and Sandra's question went on ignored.
"I fucking saved your life," as Rem spoke now, he wasn't screaming. He was speaking calmly, but still, in that calm, fluid voice, there was pain. Deep, emotional pain. "If it wasn't for me, these supplies wouldn't have made it back. I know I didn't do it alone but god damn it, I did something good, didn't I?" Casey spoke, "You did, Rem." Rem glanced at him, then back at Autumn. He didn't want Casey's approval right now, he wanted Autumn's. Autumn continued staring, then she looked to one side, and looked back. She was against a wall . . . she felt like she wasn't completely correct anymore, but . . . but it still hurt so much. Jesse's memory flashed in her mind and quite simply, she just felt like she couldn't let Rem justify his gruesome death. She smiled, for no particular reason other than to mock Rem, and oh did it work. Rem watched her, saw the smile, and waited.
"You're a hero." Her voice was plain, calm, very unlike what it had been before. "You're the wasteland's fucking guardian angel, right?" She began pacing towards him, and once she was standing in front of him, she exploded. "You're a worthless piece of trash! You think you saved me? You might as well have fucking left me there to die!" Rem's eyes became intense again, and he gritted his teeth this time. What more, his eyes turned pink. He started to lose his grasp on his emotions but before it got out of hand, he gripped tightly, unwilling to let himself cry. "You have no place trying to help anyone! You're not some fucking guardian angel! You're useless! You are why the wasteland is such a shitty place!" She paused, and then said, calmly, "Fucking worthless." Gail came close to Autumn and placed a hand on her shoulder, "Come on, let's go." Autumn didn't respond. She continued staring at Rem.
Rem stared back. He was quiet. He knew she was wrong, so badly. He had done the right thing. But . . . his feelings were tempestuous. They were indiscernible in his drunken state of mind. They were warped and twisted, but most importantly, he was hurt. And pain . . . well, pain's all the same whether you're drunk or sober. Actually, sometimes . . . it's worse when you're drunk. Nobody saw it coming. Not even the guard who had been there specifically in case something went wrong, saw it coming. Not Casey, not Sandra, not Gail, and especially not Autumn. Rem's anger, his pain, his sorrow, it all coalesced and then . . . he backhanded her. He backhanded Autumn. His left hand rose and whipped outward, slamming his knuckles into Autumn's jaw and in that motion, there were no notions of having been drunk. It was fluid, it was strong, but most of all, it was the wrongest kind of wrong. In Rem's case, the wrongest kind of right.
Casey watched Autumn fall to the floor, Sandra did, too, and so did the guard. Gail yanked her face away from the trajectory of his hand and barely managed to escape it. Autumn yelped, Sandra yelled, "Rem! What the fuck!" Casey's eyes widened. For everyone, it was time to step in, but for Gail, it was time to kill him. After she jerked back, she jerked back towards Rem and, quite simply, punched him square in the nose. Rem didn't see it coming, and when he stumbled back, he tripped over the table he had turned over earlier and fell onto the floor in a messy heap. Casey yelled, "Stop!" he started moving towards Gail, and the guard started coming closer, too, unconvinced that he needed to draw his weapon. That all changed, however, when Gail drew her plasma rifle. Rem was shaking the cobwebs when he looked up and saw a hazy image of Gail pointing the plasma rifle at him. It reminded him of the time she came through the safehouse door, after she had saved him. But then he realized that this time, she was going to kill him. He jerked his body to his left and a small moment after, the high pitched sound of a green plasma burst manifested. It burned a hole into the wood where his head used to be.
The guard started to draw his weapon and when Sandra saw that, she yelled again, with the whole situation becoming chaotic. "Don't! Don't fire!" Gail was about to pull the trigger again when Casey finally grabbed her, lifting his arms up under hers and detaining her so that she couldn't aim or fire correctly anymore. "Let me go, Casey! I'll fucking kill that miserable son of a bitch!" She dropped the plasma rifle as she tried to wrestle with Casey, and also hit him in the face with a few elbows, but he eventually managed to force her out to the barracks, where people had been awoken by the ruckus. The guard didn't point at anyone but he was holding his assault rifle tightly, and Sandra stepped in. "Get him out of here," she said, as she went to Autumn and knelt down. "Come on," the guard grabbed Rem by the arm and pulled him onto his feet forcibly, and then ushered him out the outpost exit. Sandra put a hand on Autumn's shoulder but she nudged it away, "Don't." Sandra retracted her hands, "I just wan - - " Autumn interruped, "I'm fine." She was holding her red cheek, but she started to stand. After that, she walked away, went through the outpost exit and didn't bother to look at Rem as she went straight to the ladder and descended.
Rem was sitting with his back against the wall on the outpost balcony with an armed guard standing firmly in front of him, but he didn't fail to see Autumn walk right by them.