Charon

This one's gonna take some work.

"Just line it up, and shoot."

She raises the rifle, aims at the sarsaparilla bottle.

I sigh. "Put the stock against your shoulder, or you'll bruise the shit out of yourself." She shoves the stock into the pocket of her shoulder.

"Now the safety." She disengages it.

"Anytime. You don't have to wait for me to tell you when." I know I sound annoyed. I didn't have to teach Mallie how to shoot, for fuck's sake. What little patience I have is wearing thin. We've spent two days on the trail, and Wendy's struggling. "Breathe out slow, and then pull, slow."

I'm practically begging for her to take control. I can't go much longer like this. Mallie took control so easily. It came to her, second-nature. Wendy is a good person, sweet, naïve. She's never owned anyone before; she doesn't know how to begin. When I offered her some whiskey last night, she declined. She doesn't smoke, and she doesn't drink – she'll have to take up at least one to cope. It's not easy out there, and most people I knew couldn't cope with the death, the blood, without some kind of chemical. Well, except for that one guy – the one that kept talking about God. I told him that I stopped believing in God eighty years ago. When he asked why, I stared at him until he got uncomfortable. He got the hint pretty quick.

Me intimidating him made Mallie wet.

We didn't do it on the trail often, but she was…insistent.

We snuck off, hid behind a big rock. I remember her, on her hands and knees, ass bare, pants down around her ankles. She bit down on a rag to muffle the noises she made. She told me to fuck her from behind, hard, and I did. She liked it best that way, I don't know why. I figure it feels better, although, I wouldn't know what feels good for a woman. Unless they told me. I know enough to guess that Mallie wasn't normal. I've been with enough women to know that most of 'em don't want a man to fuck 'em raw, hit them. Bite them.

But what's normal, anyway?

The sharp report of a rifle makes me flinch. I shake my head.

The neck of a sarsaparilla bottle explodes. I smile. "Better."

Wendy

He's mad at me, I can tell. It's not my fault! I've never had to shoot. I've never had to give orders to anyone before. I cooked, I did chores, I took care of my brothers and sisters. I thought that I'd marry Virgil, settle down, have a couple kids…grow old with him.

I look over at Charon. I can't help but feel bad for him. He probably would have given anything to age, to grow old with Mal, so he didn't have to face living without her. Ghouls live a long time – there are still some around from before the war. It might be a long time before he dies.

Then again, doing what he does, it might not.

He's standing there, arms crossed, barking instructions at me. I glance over at him, briefly, before I pull the trigger. His milky eyes have that faraway glassy look – the look he has when he's been drawn into a memory.

He taught Virgil all this stuff years ago. But he had years to teach him – not weeks.

We're going to DC, if it still exists – getting there should take about two months, unless we can find other transportation. We've heard about cars – real cars that run – but we're out in the middle of nowhere. DC is the only place he could think of that they'd take him. He's heard of a base, a bunker, but he doesn't know exactly where it is. Mal was taken there before; we're hoping that the Pip-Boy still has it in there. I wonder what plan he has for finding him – then something occurs to me. Maybe he's waiting for me to come up with something.

But I can't plan if I don't know what we're walking into. And I'm so inexperienced; I wouldn't know how to begin planning an assault on anything more dangerous than a nest of mole rats. I have to rely on his judgment for now.

The neck of a sarsaparilla bottle breaks, and I whoop in celebration.

"Better."

We meet up with a caravan headed east. He offers his services as a guard as a way to buy my passage – he's still a terrific caravan guard, even though I'm practically useless. I point out threats, and they let me practice as we go, shooting radscorpions, mole rats, and geckos. The guards even start to take bets on how many shots it would take for me to put something down. Anything for entertainment, I guess.

During down time, I play with the Pip-Boy, to get more comfortable with using it. The menus are confusing, but I'm getting the hang of it.

The training didn't stop. Every night I sleep like a rock, every morning, he wakes me up early and pushes me near to exhaustion with calisthenics. The sprints – which he insisted we do every other day – are brutal. He says it's the best way to build muscle and explosive strength. He doesn't let me ride in the wagon. Walking builds muscle.

He's not a cheerleader – he's a drill sergeant. Makes me wonder what he'd gone through to get in the shape he's in. Probably much of the same.

But, of course, I don't have much time to wonder about anything.

Charon

We sit around the campfire. Wendy's fast asleep – I see to it.

I don't have much time to whip her into shape. I hope I don't push her too hard. It's a delicate balance. She's a soft country girl, not a soldier, after all.

I lament not being able to teach her hand-to-hand. But where we're going, marksmanship, strength, and speed are more important.

I didn't have to teach any of this to Mallie. When I met her, she was already scarred, wasteland-hardened. Strong. Bitter. I close my eyes. I remember her, standing naked on the suite's balcony shortly before we left, palms resting on the railing, surveying the landscape like she owned every inch. My girl was arrogant, proud. She earned every scar, wore them like medals. I remember her pointing to the one where Eulogy'd shot her. "That one's yours, big guy. I took that bullet for you." I bent slowly to my knees, drew her to me, and kissed it, eliciting delighted shivers from her naked body. Mine.

I light a cigarette, inhale slowly. When Wendy starts to hate me, that's when I'll know she's ready. Right now, she's too tired and sore to be pissed off. I smirk. Tomorrow is a sprint day. If it's gonna happen, it'll be on a sprint day.

She's getting close.

Her body's lost the full softness of leisurely country life, gained toned, wiry strength. Her face is thinner, jaw set.

She has yet to spill any blood.

As we walk, I point at a blackened tree stump about fifty yards away. "Sprint." It's not a sprint day.

Her nose flares up, eyes squint. She takes a deep breath and pushes off, full throttle. I nod my head, appraisingly. Good form, good speed. She's sore from the sprints yesterday, I know. I'll sprint her until she fails. She's strong now – so strong that she's forgetting how it feels to fail.

On the way back, her form starts to go. She feels it; I can see it on her face.

I stop; let her rest for a minute. "Sprint."

She pushes off, slower, form faltering. When she reaches the stump, I yell at her. "I SAID SPRINT!"

She pushes off, angrily, grunting with effort. Here goes. About ten yards away from where I'm standing, her form breaks and she trips over her own feet, landing hard in a cloud of dust. I watch her, arms crossed in front of me. Now. This is the moment. "SPRINT!" She slowly gets to her feet, eyes blazing, and launches herself at me screaming – only to meet the dust a second time when I dodge her, easily.

"Congratulations."

She froze; she was preparing herself to fling at me again.

"You passed. Get your armor on."

It'll have to be good enough.

The hardest part isn't teaching someone how to fight; it's teaching them how to kill.

No matter what you may have heard about the bloodthirstiness of the human race – getting one person to kill another and still be able to function is a big hurdle. There are countless stories – the Civil War, the First World War – soldiers would fire above the heads of the enemy. Or they would continue to load their weapon, not firing once. We don't really want to kill each other.

Turns out, the ideology of rulers is a poor motivator.

It's survival that does it. Convince someone that they – or the people they care about – are in danger, and they will kill with impunity. Just point the finger, and they will maim, torture, and kill out of fear. It doesn't matter if the threat is real. It just has to seem real. Repetition is key.

But I don't have to use that method here. Pretty much everything's trying to kill us. If the threat is real, it makes killing easy.

Mallie enjoyed killing, reveled in blood. Killing came so easy to her, that she could have been born with a knife in her hand. For Wendy, killing is practical – something is trying to hurt her; she's gonna hurt it back. The first raider she killed, she cried over it later. She had taken a man's life. "It will get easier," I said. I saw shock, horror in her eyes. She buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

But it did get easier.

It doesn't take long for her to put on a mask of stone. Like mine, but prettier.

I think of the innocent farm girl that Virgil married, sky-blue bright eyes, naïve and wise at the same time. I've dimmed her shine. I've made an innocent into a warrior.