Scene 3
The mist rolled in from the river shore, casting the early morning settlement in a pearly glow under the moonlight. The Post was like any frontier town of the old west. The enigmatic fog hid its ramshackle huddle of houses and cabins under its veil, silhouettes slipping within the twilit dawn as the company moved from the bar, down the meandering dirt path, past the Brahmin pens and towards the east end of town. Slowly the sound of merrymaking and bawdry drifted into the pale silence as the bar slipped from sight, and the gentle currents of the Mississippi greeted their ears; waves lapping upon the silt shore and sloshing against the pier, its rickety wooden structure stretching out into the murky river beyond. The silver orb of the moon could just be made out through the mists in the sky above and a moangata lighted the waters in a shimmering glow, the silhouette of brooding dark willows haunting the space beyond its glittering light.
The company's footsteps echoed in the stillness as one by one their boots clapped against the wood of the pier. A faint and flickering light could just be seen through the fog peering out of the darkness. It was a lantern swinging from the makeshift crow's nest of an old and unlikely steam boat.
Lawman could see from a glance as he stepped tentatively forward that the ship had seen better days. Frankly, that was an understatement. The ship to Lawman's eyes was the equivalent of a three legged Brahmin to a caravaneer's gaze, and it looked like it was by sheer miracle that it was still afloat. That having been said there had been some work done to it. Its hull had been plated with steel and the bridge had been fortified with sandbags packed tightly around its base. For all that it was not big and not impressive. Seven people could fit on it sure – but only seven people.
Up close the white paint that coated the walls of the bridge was peeling, revealing woodrot. The crew silently paced on board and looked around.
"Well, gentlemen," Mr Kees said at last. "Welcome to your new home: The Mayweather."
They took it all in, their faces fading from anticipation as they approached to anything from shock to dismay as they stood on deck.
"You've gotta be kidding right?" Lawman asked as he slowly and pointedly peeled off a strip of dried paint. "The woods so bad even the woodworms are starvin'."
"No, Lawman, I'm not kidding." Mr Kees didn't seem to know how to respond to jokes or jibes. His lawyer-like air being the only state his personality ever seemed to be set in. "This is the ship that will take you to the Vault."
"It's a heap of junk!" The less diplomatic Carter exclaimed as he kicked in one of the creakier planks on deck.
"Oi!" Vance stormed over. "It may be a heap of junk but it's my heap of junk, a'right." Vance petted the railings of the ship reminiscently. "Me and old Mayweather go way back. Aye, she saw me through some tough storms back in the day…"
Carter balked at this as he flew over to Mr Kees. "You've gotta be shittin' me. You're shittin' us right?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"This thing is a floating piece of rotwood! What if a mirelurk attacks, or a fog crawler, or worse… hell, this thing doesn't look safe from a tadpole!"
"Carter, I can assure you that we have taken every precaution."
"Oh, yeah? Well what happens if a bunch of mirelurks attack, huh?"
"That's why we hired you." Mr kees gave a grim little smile to the speechless Carter as, to his credit, he patted the dumbfounded Carter on the shoulder and passed him by.
"What sort of captain has this as his ship," Katherine interjected.
Vance cackled. "The only damn captain willing to take you lunatics South, that's who," he wheezed. "What, is it not comfortable enough for you girls?" he addressed to the group at large. "My Mayweather not fit for the likes of you pretty landlubbers? Well tough tits!" And here he barked out a chorus of wheezing laughter. "'Cause I'm the only captain who agreed to have you lot on board and to sail so far downstream. Every other Captain shirked the chance to earn himself a share of that tech file's worth. So I guess you're stuck with me and my Mayweather, ain't ya."
With that and another chorus of wheezing laughs, Vance headed inside the bridge and out of sight.
"That guys crazy," Leicester murmured by Lawman's side. "We're being led to hell by a madman…"
"Well, we're the ones wantin' to go there, ain't we," Lawman said. "So by my reckonin' we're the ones two shakes short of an Atomic Cocktail."
Leicester shook his head as both he and Lawman stood watching where the Captain had just been.
"Not me. Never wanted to go on this journey. Not a chance."
"So why the hell are you on board?"
"Carter," Leicester replied solemnly. "He's the one who agreed to this. Me and Vyatch just follow his lead."
Lawman turned to Leicester and hushed his voice suddenly. "Why the hell do you follow that guy anyway?" he asked.
Leicester just kept on looking ahead, as though lost in thought. "Because there used to be another on our team, before he wanted to leave…"
"Well, what happened?"
"Carter let him go…"
Lawman arched an eyebrow.
"…off a cliff." Leicester contextualised.
"Ah."
"But why is this guy, Vance, the only one willin' to take us downstream?"
"It's not goin' downstream that is the problem," Mr Kees interrupted, striding over with his little walking cane clicking on the deck. "It's more about finding the right route through it past a certain point. The river down south ain't dead – the river is a snaking chain of bayous and mires that are living, breathing and continuously shifting within the brooding depths of the dark woods. There is one straight and true path to the vault and deviating from it even slightly means becoming lost; swamped within its dark forests and capricious waters. I anticipate that without Vance we'd, frankly, be fucked. Maybe it'll be good to us. Maybe it'll lead us where we want to go and maybe it won't, we don't know until we get going. That's why Vance is our Captain. He's the man most familiar with these ever-shifting waters with currents that yield to no man. He knows best out of anyone how to navigate them…"
"But he's never gone this far south before, has he?" Lawman replied shrewdly.
"No, he hasn't." Mr Kees shrugged as though this was of little relevance. "But he will get us there, believe me."
"He doesn't look like the sort of man happy to be on this trip, Kees."
"What makes you say that?"
"Call it a hunch."
"Well then, I guess that is all it is isn't it, Lawman."
Mr Kees turned around before clapping his hands together with relief, as two burly men dragged a figure with a coarse bag over her head on deck from through the mists. The ragged figure didn't writhe or squirm but just allowed herself to be manhandled on deck, where she was thrown to the ground.
"Gentlemen, Gentlemen…" Mr Kees greeted the men enthusiastically.
"What in the damn…" Lawman breathed as he approached the shivering figure sprawled on deck.
"…So wonderful you made it at last. And just in time too. We might have been setting off to depart but a few moments later."
"Where's our caps," one of the men grunted. "This wan't easy, Kees. We want extra for the collar."
The man drew back the hood covering the figures face and Lawman felt himself stagger back slightly in shock. Under the hood was a face like an old world starlet straight from the movie flicks, cut glass cheek bones, dark skin, molten brown eyes. But from her painted skin Lawman could see she was a tribal and not just any local tribal. This one was from the South – deep South.
She wore a bomb collar.
Where the hell did Oswald pull her from?
"…gentlemen," Mr Kees carried on as though nothing had happened. "Your work has been remarkable, however a deal is a deal. If you'd like to amend it for on the job expenses then by all means contact my boss, Oswald. He'll be sure to accommodate you." It was a sentence spoken with a dangerous edge, and the two burly men shifted uneasily in the small Mr Kees' gaze.
"Maybe we will talk with Oswald…" one of them balked.
"Maybe you will," mr kees replied coolly, with the full knowledge that they'd never dare make the same request to Oswald. Oswald wasn't the understanding sort.
"Come on let's get outta here…" one man said to another, and they shifted off deck with the agreed bag of caps in one of their hands.
"What is this, Kees," Lawman breathed, looking at the wretched woman curled up on deck, shivering.
"This, Lawman, is our key to opening the South up to our company. She's a guide. She'll show us the way through the forests once we're finished at the Vault, and will take us to New – I mean, Lost Orleans."
"She knows where it is?" Lawman's voice was soft. Deadly.
"Her people speak of it in their tongue as a city where the dead do not sleep, and where people are taken by ghost like creatures, snatched in the night never to return. She's never been there but I have full confidence she knows where about it lies."
Lawman seethed. "Why's she wearing a bomb collar, Kees?"
"Unfortunately, our guide is not the willing sort. She doesn't seem to understand what we want out of this expedition and so…"
"…And so you forced her to become a part of it."
"It's business, Lawman. We need a guide."
"She's not a guide, she's a slave," Lawman spat.
"She's necessary. And so is the collar. She understands what that means."
Lawman seized Kees by the shirt, lifting him to his scathing face. "Let her out of that thing. Now!"
Kees choked a little in Lawman's grasp. "You're not a sheriff, Lawman. And I hear that even when you were you were a lousy one. What was it your wife used to say, again? Before she was dead."
"You bastard!" Lawman raised his fist to strike the little man when suddenly he froze. He felt the tip of the icy cold barrel of a gun pressed against his temple. Lawman stiffened as his eyes turned to the side.
"Not that I care much for your argument one way or the other, gents," Vyatch's menacing voice rumbled over them, his gun already cocked and ready to splatter Lawman's brains all over the deck. "But I'd rather not have the guy who pays us get hurt, ya know what I mean?"
Slowly Lawman, relinquished his grip on the little man in the immaculate suit and the little walking cane that went click-click. Lawman's hands hung limply by his sides.
"Good, that's it," Vyatch rumbled. "Nice and easy. 'Cause that's what they used to call Lost Orleans, ain't it. We're all goin' to the Big Easy. And it's gonna be all nice and friendly like."
"Lawman, Lawman, Lawman," Mr Kees said despairingly, "when I said that Carter's men were here for security did you think that meant your security too?" Kees tutted and wagged a finger. "No. I'm afraid not. They're here for my security first and foremost."
"Oswald making slaves his business now, Kees. Is that it?"
"Oswald is a man of practicalities, Lawman. He doesn't let passions fray his reason. We need a guide. It gives us an edge that the competition don't have, and one that we sorely need. We don't have vertibirds, or power armour, Lawman. We don't have the resources of an entire burgeoning nation. We have seven people and a steamboat, but hopefully it's precisely that which will allow us to sneak in entirely unnoticed. Now, are we square? Or do we have to place you in a bomb collar too?"
Lawman was out of options. He'd go on this expedition one way or the other, as a free man or as a slave or else he was a dead man. They'd prise his pip boy from his cold dead body and continue without him – one less share of the treasure to worry about. Christ, why was it only now he realised that Oswald had him by the balls. Oswald had always had him by the balls. And now he was fettered to this cruise whether he liked it or not.
The feeling began to dawn on Lawman, that he'd never see the Post again.