Wade had spent a long time on that tower, only to have it knocked down by someone or something. It really didn't matter how it had happened, to him, just that he had to put it back together. Mayer and the burly Joel Bailman, while hard workers, were not exactly capable when it came to understanding the points he tried to make. The ground wires had been almost destroyed.

How was he supposed to generate an infrasonic signal with this shit equipment? It was hard enough already, being put on duty with Mayer.

"Who do you think took it down?" Mayer was asking Joel.

"Dunno. Not too many people in Stockton would ruin something on purpose." He scratched the stubble on his chin. "Maybe the Landis girl."

"So! She has a history, then." Mayer laughed.

"Ah, well." Joel held a bar of metal up to Wade on the top of the radio building. "We'll just get more practice putting it back together. I'm sure it will crash again."

"It's not the tower that's the problem," Wade said. "Someone deliberately messed with the ground wires. I'll have to dig them out and run them again."

"Probably was Celia, then," Mayer joked. "That one loves screwing us up."

"Calhoun ought to kick her scrawny ass out, after all this. She ran off on us when the Brahmin were calving, and some of them might have died." Joel handed Wade up another beam.

"Maybe you'll get lucky and some handsome brute will sweep her off her feet."

"I don't think she'd be interested in you, Mayer," Wade said, fitting the beam into place.

"We'll see. You know how persuasive I can be."

"Ugh!" Joel dropped a bar. "What the hell?" He kicked it away. "Slime or something."

Mayer picked up the bar and looked at it. "Ants," he said. "Wade!"

Wade placed the last piece and looked out over the wastes, in all directions. "Couple mounds over in the dry lake bed," he said, pointing east.

"You're still on contact point, rookie."

Wade sighed, and climbed down from the building. Pulling out his pistol, he swept the nearby area and took down two giant ants. He walked out onto the lake bed, where nothing except a few straggling bushes were growing, and examined the two mounds. His power armor chafed him, and he adjusted his shoulder, trying to work the cloth back under the metal.

The motion detector picked up several giant ants in each mound, but also something moving through the trees to his east. He moved into cover and watched the treeline, his pistol up.

Movement, in the bushes. Footsteps. He tensed up and waited for whoever it was to break the trees. Celia came striding out of the cover, carrying a hunting rifle. She stopped to look over the lake bed, then jumped down from a rock and walked slowly across, heading northwest.

Wade watched her leave. She hadn't even seen him there. He looked back the way she came, and stood. He could investigate it later. He was still on contact point, so he had to get the ants out of the way.

After an hour, he'd cleared the ants out of the first mound, and decided to come up for fresh air. It was stale and musty and terribly warm in the ant mound, and his filter system was blinking red lights at him. "EXPUNGE" was the warning it kept flashing. He sat down near some rocks on the west side of the lake bed and took off his helmet.

The girl came back after a few minutes, her footsteps clear in his ears. He refitted his helmet and pulled up his pistol. Just what was she doing? She walked back across the lake bed and into the same treeline she'd exited from.

Wade shrugged to himself. She had followed them, before. And Mayer was irritated that the ghoul and the girl were both missing from Stockton. Maybe he'd shut up about it, if Wade could find her, and maybe Wade could get on Mayer's good side.

He followed her through the trees, carefully. She walked about one hundred feet and then stopped, and climbed up into an ancient-looking tree. She slipped from tree to tree until she reached a rock ledge, and disappeared over it. Wade searched around the base of the rock wall for a moment, and found a small path up onto the facing. He moved slowly up to the ledge she had gone onto.

It lead deeper into the rocks, and he moved through it cautiously. There was a layer of dirt on the rock floor with bushes seeming to grow along the path, forcing him to take a zig-zag route through them. It looked almost natural, but he kicked up some of the dirt and realized it had been deliberately placed.

At the end of the passage, he came across a woven blind of tree branches. It let enough light through that he could see a small shack and a water source. He could hear a distant thudding, dull banging on metal. He looked at the blind for a moment, then pushed it gently.

It gave enough for him to see that it had been latched on the other side. He held it open for a moment, then let it drop, and turned around.

Well, that is certainly interesting, he thought. He went back through the trees to the dry lake bed, and tackled the second ant mound.

From the roof, Celia stepped over to the top of the rock wall surrounding Lionel's home and moved onto the rocks directly over the entry ledge. She laid herself flat on her stomach and pulled up her rifle. Something had bumped the blind, and it wasn't the wind.

Black metal moving through the trees. She squinted into the scope. One of the soldiers. Not him, not him, not him! He broke the trees and she saw his laser pistol. Probably Wade, alone on the dry lake bed. She sighed in relief.

But... Crap, she thought. She'd have to go down there and make sure he wasn't reporting on her location. If Mayer found out where she or Lionel was... She gritted her teeth, and slung the rifle onto her back, grabbing a nearby tree. Thank goodness for his careful pruning of the plants and trees around the shack.

Celia wound her way through the trees and watched him march straight down into the ant mounds. No wonder, she thought, if he's exterminating the ants, then he probably saw me come back from my hunt.

She climbed into another tree and watched the ant mounds. Over the wind she could hear the fizzing of his laser pistol, and the weird popping sound the ants made. Then nothing, for a long time. She checked her Pip-Boy, and timed it.

For a while, she amused herself by prying bark from the tree, and counting the small creatures that scuttled through the brush. She watched the sap ooze from the tree and thought it funny that trees were born, grew, bled, and died, just like people. But they did everything very slowly. ...Like ghouls.

After the Pip-Boy told her it had been an hour, she climbed down from the tree and moved to the mound entrance, peering down into it. She couldn't hear or see anything. Maybe he'd died? She doubted it. Ants were tough if you had little armor, but he was wrapped in a metal suit powered with nuclear fission.

She touched the edge of the mound with a hand and leaned forward. Still nothing. She agonized for a moment. If she went down to check on him―no! Bad Celia! she told herself. No more adventures.

But, she thought, is it really an adventure to make sure the ants are dead?

Okay, she told herself. This is my last adventure. I swear.