The Boy's sank up to his ankles in the thick mud of the riverbank, his ragged pants soaked through with filth and blood. Radiation burns from the water and by-products building up in the silt were bound to start. He didn't understand why. He was just a child. But even a child notices when touching something hurts.
Even so, he waded through the muck to the side of the body, buried up to his waist in the mire. His rifle had been thrown from his hands when the .32 rimfire had punched through his chest, shattering the collarbone and missing the combat armour chestplate by a mere inch or two. A few inches down and the man would have lived. A few inches up and there would be a crater where his face used to be.
The Boy's progress through the thick mud disturbed the body, which swayed on the surface of the river of filth, too light to break the surface tension of the stream. He glances back over his shoulder to see if anyone is keeping an eye on him, to pull him out if he slips and falls. He doesn't know how to swim. The body was spattered with blood from the wound, mud from the river, and caked with already dried dirt from the long trek around the Potomac.
He reaches it and pulls out the knife that they had pushed into his hands once the shooting had stopped. The words, 'Check the fucking bodies for Chems. Don't come back 'til you find some!' still echo in his ears, along with the slap they had aimed at his ear for hesitating.
They didn't like it when he hesitated.
They hated it when he said that he didn't like searching the dead people. The people they killed.
The bodies smelt horrible and since they couldn't find water to wash out in the Wastes, he could smell them for weeks afterwards. The smell only got worse. Until he was glad when a Radstorm rolled through to wash the muck away. The sores that broke out after standing naked in the rain were a small price to pay for not smelling rotted flesh, lying awake at night.
He started with the pockets first, rifling through them after slitting them open with the knife. He found spare ammunition, which he dropped into his tiny sack. Food, in cans and wrapped in cloth. He took this and added it to the sack. His stomach rumbled at the sight and the smell that his starving brain imagined it could sense from the small parcels of edible matter, the first he had laid hands on in days; but he didn't want to be hit for disobeying…
Mud- and blood-spattered hands shook with fear and expectation as he bit into the stale bread, tough on his young, stubby teeth. Hunger had a way of overcoming fear. He ate as much as he dared, rounding the bitemarks off with smaller nibbles in order to make it look as if a larger mouth than his own had bitten the chunk out.
"Help…"
The Boy shrank back with a cry, backing away from the body that had just shifted in the muck.
Glazed eyes stared at him from under the wrinkled brow, encrusted with filth, blood spattered.
"…me."
The realised that the piece of stale bread had slipped from his hand and into the mud. He hastily snatched it before it could sink too far into the mud and tried to rub off the filth. He only managed to smear it all over the crust. He put it in the sack anyway. Maybe the rest of them wouldn't want it now and he would get to finish the rest.
"Why you bellyaching out there, boy?!"
The fear ran up his spine at the rough shout from the shore. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the gangly figure waiting for him at the shoreline, ragged boots and salvaged rusty metal strapped across his body, in the hopes that it would catch a bullet instead of bare flesh. Raiders didn't wear much fabric on the upper body. In case a bullet carried it into the flesh. Infection was more likely to set in that way, even though the amount of blood and muck they routinely caked themselves in almost ensured that in either case.
"You better not be shooting up my Chems, boy! What are you doing out there?!"
"One of them's alive!"
His voice was shrill in his own ears, panic-stricken that he'd caught attention. That he was the one out here near the body. He knew what was coming but didn't want it to be so.
"Finish him the fuck off then, boy! Don't make me come out there!"
The Boy looked back at the survivor. He had heard as well. The eyes shone with tears, panic setting in. He shook his head weakly, though it jostled the broken collarbone shattered by the hunting rifle bullet.
"No…"
The Boy came forward with the knife, holding it with both small hands.
"No…. please."
The tears spilled out over the dying man's face, making trails through the blood. The boy hesitated.
They didn't like when he hesitated.
"Don't cry, mister," the young boy said in a soft voice as his own tears spilled out across his muddy face, "It never helps none; and they don't like it when you cry."
He was half dead already, and even that small knife held in those tiny hands could finish the job. The others had shown him where to stick the knife, so all the blood within come out real easy and his arms wouldn't get tired. Right at the sides of the neck.
Mister didn't struggle, only looked the Boy in the eyes as the life drained out of his own, too weak from blood-loss and pain to stop his end coming at the hands of a child, no higher than his waist.
"Hurry the fuck up, boy! I don't feed and clothe you just so you can jack off over some dead waster!"
The Boy finished searching the body, as thoroughly as he could. He'd noticed that the more he brought back, the less they hit him.
Wading back to the shore, he plodded up to the man and held up the measly sack. The man snatched it and pushed the boy away, sending the tiny child sprawling into the dense and stinking filth at the edge of the river. He searched through the sack, his large, scarred hand coming out with the hunk of half-chewed and muddy bread that he snarled at before tossing it away.
Then he found the Chems. Jet, a cloth bag of Mentats and a vial of what the young boy knew he liked best: Psycho.
He'd thought about hiding the Psycho and not giving it to him. The man always got more violent after a dose of the Chem. But he also knew that it was his favourite. He was less likely to hit the boy if he brought something good.
"More fuckin' like it," the raider crowed, before shooting up the drug right then and there, inserting the needle at the bottom of a long string of trackmarks. Some were so old that they were white and puckered from the infections they had caused, even though the dirt and grime that had accumulated across them.
The man sighed, twitching as the potent stimulant rushed into his blood stream like a wave of liquid fire.
His eyes opened and he gasped aloud, "That's the stuff!"
His trigger finger twitched, a Pavlovian response to the activities he usually got up to when riding high on the drug.
Then his dilating pupils caught sight of the Boy as he extracted himself from the mud, hungry eyes following the arc of the bread the man had thrown away. Saw the trails underneath the boy's eyes.
"You been fuckin' cryin', boy?!"
The familiar chill of fear rushed up the child's spine like an icicle had impaled him. "No," he said automatically.
"You fuckin' lying to me now?!"
The man's temper was welling up in him, like storm clouds on the horizon. His dilated pupils fixed on the trails that the boy's tears had cut in the mud and blood that crusted his face. There was no denying it, but the Boy had anyway.
Things were going South.
"What did I tell you about crying, boy!"
It wasn't a question. It was a justification for the fist that struck the boy's cheek and sent him spinning away into the mud once more, and the dirty boot that collided with his delicate, juvenile ribs.
"Don't do no good for no-one!" The boy reiterated between his involuntary sobs.
"Then why you still doing it, boy?!"
"I'm sorry, pa…"
The drugged-up raider stared down at him like an angry god from on high, the manifestation of rage and strength in this young child's life. The thing that you always needed to be afraid of if you were going to survive. What you needed to become if you ever hoped to go a day without eating a fist.
Scowling, his dad turned away and trudged up the slope.
"Useless fuckin' waste of space. Can't hold a gun, eats all our goddamn food. Can't do nothing right. Wish I'd aborted him with a rusty knife. Bitch never sleeps with me no more, anyways…"
The string of angry expletives died away as his father left to ride out his high in peace, and the boy stayed low until he was sure it was over. Then he extracted himself from the mud and scrambled after the muddy chunk of bread as fast as he dared.
He found it being nibbled on by a Radroach that had been attracted from its holes by the fresh meat of the caravan ambush. It was a smaller Radroach, only half his size rather than as big as him.
His belly growled, and the Boy cried out in anguish and rage, jumping on the Radroach and sunk his little knife into its head, where the thin shell was weakest. His ribs hurt, but his empty belly hurt more.
The oversized Roach twitched, kept on twitching as he rolled it aside and picked up the stale, muddy bread. He hesitated. But you shouldn't hesitate. He gobbled it down, his hunger making even the mud taste divine.
He felt it settle in his bruised belly like a frag mine. The Boy hoped he didn't throw up. If he could keep it down, his stomach would hurt less tonight. He might even be able to get to sleep easier.
Then he looked at the Radroach and laughed. Meat. Fresh meat. He extracted the knife, having to brace against the chitinous carcass with his muddy, bare feet to pull it out from where his hunger-crazed arm had planted it.
Then he picked up the small Radroach and toddled away with it cradled in his arms. He went towards the sounds of carousing. The raiders had set up along the riverbank and were sorting their spoils, laughing and hooting as they set large fires with brushwood and shot up with the Chems they had stolen from the dead.
The Boy skuttled past a prisoner who was being used for fun, his legs held apart by three women raiders as a fourth gelded him with a rusty combat knife. One of the women, a sallow-faced teenage girl by the name of Chickenwire, played with the severed member to the chorus of her peers jubilation. She laughed and smiled, the only thing louder being the screams that accompanied it.
The man's screams were shrill and piercing, making the Boy wince. He didn't like when they screamed. It hurt his ears.
But for some reason, the adults laughed and called for more.
He didn't understand, but the older raiders said he would when the time came.
He hurried past, prompting Chickenwire to throw the served piece of meat at him like a grenade. He dodged it, clutching his rancid prize to his chest in case they would get it into their heads to steal it from him. They didn't follow him, but their laughter did, all the way back to the largest fire where the older raider women and some of the more crippled or injured men were preparing supper.
It had been a good day for plunder. The fighters would eat well, strengthening them for the next raid. Making it more likely to be as good, if not better than this one.
Their success left a trail of rapine, plunder and mutilation across the Capital Wasteland. But the young Boy was thankful. They would eat well, tonight. Which might mean that he'd get to have the Radroach to himself.
An entire Radroach to himself! And the bread, too!
"Ma!" He cried out as he ducked past an old raider, missing his right arm from the elbow down.
A woman looked around, a vial of Jet halfway to her mouth. She scowled at the sight of him with the Radroach, her ruined teeth like rotted stumps in her shanty-town of a mouth. Her upper body was bare, aside from the two wire-mesh bowls that she had strapped in place of a bra, so solidly cemented in place by grime they might never come away.
Her brown hair hung lank around her bony shoulders, streaked with grey. She wasn't old, per-say. But raider life took it out of you like nothing else ever would.
"What you want, Boy?"
"Look! I killed it," he said proudly as he lifted up the Roach.
"Finally did something useful, did ya?"
The scowl softened into a rare smile.
"Maybe you aren't such a waste after all. Could be you're old enough to be our new hunting dog."
Some of the raider's present laughed raucously. The old man missing his arm had a particularly grating crake that sounded like death, dry and creaking.
But he preened under the back-handed praise, anyway. It was more than he usually got. It felt good to be told that he was good for something.
"Well, I ain't cooking it for you. I'm havin' my nightcap," his mother said, before putting the Jet inhaler to her mouth and emptying the vape into her lungs. Her eyes widened involuntarily. She took it away from her mouth in a stream of smoke, arms suddenly limp at her side.
She stared like a women in the midst of a religious revelation, a Satanist in communion with the Devil.
The Boy made for the fire, planning to put the carcass in the fire and let it cook inside its shell. It would taste horrible, charred and foul and still be the best thing he'd eaten in days.
"Wait!"
The fear welled up from inside him as his mother's voice stopped him in his tracks.
"Have you been cryin'?"
The icicle impaled his spine and he fought down the urge to lie. "Yes, ma."
"What you crying for? Does it ever do you any good, huh?"
"No, ma."
"Come here."
He did as he was ordered, plodding up to her. And she put the Jet inhaler down, level with his mouth. Some of the fluid sloshed inside, a tiny amount left from her own massive helping.
"Put it to your mouth and breath in."
He stilled.
He'd watched them use Chems all his young life. Sometimes he'd been given some. He never liked how the strange concoctions made him feel. All strange and weird.
But he was hesitating.
They didn't like it when he hesitated.
"Fuckin' put it to your mouth, you whiny little shit!"
He did as he was told, quickly, the adult sized inhaler fitting over his nose and mouth and even halfway over his eyes, screwed shut as they were.
"Now, inhale Jericho!"
He inhaled, and when he opened his eyes they swam in technicolour. The memory of his old clan faded with the initial rush of the familiar drugs. Jericho savoured the sensation.
A distant scream warmed his aging heart.
He shook himself like a giant cat, his gear rattling on his belt, next to the two severed hands that he'd cut off of a Regulator a few days ago. One who'd been looking to take his fingers for the bounty. His Chinese assault rifle hung on its sling next to the strap of his kitbag, a sack filled with all he owned in the world.
He exhaled the Jet smoke into the lazy wind that stirred the dust around his leather-clad legs.
"There he is!"
Jericho didn't look back over his shoulder as Junior Mike came up beside him and clapped him on the shoulder companionably.
"The man of the hour, am I right? Burnscar wants you, by the fire. He's got something for you, Jericho."
The raider inhaled the last of his Jet, rolling his neck in a circular motion to loosen the knot between his shoulders. "The fuck does he want? I'm busy."
"Busy doing what?"
"Remembering the good-old days," Jericho snapped back, the latent anger inside him raging like a monsoon. He tossed the inhaler and turned, adjusting his sling and rifle. Junior Mike led him up the slope. "If there were ever better days than these, I weren't around for them," Junior Mike laughed jokingly.
They passed other raiders as they went, who nodded respectfully to Jericho as he passed, looking away before they could meet his eyes. Those keen eyes that smouldered silently with a rage they had all learned to fear. The kind of fear that sent a feeling down your spine, like it had been impaled by a burning cold icicle.
"Jericho," they each said, meekly.
His mouth curled upwards at the edges with each utterance of his name. He preened under the praise it constituted.
They passed through the old chain-link fence at the top of the slope, and into the trainyard. The old locomotives sat on their disused rails like forlorn hulks, providing them cover and some shelter from the elements. They spent most of their time inside the metro station itself, but today they needed to be outside so that the smoke from their bonfire and barbecue wouldn't fill out the underground.
The two of them came to the fire, where Burnscar sat upon two mutilated bodies, the latest victims of their raids. Across from him sat Doyle. The new guy. A raider from further West, who had come through Evergreen Mills on his way towards the coast. He had run with them for a while now, all the way down to where they were now: Meresti Station.
Jericho thought he was a good man. A good fighter. Good as him, even. Which was saying something.
"Sad to see you go, Doyle," Burnscar rumbled as he took a large bite of the chargrilled squirrel-on-a-stick. It even had salt on it. The privileges of rank in one of the successful raider clans.
The black man nodded, but remained silent, staring into the fire like a man hypnotised. Doyle was always quiet. He'd been raped by raiders as a kid, and now the only times he smiled were when he told the story of the day he tortured those raiders to death; once he was old enough and big enough to do so.
"Where you thinking of heading?"
"Up to Fort Bannister. Sign on with Talon Company," the raider said after a brief pause. It was a logical move. He was a good fighter. One of their mainstays, along with Junior Mike, Jericho and Burnscar himself.
If he hadn't have been just that good, admitting that he was going to sign on with Talon Company would have been a good way to provoke Burnscar into killing him. But they didn't want that fight.
Throwing down, even all three of them, against a man like Doyle was a good way to get one of them dead. Best just to let him go.
"Sad to see you go," Burnscar reiterated, his mouth full of lightly seasoned meat. "If we see you later on, though, with Talon Company on your shoulder…"
"I understand," Doyle nodded in understanding, "You protect your own. Everyone else is fair game."
The raider, or now ex-raider, stood up and offered his hand. It was a testament to how much Burnscar respected the man that he actually took it and shook. Then Doyle turned away from the circle of firelight and trudged away from them, going to catch some last dregs of shuteye before he had to move along in the morning.
Burnscar turned his partially singed visage to Jericho, peering at him as the corner of his mouth twitched in a smile. It was pale and waxy from the burn scar that had given the raider leader his name.
"Jericho! You did good today! Wild Yao Qui have nothing on you, boy!"
"Don't call me boy," Jericho snarled, reflexively. With the old memories still fresh in his mind, it was like an open wound. Sensitive and sore to the touch.
Burnscar stilled but shrugged it off. "That any way to talk with a man whose about to give you a gift, Jericho?"
The fire crackled and spat sap as their leader motioned his hand towards the shed at the entrance of the station. There was a lamp burning in the building, flickering faintly in the darkness and shadows cast by the huge fire in their midst.
"Got her from the caravan we hit. I ain't feeling like it tonight, and you did better than usual. Ten of these bodies are your work," Burnscar said, patting the shoulders of his seat.
Jericho felt his heart quicken and the familiar hardness creep into his leather trousers.
"Appreciate it, Boss."
And he did. He trudged off towards the shed, shrugging off his rifle and his sack.
"Save some for the rest of us, Jericho!" Junior Mike called after him with a laugh.
Jericho entered the shed and threw his gear into a corner, as he eyed his prize up and down. She was tied to a support beam by her wrists, her Brahmin-Skin outfit stretched by her slumped posture. She stared at him, terrified, her eyes glinting in the light of the lamp. He tossed his belt knife and sidearm after the rest of his gear, where they tumbled into the dirt next to his sack.
"This is how this is going to work," he rasped, utterly implacable in the face of her fear.
"Tonight, I have you. The next, the rest of the men have you. Maybe some of the women too if they feel that way. The women will be worse, probably. They get meaner than the boys do," he said conversationally as he unbuckled his belt.
She began snivelling silently, tears brimming just on the cusp of falling.
"They don't like that you still got a pretty face and a good figure. But once everyone's had their turn, or maybe a few, I'll see to it that you'll get set loose. However much of you is left."
Now, she really did cry, the tears spilling out and down her unblemished face to patter on the cracked concrete floor of the shed.
He felt the familiar rage building up inside him.
"Why the fuck are you crying?!"
It sounded so much like his father's voice that he felt a familiar icicle impale his spine. The rage inside him broke loose.
He growled, before crossing over to her and grasping a handful of her hair in his scarred fist. Her wide eyes stared at him, unspeakably afraid at the sudden burst of anger. He saw his own wild eyes reflected back at him. The words echoed in his head and he couldn't help but repeat them, like a refrain.
"Crying never did anyone any good! Crying never saved anybody!"
But she kept on crying.
Because she didn't understand.
Not yet. Not yet…