Being cooked alive wasn't the first thing she had hoped to wake up to. Then again, sleeping in a dumpster overnight wasn't exactly ideal in the first place.
She had booked it for as far as she had dared, flashing her Pip-Boy light around erratically to give it a strobing effect. Creepy skittering and too-close-for-comfort howls made her dive headfirst into the first bin she could find. The freezing temperature, coupled with the echoing sounds of shotgun blasts in the distance, had made her sleep restless. It gave everything a surreal, loopy filter as she struggled to wake.
She peeled her damp, scroungy hair from her sticky face and crawled out like some scraggly rat, relishing in the slight breeze that rolled on by giving a cool smooch to her throbbing forehead. The crick in her neck stabbed lightning down her spine every time she tried to turn her head fully.
"Ow," she muttered as she stretched in place.
The recount of last night's embarrassing fiasco made her inwardly cringe, and she almost considered just slinking back inside the dumpster with her fated garbage.
They could then at least burn together.
She nursed a warm soda to treat her skull-splitting headache, topped off her nonexistent appetite with some packaged Dandy Boy Apples, and then reached back inside her nest for the metal crate of supplies she had managed to squeak from that grocery store. The screen of her map showed the miserable distance she was forced to make for back home...and, surprisingly, was also the little marker Arefu that Lucy West girl had pinned for her.
Evelyn raised her eyes- it was just over the ridge.
Nestled inside her left breast pocket was the letter she had been entrusted with to give to Lucy's folks (as she had no reason to ever take it out). Lucy did say her father would pay her to act as a courier for them...and caps were something she needed desperately, otherwise; she would soon be forced to sell Wadsworth for parts.
The metal bin was adjusted uncomfortably against a hip, and she awkwardly began to meander towards the settlement with her goods banging around.
A disembodied voice called out to her not even five minutes into her excursion. "You aiming to wake the entire Capital with that ruckus?"
Evelyn whirled her head around to a scavenger waving a friendly gesture from beside a corrugated lean-to shed. She blinked and sheepishly shrugged. "Um. I'm...sorry?"
Please don't be a rapistmurdererpsychopath-
The stranger took in her condition and gently shook his head. "You look like you woke up with the wrong side of a deathclaw."
A what?
If names had anything to bear out in this wasteland, then she fucking hoped to God she would never be able to put a face to it.
"Don't worry about me none," he continued, mistaking her visible fear for himself. "I'm a local trader that sells some odds and ends I happen to find." He motioned with his chin at her box. "Want to make a deal?"
She bit her lip and glanced down at her wares. Well. If he wanted her dead to loot her corpse, he wouldn't bother asking...right?
The entire exchange went more pleasantly than expected, until he jutted a half-tipped thumb over his shoulder to the murky waters just down below his shack.
"Water's a bit cold," he said plainly after he refused her trade of a box of detergent.
The insinuation made her face burn as bright as a cherry bomb, but she merely gave a meek thank you and doused herself in the frigid lake with her suit still on, scrubbing the stinging (and slightly acidic) soap into her skin till it tickled pink and felt raw. Trailing waterdrops dripped behind her like breadcrumbs as she trudged towards the crumbling overpass just down the road. A handful of caps would hopefully be some sort of consolation prize after everything she had endured in the past twenty-four hours...
At the very least, it couldn't be any worse than her puke fiasco.
Slam!
The wind from the door being banged shut breezed back her still-damp curls.
"Oh my fucking God!" she shrieked, retching to the side with stomach-squelching sounds.
No sooner had she opened the door to the West residence, than did the smell throw a double-fisted punch directly at her face. It was so thick and damp that it was almost palpable. She could taste it- a fuzzy carpet of rot.
"Gaaaaaaaah!" She dry-heaved a few times before stomping away to gulp down some 'fresh' air. She didn't have to go back inside to deduce what had happened- they were surely dead.
First, it was scorpions at the mart. Then, it was making beautiful first impressions with a gigantic fucking angry ghoul. Now, it was playing messenger for some old coot whilst discovering her entire reason for even agreeing to help was already stiff.
Fuck you, Dad.
Evelyn relayed the status to Evan King, the self-proclaimed mayor of Arefu.
"Was their son, Ian, among them?" he asked.
"I don't know, I didn't exactly poke my nose inside more than I had to," she slightly growled. The sun was beginning to climb, and with it, the sweltering heat and migraine-inducing buzzing over the sands. It did wonders to her temper. "...I think I saw two bodies."
Evan then proceeded to beg for her help in locating the boy...and her goodhearted, people-pleasing nature said sure, I'll risk my life for one idiot who's more than likely dead! She really wished she would harden her resolve and just say no...but it seemed dear old Dad had imparted more than just his abandonment on her.
She covered her eyes from the sun and squinted at the reflection it gave on her Pip-Boy screen at the two possible locations Ian had been squirreled away to. Both were within a stone's throw of Arefu, so she tried her luck with the outdoor cinema first. It was a bust, but she took her time in nabbing anything her sticky fingers could find. She placed them all inside a burlap sack the trader from earlier had given her, cramming all the cigarette cartons and toy cars together like some morally askew Santa.
Trudging down the hill towards Hamilton's hideaway proved to be a different story- a pack of molerats found her to be a delectable meal. While she didn't have much of an issue clobbering a couple of the rodents into pulp, half a dozen of them proved too much for her splintered baseball bat alone. She didn't have time to consider any other choice but barricade herself behind the chain link gate leading into the cavernous lair. The wrinkled oversized rats sniffled around the dirt for a way to follow as she disappeared deep into the mountainside, effectively trapping her within the darkness of this sketchy fucking place until she found another way out.
She was going to die down here; she was certain of it. Someone was going to come along and find her mottled corpse like she had with Lucy's parents. They were going to take a single whiff and grimace at the smell of her. If there was any sort of ironic karma in this world, then it was probably going to be the big guy crushing her skull under his boot and wiping the mess from his heel.
The light from her Pip-Boy cast a sallow glow throughout the underground maze as she painstakingly crept around every corner and pilfered through every crate. Her bag was growing in size with assorted, mostly useless crap. Whatever. As long as it brought in some caps, then she didn't care...but her aching shoulder muscles soon did.
A resident radscorpion made her scream (nearly shit her suit) and busted her childhood baseball bat in half. She held up the fractured end of it, blinked twice, then chucked it at the little hissing fucker before slamming her boots along the catwalks in retreat. She turned a corner and tripped over the body of some unfortunate soul, cursing loudly as her goodies went tumbling about. The brief glimpse of a stinger aimed well and high for her face left little time to dawdle in gathering her senses or things, and so she scrambled to her feet and continued to run until she was sure she had lost the bastard.
...in which she was also now disoriented.
Empty rooms full of random corpses belonging to raiders, roaches, and ruffians made for a graveyard of a maze for her to wander about. Stimpaks and caps were greedily stuffed in her jacket pockets till she was just about jingling a tune, luring her old friend back while she was hunched over busily rifling through a dead guy's coat. Due to some quick thinking and cowardice display, she managed to trap it inside the room and secure the door, leaving her free to regather her dropped supplies...and find a sledgehammer that weighed nicely in her blistered hands.
Hamilton's hideaway proved to be a dud as well.
The molerats from earlier had disbanded, and so she returned to Arefu with the full intention of telling Evan King his presumptions were stupid and completely off the mark, but she instead gave a shake of her head (and was given one more possible location as thanks).
The metro station.
The puke was right where she had left it...as were the ghouls, minus the big guy.
Thank God.
She prayed she would never see him again lest she die from straight embarrassment.
"What the hell?! You again?" Murphy remarked after she shyly shuffled back inside their workspace.
This time, she held up a hand in an amicable greeting and explained her endeavor. They simply stared at her before glancing back at each other, and without explaining himself, the ghoul led her around to a back room and pointed to a manhole cover glossed with glowing radioactive goop.
"Have fun, smoothskin." He eyed her bulging goods (in both senses), his apparent lack of shame knowing no bounds. "Hey, you wouldn't happen to have any Sugar Bombs, would you? It'd be unfortunate to lose them, you catch my drift?"
She balked. "Why? What the fuck is down there?"
"Mirelurks."
"Mire-what?"
Now she had a name for those crab monsters...great. How the fuck was she supposed to get past that?!
As she dumped her wares on the table to offload the sugary cereal, a landmine was picked up by Barrett and overturned in his hands.
"You want those too? I don't use them," she offered.
The ghoul gave her a thoughtful raise of his brow. "You should."
Barrett proved to be a genius. Laying some mines down and luring the shelled pricks made life a fucking mirelurk-cakewalk. She was so overjoyed watching them explode into softshell pieces that she was tempted to run back and gush of the success. The gloomy lenses of her world were suddenly wiped away, she was unstoppable-!
A snap from a tripwire slapped the drunken happy smile off her face. The explosion nearly blew her off her feet.
A plethora of clever traps almost laid claim to her life in multiple instances- it was sheer stupid luck she managed by with only a baseball to the shoulder from a pitching machine. A live landmine was defused, a rigged shotgun peppered holes a mere hairsbreadth from her leg...
When it was all said and survived, she eventually found them, waving her letter for Ian like some holy scripture.
The Family was fucking nuts.
Evelyn pursed her lips, politely nodded, and was forced to listen to the inane bullshit spewed a dozen different ways from a handful of eager lips. She was more unpleasantly surprised than frightened at their teachings- weirdos- but she wasn't about to argue with a bunch of gun-toting bloodsuckers to make her point. The letter was practically shoved in Ian's face, her point-blank suggestion of using blood packs was accepted, and her backtrack to the lab was much more uneventful a second time around.
The ghouls were visibly shocked at her miraculous return completely unscathed.
"Find The Family?" Murphy rasped as she dusted off her knees.
"I did, phewf!" She stuck her tongue out to wipe some dirt from it. "Not looking to go back, either."
"Well, well, guess you're more resourceful than you look, smoothskin." He crossed his arms, seemingly in deliberate thought. "...you might be the kind of help I need around here. It'll pay. Interested?"
She wiped some snot from her chilled nose. It had been so cold in those tunnels! "What sort of help?"
Another five days, another trip out into the wastes to gather Ahzrukhal's laundry list of goods. The ghoul could walk these cracked asphalt roads blindfolded- it'd been years since he'd left the Capital Wasteland, and judging by the circumstances in which he was placed here, it looked like he wasn't packing his bags anytime soon.
He learned not to dwell on that notion a long time ago.
Northwest Seneca Station was at his feet almost instantly- his mind tended to blank on the finer details of his routine trip when he wasn't busy putting lead in something. Under his accumulation of years and experience, he had become a textbook example of walking destruction- a perfect means to an end for his employer's tastes. It was all his life had become as of late, and he shut himself down in almost every way not to care.
"Not going to bother checking it, this time?" the ghoul scientist quipped sarcastically when he merely shouldered the duffel bag of Ultrajet.
Well...almost every part of him.
Charon gave a heavy stare at his employer's supplier. With an almost deliberate movement, he set the bag back down on the table with a loud bang, his glowing eyes silently challenging him to argue otherwise.
"It was a joke...but alright," Murphy muttered under his breath as he returned to his work.
The red ghoul inspected the canisters and shook their contents for any tell-tale sign that the depressor was faulty. Charon honestly didn't give two shits if they were or not- he was simply spiteful, and in an extra sour mood after a feral mongrel had somehow completely taken him by surprise and managed to nip him in the ass. He was sure to bear a few puncture-sized scars because of it. He half-mindedly listened to the blabbering on the side while his hands and eyes operated on autopilot.
"...we really need those Sugar Bombs, that smoothskin better come through for us." Charon felt their stares land on his person. "Or Ahzrukhal's going to have to go back to dealing Jet again."
When he was finished conducting his business, he hefted the bag over one shoulder and left without so much as a glance back. The ghoul paused just outside the chain link gate, staring down at his feet where he had previously been defiled by that bizarre fucking smoothskin.
She was lucky he hadn't been in a foul temper that day, or there would've been a lot more than just half-digested cereal to be cleaned from his boots.
He knew better. He should've kept his mouth shut and absent nose clean; the canisters from the previous visit had been without flaw...he just needed a reason. An excuse.
He knew better.
Evelyn felt a creeping chill slither down her spine that instinctively made her turn her head. There was nothing sinister stalking her- that she could see- and so she shuddered the nasty vibe from her shoulders and turned back around.
She hadn't attempted the Super-Duper Mart for another few days after the radscorpion high-speed chase. This time, she came somewhat prepared with her repaired sledgehammer (Moira had charged a pretty penny just for some spit, duct tape, and 'wishful thinking'). Shooting a gun was out of the question- she was the world's shittiest shot, and the 10mm handgun Amata had given her was still discarded at the bottom of her locker at home.
The sweat-stained ballcap she wore was fiddled with at the brim while she studied the building from behind a boulder. It looked empty- the scorpions were long gone- but then a person stumbled out cackling manically to themselves before dropping in a stone-cold heap just outside the door.
They were dead.
Raiders...nope.
She dusted her hands together and walked straight back home. Moira was just going to have to convince some other sorry sucker to help with her 'research'. It wasn't worth the risk of being beheaded and feasted on.
She stripped to her skivvies in the sweltering heat and listened to Wadsworth's exhaust blowing around upstairs as he 'dusted'. She had virtually done nothing since The Family incident, and she was still left without a single clue as to where her father had run off to.
Moriarty had offered a snap at some bait for a hundred caps, which she now had...lugging all that scavenged crap back for Moira to fawn over had been so worth the aching back muscles.
I'm sorry...I thought your dad told you...
Your father's the reason for all this!
Oh my God...you actually opened it...
She closed her eyes, fiddling with the knobs of her Pip-Boy to replay the voice of her father from the only note he had left behind; his warm, gentle tone filled her otherwise resentful heart.
Goodbye...I love you.
A flick of the switch. Rewind.
Goodbye...I love you.
Rewind, repeat.
Goodbye...I love you.
She curled into a small ball, remembering her first night in this empty house, how she clung to his ghost as though it were an actual visitor to stave off her loneliness. She had been so desperate for that safety net that she had begun to make herself available to anyone with a problem; anything for a chance to have a friend in this big, scary world.
Goodbye...I love you.
Evelyn held up her clean suit (fresh from the sink) and snagged a bottle of purified water to deepthroat as she assembled her gear. The hemming was fraying, there were permanent stains marring the golden numbers, and a few grotesquely sewn tears were beginning to threaten a free peepshow of her ass. The leather reinforcements Moira had equipped her with were in dire need of oiling and stitches, neither of which she had the general knowledge to.
"I'm heading out!" she called up to the floating robot. She swore she heard him mutter and please don't come back.
Gob was on her ass faster than a bloatfly on shit, already reaching under the table for her usual before her butt could even warm the seat. She observed him while he popped off the cap, and for once, she didn't bother reminding herself that it was rude to stare.
He had indubitably frightened her during their first encounter, but it wasn't so much as being scared, rather, it was the complete unknown of it all. People like him existed (and so did vampires, now, too). It was something out of a horror holovid or science-fiction comic book, and the fact that he wasn't the only thing to have changed in this horrid landscape made future ventures a stomach-flopping thought. He was the first ghoul she had met, and before the previous days' events, the only one she had known.
"Like the view?" he jested. "I charge extra."
She slid the bottle to herself and took a discreet whiff. He winked at her.
"Set aside the good kind this time," he rasped in a hushed tone out of earshot from Moriarty.
A swig of foamy hops raced down her gullet, and she ran her tongue over her teeth. "Does it hurt?"
"What?"
She lamely waved the tip of her bottle at him in apology, now feeling incredibly silly. "I'm sorry, that was rude of me."
"Nah...don't bother me none." He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "It did when it...changed, but not anymore."
"Huh." She tipped her bottle back, noticing the unblinking stare he was giving her in return, except it was more...predatory. She gulped both her beer and nerves. She liked Gob, just, strictly as a mutual gabber. With the way he was eyeing her now, she could clearly translate his end as desiring something else.
It was as Nova had said- he was sweet...and she wanted to keep it at that.
The Irish arsehole rounded by them, and for the first (and only) time, she was grateful for his interference.
"You find your dad yet, kid?" he asked with a condescending drawl. "It's a mighty big wasteland out there...if you're ready to cough up the caps, I might just point you in the right direction."
Goodbye...I love you.
Evelyn interrupted his shite talk with the bundle of currency she was ready to part from. "Spill."