Raiders
Recording by Scribe Ellison
"General!" The woman is panting and her face is pale. "At the bridge, raiders—they're not attacking but—"
Em is off running, and I lag behind. When we reach the bridge half the settlers are here, crowded behind sandbag guard positions with guns ready.
The raiders are standing well back, except for a woman strolling onto the bridge with a broad grin on her face.
She does not look like the most stable of raiders. Patchwork armor coming apart, eyes showing white all around. Her half-shaved head is sprinkled with boils. She's holding a bundle that moves. A baby.
Em slows to stand at her end of the bridge. She doesn't reach for the gun at her side. "Hello. Would you like to leave the baby with us? We'll take good care of him, send him to a family in a safe settlement." Her voice is calm. She holds out her arms.
The raider woman is giggling. She does a drunken pirouette, swinging the child dangerously. Beside me Doc Jenna mutters, "Glows meltin' her brain."
"You want my baaaaaby?" The woman croons. "You killed his daddy. I'm gonna give you 'im." She tucks the baby in one arm and fumbles in her coat with the other, then she's bending down arranging something on the road at her feet.
Preston Garvey realizes it first. "Mines. Mines! Get behind cover!"
Doc Jenna curses and backs off, getting her valuable skills out of danger.
Em hasn't moved. "Please don't. Let's make a deal—do you want caps? Chems?"
The raider puts her baby down between the three mines, activates them and scampers back before they can arm. She brays another laugh, "Geeeeeneral, are you going to let the baby starve or blow him uuuuup? Happy Christmas!" She turns and runs off, twisting around a few times to look back before she vanishes.
"Preston, get out there and make sure they're gone and set up a perimeter so nobody walks in on this."
Garvey nods, and gives some quiet orders to the most armed settlers and a pack of them head off.
Em is still looking at the squalling baby inside the triangle of land mines. A few people around us twitch but nobody gives in to the temptation to ask, 'What are we going to do?'
After a minute, "...Shiloh?"
I hadn't noticed the ten year old but here she is, standing up from cover. She smiles a bright fierce grin. "I can do it!"
Now I can't resist speaking. "A child!"
"Shiloh's the lightest and she can get through practice mines without setting them off. Shiloh, cross the water and come around from… let's go up on the roof to get a better view."
I stutter, but only mentally. Em and her daughter climb to the nearest roof and point and talk about how to avoid vibrations on the dirt and cracked asphalt. I can't believe a little girl is going to approach land mines. It's clear she wants to do it—and everything I've seen shows how much Em loves her daughter.
Young Shaun settles behind the sandbags next to me, lounging like he's in a chair. "Don't worry, Scribe, she'll be fine. We practiced."
"You practiced with land mines?"
"Sturges made some that just make noise so Mom could practice, so we did too."
"In the Capitol there's a town we call Minefield because someone back before the war filled it up with mines."
"Has anyone been in it? Did they blow up?" Such normal boy enthusiasm for the gruesome. Shaun really isn't worried about his sister; he waves as she and Em come down from the roof still talking strategy.
It's only been a minute or two but the baby's wails are getting tired and fretful. Em looks over at it and her lips press together.
"Mom, I'm going."
Em pats her daughter's hair and gives her shoulder a little push. And turns away. "Doc Jenna!"
Shiloh drops into the river, splashing across the irradiated water to come back up downstream of the road.
I look back to em and the doctor, who's just come rushing up with her doctor's bag. "Small dose stimpacks and Med-X, two blood packs, some warm corn bags. Kayna's milking the brahmin and Marci's bringing blankets. Anything else you can think of?"
"Can we give radaway to a baby? The mother looked like the glows."
They talk about this and Shaun asks me about Minefield. "The hero of the Capitol Wasteland went into Minefield but he said it's not that great. I think they're going to drive molerats through it to try to set off..."
Silence falls because Shiloh is visible again. She takes off her shoes and scoots forward very, very slowly, her feet barely leaving the ground. One slow step, pause, another nearly imperceptible motion. A bit of loose asphalt shifts and she freezes for what feels like a full minute before moving again.
Em's hands curl into tense claws. Shaun is perfectly still watching his sister. I don't think anyone around us is even breathing.
Shiloh is standing over the mines now. She starts to bend down, realizes she isn't positioned right, and straightens up again. She slides one foot between two of the mines, turns her body, and crouches down.
It takes her a long minute to get her arms under the baby but finally she straightens up, with the baby in an awkward deathgrip against her chest. It squalls and squirms.
There's a last terrible moment as Shiloh gets her feet clear. Then her shoulders relax and she slides slowly back. Three feet, five feet, at ten feet she leaps away, running off down the road. Almost out of sight I see her stop and bend over, trying to get the baby more comfortable in her skinny arms. It's still crying, still alive after its ordeal. Shiloh calls, "Ok Mom, I'm coming back!"
Em runs down to meet her, hugging the girl as she slogs out of the river. The baby is passed to Doc Jenna.
Shiloh says, "I checked, it's a boy. Can we call him Boomer?"
Relief sparks laughter in the settlers and everyone's gathering around Shiloh. A party is declared for tonight.
Em laughs and waves her hands for calm. "We need to do a wide patrol to make sure they're really gone and didn't leave any more surprises, and rebuild the bridge since I'm about to blow it up. But if someone wants to bake we can turn on the radio tonight and celebrate Boomer joining us."
Shiloh whoops in triumph and runs off to where Doc Jenna has taken baby Boomer. The clinic is all the way down the street so all I can see is the doctor's body language: calm and confidant. The baby must be doing all right.
Em talks into her pip-boy, telling Garvey that everything is all right here. The crackly reply is that the crazy raider and her friends cleared out and there's no sign they dropped any more mines.
"Good. I'm going to deal with these. Back, everybody! Eardrums!" She herds the whole population back, mostly by waving her elbows since her hands are busy fitting a longer silencer on the rifle she has slung down her back. Then without fanfare she sights and pulls the trigger. The three mines go up with a crash.
