And then we were there for days. I knew we would be; Nick had to get to a Railroad dead drop, the message had to get to headquarters and then whoever was coming had to get here. At walking pace since there weren't horses. And even then nothing interesting would happen until I could fight again.

At least Gage seemed to have succeeded in keeping the gangs off my back. On my way down to the market to see Doc MacKenzie the raiders loitering around barely grumbled at me.

"Well you're on the mend, Boss. For someone who took a shock baton to the ribs the skin is growing back well. And the ankle joint should have full motion when it's done healing."

"How long..? Sorry, this foot brace is hell on my back."

"That depends. How important is being able to run away from things?" The doctor said with a little smile. At least she wasn't afraid of me anymore.

I sighed. "Come back to Sanctuary after all this, you and Doc Jenna will get along great. Or do you have a home somewhere?"

"I've been here for years." MacKenzie said, her voice smaller again. "I lived in a settlement west of here. We got hit by Colter and his gang, back when he had one. It was a tough fight. Lasted all day. There were wounded on both sides but nobody could get to them without being shot. I waved a bandage for a white flag and called for a cease fire on the condition that I'd see to their injured too. Saved a lot of lives that day, including Colter's. When he took this place he came back to get me, said if I put on the collar they'd leave my settlement alone. So I did. This one doesn't have a bomb in it. Colter wouldn't risk losing his only doctor." MacKenzie ran a finger under her collar. The ring of burn scars underneath showed Colter might not risk killing his only doctor but he had no problem with shocking her.

I was sitting on the exam table, good leg propped up and hands folded on my knee. I asked, "Was it worth it?"

"I suppose. I'm fed, I can work and all I had to worry about was tiptoeing around Colter's temper every day of my life. Colter was… violent is an understatement. He needed me alive, but that doesn't mean he couldn't hurt me. Sorry, I've been talking on. Not a lot of people to talk to here."

"No, it's fine. I want to hear everything. And my agenda for today is talking to Dixie of the Disciples and I'm happy to put that off."

"Oh yes. I would be too. Dixie doesn't come in for treatment much. I mostly see people she's cut up. Likes knives."

I had to go talk to Dixie, but at least I could avoid entering the Disciples' disgusting home. They might live in filth but apparently couldn't stand to eat in it; every day past noon a trickle of hungover gang members came to the market to buy food. The ones that were sober enough to be hungry, at least.

So I got lunch and sat down outside the market to wait. It was a warm afternoon and a bunch of Pack members were splashing around in the pond, looking for junk in the mud, screeching and dunking each other. They looked like they were having fun, but they were also holding each other under a bit long.

Disciples started straggling out of their headquarters, stumbling and shading their eyes even though they had their masks on. One immediately made for the bushes to throw up.

Dixie was walking like she was a bit more awake than that. She went into the market and came out a few minutes later with the same lunch I had: molerat jerky and mutfruit in a plastic bucket. The market sold food in these because they could be washed and reused. Raiders might not care but the customers came from other settlements and expected some level of food safety.

I waved, "Dixie."

"Oh, hi Boss! Need something?"

"Wanted to ask you about Kiddie Kingdom. Gage said you snuck in, what did you see?"

"Ferals." Dxie said and looked around for a place to sit. She headed off behind a building where there was a picnic table shoved out of the way under one of Sierra's Cappy images on the wall.

I had a moment to wonder if Dixie had some nefarious reason for getting me off in private but she just put her food down on the table, looked around, and took off her mask. "We're not s'pposed to but it gets hot! Don't tell Nisha." She bent over and gave her head a good two-handed scratch. Her hair was matted and sweaty like she hadn't washed it since dragging me to Nuka-world.

"Why do you all wear those masks?"

"Nisha's idea. Somethin' about not being people anymore. Colter liked 'em since they make us scary. Whaddaya think, Boss?"

"You're a lot scarier than the raiders I see in the Commonwealth." I said honestly.

Dixie smiled. "We're supposed to always wear them but when I go on my little trips I sometimes gotta go without. Not everyone's gonna trust a girl in a mask. Some do—you'd be surprised!" She giggled and sat down to dig into her food.

I took a bite of a strip of molerat, trying to sort out what to say. As long as I could see Dixie's face I couldn't forget she was younger than Cait, hardly older than my daughter Kaynah. But I had to not think about that because I was going to get Dixie killed. "You go on a lot of little trips to bring people back?"

"Oh yeah, all the time! It's so much fun, catchin' some poor travelers and just cuttin' 'em up to watch… um. Or bringing them back here to work or sell for caps. You got to live 'cause I owed Maddox for my chems."

Which did not make me more inclined to find some way to let her live. "So, Kiddie Kingdom?"

"Thought it'd be a fun place to live. It's so colorful! So I climbed the fence. Buncha ferals wandering around all painted up like Mason's idiot crew. I was up on the wall so's I could see a little farther. Some of the rides still move! One was spinning cups?"

Dixie paused to spin her bottle of Nuka-Cola and give me a mystified look. I just nodded, didn't say that I've been on the spinning teacups when I was Dixie's age, before the end of the world. "Someone must be in there to paint the ferals."

"Yeah, he talked to me. Over the speakers. Said something like… the show's about to begin! Everybody get ready! And the ferals started getting' up! Ain't never saw anything like it! I know they didn't see me!"

"Did it sound like a ghoul voice? Do you even know what ghouls sound like?" I hadn't seen any ghouls in Nuka-world.

"Oh yeah it did sound like the ghoul slave the Ops had for a while. Nisha doesn't want ghouls. They smell too bad."

The Disciples' home smelled worse than all the ghouls I know put together. "Did you talk back?"

"Nah, I got out. Couldn't take that many alone. And he was talkin' like Red Eye when someone's in the Gauntlet. I ain't a show for some freak! I'll leave that up to you, Boss!"

"Well thanks." I said dryly. "Hey, Dixie? You ever think of leaving the life? Settling down somewhere a little safer?"

Dixie hooted with laughter around a mouthful of mutfruit. "Like farmin'? Hell no! Work all day, starve in the winter, no chems, no fun!"

My mouth opened automatically to protest that we have a lot of fun, but I didn't say it. Before I could think what I should say, Dixie leaned forward, eyes bright.

"Hey Boss, it was gonna be a surprise but I can't wait. I'm makin' you something! To say sorry for you know, shocking you before."

"Yeah?" The bit about being sorry was definitely an afterthought.

"I stole some stuff of Lizzie Wyeth to juice up my psycho and it worked so well you just have to throw it and everybody nearby goes crazy!"

"You invented a… psycho bomb?" I asked, mind spinning.

"Sure did!" Dixie was grinning. "Pity it doesn't work on ghouls or 'lurks—or Operators or Pack. Works on slaves though! Mason bought some to use for their cage fights, to make the slaves a little more peppy! Thought ya might want some later on, for when we take the Commonwealth."

I twitched. But I summoned my best raider Overboss smile. "That's amazing! Can I have the formula? I'd love to try it out!"

Dixie lit up, her bright smile showing her age. "Sure, Boss! It's lotsa fun! I only had three slaves to try it on and one dropped down with a heart attack but the other two tore each other up!" She tossed the last bite of molerat into her mouth and chewed happily, then plopped the mask back on her face. "I gotta go scrounge, I'll bring you it later. See ya Boss!"

"Bye." I managed, and sat staring at the place she'd been sitting for a minute, trying to fit in all the horrifying ideas that had just been tossed at me. She killed three slaves for fun? And invented a psycho bomb? Doc Jenna's opinion on psycho was, 'unless somebody with 'Doc' before their name tells you to take it, don't take it."

A crumpled wad of paper hit the table in front of me. I unfolded it.

You can't save everybody.

"Yes I know that." I looked around and of course saw nobody. So I took a minute to finish off my lunch while waiting for Deacon to come out of wherever he was.

He came out of the bushes behind me. "Well that was interesting."

"How much did you hear?"

"Just since she started talking about her new toy. Area effect psycho? Can we just not?"

"Maybe if it worked on super mutants… how was your morning?"

Deacon sat down, "I found Redeye's radio transmitter. He's still asleep so I got a good look around. The park's speakers are controlled from there too so all we have to do is record a get-to-safety message and schedule it to play."

"Thanks, Shades, that'll be useful. And it sounds like there really is a smart ghoul in Kiddie Kingdom. Dixie said it talked about a show like Redeye doing his Gauntlet report so maybe it's a smart but also crazy ghoul, but at least it talks."

"Well then, Boss, shall we go talk to it?"

"I'd love to but maybe we'd better give it a few more days in case it doesn't want to talk and we have to run away. And if we did somehow make a deal and gave the place to the Disciples the other gangs would get impatient."

Deacon nodded, "You're thinking to pay this theoretical ghoul lord off to let the Disciples move in and then ring the dinner bell?"

"It'd be convenient."

We were quiet for a minute then Deacon said, "I know you like bringing home strays and you got one of your daughters out of a raider camp…"

"Don't worry, I did hear everything Dixie just said. I just— she's so young. What gives me the right to decide she's too far gone?"

"Nothing. I'll decide. She's too far gone." Deacon said immediately with a smile. Then more seriously, "You have the right because you're here and have an army that listens to you. That's all it is. That's as much right as anybody gets."

And he's probably right. But there should be more to it. My entire prewar career was about there being more to it. I'd probably have started a completely pointless philosophical discussion and really gotten on Deacon's nerves, but the sound coming from the square had changed. Something was happening and we went to go see.

What we saw was a trickle of raiders heading out of Nuka-town. Mostly Pack, some dragging molerats by rope leashes, and everyone else who was sober tagging along. Porter Gage spotted me and called out, "Hey Overboss, bloodworm hunt! Or is that laser rifle on your back just for decoration?"

Now this was something I could deal with. "Find me a place to shoot from and I bet I get more than you."

"You bet, huh? How much?"

I didn't have a lot of caps and I wasn't about to risk any of my possessions so we settled on 'loser finds the winner a quantum.' The raiders herding molerats still moved faster than I did so by the time Deacon and I caught up with everybody they were getting into position around the gate. The archway into Dry Rock Gulch had been opened up and the Pack members with molerats were arranged in the opening. Everybody else who'd come along hung out behind them, out of bloodworm range.

Gage was up on a crate by the gateway, part of the junk that had been blocking it up. He pointed to another one that had been dragged into position on the other side. Deacon had to help me boost myself up onto the thing but it was big enough that I could crouch and aim. And placed so Gage and I could see quite far into Dry Rock Gulch but weren't angled to hit each other, a surprisingly fair setup for raiders.

Deacon hoisted himself onto the fiberglass fake rocks behind me and lounged.

I was about to ask how this worked when someone gave a signal and the Pack released the molerats. The creatures scrambled forward away from the noisy crowd. They got maybe twenty feet before the first bloodworm sprang out of the ground and hit a molerat mouth-first. It startled me for just a second and Gage got off the first shot.

I shook myself, sighted on another molerat, and managed to scorch a bloodworm coming up out of the ground. "They're fast!"

And they kept on coming. In a minute the ground was boiling around the unfortunate molerats, which milled around in squealing confusion. One of them was getting weighed down by dozens of finger sized bloodworms hanging off its belly. I couldn't shoot those but I was doing pretty well against the big ones. Half the big ones. Gage's rifle was firing just as fast as mine.

By the time things stopped squirming I'd reloaded twice and the ground was solid with dead bloodworms, and the molerats had been reduced to skeletons. I slid awkwardly off the crate, hissing in pain when I landed wrong on my bad foot. "Good lord. How many of these things are there?"

"Plenty." Gage said. "Come look. It's safe enough for a while."

Sierra Petrovita emerged from the crowd and went past us, walking gingerly to avoid stepping in dead bloodworm.

The raiders had done this before. They started collecting the dead bloodworms, hanging them over poles carried by slaves. And they were sorting between bloodworms killed by bullets and those killed by laser fire. I asked, "What are you going to do with them?"

"You can eat 'em." Gage said.

"You can." I said and Gage chuckled.

I've eaten plenty of insect-based food and I'll eat more in the future. I don't like it.

I picked up a bloodworm, one of the big ones, and held it up to get a look at its face. There were no eyes that I could recognize, only a circular mouth with sharp tiny teeth. The flesh of the thing was white and red, where it had blood inside. "Giant leeches. Great. Gage, did we get them all? Is this place safe now?"

"Not hardly. We killed the big ones but if anybody moved in they'd get eaten in a few weeks when the next batch grows up. We need to find the queens but we can't. They're in here somewhere but nobody's gotten close. There's crickets and things too just to make it more exciting."

Right on cue there was a distant shriek, a gunshot, and the sound of Sierra cursing. I said, "Hey Shades, can you go keep her alive please?"

Deacon was already going, his face under his sunglasses set in an expression of forced patience.

To Gage I explained, "She might know more useful things."

"You could always put a collar on her. Keep her where you can see her." Gage suggested.

And for a moment that seemed like a fine idea. It would be nice not worrying about where Sierra was. But it was wrong. Then I had to come up with a reason other than 'it's wrong' to give Gage. "I'd rather not start putting collars on customers. Might scare off the rest."

"Good point."

From the piles of bloodworms someone called, "Overboss wins! She got four more!"

"Guess I owe you a quantum. Nice shootin', Boss." Gage offered his hand.

I took it. "Not sure it was fair. Laser reloads faster. Happy to rematch anytime, Gage."

"Yeah yeah. Go find that cuckoo clock, or do you want to help haul bloodworms back to the market?"

I did not, so I walked deeper into Dry Rock Gulch. A few finger sized bloodworms bounced up and tried to drink blood from my ankles, then fell off when they couldn't bite through the reinforced fabric. Sierra hadn't got far; she was trying to open doors on the old west style buildings while Deacon stood guard. He waved. "Hi, o' Overboss. This is not a safe place. Can we leave? And come back with a crowbar and a flamethrower."

We didn't have a crowbar and couldn't get into any of the buildings, though we tried for a while. Couple of flying ant swarms later I succeeded in convincing Sierra that we weren't going to find her second letter that day.