The Pack
The next day we went to visit the third Nuka-World gang, The Pack. I was already a bit worried they'd be angry about being last to be graced by a limping visit from the Overboss. Walking over I scanned for the bright green of Sierra's shirt but didn't see her.
Deacon said, "Hope she hasn't gone into one of the parks and got eaten."
"We can track her down later. Can't imagine this will last all afternoon." We could've met all three gangs in one day if raider days started earlier. But raiders woke up in the afternoon and started taking chems and getting wild when the sun set. I wanted to be safely up in my mountain and just listen to the joyful shrieks and crashes and occasional gunfire. And this is 'under control' according to Gage.
We reached the wall across the front of the Pack's nest, the Bradburton Amphitheater. I stopped to listen. We heard zoo noises. Hoots and roars and screeches but made by humans. What were these people?
The guard at the door, wearing shorts and stripes of paint and a yellow bird mask said, "Welcome to the Nest, boss. We've been waiting for you."
"Saving the best for last!" I said inanely and the guard opened the gate for us.
There were a lot of animals walking around. Dogs, and a few of the mutated dogs we call mongrels, even some molerats. They must've all been well fed because none of them were attacking the others.
One of the humans greeted us with, "Are you sheep or wolves? Because the Pack only runs with the wolves."
I blinked at the young man with colored stripes on his face. "How do you know what sheep and wolves are?"
The raider chuckled. "The wall, Boss! Over here!"
And they had a wall of animal pictures, sheltered behind glass. Before the war it must have held announcement fliers or something, but the Pack had put up pictures of animals torn from prewar books. I recognized some from Shaun's favorite, the Big Book of Science for Kids. Other pictures must've been from around the safari Adventure zone. they'd had bears, gorillas and alligators, and a lot of poisonous snakes. It would be fun to see what those had evolved into since the bombs fell.
We followed the raider into the backstage area of the amphitheater, the Pack's living quarters. There were more animals here, and the pleasantly dusty smell of dog and brahmin along with the less pleasant smell of dung not cleared away. Pack raiders seemed to favor sleeping bags both for themselves and their pets. Dogs came over to sniff us and Deacon automatically delivered a few ear-scratches before remembering he was being a stoic bodyguard.
Not all of the animals were healthy; some had healing wounds treated with varied levels of skill. Humans were around too, eating, cleaning their weapons, petting their animals. We'd caught the Pack at a lazy time, early in their day. In the corner a pair were… mating, I guess they'd call it here. Their grunts and moans were ignored by the rest of the gang and I kept my eyes turned away. My prewar sensibilities said that kind of thing was to be done in private!
The Pack had a lot of animals, at least the more dangerous ones were in cages. They had two yao guai growling halfheartedly at each other from separate cages. In another cage a two-headed gazelle stood shivering on three legs, the fourth a stump. Had the raiders given it veterinary care? Back home we'd have eaten a brahmin that lost a leg.
Around the corner a bigger cage held a gorilla. A real, living gorilla with silvery fur and big sad eyes.
Deacon murmured, "Raiders wondering why you're smiling!"
I schooled my face into a more normal expression. An Overboss would not be standing here full of delight at finding an animal that should have been extinct, or gleeful at the thought of presenting a real gorilla to Doctor Holdren. He'd be overjoyed and he'd be grateful and I was going to hint broadly that trying again to make me a synthetic sheep would be the best way to say thanks. Of course first we'd have to find out where the gorilla had come from and if there were more. And get it out of this cage into a more suitable habitat with plenty of room and food.
Then I saw what was in the next cage. A big dog lay on a mattress with two puppies and three babies cuddled up to her belly. They were drinking milk. Babies drinking dog milk. I crashed to a stop and behind me Deacon made a shocked sound.
Emotion made me want to say something but logic came in before I could think what. We drink brahmin milk and people who have goats drink goat milk. Goliath the dog nursed a litter of kittens and they turned out all right. And chems can be passed from mother to child in milk. So this might actually be safer. Just really strange. And it would probably be a bad idea for my first words to the Pack gang's leader to be, "What the hell?" So I should really talk to MacKenzie about this first.
My joy at the presence of the gorilla and horror at the canine babysitters both cooled as I began to notice the caged animals weren't all doing so well. The cages were too small and they were just cement and bars. If the animals weren't for food it was cruel and if they were for food the conditions wouldn't do the meat any good. Then we came outside again and saw the fighting pit. Two dogs snapped tiredly at each other in the sunshine with a circle of raiders poking them with sticks.
My prewar sensibilities, and love for my own dog, came roaring back up and Deacon grabbed my shoulder before I could yell anything.
"Later, Overboss. Plenty of time."
I'd been prepared to like Mason just because of his name, but after the shocks of the Pack's den I wasn't sure what to think. The boss himself sat on a throne on the stage of the old amphitheater. Bits of set, fake bushes and trees painted on crumbling plywood, were his backdrop. Mason was a big man, wide and stocky with an attempted beard and his face painted in stripes of color. The effect should have been clownish but it wasn't. His expression was too somber.
He looked nothing like Nate. Thank goodness.
Mason was talking to one of his gang, chewing out a man in a paper mache bird mask. The Pack members who didn't go for face paint wore big chunky masks that looked like something kids would make.
Mason dismissed his man and gave me a look up and down. Vault suit, mismatched armor, brace on my ankle putting me off balance. He grunted, "Huh. Now that I get a look at you, not sure I'm buying this 'new Overboss' thing."
"I'll send you my resume and references." I said dryly.
"'fuck's a resume? Whatever. Don't matter. In nature a beast that's injured, falls behind, becomes prey."
So Mason was going to be trouble. I sighed. "But a human who's injured hires bodyguards to solve her problems until she recovers. Are you going to be a problem he has to solve?" I glanced back to see Deacon smile politely behind his sunglasses.
Mason looked from Deacon to me and raised his hands. "Slow down there boss-lady. We're just getting to know each other. Name's Mason, the Pack's Alpha. This here's our side of town. You may be Overboss—for now—but I'm the boss of the Pack and it's gonna stay that way. Long as you don't go forgetting that we're gonna be fine."
"Understood. Let's work together, Mason. I'm not interested in ruining your gig."
The diplomacy seemed to work. "If that ain't a lie things might be all right between us. Look, ain't like anyone's all broke up over Colter. Just figured on his replacement being… different. But Gage says you're the boss now so you're the boss. At least it ain't Mags Black, or that freak Nisha. Maybe you are the real deal. But we thought Colter was the real deal and look where he is now."
"Why did all the gangs follow Colter?" I asked. I was curious, and Mason was the only gang boss who didn't make my skin crawl so far.
"Huh. We been wondering that ourselves. Don't get me wrong, Colter was definitely Overboss. Not a man to mess with. And things were good in the beginning! Real good… but that was a year ago. Then Colter went soft, wanted to 'take stock in what we achieved.' Weak."
"Then what do you want from your new Overboss?"
"Caps!" Mason barked, "Action! Something! Anything more than the sitting around we've been doing for the last year."
"I'm listening."
"Sure this place beats living in the shitholes we had out there, but it ain't the palace of caps we signed up for. Ain't none of us happy, not even the Disciples and they're normally a chipper bunch as long as they're drenched in blood." Mason paused to make sure we smiled at his humor then continued, "Things were going to hell fast, but Gage put the brakes on that. Got us together and promised he'd find someone to of Colter. And here you are."
'And I'm not Colter so that better not happen to me."
"Nah, don't worry, boss, we're totally willing to give you a chance. So, you going to do right by the Pack? I heard you've been talking to the other gangs."
"I plan to treat all the gangs equally." I said, "What does the Pack have to offer?"
"The Pack are the meanest sons of bitches you'll ever meet, and we're fiercely loyal. The Operators will cut your throat as soon as look at you and the Disciples—who knows what those crazies want. Something wrong with someone who won't show you their face."
I nodded. Couldn't argue with that. "Can some of your fiercely loyal guys help with taking back the rest of the park?"
"Nah, boss, not yet. You want my guys to heel you gotta prove it'll be worth their while."
"Then I hope your guys can wait a bit for their space. If I go in injured and get killed there'll be no parks for anybody."
"Yeah yeah. Just don't take too long, boss." Mason grinned.
I wanted to remind him I got shot but instead I asked, "How big is your gang? So I know how much territory you need."
Mason raised one hand in a half shrug. "A hundred or so? Not all fighters. We don't sell our cubs like the other gangs so we've got babies to think of. 'Least we can leave them with slaves. Or the dogs."
"Yeah that's…" I said automatically then couldn't think how to finish. "That's a good idea." I said inanely.
Mason laughed at my discomfort. "It is! They grow up strong and fierce! Now is that all, boss? I got stuff to do."
"Sure, that's all. I might look around, see the Nest. I like what you've done with the place." I'd been standing long enough that standing hurt but I wanted another look around. I wanted to see how many kids there were here, and what kinds of animals. And see if I could figure out how they kept them so calm. To Deacon I muttered, "They have a friendly molerat!"
"You can do it. Get one before its eyes are open and raise it by hand, they sometimes tame down. I had one when I was a kid. Named her Bessie."
I gave Deacon the look I give Deacon when I think he's winding me up. "How do you get a baby molerat? You'd have to take out the whole warren."
"Yeah. That's how."
"Shaun's going to want to try it now."
One of the ghoul dogs wandered over to sniff our shoes. It had healing wounds across its back from a bout in the fighting pit. Deacon crouched to rub the fearsome creature under the chin. "Wonder if they're drugged. That'd explain it."
A Pack raider in a horned ram mask with only paint on his upper body paused to look at us and I waved at him. "Hey. Mason didn't have time to tell me much about life in the Pack. What's with all the animals?"
The raider jerked off the mask. Underneath was a young man with scraggly hair and sunken cheeks. He looked like the drifters in Goodneighbor. He looked like a jet habit. But we'd found a true believer; he leaned forward eagerly. "We catch them and bring them back! We own them! Survival of the fittest, you know?"
"Do you eat your animals?"
"Yeah sometimes. If they die. Mostly we just keep them. If you can catch a beast, you are a beast, you know?"
I did not know. "Where do they come from?"
"Outside the park, around. And the Safari Adventure, before. Now anyone who goes in there doesn't come back. Monsters, you know?"
We were passing the gorilla's cage. The poor creature had sores around its face and looked thin. I wanted to get it out of here, into somewhere better than a concrete cage. "The gorilla come out of the safari park?"
Our guide nodded enthusiastically. "Took ten of us to drag it back! But we got it! It's ours now!" he picked up a gnawed stick from the floor and banged it on the bars.
Shortly our guide said he was glad to meet me but he had to go find some jet and Deacon and I headed back to the market. By then I just wanted to sit down; my ankle felt twice the size it really was. I found a bench next to a big statue of Bottle and Cappy and sat down with a groan.
Deacon stepped over behind the bench and folded his arms in a very bodyguard pose. After a minute in which I'm sure he was making sure nobody was close enough to hear he said "Can't believe you didn't try to steal all the kids. And the animals."
"You think we could take care of them all?"
"Nope."
"I took a lot of parenting classes before Shaun was born and they all said physical touch is important for infants and chem use while nursing is really bad. They might be better off." I was rambling, more tired than I'd thought. "And it won't be long until—oh my god."
I'd suddenly realized what was going on across the square, that I'd been looking at without seeing while I enjoyed having the weight off my ankle. A bunch of Disciples had surrounded an old slave and pinned him to a wall with knives through his clothes. Then they'd backed off and Dixie was hefting a knife to throw.
Deacon murmured, "You think that's 'Dixie's Slice n Dice'?"
Dixie's knife thunked into the wall and another Disciple stepped up. The game seemed to be to get a knife as close as possible without hitting the slave. Who was blubbering, tears running down his face as he flinched. My hands curled into fists.
From over my shoulder Deacon said, "There's twelve of them and if you shoot anyone there goes our chance to free everybody."
Instinct said the Overboss couldn't just order the Disciples to knock it off. They'd turn on me. So I sat and watched the game. They didn't kill the man. Eventually they got bored and reclaimed their daggers, leaving the old man bloodied but not badly hurt. He staggered into the market and at last my heartrate calmed.
"Hate this place… damn…"
The sun was going down. Raider days were short, raiders slept until after noon so they didn't have to endure much daylight before they could start partying at night. At least that meant I could sleep as late as I wanted while healing. Deacon came around the bench and held out his hand to pull me up. "Go home. I'll get food from the market."
"Ask Doc MacKenzie if she can come for dinner. She might know who the mothers of those babies are, so we don't kill them."
"Don't aim too high, Overboss. It's gonna be hard enough keeping the actual innocent people out of the way."
I did not tell Deacon that I was also thinking about the animals. Not the Pack's molerats, but that gorilla—it might be one of the last gorillas in the world. There had to be more, and I wanted to find them, to protect the species. So many kinds of animals had vanished when the bombs fell we couldn't just let another one disappear.
