A/N: I own nothing except the laptop I wrote this story on.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept.
Check that. He couldn't remember the last time he'd closed his eyes. Even blinking seemed like something more than he could afford at this point. His ears were starting to ache. Firing a scoped rifle all the time had that effect on a guy. He'd heard stories of old-timers who spoke wistfully of the days when they didn't hear a ringing in their ears all the time. He hoped that that wasn't his fate some day.
Assuming of course he made it to that age.
A flit of movement below. He peered into the scope, ignoring the feeling in his brain crying out for a break. Was it movement? Or was it a shadow? Or was he hallucinating? He'd nearly shot something that wasn't there roughly an hour ago. Usually he knew when he'd had a moment like that he needed to take a break.
He'd had at least four of those near-misses today. He was starting to come apart at the seams.
More movement. His eyes weren't deceiving him. It was Quincy Boy that had somehow managed to break the perimeter that those tincans in the Brotherhood and the auto-turret system (the only god that he prayed to these days). The bastard was moving slowly, trying to stick to the shadows along the street. Maybe he thought that if he kept low and moved slow, he'd make something of himself and get to the Museum of Witchcraft. That was where the ghouls were all hiding. Right? Right? Or was he losing his mind?
The Quincy Boy stepped up and tried moving forward some more. And in doing so, he stood up just enough where his hairline was visible from behind a ruined car (that's what the General had called those things, right?). It was roughly a window of a centimeter, maybe less.
Losing his mind or not, Robert MacCready was still the best shot in the Commonwealth.
He pulled the trigger.
There was a wet crunching sound as the bullet hit its mark, and then a spray of all manner of interiors as the Quincy Boy flopped to the ground. The bullet had clipped him, but hadn't killed him outright. It had given him a pseudo-lobotomy, though, and MacCready winced as the man got up and, in his death throes, staggered up and down the street.
He made it a block before some of the braver mirelurks still hiding within the city decided to come out and get their dinner early.
Ignoring the crunching noises and screams below, MacCready allowed himself to sit back in the chair. He'd been up on the Salem church tower for…he didn't know how long. Long enough to want to be anywhere but here. He reached next to him, and grabbed the canteen he'd set aside for his typical stakeout posting. He'd drank the last of the water ages ago, but maybe enough condensation had formed inside the thing where he could trick his brain into thinking that he had another sip left.
No such luck.
"Boy! Boy, you there?"
Nearly jolted out of his chair, Mac reached over and picked up his radio. He pressed the button.
"Aren't we past the 'boy' shit, Barney?"
"Oh that's great, thought you'd decided to take a nap." The gruff, crotchety voice of Barney Rook seemed to ignore Mac's snark, and the old man on the other end of the line spoke up again. "Don't know about you, but I'm starting to get a little bit tired of shooting Quincy Boys."
"You don't say." Mac was too tired to properly inflect on the question. "Well, I haven't seen you in…two days?"
"Three. Don't cut me short, boy." Barney growled. "Been flitting throughout the streets, trying to grab whatever ammo I can off the bodies, whatever supplies they've left behind to give to the ghouls, and generally make sure the one thing keeping our butts alive - those goddamn turrets - from shorting out. So I'd appreciate some respect."
"Alright, alright." MacCready resisted the urge to imagine slapping the old coot. "How are the ghouls?"
"No longer panicking, but pretty fucking gloomy. Watching someone that had been taking care of them eat a grenade tends to do that to people."
MacCready felt a pang of sadness.
"Is Chibs dead?"
There was a pause on the other end.
"I can't say yes, seeing as how he's still breathing, but I've seen smaller messes in a Deathclaw's dung. Don't know what the fuck is keeping that boy clinging to life. Hasn't woken up since he blew apart the Deathclaw."
"Jesus…" MacCreedy said. He cleared his throat. "What about you, Gunny? You alive?"
"You're fucking goddamn right I am." The reformed raider's voice cut through the air like a razor blade. "And I'll be damned if I don't gut every last fucking one of those bastards for what they did to Chibs. AND the ghouls!"
MacCready shook his head. When Gunny had come to Salem with Chibs, he'd wondered if the General was pranking him by sending only two folks to reinforce Salem, and two ex-raiders at that. But Chibs had been good at support staff (if a bit twitchy at actual combat) and Gunny had proven to be tough as nails. But still. Three people in the entire city with guns was not exactly a garrison.
And speaking of garrisons…
"Hey, Sarge? You three doing okay out there?"
"So far we are steady, wastelander." The droll voice of Sergeant Mattis of the Brotherhood of Steel cut through the comm line. "As it stands, the Quincy scum's entire plan seems to be to run at me and my men and die until we run out of bullets." There was the sound of a minigun spooling up in the background. "A moment.' There was radio silence for a few seconds. "That strategy, and its result, appear unchanged."
"That's fine and all, clanker, but what happens when you ACTUALLY run out of bullets?" Barney asked. "If there's one thing we can count on, it's these Quincy bastards summoning a near endless supply of idiots to die for no good reason."
"Your concern, though valid, is unfounded." Sergeant Mattis replied coolly. "My unit is the best shot in the Commonwealth branch of the Brotherhood. We don't miss." Another pause. The sound of a minigun on the radio. "Still true."
In spite of everything, MacCready chuckled. Maybe it was being half awake that was making him loopy. But there was something funny, in a cosmic sort of way, about how the only thing that was keeping him alive was a couple of Brotherhood clankers and a hermit's shoddy auto-turret system. Still, that was what was keeping him alive. But what was keeping him going? What did he have to fight for, in these terrible times?
"Mac, are you there?"
He winced. There was another voice on the line. And judging by how casual it was, it was clear that the speaker only wanted to talk to him. And him alone.
MacCready switched radios.
"Yeah, I'm here, boss."
"Are you doing okay?"
"I've been better, boss." MacCready said. "Starting to think about my ammo count, which I haven't had to do in a very long time. But I'm alright for now. How goes Operation 'Save the World'?"
There was a tired chuckle on the other end.
"Operation ongoing." The General of the Minutemen said. "We've had to make some adjustments here and there. But…I haven't given up hope yet. None of us have."
"Glad one of us is an optimist." MacCready replied. He leaned back in the chair. "So, uh, Nate…"
"Yeah, Mac?"
"Give it to me straight. Are we losing?"
There was a pause on the other end of the line. It wasn't long, but it was enough.
"Well, we aren't winning, that's for sure. But we're not losing."
"Then what's the next big plan?" MacCready asked. "You got something for us up here in Salem?"
Another pause. And this one, though short, hurt more than anything else.
"Mac…I…I don't have the resources to reinforce you up there."
It felt like lead in his stomach. For a brief moment, Robert MacCready felt an icy grip of panic in his heart. He thought about how many rounds he had left. He thought about how many more sunsets he would live to see.
And he thought about Duncan, lying in that hospital bed, somewhere safely in Megaton. How was he doing now? Did he even remember Daddy?
Did he even remember Mommy?
Blinking back the tears, MacCready took a deep breath. And with it, his wits returned.
"So you want us holding down the fort up here as long as we can?"
"Mac, I want you protecting the ghouls of the Slog. Salem…Salem isn't worth all of your lives. Given a choice between the two…"
Mac was distracted by the sounds of crunching on the ground below. Footsteps.
"Tell you what, boss. I think I'll choose door number 3. I'll do both. Just build me a big fuckin' statue when it's all said and done."
"Mac, wait-"
He switched his radio back to the main channel.
"Gunny, I've got hostiles coming down the street!"
"Hold them down, boy! I'm almost done rebooting the turrets! Give me five minutes!"
Five minutes? Might as well be five years. Five lifetimes. But then again, who was counting?
He popped out of cover and fired. The first Quincy Boy down there was too cocky, and too open. He dropped like a bag of wet cement. The others saw their friend fall, and then began to fire. MacCready ducked back behind the wall, as bullets whistled past him and cut up the cement and remnants of the clock tower around him. He was sure he was getting cut from the shrapnel, but it didn't matter. He had a job to do.
He fired again, and another Quincy boy fell to the ground. This one wasn't dead, but he was clearly out of commission. Bullets continued to zip and scream through the air, and a few were getting closer and closer…
Some slammed into the ground at his feet, and kicked up plaster and dust in his eyes. Grunting in annoyance, Mac dove for cover and tried to clear out his eyes. It took precious seconds, seconds he did not have, but he got clear and fired.
They were getting closer.
And one of them had an RPG.
He didn't have time to reload. The RPG would have him dead to rights if he did. There were three men down there on the ground, and he only had two bullets left. He had to choose. And he had mere seconds left.
The first shot, he put between the eyes of the spotter. That bought him a little bit more time. He looked, and then he decided to do the craziest thing he ever considered.
He waited.
Waited for the RPG to load.
Waited for the man to get the gun on his shoulders.
Waited for the man to aim up at the clock tower.
And then, in mere milliseconds before the man on the ground could pull the trigger, MacCready pulled his.
The bullet slammed into the RPG's hip, right as the man was pressing the trigger.
As if in slow motion, MacCready watched as the man tilted to his side and swung around in an involuntary reaction to the pain. And he watched as the RPG was turned to the side, and fired not into the tower he stood in, but directly into the husk of a car by which the two raiders were taking cover.
The explosion engulfed the two of them, and took the car with them.
As soon as the dust settled, a voice crackled over the radio.
"Holy shit, kid, that shot was one in a million! And not a second too soon. The auto-turrets are rejuiced and reloaded. I'm having them shoot anything that moves on the streets."
They started to fire at a frightening pace.
"Hooooooo-wheeeeeeeeee! We're cookin' Quincy Boy barbeque out there! I think you've earned yourself a rest, sharpshooter. Me and the turrets will take it over from here."
His words fell on deaf ears. Robert MacCready was already asleep.
A/N: Sorry for the delay! Ear is healing without surgery (yay!), and I've been a busy man of late. Look to see another one of my stories that has long laid dormant wake up in the near future…
Till next time!