Back out in the wastelands with the sun slowly moving across the skies, once again, Rose and Harold walked across the broken roads as Rose periodically checked her Pip-Boy.
Still ways away from Memphis, but they were making progress, and thus far they hadn't come across a raider or anyone with cruel intentions towards them.
The sun was almost setting when they found an abandoned town to camp for the night.
Finding a house still standing with all four walls still up, they got inside using a broken lock and a screwdriver.
Making a small campfire in the center of the house, Rose watches as Harold covered every window that the campfire was visible from out of caution.
"So far, so good," Rose shrugs as Harold sat down across from her.
Sighing, Harold warns her, "Be careful, Rose. Just because we haven't had to deal with the raiders doesn't mean we're out of the woodwork, yet."
While their luck has been good so far, Rose needed to prepare when it inevitably sours.
"We'll be okay, Mr. Harold," Rose showed unwavering optimism.
Something that Harold noted was a rarity in the Wastelands.
Sitting around the fire eating their respected meals, the two listen to the ambiance of the nightlife outside the abandoned house.
Howling coyotes in the distance, which Harold notes that these ones were different than the ones observed in the Mojave.
Heavily irradiated, the coyotes underwent mutations that have since left them blinded, but their remaining senses became near supernatural stronger to compensate for the blindness.
They're rare, Harold hadn't saw one himself, thankfully, but there was one person in the caravan that did.
Described them as mangy with sunburnt skin and excess skin folding over their eyes.
Once shy and nervous around humans, these mutated coyotes took a chance whenever possible in packs, the person telling Harold said they saw at least a pack of six.
Using the cover of darkness, they're quiet, and deadly with their jagged teeth puncturing heavy leather and their salvia causing infections.
Of course, as Harold stressed, there were worse things out in the Wastelands.
"Can I ask a question?" Rose changed topics.
Shrugging, Harold gestures as he replies that she can, it was only fair.
"Where're you from?" Rose asks him.
Sighing, Harold revealed, "A vault."
Adjusting herself in her spot as she looked at him with interest, Rose gestures as if she wanted to know what vault.
"Vault 42," Harold admits.
Eying him, Rose proceeded to ask, "What was your vault's experiment?"
Sighing as he rubbed his tired eyes, Harold answers with, "I didn't know everything. Our overseer… was a bit of a melodramatic man… fancied opera music. From what I learnt out here and what I experienced back there, it was evident they wanted to test the mathematical strengths of society. More specifically solving a math problem."
To which Harold can safely say, they never solved it, last he knew.
"Well, I'm not sure what our experiment was, but if it's poker tourneys and cookouts, well, that's an interesting experiment," Rose recalls what her life was like in her vault of Vault 50.
Curiosity arises and Rose asks what happened to Harold's Pip-Boy.
"I used it to help save a boy in the settlement I lived in. He needed an iron lung and my Pip-Boy was the only way of powering the makeshift iron lung the settlers made with my specifications," Harold frowns.
Seeing the sadness in his eyes, Rose opted not to ask further regarding what happened.
Sitting around the fire, the two converses until it was decided to sleep, and the crackling fire was their white noise as they went to sleep.
Sometime during the night, they were awakened when they heard hollering mixed with whooping noises coming from outside the house.
Immediately, Harold put out the fire, enshrouding the room in darkness as he sat quietly with Rose.
"What's that?" Rose whispers.
Listening to the muffled noises, Harold responded how he didn't know for sure, but he knew better to look for answers.
The noises continued, getting closer to the house they stayed in, and Harold starts tensing up as he fidgets in his spot.
In his mind he plotted a way out of the house.
If they come through the front door, he and Rose can escape through the back.
The opposite.
A window or two if they try going through both doors.
It continues until the hollering and whooping noises pass by the house without stopping.
If Harold had to guess, it was a hunting party.
Whether it be raiders or some other mad people living in the Wasteland, he didn't want to find out.
Once he was sure the noises had moved on and no one was trying to break into the house, Harold relit the fire, and the living room they hunkered down in illuminates in the flame.
"They're going through where we came from," Rose exhales.
Nodding, Harold exhales, "And hopefully we do not cross their paths."
Checking her Pip-Boy, Rose notes that they aren't far from another settlement.
Hillsboro.
Don't know anything more than a blip on her Pip-Boy.
"Once we reach it though, it says we continue south from there, and we should be on the path to Memphis," Rose smiles.
In her mind, Rose plots how it will go once they arrive in Memphis.
Hopefully, it'll be as simple as asking an Elvis the familiar haunts and find Mercurio Benton.
Deliver the parcel, get proof of the delivery, something, and that'll be the end of it, Rose would be able to make the return trip back to her vault.
The stories she'll tell to her friends when she gets back, the analogues she can write for her students to learn from her experiences.
Still, they have ways away from getting to Memphis, and thus Rose goes to sleep.
Come morning, Harold went around checking to see if there was anything outside the house before he left with Rose after covering up their tracks and the makeshift campfire.
As though no one was there, they leave the house when they first get inside, and following the Pip-Boy they move along the empty streets with lines of houses in various states of decay.
White picket fences broke apart and were left in tatters, mailboxes bent in odd shapes, and some fell over completely.
Signs of destruction to a school, but Harold doesn't think it was the work of a bomb, though it certainly looked as though one went off.
There's a trail of turned over dirt coming from an abandoned corn field with several acres destroyed coming through where the school was, and then after its destruction continues moving across until it stopped somewhere near a corner grocery store.
"What caused that?" Rose wonders.
Shrugging, Harold answers with a thoughtful, "I'm not sure."
Moving on, they pass the destitute buildings with their signs missing and nothing indicating their functions left.
Rose stopped briefly when she found an abandoned bag left behind, too new to be something from bygone, and carefully went through it while Harold stood guard.
Whoever owned the bag dropped it because the strap broke and didn't think to pick it up or had the chance for whatever reason, but they left behind some tinned food, stimpaks, and some caps.
Digging around, she found a map someone drew up and on it were clear warnings about someone called Chicken Charlie.
"Chicken Charlie?" Rose raises a brow.
Showing this to Harold, even he couldn't hazard a guess before Rose decided to take the map with her.
Maybe she can ask someone in Hillsboro who Chicken Charlie is and why they warrant a detailed warning on a handmade map.
Traveling through the town, Rose poked through different buildings out of curiosity.
Doing so, she found more things to help them with the journey to Memphis.
Eventually, there was nothing left to see and the two moved on from the town, back on the lonely highway that once was, and they found graffiti marking old billboards warning travelers going further south.
In broken English, it took both Harold and Rose to understand what the graffiti was saying.
"Stay away from Belle Meade," Harold blinks.
Rose tilts her head, "Why?"
Shrugging, Harold responds, "Who knows. Though, people tend not to make jokes about potential threats, suppose we won't be going anywhere near there."
Not that Belle Meade was anywhere near Memphis, so there's that.