Struggling on the ground as Vandal kept him pinned with his boot, the armored man shouts back at him, "Fuck you, leather face!"
Vandal calmly asks, "Where are your friends?"
The armored man refuses to tell him.
"It's going to be worse for you if you don't tell me," Vandal warns him.
Still, the armored man was being difficult, so Vandal brought about the now-dead horse.
A rare horse like this doesn't come cheap, unless it was stolen, and it would be foolish not to have backup in case someone attempts stealing one or from another thief.
"How many are there?" Vandal remained determined.
Finally, the armored man shouted, "Shoot the bastard!"
Sighing, Vandal shot him in the head, instantly moving away from the body as he held Betty close to him while searching for the others.
Adjacent of him, there was another gunshot, from a distance, and there, Vandal sees more armored men and women lining their shots at him on a large rock overlooking the area with vantage points.
Glistening teeth, Vandal remarks, "I like these odds!"
Using the dead man as a shield, Vandal shoots at the armored group, managed to splat an entire head with one shot, disarmed another one literary, and when the dead body was full of holes, Vandal switched to the horse as he continues firing back at them.
Couldn't have been easy, could it?
Counting his bullets, Vandal times his shots, and after three successful hits, he quickly reloads.
Down to only a handful of the raiders left, Vandal prepares to finish them off, but they won't realize it until too late they picked a fight with the wrong ghoul.
Loaded into Betty, Vandal points at a strategic spot, and fires a special bullet.
The moment it hit the rock the remaining raiders were on, instantly an explosion set off, splintering the rock as it fell onto the ground below.
Unable to flee, the raiders tumble downward as they're assaulted by the rocks.
Once it came to a stop, it was heaps of rocks and blood, Vandal made sure there were no survivors.
Turning his head, Vandal returns to where he hid them, but found Rose and Harold missing.
He was going to assume they snuck off when he was busy with the raiders, but he caught sight of a scared raider hiding behind them as human shields with a gun pressed against Rose's temple.
"Really?" Vandal exhaled sharply as he stared down at the raider.
In usual fashion, the raider wanted to go free, and was willing to use Rose and Harold.
"I'll do it!" He threatens Vandal with his voice cracking.
His hand trembling, the raider would accidentally shoot someone with how he handled his plasma pistol.
Gritting his teeth, Vandal holsters Betty as he slowly raises his arms.
"Let 'em go and you can walk," Vandal brokers with the raider.
The raider disbelieved him.
"You can still come after me!" The raider panicked.
Scoffing, Vandal points out, "I already killed your merry band of morons, what else am I gonna do to ya?"
Unless the raider kills his bounties, that is when he won't be so cordial.
The raider momentary stopped to think about his options when Rose decided for him by head-butting him hard in the stomach.
Dazed, the raider struggles, and as he does, Harold instructs Rose to follow his lead.
Struggling, Rose works with him to run in tandem.
Vandal became distracted by the recovered raider who proceeded to shoot at him, and Vandal managed to dodge the lasers as they flew.
Only lightly singed his shoulder, but he had worse things happen to him.
With Betty in hand, Vandal promptly shot him in the head, and he fell in a heap on the ground.
"I was trying to be nice!" Vandal exhales sharply.
Refocusing on Harold and Rose, Vandal found the muddy chaotic footprints they left behind in a bid to escape him.
So much for civility!
Thankfully, the ground was still wet from the rainfall, so the two left behind plenty of tracks for Vandal, and he can tell when they were muddying them.
No, the footsteps were more erratic, Rose was trying to go back, but Harold wouldn't let her, and forced her to push onward.
Glint in his eye, Vandal casually retrieves the object that would have incited the response.
Rose's knapsack.
It was lost amid the showdown with the raiders and panic has a funny way of losing sight of it.
The guns were still attached to it, but Vandal had already disabled them, so they're useless.
Having already looked through the knapsack before, Vandal knew why Rose wanted to go back.
She was determined to get to Memphis to deliver the parcel.
Should been a courier!
Come between them and their deliveries, they'll raise nothing but hell and more!
They're the most determined people in the known Wasteland and Vandal had dealt with one before his migration to the south somewhere in the Mojave.
Gave him a run for his money, almost took his life, but he managed to survive the encounter.
Licked his wounds, but he was still alive, so there's that.
Well, with Rose's knapsack, he has a reason for her to come find him and reclaim it.
Assuming she's still alive by then.
Vandal got a badge for tying knots in the Boy Scouts for a reason.
Following the footsteps, Vandal easily found the path they're taking, and as he follows the path, he starts hearing a commotion.
Running, Vandal catches up to another set of what he thought were bandits, but as he nears, he notices they weren't wearing atypical bandit clothing.
More southern gothic than anything.
Hell, it makes him look normal!
They already undid his handiwork binding them together and restrained Rose and Harold themselves.
Once they saw him, the cast out of an Antebellum drama just stares.
"I don't want know trouble, but these two are mine," Vandal tries being civil with them.
As he was closer, he notices something unusual with the people restraining Rose and Harold.
Their unfixed gloomy eyes, for starters, didn't even flinch when Vandal tries raising his voice.
Gurgling, one of the men wearing an Antebellum style suit mumbles, "Bring… bring…frau…"
Unafraid of him, the oddly dressed people slowly moves while forcing Rose and Harold to move.
Gritting his teeth again, Vandal raises his voice once more, but the people continued to ignore him.
Unable to be convincing, Vandal Relied on the tried-and-true way of getting to the point.
Shooting at them, Vandal witnesses the people not reacting in pain or fear.
Not even anger.
A yelp.
Something.
It made him stop as he never experienced something like this before.
They continue strong arming the two and Vandal had no choice but getting physical.
Using his serrated knife he forcibly cuts at the hands of one of the people holding Harold hostage first in a bid to force them to release him.
Not once did any of the people react to the hands being cut into with the knife, didn't try to stop Vandal, attack him, instead they marched onward.
Blood oozes from the person's hands as Vandal had no choice but to cut into their tendons.
They were not letting Harold go without a fight.
Once he decapitated the hands holding Harold, Vandal gripped him tightly as he went to work on the one holding Rose.
Hard doing with the caravan of Antebellum nutjobs moving without a care.
As he forces Harold's compliance, Vandal works on the hands gripping Rose, but as he tries to cut into the hands, he heard something he never wanted to hear.
Something that all people on the topside feared.
For very good reasons.
A deep growl with a strange restraint, "Get… frau…"
If he had hair, it would be standing taller than a monument, Vandal uneasily turns his head in the direction of the deep growl.
Coming over the hill, tall, muscular, sickly green skin, something out of a fantasy book, it was not something Vandal wanted to see again since his last experience with them during a stint in the Commonwealth.
Blurting while fighting against the person restraining her, Rose asks, "What the hell is that?"
Vandal hoarsely tells her, "Welcome to the Wasteland, little lady, when nightmares are even afraid of it!"
A goddamn super mutant!
They're getting too bold for Vandal's liking making their headway from wherever pits of hell they walked out from and seeing one here in Tennessee already made his skin crawl.
"Can you kill it?" Harold panics as he asks Vandal.
Switching back to Betty, Vandal answers, "I usually avoid them!"
For very good reasons.
Sure, Vandal picked fights with people bigger than him, but even he knew it was suicide fighting with super mutants, especially when it's a cabal of them working in tandem rounding up people, they find traveling the dusty roads for God knows what reasons and Vandal's sure he doesn't want to know.
But he had a job to do, and he loaded Betty with another round of his specialty ammo.
Pointing Betty outward, Vandal took a chance, and fires at the super mutant as it started advancing towards them.
The bullet hit its muscular chest and it didn't even get so much of a snarl out of the super mutant.
A mini explosion occurs and the super mutant stumbles backwards with its blood shooting out of a hole the size of a Dixie cup.
Not once did the super mutant say anything Vandal knew them to say, instead it only utters a stilted, "Bring… frau…"
What in the hell?
The super mutant recovers and Vandal expected the worst, but the super mutant remained frighteningly calm about a hole in its chest.
Seeing the super mutant still advancing towards them, Vandal fires another round at it, and again, it never said anything more than what he already heard.
Not the one to waste his shots, Vandal turned his attention to Rose as he forced Harold's help in freeing her from the near-zombie person who didn't even flinch when Vandal cut into their hands.
What in the hell did Vandal get himself into?
To make matters worse, while they were trying to free Rose, someone shot a flash bang at Vandal's feet, and all he saw as everything went white was the outline of a person standing not two feet away from them.