Draconias Galactica
First time out of the vault
Behold! My fingers refuse to stay still! AND YOU ALL SHALL READ! Or else...I'll cry in the corner! ALL SHALL DROWN!!!
Okay, I'll shut up now. Part 1 of...dunno yet. Read, peonic people.
---
Outside, it was still raining. It had been raining before me Sten even woke up. Judging by the clouds -- they're black and heavy, and it's dark as night underneath them -- it will still be raining when we go to sleep.
It wasn't the rain that was the problem. Hell, I'll take any water I can get, especially before the wet season starts. But you couldn't see a thing outside. You could use torches, assuming you had them (which we didn't), but they wouldn't last long in the rain. There were plenty of flashlights in a store (ex-store, at least) we hit yesterday, but no batteries. All it amounted to was a bunch of junk.
Kind of fitting that we weren't outside searching for more junk. If there was water, there wasn't any need for us to go searching. But the rain'll end eventually, and then we'll still be weeks away from the wet season with a busted water pumper. And it wouldn't matter how many buckets we had back at Slim Grove, because we could never catch enough rain to last us. Hell, it would get stagnant even if we did. Either you had a well, a river, a convoy, whatever the hell those vaults used, or something, or you were dead. It was that simple.
I tossed a card from my deck into the drop pile. The card game we were playing was just another stupid way to waste time, which is all we could really do right now. There's two piles, a drop pile and a grab pile. You start off with five cards each, and you play two each hand. Small hand dumps the smaller of his played cards in the drop pile, and big hand gets to put in two of his choice. Then you pick up a card from the grab pile, and go again, and again, until somebody doesn't have any cards, or you start shooting at each other (this is considered a draw). It's just a stupid little game, but it kills time. A lot of it.
It was our third day in the dead city. There was probably a name for this place once, but there isn't anybody around to remember it. And Slim Grove'll be like that soon, too, if nobody finds any parts for the pump. Me and Sten aren't in this by ourselves; we -- Slim Grove, that is -- have teams going to every busted-up, burnt-out, dead-ass pile of metal that used to be a city in the area. The pump's pre-war, and it's tech. We have a guy who can fix it, we just need the parts. Me and Sten left five days ago. Some of the others might be back by now, and maybe the pump's "working" again. But we can't go back, not until we tear up every damned corner of this place. Not until we're sure there isn't anything here, or we find something.
Sten tossed in his two cards, and asked, "What time is it?"
The joys of owning a working PIPBoy are many. First and foremost, everybody knows that you are their personal clock service. "Bit past noon," I said, grabbing my next hand. Talking was never a big part of the card game -- there isn't much worth talking about anyways. Just the rain stopping us from doing our damn job. Water's killing our town ahead of schedule; what a thought.
It's been three days, two and a half maybe, since we finally reached this big hollow debris. The two days before that were loads of fun -- almost immediately after we step out of Slim Grove, radscorp's start chasing us. The thing about rad scorps is that they don't run as fast as humans, but if you slow down you'll find out that they still run pretty damn fast. That, and the fact that they have tough pinchers and very sharp tails. We lost them, eventually. Five minutes later, we find a pack of wolves. A hungry pack.
No luck at all, not now, not ever. Story of my life.
It was almost like the wolves and rad scorps were doing tag-chasing; the moment one stopped, the other picked up. Probably 9 out of 10 times those two days, we were running. We were still running when we got to the city. The strange part is, right after we got near the place, the wolves backed off. We kept running, but they pulled back, and turned around. I couldn't figure it out -- they chased us for two days, and then they just backed off?!
The way I see now -- now being a long wet stretch of time for me to think in -- the city must have been glowing once. The Geiger counter we have is, frankly, a piece of crap, but if it turns on, it works. After we managed to get it running, it sniffed the air all around, and decided the city was clean (as in, it probably won't kill you to touch a car). Of course, we only checked out of habit then, not because of the wolves. Anything hot can cool down; those wolves must have remembered this place was death a while ago.
Right now, this place is wet, and it's just another damn junk pile. For two days now we've been searching! Thank you universe for the stray porn mag's, and the fewer stray bullet mag's, but we came here for tech! The first day was a bust -- we only got here a few hours before nightfall. Disappointing, but when you've been scavenging for a while, you get used to delays. We set up camp inside one of the better looking metal piles, in a fairly clear room -- only an overturned desk and a few ruined chairs lying around -- and got a few hours of sleep that, amazingly enough, did not involve us waking up every five minutes because a wolf howled or a rad scorp clicked.
I remember thinking, as I went to sleep, it's because this place is dead. I didn't just mean that the city's nuked beyond recognition. I meant that, besides us, we didn't see a single living thing that first day. No geckos, no ghouls, no muties, no rats, no roaches, no nothing. Just a bunch of wrecked cars, a lot of crumbling buildings, and a wind going through them like something out of a nightmare. I don't believe in ghosts or that stuff, but when I can hear them screaming on the wind, when I can see the burnt remains of their shadows on the walls...well, I can tell why no one lives here.
Sten grinned for a moment. Just long enough to let me know he was gonna kick my ass this hand as well. He flipped his two cards over -- a K and a 10.
"Goddamnit," I muttered. The best I had was two 5's. And I'll admit it, I am not a card player. I'm too damn old to start learning anyways. At least we weren't playing for cash. The only things I really have to offer that he'd take are my gun -- no way in hell I'm giving that up -- and my knife. And maybe that clock I found.
I found it yesterday, our fourth day here. We started searching again as soon as the sun came up. Our "searches" were just us going into every stable building we came across, and digging around. The good tech is always either higher up, or down low, somewhere underground. We've spent most of our time underground, or walking around in the roads. Going up high is risky. If something goes wrong, and you're stuck, your only real choice is to fall. And it doesn't matter how good a rope you have, or how good you are at climbing, because something can, and probably will, go wrong again. At least underground, you can dig your way out. And even the deepest hole around here is closer to ground level than the average building is.
But there was one we building we climbed up high, all the way up to the fifth floor. I don't think I've ever seen a building so stable be so tall before. And it wasn't just stable -- it looked like it hadn't been touched by the firestorm. I've seen places like this before -- by pure luck, I guess, they miss the worst of the storm. This one was the luckiest of all, by far.
The inside looked as clean as the outside did. There wasn't any junk lying around, no fallen chunks from the ceiling, no torn-up tiles, the walls weren't jagged or missing large pieces. In fact, there wasn't really anything in there at all. The owners probably got nuked before they could move in.
There wasn't a basement, so we went up. Judging by the first floor, there wasn't a good chance we'd find any tech, but at least we knew it had a view. It was better than just walking around at random. First three floors, there wasn't anything. The walls, the floor, all bare. It was like somebody made an exhibition of "clean". No luck at all. The fourth floor had some wooden crates tossed all over the place. There wasn't anything inside them. Reminded me of my house. We kept climbing towards the view, since it was obvious this place didn't have any tech.
The fifth floor was just one big empty room like the rest of the floors were. Nobody bothered putting up dividers or anything I guess. The first thing I noticed were these two statues in the rear of the room. Just a long empty floor, a really poorly made one at that, and then statues? It threw me off for a second. They were both made out of something colored dark gray. Don't ask me why, but somebody had dressed them up in these brown robes, real big ones that covered just about everything besides their arms. Each one had their arms out, and was holding...something. I couldn't make it out, since the sun was starting to come in through a window beside the two.
Sten noticed the bodies on the floor first. He never had any culture anyways.
And damn my old eyes, there must have been twenty or so. I probably didn't notice them at first because they were the same color as the floor -- dark reddish brown. Dry blood. There were a few spots where the floor wasn't stained, but there weren't many.
"Time to go," Sten said. It was a good idea. A shame that I ignored it.
Sten kept yelling at me for us to get out of there, but I wanted to at least check out the window, and find a place to go to next. Convenient that I picked one at the far end of the room, near the statues. It happened to have the best, unobstructed view of the city. But I also happen to be full of shit sometimes. Sten eventually shut up, and started looking through the bodies for anything worthwhile. Once you get over the shock, dead bodies aren't that big of a deal. Of course, when you don't know who made them, you never get real comfortable with the things.
I looked out the window long enough to decide that I had no clue how to get to most of the buildings I could see. The statues held my attention for a bit longer. There were still two, and I still didn't have a clue why they were wearing real clothes. Somebody probably thought it was artistic, or some bull like that. If they didn't look so damn heavy for the weather -- always a variation of hot, warm, burning, how did it drop down to 10 below overnight?, and just too damn bright -- I probably would have taken them. I couldn't see if the statues had faces underneath the shadows from their hoods, and I didn't really care enough to check.
What really caught my eye was what was in their hands. The first one, facing the stairs we had come up through, was holding a wood pole, about seven feet tall I'd guess, upright in front of him --hell, carved rocks can be people too, right? -- with both arms. Even without a face, the statue looked impatient. I was getting antsy just looking at it myself. The second one had his back to the other one's left. He had his hands extended, cupped in front of his stomach. There was a round clock resting there. Wood, old-looking, and, amazingly enough, still ticking.
"Well I'll be damned," I muttered. Working tech, high or low like this, was hard to come by. Especially sensitive tech like old clocks.
"You done yet old man?" Sten shouted. I looked over my shoulder at that little punk -- no respect, not from him or anybody -- and hell if he wasn't taking the pants off of one of those corpses! We're both scavs, I can understand the mind set...but pants?! I mean, sure, my clothes and his clothes were probably on some dead guy sometime in the past, but that doesn't mean I want to know for sure!
"What the hell are you doing?" I shouted back, even though I knew exactly what he was doing. Who'd buy pants covered in blood anyways?!
"What? He ain't using them no more! C'mon, let's get moving already! The sun's going down; I don't want to be stuck lost in this place at night."
"Yeah, sure, fine. Just leave the pants for crying out loud!"
Sten might not be the brightest kid out there. Hell, I know he isn't. And he ain't the best scav either. Or shot. Or cook. Or, well, anything. But he's my partner, and damnit if trusting somebody ain't worth him being not particularly great at anything. I just wish he'd stop separating the corpses from their clothes. There's just some things you don't scavenge.
That clock wasn't one of them. The statue looked almost like it was offering the clock, and who was I to offend him? I figured I could find someone to buy the thing. Too bad it wasn't in as good a shape as I thought originally. The moment I picked it up, it stopped ticking. Like I said, those things are delicate. Even if the building hadn't been scorched, that didn't mean it hadn't been shaken during the firestorm. Reminded me of the pump back in Slim Grove -- as long as nobody touched it, looked at it, thought about it, knew it existed, it might run smoothly. There was an old war poster on the side of the pump building of some sinking clown -- "Someone talked!".
We didn't waste any time getting out of there. Even if the sight of corpses and blood doesn't bother you after a point, you never really get used to the smell. Outside, the sun had sunk behind the buildings, but the light was still coming through the same cracks and gaps the wind did. Flooded in orange light, the ruins didn't look as bad. Of course, even softened, none of the buildings looked as good as the one we had just come out of. Still, it didn't look quite as...dead. You could almost believe it was just run down or abandoned.
It didn't sound as dead either. Just as we started walking back towards the camp, we heard a shriek. I couldn't tell where it was coming from -- the damn thing was echoing through the entire city -- but it sounded much too close for comfort. It also sounded like something dying, or being hacked up to pieces. I had never heard anything like it before, and it scared the hell out of me.
"Move it old man!" Sten shouted over his shoulder; he had already taken off. This time, I listened. Seeing dead things is one matter, because whatever caused it was in the past. But that sound was here, right now, and we were both running as fast as we could. Torn up roads, wrecked cars, fallen rubble, we leapt and scrambled over all of it in a mad rush. In that sort of situation, you don't really know where the bad thing is, but it's not that hard to imagine it's right behind you, chasing after you. There wasn't any wind anymore -- it was just that thing breathing down your neck.
Sten was a lot more level than me, so even if I was the one with the magic map-drawing box on my wrist, I followed after him. As long as he was taking us away from that noise. The scream came back, and it was louder. I wanted to turn around, and start shooting at whatever the thing was. I wanted to unload my gun into the thing's chest until I was sure it was dead, and then run twice as fast. I had to keep reminding myself that there wasn't anything behind us, there was just something in the same city as us. Not that it made me feel any safer.
It was just one long fear-driven blur. The first thing I remember clearly is reaching the room on the second story where we were making camp. First thing we did was turn around, and aim our guns at the door. Besides busting down through the ceiling, it was the only likely way to get in. I crouched down behind the fallen desk with a hole in the front, Sten dropped down onto his belly and stuck his arms out.
Whatever it was screamed again, louder and closer now. I nearly pulled the trigger and shot at the thin air in the doorway. Waiting was worse than running from it, because had cornered ourselves, and it was harder to start running again than it was to just keep running.
Outside, there was a noise. A pebble or some other small thing, falling down onto the ground, or tumbling through a hole. Normally, I wouldn't even pay attention to it; this whole place was falling apart. But that shriek hadn't been normal, and the pebble was now a messenger of something trying to eat me. I could still hear that shriek echo through the walls. Or maybe just my memory. Either way, my hands were shaking even more.
Probably a minute later, Sten said, without looking away from the door, "So are we staying or going?"
If it had been me running first, we would have already been on our way to Slim Grove. And even cooled down a bit, I still wanted to bolt out that door and keep running until we were the hell out of the city. But we still had to worry about the pump. "We still gotta find something to fix the pump. We're staying for two more days." Two days running, and two days searching already. Seemed like as good a number as any.
"That's a real dumb-ass idea, y'know."
"Yeah, I know. Two more days. We should be good if it's just two more days." I don't know how I figured that, but I was ready to believe it regardless.
Sten was too, apparently. "Two days," he said, cementing it.
I haven't been getting enough sleep. Just when we get done with wolves and rad scorps, we get this shriek. Maybe it was just in my head, but I swear I heard it a few more times last night. Each time I'd woke up, grab my gun, and aim at the doorway. I didn't check to see if Sten was up, I didn't check what time it was, I just kept looking at that door. And even after it was clear nothing showed up after those shrieks, I still couldn't sleep through them. I'd just lay there, holding my gun, until I couldn't hold up my eyelids anymore. Probably happened four or five times. The whole night was just one long daze. You don't get rest from a daze.
Hell, maybe it's the floor that was the problem. This isn't my floor, and my back's too old to break to fit a different one. This wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't raining. We could go out then, find some sort of part for the pumper -- and this would all go a lot faster if we knew just what it was we were looking for; something more specific than "tech in good shape" -- and I'd be back on my floor in just two or three days. I'll admit it, I'm not much of a traveler, not anymore.
But the fact is, it was raining when we woke up, and some five hours later it's still raining, and it'll probably be raining for the better part of the daylight hours. At least there haven't been any shrieks today. We still only have tomorrow left to search, though. Even if we can't hear them anymore, those yells weren't something you forget easy. Sten's keeping his gun a lot closer to his hand than he normally would in a card game against just skill-less me. And I've been catching his eyes darting out the side wall every now and then, and I know he doesn't loose his attention in cards to anybody. He'll stay here today, and he'll still be here tomorrow, but the day after that, he'll bolt come daylight and I'll be just a half-step behind him.
Even drowning in rain, the ruins managed to sound dead. All the rain managed to do was muffle and distort the wind, not kill it. And even if I can't see out that side wall through all the clouds and water, I remember what this place looks like. Maybe if we ran into just a bug, a rat, a gecko -- and if it were in heat, all the better; at least then I'd know that shriek wasn't anything to worry about for a few months -- or just something, it wouldn't be that bad. I could pretend that this place wasn't empty and almost entirely dead.
But there's just me, Sten, and whoever was yelling yesterday. Maybe it is a ghost; lord only knows how many people died here in the firestorm. And at least twenty afterwards. It really is a dumb-ass idea, waiting around here when we could become the next two in that category. But hell, Slim Grove's just some little farm and scav town in the middle of, literally, nowhere. That's why I settled down there in the first place. Moving anywhere would be a long enough trip to be a very risky proposition, and staying there with no water would be death. We need to fix that pump. It would help if any of us had a clue how to make a well, or set up a water convoy, or something, but all we are is farmers and scavengers. We can't farm up water (I've seen cactus farmers, but I don't think that would work), but we might be able to scavenge it fixed.
"You know, you're pretty lucky," Sten said, as he gracefully kicked my ass again with a nine and an eight.
"How's that?" I asked, as I looked over the cards I had left. Rough estimate, I'd say there were at least 55 left in my hand. I'm so bad at this, I think I just broke one of the card laws of physics or something.
"I can't shoot two guns at once, and I don't want to see you naked, so the only thing I could take off of your pitiful ass is that clock."
"Fuck you," I said, grabbing the next card that would loose to his from the pile.
"I mean, at least I try to scav stuff that's useful, you know?"
"Who the hell is gonna use some corpse's bloodied pants, huh? The only freaks you could sell those to would probably pay in chicken hearts or something."
"Maybe I know some guys who want those hearts, hey? I've got connections, old man."
"Then why don't you connect us with somebody who can fix the pump?"
"Would you want to know that your water was brought to you by a guy who's trading for chicken hearts?"
He had a point, for once. Sten does that sometimes, but not all that often. Like just a moment ago, for instance. That clock is not useless; it would go great with some of my boxes, and my...actually, that's it, all I have is boxes. I sleep on the floor, for crying out loud!
But there's something about that clock...I don't know what, exactly, but it isn't just some useless old piece of junk. Otherwise I wouldn't have kept the thing tucked under my arm as we ran like crazy the other day. Otherwise, I would have pried the damn thing open already out of boredom. I don't know. The closest I came to that was fiddling with it last night as the sun set. I managed to get it started a few times, but after the sun set, I just gave up. It wouldn't stay fixed.
Back when I was still running around like a wild dog, I used to get these hunches. I didn't get them often, but every now and then, POW!, it would hit me in the back of my head so hard I thought I had been shot. This one I have right now, it's more like somebody's poking me; it's weak, and it's muffled by hair (in my mind, I can still have hair), but it's still there. This isn't unimportant, I know that much.
I checked my working clock -- one thousand and one uses for a PIPBoy, and all I could think of were maps and time -- and it was still today. I checked my busted wall, and it was still raining. Tomorrow, we'll find something. We'll search all over, then we'll find something and get the hell out of here, before something finds us.
Okay, I'll shut up now. Part 1 of...dunno yet. Read, peonic people.
---
Outside, it was still raining. It had been raining before me Sten even woke up. Judging by the clouds -- they're black and heavy, and it's dark as night underneath them -- it will still be raining when we go to sleep.
It wasn't the rain that was the problem. Hell, I'll take any water I can get, especially before the wet season starts. But you couldn't see a thing outside. You could use torches, assuming you had them (which we didn't), but they wouldn't last long in the rain. There were plenty of flashlights in a store (ex-store, at least) we hit yesterday, but no batteries. All it amounted to was a bunch of junk.
Kind of fitting that we weren't outside searching for more junk. If there was water, there wasn't any need for us to go searching. But the rain'll end eventually, and then we'll still be weeks away from the wet season with a busted water pumper. And it wouldn't matter how many buckets we had back at Slim Grove, because we could never catch enough rain to last us. Hell, it would get stagnant even if we did. Either you had a well, a river, a convoy, whatever the hell those vaults used, or something, or you were dead. It was that simple.
I tossed a card from my deck into the drop pile. The card game we were playing was just another stupid way to waste time, which is all we could really do right now. There's two piles, a drop pile and a grab pile. You start off with five cards each, and you play two each hand. Small hand dumps the smaller of his played cards in the drop pile, and big hand gets to put in two of his choice. Then you pick up a card from the grab pile, and go again, and again, until somebody doesn't have any cards, or you start shooting at each other (this is considered a draw). It's just a stupid little game, but it kills time. A lot of it.
It was our third day in the dead city. There was probably a name for this place once, but there isn't anybody around to remember it. And Slim Grove'll be like that soon, too, if nobody finds any parts for the pump. Me and Sten aren't in this by ourselves; we -- Slim Grove, that is -- have teams going to every busted-up, burnt-out, dead-ass pile of metal that used to be a city in the area. The pump's pre-war, and it's tech. We have a guy who can fix it, we just need the parts. Me and Sten left five days ago. Some of the others might be back by now, and maybe the pump's "working" again. But we can't go back, not until we tear up every damned corner of this place. Not until we're sure there isn't anything here, or we find something.
Sten tossed in his two cards, and asked, "What time is it?"
The joys of owning a working PIPBoy are many. First and foremost, everybody knows that you are their personal clock service. "Bit past noon," I said, grabbing my next hand. Talking was never a big part of the card game -- there isn't much worth talking about anyways. Just the rain stopping us from doing our damn job. Water's killing our town ahead of schedule; what a thought.
It's been three days, two and a half maybe, since we finally reached this big hollow debris. The two days before that were loads of fun -- almost immediately after we step out of Slim Grove, radscorp's start chasing us. The thing about rad scorps is that they don't run as fast as humans, but if you slow down you'll find out that they still run pretty damn fast. That, and the fact that they have tough pinchers and very sharp tails. We lost them, eventually. Five minutes later, we find a pack of wolves. A hungry pack.
No luck at all, not now, not ever. Story of my life.
It was almost like the wolves and rad scorps were doing tag-chasing; the moment one stopped, the other picked up. Probably 9 out of 10 times those two days, we were running. We were still running when we got to the city. The strange part is, right after we got near the place, the wolves backed off. We kept running, but they pulled back, and turned around. I couldn't figure it out -- they chased us for two days, and then they just backed off?!
The way I see now -- now being a long wet stretch of time for me to think in -- the city must have been glowing once. The Geiger counter we have is, frankly, a piece of crap, but if it turns on, it works. After we managed to get it running, it sniffed the air all around, and decided the city was clean (as in, it probably won't kill you to touch a car). Of course, we only checked out of habit then, not because of the wolves. Anything hot can cool down; those wolves must have remembered this place was death a while ago.
Right now, this place is wet, and it's just another damn junk pile. For two days now we've been searching! Thank you universe for the stray porn mag's, and the fewer stray bullet mag's, but we came here for tech! The first day was a bust -- we only got here a few hours before nightfall. Disappointing, but when you've been scavenging for a while, you get used to delays. We set up camp inside one of the better looking metal piles, in a fairly clear room -- only an overturned desk and a few ruined chairs lying around -- and got a few hours of sleep that, amazingly enough, did not involve us waking up every five minutes because a wolf howled or a rad scorp clicked.
I remember thinking, as I went to sleep, it's because this place is dead. I didn't just mean that the city's nuked beyond recognition. I meant that, besides us, we didn't see a single living thing that first day. No geckos, no ghouls, no muties, no rats, no roaches, no nothing. Just a bunch of wrecked cars, a lot of crumbling buildings, and a wind going through them like something out of a nightmare. I don't believe in ghosts or that stuff, but when I can hear them screaming on the wind, when I can see the burnt remains of their shadows on the walls...well, I can tell why no one lives here.
Sten grinned for a moment. Just long enough to let me know he was gonna kick my ass this hand as well. He flipped his two cards over -- a K and a 10.
"Goddamnit," I muttered. The best I had was two 5's. And I'll admit it, I am not a card player. I'm too damn old to start learning anyways. At least we weren't playing for cash. The only things I really have to offer that he'd take are my gun -- no way in hell I'm giving that up -- and my knife. And maybe that clock I found.
I found it yesterday, our fourth day here. We started searching again as soon as the sun came up. Our "searches" were just us going into every stable building we came across, and digging around. The good tech is always either higher up, or down low, somewhere underground. We've spent most of our time underground, or walking around in the roads. Going up high is risky. If something goes wrong, and you're stuck, your only real choice is to fall. And it doesn't matter how good a rope you have, or how good you are at climbing, because something can, and probably will, go wrong again. At least underground, you can dig your way out. And even the deepest hole around here is closer to ground level than the average building is.
But there was one we building we climbed up high, all the way up to the fifth floor. I don't think I've ever seen a building so stable be so tall before. And it wasn't just stable -- it looked like it hadn't been touched by the firestorm. I've seen places like this before -- by pure luck, I guess, they miss the worst of the storm. This one was the luckiest of all, by far.
The inside looked as clean as the outside did. There wasn't any junk lying around, no fallen chunks from the ceiling, no torn-up tiles, the walls weren't jagged or missing large pieces. In fact, there wasn't really anything in there at all. The owners probably got nuked before they could move in.
There wasn't a basement, so we went up. Judging by the first floor, there wasn't a good chance we'd find any tech, but at least we knew it had a view. It was better than just walking around at random. First three floors, there wasn't anything. The walls, the floor, all bare. It was like somebody made an exhibition of "clean". No luck at all. The fourth floor had some wooden crates tossed all over the place. There wasn't anything inside them. Reminded me of my house. We kept climbing towards the view, since it was obvious this place didn't have any tech.
The fifth floor was just one big empty room like the rest of the floors were. Nobody bothered putting up dividers or anything I guess. The first thing I noticed were these two statues in the rear of the room. Just a long empty floor, a really poorly made one at that, and then statues? It threw me off for a second. They were both made out of something colored dark gray. Don't ask me why, but somebody had dressed them up in these brown robes, real big ones that covered just about everything besides their arms. Each one had their arms out, and was holding...something. I couldn't make it out, since the sun was starting to come in through a window beside the two.
Sten noticed the bodies on the floor first. He never had any culture anyways.
And damn my old eyes, there must have been twenty or so. I probably didn't notice them at first because they were the same color as the floor -- dark reddish brown. Dry blood. There were a few spots where the floor wasn't stained, but there weren't many.
"Time to go," Sten said. It was a good idea. A shame that I ignored it.
Sten kept yelling at me for us to get out of there, but I wanted to at least check out the window, and find a place to go to next. Convenient that I picked one at the far end of the room, near the statues. It happened to have the best, unobstructed view of the city. But I also happen to be full of shit sometimes. Sten eventually shut up, and started looking through the bodies for anything worthwhile. Once you get over the shock, dead bodies aren't that big of a deal. Of course, when you don't know who made them, you never get real comfortable with the things.
I looked out the window long enough to decide that I had no clue how to get to most of the buildings I could see. The statues held my attention for a bit longer. There were still two, and I still didn't have a clue why they were wearing real clothes. Somebody probably thought it was artistic, or some bull like that. If they didn't look so damn heavy for the weather -- always a variation of hot, warm, burning, how did it drop down to 10 below overnight?, and just too damn bright -- I probably would have taken them. I couldn't see if the statues had faces underneath the shadows from their hoods, and I didn't really care enough to check.
What really caught my eye was what was in their hands. The first one, facing the stairs we had come up through, was holding a wood pole, about seven feet tall I'd guess, upright in front of him --hell, carved rocks can be people too, right? -- with both arms. Even without a face, the statue looked impatient. I was getting antsy just looking at it myself. The second one had his back to the other one's left. He had his hands extended, cupped in front of his stomach. There was a round clock resting there. Wood, old-looking, and, amazingly enough, still ticking.
"Well I'll be damned," I muttered. Working tech, high or low like this, was hard to come by. Especially sensitive tech like old clocks.
"You done yet old man?" Sten shouted. I looked over my shoulder at that little punk -- no respect, not from him or anybody -- and hell if he wasn't taking the pants off of one of those corpses! We're both scavs, I can understand the mind set...but pants?! I mean, sure, my clothes and his clothes were probably on some dead guy sometime in the past, but that doesn't mean I want to know for sure!
"What the hell are you doing?" I shouted back, even though I knew exactly what he was doing. Who'd buy pants covered in blood anyways?!
"What? He ain't using them no more! C'mon, let's get moving already! The sun's going down; I don't want to be stuck lost in this place at night."
"Yeah, sure, fine. Just leave the pants for crying out loud!"
Sten might not be the brightest kid out there. Hell, I know he isn't. And he ain't the best scav either. Or shot. Or cook. Or, well, anything. But he's my partner, and damnit if trusting somebody ain't worth him being not particularly great at anything. I just wish he'd stop separating the corpses from their clothes. There's just some things you don't scavenge.
That clock wasn't one of them. The statue looked almost like it was offering the clock, and who was I to offend him? I figured I could find someone to buy the thing. Too bad it wasn't in as good a shape as I thought originally. The moment I picked it up, it stopped ticking. Like I said, those things are delicate. Even if the building hadn't been scorched, that didn't mean it hadn't been shaken during the firestorm. Reminded me of the pump back in Slim Grove -- as long as nobody touched it, looked at it, thought about it, knew it existed, it might run smoothly. There was an old war poster on the side of the pump building of some sinking clown -- "Someone talked!".
We didn't waste any time getting out of there. Even if the sight of corpses and blood doesn't bother you after a point, you never really get used to the smell. Outside, the sun had sunk behind the buildings, but the light was still coming through the same cracks and gaps the wind did. Flooded in orange light, the ruins didn't look as bad. Of course, even softened, none of the buildings looked as good as the one we had just come out of. Still, it didn't look quite as...dead. You could almost believe it was just run down or abandoned.
It didn't sound as dead either. Just as we started walking back towards the camp, we heard a shriek. I couldn't tell where it was coming from -- the damn thing was echoing through the entire city -- but it sounded much too close for comfort. It also sounded like something dying, or being hacked up to pieces. I had never heard anything like it before, and it scared the hell out of me.
"Move it old man!" Sten shouted over his shoulder; he had already taken off. This time, I listened. Seeing dead things is one matter, because whatever caused it was in the past. But that sound was here, right now, and we were both running as fast as we could. Torn up roads, wrecked cars, fallen rubble, we leapt and scrambled over all of it in a mad rush. In that sort of situation, you don't really know where the bad thing is, but it's not that hard to imagine it's right behind you, chasing after you. There wasn't any wind anymore -- it was just that thing breathing down your neck.
Sten was a lot more level than me, so even if I was the one with the magic map-drawing box on my wrist, I followed after him. As long as he was taking us away from that noise. The scream came back, and it was louder. I wanted to turn around, and start shooting at whatever the thing was. I wanted to unload my gun into the thing's chest until I was sure it was dead, and then run twice as fast. I had to keep reminding myself that there wasn't anything behind us, there was just something in the same city as us. Not that it made me feel any safer.
It was just one long fear-driven blur. The first thing I remember clearly is reaching the room on the second story where we were making camp. First thing we did was turn around, and aim our guns at the door. Besides busting down through the ceiling, it was the only likely way to get in. I crouched down behind the fallen desk with a hole in the front, Sten dropped down onto his belly and stuck his arms out.
Whatever it was screamed again, louder and closer now. I nearly pulled the trigger and shot at the thin air in the doorway. Waiting was worse than running from it, because had cornered ourselves, and it was harder to start running again than it was to just keep running.
Outside, there was a noise. A pebble or some other small thing, falling down onto the ground, or tumbling through a hole. Normally, I wouldn't even pay attention to it; this whole place was falling apart. But that shriek hadn't been normal, and the pebble was now a messenger of something trying to eat me. I could still hear that shriek echo through the walls. Or maybe just my memory. Either way, my hands were shaking even more.
Probably a minute later, Sten said, without looking away from the door, "So are we staying or going?"
If it had been me running first, we would have already been on our way to Slim Grove. And even cooled down a bit, I still wanted to bolt out that door and keep running until we were the hell out of the city. But we still had to worry about the pump. "We still gotta find something to fix the pump. We're staying for two more days." Two days running, and two days searching already. Seemed like as good a number as any.
"That's a real dumb-ass idea, y'know."
"Yeah, I know. Two more days. We should be good if it's just two more days." I don't know how I figured that, but I was ready to believe it regardless.
Sten was too, apparently. "Two days," he said, cementing it.
I haven't been getting enough sleep. Just when we get done with wolves and rad scorps, we get this shriek. Maybe it was just in my head, but I swear I heard it a few more times last night. Each time I'd woke up, grab my gun, and aim at the doorway. I didn't check to see if Sten was up, I didn't check what time it was, I just kept looking at that door. And even after it was clear nothing showed up after those shrieks, I still couldn't sleep through them. I'd just lay there, holding my gun, until I couldn't hold up my eyelids anymore. Probably happened four or five times. The whole night was just one long daze. You don't get rest from a daze.
Hell, maybe it's the floor that was the problem. This isn't my floor, and my back's too old to break to fit a different one. This wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't raining. We could go out then, find some sort of part for the pumper -- and this would all go a lot faster if we knew just what it was we were looking for; something more specific than "tech in good shape" -- and I'd be back on my floor in just two or three days. I'll admit it, I'm not much of a traveler, not anymore.
But the fact is, it was raining when we woke up, and some five hours later it's still raining, and it'll probably be raining for the better part of the daylight hours. At least there haven't been any shrieks today. We still only have tomorrow left to search, though. Even if we can't hear them anymore, those yells weren't something you forget easy. Sten's keeping his gun a lot closer to his hand than he normally would in a card game against just skill-less me. And I've been catching his eyes darting out the side wall every now and then, and I know he doesn't loose his attention in cards to anybody. He'll stay here today, and he'll still be here tomorrow, but the day after that, he'll bolt come daylight and I'll be just a half-step behind him.
Even drowning in rain, the ruins managed to sound dead. All the rain managed to do was muffle and distort the wind, not kill it. And even if I can't see out that side wall through all the clouds and water, I remember what this place looks like. Maybe if we ran into just a bug, a rat, a gecko -- and if it were in heat, all the better; at least then I'd know that shriek wasn't anything to worry about for a few months -- or just something, it wouldn't be that bad. I could pretend that this place wasn't empty and almost entirely dead.
But there's just me, Sten, and whoever was yelling yesterday. Maybe it is a ghost; lord only knows how many people died here in the firestorm. And at least twenty afterwards. It really is a dumb-ass idea, waiting around here when we could become the next two in that category. But hell, Slim Grove's just some little farm and scav town in the middle of, literally, nowhere. That's why I settled down there in the first place. Moving anywhere would be a long enough trip to be a very risky proposition, and staying there with no water would be death. We need to fix that pump. It would help if any of us had a clue how to make a well, or set up a water convoy, or something, but all we are is farmers and scavengers. We can't farm up water (I've seen cactus farmers, but I don't think that would work), but we might be able to scavenge it fixed.
"You know, you're pretty lucky," Sten said, as he gracefully kicked my ass again with a nine and an eight.
"How's that?" I asked, as I looked over the cards I had left. Rough estimate, I'd say there were at least 55 left in my hand. I'm so bad at this, I think I just broke one of the card laws of physics or something.
"I can't shoot two guns at once, and I don't want to see you naked, so the only thing I could take off of your pitiful ass is that clock."
"Fuck you," I said, grabbing the next card that would loose to his from the pile.
"I mean, at least I try to scav stuff that's useful, you know?"
"Who the hell is gonna use some corpse's bloodied pants, huh? The only freaks you could sell those to would probably pay in chicken hearts or something."
"Maybe I know some guys who want those hearts, hey? I've got connections, old man."
"Then why don't you connect us with somebody who can fix the pump?"
"Would you want to know that your water was brought to you by a guy who's trading for chicken hearts?"
He had a point, for once. Sten does that sometimes, but not all that often. Like just a moment ago, for instance. That clock is not useless; it would go great with some of my boxes, and my...actually, that's it, all I have is boxes. I sleep on the floor, for crying out loud!
But there's something about that clock...I don't know what, exactly, but it isn't just some useless old piece of junk. Otherwise I wouldn't have kept the thing tucked under my arm as we ran like crazy the other day. Otherwise, I would have pried the damn thing open already out of boredom. I don't know. The closest I came to that was fiddling with it last night as the sun set. I managed to get it started a few times, but after the sun set, I just gave up. It wouldn't stay fixed.
Back when I was still running around like a wild dog, I used to get these hunches. I didn't get them often, but every now and then, POW!, it would hit me in the back of my head so hard I thought I had been shot. This one I have right now, it's more like somebody's poking me; it's weak, and it's muffled by hair (in my mind, I can still have hair), but it's still there. This isn't unimportant, I know that much.
I checked my working clock -- one thousand and one uses for a PIPBoy, and all I could think of were maps and time -- and it was still today. I checked my busted wall, and it was still raining. Tomorrow, we'll find something. We'll search all over, then we'll find something and get the hell out of here, before something finds us.
