When Kathy woke up again, there was already a fire burning nearby. She looked around, found herself lying on a dusty old couch in a gray, burned-out living room caked in grime and debris. There were glass shards all over the floor, half of them layered with ancient gray film. The rest of the company was seated around the room, except for Dimanche, standing guard by the broken window, peering outside.
Byron was seated closest to her, back against the couch by her feet, head hung down. He must have heard her move, as he shifted around to look dully at her. "Hey," he said wearily. "Welcome back." Kathy grunted, sat up clutching her head.
"Where are we," she asked, taking note that everyone was once more dressed as they had been when the first came to the Gray Wastes.
"No idea," Byron said, "though from the looks of it outside, some kind of blasted city. There's three Gieger counters in the kitchen on the table, along with a few skeletons seated around the table. I'm thinking post-nuclear war from the way things look." He sounded tired, and she knew why; they'd just lost one of their own, and for her, the loss was personal. She'd become fast friends with the cyclops during her first stay in Ether. Now that he was gone, she felt her grip on the magic of being in that mystical realm slip a little more.
Senta lay on his side across the room, staring off at nothing. "They ambushed us," he snarled, his face pinched in fury. "We should have just destroyed them when we had the chance."
"We never would have learned about the door then," Daggeuro said sitting by an archway which Kathy saw led into the kitchen. She got up and walked over toward the kennin warrior, peeking into the other room. The skeletons Byron had mentioned were there, sitting in the chairs around a simple red round table, hands all locked together. Two parents, three children, the smallest perhaps only five or six at the time they died. Their clothes were rotting, falling away. Nuclear wind, she thought as she looked at them. They knew what was coming and spent their last moments in prayer together. Is this what awaits us? She shivered, looked down at Daggeuro. He looked up at her and silently nodded. "I know," he said quietly.
Kathy strolled into the kitchen then, trying not to look directly at the skeletons. On the table sat three blocky little gray metal gadgets, little plastic bunny ears mounted on top. A note had been scrawled on a yellowed piece of paper next to them. 'Keep yourself from catching radiation sickness, and the green door to the north will open for you. Love, Quoth.' She snatched the paper, wadded it up, and threw it aside with a muttered curse for the bird.
Kathy walked back into the living room, where Dimanche had one hand held up for silence, his other hand glowing with dim blue light. Everybody had gone utterly still, and as Kathy started easing back toward the kitchen, she spotted movement through the window. From where she stood, she could see out to a rubble-strewn street, and what she believed was a humanoid shape moved in a quick crouch from behind a flipped over car to a pile of concrete and brick waste only twenty feet from the house they were in.
She ducked back around the corner and listened closely, taking her bow and an arrow in hand. Byron darted into the kitchen then, hellfire shotgun in hands, staying crouched low against the opposite side of the archway. A voice called out from outside, "Hello? Is there anybody in there?" Byron looked to Kathy, who used the arrow to press for silence against her lips.
Movement then, as something rough scraped over the windowsill and Baron Dimanche shouted, "Remain where you are! Remain!" Blue light flashed along with a surprised shout, and she and Byron swept around to discover a lone human, dressed in cobbled-together leather and metal armor, held flat on the floor by pulsing blue magic. Dimanche towered over the wide-eyed man, a grizzled, bearded man with tufts of hair falling out all over his head. His cheeks were blotchy with red marks, and his exposed left forearm bore numerous scars and a mangled tattoo of a lion.
Daggeuro and Senta approached, the kennin warrior taking some sort of high-tech rifle from the prone man's right hand, Senta patting him down and removing his belt and several smaller weapons. They tossed these toward Byron and Kathy, who let them skid across the grimy kitchen floor. When the man was disarmed, Dimanche released his magic, but kept green fire in his left hand at the ready.
"Holy fuck," the man rasped, visibly shaking. "This is too weird." He grunted, got to his feet, staring in disbelief at Daggeuro and Senta. "I ain't never seen muties like you two. Or are those costumes?" He reached for Senta's face, and the gotrin assassin snatched his hand, snapping one of his fingers with a violent crunch. The human howled and dropped to his knees, clutching at his injured hand.
"Keep your paws to yourself," Senta snarled. The human didn't remain cowered, however. He instead suddenly shifted his weight, and with his injured hand, punched Senta squarely in the balls, dropping him like a sack of rocks. Daggeuro and Byron were quickly upon him, pinning the man down until Dimanche could reuse his holding spell. The voodoo man flexed his fingers, floating the man over to the couch and bending him into a seated position.
"That was unwise, friend," Daggeuro said. "What's your name?"
"Jack Stamper," the human replied.
"And do you belong to any kind of group or unit?"
"I'm an unofficial ally of the Route 18 raider tribe," he said. "I camp with them, fight alongside them sometimes, but I'm mostly a free agent. I go where I want, stay out of the Brotherhood's way."
"The Brotherhood," Kathy asked. "Who are they?" The man blinked at her, flabbergasted. "We're new here," she added.
"Clearly. The Brotherhood of Steel," Stamper said, and Byron slapped his leg and laughed aloud.
"I knew it! I knew this was all really familiar! Guys, I know where we are!" All eyes from the company fixed upon him. "We're in Fallout!"
Byron took everyone into the kitchen, Dimanche setting his spell to hold Stamper down on the couch while they conversed. He explained that they were within the world of a video game series called Fallout, of which he was an enormous fan. Kathy remembered watching him play the gams on his computer. "Aren't raiders bad guys," she asked when he paused.
"Nominally, yes," Byron said. "But this guy said they're a tribe, and most of the sizable tribes can be reasoned with. They aren't exactly civilized, but it's a start. And I don't think we're exactly in one of the game settings. This isn't D.C., at least, I don't think it is." He walked over to the archway into the living room and asked Stamper, "Hey, what city was this?"
"Boston," Stamper replied.
"Got it." He returned to the group, huddled by an ancient, unpowered fridge. "Okay, we're not in one of the games, unless it's an expansion I never heard of."
"So, you at least know enough to guide us," Daggeuro said. "Good. What do we do with Stamper?"
"Can't we just cut him loose," Kathy asked. "He seems like he could be more trouble keeping around than letting go, and I don't think we can just murder someone in cold blood."
"My balls feel otherwise," Senta groused. "Besides, if there are allies of his in the vicinity, he may well bring them back against us as retribution."
"I've got an idea," Byron said suddenly, grinning. "Look, this is his world, right? I mean, he's clearly a native. Why not ask him to act as our guide? It'd sure as hell beat trying to go out there without any knowledge of the area." They all nodded, and Dimanche led them back over to Stamper, kneeling down before him and smiling.
"Hey dere, my man," the voodoo spirit said amiably. "How would you like a job?"
Kathy and Byron hunkered into the cleanest bed they could find. The building they'd awoken in turned out to be a three-level apartment building, all three floors occupied by two-bedroom abodes. The Awakened humans claimed the second floor, while Daggeuro and Dimanche kept on the first floor, Stamper being watched closely by Senta on the top level.
The native human had been reluctant to accept working with them until Dimanche took a solid gold ingot from his bag and offered it as payment. Then, Stamper had become downright friendly. As mercenaries went, he was typical; all too helpful when money hit the table.
Byron didn't seem too concerned about Stamper, especially since he and Kathy had been charged with hanging onto the man's weapons until they'd all rested some and gotten ready to move out. Byron sat over by the window, a faded purple drape twitched aside so he could watch the city streets for signs of other inhabitants or passers-through. He let it go a moment, sighed. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart," he said softly. Kathy dared not speak yet. She had felt on the verge of breaking into tears again since splitting from the others, irrationally terrified that she wouldn't see them again.
So instead she nodded and rummaged through the bedroom closet, pulling out a stack of dried out old newspapers. She found a couple of crumbling magazines as well, giving them a careful once-over. She noted the date on one, a periodical entitled 'Guns Monthly'. "Says December 1955, but there's no way these guns were around then."
"It's not our world," Byron pointed out. "According to the Fallout mythos, that was about six or seven months before the bombs fell. The games are set about two-hundred years later, when people could logically start coming out of huge underground vault systems to reclaim the irradiated lands."
"So some places have power? Running water?"
"Some do, yeah," Byron said. "City this size, there's bound to be at least two or three opened vaults. But they tend to get overrun and claimed by gangs and tribes pretty quick." Byron snickered. "War. War never changes," he said in a mimickry.
"Ron Perlman?"
"First guess, very good."
"He has a very distinct voice. You made me sit through those Hellboy movies two or three times, so it's hard to forget it."
"Well, that line I just did is basically the tagline of the Fallout franchise. War never changes. And really, it doesn't. Of course, we're not really at war here. This is just a quest. Much different arrangement."
"Were we at war with The Chained One?"
"Yes, though that was a small-scale war. What you faced the first time you were in Ether was a mid-sized war. What we're on is a mission, a singular quest. The dragons, though? Daggeuro's army? That's a big war."
"Well, hopefully we can put an end to it by getting King Ovin free," Kathy said, finally giving up on the magazines and newspapers. She patted down the bed covers, pulled them back, and slipped into bed. "Come on. We should get some sleep while we can. I feel like we've been up for days."
Byron climbed in with her, and after making love quietly, they fell into a deep slumber. It would be the last good rest they got for a while.
Close gunfire awoke them unknown hours later, accompanied by explosions and flying debris crashing through the streets just outside. Kathy and Byron both rolled out of the bed, quickly getting dressed and heading out into the apartment's livin room. Daggeuro and Dimanche were there, moving toward them in a crouch, Senta and Stamper standing in the doorway of the stairwell between floors.
"Stamper says there's Brotherhood troops outside, fighting with raiders," Daggeuro whispered harshly under the echo of gunfire. "We need to stay together and keep quiet until they clear the area. When they're gone, we're leaving." Kathy and Byron nodded, hunkering down on the floor with the others to wait for the battle sounds to die down. Gunfire peppered the air, and not a small handful of bullets smacked into the building where they were holed up. Kathy could see Byron jump every time a bullet crashed through the building, keeping his body positioned between her and the wall facing the street.
It was almost six minutes later when they heard shouting in place of weapons' fire, angry-sounding men calling for situation reports. Someone named Blakely was ordered to check nearby buildings for recoverable technology, and another man called out for a 'run-sweep' traps. The company waited with baited breath as someone entered their building through the first floor apartment's front door, stomping about recklessly. Whoever they were, they left after only half a minute.
They spent another twenty minutes in silence before Stamper risked going to the living room window and using his binoculars to look around. He came back to the group quickly. "They're down the road, heading west. There's a lot of bodies out there, some still got packs on 'em. I give it another five minutes before we're clear."
After waiting it out, Daggeuro told Byron to fetch Stamper's weapons and hand them over. He did so, handing the plasma rifle over warily, but Stamper made no move against them. "All right," the native man said. "You said there's a green door you have to get to, right? North end of town?"
"That's right," Kathy replied.
"Well, I think I know what you mean, but getting there's going to be rough. There's a lot of rad pools between here and there, and it's heavy ghoul territory. Not civilized ones, either, ferals. They'll attack us on sight. You ready to deal with them?"
"We are," said Daggeuro. He drew out Boon and Bane, and followed Stamper as he led them outside. Kathy had her bow in hand, Dimanche kept green power swirling around his hands, Byron held his katana at his side, and Senta had a shuriken in each hand. Nobody made any sudden movements, letting Stamper lead them in a measured half-crouch to an overturned car, poking around the side, sweeping his sights from left to right.
Something roared off to the north, and he made a pained face. "Shit," he grumbled.
"Was that a deathclaw," Byron rasped.
"Oh, you have them where you're from?"
"No," said Byron, swallowing hard. "But I've seen pictures, read accounts." Stamper nodded, peeked around the end of the car again. He consulted a small device he pulled from his pocket, setting it on top of the car and waiting for the beast to let out another roar before checking it again. "What's it say?"
"Seven-hundred yards away, west-facing," said Stamper. "Fully grown. All right, if it's alone, we can take it easy, just overpower it. But sometimes these things travel in twos and threes. If that happens, we can't cluster together, or they'll just rush us. Now, what's the deal with your hands," he asked Dimanche.
"Fireballs at the ready," Dimanche said plainly, as if the answer should be obvious. Byron tapped Stamper on the shoulder and leaned close.
"He's got implants on his hands, nifty tech," Byron lied in a whisper.
"Okay, you and I will go out first, the archer here right behind us," he said, indicating Kathy with a tip of his head. "We've got range, so that's our advantage. Everyone else follows ten feet back, okay?"
"It's your city," Daggeuro said. Stamper and Dimanche led the way around, followed by Kathy, angling toward the lefthand sidewalk. The decrepit, blasted storefronts reminded her of old black and white television shows depicting every Suburban Haven U.S.A she'd ever seen, but with an air of sadness permeating the displays and merchandise. This world had moved on.
When the deathclaw lumbered into view down the street, coming out of an abandoned shoe store, Kathy felt her legs tremble. The creature was gargantuan, easily nine feet tall when stooped, with reptilian skin, overdefined muscles, and giant claws on its ape-like, dragging arms. Bull-like horns stood out on either side of its reptilian head, like a serpent crossed with a minotaur.
It stood there staring out across the street, chest heaving up and down as it breathed. Kathy, taking care not to move too quickly, pulled out te Geiger counter she'd taken. The levels were low, but present. She tucked it away, took slow, careful aim with her arrow.
Stamper stood to full height then and fired a bolt of green energy from his rifle, followed by Dimanche hurling two green fireballs. Kathy loosed her arrow right behind, and all four projectiles struck at once. The deathclaw roared as it was flung back through the front of the shop, but an instant later, it was bounding toward them, claws out at its side, shredded torso spraying blood everywhere.
Kathy's second arrow took it in the eye as Stamper's shot went wide and Dimanche conjured another fireball. It fell with a groan, twitching, claws gouging the concrete in deep furrows as it died. Kathy felt sick, but glad to be alive. The creature had survived a full barrage of attacks before going down, which spoke volumes to her of their toughness. She hoped like hell the thing had been a loner.
The others caught up a moment later, and they all moved to the still form on the street. Stamper pulled a machete from the back of his belt, hacking the clawed hands off at the wrist. He wrapped the bloody ends in rags and stuffed them in his backpack, grinning impishly at his new employers.
"Waste not, want not," he said. "I know a fellah collects these, pays plenty of caps for each pair brought to him. Won't help me much to let an opportunity like this slip by."
"Or you could have someone make them into weapons," Byron suggested offhandedly. Stamper looked him over gravely, though, nodding.
"You know, that might be pretty neat. These things can cut through even Brotherhood powered armor. That'd be handy, like a can opener." He chuckled and grabbed up his rifle, leading the way again. He stopped here and there to scavenge supplies off of dead raiders along the road, mostly sniping boxes of ammo, stripping energy weapons of their power cells.
At an intersection choked with rubble he stopped, using his binoculars to scout out the area. "Okay, when we cross over the pile, we're going to be in ghoul territory. The first big pool of irradiated water and oil is about five-hundred yards past. Now, it's gonna be pretty much light out from here on, not a lot of places to take cover. The north half of the city got hit hard by nuclear winds during the bombs, so the few places that look okay might fall in on themselves with too much knocking around. The important thing to remember is noise, sound. That's how feral ghouls hunt, mostly. They get close, they can see you, but mostly they listen to catch their prey. Any questions?"
Nobody said anything for a moment. Byron finally said, "Can we check our own rad counts with these counters?" Stamper nodded, took one that Kathy offered him. He flipped open a panel on the bottom, licked his finger, and pressed it against a small green pad under the panel. The Geiger counter crackled up to around sixty points. He pulled his finger off, closed the panel, reopened it, and handed it to Byron.
Everybody in the company followed suit. Their readings were all the same, twenty, except for Senta, who registered a seventeen. Gotrin were naturally resilient to all manner of disease and infections, and this apparently spread out to include radiation.
"Sickness starts to set in at a reading of around three-hundred, so we have to be careful," Stamper said. "It'd be minor, but in the New England Wastelands, even minor radiation sickness can be fatal. Let's go." He took point, leading them up over the rubble, and into a part of town choked with debris and signs of long-ago looting and fighting.
Kathy, already on edge, was made even more so when a floating sphere with antenna went hovering by, a grille speaker set behind face guard bars from a football helmet on its front. She took aim at it, but Byron reached over and lowered her hand gently. "Just an eyebot. They're harmless by themselves," he said. Kathy nodded, now even more alert for danger.
Senta's left foot accidentally struck an old soda bottle as they walked along, and when it broke against a fallen mailbox, the air was torn by savage, animal growls and snarls. Stamper crouched down, weapon held at the ready. "Ghouls coming," he said flatly. And so they were, seemingly from all directions, man-like creatures like running zombies with melting faces and yellowed teeth gnashing.
The attack lasted less than a minute, with blades and arrows flashing out, Stamper's plasma rifle blasting, the ghouls falling like so much kindling. When it was over, Kathy saw Stamper smiling, shaking his head. "God damn," he muttered. "That was the easiest time I've had with ghouls in a long time. You guys're good."
The company didn't linger, in case anything more threatening overheard the fighting and wanted to come see for themselves. They turned off of the main thoroughfare and onto a sidestreet to avoid a large pool of contaminated water, their Geiger counters clacking madly when aimed north. Heading west, they picked their way through ancient traffic jams, carefully avoiding large insects called radroaches, which seemed to ignore them largely. A few lethargic, mutated dogs strayed close, but one look from Daggeuro sent them running off with their tails tucked between their legs.
It was shortly after they turned north again that trouble fell upon them again. Stamper was in the lead, and as he took a step between two decrepit cars, they all heard something go 'click'. Kathy saw the tripwire falling away from his leg, and her eyes followed either end to shotguns rigged inside the husked out cars. Stamper managed to lean back in time to only get grazed by buckshot from the right-hand weapon, the worst bit a stray bit of shot ripping off half of his chin and beard. He screamed as he fell back, firing his plasma rifle blindly north.
A pair of wasteland raiders in spike shouldered armor came howling like animals from their hiding spot, assault rifles in hand. Dimanche threw out his right hand, a bolt of purple lightning taking one man square in the chest and hurling him away. Kathy fired an arrow at the other, but his armor stopped her projectile.
His armor was not so effective when Senta rolled forward and sprang up in front of him, both daggers stabbing up into his throat. The raider twitched a few times as the gotrin tossed him aside. Kathy looked over to Byron and Daggeuro, who had both been shot by the single burst Senta's victim fired. Their armor had held, though Byron winced as he put his hand over the crumpled bullet.
"Jesus that hurts," he whinged, plodding along behind Stamper once again. The native man had shot himself up with kind of syringe, and Kathy saw his wound already beginning to close in response. Handy, whatever that stuff is, she thought.
The company carried on.
She didn't like the idea, but Kathy agreed that what Stamper was proposing was their best option. They had come to a part of the city where the destruction from the bombs was worst, everything caved in on itself. They stood before an old school which had, miraculously, remained standing. They could get to the green door Stamper had seen a few days earlier by passing through the building.
He warned them that the place was a hotbed for ghoul activity, and that there were Glowing Ones inside, ghouls so flooded with radiation that they gave it off in waves. "Two minutes near a Glowing One can leave you feeling like you've been in an exposed reactor core for too long," he explained. "Other ghouls flock to them. If you see a bunch of ferals all clustered together, chances are good there's a Glowing One close by. I'm going old-school in there," he said, setting his rifle in a holster across his back, pulling his machete.
"I suppose dat's best," said Dimanche, drawing out the virulent green blade of Serpantus from its sheath. "We don't need de building collapsing on our heads." Stamper led them to a boarded over window along the front, pulling a loose one aside and slipping slowly, carefully within. Kathy went next, daggers in hand, looking around the darkened classroom they'd entered.
All was ajumble, desks and chairs strewn about haphazardly. The dried out remains of some poor wanderer lay in a heap in the center of the room, letting off the ancient, cinnamony scent of mummification.
Kathy pulled out her Geiger counter and set it to 'mute' on the readout. When she swept it around the room, the readings spiked toward the east end of the school, up around two-hundred. She estimated that they had about fifteen minutes to get through the building before they started feeling the effects of exposure.
Given his expertise in melee combat in enclosed environs, Senta took point. His enhanced vision, suited well to the dark, gave him another edge as he poked his snout out into the hallway. He silently waved them on after him, heading out and left. Daggeuro hung back long enough to put cloth mufflers on his metal boots before following them.
The corridor was wide and layered with old pictures hung in memorium of a school year passed hundreds of years earlier. Kathy tried to ignore the smiling faces of teenagers going on about their lives. These people had never been real, not for her, but she mourned for them anyway. She couldn't help it.
When she looked over to Byron, she could see he was struggling with something. It was plain in the way he kept his expression neutral, his movements deliberate. All of the little tells that he was barely keeping himself from flying into a manic episode were present, including his habit of pulling on his left earlobe absently. Every now and then he'd give it a good tug, explaining once that the sudden pain helped bring him back into the moment temporarily.
They needed him to keep it together. Senta stopped up ahead, having come to the edge of an open doorway. He peeked inside the room quickly, held one blade up behind him, and snuck inside. Kathy heard a wet 'thud', and he returned, knives bloodied.
A ghoul in the distance hissed, its noise echoing back and forth through the halls, then fell quiet. Her eyes now adjusted to the dimness inside the building, Kathy saw something moving down the hallway, at least a hundred yards away. It was a shambling ghoul in tattered clothes, and when it got seventy yards away, it turned around and shambled back the way it had come. When it went around the corner of another hallway intersection, Senta got moving again.
At a north-leading intersecting hall they stopped, and Kathy felt her heart immediately speed up. Perhaps twenty yards away, from a wide, squared doorway, sickly yellow-green light came wafting out- a Glowing One. The smell that accompanied the glow was awful, like burning human hair. She wondered how they hadn't smelled it earlier.
Adrenaline, heightens the senses, she thought. Daggeuro motioned for everyone to gather close to him, and when everybody was huddled in, he made three sharp, deft motions with his hands, and pools of darkness wrapped around them. "All right," he whispered, "we're hidden for a minute, two at most. Stick together, and move quickly."
The company, wrapped in concealing shadows, moved swiftly up the hall. As they passed what Kathy saw was the school gymnasium, she tried to count all of the feral ghouls gathered around the illuminated, skeletal Glowing One. There were, she estimated, at least two dozen of the sad creatures shifting aimlessly about it, feeding on its radiation.
And then they were past, going around another bend in the corridor. Fifty yards away stood an pair of battered blue steel doors with pressure bars, their way out. When they were ten yards away, Stamper stooped down and set a small metal disk on the floor, pressing a button on the side, which began to glow blue.
"Gel mine," he explained as he rejoined them, clustered at the doors. Senta was slowly pressing one of the bars in, trying to remain silent, so as not to alarm the nearby ghouls. "If they hear us and come after, they'll be glued down." That turned out to be unnecessary as Senta pushed the rear door of the school open, allowing them out into the city ruins north.
Hemmed in on all sides by towering wreckage, before them sat a kind of crater, filled with garbage metal and scraps of cloth. Ghoul bodies lay in various states of decomposition, riddled with bullets. Kathy looked at the sprawl, did a quick mental calculation, and said, "We're going to need to either put up shield spells or find some kind of scrap close by for cover. Some of these ghouls are only a few days dead."
"Probably a sniper in one of those apartment buildings," Byron said, pointing across the crater to two towering apartment complexes. "Hopefully they're not keyed in on us yet."
"Whether they are or not, shields are best," Daggeuro said. Dimanche pressed his palms together, and with a low thrum, a translucent bubble of purple energy wound out around the company. "How long, Baron?"
"Ten minutes, if de force is merely de weaponry of dis world," said the voodoo spirit. "If we aren't attacked, fifteen. Stamper, how far away is de green door you saw?"
"Not far past this crater, down a side street," said the native human. "But there's rad pools on both sides of the street. I had a good supply of Rad-X before, and now I've only got about three doses."
"That sniper'd have to have some too, then," Byron said. "Logically speaking. Otherwise he'd have to abandon that post before too long or risk overexposure." He narrowed his eyes, looking at the two buildings. Each one had twelve windows facing into the crater, but he discounted the first two floors out of hand. A sniper would want an elevated position to see better, reduce glare and blocking cover. If he went with the most logical outcome, the sniper would be in one of the top six windows. "We need to have him take a shot at us," he said.
"I t'ought we were trying to avoid being attacked," Dimanche retorted.
"We are. Just one shot, and I can hopefully pinpoint his position," Byron said. He took out a card and wrote on it hastily, held it in hand, ready for use. "On my mark, walk forward." Nobody argued, and after only seven paces, a rifle boomed, and the bubble flashed as it blocked the incoming bullet. Byron snapped out the card, and with a flash of orange light, he was holding a green metal rocket launcher, staggering under its weight. He took aim and fired, the rocket whooshing as it flew. It struck the wall just under a window on the right-hand building and exploded with a hellish roar of fire and destruction.
Someone screamed and fell from the gaping hole the rocket left. The company rushed forth and found the crisped body of a man, his sniper rifle melted in the blast to his hands and shoulder, or what remained of it. Dimanche grabbed Stamper, who yelped in alarm, and floated up toward the sniper's nest. Kathy waved the foul air of the smouldering corpse from her face and shook her head. "There should have been some other way," she groused.
"No time for that," Byron said, pulling out his Geiger counter and showing it to her. "We're already exposed right now. Remember what you said the note read; if we're sick, the door won't open for us."
Kathy grunted, still displeased, though she knew he was right. Quoth's games were cruel, savage nightmares that no one should be forced to endure. She had to wonder what sort of balancing force would be required of the universe to counter his wickedness and madness. "All the Saints," she muttered to herself.
"What's that," Byron asked.
"Nothing. Hey, Baron," she called up, cupping her hands around her mouth. "What's the word?" There was silence for a moment, followed by Stamper and Dimanche floating back down, the human smiling broadly. "I take it we got what we need?"
"And then some," Stamper said. He held up a military-style bag and shook it. "There's about a dozen doses of Rad-X in here, and twice as much Radaway. Bunch of cans of food too, though I'm guessing you guys won't need that."
"That'd be a no," Kathy said. Stamper pulled out a plastic box full of litte red pills, offered one to each party member. They dry swallowed the pills, after which he pulled out several individually wrapped syringes labelled 'Radaway'. Each member took one, administering the shots to themselves except for Byron, who had to have Kathy do his. He hated needles, but trusted her implicitly.
Soon they were moving again, heading north. When they got to the jumbled intersection where Stamper told them they would turn to find the door, he pivoted on his heels, weapon raised, aimed directly at Daggeuro. Kathy was about to dash in to take him with one of her daggers when the kennin warrior ducked, and Stamper fired his plasma rifle. Kathy looked back south, saw the ball of green force hit the Glowing One that had come out of the school after them a hundred yards away. She hadn't even heard it coming over the rising wind from the west.
"Rest of its pack'll be along after it soon," Stamper snapped. "Come on!" They made the turn onto a narrow side street choked with makeshift barricades from some long-gone expeditionary force, rushing along as fast as they could. Fifty yards on, Stamper stopped to face them. "Okay, this is where we split, folks. You go about three-hundred yards down, on the left, you'll see an old garage with a weird green door where a panel door should be."
"What about you," Kathy asked. "Where are you going?"
"Heh," he chuckled, demuring. "Lady, this is my world, and I suspect you folks don't belong in it. Have since I met you. I thought your friends here might be muties, but as soon as I saw their confusion, I knew I was wrong." He looked back up the street a moment, sighed. "I'll fire some rounds to draw the pack away. I remember this area pretty well, I'll be able to hide from them and sneak out."
"We thank you for your service as guide," Daggeuro said solemnly. "Go in peace and glory." The human nodded, and before anyone had time to think about this parting, the rest of the group took off. Either side of the street had been turned into trenches, in which pools of sickly green sludge pulsed out at them. Kathy felt her stomach tighten, but nothing more; the Rad-X was working.
She heard Stamper behind them hooting and cat-calling, drawing the ghouls after himself as they ran over debris and detritus. When they neared the garage, Kathy spotted movement coming toward them from the direction they needed to go- a Deathclaw, charging with its horns lowered.
Senta darted around and ahead of her, sliding on his side under the enormous creature, his daggers carving a bloody twin trail along its chest and belly. It reared up, roaring in frustration and agony. As it came back down, Daggeuro caught its neck between Boon and Bane, and with a flinch, decapitated the reptilian beast.
Kathy was the first to grab the handle of the door, and as she pulled it open, she felt the vacuum beyond tugging her through.
And once again, she drifted into darkness.