M71

(+)7

2075 ROBCO(R)

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

14302 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: "THE-WORST-THING-EVER"

INITIALISING….

SUCCESS!

STATUS

Battery Level: 42%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 92F

HEALTH

BP: 170/130

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 99.5F RR: 28

HR: 185

TIME

Day: 24 SEP. 2279

Time: 16:10

CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 76 F

Atmospheric Pressure: 750 mm

Background Radiation: 1.321 RAD

WARNING: Dangerous wasteland creature in range!

Yeah, no shit, Sherlock! Why don't you tell me my chance of survival as a percentage too!

I'd been tipping back in my chair when the wall exploded, so now I was sitting on my ass in a state of total mental shock, slowly butt-scooting my way backwards. The NCR soldier who I'd been sitting beside popped up, knocking his stool over in the process.

"Ayuda!" he shouted. He was shooting his rifle, but it wasn't making any noise. He screamed something about shit ammo and started yanking on the charging bolt.

Amongst the wreckage, Tandi tried to stand back up. How she survived an impact like that was beyond me, but I wasn't about to point that out. She turned her head to look at Gram.

"Gram, get the-" she started. Before she could finish, the big white reptile threw itself directly at her, knocking over the entire table and crushing Cook and Jas as Tandi rolled out of the way, trailing pink insulation foam behind her. Gram sprinted past me and started clambering up the stairs to the second floor, leaving poor Chomps sitting in stunned silence.

The deathclaw reared around to face Tandi, who had drawn a six-gun from her hip.

"Fuck off, cyka!" shouted Tandi, and emptied it directly into his face, shattering his jaw and blasting off his nose.

The gunshots, the shrieks of the injured beast, the dust that was gathering in the air... it was all so overwhelming! I'd never been so close to anything so dangerous, and my whole body was screaming at me to run for my life, but I just couldn't send the signals to my muscles. I couldn't move, couldn't shout, couldn't breath...

The beast lunged at Tandi again, and she caught him by his arm and snapped it against her leg, then grabbed onto his broken jaw and forced it into the back of his throat. He immediately swung his other hand at her, impaling her through her forearm and thigh. He probably would have disemboweled her in the next motion, but was interrupted by a sudden hail of gunfire.

My eardrums pounded as the soldier fired shot after shot from his now-functional rifle, striking the deathclaw all across it's back and arms, poking lots of inconsequential little holes in the thing. By the end of the magazine, I couldn't hear anything but a loud ringing, so I didn't even get to hear the soldier's scream as the Deathclaw reeled around and folded him against the wall, taking all the life out of his body and sending him tumbling to the ground in a way that made it clear that he'd not be getting back up. The beast stalked over to him...

And in Came chomps like a goddamn pro wrestler, swinging a stool over his head like a sledgehammer. The beast didn't even bother to turn around as it raked Chomps across his entire upper body with its good claw. I could see the blood running down his face as Chomps stumbled backwards into the fallen table and fell onto his back, trying to figure out which of his massive wounds to clutch as he writhed about with his legs in the air.

Then, the thing turned it's whole upper body to face me. Our eyes connected.

Have you ever been so scared that you choked on your own spit? Because, as the beast stared at me with its one remaining eye, I distinctly remember gagging so hard that I started choking on my own spit.

It started walking towards me- a big, ghost-white beast, stained all over with its own blood, all its parts hanging loose- and I involuntarily let out a mix between a wet cough and a squeal. More logic-defying noises escaped my mouth as I scrambled for the stairs, trying and failing to stand up in the process. But it wasn't me who the deathclaw was keying in on now- It was Gram, standing behind me on the stairwell with a laser gun.

"Cover your ears, Boy!" He shouted over the ringing, and I followed his advice. I pressed my hands against my ears and shut my eyes.

Next thing I felt was heat on my skin- wasn't no light, but there was heat alright! Heat and a noise like a can of sarsaparilla taking a fifty cal right in the center! Drops of hot liquid splashed across my skin.

Next thing that hit were the smells. Burning fat, a delicious dinner and clouds of gunpowder, pools of coagulating blood and bodily fluids; The sounds- screaming, shouting, sobbing, and there was that damn ringing in my ears! My head hurt too, and my skin was all hot and prickly. I swear I could feel my chest caving in, I was breathing so hard…

"Isaac! Isaac, get moving, people are dying! ISAAC!"

Someone hit me in the back of the head, so I turned around and bit them as hard as I could. I could taste blood so vividly, as they pulled their hand back, putting them off balance. I grabbed the wrinkled, bleeding hand and yanked it forward, pulling its owner down the stairs and onto the floor. Someone walked up to me and tried to say something to me so I started screaming as loud and hard as I could, until they backed away.

Then it struck me- the deathclaw was dead. It's head had been hollowed out, pieces scattered all over the room. No one was even paying attention to me as I beat the ever living shit out of Gram, who had probably just saved my life. They all had their own problems.

I was hyperventilating, I realized, and it was making my vision go dark around the edges. I tried to regulate my breathing as I scanned the room, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do first. But it was hard- so, so hard with all the ringing, and the prickly hot feeling on my skin and the static in my head!

Where to start? I started compiling a mental list of all the problems that I had to fix, or "doing triage," as my father would have said. In my head, it looked something like this:

I'd hurt Gram after he hit me in the back of the head, but he was already getting back up.

Cook was lying underneath a table, wheezing and trying to get it off her chest- she was probably having trouble breathing, but Jas was helping her at the moment, and she was making noise so it couldn't be that bad.

The NCR soldier was in a bad way, probably got his back broke. I couldn't tell if the blood all over his back was his or the deathclaws, which warranted a closer look, but there was still air going through his body so I'd put him on the back burner for now.

That left Tandi and Chomps, the two with the nastiest wounds. If the claw had hit his throat, Chomps would be dead very soon, if he wasn't dead already. I decided to deal with him first. Ignoring Gram's muttered insults, I stalked across the room and fell down on one knee beside the old man. There was a frightening amount of blood pooling around his head, and my heart rate picked up when I dragged him on his side and gave him a quick once over.

Three parallel gashes- One deep wound across his stomach, one relatively shallow one across his upper chest and collarbone, and one across his forehead that was bleeding profusely but which had stopped at the skull. I saw no signs of life-threatening bleeding, though his intestines were poking out through the stomach wound. I motioned towards Gram.

"Gemme a wet towel." In spite of what I'd done to him, he didn't argue with me, disappearing into the kitchen without a word. I looked back at Chomps. I'd been an idiot and left my medical kit in the cart, so my emergency treatment was going to have to be improvised. I didn't like that, but I wasn't about to leave any of the people in the room to go get the kit. I'd have to make do for the moment.

First step would be to remove the clothes around the evisceration. How was I going to do that? I couldn't just pull off his overalls. I'd have to cut through them. What options did I have for cutting? My utility knife was in my medical pouch. But, when they'd set the table, there had been steak knives…

Find a steak knife, I told myself, and started scanning the floor. I could faintly hear the back door open as Gram headed outside to pump water on a towel, which I'd use to dress the evisceration. Steak knife, steak knife…

Amidst the debris, I found a fork and steak knife lying together, so I took both just in case I ended up needing the fork for something. After putting a quick gash in the pale, unfeeling strip of skin on my forearm to get a feel for the knife's cutting edge, I leaned back over Chomps and slid the knife against his blood-soaked denim. It took a bit of force, but once I had cut through the tough edge, it became a lot easier to run my knife through the worn material. I cut out a rough square of cloth all around his chest, and carefully peeled it off his sticky, bloody skin. Poor man was conscious, I noticed, but he wasn't saying nothing. Just watching.

"Don't try and move. Your guts weren't ripped, but they might be if you start squirming. No matter how much it hurts, you gotta stand still," I said, tearing off the loose strip of overalls and bunching it up into a makeshift rag for later. It wasn't sanitary, but it'd have to do. 

Gram came back in shortly after, carrying several ragged towels soaked in water. I gave him a nod of acknowledgment and held my arms out for Gram to drop the towels into. Not stopping to check his trajectory, Gram tossed the load in my arms, and continued walking until he reached Tandi. He knelt down beside her.

"Toss me the pip boy!" He shouted. I was confused for a second, then remembered the medical profiles I'd created. Quick as I could, I logged off the pip-boy, and tossed it underhanded to Gram. I didn't wait to see if he caught it.

"Remember: Don't move," I said, laying the wet towel across Chomps's jutting intestines. He winced as the towel touched the wound, but he didn't squirm. Don't think there was much that could've made Chomps squirm. 

"You're doing great!" I told him, securing the towel around the edges. I checked the rest of his wounds. His airway was swell, and the leaks in his forehead and chest weren't gonna kill him. Which means he was as stable as he was going to get, without a stimpack. "I'll come back to you soon. I need to check the soldier…"

"No, Fuck that guy! Tandi's been thrown through a goddamn wall!" shouted Gram, but it sounded quiet next to the ringing in my ears. I rubbed my temples. Jas had gotten the table off of Cook, and was doing what I guessed to be a misguided attempt at CPR on her, for some reason. Probably because she was complaining about breathing? First things first, I needed to put a stop to that 

"Jas, does Cook have a pulse?" I asked, barely able to hear my own voice. Jas nodded. 

"Yeah, but she says that she can't breathe, so I'm doing-"

"Stop doing that! CPR is for dead people!" Jas didn't complain no more, instead standing up and going to examine the NCR soldier. If Gram was telling the truth, I didn't have time to worry about how Jas was going to screw him up, so I ignored her and hurried over to Tandi. Surprisingly, she was still conscious. She gave me a weak middle finger as I sat down.

"Helmet off- stop moving it if she complains about her neck," I said. Gram complied immediately. Tandi didn't have anything to say as the helmet came off, revealing her sweaty, mutilated face. There were no new injuries there, though it was still as shocking as ever.

"Where's it hurt, Tandi? Is your back okay?" I asked. She looked up at me like I was stupid.

"No, I'm completely paralyzed. Dumb whore..." I rolled my eyes.

"Surely, I am as dumb as they come! But, the pip-boy says you've got internal bleeding, and it's still figuring out where. Where're you hurtin' at?" Tandi laughed a little.

"Internal? Then it's in the right place." I shook my head and inspected her pip-boy image. There were so many warnings that it was impossible to try to interpret them all. I suddenly really wished I could read, even just a little more.

"Tandi, this is life or death! Where did it-" Suddenly, the image on the screen changed. The pip boy beeped, and a blinking warning sign appeared dead in the center of her character's chest. The BP stat, I noticed, was down from the last measurement.

"Y'have no idea how often people say that. Anyways, he hit me-" she started. I began to pull off her coat. I elbowed Gram in the shoulder, and pointed at the stricken woman.

"Strip her down. Tandi, please help as much as you can!" She gave me a suspicious look.

"And what if I don't want you exploring all up in my nooks-and-crannies?"

"Tandi, something is very fucking wrong! Help me take the armor off!" She clutched her wounded leg and growled at me.

"...Aggghhh, Fine! But I'll kill you afterwards."

Gram worked on taking off the armor supporting her back, while I removed her dented chest-plate. Once I'd gotten that free, I took off her shirt, Gram removed her baggy jeans, and we got to work freeing her armor harnesses. When one of the clips got stuck, I picked up my steaknife from the ground and sliced through the whole strap. It was surprisingly easy to cut through, I guess for emergency situations like this. Once I got that off, Tandi was left in her sportswear. I removed her chest wrapping on account of some bruising in that area. Her knickers weren't covering nothing up, so I left those alone.

The full picture was distressing, real distressing. Amongst Tandi's considerable collection of old scars, there were several huge, rapidly swelling patches of yellow, purplish skin all over her body, the biggest of which was right over her heart. I pulled my stethoscope off my neck and plugged it into my ears- had em backwards, got them in the right way and then checked around for her heartbeat, and got back a faint, muffled noise. Combined with her wormlike neck veins and the fact that I couldn't even get a pulse on her femoral at this point, that made Beck's Triad. Father always told me I'd never be able to diagnose tamponade like that on a real clinical exam, but here were all three symptoms, sticking out like a compound fracture.

"Oh no," I breathed. I tried to compose myself, but panic was already overtaking my mind. Before I even spoke, I could hear my voice cracking. "Jas! Get- uh, break into the wagon out back, and grab the orange bag and the other one, the other emergency-looking one. Bring em back fast!" Jas looked at her fallen companion, who she had sat up against the wall, then at the door, then at me. Slowly, she stood up, walked away from the unconscious soldier, and exited out the back door, picking up speed as she went.

Preparing myself for what came next, I placed the cold knife against Tandi's bare, swollen chest, and started counting ribs. One, two, three, four, five... The tip came to a rest beneath her right breast.

"What are you doing?" She asked. I pressed the knife a bit harder, seeing how hard I'd need to press to cut her sweaty skin. Not very. A drop of blood seeped out from under the knife.

"There's blood gathering in the lining around your heart, Tandi. I gotta open your chest up to fix you." Tandi's eyes opened wide.

 "What- NO!"

I felt her grab onto my wrist, but she was late; I'd already abandoned any doubts that might've been left in my head and punched my knife through her chest, right by her sternum. A primal scream filled my ears as I dragged the blade through the layers of skin and fat, all the way to her shoulder blade. I shoved my hand into her intercostal space.

"Spread her ribs and hold 'em," I grunted. Gram made a face.

"Oh, Christ..." Tandi continued to shriek in pain and squeeze my wrist as Gram spread the wound like a clam shell. I tried to wrap my fingers around her pulsating heart, but couldn't quite get at it. I pushed her lung aside.

"Stop it! Da idi ty, fuck you! Otvyazhis'!" Tandi cried, but I didn't stop. I couldn't. It had to be done, or her pericardium would fill up with blood and squeeze her heart til it stopped beating. I kept digging around as the blood coursed over my hands and arms; I was slick up to the elbows with it. 

"Anyone got a flashlight?" Gram shook his head. I swore and spit on the ground. That was gonna make this next part a lot harder.

Tandi kept on hollering and thrashing as I tried in vain to get a grip on the pericardial sac without also grabbing the throbbing heart inside. My fingers were too slippery to pinch it, so I pulled the dinner fork out of my pocket and hoisted the sac up that way. It slipped off the fork a couple times before I could get it in a good position, but once I had it pulled taught, I didn't waste any time opening it up between the phrenic nerves- Tandi was dying quick. She looked like she'd been drained by a vampire, and her shrieks of pain had already quieted down to confused sobbing.

"Ah hell Isaac, I don't know how long I can hold this! Could you hurry up?" grunted Gram. I could see the muscles straining beneath his skin, bulging in his face and neck. His arms were quaking.

"Yeah, sure! Now help me turn her over…" I put my hands on Tandi's back and worked with Gram to move her on her side, so the blood could leak out of her cavity. The floor was covered in the stuff by now, and it had streaked and smeared where she'd been struggling. I tried to ignore it as I got down on my hands and knees and stared into her wound. "Great. I'm gonna peek down here again, try and figure out where it's-"

Before I'd even finished my sentence, a gout of bright red blood sprayed out the cut I'd made in the pericardium, all over my chest and face. It dripped down my glasses like some sort of cheesy horror-movie effect.

"Doc! Hey, Doc, I've got the stuff!" I looked over my shoulder to see Jas stumbling in through the back door, carrying both the stimpack bag and my medical bag in her arms. I motioned for her to set them down next to me. "Um, there's a few stimpacks here, which should I-"

"Fuck it! It don't matter!" Something like a laugh rattled through my chest as I snatched the syringe out of Jas's hand. Tandi's heart coughed out another gob of blood, but I'd already moved to the side, and soon my hand was in the clamshell wound again. My fingers clawed for the source of the blood. 

"I'm hurting bad!" grunted Gram. I started probing with my stimpack.

"Well don't let go, use a- I don't know, use anything!" I was hardly paying much attention to Gram at this point. I could feel the blood coursing over my fingers as they brushed over some artery, can't say which one, and I figured pretty quickly where the rupture was. I jabbed the stimpack in. 

And Missed.

I tried again, and missed. Which gave me that sinking feeling that you get in your stomach when you realize that you've not got much time, and your body just isn't the right machine for the task. Usually that came with a certain embarrassment, that telltale hotness of the skin, but not this time. This time, the hair on my arms stood up straight, and the sweat on my skin grew cold.

 I looked over at Gram. His eyes were jammed shut, he'd bit through his upper lip- and his hands, shaking more than ever. My hands were shaking too. The animalistic energy that'd been carrying me through this had gone. For a moment, I was just a kid again, in over his head and scrambling for a way out. 

But it was only a moment. Like a lumberjack throwing all his weight behind an axe, I took three more passionate stabs with the needle before piercing the artery. I had no hope of suturing it now, so I just hoped to high hell that pushing stimpack juice through the pipe and pinching the rupture shut with my nails would actually work. I'd made so many choices based on pure hope already, what was more on the pile?

The moment I pulled my hand out and discarded the empty stimpack, Gram grunted and collapsed on top of Tandi. He'd stopped holding the site open, but his fingers were still buried in the bleeding wound. His lungs rattled with each jagged breath.

"What- what should I do? Do you need help with her?" panted Jas, and I waved her away. I was panting too, panting and hot and covered in sweat and blood and god knows what else. I could feel my heart beating in every crevice of my aching body.

But was Tandi's heart still beating?

Her eyes were open and unreactive, her skin was pale and waxy. Seemed like she was breathing, but the hairs on my arms still stood up as I prodded around for a pulse near her groin; there was nothing at first, then a faint squirming beneath my fingertips, and then nothing again. The skin felt cool as glass. I put my hand on Gram's back.

"What's her- check the pip boy, what's her BP say?" Gram lifted his head up just slightly to look at the pip boy screen.

"Seventy six and fifty." There was a solemn silence. "Is that…?"

"That's good. Better, I mean.

I wiped some of the sweat off my brow again. It was pointless, seeing as how I probably deposited a bunch of blood when I did it, but I had to let out all that relief somehow. I hadn't even been able to get a femoral pulse when I'd checked last time, which meant that her pressure had been somewhere below seventy. A jump back up to seventy six was good news.

Of course, Tandi's troubles weren't over- her pericardium was slit, she still had herself a gaping hole in the chest, and the cavity was still full of blood in spite of my efforts. I grabbed my hand-suction pump from out of my bag and hooked up the reservoir, plunged in the tip, and got to work squeezing. An onlooker might have thought that I was still putting in my all, but at this point, my mind was elsewhere. I glanced over my shoulder. 

"Jas, you wanna be helpful, right?" I asked. I didn't wait for a response. "Prepare the worker's quarters for all these patients. I want beds, I want chamber pots, whatever we can get. And when you're done with that, you and me are gonna haul these folks upstairs."

Jas might've said something to me after that, but I couldn't hear it over the fuzz in my head, the static of stress. I looked around the room one last time, and I don't think I have to tell you the specifics of what I saw; just that I could tell right then that this would be, without a doubt, the longest night of my life.

(+)6

2075 ROBCO(R)

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

14902 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: "THE-LORD'S-MIDDLE-FINGER"

INITIALISING….

SUCCESS!

STATUS

Battery Level: 67%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 90F

HEALTH

BP: 120/90

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 17

HR: 70

TIME

Day: 24 SEP. 2279

Time: 15:32

CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 89F

Atmospheric Pressure: 750 mm

Background Radiation: 0.431 RAD

---

"Chomps Lewis! How ya doing, old buddy?" cried Gram, throwing his arms out and motioning for "Chomps" to come hug him. Chomps didn't play ball. He was wearing a yellow mining helmet, and holding some sort of animal in his arms- a mole-rat, I think. Didn't seem like he wanted to let it down to hug Gram.

"Howdy, Gram. Going to New Vegas again?"

Gram shrugged. "Dropping off a shipment there. And if it all works out, maybe I'll have enough money to settle down there for good." Chomps stroked his mole rat, and it let out a quiet sniffle.

"That city sucks the money right out of you, Hoplite. I traveled there once- never again. Blew a whole month's earnings in one hour..." He didn't sound bitter, when he spoke, just regretful. Gram put a hand on his shoulder.

"A hundred-thousand caps, Chomps! That's how much I'm gonna get paid, and I ain't gamblin' away a single cent of it. There are other things in Vegas than gambling," he said. There was a serpentine emphasis in his voice as he spoke aloud the absurd amount of money he'd be earning from this job. The old man sighed.

"Listen, Hoplite, that's great and all, but if you want to go to New Vegas, then you might as well turn around right now. This route is closed to travelers."

Gram looked hurt. "Closed to travelers? Is everything okay here?" Chomps shook his head.

"No, things are not okay. You heard about them escaped NCR convicts? Powder gangers, they're calling themselves. Dangerous folks," he replied, still stroking his mole-rat. Gram nodded sympathetically.

"Yeah, I always knew that the correctional facility was a stupid idea. Giving a bunch of violent criminals dynamite, they should have seen that one coming from a mile away…" Gram trailed off, then snapped back to attention. "But, those boys- they don't trouble us. Bounty hunting is one of Tandi's favorite pastimes. Am I right, Tandi?"

"I've killed at least a hundred now, and that's just since I got to America. Do you want to know how many times I killed in Kiev? I used to keep track," said Tandi. My heart skipped a beat.

Kiev?

Oh.

Oh, of course that's who she is!

"Wait, Tandi, did you just say Kiev? As in, Kiev Ukraine?" Tandi put a finger up to the mouth of her gas mask.

"Shut it, sawbones. I'm busy," she said. But she wasn't getting off that easy- I nudged her in the shoulder.

"As in, the Scourge of Kiev? Is that who you are? I thought you were retired!" Tandi yanked her mask off. She didn't look happy.

"Yeah, that's me! I served my 25 years, I got my medals, and now I'm retired. You want a fucking autograph?"

She didn't shout. She just looked and sounded completely disgusted with me, and that hurt a lot more than the shouting would have. I slunk back behind the cart and tried not to care about the opinion of a 50-something year old serial killer.

But, despite how much I disliked the NCR, and how much I disdained killers, I'd heard a lot of stories about, "The Scourge of Kiev," that mysterious Eastern ranger. She might not have been born here, but her dedication to the NCR was legendary. She was on the propaganda posters, in the Newspaper headlines- hell, I'd even seen a comic-book with her likeness on the cover! They never showed her face or said her name, but you could tell it was her by the way she stood, the flowing cape that they always had her wearing, and by the big, obnoxious labelling that said, on every portrayal, "THE SCOURGE OF KIEV," usually with a big blue rifle-crosshair next to it.

Not that I'd had mom read it for me. Or that I'd enjoyed it, and briefly aspired to be like Tandi until father convinced me that killing was bad.

Really what I'm saying is, I could pretend that I was above her, but the unfortunate fact remained: She was a hero, and I was nothing. It's hard to ignore the opinion of someone like that.

"So Ignore this boy- there could be a hundred of these men, there could be a thousand, and it wouldn't matter to me. Not with all the lives I've ended, no. They are still only men. And these hands have broken many men..."

There was silence. The wind changed direction in the seconds that followed.

"You all done pretending to be scary?" asked Chomps, when some time had passed. She nodded and re-applied her gas mask. "Well then lemme explain why you'd best be turning back. See, we ain't worried about the convicts; we're worried about the deathclaw infestation that they caused when they blew up the valley."

"Shit," muttered Gram. Chomps looked a little smug at that. Gram started pacing back and forth, glaring at the ground. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…!"

"I can kill deathclaws too," said Tandi, nonchalant. Chomps shook his head.

"Well, you can try, but- I'm warning you, there's a lot of em-" Tandi was already striding past him, sniper rifle slung over her shoulder. She gave us a confident nod goodbye.

"I'll be back when they're all dead!" Gram spit on the ground.

"Damn straight- give em hell, Tandi!"

"And, if you see an egg, would you mind hauling it back? Asking for a friend!" added Cook. But I don't reckon that Tandi heard her, cause she had already turned her back to us and started walking towards deathclaw territory. Chomps looked indifferent.

"You don't think she's actually gonna do it, do ya Hoplite?" asked Chomps, staring off after the ranger had climbed to the top of a large, rocky hill. Gram stared after her for a moment, then nodded. She disappeared over the crest.

"I've learned better than to doubt that old maid, Chomps. She lives up to the hype."

Suddenly, Chomps looked at me. I hadn't really been acknowledged thus far, so it caught me off guard when he looked into my eyes. Immediately, I broke eye contact and stared at the ground.

"Not sure I've seen you traveling with Gram before- you new to the business?" I started to reply, but Gram interrupted me.

"He's a Doctor! Gotta get Downtown for some reason, so we took him on for this run," said Gram. Chomps ignored him.

"Who are you really, though- what's your name? Are you a doctor?" I looked up at him for a moment, not sure if I should answer, then looked back down. I hated it when people did stuff like this. To be fair, I also hated when other people tried to tell me who I was, but Gram hadn't said much.

"Isaac Saller. My father was a member of the Followers, so I... picked some things up along the way," I said, indicating my badge. For a few seconds, Chomps wore a look that was impossible for me to parse. Then, he broke into a wide smile, which was enough to scare me. Why was he smiling? Did I say something stupid?

"You're Lucas's boy, right?" He asked. I nodded; I'd be surprised, but apparently a lot of people had heard about father, and I had a bit of his likeness. It was a hard thing to live up to.

"You see, Lucas was a big name around here after the work he did in Novac. Saved the whole town from some sort of plague, or something. My wife Margaret was visiting at the time, and she invited him back here for the night when he finally decided that it was safe to let the residents travel again. An intimidating man to be around, but I was grateful- If it weren't for him, Margaret probably wouldn't have lived to fight at Hoover Dam- wouldn't have died a hero…" Chomps stared off into space for a while, then snapped back to the conversation. I felt a pang of sorrow for this strange old man. "Anyways, Lucas is a good man. Is he still working for the Followers? I haven't gotten a letter back from him in years."

I shook my head. "He's dead. A drunk courier from the Mojave Express came into town one night and shot him." Chomps didn't flinch.

"That's a damn shame. But, as I've learned, people come and go- be glad he managed to do so much good in his life before he died. Probably helped more people than everyone who's ever worked this quarry combined."

It was sort of disorienting to hear a complete stranger talking about my father like this. Like, I always knew that he was kind of important, but here this old man was talking about how my father had saved the life of his wife. I even vaguely remembered father talking about Novac, but he hadn't talked about it like it was anything but a little pit-stop, a side quest. Had he really impacted so many people?

In the time that I had been mentally absent from the conversation, Chomps had started walking to the front door of the main building, and Gram was currently walking the cart and the two Brahmin to a little stable area beside the main building. Judging by how far they got, I'd been standing around slack-jawed for a good twenty seconds.

Well, nothing new there. Trying not to look embarrassed, I casually (read: stiffly and suspiciously) jogged up behind the caravan.

"Wow, that quarry sure is abandoned! Can't imagine what it must've been like watching all those deathclaws come flooding in," I commented, even though I had actually been facing the opposite direction of the apparently deathclaw-infested mining quarry, and I actually could imagine all of the deathclaws flooding in because it's a recurring nightmare of mine. I don't think anyone heard me except for maybe Cook, who was still sitting on the roof of the cart as it was secured beside the main building. She gave me a nod of acknowledgement as she stepped down from the roof, and sidled up next to the Brahmin. She led them up to a little wooden stable, much like the one we had behind the casino in Primm.

"Did we feed Flebe this morning? She keeps giving me the puppy eyes whenever I come near her," Cook said, indicating the larger of the two- Well, four Brahmin, depending on whether or not you counted each head as a separate entity. I wasn't exactly sure how that worked, though I'd noticed that each head seemed to be doing its own thing. Which one controlled the body? Did they both control the body?

Does it matter to the story I'm trying to tell? Probably not.

"Yeah, I fed and milked 'em both this morning. Though now that I think about it, Flebe probably hasn't had any water for a while. Hebe drank some when we stopped in Primm, but I think we forgot to water Flebe on account of this guy," said Gram, nodding in my direction. I snorted.

"Oh- Oh, I'm so sorry Flebe! I must admit, I weren't thinking much for your health when I got assaulted yesterday!" Gram looked like he was gonna try and say something, so I raised my voice. "I SURE DO HOPE that I can make it up to you someday, but I understand if that's too much to ask! Water's a precious thing in the Mojave, ain't it?." Both of the heads regarded me with dull interest for a moment. Gram gave me a punch in the shoulder.

"I wasn't insulting you, wise-guy! Just answering Cook's question."

"Oh, and while we're still on the subject, why don't you make it up to poor little Flebe by helping us pump him some water? I'm about to get started on dinner, and if he hasn't drank since the stop before Primm, he's probably going to collapse soon," said Cook, stroking Flebe's head. I gave her a nod of assent.

"Seems like the least I can do. Where's the pump?" I asked. Cook pointed at the corner of the wall we were standing beside.

"Behind here, there are a couple of water pumps and buckets. Just dump some water in the troughs, and be careful not to spill any- Chomps has chewed me out for that before," she said, and I raised a rectifying finger.

"Don't you mean... chomped you out?" Cook broke into a toothy grin. Gram looked decidedly less amused.

"Look Gram- now we have a teammate who's even dorkier than me, and I think that crossword puzzles are fun! I told you it would happen someday," said Cook. I took her comment with pride; Father had taught me the fine art of the awful pun when we were reading Discworld together for the first time, and I'd been fabricating them since.

Come to think of it, can you believe that no one had shot me yet? Like, I might've done alright before the war, but I'm genuinely impressed with myself for surviving past my 12th birthday, given the world I grew up in and the many, many counterintuitive traits I possessed. It's a miracle that someone so insultingly naive, neurotic, and out of place as me managed to avoid getting blasted to pieces sometime between my birth and now!

As I prepared to make a retort, Cook disappeared into the main building, leaving me alone with Gram and the Brahmin. Gram nodded towards the water pumps.

"Better get to pumping," he said. I watched him slip through the partially opened front door and close it behind him, yanking it shut loud enough that I winced.

Did I just get delegated? It sure felt like it. After a few moments of thinking, I decided I'd been delegated. Pretty tame, as far as hazing rituals go, though I was still surprised with the swiftness and efficiency with which the task had been dumped on my lap while the others went off to relax. Kinda reminded me of how mom roped her employees into going "above and beyond" for the business...

Ah well. It wouldn't hurt to do some mindless work to take my mind off of everything, and maybe I'd earn some brownie points for it. All that in mind, I headed around the back of the building, picked up a bucket, placed it under a rusty blue water-pump, and got to work extracting water from the Earth.

-Break-

I opened up the back door to the mess hall, and was immediately struck by the delicious smell of roasted meat wafting in from the kitchen. In the main hall, plates and silverware were being set out on a fancy wooden dinner table by a uniformed NCR soldier. Gram was sitting at one end of the table, while chomps sat across from him, and all of the other stools were unoccupied. I walked into the room a bit, and saw Cook and some lanky, sunburned young lady with brown hair and a ponytail arguing back and forth in the kitchen. I decided to listen in.

"… that isn't mole-rat meat, Jas! Just who the hell are you getting your meat from?"

"A very nice old lady, who just happens to not want to diverge her name to me." Cook glared accusingly at the woman, and she threw her hands up above her head. "Okay, fine, maybe that should have rung some alarm bells! But I can't believe it's actually…"

"Jas, that's human meat. You've been making meat pies out of human meat," Cook whisper-shouted. I don't think anyone else heard her, but my appetite shrank away just like that. Of course, now that I'd heard it, I had to investigate…

"What's this about some human meat? We just find out about the secret of soylent-green or something?" I asked, stepping into the kitchen. Immediately, Cook pointed at a cut of meat on the counter. It didn't take me a magnifying glass to figure out what that was.

"Yep, that's people," I said, backing up a little bit. Jas looked betrayed.

"Are you sure? I mean, I guess I thought it was a little bit too beefy for mole rat meat, but it tasted kind of similar," murmured Jas. I nodded. She didn't sound nearly horrified enough to me.

"Trust me, I've seen human meat. My father and I performed a few autopsies when I was younger- that strip right there is probably a cut from the inner thigh…" I said, indicating the larger of the two hunks of meat. I briefly examined the other one, adjusting my glasses and kneeling down to put my face a little bit closer to it. It had been cut down a bit, but I could still vaguely figure out where it came from. Looked sorta like bird poultry. "…and I think the one beside it is from the bicep, but don't quote me on that. Someone cut the fat off the edges, so it could also be a different cut of meat off the humerus." The color was rapidly draining from Jas's face as she stared at the meat in question. Cook looked kinda curious as I was explaining the cuts, but seemed to get back to being angry with Jas pretty quickly.

"Anyways, it's like I told you last time- don't get your meat from people who you don't know and trust. They might be cannibals or something," said Cook. Jas crossed her arms.

"Fine. I'm not planning on sticking around here anyways. As soon as I get to my next stop, I'll get a new supplier. For now, I'll just have to sort out the human meat from the rest," she said. Cook rolled her eyes.

"Please. You've been here for at least a year now, I don't think you're leaving anytime soon."

"Jas, stop arguing with the guests! I don't know what it's about, but if it's holding up dinner then you better quit it!" shouted Chomps from the other room. Jas sighed dramatically.

"Alright, fine, I'll get a new supplier! If your ranger solves the deathclaw problem, maybe I can finally get back on the road to New Vegas, and then we won't even have to worry about it." Cook crossed her arms.

"Well, then you better start packing soon, cause Tandi is good at killing stuff. Bet you she gets back before we're done eating." She opened up the oven and grabbed a stray rag to pull out the contents. Jas grabbed a rag as well, and together they hauled out two platters, each of which contained a big cut of steaming Brahmin roast.

Sensing that I was in the way, I silently retreated from the kitchen and tried to find a seat among the rest of the guests in the dining room. Gram had moved to sit beside Chomps, and was halfway through a conversation with the old man, but he gave me a nod of acknowledgment as I sat down at the table. A young NCR soldier whose name I didn't know said something to the effect of, "welcome back," but I didn't quite catch it. One leg of my stool was shorter than the others, so I occupied myself tipping it up and down. A dangerous thing, on account of my stubby little legs.

"… Where do you think she went?" asked Gram. Chomps looked distressed. The little mole rat was crawling under the table, so I pet it on the head while I tried to figure out what they were talking about. It squeaked pleasantly as I stroked its nose.

"I don't know! She left a note, says she was going off to live life free from me and the NCR, but she didn't say what she was doing." Chomps put his elbows on the table, and let his chin rest in his hands. His eyes were watering, I noticed. Had his wife run away- wait, no, she was dead. His daughter then?

After a few seconds of silent tears, he stiffened his upper lip and sat back up. When he spoke, you could hear the tears.

"I'm worried about her, is all. Her mother did the same thing when she was that age, and that's how she met me, so I guess I should be happy for her- but it just ain't the same world it was all those years ago. I don't want to have my daughter disappear out there in the wasteland. I just love her so damn much..." Chomps started crying again, and Gram gave him a sympathetic squeeze.

So it was a daughter, then.

I tried not to accidentally catch anyone's gaze- I felt bad for Chomps, but I didn't know him well enough to try and comfort him. Whenever I tried to comfort people who I didn't know, I'd just make things worse. So, I stuck to treating people's physical symptoms. I'd never learned very much about psychology.

"The worst part is knowing that it's my fault she ran away. After her mother died, I guess I clung to her a little too tight- I put limits on her that she didn't need, told her to stop talking with friends I didn't like. Looking back, it's so easy to see where I was wrong, but I was so scared of losing her that I was blind to how much I was hurting her. Or, maybe I did see it and I didn't care. It's hard to remember now..."

In the corner of my vision, I could see the two chefs emerging from the kitchen, carrying their platters of vegetables and roast Brahmin to the table. Chomps wiped his eyes, relaxed his posture, and tried not to look like he'd been crying as Cook and Jas set down the platters. I fought with myself to say something, to try to tell him that his daughter would be fine, because I knew I'd screw it up, but it was hard not to say something- the details were different, but it reminded me so much of what I'd done. Was this how my mom felt right now? Was she worried that I'd been done in, and that it was her fault?

Simmering with emotions, I stayed silent and watched Cook and Jas heap slices of beef and vegetables onto the assorted plates sitting around the table. I muttered my thanks to Jas as she served me two slices of meat and some unidentifiable vegetables. As was customary in the Saller household, I held off eating until everyone had sat down. The NCR soldier didn't even bother, slicing up his steak and spearing one of his vegetables as soon as the food was laid before him. He was the odd one out, actually- everyone else waited until Jas and Cook had sat, though only Jas and Chomps kept waiting even after that. As everyone prepared to eat, Chomps cleared his throat, and all eyes fell on him. He looked like he had recovered somewhat, but I still felt uneasy seeing him get ready to speak so soon after all that emotion. Was he gonna start crying again?

"Now, I know that most of you don't believe in any sort of God- I have to admit, I've had my doubts too. But, I was raised to say a prayer before I eat, and I intend to carry on the tradition until the day I die. I invite everyone here to pray with me if you know the words, or give a silent prayer if you don't. We haven't necessarily been lucky here in Sloan lately, but let's all tell the lord how grateful we are for what we've still got..."

I didn't believe in god- still don't, probably never will- but I ain't no asshole neither, and I was pretty sure I knew the prayer that he was talking about. My father had read the Bible with me as a kid, because he was a big fan of Jesus and all that, and the McBain's had taught me the dinner prayer when I stayed with them for a while. So, calling on knowledge that I hadn't used in years, I put my hands together, bowed my head, and started talking with God.

"Bless us, Oh Lord…" Chomps began. Jas, the NCR soldier and I recited it with him, while Gram had his own silent prayer. Cook just looked annoyed the whole way through.

"... and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord." Everyone was silent for a moment.

"Amen," Said Chomps. I nodded.

"Amen!" we said, and then a huge chunk of the wall exploded inwards in a shower of rocks, wood, and pink-insulation foam, peppering us all with debris. Everyone sat in shocked silence as the dust cleared, and a massive white deathclaw appeared in the hole.

Yeah, well, fuck you too, God! Don't suppose you're offering prayer-refunds these days?

(+)5 COPYRIGHT 2075 ROBCO(R)

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

15452 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: “THE-NEW-KID”

INITIALISING….

SUCCESS!

> STATUS

Battery Level: 100%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 87F

> HEALTH

BP: 120/90

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 17

HR: 70

> TIME

Day: 24 SEP. 2176

Time: 06:12

> CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 80F

Atmospheric Pressure: 753 mm

Background Radiation: 0.431 RAD

---

I woke up to the pleasant smell of fresh-cooked bacon mingling with the less pleasant smell of rotting wood. I rubbed my eyes- had I really fallen asleep in the damn cabin? My back hurt, my joints ached, and, according to the pip-boy, it was 6:12 AM, almost two hours before my normal wake-up time. Though my back screamed at me to lay back down, I forced myself to stand, audibly popping at least a few joints in the process. I muttered some bad words under my breath and tried to stabilize myself against one of the shelves. Soon as I pushed on it, I could feel the wood yield, splitting and snapping off in one violent motion. I tumbled to the ground along with it and a heap of medical supplies. “Goddammit,” I groaned. I started trying to scoop up the fallen supplies. None of them seemed damaged, but so much had fallen- Bottles of pills, bags of rad-away, surgical implements from the bottom of the bag…

Suddenly, the wooden door creaked open. I made a noise like a caveman who’d just been spotted screwing his buddy’s wife, and turned around to face the intruder.

“Isaac- Oh my gosh, did you actually fall asleep in there?” I couldn’t tell if that was worry that I heard in her voice, or mocking. I looked away from her.

“Yeah. I was just cleaning up in here,” I said, scooping up a few more items and putting them back into my bag. I could feel Cook’s eyes on me as I struggled to reach for a couple of items that were on top of one of the intact shelves.

“Well, you can finish packing later. I made some home-style bacon, which as I’m sure you know has a pretty short tastiness half-life before it gets all weird and chewy.” I nodded.

“Um- yeah, you’re right. Is it that weird NCR ration stuff?” I asked, following her outside the shack.

“Technically, but I think you’ll like it. I can turn a pack of instant noodles into Taglioni ai enokitake-mutante! ” She wore a proud grin when she said that, and I gave her a weak little smile back.

“Mm.”

The rising sun felt painfully bright as I scanned the horizon, noting that we had passed the big radio-tower that loomed in the mountains beside Primm. Of course, we really hadn’t traveled far yet- I could still see Primm, with its neon signs and its indefinitely under-construction roller coaster standing out against the hilly background. The coaster had been the previous Casino-owner’s idea, but Mom had decided to see it to completion. She let me ride one of the parts that worked once; I quickly decided to never ride a roller coaster again.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be at home with mom- not the sick mom, but the strong, gambling, slightly-tipsy mom that I had spent my boyhood with! I blinked back tears as I stared at the home I was leaving behind, then quickly turned around.

“Goddamn sun is getting in my eyes,” I muttered, and kept limping towards the scent of Bacon.

Cook and I walked around the side of the shack, and over a little hill. Once we reached the crest, I could see the campsite below, just off the highway, behind a massive boulder. The wagon and its two brahmin sat off to one side, a few yards away from a shoddily constructed fire pit, where I could see Gram sitting in a folding lawn chair. Cook led me down the steep hillside, silently indicating for me to follow behind her. It took me a second, but I got the message after slipping on the third loose rock. Standing atop the boulder, I could see the unmistakable outline of Tandi, who I think was waving.

“Took you long enough!” she shouted, her voice amplified by her helmet. Cook gave her a defiant middle finger.

“I’ll spit in your dinner!” she shouted back, cupping her free-hand over her mouth. I assumed a look of quiet horror.

“Cook! That’s a textbook BSI violation!”

Tandi hopped down from the rock, executing a perfect tumble just as I remembered that she had a horribly injured leg. I almost shouted in protest, then realized that she was already standing again. She dusted herself off.

“‘Morning, fellas,” said Gram, tipping his hat at us from his rusty folding chair. I gave him a quick salute.

“‘Morning, sir! Sorry I took so long to get up.” Gram gave me a dismissive wave.

"You’re the one missing out on a hot breakfast. Check the fire, I’ll bet there’s some left.”

I don’t much like fire, but I also didn’t like how hungry I was feeling. So despite my fears about the safety of the fire pit, I walked up and knelt beside it. It wasn’t a big fire- it had been made from a couple of planks of plywood and a chunk of tire, though I was also pretty sure I saw something metal in there somewhere. It had been built inside a hand-dug pit, with the shovel still lying off to the side, which worried me a little bit. What if I fell in? Would I fall into my own fiery grave of burning embers?

Stupid. I was being stupid. The fire was burning low now, and there were two pans of delicious Brahmin bacon cooking over the stove. That was the important thing here.

“How do you recommend taking these out?” I asked, staring at the delicious bacon which awaited me in the pan below. It was tempting to just try to grab it, but… fire, you know?

Cook motioned for me to move out of the way. She was holding a machete covered in dried blood- Animal blood, I hoped, while I moseyed right-on out of the way. Cook stepped up where I had been standing, and nimbly scooped up four strips of bacon with the machete. She wheeled around on one heel to face me, and I froze, trying not to be worried about the blade that was now just inches away from my chest. Cook smiled.

“How many do you want?” She asked. I looked down at my poor, empty stomach, then back up at her.

“...Can I just have all four? I don’t think I ate breakfast, lunch or dinner yesterday.” Food had been the last thing on my mind.

“A man after my own tastes, I see! Stress-eating is the noblest kind of eating,” she replied. She tilted her machete downwards a bit, and I quickly cupped my hands to catch the sliding strips of meaty goodness. I juggled them around in my hands as the worst of the heat dissipated.

“You don’t know the half of it. Got any plates?” Cook shook her head.

“Nope. We have a couple of bowls for soup, but I just cleaned those. Find a rock or something.” She looked at me for a moment, and screwed up her face a little. “Why are you here anyways? No offense- I like Doctors, and you seem cool! But you don’t seem like someone who’s traveled before, and New Vegas is far away. What brought this on?”

I thought for a second. I had deliberately withheld that information from Gram because I wasn’t sure how he’d react, but I wasn’t really worried about Cook. Would she tell Gram? Would he be annoyed that I’d been withholding information?

Was I maybe overthinking this a little?

“My mom’s sick. I need to see the Followers to get her help, and they’re stationed in New Vegas now.”

There. Noncommittal- I didn’t say she was dying, just that she needed help. I didn’t let on too much about the circumstances, either. I just told the truth. And I always say, reluctant honesty is the best policy, on account of It fostering character growth or something.

Come to think of it, I was starting to see why characters in the books that father always read me didn’t just dump their deepest, darkest problems on each other as soon as they met. I’d always been of the mind that most of their problems would be cleared up if they were just honest with each other- that was my thinking behind the examination. But now, I was seeing firsthand the dangers of sharing information with new people. If I told Gram or Tandi the wrong thing, or presented it the wrong way, I could see myself winding up abandoned.

Cook seemed safe, though. Where Gram seemed to care only as it related to running an effective team, and Tandi didn’t seem to care at all, Cook seemed endlessly fascinated by most things. In the examination room, she had been interested by my hand, by her own strange biology, and seemingly just by me.

Based off of that, I was pretty sure she wasn’t testing me or looking for a reaction when she asked that question. She just really wanted to know.

“Oh. I’m gonna guess that what she has is terminal?” ventured Cook, trying to make scary eye contact for some reason. I sighed.

“...Yeah. My mom has cancer. Nothing I can do about it, but I know some doctors who I’m hoping to convince to come back and help. My Aunt Julie is kind of a big deal there, and I’ll bet I could guilt trip her.”

“Oh.” We both sat in silence.

Well, there went keeping that part a secret . Still, it didn’t really matter- if I was desperate enough to mosey on up from Primm to New Vegas and beg for help, anyone with an ounce of brainpower could guess that the situation was pretty serious.

I started munching on my strips of bacon, which admittedly brightened my mood a little. I think I was on about the third piece of bacon when Cook finally decided to try to restart the conversation.

“I’m really sorry- not about your mom- well, obviously about your mom, but also about…

"Bringing it up like that,” I said, finishing her thought for her. She tugged at the hem of her dress.

“Yeah. I don’t always think before I talk.”

Well, I could understand that, at least. Not that I didn’t think before I spoke, but that I didn’t think about the right things before I spoke. I’ve always tried my best to be kind to everyone, but my idea of kindness is a lot different than most people’s. For example, most people will tell you that they’d like for you to tell the truth, which is good- I like telling the truth, makes me feel better- but when you tell them the truth, they get all upset and tell you that you shouldn’t be so mean. It’s infuriating- if they want me to lie, why don’t they fuckin tell me so?

Well, actually, maybe that’s a bit too much to expect, but it would be nice if they didn’t preface it with, “ Be honest ,” seeing as how they expect the opposite. But I digress.

“It’s okay- I have a similar problem,” I replied. Then I thought back a little, and decided to be proactive. “Actually, can I ask you a quick question?”

Cook nodded. “Ask away!”

“When you say, “be honest,” do you mean it? Like, I’ve noticed that a lot of people tell me that, and then when I tell them the truth they get all freaked out. You ain’t going to do that, right?” I asked. She grinned.

“Oh, thank gosh- I thought you were about to start asking me about my past or something. Um, no, I definitely won’t freak out if you’re honest with me. Actually, I kind of hate it when people mince words to make things sound better,” she replied, scooping up another few strips of bacon with her machete. She offered me one.

“No, but thank you!” I instinctively backed up a few inches as the blade came within chopping-distance of my nose. She smirked.

“More for me, I guess.” I watched with confusion and fascination as Cook flicked her machete, tossing all three strips of bacon into the air, and then subsequently caught them with her mouth. I couldn’t pretend that that wasn’t kind of impressive, but I honestly wasn’t sure how to show my appreciation for a stunt like that.

“That was kinda nasty,” I offered. Cook scoffed at me through the bacon.

“Oh, come on, you’re a doctor! Isn’t your bar for what’s, “nasty” a little higher than that?” I shrugged.

“I never said that stuff wasn’t nasty. But, I poke around people’s guts all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever watched someone do that before,” I replied. That was a little bit of a fib- I actually didn’t root around inside people’s internals very often. In fact, yesterday was the first time that I’d done anything that involved so much blood. But, I’d seen father do the same thing a thousand times, and I’d practiced on corpses and looked at diagrams, gotten a sense for what it was like. Even by that time in my life, the smell of blood on skin was one I wasn’t ever gonna forget.

“I guess I’ll take that as a compliment- I made a doctor sick to his stomach,” she said, finishing off the last of the bacon and wiping her mouth. I shook my head.

“No, see, I didn’t say you made me sick, I said it was “ kinda nasty- ” there’s a big difference!”

“You two, shut up and pack your shit! We’re leaving!”

We both turned around to face Tandi, who had been stalking up behind us, helmet underneath her arm. She looked a lot better in the morning sunlight than she did in the sickly glow of the flash-lit shed. Her hair flowed behind her as the wind blew, and she was able to stand at her full, impressive height, which was at least a foot taller than me. Cook and I were both completely dwarfed by that woman.

“I’m already packed--Isaac isn’t, but that’s my fault. I fetched him for breakfast before he could finish,” said Cook, and I silently appreciated her jumping to my defense like that. Tandi rolled her eyes at us with her entire upper body, and pointed in the direction of the shed.

“Well get to it then! I’m gonna scout ahead, check the usual places. Don’t do nothing stupid,” she suggested, slipping her helmet back on. Before I could think of a clever retort, Tandi was already out of earshot. She gave Gram a lazy salute as she strolled past him, and he tossed her something- a rifle, I think. She caught it with practiced ease. Then she strode behind the boulder, and out of sight.

“She’s real scary,” I decided. Cook shrugged.

“I like her. I mean, she’s not usually this mean- She’s just not a morning person. Give her some time, eh? She’ll warm up.” I gave her a look that suggested the opposite.

“Really? What could she possibly like about me? I’m a small-town doctor, she wouldn’t let someone like me tie her boot-laces!” Cook looked annoyed now. Were they actually friends or something?

“Yeah, and I’m a cook, if you couldn’t tell! She doesn’t care what you do, she cares what kind of person you are. As long as you aren’t a complete coward or one of Caesar’s  cronies, she’ll be fine with you.”

I sighed. “Okay, maybe. I’m still just gonna stay out of her way unless I’ve got to.” Cook didn’t argue with that. I looked up at the hillside that the shed lay behind. “Do you want to help me pack up?”

She shrugged. “I guess. I’ve really got nothing better to do.

That was fine by me.

-Break-

“How’s that yellow brick road song go? We should be hummin’ that right now,” suggested Tandi, strolling beside me and Gram. Cook was sitting on the top of the wagon, enjoying a midmorning snack of NCR rationed trail-mix.

“You mean the Elton John one? It’s like, “ When are you gonna come down, When are you going to Land -“ started Gram, getting into the rhythm of the song with his gravelly voice. Tandi shook her head.

“Nah, not that hippy shit! I’m talkin’ about the one that the little brat in the wizard movie sings!” I perked up at that.

“You’re talking about the Wizard of Oz!” I replied. That movie was like, one of three that I had ever seen! Tandi nodded.

"Yeah, that one! How’s the song go?”

“Well, it’s like, “ Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Follow the Yellow Brick road !” and then there’s a trumpet thing and then they start singing that they’re, ‘ off to see the Wonderful Wizard of Oz ,” I explained, doing a happy little jig as I sang each musical number. I couldn’t see Tandi’s expression, but I don’t think she was very impressed.

“That’s the gayest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. After a brief pause, she began to hum the song. I hummed along, and eventually, Cook caught on and started humming too. Gram just looked annoyed.

"We’re off to see the wizard ...” Gram rolled his eyes at me. “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz! Come on, sing with me!”

“Yeah! I’ve heard you sing before, you’ve got a great voice!” said Cook. Tandi just kept humming along, walking forwards just a little faster than the rest of us as she hummed. The humming was surprisingly recognizable, given that it was being so grossly distorted.

“The Wizard of Oz is one becozzzzz…” I started, grinning evilly at Gram. He lit a cigar.

“I consider this your fault.”

Tandi began to hum louder, and Cook took that as a cue to join back in. I just grinned and kept humming along, happy to lighten the mood for the other two. It was getting really hot, after all, and we had already walked a couple of miles this morning.

Still humming, I checked the route guidance on my pip-boy. We were currently bound for Sloan, a little NCR mining town to our West, which was still many miles away. Thankfully, the highway was flat--slightly downhill actually, so the journey wasn’t even hard on my legs. Mom and I would go hiking up to the old cell tower back in the day, and I’d been keeping in decent shape by running the neighborhood almost every morning since then.

The others weren’t tiring either, which was refreshing. Tandi was so well exercised (and determined) that she could probably walk up a 90 degree slope, and Gram just seemed to be perpetually strolling through some sort of imaginary park. It wasn’t so much that he was fit, but that he saved his energy so well that it was almost supernatural.

Cook, on the other hand, was not big on hiking. I didn’t get the impression that she did any sort of dedicated exercises, and she was a lot heavier than any of the rest of us. So, she usually just sat on the top of the wagon, occasionally getting down and walking with us for a while. It was kind of fun to wave to her and shout back and forth from the ground to the top of the caravan though, so I didn’t judge.

Despite my ability to keep up, I still got the sense I was doing something wrong. The sun seemed to be getting to me a lot more than the others, which was strange considering how much time I spent outside. I was fanning myself off, taking little breaks behind the occasional shade-granting boulder, and even staying hydrated (despite our best attempts to run out our water reserves before we reached Sloan.)

So, I gave myself a mission: as we walked, I tried to look out for things that the others might be doing differently. At first, my search was fruitless--I didn’t notice anything different. We were all wearing long sleeves, (Except Cook, who was still wearing a sundress, and also keeping her back to the sun which I think meant she was taking my advice.) we were all walking at a comfortable pace, and we were all taking steps to stay hydrated. Then, as I was doing a quick scan, I noticed something-

H A T S

They all had hats!

Gram wore a bowler hat, Cook wore a baseball cap with a maple leaf on it (or sometimes a floppy hat,) and Tandi was rocking her ranger helmet. Did it really make that big of a difference? There was only one way to find out.

“Hey, Gram! Do you maybe have like, a hat I could use?”

Without even turning around, Gram chuckled at me- had he been expecting this? Did this happen to every new recruit or something? I felt a little bit like I’d failed another test.

“I was waiting for you to ask. Yeah, I got a few choices. You wouldn’t believe the difference they make!”

So he had been expecting this! I tried not to look forlorn as Gram stopped the Brahmin, opened up the back of the wagon, and ushered me inside.

I hadn’t ever seen the inside of the thing. The frame of the wagon was made of wood, I noted, and it had open sides, but Gram had covered it in brown-colored blankets, except for the place where a spigot for getting water stuck out the side of the wagon. The doors in the back weren’t locked in any sort of way, although there was a bar that Gram had to slide so that they could open up, probably so that it wouldn’t come open by accident.

Inside, there was a big black box- in fact, the frame of the wagon had been slightly modified to hold the thing, it was so big. The box was clearly locked, and it took up almost all the space inside the wagon. In the space that the box didn’t take up, there was a machine gun, a laser rifle, cooking supplies, some sort of emergency-medical-supplies box that I was pretty sure was made to hold stimpacks, a bunch of tangled up electronics that I wouldn’t even try to identify, and a few hooks with spare clothes hanging on them. At the tip of each hook was a hat or helmet, bobbing pleasantly as the wagon came to a complete stop.

“Well, Isaac, take your pick- if you can’t reach it, we can get Tandi,” said Gram, indicating the helmets in the very back of the wagon, a space that was hard to reach on account of the massive black box. I gave it a kick.

“What’s in here?” I asked. Gram shrugged.

“The NCR wouldn’t tell me- they just said that it was important, and sent me on my way.” He leaned over like he was getting ready to spill me a secret. I gave him my ear. “They promised me a hundred-thousand caps for this. None of those NCR dollars- good, solid caps. And a hunded thousand, do you know what that could buy? That’s enough to disrupt this economy in a big way. That’s more than I’ve made on every other shipment combined.”

Normally, I didn’t think much about money, but I had to admit that the number floored me. The things that a man could do with a hundred-thousand caps…

Of course, it was the NCR offering the money, so I was pretty sure Gram was going to get fleeced somehow. They would impose some ridiculous tax on his payment, or just plain sweep him under the rug, since the whole deal had presumably been made in secret. That was how the NCR operated- it was part of why the Followers had been so reluctant to work with them, and why father had hated them so much. And to be honest with you, I couldn’t disagree with him. The NCR wanted a police state, and freedom wasn’t something I took lightly. I figured that people don’t need a bunch of jackbooted thugs with barking-irons telling them how to live their lives, when they had been perfectly content before. Raiders were a problem, sure, but the NCR had really only made the problem worse by acknowledging the issue and then failing to do anything about it.

Of course, the NCR was also the only thing keeping the legion from coming in and killing us all, so I tolerated them for that. No matter how much the NCR might’ve sucked, they were better than Caesar’s Legion. At least some of them thought they were doing the right thing, even if most of them were hopelessly corrupt…

“Isaac? You gonna choose a hat?” Asked Gram. He only seemed a little bit bothered.

“Yeah, of course. Sorry,” I murmured, and started scanning the hats on display. There was a floppy hat, a tan ballistic helmet, an old firefighter-helmet, a police cap, another floppy hat...

“I’ll take the fire helmet,” I said, and pointed at the scratched grey helmet that shared a hook with a bomber jacket and a couple of sundresses. It didn’t have quite the same sun-blocking properties as a floppy hat, or the safety features of a ballistic helmet, but I’d worn a fire helmet before and it seemed like it would perform both roles fairly well.

“Alright. Can you reach it?” I nodded.

“Hell yeah I can reach it!” Though it was on one of the farther hooks, I compensated by pushing myself up to the top of the black box with one hand, and reaching for the helmet with my weird hand. I wasn’t tall enough to pull it off the hook, so instead I knocked it off from the bottom and grabbed it from on top of the black box. Once I had secured it, I let myself slide down.

“Got it,” I muttered, and slipped the helmet on. Because of some convenient rigging inside the helmet, it was surprisingly snug on my head, though I could feel it bob a little when I moved.

“Well, it’s loose for sure, but it’ll give you some good shade. Has your decision got anything to do with the thing on the front?” he asked, poking me in the center of my helmet with his finger, right where the emblem sat. I nodded sheepishly. Part of the reason I had picked it was, indeed, on account of the cool blue star of life on the front. I knew I wasn’t anything like the paramedics of the past, but I had considered them to be a sort of ideal when I was younger. Since then, I’d never quite shaken the idea of being like a pre-war medic.

“Well, come on, let’s not lose any more time. We’re closer than you might think,” he said, leading me out of the wagon. He shut the doors, and looked over the caravan with a big grin.

"In fact, riiiiggght around this bend, we’ll be able to see Sloan. We’re booming along today, just absolutely killing it! Who knows- maybe we can even get back on the road after we stop,” he continued, clearly trying to get a rise out of us. On cue, Cook groaned obnoxiously, and Tandi mumbled something about armor plates and sweat. I groaned too, but my heart wasn’t in it- I was on this journey to save mom, and the quicker it went, and the fewer hitches we ran into, the more successful I was likely to be.

“Sloan-Ho!” shouted Cook as the cart rounded the bend in the highway that had been necessitated by two giant, rocky hills. Tandi snorted at that, and I gotta admit that I smiled a little too. The town of Sloan, though still far away, was now straight ahead.

New Vegas was a long ways away from here, but I was glad that we were already making so much progress. Considering how well things had been going, it was all too easy to forget that I was on a tight, invisible timer, slowly counting down to, “too late.”

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

15932 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: “THE-LOONEY-BIN”

INITIALISING….

SUCCESS!

> STATUS

Battery Level: 57%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 93F

> HEALTH

BP: 120/90

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 14

HR: 75

> TIME

Day: 23 SEP. 2279

Time: 22:12

> CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 72F

Atmospheric Pressure: 753 mm

Background Radiation: 0.431 RAD

---

It was well past my usual bedtime. 10:12 PM, when I translated the clock from military time, and the sun had already set. The sky was too cloudy to see any stars, of course; Even the brilliant light of the moon couldn’t quite make it through. I was tired, both because I was used to a more structured schedule, and because it had been an exhausting day. So much had happened at this point that I wasn’t really in a frame of mind to care about one more piece of work.

Gram had suggested I do something to introduce myself to my new friends before we hit the hay, so I decided to do what I was best at- general assessment! I’d do a head-to-toe examination of each of them. That way, I’d be getting to know each of them in a real literal way, and it gave me an excuse to set up some pip-boy profiles. The Pip Boy makes a great assessment tool, assuming you got the patient in the database already

I looked over each of my patients, then back at my device. 57% battery charge … creating new profiles always took a lot of battery power, but I knew it would hold for the night. If worse came to worst, I could charge it up a little with the glowing energy cell that I always kept in my breast pocket.

I was about ready to perform now, with this makeshift examination room as my stage. It was little more than an abandoned shack that we’d used as a goal post while hiking, and eventually decided to camp by; we’d all be sleeping in nice orange tents. I had used the rickety shelves to set up equipment that I’d need, and propped up an old 3-legged chair against the wall for the patient to sit in. The ranger, who I’d learned was named Tandi, had loaned me a tactical flashlight to provide lighting. Or, I suspected, Gram had made them lend me the flashlight. I’d also commandeered the cart’s radio to get some appropriate music going.

Now, it wasn’t much, but I was grateful for it, because the shed offered privacy. I’d seen firsthand what kind of compromising information could be revealed during this sort of assessment. Forget the eyes, it turns out that STDs are the real window into the soul.

“Alright folks, looks like we’re all set up! Cook, why don’t you come up first?” I suggested, motioning for her to come on forward. She smiled.

“Cool! I actually have a few things that I want an explanation for.”

I ushered her inside, and had her sit down on the stool. I gave her a quick once over; she was about my age, maybe a little older, with freckly brown skin and messy, chin-length black hair that she’d pulled back into a bun. Definitely on the heavier side for a Mojave resident, but other than that she seemed to be taking pretty good care of herself. She had a healthy glow about her that was refreshing to see.

After checking to make sure I had turned the pip-boy all the way off, I removed it from my arm, and clipped it onto Cook’s. Her arm was bigger than mine, so I had to put it a bit lower, but it still fit alright. I turned it on and let it set up a profile. The song on the radio changed as we got settled in.

Blamin' it all,

On the nights on Broadway-

Singin' them sweet sounds,

To that crazy, crazy town...

“I’ve never seen one of these things up close before. Is it going to reveal my deepest, darkest secrets?” Asked Cook, big brown eyes rooted to the glowing green screen. I nodded.

“If you consider the state of your internals to be your deepest, darkest secrets, then sure. You missing anything?” She shook her head as I donned my stethoscope.

“I don’t think so. Are you?”

I looked down at my left hand. I was missing something, actually- I didn’t have a thumb on my left hand. Instead, my father had done some little surgeries, and moved my index finger to where my thumb would be. It worked fine, didn’t hurt me none, so I hardly noticed it. I flexed my hand to demonstrate.

“Yep. Ain’t that neat?” Cook looked mystified.

“Whoa. That is cool! Why are all those fingers so long ?” I shrugged.

“Hell if I know. The whole arm is a little screwed up, but mostly the hand.” And the forearm, I thought about pointing out. There was a huge patch of pale and rubbery skin running along there, but it didn’t seem like she’d noticed yet and the reasons for it being that way weren't the kind of thing that I liked to talk with new folks about. It was my uncomfortable little secret, you know?

“Could it be radiation? Maybe your mom got exposed while she was pregnant,” suggested Cook. I thought for a moment. Had mom been pregnant with me when she got shot?

“Hey, wait a minute- this is your examination, not mine! Keep the speculatin’ to yourself!” Cook shrugged.

“Sorry, I'm a natural speculator. Oh, and, I think your pip-boy is booted up. Am I a new user?” I nodded.

“Here, lemme see it-“ I used the selector wheel to scroll to the thing that said, “YES,” which was a word I could read, and then let it boot up some more. After a few seconds, her profile popped up:

> STATUS

Battery Level: 40%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 95F

> HEALTH

BP: 130/80

SPO2: 99%

Temp: 99.5F

RR: 12

HR: 100

WARNINGS >Right Kidney: Absent

---

“I see a warning,” I said. “Do you mind reading it for me?” Cook shook her head. “No, I… well, shit.” She stared at the screen silently for a few seconds. I raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“It says, right kidney: absent. Is that bad?”

I blinked. “Um, let me see that.” I crouched down next to her, and flicked over to the screen that showed the smiling guy- or, girl, apparently, if the user was female, with little symbols indicating problems. Sure enough, there was a little black warning sign where her left kidney- her right kidney, actually, would be located. “Hm. I don’t reckon it’s a glitch.”

“Okay, but is that bad? Am I going to die before I turn twenty?” she asked, with enough confidence that I was pretty sure she knew the answer. I shook my head.

“Well you might, but not on account of your kidney. Some people just… only have one, I guess.” I thought for a second, then added, “Rule of thumb: If you’ve survived this long without any problems, you’re probably fine.”

That seemed to satisfy her. “Anything else you need to check?” she asked. I nodded.

“A few things. First off, I want to get an idea of what your normal heartbeat sounds like.” I slipped the earbuds of my stethoscope in and placed it against her chest, moving it around a bit. I didn’t hear no beat. “Could you pull your shirt up?” I asked. She gave me a suspicious look.

“I’m wearing a dress. I can’t really pull it up.”

“Okay then, pull it down a bit. I don’t hear nothing,” I replied, trying not to push it too much; apparently some people really didn’t like showing their skin in front of other folks. I always thought that was strange, but I’d learned to respect other people’s weird choices. She sighed and pulled the top of her dress down a bit.

“Still getting more lung than heart,” I said. Cook snickered.

“Well that’s because you’re listening on the wrong side, you dork!” I froze. I took a deep breath, and then I placed it on the other side.

“Oh my god,” I murmured. I stood there for a few more seconds, not sure whether to feel astonished or annoyed

“What?”

“Cook, have you got yourself a twin?” I asked. Cook frowned for a second, then shook her head

“Not that I remember. What’s that have to do with this?”

“Your entire body is flipped! Your heart’s on the wrong side, the pip-boy registered your right kidney as your left kidney, and I’m willing to bet twenty Caps that you’re left handed!” I said, yanking the stethoscope out of my ears. She looked surprised.

“Ambidextrous, actually. I use both my hands for stuff, though I guess I do sort of default to my left! I hadn’t noticed until you mentioned it,” she replied, rubbing her left arm nervously. I shrugged.

“Whatever! It’s harmless, and imagine if someone tried to kill you by shooting you in your heart, but they couldn’t cause it was facing the other way!”

“That would be badass.” she conceded. She stroked her chin. “Like, the hero puts the gun up to my chest and shoots, and then turns his back because he thinks that I’m dying, and then BANG! His friends all gather around for his tragic last words, I laugh an evil laugh and make my escape…”

“But what if the hero-“ I started. Cook started cackling.

“Hey, no, don’t steal my idea! What if his heart was on the wrong side too? Or, it was on the right side, but I didn’t know which side the heart was supposed to be on because mine was wrong!”

“Oh- but then, you both die anyways, cause you still got shot in the lung, and now you’ve got pneumothorax and your lung is gonna collapse!” I realized midway through the sentence that it was a real buzzkill, but Cook didn’t seem to mind. She leaned back in her chair.

“True… Well, I guess it wouldn’t be all that useful then. Still, it’s kind of cool!” She made a little gesture with her thumb and index finger to indicate just how kind of cool it was.

“A little,” I said, still grinning. We both just kind of sat there for a while after that, enjoying our newfound kinship. Cook made a sound like she’d remembered something.

“Oh! I almost forgot- do you have any idea what this weird rashy stuff is? It’s genetic I think, because a few other people in my first tribe had it and I’ve not seen it anywhere else.” She turned her back to me and spread her arms. I hadn’t noticed before, but the backs of her arms and all of the skin I could see on her upper back was covered in these little raised red patches with chalky white centers.

"Psoriasis,” I said immediately. She turned back around looking all sorts of concerned, but I waved her away. “Nothing serious. There are a few different types, but none of them are dangerous. It just means that the top layer of your skin grows too much in some places, which is what makes those weird little scales appear.” She sat back down.

“Is there like, any way I can treat it? The rashy bits itch all the time, and it hurts when I scratch them.”

“Yeah, actually!” She perked up a bit. “Just spend some time with your back to the sun. Make a habit of keeping the rash uncovered, and try to face it towards the sun whenever you’re sitting.”

“Why’s that work?” She asked. I shrugged.

“No idea. My guess is that the sunlight helps kill the weird cells, but I’m a combat clinician, never studied for it specifically. One of my father’s doctor-buddies had psoriasis, and that worked for him. He liked to go around shirtless ‘cause of that,” I explained. Cook nodded.

“Sounds like fun, but I’ll probably just stick to backless dresses- For everyone’s sake.” She laughed, and so I laughed too, even though I didn’t really get what she was joking about. It felt nice to laugh along with someone again.

“Well… I guess you better do your next patient. It’s kinda late,” said Cook eventually, standing up from the rickety chair. I nodded.

“Of course. Been a pleasure talking with you!” I unclipped the pip-boy from her wrist and gave her a friendly wave as she walked out the door.

“Yeah, you too!”

Well, that’s one patient down, I mused. Weird anatomy, but good company! I’d have to get to know her better in the future.

“Next!” I shouted.

-Break-

Battery Level: 23%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 95F

>HEALTH

BP: 150/120

SPO2: 97%

Temp: 97.5F

RR: 10

HR: 60

>WARNINGS > Head: Crippled > Right Eye: Crippled > Left Leg: Damaged > Right Kidney: Absent

>TIME

Day: 23 SEP. 2176

Time: 22:56

---

It's not in the way that you hold me,

It's not in the way you say you care!

It's not in the way you've been treating my friends,

It's not in the way that you stayed til’ the end...

Now, I couldn’t read all the warnings, but Tandi sure had a lot of them. I flipped to his- no, HER , I realized, little character icon, then immediately regretted it as the wave of warnings jumped out at me.

“Damaged head, missing right eye, some kinda fracture warning in the right leg…” I stopped for a second. I screwed up my face a little. “Oh, for fuck’s sake- are you missing a kidney too!?” Tandi bobbed her helmet solemnly.

“Okay, whatever, that’s fine, I’ll ask about it later! In the meantime, could you take off your helmet, so I can see your head?” She didn’t respond for a bit, which probably bumped my systolic up at least another ten points. Then, slowly, she brought her hands up to her helmet like Darth Vader, and lifted it off.

Her face was sharp. She had tan, leathery skin and straight blonde hair streaked with grey, tied behind her head and tucked into her collar. The lines of her face suggested that she was about fifty years old, but the sharpness of her features made her look younger. She was kind of familiar, but I couldn’t say why…

That was, of course, ignoring that the entire lower-right side of her face hung somewhat loose, with that side of her mouth all scrunched up at the end. One of her eyes was little more than a swollen, empty socket, and I could see a patch of missing flesh where her synthetic jaw poked through. Before I could start feeling disgusted, though, I got to feeling kinda curious.

“What happened there?” I asked, reaching my hand towards the face to touch the skin. Her glare was enough to make me draw back.

“I had my face shot. Someone put it back together.” She tilted that side of her face towards me. “How’s it look?”

“Magnificent! I’ve never seen anything like it,” I replied, eyes wide with wonder. The fact that she could still sound so normal- well, so relatively normal, if you ignored the bizarre cadence, was mind blowing. “Seriously, whoever did that surgery must of been equal parts crazy and awesome !”

Tandi shook her head. “No. He was a terrible doctor, just a butcher with a steady hand. Guy who made the jaw was smart, but a real shit soldier.”

So it had been a joint effort. That explained the patchwork quality, though I was still a little unclear as to how she’d actually survived getting shot in the melon. That thing contains some pretty vital stuff.

“Well, as neat as that is, you’ve got a lot of problems. Let’s start with your kidney- where the hell is it?” She curled one side of her face into a smile, which caught me off guard, then lifted up her shirt and armor. Among other markings, there was a deep, pink scar running just inferior to her ribcage, all the way across her side.

“I had a comrade named Andrei who needed one. I was stupid back then, so I gave it to him. Tried to take it back later, but that’s another story...” she recounted. She stared off into the darkness, seemed to space out for a while, and I didn’t interrupt her. I often did the same thing.

“… Anyway, now I’m short a kidney. Good luck with Gram.” She started to stand up, grunting a little as her gargantuan form unfolded out of the chair. I motioned for her to sit back down, even though I knew I couldn’t actually do anything if she chose to leave. I got the impression that she could walk right through me if she wanted to, although she didn’t on this particular occasion; tonight, she settled for scowling at me as she sat back down.

“Can I put my helmet back on?” she asked. I nodded.

“Sure. And I can probably help with that eye, if you let me. Removing a little bit of tissue and wearing a patch would probably do you a world of good.” I couldn’t tell if she’d heard me. When the mask was on, she was about as emotive as a Protectron. “Anyways, let’s talk about that leg! You got any idea what happened there?” Tandi stared at me for a few seconds, which was really creepy with the glowing red visor and the gas mask. She shrugged.

“I kill people. Sometimes, I kill them up close. I must have kicked someone’s skull in too hard.”

As usual, the talk about killing upset my brain and my stomach a little bit. I’d already decided that I was never going to kill nobody, swore an oath on it way back at Father’s funeral, but would they expect me to? Cook might understand, but Tandi? I wasn’t sure about Gram either. If he was still alive this many years after the war, I’d be willing to bet he had killed at least a few people...

But, it wouldn’t do to think about that during an examination! I tried to pull myself together.

“So, I don’t know much about what happened, except that it didn’t heal right. It’s too late to just stick some med-x in, but if we measured doses and gave you some down time, I could probably fix it...” Before I was even done speaking, Tandi was shaking her head.

“No, fuck that- I keep my scars. I ain’t about to sit around on my ass for a month so that I can get out of chairs quicker.” I rubbed my temples.

“Well then , it's awful late, and I still haven’t examined Mister Gram! You don’t have any life threatening conditions right now, so I’ll just let you go.” Without much more than a grunt of pain, Tandi stood up, tossed my pip boy on the ground, and started to walk out the door.

“And, uh- Tandi!” Slowly, she turned back around. I couldn’t see her face, but I could tell that her patience was gone. “… Be careful. You’re awful tore up, you know that? If you get hit bad, I don’t think I can offer you more’n a lick and a promise.” She didn’t nod, or do anything that told me that she heard what I was saying. She just stalked away, disappearing into the dark

Oh well. No one could say I didn’t try.

“Next!” I said, with a little less conviction this time.

-Break- Battery Level: 4%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 98F

>HEALTH

Vitals:

BP: ?

SPO2: 93%

Temp: 104F

RR: 16

HR: 50 >WARNINGS > Pulse: WARNING! > Airway: WARNING! > Temperature: WARNING! > Circulation: WARNING! > Blood Pressure: WARNING! > Respiration: WARNING! > Liver: WARNING! > Circulation: WARNING! > Dangerous radiation level!

> TIME

Day: 23 SEP. 2176

Time: 23:15

---

Oh, oh, oh (oh, oh, oh)

You're a native New Yorker!

You should know the score by now, (you should know by now),

You're a native New Yorker...

“Well, Gram, congratulations- your biology is so funky that you’ve triggered every single vitals warning. You proud of yourself?” I could tell that Gram was trying to keep a straight face as my Pip-Boy shat itself figuring out how he was still alive. He took a puff on his cigar and kicked back in the chair, causing it to creak dangerously. That didn’t seem to worry him none.

“Oh, you bet your ass I’m proud. Surviving this kind of stuff ain’t just a talent of mine, kid, it’s a passion .” He aired his cigar smoke as I stared him down, really took him all in for the first time; His brown skin was dead and peeling, his eyes were murky and black. And when he breathed, I could hear the fluid in his lungs without holding a stethoscope to his chest.

In the end, I gave up and sat down on the floor.

“To be honest, Gram, I’m kinda lost here. Both of the others had distressing shit, but at least they were human. With you… I don’t even know where to start. Are your organs even in the same place anymore?” He made an incomprehensible expression.

“I dunno- I’ve never checked.” He took another puff of his cigar, which I would comment on, but… well, frankly, that was the least of his worries. Everybody’s gotta die of something, I guess. “If I’m being honest for a moment here, Isaac, I knew you’d be confused. I just had to make sure I was right.”

My heart sank. This had been a test?

“Gram, I know I don’t sound super confident, but that’s just because this is unfamiliar territory for me! Knowledge gaps scare me! If you get shot, I’m still gonna find a way to fix you,” I said, tensing up like I had a gun pointed at me. He chuckled at that.

“You worry too much, Kid- I just want to get to know you in a medical context, make sure I can trust you to handle me and my team. Looking at how worried you are, I think I know the answer.” He gave me a wink, which he had clearly been practicing plenty over the last two hundred years, and I relaxed a little.

“I… Alright. I think I hit it off with Cook, at least, so that’s good,” I replied, sighing and scooting over to the ground beside Gram. The smell of cigar smoke filled my nose.

“Good! She came out with her smile intact, that’s always a good sign! Did you and Tandi get along any?” The mention of her name wiped the grin right off my face. “Wait, don’t answer that question- I think I know the answer. You two are already like a couple of old pals, right?”

I let out a mix between a laugh and a growl, and stared up at the flashlight hanging from the ceiling.

“She’s what my Father would’ve called a ‘ Calamity Jane. ’ That lady has got issues.”

Gram laughed too. “Yeah, you think? Turns out that thirty years of state sponsored slaughter can mess with your head.” Gram swished some more smoke around in his mouth, and blew it out through his nose. “She’s a good woman at heart. She just has this idea in her head that she’s got some kind of duty to her people- to the NCR, to me and Cook- and sometimes she just can’t see anything else.” I guess Gram saw that I was looking forlorn, because he reached over to pat my head. “Don’t worry about it. Just be glad that you managed to get through to Cook. You ain’t gonna be all alone.”

Then Gram handed me my pip-boy back and stood up to leave. I didn’t stop him. As he opened up the rickety wooden door, (which I noticed that only he had bothered to close) he turned around to face me. “G’night, kid. Try and get some sleep tonight. We’ll be walking most of tomorrow, and I want you up at the crack of dawn.” I nodded.

"Course.” Gram tipped his hat, and closed the door behind him.

Blinking to stay awake, I checked the time on my pip boy. It was almost midnight, which meant that the day wasn’t even over yet. Yawning, I turned it off, and plugged it into my emergency energy cell.

September 23rd- It had been the best day of my life, then the second worst, then it got better, and now it was kind of mediocre again. I wasn’t sure how I felt now. Not that it mattered how I felt. I was going to have to stop thinking so much if I wanted to survive the following days, I realized, as I straddled the line between sleep and consciousness. I thought about standing up to turn the light off, but I was so tired that even thinking about standing up made my legs ache. Instead, I just made a sad, feeble attempt to reach the thing with my hand, and then everything went black.

And so that’s what happened on the 23rd of September, 2173; the day that the world ended.

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“Oh, that’s terrible! I mean, I had known that Penny was sick, but I didn’t know that she had cancer !” said Mrs. McBain. She gave my hand a tight squeeze, and then released it. “If there’s anything we can do…”

“There’s one thing,” I said. Both Mrs. McBain and her recovering husband looked up at me. “Look after my momma. Make her nice meals, give her hugs, and send a letter to the followers if anything happens. I hope I won’t be gone for long, but if I don’t come back…” I thought for a moment. “Look for help. If you can’t find any, at least make her comfortable.”

Mr. and Mrs. McBain shared a look that suggested they were worried about me. “Of course, I’m sure that ain’t gonna happen. I just like to plan for the worst!” Mr. McBain smiled at me from his bed.

“I appreciate that kind of thinking, son. Things can go to hell in a handbasket pretty quick,” said the Sheriff. His wife glared at him.

“He’s not going to die, Kurt! Don’t you suggest that kind of thing!”

“I wasn’t suggesting nothin! Just saying that it’s good to have a plan- it’s a staple of being a good doctor, or so I hear,” said Mr. McBain, looking at me again. I forced a laugh.

“Yeah, I guess it is! Now, you two, can you do that? Can you look after my mom for a few weeks?” Immediately, Mrs. McBain nodded. Mr. McBain gave a thumbs up.

“Of course, Isaac! It’s the least we can do, really,” said Mrs. McBain. I smiled.

“Thank you,” I replied, and headed for the door. Mom might come looking for me soon, and this’d be one of the first places she’d check.

“Wait, Isaac- do you want to call your mom before you leave?” suggested Mrs. McBain, putting a hand on my shoulder. I shook my head.

“No. Well, yes, but I’m afraid that she’ll change my mind.” I hung my head. I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity, but I needed to do this. I suspected that I was going to have to make a lot of these kinds of choices in the near future. “Thank you though. I’ll try to repay you somehow when I get back.”

“Isaac, dear, you already have.”

I smiled at that. “If you say so.” A cloud of dust blew in around my legs as I opened the door. “See you folks soon- tell Mom I said goodbye, and that I love her!”

And just like that, I left behind everything I knew, and strode into unknown territory.

-Break-

Well, not really, “ Unknown territor y,” not yet. The next place I went was the town square, which was quiet and empty today. I was thankful for that. I strode past mom’s Casino, which was my next destination, and crouched down next to a little patch of brown grass and concrete between the sidewalk and Bison Steve’s. That was where Father had been shot. After that, he backpedaled for a while, and then ran into the side of the Casino, where he fell down and bled out.

I walked over to the wall. Me and mom had painted it together, before he died and after. I usually left him something; The first time it had been the snow globe he was going to give me, then it had been cactus flowers, and it kept changing after that. Whenever it stormed, the items got swept away, which I was okay with. He wasn’t even buried there, and it wasn’t like he was in any state to need the stuff. I would just start over, leaving something new every time.

But not this time. Not only was that in the past that I was trying to leave behind, but it was also kind of stupid, as I was starting to realize. Instead, I just crouched down next to the spot, put down my bag, and tried to make myself look presentable.

“Howdy, Father- I’m going on a little adventure, out in the wastes. I’d be real grateful if you could watch over Momma til I get back.” I didn’t know much about communing with spirits- still don’t, but it felt like a nice thing to do. After all, I was going to be gone for a while.

And after that, I stood up, wiped away the tears that had been gathering in my eyes, and walked into mom’s bustling Casino. The mysterious new city of New Vegas had taken a toll on business, but Primm still had the most convenient Casino on this side of the Mojave.

“Good evening, Mr. Saller! How you doing- I heard you saved the Sheriff’s life today!” said Johnson Nash, an old, wrinkly-skinned man and the overseer of the Mojave Express mail delivery here in Primm. I smiled as I approached him.

“Howdy Mr. Nash. My mom is dying of cancer. Are there any caravans passing through here?”

Mr. Nash looked surprised. His gaze shifted to the window. “Well, I… Really, Penny? I’m so sorry, boy, she’s always seemed so strong to me! I never would have guessed that she…” he turned his head to look at me again. “Sorry. I’m reminiscing. You just missed an NCR caravan heading up to Nipton. If the schedule keeps going like it has been, another caravan should show up next month…”

“Crud,” I muttered. I thought about saying something less polite, but Mr. Nash didn’t like me swearing.

“Sorry,” said Mr. Nash. Then, his expression changed. He glanced over his shoulder.

“Oh, I almost forgot! There’s an unsponsored one preparing to leave right now, bound straight for New Vegas. It’s a little caravan, three people, a couple of brahmin and a wagon. They’ve run the route a few times, but they don’t usually pass through here. The leader- Gram, I think it was, says he’s with the NCR. He’s got a ranger with him, so normally, I’d be inclined to believe him. But, the NCR never told me about them like they do with the rest of their caravans, and only the ranger wears a uniform.”

I started to walk away. “Thanks, Mr. Nash--where can I find them?”

“They’re out back behind the Casino, sort of over by the hitching posts, but I wouldn’t mess with them. They seem kind of shady to me,” he said. I turned my head to grin at him.

“Oh, I’ll be fine, Mr. Nash. I’m sure they’ll jump at the opportunity to get a doctor on board!”

-Break-

“Hands behind your head! That’s right, don’t move an inch!”

I shouted out in pain and surprise as the great-big person with the ranger uniform pushed their boot even harder against the small of my back, no doubt leaving a bruise. Without even registering it, I had moved both of my hands behind my head.

“Good. Hoplite, search him!”

A stout, bespectacled ghoul wearing a plaid three-piece suit with a tan cowboy-hat sauntered into my field of view. I hadn’t met many ghouls before, but I could tell by his demeanor that he was no spring chicken. Maybe pre war, maybe not, but definitely vintage. Maybe even antique. He stared at me for a while, then took off his hat, and tilted his head in my direction.

“He’s got nothin, Tandi. If he had a gat, he would have tried to reach for it when you spotted him,” said the ghoul. My ribcage felt like it was going to crack open as the ranger put even more weight onto their one foot.

“That’s not what I’m worried about. I bet he’s a legion slave, check his collar, look for brands on his skin!”  

“I ain’t a slave,” I said, and instantly regretted speaking. The ranger laughed, a strange, hollow sound once it got passed through the helmet.

“Well, the kid ain’t a slave! What a goddamn relief!” The cheery Texan twang didn’t mesh with the deep, slavic voice. Every word that the ranger spoke sent chills down my spine.

“Look!” I shouted. I reached for my coat collar, and the ranger raised their foot and jammed their heel into my back again, harder than before. I screamed out something incomprehensible.

“Try it again, slave-boy-“ I could hear the ranger pull the bolt back on their submachine-gun, and I’m pretty sure I pissed my pants a little. “…And I put a round in your kidney! Maybe death don’t scare you, but pain like that’ll make a tough man cry. Ain’t that right Hoplite?”

The ghoul let out a tired sigh. “I’m not about to play good-cop bad-cop with you, Tandi. Let the poor kid go.” The Ranger kept their foot on my back for a few more seconds, pressing just hard enough to give me a sharp pain in my ribcage. Finally, they released me, leaving me aching in the sand.

As soon as I had recovered enough to breath, I flipped myself onto my back and started coughing. My whole goddamn chest was aching, which was an unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling. Of course, that wasn’t what I was thinking about. I was instead thinking about how I almost got shot, how I almost died less than an hour into my journey, how I almost failed my momma…

I started crying. I knew immediately that it was a bad idea, so I kept it silent, but I couldn’t help but let a few tears leak down my face. No one seemed to notice it, probably because they were still talking amongst themselves.

“…we do with him? Like, I’d feel kind of bad leaving him here…”

“Whoa, big friggin’ idea right here: why don’t we ask him what he was doing? He don’t look like a bad guy to me…”

“Leave him here. He’s a runt and a coward, and the only thing I-“

“Buzz off, Tandi! No one invited you to this conversation!”

“Yeah, shut up, the adults are talking!”

“What? I am thirty years your senior, Savvy! ”

“… Ladies, please. If we don’t make a decision soon, I think the suspense might kill him.”

“Still time for me to kill him.”

“Hush! I think he’s listening to us!”

All eyes turned to me. After a few seconds of feeling like a bug in a magnifying glass, I threw my arms into the air and craned my neck in what I can only describe as a full-body shrug. The ghoul laughed as my arms and legs thumped against the sand.

“Did that hurt? That looked like it hurt,” said the person who I hadn’t seen yet. I could hear her walking closer to me. I didn’t look up.

“Little bit,” I admitted. She was standing behind my head now, and, not wanting to lift my neck, I strained my eyes to look up at her. I couldn’t see her so well against the glare of the sun, but I could make out the general look; she was a young, heavy-ish woman with a bob of black hair and what I recognized to be some-kind-of-Asian features, wearing a faded floral sundress and a floppy hat. I smiled up at her, and she smiled back.

“Howdy there!” I said, and then regretted speaking so loud. My chest still ached.

“Hi! I’m sorry about our ranger. She’s kind of aggressive,” said the girl. I snorted. “Anyways, what’s your name? And, uh, would you like to stand?”

“Isaac, and no, not really,” I replied. Still smiling, she withdrew her hand.

“That’s okay. What were you doing back here? Was this just bad luck, or were you trying to find us?” I nodded absently.

“Both, I think.” I saw the ghoul cast a sidelong glance at the ranger.

“A wise guy? Oh, this’ll be fun. Maybe we should kill him after all,” said the ghoul, and I laughed a laugh that was really just a thinly veiled prayer to God that he was joking. The girl gave him a look.

“Gram, hush. Why were you looking for us? And don’t beat around the bush anymore, I hate it when people do that.”

Normally I would agree with her on that, but I felt like I had a little bit of a right to be insufferable. Given the circumstances.

Don’t push your luck, I thought to myself, you want to join up with these folks. You can still spin this to your advantage! Except, I didn’t really know how I was gonna do that. None of them were taking any sort of pity on me, so I doubted I could play the poor, innocent boy card, and I wouldn’t press the dying momma thing. Past that… well, I wasn’t really sure what to say.

First though, I decided to stand up. I couldn’t have looked very impressive, lying in the dirt like I was. Trying to appear as though I weren’t in incredible pain, I stood and dusted myself off. I turned to face the girl in the dress, who was looking awful unimpressed with me.

“Well, since you asked me so nice, I’ll keep it simple- I need to get to New Vegas as soon as possible. Someone at the casino told me about y’all, so I came to see if you might take me on.” I turned my head to look at the ghoul. “You’re Gram, right? Nash told me about you. Said you were kinda shady, but I trusted that I’d be alright.”

The Ghoul nodded. “Yeah, that’s me. Sorry, but we ain’t taking any new members. We run a taut ship here, and to be honest, I don’t think we need anyone else gumming up the works.” I started to talk, but the ghoul raised a hand to silence me. “And, forget about paying to come along, because this job here is paying enough for my retirement! Don’t think I didn’t see that look in your eyes, kid.”

There went that avenue. I tried not to look defeated.

“That’s alright! I don’t got much money anyways,” I said, which was technically true- I wasn’t very liquid right now. “I was thinking about offering my services. I’m a doctor, see!”

“Nah, see, I already told you, we don’t- wait!” I could see the look on his face change as he registered what I said. “Wait, a doctor? Ah, I should’ve guessed by the coat! You roll with the Followers?”

“No. I’m looking to see them, actually. My aunt Julie leads this here chapter, and my father was a big shot there. Taught me a thing or two, before he died.” I said. I showed him the badge on my coat, which was a little metal circle with a stenciled-on cross with forked ends and a circle at the point where the two lines crossed. He examined it for a moment, then nodded.

“Badge seems genuine, so I don’t think you’re lying about your pops. But, how do I know you’re any good as a doctor? We can’t exactly have you perform a demonstration.”

I had a solution to this one!

“That’s easy! I saved a man’s life this morning, and I can prove it! Name’s Kurt McBain- he’s the Sheriff of this town. Ask anyone in that Casino, and they’ll tell you that I’m not lying. Mrs. McBain shared the news with everyone , so there’s no shortage of people who know,” I said, grumbling the last part like I was disappointed. I was secretly thrilled that she’d told so many people, but I was pretending to be disappointed because it seemed more in-character.

“Cook, why don’t you go check up on that story? Tandi, go check the perimeter, make sure this isn’t some sort of distraction. I think I’d like to talk to the kid alone.”

The other two members of the group departed wordlessly, leaving me alone behind the Casino with Gram, the weird ghoul who spoke like a gangster from one of the pre-war crime novels that my father would read me sometimes. He scared me less than the ranger, but more than the other person- Cook, he had called her. I couldn’t really put a finger on why.

“So, Isaac, let’s assume you’re telling me the truth, for a moment. Just how good of a doctor are you?” asked Gram, walking past me to lean against the peeling Casino wall. I thought for a moment. That was a hard question.

“Well I’m more of a medic, really- general physician in a pinch, but I studied for trauma. Given enough supplies, I can patch up most folks who haven’t got irreversible organ damage,” I replied, thinking back to how I’d repaired the Sheriff’s leaky artery with a stimpack. I might’ve been able to fix it without one, too, if I knew going in what exactly I’d be doing, but I wasn’t sure if I trusted my emergency sutures to hold on their own just yet...

We talked for some time about what I’d done, and what I could do if I absolutely had to. I explained to him that if I set up a pip-boy profile for everyone in advance, I’d be able to get all sorts of information that I’d otherwise have to find out the old-fashioned way. All the while, Gram was scratching the back of his neck, looking over at the back door to the Casino like a deathclaw might come bursting out at any moment. He always kept one hand in his coat.

“Well, Cook’ll be getting back pretty soon, and I’ll call Tandi over the radio once Cook gets back. Assuming you ain’t lying or holding anything back, then you’re on. I’ll give you ten minutes to pack up, and then we’re leaving.”

Despite everything, I smiled- I just couldn’t help it! The sun hadn’t even set, and I was already starting my journey to save my mom. No one could tell me it was just an idea now, because I was taking actions- taking risks, I realized, and it was already paying off. I was elated!

Suddenly, the back door to the Casino opened up. Cook stepped out, her expression unreadable.

“Hey, Gram? So, I asked around, and I’m pretty sure that he’s for real. There were some people who hadn’t heard about the incident, but most of the people who I talked to confirmed that the story was true,” she said. Gram raised one of his bushy eyebrows.

“Hm. How many is, “most?” How was your sample size?”

“Eight out of the Ten people who I asked answered in the affirmative. No one actually denied the story, they just denied knowledge of it. The details didn’t deviate much between accounts, either.”

Gram turned his whole upper body to look at me. He whistled. “Damn, Isaac! Either you’re the fifth best conman I’ve ever met, or you ain’t kidding about the whole doctor thing. I’m gonna go with the latter, because I’ve usually got a pretty good eye for cons.”

“Are you sure, Gram? Not knowing about it is what makes a good con. What if you’ve been getting tricked all the time, and you’re so bad at spotting cons that  you didn’t see most of them- even in retrospect!” suggested Cook. Gram scoffed.

“Please- when you’re alive for as long as me, you learn a thing or two about people and their tricks.” He sounded cross, but I could tell that he was smiling. Cook made a dramatic gesture.

“That’s what they want you to think! It’s how they’ve tricked you for so long!”

“Who’s tricked who?” asked the ranger, emerging around the corner with their barking-iron drawn. Every muscle in my body tensed as I tried not to jump out of my skin.

“Cook was telling me about all the cons I’ve apparently missed. I got a pretty good eye for cons, right, Tandi?”

“How do you know you can trust my answer?”

Cook grinned from ear to ear, and I found myself smiling too- her grin was infectious. “I told you! You’ve been blind this whole time, Gram! I guess living so long has given you some sort of complex…”

Could I wedge my way into this conversation? Did I even want to? The group seemed to run on an awful lot of unspoken rules and agreements, and I definitely didn’t get the impression that I had been invited to this particular conversation just yet.

“Et Tu, Isaac? Has this all been some sort of set up?” Gram asked, throwing his arms out and contriving to look betrayed. I took my invitation and tried real hard to look menacing.

“I’m sorry brother, but you shouldn’t have crossed the mob. You saw what happened to Sunny, didn’t you?” I said, making a little finger gun and calling desperately on my vague knowledge of “The Godfather.” Gram raised an eyebrow.

“First off, that’s not what Pacino sounds like and Michael didn’t kill Sonny. Second, you’ve seen The Godfather?” He sounded more intrigued than surprised. I shook my head.

“Read it, actually. My father read me a lot of books when I was younger. Are you from New York?” I stopped. That was a weird place to end the sentence, since they couldn’t understand the train of thought that led there. “Sorry. It’s just, we were talking about The Godfather, and you sound a lot like the voice my father would put on when he was playing New York mobsters.” Gram looked at me strangely, or at least I imagined he did, then nodded.

“Yeah, yeah I lived in Brooklyn before the war. I’ve been a lot of places since then…” He seemed to think for a moment. “Have you seen what New York looks like nowadays? It’s worse than the Capital Waste. If I hadn’t gotten outta there, I’m sure I would’ve gotten killed by now.”

“Well, I haven’t been, but-“ I started, getting ready to recount one of my many stories about father’s adventures with the Followers. Before I could finish, the ranger stepped between us.

“Beggin’ your pardon, Hoplite, but the sun’s setting, and I don’t want to spend another night in this shithole. Are we taking him or not?”

Gram shrugged. “Depends. Are you sure you wanna come…”

“Isaac,” I said. Gram nodded.

“Right. Now, Isaac, before you agree to anything, I feel like I’m obligated to warn you about the dangers of this run. There are raiders out there, there are legion assassins, mutants, and because of these things there will probably be death. We haven’t had a casualty in years, but you’re still probably going to watch someone die.” That last one hit me like a punch in the gut, but I think I managed to keep my reaction under wraps. I just nodded. “You ever seen someone die, Isaac? Are you gonna shut down on us as soon as someone gets shot?”

“Yes, I have,” I replied, and left it that. Gram looked satisfied.

“Good. Let’s get going. Isaac- as of this moment, you’re hired. I’ll give you ten minutes to pack. Be quick,” he said, shooing me away. I shook my head.

“Actually, I’m already packed.” In retrospect, I probably should have taken a few choice magazines with me, but those weren’t particularly vital. I had my jump bag with me, and I had the clothes on my back.

It was kind of sad, actually, to think that I didn’t own a single item worth taking with me that I wasn’t already carrying. Maybe I just wasn’t thinking hard enough.

“Well, in that case, we’ve got no time to waste- let’s hit the road!”

Under normal circumstances, I’d have felt awful sad, leaving home like this, not knowing if I was ever gonna return. But today, I was satisfied. I’d made a decision, and I was finding a way to carry it out!

“Cya soon, momma,” I mumbled, and loaded my bag onto the back of the wagon. I was leaving all-standing, and the journey ahead of me would surely be long, dangerous, and full of unpleasant surprises. I might even die a horrible death, end up face down in a pool of radioactive waste...

I’d never been more thrilled in my entire life!

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LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

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16600 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: “THE-END-OF-THE-WORLD”

INITIALISING….

SUCCESS!

>STATUS

Battery Level: 90%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 92F

> HEALTH

BP: 120/90

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 19

HR: 70

> CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 103 F

Atmospheric Pressure: 753 mm

Background Radiation: 0.231 RAD

---

I had never felt so good in my entire life.

I’d had moments of triumph before, but nothing like what I was feeling as I walked home from Mrs. McBain’s house, my white coat trailing behind me, damp hair blowing in the wind. I was riding high in the saddle!

I’d saved a life. Like, an actual, human life! Everyone had been so happy with me- suddenly, I wasn’t the weird retard across the street, the creepy kid who was always pissing himself over loud noises and sitting alone in the town square. I was a doctor, and I was to be expected, and cheered, and listened to… It was like all my fantasies had come true! I was the coat wearing, slow-walking, calm and collected badass that I’d always promised myself I’d be!

Well, that wasn’t totally true. I’d been a little shaky there for a minute, and there were things I could have done differently, but I hadn’t shut down like I thought I might! That was real progress from the days when a dog barking at me could make me curl up and sob.

I didn’t bother ringing the doorbell as I threw open the door to my home and waltzed into the main hall, where mom was waiting for me. I didn’t even flinch as she came up and hugged me, because I was already throwing my arms around her myself. She looked surprised.

“Momma!” I shouted, and pressed my head into her shoulder. Even though I was 17 years old, I was still a lot shorter than her, because she was tall for a woman and I was knee high to a lamb- only five foot four at the time. It usually made me feel sort of self conscious, but right now, I didn’t care. “I saved Mr. McBain today! Beagle accidentally shot him while they were doing target practice, and he hit his femoral artery, so I had to-“ My mom shushed me.

“I know! Trust me Ikey, I know! I heard all about it from Mrs. McBain!” There was a pause. Mom ran her fingers through my wet hair. “God I’m so proud of you, Ikey! I was scared when I realized you’d gone, but I knew that you’d be alright. I just knew.”

A wave of guilt washed over my heart as I realized that I hadn’t checked with mom to tell her where I was going. She’d probably looked for me in the town square, and then heard a single gunshot in the hotel…

“I’m fine. Sorry I didn’t tell you where I was heading,” I said. I was still pressing my head against mom’s shoulder, because even after a shower and lunch, I felt completely drained.

“It’s okay. You’re home, you’re alive, Mr. McBain is alive… Everything is alright.” Now that I looked at her, mom’s skin was all flushed, and she looked awful sick. She’d looked old for years, but today she looked real frail. Some combination of stress and that long illness she’d gotten way back when, I guessed. I hugged her even tighter, then let her go. We stepped away from each other.

“Well, why don’t you go to your room and unwind- maybe you can play something on the computer, listen to the radio, rest a little…” I stopped smiling. That was how mom liked to preface bad news. Now I was all tense, waiting for the other shoe to drop…

“And then we need to talk about something.”

I knew it! “Is this about me leaving? Cause, I normally wouldn’t go like that, but it was an emergency, see, and I haven’t hurt myself in years-!”

“It’s not about that,” my mother said, gently. I slumped a little. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said anything. Come on- go to your room, relax, and I’ll talk to you in an hour. Alright?” I didn’t answer. I felt like crying, and if I talked, it would make it worse.

“Alright Ikey?”

“Okay,” I said, and walked to my room. I shut the door gently behind me, and then sat down at my desk, legs hanging off the end of the chair. I took my pip boy off, plugged it into the computer and then stared at the screen for a while. I hadn’t gone back to my room after answering the emergency phone call, so the “Game Over” screen of Red Menace was still glowing in my absence.

I turned off my computer; I wasn’t in the mood for games now. I put my headphones on instead, plugged them into the radio, and tuned it to the 70’s music station. I had to wade through a few seconds of static before I got the right frequency.

‘We-are-family!’ came the voice in the headphones. I had a soft spot for Disco, so I cranked up the volume a bit. “And I got all my sisters with me…”

Once I was satisfied with that, I opened my drawer and pulled out an old picture of Father that I kept there, that I liked to consult in situations like these. He looked a lot like me- Thin, blonde haired, always wearing his Followers of the Apocalypse Coat. My coat, now. But, where I was short, round faced, and weak, father had been the opposite. The features of his face were sharp and defined, and he had a well-groomed beard. He never wore glasses.

I closed my eyes. Even though he’d been all those things, that wasn’t how I remembered him. I remembered him because he was fair, and honest, and loving in a different way than my mom. Patient, is what he was. Even back when people thought I was a retard, father raised me like he would any son- he taught me to be good, to resist tyranny, and to never, ever hurt anyone, no matter how bad they were. When I showed an interest in medicine, he taught me that, finding ways around my inability to read and write and do complicated math. He taught me how to use a calculator, how to use simple tricks to solve complicated problems, and all those sorts of things.

I really liked my father. I’d say that I wanted to live up to his memory, but I knew I couldn’t ever do that. Everyone in the Mojave knew about Lucas Saller and all the folks he’d saved, and I had some problems that he didn’t. Instead, I tried my best to do what would make him proud anyways. “ Find a way ,” he’d told me, and so I always did.

There was a knock at my door. Quickly, I shoved the picture back in the desk drawer and shut it. I tried to keep a steady voice as I said, “You can come in.”

The door creaked open. Mom walked in the door frame- a picture of majesty, in my eyes- and sat down on the bed. She took a long, deep breath.

“Please take those headphones off,” she said. I plucked them off my head and sat them down on the desk. “Thank you.” As an afterthought, I bent over the desk and turned off the radio. I heard the headphones crackle and then go silent.

“Now, I know I said I’d wait an hour, but I got the feeling that I was just stressing you even more by waiting…” It was true. I would have probably exploded if I had to wait an hour. “Is it okay if I talk to you now?”

“Of course!” I snapped, words firing out of my mouth just a little too fast. Mom smiled.

“Oh Ikey…”

And there was that weakness again- the way her shoulders slumped, her green eyes glossed over- I looked away. “You know, since your father died, you’ve grown up so much.”

I stared at the ground. “Not really,” I said. “I’m still smaller than anyone else I know.” Well, not everyone. I was taller than Mr. Nash’s wife now, but not by much.

Mom shook her head. “You know that’s not what I mean. When you walked in through the door today, all happy and composed, I saw a man in you. And, it was just… It was crazy, to think that you’re this grown up! That I can trust you to go out on your own, and deal with this, this insane , stressful situation, and then come back like it was all nothing.”

I smiled a little at that, and let myself look up from the ground. “Remember when I used to bite people for touching me? How old was I last time I did that, ten?”

“Thirteen,” my mother replied, sounding solemn. I raised an eyebrow.

“Really? Was that before or after…”

“Before,” she said. I nodded to myself. Before father died. “I think that it sort of… forced you to grow up a little. Or a lot, just based on today. And I guess I saw it before then too. You did ten years of learning in three.”

I shook my head. “It didn’t force me, I made a choice to be stronger after that. Nothing done forced me to grow up,” Mom frowned, and my chest hurt a little at that. What was I saying wrong?

“Ikey… well, you know what, it doesn’t matter! One way or another, you’ve grown up a lot since then. You might not see it,”

“I do,” I interrupted, “I’m doing a lot better now.”

“-Of course, Ikey. I see it, you see it… And, I think that God’s seen it too, because the world’s decided to give you a new challenge.”

My heart sank.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Mom looked me in my eyes. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were all red.

“Ikey, remember that story we told you about the cultists? How your father and I were attacked on the road, and how I got shot?” I nodded. It wasn’t one of her favorite stories, but father had told me about it before. “Well, the problems didn’t set in for a while, but once they did, dad realized that I was sick. You probably don’t remember, but when you were young, I’d disappear for a couple of weeks, every once and awhile. Do you remember that?”

“No,” I said, and I didn’t. I’d forgotten a lot of things.

“Well, no matter. I’d go missing sometimes, and while I was missing, I was getting treatment from the Followers of the Apocalypse. It was expensive, but your father paid for it, either with caps or with his reputation. Between Aunt Julie and him, I could always find help.”

The pieces were starting to fit together now, and I was starting to fall apart. Had she come to tell me what I thought...?

“Momma, are you dying?” I asked, before she could continue. My mom choked a little bit.

“Ikey! Ikey, please let me finish! I already feel so terrible, dumping all this on you-“

“Dumping what? Momma, ARE YOU DYING?” She breathed deep- looked away from me, clenched her fists- but she didn’t stop. She just spoke to the floor instead.

“Well, the treatment worked! I didn’t even lose my hair, like they said I would- it was all so perfect. The doctors were optimistic. They thought they’d fixed it, killed the disease, but they hadn’t. They’d just slowed it down.”

“For a while, I was alright. I started feeling better, and for ten years or so, I raised you and ran the Casino and spent time with your father without any signs of the disease ever coming back. And then one night, I started feeling sick again, so I sent a letter to Julie and the Followers…”

I knew the rest of this story. “And then Father made an emergency trip home, and he died. I remember, mom. You don’t have to tell me that part.” I was crying now too, thinking about that night. It was dark and hot, and father had brought me a little snow globe…

Nope. Not going there.

“When he died, I lost all of my freedom. You were too young and too…”

“Retarded,” I finished, glaring at the ground.

“No, too inexperienced, to look after the Casino for me! And I was worried that you might try to hurt yourself again. So, I just tried to tough it out, waiting for the day that you’d be old enough to watch everything while I was gone to get treatment…”

I bit my bottom lip. That day had probably passed about a year ago, but she hadn’t seen it until now. What could I have done differently, to show her that I was ready?

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have grown up a bit faster if it meant you getting your cancer treated!” I said helplessly. Mom set her jaw.

“Because I’m never going to try to force you to grow up any faster than you need to. You needed time to develop!”

“And you needed chemotherapy!” I stood up, and Mom glared at me.

“Ikey, sit! I didn’t-”

“I’m not-”

“ -DIDN’T COME HERE , for you to storm off on me!”

“Momma, I’m not gonna storm off!” There were tears in my eyes. “I’m- I’m worried about you, is all! If you came here to ask me if you could leave me alone a few weeks then the answer is yes, obviously! I love you!”

But she just shook her head.

“It’s too late for that, way too late. You need to be strong to survive that journey, and I’m not strong anymore. And the roads have gotten more dangerous since then, too- so dangerous that the NCR is taking action. Did you hear that they’re getting ready to set up an outpost here?”

I shook my head. Obviously, NCR control would be bad for Primm, but that wasn’t what I was worried about now. I was worried about my Momma! My mind was already racing with more possibilities.

“Then what are we gonna do? You- you think we could get the Follower’s to come down here? We could write to Aunt Julie! We could remind them about Father!”

Mom sighed. She decided to stand up then too, and even with her hunched back, she was so much bigger than me. She drew open the curtains, and some of her majesty returned as the sunlight and breeze washed over her.

“No, the Followers have too much on their hands right now to treat me again. There’s no options, Isaac...”

My heart clenched up-

“ I’m going to die .”

And shattered.

She rested her arms on the sill as the words sunk in. The horror, the finalty… the absurdity of it all. Because even when you know it’s coming, news like that is more crazy than it is anything else. I couldn’t find any words of my own, so I just closed my eyes and bit my tongue. I would’ve screamed otherwise.

“I don’t know when it’ll happen. It could be a year from now, it could be four. But when it does, I need you to be ready to take up the Casino- hell, you can sell the thing, I don’t care- but, I need you to be able to survive on your own. Do you think you can learn to do that?”

A few more seconds passed as hot tears made their way down my cheeks. I kept my eyes and jaw clenched shut, lest anything escape.

“ Ikey, baby, do you think you can do that for me?"

And I heard Momma walking towards me, felt her gettin closer. Felt that static in my head again...

“ Ikey…?”

She put her hand on my shoulder, and I exploded.

“NO!” I shrieked. Her eyes went wide.

“What?” “You heard me Momma! Fuck that, I’m not just going to just, just lay down and watch while you die!” I sniffled. “I’ll- I’ll go and get the Followers myself if I’ve got to, but I am gonna find a way to help! I’ve gotta!”

Still shocked, my mom sat back down on the bed.

“Ikey… I appreciate that, but that’s an awful idea! I already told you, the Followers can’t-“ she started, but I was already gathering up my things to leave.

“Fuck them too! They have to help you, I’ll yell at Aunt Julie or something!”

I was in the hallway now. Mom tried to catch up with me, but I’d already clicked on my pip-boy, swept up my coat and picked up my bag. What reason did I have to delay any longer?

“Ikey, we can still do all those other things! We can still send a letter to Aunt Julie, write to her for help-”

I stopped. I took a deep breath. My hand was on the door knob now, but I drew it back for a moment and stood still at the end of the hall.

“If all them letters didn’t work before, then they ain’t gonna work now.” I turned to face her down. “You ain’t going to change my mind on this, momma. I am going to find a way to save you.”

“No! Isaac I didn’t, I never...”

She clenched her fists. She looked even weaker now; I’d never noticed how gray her hair had gotten, or how wrinkled and yellow her skin was becoming, or seen any of the signs that I’d so painstakingly memorized. Maybe because I hadn’t wanted to.

What was that look on her face? Was it worry? Anger? Regret? Maybe it was all of them at once. I don’t know. I’d gotten so used to reading Mom’s simple, practiced expressions that she’d put on just for me, that I didn’t know how to interpret her raw emotion besides knowing that she was feeling something awful strongly. I kept my gaze steady.

“... Oh, damn my pride,” she muttered, eventually. She covered her eyes. “My goddamned pride! Oh, I should never have lied to you!”

“It’s okay Momma...”

The hot air burned me as I stepped outside. Momma fell to her knees sobbing.

“I never should have lied! Come back Ikey, I didn’t, I didn’t-!”

“It’s okay! It’s okay, I’ll be back!” I shouted, and left the door hanging open for her to close. I didn’t have the heart to shut the door on her, maybe because it would solidify the crazy decision I’d just made.

Crazy or not, I’d made my choice. No matter what I had to say, or what I had to do, I was going to find a way to save my Momma!

(+)1

It was eight o'clock in the morning, and Sheriff McBain had just been shot.

There weren’t no lights, no sirens. No outward signs of urgency anywhere, save for the frantic telephone call I’d received just seconds ago and my own bounding heart rate.

It didn’t take me long to pull on my pants or step into my boots. Even with my shaking body, I moved with a sense of purpose, each action a step in a subconscious routine.

Buckle up my pants, lace my boots, grab my glasses, disconnect my Pip-Boy from the outlet, clip that bad-mama on and get it running…

The black screen turned a vibrant green color as I clicked the power button, lighting up my dark room. These were the words on the screen:

PIP-OS(R) v1.0.3

COPYRIGHT 2075 ROBCO(R)

LOADER V1. 1

EXEC VERSION 41.10

32K RAM SYSTEM

16811 BYTES FREE

HOLLOWTAPE LOADED: “THE-SCIENCE-OF-UNCERTAINTY”

INITIALISING….

SUCCESS!

> STATUS

Battery Level: 100%

Wireless Signal: (?)

Operating Temperature: 90F

> HEALTH

BP: 150/120

SPO2: 100%

Temp: 98.5F

RR: 25

HR: 160

> TIME

Day: 25 September 2279

Time: 08:01

> CLIMATE

Current Temperature: 78F

Atmospheric Pressure: 753 mm

Background Radiation: 0.231 RAD

---

I couldn’t read much, so I wasn’t sure exactly what each of them meant, but I got the gist- I knew exactly what I needed to know. I threw open my door and strode into the hallway, grabbing my father’s white coat off of a hook along the way. I slipped it on over my shoulders as I strode up to the front door, where my faded orange doctor’s-bag lay on its side. Before I threw the strap over my shoulder, I made sure to quickly button my coat and pull my green tie tight around my shirt collar, because my father told me that a doctor should always look his best. I hefted my bag up with one hand and pushed the door open with the other.

The morning sun was bright in my eyes. It was hot outside, about 97 Fahrenheit if my pip-boy was telling me the truth. Not that it mattered- I was used to the heat, and my patient was inside the air-conditioned Bison Steve’s Hotel. I didn’t give it much space in my head.

I started to sprint, skirting the corner of my neighbor’s house and running out into the main square, heavy bag swinging wildly in my aching right hand. As much as I wanted to have time to process all this, to stride up all slow and confident like father had taught me, I didn’t have the time. It could be a matter of seconds deciding whether or not the Sheriff survived.

I was starting to feel kind of dizzy, like you do when you’re fixing to vomit. The Hotel was just up ahead now. The big “Bison Steve’s” sign flickered eerily as I walked up to the double wooden doors, which I pulled on at least three times before I remembered that they were push doors. A rush of cool air washed over my skin as I stepped into the building, and tried to regain my composure. I cleared my throat.

“Alright- Alright y’all, listen up: My name is Isaac Saller, and I am a medic! ” I shouted. There was silence. “‘I’m empty holstered, so please don’t shoot!”

That may have been a bad idea, in retrospect, but it was all that I had planned for an active-shooter type deal. I didn’t deal well with confrontation.

The front hall and the reception desk were abandoned, but the lights were on. I stepped through the next set of propped-open doors and into a dark hallway, where a pretty blonde woman was cowering, holding onto a wall-mounted telephone. Her red face glistened with sweat.

That would be Mrs. McBain.

“Oh my god, Isaac! Come here, quickly- I think my husband is dying!” I power-walked to catch up with her, then tried to keep up a comparable walking pace. Which was kind of hard, given my height; I was still, “between hay and grass ,” my father would have said.

“Could you tell me what happened?” I asked. The words felt so strange to say out loud. I’d practiced what I’d do in a real emergency, but now that it was actually happening, I couldn’t believe that I was actually falling into my routine, just like I did for everything else. Must not have seen any other option.

“Well, the boys- Beagle and my husband, right, they were doing firing drills! But then the shooting stopped and my husband started airing his lungs, just shouting something awful. And when I ran in to see what happened, I saw that Beagle had shot him in the leg!”

And, there was the story. I let out a sigh of relief; here I was worried that I might be dealing with some crazy psychopath! Though, the more I let myself think on it, an idiot like Beagle with a gun started to seem just as dangerous.

“Does he still got the gun?” I asked, approaching one of the four doors to what had to be the firing range. The familiar scent of gunpowder stung my nose as I cracked open the rightmost door, and peered into the massive, open room. I didn’t see nobody, but then again, my vision was so awful that my patient could’ve been right in front of me. Mrs. McBain brushed through the doors.

“No, I made him put it down!” I nodded and entered the room.

As I stepped through the doorway, another smell drifted in after the first- a sharp, metallic smell that hung in the air like some sort of leaking gas. Subtle, and not quite so intimately familiar, but I recognized it right away; the acrid smell of blood rubbed on skin.

“Hey Doc, come on in--the Sheriff is lying over here,” said Deputy Beagle, waving his iron about. I flinched.

“Holster that!” I shouted back, “I’m not going to do anything until-“

“Beagle! You put that thing down right now or I’ll shoot you myself!” Shouted Mrs. McBain. Beagle made a dramatic sigh.

“Fine. But, you know it was an accident, and it ain’t like I’m gonna do it again.” He tossed the gun aside. The cocked, loaded, cold-steel weapon hit the ground hammer-first.

The ensuing, “BANG!” was, no kidding, the second loudest thing I’d ever heard.

“Goddammit!” Beagle shouted, and Mrs. McBain screamed and dropped to a crouch. I just sat, stunned, staring at the gun and trying to think again. It was like my mind was a Television set, and someone had just thrown a brick through the screen; An all-encompassing static crept over my senses.

“Isaac? Isaac, are you alright sweetie ?” asked Mrs. McBain, over the loud ringing in my ears. I nodded.

“I’m okay ,” I lied. I kept nodding.  “I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay…”

“You sure don’t look okay,” said Beagle. He was too close to me, way too close. I took a deep breath and pushed him back a little bit.

“I’m good! Where’s the Sheriff?!” I looked around warily. My eardrums were still bubbling, but I was starting to be able to hear myself think again. I had apparently dropped my medical bag on the floor, but it hadn’t opened up or spilled.

“Jesus kid, can you not turn your head on your neck? Over there, sitting against the support beam!” snapped Beagle, motioning towards the wounded Sheriff with his whole upper body. I felt like yelling back but I didn’t. I just gave him a quick nod and stumbled over to the fallen Sheriff.  

The bright red pool beneath Sheriff McBain’s thigh had already begun to clot into ketchup-like clumps. As I got closer, I could hear him muttering to himself, though I couldn’t understand what about. I dropped to a crouch beside him, opened my bag and rooted through it til I found myself a pair of gloves. I had to work to get them on with how sweaty my hands were.

“Hello, Sheriff! Can you understand me?” I asked. He smiled up at me.

“Hey! You’re Isaac, the um, the Gambling-Place owner’s son. Uh, Casino! Yeah…” He trailed off. In my head, I started going over my ABCs, because apparently my mind was too overwhelmed to do anything but stick to its beaten-path routines.

He could speak, so his Airway was patent. I didn’t have time to properly test his Breathing, but it sounded fast and a little shallow. That was par for the course, which left me with the real problem, his Circulation- that’d be the bleeding.

“Alright, Sheriff, I’m going to take your pants off. Tell me if it hurts much,” I said, unbuttoning and unzipping his trousers. They got snagged up on his shoes, so I started pulling harder. He just laughed as I pulled them off.

“Actually, I don’t feel much of anything in this leg! Just like I got punched, and now it’s burnin’, sorta.”

That was good. It meant that the bone probably hadn’t been fractured, and I wouldn’t need any med-x. I always kept an emergency syringe of the stuff, but I was reluctant to actually use it on anyone.

Once I’d gotten his pants off, I touched his leg. It was cold and wet. I’d assumed shock, based on the bigass blood pool, but I could be dramatic like that; This was solid confirmation. I was going to have to work fast!

As I searched around in my bag for a tourniquet with one hand, I held up the Sheriff’s leg up with my other, so that I could see the wound in the dimly lit firing range. The hole wasn’t big. At least, not the entry- just a red, penny-sized oval near the base of his thigh, surrounded by bruised skin and seeping out blood. Like a bloody little volcano.

The exit wound, on the other hand, was massive . A jagged hole right under his ass with flaps of skin hanging loose around it, spitting out a torrential amount of bright red blood with each beat of his bounding heart. Based on the color of the blood and the way that it was coming out, I knew that the bullet had nicked or severed his femoral artery. I also knew that I probably couldn’t repair that with forceps and bandages alone. The best thing I could do would be to stem the bleeding, and get a stimpack as quick as possible.

Of course, that presented a little bit of a problem: See, stimpacks are awful expensive, so carrying them around wasn’t always an option for a man like myself. As of now, I didn’t actually have any of them-things in my jump-bag. Some places ‘round here had one in a box on the wall, but I didn’t see none in here, and I’d have noticed one in the hall if there’d been one. I cursed under my breath.

“Go and get me a stimpack!” I ordered. I had finally found where I kept my tourniquets without actually looking into the bag, though if I had any sort of presence of mind, I would have been embarrassed at how long it had taken me. I pulled his shoe off, and slipped the tourniquet on over his leg.

“I’ll fetch one from the kitchen!” replied Mrs. McBain, and I nodded to let her know I’d heard. Now that I had a stimpack on the way, all I had to do was keep the Sheriff from kickin it until I could apply the damn thing.

Easier said than done.

“Why are you squeezing me? You taking my blood numbers or something?” The Sheriff asked, as I pulled the premade tourniquet tight and started cranking on it. I tried to smile.

“I’m not taking your blood pressure, sir, I’m putting on a tourniquet. It’ll hurt, but you’ll bleed a lot less.” When I couldn’t tighten it anymore, I took out another tourniquet, and fastened it right above the first one, against the base of his thigh. It was a good thing that the Sheriff was thin, or I’d be having some issues about now.

“What are you doing? He could lose his leg that way!” shouted Beagle. When I kept on tightening the second tourniquet, he hit me in the back of the head- not so much to hurt me as to get a reaction out of me. I didn’t give him one. “Hey, are you blind and deaf? I’m talking to you!”

“Stop it Beagle! Isaac is a good… he’s a good kid,” insisted the Sheriff, his voice growing weak. I finished cranking the tourniquet, and touched the Sheriff’s ashen forehead. He looked like he’d stuck his head in a drinking fountain, with how much he was sweating...

“Could you try and talk with me, Sheriff? I’m gonna try some more stuff, try to keep you from going into decompensated shock.”

The Sheriff looked confused. He squinted up at me with teary eyes.

“Shock? You mean, the reason why it don’t hurt? I’m pretty sure I’m already in shock, but I ain’t- I ain’t shocked, you know. Like, I know what’s happened. I got my mind about me ,” he grumbled, tapping his head conspiratorially. I removed a few packets of gauze from my bag and tore them open.

“No, I mean when your organs stop working cause your blood-pressure drops and they ain’t getting enough blood!” Finally, I finished packing the exit wound tight with gauze. I started putting pressure on it.

“Oh. Huh. Well, you doctors ought to stop having so many words that mean- that mean all different things,” the Sheriff replied, his breath passing his lips so quietly that I was worried he might have fallen unconscious. I stopped moving.

“Sheriff?” I asked. When he didn’t respond, I reached into my coat with my free hand, and pulled out a small metal tinderbox full of a reddish powder. I waved it under his nose.

“Wake up, Sheriff!” I shouted. He started coughing and looking around wildly.

“Ah, Jesus Christ, what the hell is that smell?” I slipped the box back in my coat.

“N-H-Four, sir! It’s supposed to keep you awake!”

Of course, it wasn’t doing a very good job at it! Before I was even done speaking, the sheriff had puked all over himself and slumped forward. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him vigorously.

“Keep them eyes open Sheriff! Stay with me here!” His eyes fluttered.

“You know, I like your voice! It’s like, you talk like a teacher, but then you got your daddy’s cowboy-thing going on, so it’s sort of funny…” he muttered. His head hung limp on his neck. I let him drop to his side, and focused on applying pressure to the wound again.

“Um, Isaac?” I looked over my shoulder. Deputy Beagle was standing above me again, clasping his hands together. I wasn’t so good at reading emotions, but I’d seen enough pre-vomit patients to know that he was feeling sick. He had spoken so quietly, which was strange considering how loud he’d been before. “Isaac, Is he gonna die? I thought that getting shot in the leg didn’t kill people. Why’s he acting like that?” I sighed.

“I sure hope not. But, there’s a big red-pipe in your leg, and if it gets hit, you bleed a lot. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do if I don’t get a stimpack soon!”

As if on cue, Mrs. McBain came rushing into the room, her dress all bunched up and full of miscellaneous medical supplies. Among the heaps of things I didn’t need, I could see a stimpack poking up.

“Isaac! I brought a bunch of things, I don’t know what’ll help and what won’t, but-”

Suddenly, Mrs. McBain stumbled, and her makeshift pouch came unfurled as she threw out one hand to catch herself.

Aw shit! I dropped everything and ran towards Mrs. McBain, interposing myself between the unsecured, falling medical supplies and the floor. Packaged Band-Aids, bottles of pills and ointments, a pair of scissors- it all went tumbling over me and I didn’t care, until suddenly I saw the fragile old stimpack teetering on the edge. By now, Mrs. McBain was trying to recover, but she was only making matters worse. The supplies were spilling out both sides now, and she was getting dangerously close to just dumping it all on top of me.

The stimpack. That was the focus. I shot out my hand to try to grab it, but I only succeeded in tipping it off it’s balance point, causing it to tumble back into the pouch.

I sat up, and all the supplies that had landed on me spilled back onto the floor.

“Don’t-“ I started, but she had already slipped and let go of the other side of the pouch. I cried out as it all went spilling on the ground.

“The stimpack!” I looked down, and found that through some unchecked reflex, I had caught it on my outstretched thigh. I blinked.

“Huh,” I said, and snatched the needle off my leg. I rushed back over to the Sheriff, who was unconscious and drooling. Beagle was sitting beside him, pressing hard on the entrance with his bloodstained hands and muttering to himself.

“Kurt, you can’t die- I’m, I’m just a deputy, if you die I’ll have to handle this whole town myself, and you know I can’t do that! Please, please don’t you die, please-“ I took a knee beside Beagle and his brother, stimpack in hand. Beagle was crying.

“Am I- am I doing this right?” He asked. I nodded.

“You are doing just stupendously! Just keep doing that!” I replied. I lifted up the sheriff’s leg, tore out all the gauze and probed around with the needle for a minute, until I’d found the deflated husk of his split femoral artery among all of the slick yellow fat and ground-beef looking shit in his leg. I didn’t have much light to work with and it was pretty well buried beneath the gory chaos of the exit, but I knew it when I saw it- despite the tourniquet, the top end was still spritzing out bright red blood with each passing heartbeat. I took my forceps out of my bag, which already had some fishing-line and a hook wrapped around them, and got to suturing the split ends together. The artery kept on pulsing out blood around the edges as I passed my hook and line through it’s thick middle layer.

‘Moment of truth, Isaac,’ I thought, as I squared off my suture. I picked up the stimpack again, prepped the needle with my shaking hands. I took a deep breath.

In the dim light of the firing range, I stuck the pipe.

The freezing cold from the reaction chilled my gloved fingers halfway to the bone. Had it worked? Would it hold? I had no idea. It wasn’t squirting blood no more, so I snipped off the end of the suture and pulled all the fishing line out, then started suturing up his ragged exit-wound, so that the ends of the skin were facing upwards. I didn’t even bother squaring off the end before running a stimpack along the seam. Once his thigh had sewed up along an ugly white line, I pulled all the fishing string out, because otherwise I was just asking for it to get infected. I still had a little stimpack-juice left, so I moved Beagle aside and shot the rest of it into the tiny-little entry wound, to sort out any of the leftover internal damage.

More time passed in silence. I knew it wouldn’t matter, but I loosened and removed the tourniquets to feel like I was doing something. My ears were ringing, blood was soaking into my pants like syrup, but I barely noticed- all that mattered now was if he was going to live, or if he was going to die. I was just going to have to have faith now.

“Is it working?” asked Mrs. McBain. I checked the Sheriff’s pulses, noticed that some warmth had returned to his skin...

Pulse is already stronger , and I can actually get a femoral. I sighed with relief. “It’s working. Pressure’s up.” A few more seconds passed. “I doubt he stopped perfusing to his brain for long, so his head should be fine, if you’re worried about that. He’s gonna need a ton of fluid, though, and he might need some more help with that leg-“ I started, but then Mrs. McBain wrapped her arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug. Once I was over the initial shock, I hugged her back.

“Thanks,” I murmured. Mrs. McBain laughed.

“You saved my husband, Isaac! You saved his life!”

I nodded and tried to free myself from the asphyxiating hug. Unfortunately, Mrs. McBain was a teensy bit stronger than me. “I don’t even know how to thank you. Do you want caps? We- well, you know we aren’t rich, but we have a tin of caps hidden away under the floorboards!” Still struggling in vain to free myself, I shook my head.

“No- no, Mrs. McBain, I don’t want no caps! I just need you to work with me here for these next couple weeks to get your husband healthy again. I mean, he just caught a bullet, he’s gonna need some help getting back to normal...” I was lying about the caps. I would have loved caps, considering how much I was hurting for supplies. But I also wanted to establish that I didn’t charge for my services, and Mrs. McBain had a way of inadvertently spreading that sort of information.

“Oh, but I can’t just let you go back to work like that- look at you, you’re all filthy!” she said, finally releasing me from the hug. I stumbled back and fell onto my rear. “Why don’t you come over to our house- You can get those clothes washed, and I’ll get you some lunch. And a shower too, what would Penny say if she saw you like this?”

Well, I couldn’t disagree with her on that count. Just hugging Mrs. Mcbain, I’d gotten spots of blood all over her dress. Momma had already had to warn me about tracking blood in the house before...

“Alright,” I said. The ringing in my ears was tolerable now. I was starting to be able to think straight again, even if I was still shaking and sweating like hell. I noticed that Beagle had offered me his hand.

“Um- yes!” I said, pulling off my glove and allowing him to haul me up to my feet. He held on real tight to my hand and looked at me with an expression that I couldn’t parse.

“I owe you one, Isaac. I know that this is my fault, and that I’m not always nice to you, but I- I really do appreciate this. I don’t know what I’d have done without my brother.” I tried out a smile. Beagle smiled back at me, and it almost made me forget how much of a prick he’d been when I was a kid. Almost.

“Water under the bridge, Beagle,” I replied. I thought about winking, but I once made a girl run away from me when I tried to wink at her, so I held off.

“Isaac, sweetie-“ I turned around. Mrs. McBain was standing in the doorway. “The door’s unlocked, why don’t you come back to the house first? We can lay my husband down while you wash up.”

I considered. The sheriff seemed stable enough for that proposal, but no one else seemed to quite understand the extent of what he’d just suffered, or the long road that lay ahead for him. I mean, hell, he’d had his leg blown open, lost a third of his blood, and then had a stimpack injected right into a central artery! There were some things I wanted to take care of before I attended to myself.

“I like that idea, but can I borrow one of you to help me finish sorting out Beagle first?” I asked. Mrs. McBain looked at Beagle.

“Beagle, seeing as how you’re the one who shot him…” she started. Beagle put his hands above his head.

“I’ll handle it, ma’am. What should I do?” I raised my hand.

“We’re gonna try to get him on a mattress, if we can. Start him on some Saline and get him drinking water when he wakes up, the stimpack and his body will sorta work together to replace all that blood he lost. He’s going to be in a lot of pain, so we’ll have to give him morphine when he wakes up. I’ve got powder and IV’s with me,” I said, trying my best to cover all my bases without over-explaining. Mrs. McBain started to walk away.

“Alright! You two do what you have to, I'll be getting the house ready for him.” she said, and disappeared through the doorway. I looked at Beagle.

“He didn’t hurt his back none, right?” I asked. Beagle shook his head. “Good. I’m gonna grab his legs then, you grab his arms- let’s get him on one of them cots over there, then move him from there.”

He nodded. We grabbed a hold of the Sheriff’s limbs.

“Alright. Three, two, one-”