Philly

The Old Post Road had been a highway, once, so there were signs. Or the remains of them, anyway. It was a rare sheet of painted metal that could survive a nuclear apocalypse, the black rains that fell a week after, and two hundred years of neglect on top of that. Ellen had learned to ignore them, mostly; they usually weren't worth the effort to try and decipher.

The bright yellow caught her eye, though. Even the longest-lived remaining signs didn't keep that kind of color. Acidified rain and wanderers with a tendency towards target practice saw to that. She held up a hand; the others stopped. "Kang?" she said. "You've got the binocs; mind telling me what's on that sign?"

"Way ahead of you, ma'am," said the Knight. "It's…"

He paused. It went on for a while.

"… I have no idea what that thing is, ma'am," Kang finally said. He handed the binocs to Conklin, who stared in similar puzzled silence.

Ellen sighed and held out her hand to Conklin.

The figure painted on the sign was a low-slung thing, a four-legged, blunt-nosed creature of considerable girth- more so than a Brahmin, certainly. It didn't much resemble a Brahmin in any other way that counted, though. Brahmin legs were longer, for one thing, and where they had two heads the thing on the sign had only one. But what a head it was- easily half as long as the thing's body, its jaws gaping wider than any living thing Ellen had ever seen. The image only showed four fangs as far as teeth went, two to each jaw, but she suspected that would probably be enough for anything short of a Deathclaw- and even then the smaller examples of their kind would probably have a hard time coming out on top. Under its stubby-toed feet was lettered a single word: BEWARE.

She grimaced and passed the binocs to Jerald. "I don't know what those are either," she said, "but I don't like the look of them, and somebody actually went to the trouble of warning strangers about them. Unless one of you has better ideas, we need to stop for a few minutes while I get out of my stealth suit and into my power armor, because I'm not relying on not being seen to protect me."

---

The creatures, whatever they were, did not seem to be in any great hurry to come out and show themselves. Ellen was deeply thankful for this. If they found the General Atomics plant they'd have to investigate the things on the way back, so as to prepare whoever Elder Lyons sent to do the reclamation, but right now-

Well, right now they were getting awfully close to what looked like the city walls. Not, perhaps, something Ellen would have expected. The Pitt didn't have walls, just that poison river. Someone must've started work a long time ago to get the sheet metal and rubble piled that neatly and that high. Maybe the same someone responsible for the signs they were starting to see along the side of the road:

WELCOME TO PHILLY

HOME OF THE BLOOD PRINCE
AND HIS WORLD CHAMPION FLYERS

ALSO HOME OF:
THE ROYALS
THE THRESHERS
THE NAILERS
THE RAMBLERS

YOU ARE UNDER SNIPER SURVEILLANCE

DON'T TRY ANYTHING STUPID
(THIS MEANS YOU, YINZER SCUM)

ENJOY YOUR VISIT TO OUR CITY

"… uh huh," said Jerald, whose eyes were still on the signs as Ellen and the two Knights began sweeping the walls for the aforementioned snipers. "Ellen?"

"I count two at eleven o'clock, maybe three," Ellen said absently without looking over her shoulder. "Yes, dear?"

"I kind of get the feeling we're going to be a little outnumbered in a few minutes," Jerald said. "Any chance you know mole people this far north?"