Paradise Falls

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens on the Capital Wasteland, its rolling scrubby landscape peeling away in every direction. Off to the east, the huddle of reinforced walls can be seen. "This is as close as we can get to Paradise Falls without being seen," Ellen says. "This would be the best place to start from... welcome to the Wasteland, by the way."

Comments

[justcallmefee]

Fiona doesn't react. She's seen similar in the mine fields outside of Sarajevo. (Perimeter detonator. Which means there's a transmitter around here somewhere.)

Her eyes go cold, and she turns back to Grouse with an exasperated sigh. "Clean up on aisle fourteen. You said to tell Forty, what?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That Grouse cleared you for passing the second gate," says Grouse. He jerks his chin at the man with the assault rifle, who grumbles, slings his weapon, and begins the less-than-exciting process of tidying up. "Hey! Forty! Think you can still operate a damn gate, or did the livestock get the better of you?"

Forty gives off rubbing at his nose to make a very rude gesture in Grouse's direction.

[justcallmefee]

Livestock.

Fiona imagines a clean edged little hole right between Grouse's eyes, filling in the details of the back of his head as she walks down the middle of the kill corridor, her skin prickling.

Livestock.

Forty gets a similar once over as she strolls up, not even bothering to step around the muddy streak of gore outside the gate.

"Grouse sends his love, and my clearance for the second gate."

Her eyes watch the man at his task. She can't tell if he's prepping the body parts for the burn barrel or for eating later. Doesn't look like there was enough meat on that one to bother. Without waiting for him to speak, she bends down and picks up a pair of goggles that were, thankfully, coiled around the slaves's wrist. She flicks off a bit of bone fragment before wrapping them around her own neck.

Wastelander chic. Somehow, she makes it look good.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Forty- a man of dirty blond hair and dirty tan skin- gives a grunt of irritation and bangs a fist against a yellow button on the wall. A broad sheet of segmented purple metal clatters upward, not unlike a garage door. Beyond lies a tangle of fencing and sheet metal and a sign reading WELCOME TO PARADISE FALLS. STOW YOUR PIECE.

There are people here- slavers, by the look of them; no one in the area is wearing a collar, and everyone is wearing some form or other of armor, whether it's leather or something heavier. Signs in front of what must've been boutiques and shops once proclaim 'Cutter's Clinic' and 'Pronto's' and 'Restrooms' and the like.

[justcallmefee]

She mentally draws crosshairs on the forehead of every piece of scum she lays eyes on. Yeah, life in the wasteland is hard, she can only imagine, but taking slaves is a capital offense in her book. (To be fair, so's letting your weapon rust or wearing Malibu Barbie pink over grossly fake tits. Fiona's book is not that discriminatory.)

She also keeps an eye out for that transmitter, and the kids. Nothing so far, so she makes her way deeper into the warren, idly thumbing the mic at her throat.

"Did you hear all that?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Loud and clear," comes Ellen's answer. "No activity out here, thank goodness."

There's a set of ramshackle stairs along one of the fences that leads up to the central sentry area. A wall of rubble gives way up ahead to a larger open area. It might've been meant as the mall's central plaza long ago. For now, it's used as the slavers' dining area, to judge by the tables and ancient refrigerators and steel-drum barbecues to the right. To the left is a pool table and a roasting headless cow (or something else of that size) on a spit over an open fire. Beyond that is building that might've once been a movie theater, all false grandeur and pillars and peeling paint. A sign next to the door proclaims it to be Eulogy's Pad.

The roasting Brahmin may be enough to mask the smell coming from the buildings further to the south, or it may not. Certainly the fire under it isn't putting off enough smoke to mask the sight of twelve-foot-high double fences topped with barbed wire that wall off what might've been the mall's administrative offices once, or hide the milling human figures behind the fences.

[justcallmefee]

Two points of interest: head boss man is the kind who likes to advertise where he sleeps (idiot), and the "livestock" pens. Again, her jaw clenches.

Fiona describes the layout so far in brief, tactical language, keeping her voice down as she walks. "I'm heading to the pens now. No sign of the transmitter yet, but I'm guessing it's centrally located." Probably in head boss man's HQ and here's hoping he put up a sign for that, too.

She's thinking she's glad she brought her good set of lock picks and the wire cutters, just in case it comes to that.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The pens, it happens, are shared with more than one kind of livestock. Part of the rank smell is the work of a massive, thin-furred, two headed bovine with an udder that would make James Herriot wince. It turns one of its heads in Fiona's direction, makes a small grumbling noise, and moves on between the fences.

Beyond the cow, the pens are divided down the middle by a similarly high fence. A cluster of adults ranging in age from 'just out of teenagerdom' to 'ancient' with a brief stop for 'never mind your age, what the hell happened to your nose' occupies the right-hand side. To the left, three or four children- perhaps eight, perhaps ten, hard to say when Wasteland nutrition is involved- are doing their best to be unobtrusive and avoid the eye of the guard at the gate to the pens.

[justcallmefee]

"Bingo."

She has to take a moment to bite back her initial response to seeing these people kept like and with animals. It really would be a suicide attack if she took off the heads of every guard here, but that doesn't keep her from flexing the fingers of her right hand over and over again.

She heads for the guards.

"Hey sugar," she drawls. "You who I talk to about the merchandise?" She juts her chin out, gesturing to the pens.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The guard starts to look Fiona up and down, but his eyes stop on her weaponry; he knows better than to take certain chances. "You talk to me, you show your caps, you get to make your selection," he says. "Eulogy's the one you talk to for the final sale. Most of these are earmarked already, but we still have a few...."

[justcallmefee]

Her eyes narrow. Show the cash first, risk getting killed for it. She's done this dance a thousand and one times with equally illicit merchandise. (Guns usually, or explosives. Never people.)

She shakes her hand out and reaches inside her jacket, pulling out the small canvas sack and giving it a heft to make the contents rattle.

"I want those." Her other hand points at the kids.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The sound of bottlecaps against bottlecaps is very distinctive. He laughs; it's not a pleasant sound. "This is your lucky day, then," he says. "It's the adults that're off the market. The Pitt don't buy half as many kids. I'll go get Eulogy for you. No funny stuff- we got our eye on you."

And with that he strolls off towards Eulogy's Pad, whistling cheerfully as he goes.

[justcallmefee]

"Take your time," she sneers. "Ain't like I got places to be or anything."

Fiona watches him go, one hand shielding her eyes against the perpetual glare of the Wasteland sun, the other brushing her choker to thumb the throat mic.

"You know that name?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"It... sounds familiar," Ellen says over the radio. "I think one of the runaways at the Lincoln Memorial mentioned Eulogy Jones. The Pitt used to be Pittsburgh. The Brotherhood scoured it years ago. Someone must've decided to reoccupy the place..."

[justcallmefee]

"More intel better," Fiona muses.

She's deliberately not looking at the kids or the adults either for that matter. She can't or she'll lose it and they'll all be fucked.

Her heel is bouncing on the ground in a manner that says bored, not antsy, and she's mentally totalling up how many rounds of ammo she has in each weapon before she gets to switch to the Bowie knife.

"Perimeter detonator needs a transmitter. Centrally located. Some place secure. I'm guessing Eulogy's pad," she muses, her voice only loud enough to trigger the mic.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I wouldn't be surprised. He's probably got a terminal hooked up to a radio antenna somewhere in there. I've seen it done with another system before."

One of the Pad's doors opens, and the guard emerges, followed by a dark-skinned man in a well-kept, deep red suit.

[justcallmefee]

Well, would you look at that? A man who knows how to wear a suit in the middle of all this delightful devastation.

Fiona shifts her weight, a predatory grin blossoming on her features.

"Mister Jones, I presume?" She can't help but here the Frenchman's lilting accent in the back of her head. If you could only see her now, Indy.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"The one and only," says the red-suited man with a smooth bow. "Ronson here tells me you've taken an interest in my newest acquisitions. Am I correct in thinking you want the whole set?"

[justcallmefee]

"Maybe," she answers, her eyes never leaving his face even as she's acutely aware of where his hands are.

"I want to take a look at them first. If they're all in working order, then yeah, I'll take them off your hands."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"An educated consumer is our best customer," says Eulogy with a smile. He nods to the guard, who moves forward to unlock the gate. "I should note that the oldest of the three has one of the better educations I've seen in the Wasteland so far. A valuable commodity in any situation."

[justcallmefee]

Fiona pulls a face, one hand on her hip.

"I just want to make sure their fingers aren't broken and that their teeth aren't rotten. He's not so smart he's going to get ideas now, is he?"

She follows the guard through into the inner fenced corridor, trying not to hear the old man muttering in the corner of the chain link dog run.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Not if he knows what's good for him," says Eulogy. The guard shoves the children forward- one boy as dark as Eulogy, one girl a little lighter-skinned, and one very dirty boy a little older than the two. They've all got collars on and, it goes without saying, look as if they would rather be somewhere else.

[justcallmefee]

Fiona is the oldest of seven kids, and helped her mum raise her brothers and sister. She touches each of them on the head with a gentle hand, tipping their faces up to the light.

She catches the eye of the oldest and gives him a smile and a tiny wink. The light in his eyes does her heart a world of good.

She grabs him by the chin and snaps, "Open." He obliges her, and she peers into his mouth, tipping his head to one side and the other. The other kids get a similar once over, the girl almost in tears at the treatment.

She pulls their hands up to examine them, and tries to give a little reassuring squeeze, but the girl isn't having any of it. The older boy touches her on the shoulder and pulls her back.

"Yeah, I guess they'll do." She turns back to Eulogy with an edged look on her face. "How much?"

It's taking every ounce of willpower she has not to rip the man's throat out with her bare hands. But they're still wearing their collars, and she doesn't have backup.

Still, it's a damned close thing.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Eulogy thinks for a moment, then cites a number for each of the children; the educated one's price is considerably higher. The total is within the amount of caps Ellen handed over.

... Ellen kinda sells a lot of stuff from people who've been stupid enough to attack her.

[justcallmefee]

Fiona crosses her arms and chews on the number for a moment.

"Yeah, all right," she drawls. "Sounds reasonable to me. You want the money here or behind closed doors?"

She doesn't know what the rules of business etiquette are here, and in other situations like this, she's never gone wrong by asking.