Pennsylvania

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Where they are right now in terms of pre-war boundaries, Ellen isn't sure. Tunneltown's long since fallen into the distance. There's been pre-war highway to follow in some places, and only the scent trail of a group of people big enough that they have to be slavers in others, and the occasional confirmation in the form of ashes and trash heaps and latrine pits that some large group passed this way recently. There've been things coming at them out of the landscape in places, like mole rats but smaller and more numerous and vicious, and the occasional ghastly-looking bird that circles remarkably low overhead before changing its mind and moving on. There've been ridiculously massive giant ants. Once, they found the body of a woman in slave rags. There wasn't anything they could do for her except move her off the road and lay her straight for the final rites, and then move on.

Ellen is beginning to hate Paladin Renny and her orders, although she'll never admit it out loud.

"Hey, Voodoo?" she calls instead at one point, eyes on the scent trail as Dogmeat sniffs the night air around them. "It looks like they veered off the road here and headed for that bunch of houses up in the distance. I don't know if they're still there, but the trail's pretty fresh..."

And pre-war houses, back in the Capital Wastes, tended to attract raider groups like a corpse attracts bloatflies.

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo's night vision goggles paint the landscape an eerie green as he swivels his neck to look where Ellen's pointing. It looks like your typical cookie-cutter mid-50s suburb at first glance.

A glint of glass on moonlight interrupts his second.

He slowly holds out a fist. "Freeze."

If it's a sniper, he has them dead to rights. If not, well, for all the detail these things are giving him, it might as well be.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen freezes, silent, and grabs Dogmeat by the collar. The heeler doesn't smell anything wrong, not at this distance, so there's no growling to worry about.

The gods, if gods there are, are smiling on them today. It's not a sniper. Or if it is, it's a sniper who hasn't got his rifle out; it's someone with a nearly shaven scalp peering out the window through a pair of binoculars. Ordinary sentry, one who falls back from the window after a while and doesn't appear again until a few moments later at the other end of the house.

[boston_bruiser]

Were he someone else, Voodoo might breathe a sigh of relief just now.

Instead, his hand inches back to the pistol grip of his M60.

"Sentry. Top left window of the two-story building, third house from the left."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Dogmeat. Down."

Ellen's going to need both her hands to steady the Gauss rifle for a look through the scope, since she hasn't got binocs of her own.

"I see him. Can't be too many of them, if they've only got one on sentry duty."

[boston_bruiser]

"Could be. Could be they're too lazy to go more than one man at a time." Or undisciplined. Voodoo's not putting either one past them.

Something dark jumps up at a ground floor window on the house to the right, then falls back down. Voodoo keeps stock-still. Any movement's likely to alert the sentry.

"More movement. Ground floor window, house to the right. Couldn't tell what."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Fwoomp.

"Not seeing a repeat," reports the featureless blur after a while. "Might've been a radroach. You find them in these old houses sometimes, and they jump."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo grunts by way of reply, his eyes fixed on the sentry's house.

"Could be he's an OP. Could be a whole platoon of radiers downstairs. Won't know which until we get closer."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Fair enough," says Ellen. "I'll take point."

Spotting her stealth field in daylight is tough enough. In low levels like this? Almost impossible. If anyone's going to get close enough to see without being seen, it's her.

"Dogmeat. Stay back with Voodoo."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo raises the M60 to his shoulder and zeros in on the sentry's floor - if he's at either window, all it takes is a quarter-inch correction to put Voodoo's irons right on his head. It'll certainly be accurate enough to keep his head down if Ellen's cover is blown, maybe even kill him.

"Stay, Dogmeat. Stay."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The heeler whimpers- it goes against the grain not to go along with his human- but obeys. Which is just as well, since even if the sentry didn't spot him, the dog's tendency to growl at the smell of danger would be a problem.

Ellen's got ground to cover without giving herself away, which means moving at an agonizingly slow pace. Which... turns out to be something of a good thing. As she gets closer to the house, the faint blurred patch stops moving for a while. Eventually it comes back, equally slowly, and mutters, "They planted prox mines out front. Left 'em just barely visible, but high enough to disable without too much trouble come morning. They don't want anybody getting out of that house overnight."

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo mulls this over. "You see any back doors? Movement in the other houses?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"No movement or light in the others. There's a cellar door around back. Locked, but the lock's so old I could pick it in my sleep."

[boston_bruiser]

"That's our in. Go slow, go soft. I'll cover your six."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The blur nods and begins the creep around the house towards the cellar doors on the far side, giving the impromptu minrfield a wide, wide berth. Were she at home, she'd stop to gather blades from the ancient lawnmower propped against the side of the house, but her Shishkebab is just going to have to wait for parts.

The lock is an old deadbolt, half rust by now. It'll take her a while to work it open, but at least no one's looking....

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo follows her, his machine gun tracing over the houses and windows as they pass. His movements aren't catlike - lugging around over 20 pounds of gun puts a damper on anything graceful - but they're also far from clumsy.

He settles in, eying the terrain as Ellen picks the deadbolt, finger just outside the trigger guard. One part of him is okay with this, but another part, one that he's never managed to shut up, is screaming that it's all wrong, that it's too easy, that it has to be a trap.

The thing about that voice?

It's been right more often than not.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

After a while, the blur- Ellen refuses to disengage her stealth field until absolutely necessary- pauses. "In my experience," she murmurs, "if the lock is this badly off, so are the hinges. This door is going to squeal like a dying animal when we try to open it. Unless these raiders are completely chemmed up, someone's going to come and see what's going on...."

[boston_bruiser]

So there's the catch.

"Open it quick. They might pass it off as an animal. Worst case scenario, we'll go loud early."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen nods, and sets her shoulders for the mightiest pull she can manage. The hinges, sure enough, let out an almighty screech. Somewhere in the basement a man's voice goes "What the fuck?"

And then it goes a lot more inarticulate, because Dogmeat just rocketed past Ellen and into the cellar all on his own. He knows trouble when he smells it.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo rushes in after Dogmeat, his M60 up and scanning the room, but all that's in the basement are a handful of slaves chained to the walls, arterial spray over the floor...

...and Dogmeat ripping into the throat of a raider sprawled on the ground.

You gotta do what you gotta do.

Voodoo shows the slaves an open palm, then puts a finger to his lips. They might still be able to take out the sentry - and any other hostiles upstairs - quietly.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

There's a thump on the floor from upstairs. "What the fuck is goin' on down there, Whitefish?" a woman's voice yells. "Keep 'em quiet, dumbass!"

[boston_bruiser]

At that, Voodoo rushes to the door leading into the house, flattens himself against the wall just outside the door frame, and unsheathes his tomahawk with one hand, putting the other on the butt of his pistol.

Any raider coming through is getting the last clothesline of their life.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Not all raiders are big, brawny, dangerous types. Some of them are little, scrawny fellas who think Joe Pesci characters make for great role models. Most of the raiders upstairs would've been perfectly content to leave Whitefish to whatever trouble he was having with the slaves, but Grinny figured what the hell, might as well go show the merchandise what happens when you give a buddy of his a hard time.

(They weren't buddies. Ever. Nobody has ever been buddies with Grinny.)

"I'm comin' down there, Whitefish," Grinny calls, and the door opens.

Grinny's not going to make it to the bottom of the stairs, is he.

[boston_bruiser]

No he is not.

The second-to-last thing he sees is the flash of a tomahawk going for his throat. The last thing he sees is the floorboards as he doubles over in pain, blood spraying onto the wood as he clutches at his neck.

He doesn't have time to yell. He doesn't even have time to draw breath before the tomahawk bisects his cervical curve.

Voodoo catches his body mid-fall, tucks it into a corner, and starts patting it down. He's packing, for sure - a 10-milimeter submachine gun, a couple of clips, and something that looks like it made a wrong turn out of a Freddy and Jason movie slung over his back.

All of it gets stacked in a particularly dark corner as Voodoo takes his place again. If he's lucky, someone'll come down to investigate. If not, well...

...he's not packing 24 pounds of gun for squirrel hunting.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

If Ellen were someone else, she'd make a comment to the effect of 'I want the next one'. It's not her style, though- neither the comment, nor actually claiming a kill in advance. She just wants this over with.

She settles herself down at the base of the stairs and murmurs, "I have a clear shot if the door opens." She'll ask what that thing the raider was carrying is later. Right now, she's just listening, because sooner or later the woman who was shouting earlier's going to want to check up on Grinny... he never was what you'd call a quiet loner.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo doesn't respond, instead inching the door open. It doesn't squeak, thank Christ. He peeks out, looking left, then right.

The cellar door opens onto a three foot wide passage between the living room to the left and the kitchen to the right. The walls are moldy, and the kitchen doorframe is sans a door, not than the female raider sacked out on the couch in the living room or two male raiders in the kitchen mind. The woman's got a shotgun within arm's reach, and judging from the bones on her armor, knows how to use it.

A foul stench invades Voodoo's nostrils, and his resists the temptation to gag. There's a sizzle from the kitchen - apparently they're trying to cook something. And failing miserably.

"Sucko, you dumb fuck, I tol' you you gotta rotate the goddamn thing -"

"Yeah, so?"

"So you burned it, asshole. That was the last iguana meat within fifty miles and you burned it..."

Voodoo stops paying attention, even if the smell persists. "Living room's to the left. Kitchen's to the right. Woman with a shotgun on the living room couch. Two guys burning an iguana in the kitchen. How do you want to play it?"