Rock Creek Caverns

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The door opens onto the hot and dusty landscape of June in the Capital Wasteland. Specifically, onto the interior of what was once a halfway-decent barn. These days a good half the slats that used to form the walls are gone, and the roof's mostly collapsed- but, hey, it has a door.

(Also it has the carcass of a giant scorpion, but that's neither here nor there.)

"All right, guys," Ellen says. "This seemed like the safest place to start, out of everyone's way."

Comments

[luvs_yogurt]

Michael changes out the battery and keeps a close eye between his companions as they continue the long walk.

Musing, he looks at Ellen and says; "That reminds me, William Evans wanted me to ask how the brahmin are doing."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I've always liked it, and I only encountered the stuff for the first time last year," Ellen says. "It's better than yao guai, that's for sure- and yao guai's pretty tasty in and of itself."

She blinks, and then smiles. "The ones that're still alive are all right. Tom and Jerry the steer got killed in the crossfire when the raiders tried to carry him and the two pregnant cows off. The cows're okay, though, and so's the herd bull. If one of the calves is a heifer, it's going to a family in town that's helped me look after the herd so they'll have an animal of their own to start with. Makes a lot of difference, having a source of milk and fertilizer out here."

[fullofmercy]

Wolfwood's eyebrows lift over his sunglasses as he puffs on his cigarette before dropping it to the ground and crushing it out with the toe of one scuffed shoe.

"Seems like a difficult area to raise livestock," he offers. "The best we can do are Thomases, but they don't give great milk."

And they're far more useful to ride or use as beasts of labor rather than eat, but when you're desperate, you're desperate.

[luvs_yogurt]

Most of what Ellen says is lost on Michael, but he makes note of it anyway to relate to William later.

"I can't imagine anything living out here," he adjusts his sunglasses and takes another full circle look behind them just in case.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Oh, Brahmin can live on very little fodder and water," Ellen says. She indicates a low, yellow-brown bit of what looks like a dead bush. "They can digest just about anything that grows here- that stuff included. I still don't know how they manage to have so many calves without humans in attendance, but they apparently pull it off..."

She glances over at Wolfwood and adds, by way of explanation, "They have two heads. All of them. I had to help one give birth once."

Dogmeat finally comes trotting up with a detached crab leg in his mouth and his tail held high. Ellen just sighs and shakes her head.

[fullofmercy]

That sight makes Wolfwood grin.

"Good boy," he tells the dog, before imitating Michael and glancing around.

For the moment, at least, all seems clear.

"If I knew anything about raising animals, I would probably see if they could survive on Gunsmoke," he tells her, conversationally. "Unfortunately, my meager skills don't exactly lie in the farming direction. Crabmeat seems like a better bet."

[luvs_yogurt]

Despite his occasional agricultural cover, Michael's knowledge in the area is limited - and he's ok with that.

He's far more interested in keeping his eyes and ears trained for signs of trouble.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Fair enough," Ellen says. "All right. After the bridge we're turning south..."

For some time the journey is uneventful, and Ellen points out this or that bit of wreckage that stands as a relic of the world before. Eventually, though, they come across an area where ruined buildings still stretch two or three floors skyward, and where the ground underfoot gives way to gray asphalt rubble: the remains of a road.

"The Metro station's up ahead," Ellen says, indicating a rusty pipe fence around a downward set of stairs. "Farragut West. We'll be heading into there and following the main line of the tracks for a bit before taking the side tunnel into the Caverns."

[fullofmercy]

"Tunnels," says Wolfwood, shaking his head. "Who would have thought?"

There aren't any of those at home, aside from the ones he'd fallen into with Vash in the desert that had turned out to be a giant crashed spaceship.

He wishes he could also say he's never seen anything like the ruins of the city that used to stand here, but he's been to what's left of July, and the sight of the tattering wreckage all around them is something he knows all too well.

"This part looks familiar, though." He eyes the hollow skeletons of the buildings, wondering what might be lurking behind what's left of the walls. "There was a city, July. It was destroyed years ago in a terrible cataclysm. Not much is left of it now, but there's the odd ruin or two."

[luvs_yogurt]

The city means something else to Michael. It's different from the DC he knows, subtlely - a decrepit sign for something called Nuka-Cola (clearly this world's Coke) that's faded and burned reminds him it isn't his world, but he knows these buildings, the roads and the Metro. He's walked here, eaten at a diner down the road back in the 90s after appearing before politicians he didn't care about at the time to have a medal pinned to his chest for service in the Gulf War.

He remains silent, forcing himself not to think about what must have happened for this wide scale of destruction. Prepared for the high likelihood of hostiles, he keeps his finger on the pistol's trigger and his eyes on the area ahead.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I'm going to have to put my helmet on for this," Ellen says at the top of the steps. "There's no lighting except in areas where somebody's colonized the tunnels, but my helmet and Pip-Boy have lighting, and I installed some side lights in Jingles for stuff like this. A lot of things in these tunnels avoid light most of the time- the radroaches, especially- but sometimes light just makes them mad, so... just stay alert, I guess."

She pulls on her helmet, flicks the light on the side on, and then hitches her plasma rifle to a set of hooks on Jingles' pack. "I don't like wasting ammo on things that lunge out of the dark," she says almost apologetically. "My reflexes aren't that good at a distance, so I'll be using this for a bit."

'This' is a broad blade attached by long, flexible tubes to that blue fuel tank backpack she wears. Michael might, perhaps, recognize it as being more like a machete than a proper sword, possibly being derived from some kind of landscaping tool. Of course, the part where it suddenly bursts into butane-smelling flame a moment later may make that recognition difficult.

"It won't be burning the whole time. That'd waste fuel. But I figured I'd better warn you," she says as they descend into the Metro station.

[fullofmercy]

When he slips his sunglasses off and folds them to put in his pocket, he blinks briefly at the sun and again at the blade suddenly limned in flames.

"Very impressive," he says, a little taken aback, then pats the side of his cross.

"As blunt force weapons go, this isn't all that bad. It doesn't burst into flame, interesting metaphorical quandary though that might be, but then, you can hardly add every possible permutation to a design, can you?"

Enclosed, underground spaces: he's not a fan. As much as he might despise the desert and its endless wastes, he's used to having space around him everywhere he goes. His nerves will be on edge down here.

"Tell me, what sort of delightful variations on violent life are we likely to find down here?"

[luvs_yogurt]

Michael follows suit with his shades, hooking them in his pocket before drawing his combat knife with his off hand. The laser pistol is light enough to fire mostly accurately even one handed and judging by Ellen's flaming machete and the low visibility they're gonna be getting up close and personal with whatever it is.

"We should stick close together in a loose triangle formation - between the three of us we should be able to see anything coming even in low light."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"You get ghouls down here," Ellen says as they pass signs for Abraxo cleaner and the Virgo 11 lander at the Museum of Technology. "Radiation victims who've lost their minds and gone feral. They look like walking corpses and they'll attack anything that moves. It's an act of mercy to put them down, because as far as I can tell, they don't die of old age. They stay like that until something kills them."

The turnstiles collapsed long ago and the Nuka-Cola vending machine on the wall is no longer lit. The Eat-o-Tronic 3000 snack machine looks like it was raided recently.

"Probably radroaches, too, those are common enough. Maybe molerats the size of Dogmeat. We won't see any more mirelurks until we get to the Cavern area, though. They stay near water."

[fullofmercy]

"Well, that's a start," he says, blinking until his eyes adjust to the gloom. The air tastes stale and thick down here, heavy with the scent of dirt and metal and cement.

It's like a horror-house version of a plant, sounds echoing strangely against the walls and floor and ceiling.

Michael's right about the formation they ought to take: the man seems to know what he's talking about, so Wolfwood follows suit, looking around as they head further down and in, eying the shadows and any openings that look as though something could ambush them from within.

[luvs_yogurt]

He can hear them before he can see them, the low growl-hiss of monsters lurking in the darkness. By the time Michael can make out three shambling figures in the darkness, Dogmeat is already charging down the corridor - he fires two shots blindly toward what he assumes is a head, only one catches but it's enough to get a good look at what he can't believe he's seeing.

Fucking zombies. They look like zombies at least, nothing bits of flesh and cloth hanging off of brown-green skeletons with dead white eyes.

"They're coming."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Ellen's blade flames into life. "Aim for the center. They don't need headshots to die," she says; it's dark and the tunnel isn't a good place to take chances on a small target.

And then there's no more time to talk, because the first of the ferals is lunging at them, emaciated arms flailing for all it's worth. That needs fire and steel- and she's got plenty of both right now.

[fullofmercy]

He grimaces at the sight, lifting the Colt to shoot and emptying all six bullets into one of the ghouls, who might have been a man once but who is now nothing but a mindless horror.

Legato would love this place.

Ellen's short sword is handy here, but he can't keep shooting when she's in close combat with the things, so he hefts the Punisher and tosses it at a feral. The cross lands with a heavy clang, crushing the thing into the wall.

Full of mercy, huh?

He reloads, taking aim at a shifting, horrifying figure far enough away from Ellen that he won't have to worry about hitting her.

[luvs_yogurt]

Michael's happy to forego shooting - they seem vulnerable enough and seeing Wolfwood's pistol out of use, he surges forward and slams another into a wall, plunging the knife between it's eyes until it doesn't move anymore.

He may not watch movies or tv often - but he knows how to kill a zombie. The principle works on pretty much anything with a brain.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It works. All of it works. That's the thing about ferals- they aren't zombies, not properly. Oh, they look the part, but there's no unstoppable force or unspeakable virus animating their corpses. Hurt them, make them bleed, and while they may not react to it in any sensible way, they'll drop of the damage eventually.

(Although the one in front of Ellen doesn't seem to notice it's actively on fire until an especially impassioned strike sends it reeling into the wall. It does not get up.)

[fullofmercy]

"Not very bright, are they?"

Holstering the pistol, he walks forward to retrieve the Punisher, looking down on the crumpled remains beneath it with a grim expression.

He's not sure radiation zombies are any better than mindless puppets of humans controlled by Legato, but at least these don't have lives and families to go back to.

[luvs_yogurt]

Coming down from the moment, Michael wipes his blade across the tatters of the thing's shorts, clenching his fingers around the grip.

"I hear more of them ahead, a lot of them at varying distance."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That's why they're feral. Regular ghouls are just like anybody else, brain-wise," Ellen says. "Ferals haven't got anything left."

She shifts her blade to her left hand and flicks a switch on her Pip-Boy, checking the screen.

"The break we're aiming for isn't far from here. We may run into more of these. Let's keep moving and hope we beat the rush."

She's not desperate enough to search a feral ghoul for supplies. As for the fact that these were people once, she'll pray for them when they're somewhere safe. Not now.

[fullofmercy]

He can hear them, up ahead. The tunnels amplify sound and make it echo, turning every shuffling scuffle of detritus into footsteps or an ambush. His fingers are tight around the strap of the Punisher, knuckles turning white.

Possibly he should be worried about the radiation himself, but if Ellen isn't, then he'll let it slide.

It can't be worse than being near Knives.

[luvs_yogurt]

Trying not to think about it, Michael falls back into the formation and peers into the increasingly easy darkness. His boot catches a discarded soda bottle and sends it skittering down the rail to a caved in block.

"The apocalypse," he asks quiety, the question digging at him, "it was a war, right? In the United States?"