Voodoo - Under Way

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Back before the Great War, if for some reason you wanted to travel from Washington to Las Vegas without taking a plane or a train, you got in the car and you made for the nearest interstate, and you didn't think twice about it until your kids in the back seat started screaming at you to stop at the next hotel with color TV and a pool. But that was then, and this is now, and following the remains of the interstate blindly out of DC will get you eaten by Deathclaws if you're lucky. The safest routes follow older, smaller roads- where roads still exist at all, since DC was a massive strategic target- and they aren't particularly direct. All the direct ones go to places Voodoo and his people really don't want to be.

Fortunately, a few of the old US highways lead to places that weren't completely pounded flat by the Bomb, and some of the old state roads may have fallen to pieces but still make their presence felt, and if you have a compass and an understanding of just how far magnetic North has moved since your own time and enough patience, you can make good use of that to get to places that just might have more humans than horrors.

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

As Fawkes stomps off to make sure no one was away from camp to use the latrine, the others make their way forward and start the process of scavenging. Hector isn't exactly cackling in the process, but there does seem to be a disturbingly cheerful air about the older man.

Josepha just smiles a little. "Thanks," she says. "Was it just me, or were these guys a little more on the clueless side than our usual?"

[boston_bruiser]

Ah, who can blame him if there is? It's hard to overestimate the joy in a good old-fashioned turkey shoot.

Voodoo shakes his head as he makes his way around the pit. "Not just you. With what Aaron said, I'll bet these guys must've been just some assholes down on their luck who took the tunnel collapse as a chance to make some quick caps. With their numbers, they probably figured they didn't need much training besides how to squeeze a trigger. Probably took to the pit mine because you can't tell if it's occupied 'less you practically come up right to the rim. Nice and hidden from folk on the roadside."

He rolls a raider onto his back with his boot.

"'course, that's over and done with. Ain't that right, pal?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Some people just don't have the manners to answer when they're spoken to.

The raider's head just sort of lolls back in that way that people who will never answer any question ever again tend to do.

[boston_bruiser]

"Thought so."

This particular dude fell onto his shotgun. It's your standard pump-action, from the looks of it - not bad, but nothing to write home about, either. Voodoo picks it up and works the pump once, twice, thrice.

"-no freakin' way."

He picks up one of the shells, turning it this way and that in his hand.

"These shells have military lot numbers and branding. The hell did these guys get Army kit?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Couldn't tell you," says Al, looking up. "Maybe there's an old National Guard depot or something around here? You hear about places like that sometimes, from before the War. Most of them're pretty picked over but some still have things people can scavenge."

[boston_bruiser]

"Hmm. Guess we know what we're hittin' up next."

Voodoo pats down the outside of the raider's pockets for sharps before diving in - he doesn't know if Ellen's world has HIV to deal with, but he'd be pretty surprised if it didn't have at least one of the heps, and getting stuck isn't his idea of a good time.

"-huh. Postcards."

They're the usual "wish you were here" fare of pre-War pictures of Tunnelton. Scenic, sure, but not something a raider would - oh, would you look at that? There's a tally of his kills on the back of each. Looks to be about...55 people, a yao guai, and three rabbits, give or take.

Voodoo shakes his head, tearing them in half and sprinkling them like confetti over the raider's corpse. "Goddamn. You were just an all-round stand up guy, huh?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Some people the world's just plain better off without," says Hector. "Are we gonna do anything with these guys or are we just gonna leave them for that wooly critter?"

[boston_bruiser]

"Dunno about you? But the more I think of that thing turnin' these guys into hot turds, the more it strikes me as poetic justice."

He picks up the shotgun, tucking the shells into his rig.

"Pile up their weapons and ammo. We'll take whatever's functional back to Aaron and his people. The rest we'll strip for parts."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"You bet your ass," says Hector cheerfully, with something like a salute. It really doesn't take long at all for them to gather everything the raiders had been armed with into a pile; Kate takes a little longer, but she's in the process of stripping them of whatever genuinely useful (as opposed to just spiky) armor she can get her hands on.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo nods in approval at the pile. "Good haul, good haul. All this's gotta be worth an extra hog or two at least."

He keys his headset.

"Fawkes, you find anything? We're about ready to head back."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"No sign of any other humans," reports Fawkes over the radio. "But they seem to have cut notches into some of the trees, at about the height of your shoulder. It looks as if they were leaving themselves sign-posts of some kind."

"I'm on my way back."

[boston_bruiser]

Signposts?

Well, it's as good a guess as any other. After all, the only guys who can tell them for sure are dead. He makes a mental note to check it out next morning.

"Good to hear. We'll wait for you in the pit."

The Next Morning

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The VFW beds weren't great, but they weren't horrible, either, and in a world like this that's really about the most anyone can ask for. The new day's dawned, although light takes a while to make its way all the way down in these mountains; it's still on the dim side outside.

Might be a good time to do some nosing around in the area and see where those shells came from.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo's thoughts exactly.

He's currently tracing his finger along one of the notches Fawkes noticed last night. They're all deeper in one direction, like they were created by strokes from the same side.

"Looks like signposts leadin' up the river. Don't know what it's leading us to, so keep your guard up."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Look at it this way," suggests Kate. "At least it's not likely to be that white thing, right? I mean, it's not like they're claw marks."

"Thank you, Kate, that was the exact opposite of reassuring."

"Sorry, Al."

[boston_bruiser]

"We've got Fawkes and five rifles. If it comes down to it, we can handle one little goat-shaped monstrosity."

As they get closer and closer to the river, there are more and more signs of disturbance - there's no real trail, but there's the occasional broken branch and disturbed detritus. There's a break in the foliage on the other side just as the trail banks, and in the distance is the glimmer of brass and metal. Voodoo halts, taking out his binos and focusing them on the glint.

"Looks like a flagpole - and some Quonset huts. If this is where those shells came from, I'm thinking government armory. Hector, if there's anything we need to get into, you're our breacher. -sound off if you see a place where we can ford the river with Leo, otherwise we'll keep going until we hit a bridge."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Will do," Hector promises. "Tell you the truth, though, I don't know that I'd be all that comfortable trying to cross a moving river if it was more than a couple of inches deep, so here's hoping we can find a decent ford."

[boston_bruiser]

Fortunately, a bridge that time hasn't collapsed is soon spotted, and the group makes it over in good time. A short road leads to a checkpoint that, once upon a time, would have been brimming with MPs. Now it is deserted, the only indication of its past use a faded wooden sign that reads NAT N L GU D ARM Y AND B E.

"Let's split up and search this place. Al, you're with Kate. Josepha, you're with Hector. Fawkes, you're with me. If we can use it, take it. Anyone finds the armory, sound off."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Take extra care," Fawkes notes. "I don't know about this place, but the National Guard facilities in the Capital area had robots still active on the premises."

"Well," says Josepha, "let's hope those people who were causing so much trouble back in Tunnelton cleared them out for us, then."

[boston_bruiser]

"Their one good deed, if they did."

Leo is relieved of two Halligans, and Kate and Hector are each handed one before the three pairs go their separate ways. There are some robot remains scattered throughout the base - some have been stripped of their armor, others of their gears and servos, but if there's more of their like around, Voodoo doesn't hear them. There are warning signs painted on the interior walls of some of the buildings, warning about ceiling turrets, but the ones Voodoo can see are already busted.

He keys his headset. "Watch the ceiling, guys. I can see warnings about gun turrets around this place."

They make for a large concrete building with a red cross above the doorframe, and Voodoo rattles the doorknob, to no effect.

"'course it's locked." He steps back. "All yours, Fawkes."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"That strikes me as fortuitous," rumbles Fawkes. "If it were open, I think everything we could make use of would be long since gone."

He reaches over his shoulder for the massive war hammer he carries in addition to his Gatling laser. "Stand back," he says. "If anything breaks, I don't want you catching the shrapnel."

WHAMM!

As he draws the hammer back for a second blow, Voodoo's radio crackles to life. "Guys?" says Al's voice.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo complies, standing well back so Fawkes has an unobstructed swing.

"We're reading you, Al. What's up?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"There's something here that walks upright, more or less," Al reports. "Kate spotted something moving, but it didn't look like a person. It looked kinda... grayish-brown, or something, and didn't seem to have much of a head. We only saw it for a second before it went behind a building."

[boston_bruiser]

WHAMM, goes Fawkes's hammer. Voodoo reflexively looks around him at Al's report, but there's nothing moving.

"Whatever it is, you have guns. It doesn't."

WHAMM.

"If you think it wants a piece of you, just keep your distance and you'll be fine."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

WHAMM.

"Ten-four," says Al, and the radio goes silent. Just in time, too; there's a horrible squeal of metal as the door's hinges give way under Fawkes' assault. Fawkes leans into the dark beyond the doorway, peering around a moment.

"I think something may have been here," he says, "but not the raiders. It smells too organic in here to have been sealed all this time."