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

[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."