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]

"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."

[boston_bruiser]

"Well," Voodoo says, grunting as he hops up onto the threshold, "so long as that thing ain't here now, we won't have problems."

Time has not been kind to this place. A couple of nonfunctional autodocs are scattered across the floor, as well as more mundane detritus like surgical tubing and gauze. As Voodoo draws in a breath, his face scrunches.

"-whoo. 'Organic'. That's a word for it. -damn, wish I'd brought a flashlight."

The building is fairly expansive, sufficient to care for a company of sick soldiers. Some of the medicine cabinets lie open, their contents scattered, and the locks on others are busted.

"Buffout and Jet's gone. Med-X, too. Someone had priorities."

But there are some at shin height with heavier locks on them, and Voodoo takes out his lockpick kit from a chest pouch. Within a minute, their doors swing open.

"Here we go. Stimpacks, antiseptics - it ain't much, but it's something."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"More than we had before, certainly," Fawkes agrees. "And there are some bottles up here, I see, although I don't know how long Rad-X keeps its potency. Shall I bring them back regardless?"

Before Voodoo can answer, the radio goes off again. "What the hell was that thing?" says Hector's voice.

[boston_bruiser]

"What the hell was what thing?"

To Fawkes, as he makes for the exit: "Ditch it for now, we got a mystery creature needs cornerin'. Hector, what'd you see?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Something big and gray. Moved like its knees were tied together or something, all shuffly-like," Hector reports. "And it's either got wings or some kind of blanket or cape or something over its shoulders."

[boston_bruiser]

"Lock down your sectors, Fawkes 'n I'll find it."

So it's unarmed. That doesn't mean he's got to like the fact it's creeping around the place checking on his people. His weapon is down, his finger off the trigger - for now.

To Fawkes, as he steps out of the medbay, leaves crunching underneath his boots: "You see anything?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Nothing yet," reports Fawkes, scanning the vicinity. "Wait- something's moving on that rooftop over there."

[boston_bruiser]

"Where? I don't- belay that, I got it."

True to Hector and Al's word, the "something" is gray and shuffles across the rooftop, and there's something on its shoulders. Voodoo takes a step forward, raising one hand in the air.

"Hey! Hey! Come down here, man, we're not gonna hurt you!"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It pauses for just the barest fraction of a second, almost- almost- turning Voodoo's way. Something red and round flickers from its chest as it suddenly turns and hops off the rooftop, dropping out of sight.

The thud one would generally expect to hear under the circumstances does not happen.

[boston_bruiser]

"Goddamnit."

Bad enough they've got a saber-toothed goat-thing around, now there's this - moth-thing creeping around the place. Is there a three-ring circus in the area he doesn't know about?

He jogs around the edge of the building - the nearest tracks are a good thirty feet from the roof edge, and they stay the same waddly-shuffly pattern all the way up to a building with SE VICES A D REPAI stenciled above what looks like a big garage door, where they disappear. Voodoo drops to a knee and tries the door - it's locked, and the hinges are rusted shut on top of it.

"C'mon, man. We just wanna talk. You're stalking my guys and it's making me nervous."

To Fawkes:

"Check for an open door, or one I can pick open. Dunno about you, but I don't think good things are gonna come outta startling - whatever this is."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I'll look," acknowledges Fawkes, "but I have a bad feeling about this."

The meta-human heads around the side of the building, testing every door he can find.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo steps back, looking over the building. He's gonna look like a damn fool if this isn't the place where the thing's holed up, but here goes.

"Look, man. You haven't hurt any of my people so far, so I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt. All I want's for you to come out here, nice and slow. So long's you don't try anything funny, we ain't. Gonna. Hurt you. You got my word on it."


Silence.


He keys his headset. "Fawkes, how's it coming with those doors?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I have one over here with what looks like a vulnerable lock," says Fawkes. "The hinges are badly corroded, but that's to our advantage if the lock can be picked."

[boston_bruiser]

"Check. Makin' my way to you."

It's a short walk to Fawkes's position around the building, and Voodoo runs a hand over the hinges, every last one red with rust.

"You weren't kidding. These things haven't been oiled in centuries. Well," he says, digging the picks out of his rig, "time to meet our gunshy stalker."

It's child's play to pick the lock, and the hinges screech as he opens the door.

It gets dark after a few feet in here - there's not much in the way of windows. There's the same organic smell from before, along with what he guesses is a motor pool's worth of meticulously disassembled vehicles.

"Damn but I need some kinda light- hello?" he says into the darkness as he steps inside, checking his corners out of habit. "We're coming in, dude. Same deal as before, okay? Don't try any funny stuff and you ain't gonna get hurt."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

There's a hiss from the shadows on the far side of the garage, and two gleams of red that don't get any closer- but don't run away, either.

Fawkes looks questioningly at Voodoo. He's not going to risk using his Not Inside At All voice just at the moment.

[boston_bruiser]

Voodoo waves him on in, carefully placing each step as his eyes adjust to the light. "Watch for wires."

On the walls are what looks like charcoal markings - he's not too sure, but they look like historical landscapes, with an emphasis on natural disasters - mine fires, floods, et cetera. A bridge collapse looks to be the magnum opus, and its buckling steel and frayed cables take up most of one wall.

"Stay cool, man. Just like that. Just like that. We're all friends here."

He stops with two jeep-looking vehicles in-between them, resting one hand on the hood. So far, the thing's proved harmless - but they're good cover, just in case.

"You got a name, bro?"