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]

"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?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The red gleams are too widely spaced to be human eyes, but they have an unnerving feel of focus to them as they fix on Voodoo for a while. Rather than speak, the thing suddenly jumps straight up into the air and comes down with a CLANG! on the hood of the nearer vehicle. It remains hunched in the darkness, staring- probably- at Voodoo.

Fawkes touches Voodoo's shoulder lightly. "A question," he says as quietly as he can- which is to say, about normal speaking volume for an ordinary human. "Are you... familiar... with the Wasteland things that humans call centaurs?"

[boston_bruiser]

"No," Voodoo says, not breaking eye contact with the thing.

(Right now, his thoughts are running the gamut between so this is what a white chick in a slasher movie feels like and great going, idiot, you just offered yourself up as a morning snack for Post-Nuclear Oogieboogie #5318.)

As his hand creeps up to the pistol in his chest rig:

"Why?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The cape-like part of its shadow lifts a moment, then falls again.

Fawkes says, "I saw some of them made. They happened when a human and another human, or sometimes another creature altogether, were thrown into the vats in Vault 87 together. The virus fused them together into monstrous hybrids. The few who lived were in constant pain, and could not speak."

Something brighter comes into the red gleam, and the creature attempts to stand up straighter; it must be a good seven feet tall...

[boston_bruiser]

Which means that, combined with the height advantage conferred by its position on the hood of the jeep, this thing's got something around 80 inches on Voodoo.


"Well, shit."

His grip is secure on his pistol, now. He's trying to imagine the ten million kinds of suck whoever's stuck in this chimera is going through, and is coming up short every time.

(Ellen would probably have something for this - some way of soothing the thing as she put it out of its misery. She's good at this empathy shit.

He's not Ellen.)

So he squares his shoulders, stands up tall, and looks the thing in the eye.

"My buddy tells me you're hurtin' bad," he says, nodding to Fawkes. "You want us to - put you down?"

A half-beat.

"Just - nod for 'yes', shake for 'no'."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The creature's form trembles a moment, visible more through the motion of its eyes than the rest of its form, and it lets out a weirdly metallic hiss.

But it bobs its entire front end up and down, the best approximation a thing that has no visibly distinct head seems to be able to make of a nod.

[boston_bruiser]

"Well - okay."

(Cutting down thirty scum-of-the-earth raiders in a go is one thing.

Putting one through the brainpan of some unlucky schmuck who was in the wrong place at the wrong time Christ-knows-how-long ago? Who's been hobbling around in this science experiment of a body for years, maybe decades on end?

It's another.)

He draws his pistol out of his chest rig, gripping it just like he was taught so long ago - strong hand high on the grip, weak hand wrapped around it under the trigger guard, thumbs pointing down the slide.

"Just stand still."

(It's the goddamn light, more than anything - there's only one or two windows on the back wall, just barely enough to let him make out the three white dots on his irons. He's no expert on moth anatomy - not that that would matter with this kind of chimera - so he has to guess where the brain is, but if it's where it looks like-)


BANG.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It's close enough. The thing's... wings? Yes, wings- flare massively in a last burst of reflex, slowing its fall to a weirdly graceful topple forward. With one last hiss of breath, it collapses, and slides off the hood to the floor of the darkened garage.

"That was kindly done," rumbles Fawkes. "Thank you."