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]

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."

[boston_bruiser]

"Yeah," Voodoo mutters under his breath as he replaces the pistol in its holster. He looks down at the corpse.

(This'd be where Ellen would stop and say some words for it. He's no good with words.

He hopes a few moments of thoughts, of hoping that wherever the human side of this thing's gone is a better place than this, is enough.)


"Let's head back to the medbay."

He keys his headset. "That, uh - thing you guys saw. It's been taken care of. You guys find anything?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It's probably best that the lights aren't on in here. Phylum Arthropoda and phylum Chordata were never, never, ever meant to be merged; how something that forced the two to coexist in a single body managed to make it out of the FEV vats alive is ... best not examined too closely. It might be remembered later.

"Think we found what's left of the armory," says Josepha's voice as Fawkes steps past Voodoo to get the corpse out of the way. "Those raiders took most of the good stuff, but there's some lockboxes back here that look like they couldn't get'em pried open."

[boston_bruiser]

"If the Halligans don't bust 'em, get Hector to blow the locks. We'll meet up with you in a few after we empty out the medicine cabinets."

He mutters a thanks to Fawkes as he steps past. He needs some fresh air.