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]

The roads are good guides, Voodoo doesn't deny that - but ever since they've moved out of the wastes around Baltimore and D.C. and into hillier country, he's gone out of his way to avoid them where he can. Old World infrastructure planners had commuters in mind with these roads, not military columns - here, along this portion of the Cheat River Valley, State Route 51 is sandwiched in between the Briery Mountains and the Lantz Ridge. Both are a good thousand or so feet off the valley floor - perfect for ne'er-do'wells looking to take a few potshots at some schmucks moving along the open road.

And so they're spread out in a line about halfway up the ridge that leads to Cannon Hill, a couple hundred feet above Saltlick Creek. Not high enough to silhouette themselves against the skyline, not low enough to give any ambushers a decisive height advantage. The steer's trundling along at the back of the pack - it's taken the weight of their supplies pretty well so far.

"We're close. We round a few more bends and we'll have eyes on Rowlesburg."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Well, the ruckus over the big green fellow finally got settled without anybody doing any shooting or stabbing, which is good. Fawkes might be tougher than humans, but even a metahuman's got no real liking for pain. The others weren't the source of any particular fuss once the Fawkes matter was handled, so by and large the travelers are settling in at the old VFW.

Al, of course, being the exception. The sooner he and Voodoo get their recon done, the sooner dinner becomes an option.

[boston_bruiser]

By the time they get back, get dinner, go over the plan, and move to the hill, the sun has just set over the horizon, and most of the raiders look to be bedding down. A few are staying up to keep watch, but the fire's still going. Voodoo and Hector have found a good position looking down into the pit - there's barely anything in the way of cover on the rim of the pit besides chicken wire and some sheet metal, but the angle the guys in the pit will be shooting up from already puts them at a pretty severe disadvantage.

He keys his headset. "Hector and I are set. How about you guys?"

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.