aaaaaaaagh_sky | Voodoo

Voodoo shrugs. "Then we might as well come along. Lead the way."

Can't hurt to make sure these guys are on the up and up, right? And it'd be nice to secure some maps of the area if the local yokels have it.

"Goot sists," says Follows-Chalk, with the air of someone for whom this is just another piece of everyday language. "We head east, then. Joshua is at our tribe's camp in the Eastern Virgin. It's none too far."

With that he sets off along the rocky trail at a trot, up a slope that leads under a natural stone arch. There's a battered, ancient metal sign to one side with an old pictogram of a backpacking figure on it; this must have been a park trail once.

"We follow this trail for a while," says Follows-Chalk cheerfully, and points to the drop-off to his left. "Nice view of the river down there, neh?"

The nuclear apocalypse was cruel to a lot of places. Some cities have been wiped off the face of the planet, and others have been reduced to shells of their former selves, raiders and mutants picking over their carcasses.

Zion, fortunately, has suffered none of that. The river below actually looks like it's drinkable as-is, and the only signs of warfare here are the occasional grouping of bullet holes in the rock.

"Got that right," Voodoo says, his carbine taking up the slack in its sling. "How long you been holed up here?"

"Me?" says Follow-Chalk. "Not that long. Couple days, maybe. The Dead Horses, now, we've been here for years. Ever since Joshua came, and led us from-"

He stops, holding up one hand sharply. "Freeze!" he all but hisses. "Don't move a muscle. Yao guai."

Up ahead, at the top of a rise in the path, the canyon wall slopes downward to a pile of boulders the size of small houses. Just enough bushes and green things are growing out of the cracks to offer some degree of shelter to the local wildlife- more so for the scrambling lizard the size of an eight-year-old child than for the massive, mutated bear leaping down on the lizard's form. The bear is easily twice as big as its kindred in the Capital Wasteland; the lizard's in for a short, ugly fight.

And freeze Voodoo does, hands tightening on the grips. "Do what the man says," he whispers out the side of his mouth. "We do not have the ammunition to waste."

Here's hoping that lizard's enough to fill it up, yeah? Because Voodoo doubts five-five-six ball would do much of anything to that thing.

Josepha nods frantically, her knuckles going pale on her weapon. The others just freeze up. A good thing, too; after a few minutes the bear lets out a tremendous roar and trots off, dragging the lizard carcass.

"Hoo!" says Follows-Chalk, shaking his head. "That was some kind of lucky. Guess that one's gonna be all full of gecko, neh? Don't get too used to it, though. Yao guai are plenty mean as a rule."

"Yeah, that's what I've heard."

(Look on the bright side - they could be deathclaws. You don't know it yet, Voodoo, but they grow them extra-mean out West.)

"You were talkin' about this 'Joshua' dude?"

Follows-Chalk nods. "Joshua Graham- he leads our tribe," he says. "Thanks to him, the Dead Horses are strong, and safe from our enemies. We used to live at Dead Horse Point, before he brought us here."

"Hm," Voodoo grunts.

As they come to a bend in the trail, he squints, pointing down to the canyon floor. "That them down there?"

"That's the place," says Follows-Chalk. "Going to have to go down and wade the river. Watch out for traps in the water. Got to keep the White Legs out somehow, neh?"

"We'll step where you step. We're short on people as-is."

Follows-Chalk nods and starts picking his way down the path to the river, which is marked with some more of the old blue and white Park Service signs. The river below runs through a particularly narrow canyon, and while it's only knee-deep at the most, the water is cold and mostly clear. Someone who looks closely enough can see fish in it- or the aforementioned traps, big pressure-triggered bear traps set carefully into the mud of the streambed every few yards.

Al pauses to scoop up a handful of the water and sniff at it. "Doesn't seem fouled," he notes. "That's kind of impressive."

"No cities, no people, no reason to waste a nuke."

The bear traps get a cursory look - more of them are rusted than not. You'd get tetanus from it if you didn't bleed out quick.

"I bet there ain't a bomb crater for a hundred miles."

He turns to Follows-Chalk.

"How many guys you got? In total."

"Hmmm... well, there's Two-Bears-High-Fiving, and there's the shaman, and-"

"Numbers, pal," interrupts Hector. "We don't need to know everybody's name."

"Oh. Forty or fifty men, then. And about that many women, but I don't know how many children there are."

[The number given is an approximate guess at best and is almost certainly wrong, but it seemed a better idea to cite something than to simply handwave.]

"And I'm guessing the White Legs have more." He sucks air through his teeth. "You're up shit creek, bro. You got a plan?"

"You'd better ask Joshua about that," says Follows-Chalk. "I'm still a junior hunter. He's the war leader." He nods ahead, to where the river widens and the canyon walls pull back on either side. "He's just up ahead there, in Angel Cave."

It's dark in Angel Cave. It feels surprisingly moist, too - cave fungi line the walls, and every few paces are a group of tribals huddled around a fire, talking amongst themselves and sharpening weapons. Fawkes gets more than a few looks from them, but that can't be helped.

The dude their eyes are all drawn to is sitting at a table in one of the larger caverns, field-stripping and cleaning what looks like, if not a M1911A1, then a very good clone of one. Guarding the entrance is the biggest tribal in the cave - he's got six inches and sixty pounds on Voodoo, easy, and he looks down his nose at him, glaring as he crosses his arms over his massive chest.

"You show respect, owslandr," he says. "Or he show you thunder and fire."

Voodoo's response is a lazy thumbs-up. "Got it, dude."

The tribal's eyes narrow. After a moment, he steps aside, allowing Voodoo through.

"You must be Joshua."

The bandaged figure glances up and nods, though he pauses less than a second in his attention to the weapon at hand. "We should have given you a better welcome on your first visit to Zion," he says, "but from what I hear the White Legs beat us to it. White Legs seem to be the only visitor we have these days, although I'd heard rumors a few people from the Mojave might have come looking for us."

He checks the gun over and sets it aside, then picks up another weapon to begin working with.

"I don't suppose you encountered a courier in your travels?"

"Didn't see nobody I'd call a courier."

About those pistols: there's a lot of them on the table. None of them are in mint, like-new, or even particularly good condition - in fact, some of them look the "guaranteed to go bang once" type, but they're passable for the most part.

"Why, you expecting a delivery?"

"A message, more likely, but the courier I was expecting to see follows his own time-table." Joshua moves on to another pistol. "Assuming he's safe at all, of course. I pray for the safety of all good people who come to Zion, even Gentiles, but we can't expect God to do all the work. What brings you here?"

And here Voodoo hesitates a little bit, because this far out west, this close to Legion territory - you can't be a hundred percent sure where people's loyalties lie.

"Got word of a problem in the Mojave called Caesar's Legion. Whole bunch of bad dudes - making a habit out of enslaving the locals, conscripting tribes, killing anybody who resists, you get the picture. We-"

And here he turns to gesture to the group.

"-are the problem-solvers. 'cept we got caught up here on our way to Vegas."

Edited 2015-11-03 19:44 (UTC)

"Is that so?" One gets the impression that if there were eyebrows left behind those bandages, one of them would be rising now. "You do come from a long way off, then. Otherwise I'd imagine you'd have heard about what the White Legs did to New Canaan, as part of Caesar's price to let them join."

Hector mutters something; the bandaged man's eyes narrow. "Tell your companion there that I don't test people with falsehoods. New Canaan is no more- undoubtedly because of me- and the Legion is waiting on the White Legs to finish their campaign of blood and fire before extending their reach into these valleys."

Edited 2015-11-03 19:59 (UTC)

Voodoo holds a hand up in what he hopes is still the universal signal for "dudes, chill" before pulling up a nearby chair and sitting opposite the table from Joshua.

"If those White Legs have half their numbers in brains, they'll have bottled up the valley by now. We're good, but we can't leave with the terrain giving them that big an edge. Even if we could, they're Legion proxies, and from what you say, the Legion itself ain't far behind. Figure you know how I feel about those kinda guys."

He leans back in the chair, regarding Joshua for a moment more.

"Looks like that puts us on the same side."

He points a thumb at his chest. "I'm Voodoo. That's Fawkes, Josepha, Al, Hector, and Kate. We ain't much for numbers, but we've got lots of gear and lots of fights under our belts."

Graham considers this, although neither his hands nor his attention to the cleaning and stripping of the stack of pistols before him so much as falters. "Even with the White Legs broken, you would still need maps or a guide to find your way out of the area," he says. "The good news is that once that happens, we can help with that. Daniel, one of the other New Canaanites, has made many maps of the region. For good neighbors such as yourselves, he'd share them once the fighting was done and the smoke cleared. It would be wise, though, for us to prepare for an evacuation. In the event something went wrong, we'd need pre-War tools to help us navigate beyond Zion. Whether they came from you or from one of the places here in Zion that the Dead Horses or the Sorrows consider taboo-"

He shrugs.

"Well. So long as they function. A route should be prepared for the people, no matter how experienced or skillful their defenders might be."

"'Pre-War tools'. We talking compasses, shit like that? 'cause we got those."

To prove his point, he digs into a pouch on his chest rig before producing one, holding it up to the light for Joshua to see.

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