Voodoo - Utah

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

It's a long haul across a lot of territory if you're planning on making it through Utah. Longer if you're doing it with the deliberate intent of being as careful as possible. The place is crawling with hostile wildlife, hostile tribals, and just general hostility of every human and other living kind.

Voodoo and his companions are good at surviving hostility by this point. Not everyone is.

Like the shaven-headed fellow with all the tattoos whose neck is bent at an incredibly awkward angle, up to the side of the path ahead.

Comments

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Josepha nods once and follows suit. This is no time for carelessness. There is going to be Trouble- or rather, there already is; it's very definitely underway. And from the sound of things somebody is badly outnumbered.

There's another tattooed guy fallen along the way. Guess the scouts go out in pairs after all. But the guns are up ahead, even if their numbers sound like they're dwindling- ah, there, muzzle flashes and partially concealed white-painted figures, and down where the canyon walls are pierced by a narrow path the remains of a multi-person caravan, with the last man falling...

[boston_bruiser]

It's on.

"Fawkes, Josepha, suppressing fire! Hector, Kate, with me!"

It's hectic - he can't make out exact numbers, all he knows is the bad guys outnumber the good guys right now. He moves from cover to cover as he works his way around to the flank, shoulders squared with his targets as he lines them up and knocks them down. Except he's a little too slow ducking down into cover one time, and a round grazes his cheek, eliciting a grunt from him as he drops to the deck, glove clamped over the cut.

"Fuckin' shit- asshole!"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"Relax, he's going nowhere," calls Josepha.

"I WON'T LET YOU GET AWAY WITH THIS!"

"Fawkes is after him."

The bad guys' numbers are dropping fast; there are maybe two of the white-painted figures left standing at this point, and Josepha has one of them in her sights. They do make relatively easy targets, colored like that.

[boston_bruiser]

And Voodoo is back up in seconds, his carbine's sights on the lone survivor's center of mass. One-two-three-four-five shots later, and he's down, blood bubbling from his mouth as Voodoo quickly moves in, kicking the tribal's rifle away from him as he holds him at gunpoint. He forces an exhale through his nose, locking eyes with the tribal as he breathes his last.

"Report - all clear?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"I'm all right," Josepha says tersely, her .45 trained on the tribal as well.

"I seem to have taken some damage," says Fawkes. "A minor bandage should be needed, nothing more. But there are no other moving targets in sight."

[boston_bruiser]

"Good."

The tribal goes limp, and Voodoo tilts his rifle, checking his magazine - half-full. Good enough for now.

"Caravan up there, bodies down here. You know the drill - look for stuff we can use. While you're at it, see if there's anything that tells us who the fuck these guys are."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Josepha nods and begins the searching. Fawkes grunts, taking a moment to pick out some brown cloth from a pouch of possessions and wrap his arm with it. The blood starts to seep through almost immediately, but the edges of the wound are held together, which is what matters to him. He can't do much in the way of a search if he's fussing over holding it closed himself, after all. A moment later he gets up to join her in the work.

"Hey, Fawkes, do you recognize this?"

"I believe I do," the meta-human rumbles. "Voodoo, I believe you'll want to see this. One of these people is wearing a Pip-Boy."

[boston_bruiser]

"No shit?"

A hop, skip, and a jump over some tribal corpses later, and - yes, that is indeed a Pip-Boy.

"Hm," he says, crouching down, taking the dead dude's arm in his hand. "Gimme a sec-"

He's seen Ellen use her own often enough that going through the menus isn't quite second nature, but he doesn't look like he's got his dick stuck in his fly, either. It's pretty easy to get it to the local mapping function, and there's a yellow brick road leading from what looks like a passage into Zion to where they are now.

"They're not local color. Looks like they came from outside Zion. Doesn't say why."

A momentary glance upward lets him catch a twitch of motion ducking behind a distant rock.

"Hey! You!"

After a moment, a silhouette peeks out from behind it.

"Yeah, you, wiseass," he says, finger pointed. "Get out here - slowly."

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The figure that comes into view is human, not nearly as painted as the dead tribals who lie scattered all around. He is, however, a lot more heavily tattooed- starting with his face. And we won't get into the hat.

"Ho, I'm no danger," he says, holding up both hands; the effect is somewhat spoilt by the curved war club he's still got in one of them. "Anybody who makes an enemy of the White Legs, they're probably okay."

[boston_bruiser]

"If you say so."

He relaxes, nodding back the way they came.

"Some dead scouts with ink and gear like yours back that way. Lose any guys lately?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

The young man sighs. "There's been trouble," he says. "Been a lot of problems, mostly the White Legs. Probably they got on their bad side. I came out here to look for them- there's lots of yao guai, too."

[boston_bruiser]

With a sweeping gesture to the corpses of the White Legs: "You found them."

Then, turning back to the young man:

"You got a name, dude?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

He nods. "Follows-Chalk," he says. "You came from outside, didn't you? From the civilized lands? Joshua's going to want to hear about this."

[boston_bruiser]

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.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"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?"

[boston_bruiser]

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?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"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.

[boston_bruiser]

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.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

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."

[boston_bruiser]

"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?"

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

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."

[boston_bruiser]

"Hm," Voodoo grunts.

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

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

"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?"

[boston_bruiser]

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

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

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."