Carib FMJ
Nuka-Cola Chaser
Wasteland PULP
CHRONICLES OF THE VIOLIN BK 1
By: Rama Toulon
AKA Carib FMJ The Nuka Cola Chaser
Inspired by Charlyn Vidal the Red Violin
PROLOGUE
Earlier in the Morning…
“Whoa there, short stuff. This is private property. No trespassing’.” A scarred up mutant sentry barked, at the approaching female, his large green hand in her face. “Get movin’ normie you have no place here. No permission no entrance.”
The female scuffed. She was a fair heigthed 1.75 meters, dark brown skin, a woman of ancient Creole and Negroid heritage, her face was round and her lips puffed a bit, though not huge. She wore a black skull bandanna and adorned in a very stylish single sleeve leather jacket with a white t-shirt with the Cat’s Paw logo on the chest.
“I wasn’t askin’ permission troll,”
“Now, listen here normie, we don’t take jive from n-.” The second sentry didn’t even have time to finish, when the girl grabbed her Colt 6520 Delta elite and her battered but trusty sawed off and fired both in almost harmonious synchronicity. The 6520 dropped a 10mm armor piercer round through the left sentry’s throat, drilling a nasty cavity into the dark green flesh and severing an artery or two in its wake. The sawed off scatter shot, designed for portability and close lethality, not precision shooting, then again, Apple wasn’t in need of long distance attrition.
The double barrels sent a hail of scatter shot at point blank range into the sentry bosses’ chest, tearing him a new windpipe.
Both mutants collapsed to the ground, neither really dead, but with every moment and every breath were getting closer to their graves. Their weezing and pain meant nothing to her, she walked on by, grabbing the pass key from the ripped up mutant boss. As if he could resist.
“I’ll be taking that,” she snatched the card from his neck and left the mutant to have his lungs crushed by the increased air pressure invading the cavity in his chest.
She looked back for a moment and stared at the pens where the Brahmin were kept. There she saw the weirdest thing ever.
“Mooooo.”
A Brahmin with one head. “Mono headed Brahmin…. I knew this place was crawling with freaks. No one is ever going to believe this.” She said to herself. Mono-headed Brahmin were supposed to be some fairy tale. Things made up to amuse children. Apple still had a hard time believing what she saw. Mono headed brahmin.
Entering the farm, she saw a small room, a guard station and a secure looking reinforced door. Sliding her new found pass key across the reader, she heard a faint buzz as well as the releasing of three heavy locks.
The door slid open without even a squeak. And then there was a red stair well winding down maybe twenty feet below. She followed the railing, pistol out, just in case she met any other sentries.
Reaching bottom floor without incident. It was sort of disappointing in a way; she had expected resistance and received only silence.
A wooden door lay before her and she let herself in without even a faint knock. Creaking it slowly, pistol ready. With wush, the door swung open and Apple had her pistol leveled. Lowering it, she could only see a flurescent light tubes hanging above work tables, and a few lit computers and other techno-paraphernalia.
Edging slowly towards a lit terminally, she looked down at the already open file.
Running Search Program…. Accessing Poseidon net…
Enclave NET Files…
Running Diagnostics……… Searching for Subject………
Priority: Observation
Subject: Apple
Alias: The Red Violin
Gender: Female
Threat level: High
Apple hated computers. In her mind as her fingers raced over the cumbersome keyboard, tapping keys frantically, a computer was a waste of breath. Ironic that a computer never breathed, though she had met a cyborg or two that would beg to differ. In the background of what was once the Stranger’s den, Apple left four dead mutant sentries lying in their own blood. On the outside it looked like some pre-war farm, complete with picket fence which incidentally wasn’t white since time and neglect long ago bleached away the lead based pants. Looking on the inside just made her hated this place even more. It was stank of antiseptics and death… It was sterile, though it was covered in what appeared to be living tissue of some sort etched into the walls, and other geneticist paraphernalia. Just behind her was a operating table wet with that bizarre pseudo flesh and of course blood.
Every time she got near the jelly flesh like gunk she could swear it was probing her, feeling her thoughts. It was that feeling that made you think you were being watched. Whatever the stranger was tinkering in wasn’t good. Apple would know, passing her hand behind her neck for a brief moment - as the archaic computer system was searching for the information she required - her finger tips brushed across the bar-code tattoo etched into her flesh. Memories of a small room and bright white light filled her head, and sudden pang of pain hit her skull.
Oddly enough this wasn’t from memory.
“Tut-tut… Have I taught you nothing child.” Came the metallic rasp in her head, only as she looked over her shoulder, it wasn’t a distant memory, it was a man adorned in a black military fatigues, his pitch hair brushed back with two locks dangling at the base of his neck and dark reflective shades on his hidden eyes. His lips formed into a mournful smirk, like that of a father catching their child committing some deed they were disciplined for previously. The Stranger was handsome in a sinister sort of manner. His face was pale, but he was muscled up, fit and seeming well nourished compared the rest of the wastelands populace. His hands were gloved. Apple wondered why he always wore shades, but it was one of those questions for another time.
Funny, Apple thought as she rubbed the back of her scalp, her fingers going through the scarlet tipped hair. Apple could see her already bronzed flesh and oval face in the shades reflection and all she could do was sneer as she saw her own hatred reflected back into her own hateful gaze.
“What?! No Good afternoon, ‘Mr. Essex‘? Have the children of these dark times no manners?” He asked, it was almost a taunt as it was a rhetorical question, especially to a girl who had no more manners and subtlety of a savage deathclaw. Apple was about to reply but before she could even part her lips to give him a piece of her mind, he moved like a blur before she could even grab her sawed off shotgun.
His fist connected sharply with her stomach, pitching her like a rag doll against the operating table. Before she could even gain her senses, she felt his steely grip clench around her lower jaw and felt her body being lifted as if she were a mere doll.
“Y-You…” she began to choke out, both from the tight grip on her lips that distorted her words and the fact she was furious. “Y-You… stole my life… my mind…. U-used me… and threw me away like I was just a play thing.” Her eyes blazed with defiance, a trait which the Stranger had come to both disdain and admire.
Essex tossed her to the tiled floor, knocking the air out of her lungs. “The fly has no favor in the web, child. You are useful to me, that is why you live. That is why I made you better.” He retorted, not caring to justify anything to this girl who was nothing more then a specimen. An experiment and a weapon to be used… and discarded if strategy required.
“W-what? What did you say?”
“Silly thing. I gave you gifts. The least you can do is accept them and not get on like a spoilt child who lost their Nixon Doll. Remember you sold your soul to survive. I delivered… you belong to me. End of discussion.” Essex said, turning his back. “Now leave and only come if and when I summon you.”
Apple wanted to grab her dagger and drive it into his heart, to cut his throat and feel his icy blood bathe her face, but it was almost funny. Thanks to him she could see in the dark and survive in the irradiated land. Then again, thanks to him she lost a life… a child and her eternal soul. Apple the Red Violin, on the ground, on her knees, her palms touching the icy floor, grabbed her stuff, picking up the rickety shotgun and not even caring to look back at the console to see what it may have discovered on its archives.
At the moment it was pointless. Essex had won once again and now it was off to civilization, to the light and people… the things she hated almost as much as she hated him.
Decadent Downtown, Old Moscow, apartment complex area, north Main Street....
PROGRAM RUNNING.....
ENTER the RED VIOLIN
One of those rare places that still remained intact after the war. Old Moscow, Idaho was spared the nuclear war but not spared the dark human survivalist that lurked within. It fell into disrepair and scavengers, and of course, the nuclear winter and the acid rain didn’t make anything easier. The small apartment on the forgotten lane of Pulma, a residential area, there was a small, quaint apartment complex which was muddled with graffiti. Most rooms were intact, some expanded by breaking down walls and sharing into other apartments.
Room number 16A, three main rooms in it. The kitchen which was tidy and would fit in well with the standards of the EPA, even for post war standards. It had a fully stocked fridge from Nuka colas to other products, especially dry foods, the kind that never spoil. A one bed room, which had more room than a standard eight by eleven prison cell. And the main room where an old burned out TV from the pre-war era stood on a stack of books and the coffee table was the main feature. On the coffee table you can see several different books and articles that survived the holocaust.
Sociology and Psychology 101 by Vault Tech.
Two Dean's Electronics, for all those budding new mechanics and electricians.
A large science Journals about micro biology. A stack of Pulp Comics. Three black and white, noir-esque comics that were gritty and violent.
Then there was the Lavender Flower, a pre-war romance novel by fabled romantic and erotica author Dorothy Rixon. Some people could never understand why she went for her cousin.
As you progressed through the rest of the apartment, things seem to change.
There was a sound of shuffling feet and a male voice cursing.
Behind the door, you'd see two women and single man. The man was tall and had a face that was very hard to look at, old poker marks and other horrible knicks. His name was Albert, and Albert wasn't happy. Not happy at all. Not mainly with the proud looking female standing, a double barrel shotgun at her side. But his anger, his grievance was with the brown skinned girl who was in bed, covers over her naked torso.
She had been caught cheating. But not with another man, no with another woman. And that mad Albert, made him see red, and that was the reason why he had a knife in one hand.
He took another step. His already bloodshot eyes seem to get redder.
"Al.... Please don't. You don't understan-" The wife began, her voice shaky.
"Shut... the..." He seems to be so angry that the words came within intervals, a synaptic lapse of judgment that was clouded by primal emotions that drove humanity. "Fuck.... up.... cow.... can't... you see.... Yer man is at work. Don't worry, I settle with you after I deal with the chicra here.
"Yeah, so wanna screw my fuckin' wife, eh?" His voice rose, it was clear with murder and rape intent. The sound of a man who was seeing himself at the edge of everything.
The woman stood and shrugged her shoulders. "It seemed she needed...." she licked her honey brown lips at Albert's wife for spite, "That she needed a woman's touch. I did you a favor." She had enjoyed the lust derived from the woman; she always liked them when they felt another woman's touch for the first time. And she knew how to please.
"A fav...?" He seems to stutter at the words, his hands on his ears as if trying to block out mental interference, and it made him shutter with rage. "A favor... You fuckin' lesbian whore, I am gonna carve you from crack to neck. You hear me, I am gonna--"
The girl simply made a crack sound from her neck and smiled evilly. "You are going to die." She finished for him. The man made his move, but she was faster.
With a whirl and pivoting on one foot, a pale brown figure moved like a blur and swung her Widow-maker to her right, squeezed the left barrel trigger.
BAMMM!!!
A figure is propelled through the darkness of an apartment window and lands awkwardly on a dumpster, two stores down. His shattered remains stare blankly. Back in the apartment room, the barrel smoked as it had laid low a man.
One shell left....
The few inhabitants saw the spectacle, but didn't seem to care. The only one's who seem to take notice were the heavy set men down stares by the old pay phone who saw their comrade fall to his death with a gapping hole in his chest.
They weren't pleased. A second later, feet began to rush upstairs in that noisy shuffle of moccasins and sneakers.
*****
The footsteps come pounding up the stairs, but there is the sound of another set of footsteps coming in the opposite direction. There's a voice in the hallway. "HEY, FELLAS!"
It's followed by the sound of gunfire and several thuds. The door opens, and Ron Spears steps in, Beretta lowered. "Did you kill that fat guy...? Guess you did." Well, his hombres were sorta pissed off. Must be a good shot with that scattergun, huh? Have fun."
The mercenary shuts the door with a grin and a wave.
*****
The woman who blew Albert Taner out the window stood smiling, her widowmaker tapping her shoulder blade. She was a slender girl, she could pass as maybe as young as seventeen or perhaps eighteen, but she was older, you could tell in those shinny amber eyes. She had a round face as if it were perfectly round face - or perhaps a bit of genetic artistry - that even looked girlish.
But she was a woman, either through years of killing or perhaps experience, she was a woman. She was more than a woman. She was a woman who carried a shotgun.
The now-would be widow, sat cringing in bed. She expected a fight, but never expected the slender, chocolate skinned woman to blow her husband out of the window like that, blew out like a candle. The way she carried out the act as if it were like a involuntary reaction. She raised the weapon, squeezed the trigger and death came out from a barrel.
True her husband was a fat slob, but she never wished him death. He never hurt her or beat her, he was always kind, but he wasn't very apt in the art of love, and when she strolled the streets, horny and hungry for pleasure and happened by and saw the young female violinist, she was instantly seduced by the girl. The young, fresh looking teenager. But as she got involved, she realize the girl wasn't as young as she looked, and when they made love, which was the first for Albert's widow; it was a whole new world of colors and flavors. But all that seemed dull as she reawakened in a nightmarish reality where the violinist murders her husband.
"Why did you kill Albert?" She asked from the bed, her legs shivering from under the covers in fear. Any moment she could have urinated on herself in just fear. What made her more afraid is how angelic the girl looked, how pure and clean, not the murderess she saw before her.
"Easy," The girl began. "He had a knife, he threatened me... bam, problem solved." She formed gun finger and made a pow-pow sound.
"Charlyn... I-I. Go, please... Go." The widow began to weep bitterly.
"Fine," Charlyn hissed. She was getting annoyed now. She began to walk towards the window, she didn't even take on the merc, as if absorbed in her own world. Charlyn felt confused, wasn't sure how to feel. She reacted with her usual instinct, and now the woman whom she was falling in love with has pushed her away...
Like so many of the others, she thought broodingly. The violinist was adept at hiding her outer emotions. From the outside one could see a haughty girl, but in the inside, rage was brewing.
Now the merc, She thought as she got a glance at the man. Can't have him thinking I left him ignored. That'd be rude.
Her amber eye's scanned the merc who came upstairs and had gunned down the angry lot of thugs.
A cruel lopsided smile rose on her face and she answered Ron Spears. "I suppose I should thank you for killing those men. So thanks. Anything I can help you with? I was on my way out." She quickly walked quickly past him and took the books on sociology and other materials on the coffee table.
"This is my fee." She muttered in respect to her love affair with Albert's widow.
She nudged the merc by the shoulder with her own as she walked by.
"Oh, yeah, thanks for the help. Though I could have taken them, I am glad your ammo and not mine got wasted." She said coldly. Her hands grabbed the ends of the window and she opened it. The fire escape was still there.
Opening the barrel of the shotgun, she removed the used shell and inserted another one. Smiling happily as it snapped shut, fully loaded. She began to head out of the fire escape and looked back at the merc.
"You want something?"
Ron shook his head calmly. "Where you headed from here?"
She halted in her tracks. Are all people this talkative? asking and knitting questions? Charlyn thought with cold contempt. But with her little memory she had, it was something she had to endure.
"Going away from here before some decides to be a hero and I have to kill someone else.... or get killed." She always acknowledged that there was someone faster and deadlier; reason why she always made sure she was a step quicker... and a little deadlier. "You wanna come?" She offered. She hated walking by herself and perhaps the merc might know something. And if she found anything fishy about him, she'd kill him.
Simple and easy.
She looked back at Mrs. Taner and blew her a kiss. The woman seem frozen in a livid and frightened state. Charlyn decided she had tasted enough of her pain and headed for the window.
"So you comin'? We head down town or something. I saw a place somewhere outside town that looked interesting."
The corner of Captain Spears' mouth turns up in a smile. He nods. "I was gonna go downtown, too. Yeah, I'll come with you."
She gave an untrusting eye, not sparing Spears anything. Honesty was a vice she had in spades.
"Fine," She crept out the window and reached the main stair well of the fire escape. The escape ladder was pad locked to the main stair case. Grabbing her small lock picks, she began to pick at the lock. Her brown bag was placed at her feet. It had most of her stuff, she still had another bag stashed somewhere.
"So, you have a name? Or do you charge in, berettas in hand and save people from a raging mob coming up the stairs?" As usual, she spared no one her dry and caustic humor. No one. She used the tumbler to pick at the lock. At an other time, she would have used her own gun to blast the lock, but doing so at such a close range would brake pieces of steel into her face. And she didn't want that.
Ron chuckles. "Ron. What about you?" He watches her pick the lock and follows her down the ladder, keeping a barely safe distance.
The fire escape began to shimmy slight as Ron made a move forward. "That is very unwise." She said with caution. Her voice alone conveyed the message as she spoke the ominous words from over her slim shoulder.
Snap.
The lock came free and the ladder slid down. "Piece of cake." She tucked her tools away and faced Ron. "The names Charlyn. Some call me Violin." She grabbed the side handles and slid down the ladder military style; hands on the side, legs on the side handles and gently slid down.
Her bag was on her shoulder as she plopped down on the wet snowy side walk. It wasn't as cold as it looked. Summer was climbing weakly to this area o Idaho, and it was welcomed.
Ron waits for her to get away from the bottom of the ladder, then slides almost all the way off of it. Then he kicks off of it and flips backwards, landing like a cat on his feet. He walked after her calmly.
"Violin, huh? You play one or something? My mom used to play one."
She walked ahead of Ron, she wasn't really into small talk and would spend most of her time replying and not looking him in the face. "Yeah, I play a violin." She said tersely.
Passing in a narrow alley, they passed through the ruined area of Moscow, a place of rotting buildings and bones interwoven into the very asphalt.
A small red sign, long has the neon light died from within, but it still stood.
The Jack Rabbit bar.
It had an out of business sign hanging near the sign. As they descended the small steps to the back door, Charlyn once again took out her lock picks and preyed at the lock.
"Have to pick up something’s here." Charlyn said from over her shoulders.
Ron yawns and watches behind them, one hand under his leather holster for his best throwing knife. He watches Charlyn alternately.
"What stuff?"
Entering the bar, it was a very dusty place, the brown was layered by a thick film of gray dust. The sound of her feet were muffled by the gray blanket that was everywhere to be seen. The days light shun through the boarded windows of the long forgotten bar. Taking some matches she had pilfered from her ex-lover, she lit some wax candles that lay standing.
The dull amber light filled the room and the tiny rats creeping about ran. Her foot kicked one of the fleeing creatures in the head, shattered the vertebra and killing the creature.
"One for the rat catcher in the sky." She muttered antipathetically. She hated vermin. The creepy eyes, the hair, the fleas; it was something innate to her. She hated rats - period. Taking glance left and right she saw the bar was the same as she left it months ago.
It was a roomy bar complete with three different dispensing machines. The classic orange-copper tinted nuka cola machine, which oddly after how many years of neglect (and abuse) could still give a fresh nuka cola - this of course, if you knew how to shake it just right - then there was the candy machine. The glass broken and the candies nibbled on and rotting.
The sign of dead vermin could be seen.
The third machine was a coin machine. It was out of service, the red sign painted in bold couldn't be missed.
The bartender's area was webbed, and glasses of old liquor had been long plundered during the end times, before the rebirth of the world. Maybe two or three bottles of booze or copper tops remained. Near the cash register was a packet of expired 9mm JHP rounds. She grabbed the box and sent it to Ron, who caught it.
"Could come in handy," she said flatly.
Jumping over the bar counter, she went near a floor panel and picked up a crow bar that sat webbed in the adjacent nook to her right. Swallowing whatever disgust that welled up inside, she took the bar and removed the sticky material that was meant to entrap insects and small prey.
"I have some -" She thought on the words between her prying and lifting motions to snap the open the boards. "Personal things and other stuff. Oh, and be a dear, Captain Ron and fetch that colorful map on the wall to your... far right; the one of the upstate area." With that, the board snapped and a thick leather duffel bag with multiple straps lay underneath.
"Gravy pot." She said with a confidant smile as she lifted the bag out of the compartment. Slinging the bag on her shoulder and placing the lesser bag within the larger one. It was one fit and it was light.
"Hid it here for years.... and still good. So we can now head up upstate. Find somewhere warm to sleep. Oh, and one more thing - what are you Captain of?"
Ron cocks one of his eyebrows. "I... never said I was a captain." He figures she saw the dog tags and made a wild guess, or maybe even heard of the Nightmare Company or Ron Spears. He shrugged and walked over to the map, grabbing it off the wall and rolling it up. He walks back, taking a moment to really process her question. He remembered all too well.
Fire. Screaming. A tremendous explosion. Men screaming either in horror or rage... sometimes both. The stench and taste of blood. Copperish, like a penny. The musky scent of urine--one of the rookies who couldn't handle himself, maybe, or even one of the bodies that pissed itself a few minutes after death, or maybe that one kid with the little freckles that had been whining about having to piss for the past mile. Mutants roaring, ghouls screeching. The second in command, Chase Segal, holding his intestines and staring at Ron, blood smeared on his face. "CAPTAIN, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!"
Ron snapped back to reality and coughed. He spoke up, and sounded very shaken.
"I was leader of a group called the Nightmare Company. We were a paramilitary defense group for a Vault."
He says nothing else, because it's obviously a very emotional subject.
Charlyn smiled. "Well Captain, your tags gave you away and well, the way you move, the way you handle your beretta for example, and the dog tags. Obviously you are military. Don't ask me how I exactly know this just call this my 'sixth sense'." She tapped the side of her covered temple with her fore finger. She had a deep insight into many things, she could see little details one ignored and saw a thousand possibilities. It was a handy trait to have, but it was unpredictable and often left her feeling confused when she knew so many things about others and nothing about herself.
Edden.... Something entered her head.
Who the fuck is Edden? She thought. Then after a moment, the Red Violin thought about the name and recalled the place of darkness and remembers a brown skinned man with cold golden eyes calling her that name. He stood next to her and handed her a grenade. His look was gaunt and stoic, the type that didn't show affection, be it for someone or when he was placing a pistol to someone's skull and squeezing the trigger.
He had the eye's of the hunter.
'Remember, Edden. Take cover.' He had said, his voice hinting a sense of concern, but it was hard to decide if it was comradeship or something more...
The past faded and Charlyn was back in the world. A piece of the puzzle set down in the giant mosaic made by amnesia.
"Well, it seems I found something, a piece of the puzzle. Call me Charlyn Edden. Charlyn isn't my name, but do call me Edden if you please."
AWW, GODDAMMIT-- another flashback?
Edden... Eddins... PFC Michael Dwayne Eddins... his body swinging from the wreckage of the watchtower, disemboweled with a trail of organs leading ten feet to the ground, swinging helplessly, his eyes bulging in their sockets with his face black, mouth fixed in permanent agony..........................................................
Ron cleared his throat. "Edden. Pretty name." He tucked the aforementioned dog tags under his shirt.
"I saw an inn about a half a mile north of here. They said they had running water and a working tub in every room."
"Thanks, I think the name is pretty too. Just hope its my real name." She said in agreement. But still she felt some frustration in getting fed bits and pieces of memory. As if someone from within was giving her what it wanted, making her dangle for the carrot before the eyes, so to speak.
Edden gathered her stuff and didn't really pay mind what Ron said till she hoped over the counter and grabbed a coin from her pocket. She was feeling a twitch in her left hand.
"As for the Inn, how far is it from the Nuka Cola Facility on the map?" She asked. She wanted to head there, but some warm water and good bath never killed no one.
Caffeine was low and she had no more caffeine tablets. Reaching in for a silver dollar coin, she dropped in the slot of the nuka cola machine and punched for the nuka cola classic.
Slapping the button there was a rattle but no response. Grabbing each ends of the machine, she began to shake it like a maniac and threw two kicks near the dispenser slot.
The machine rattled and the sound of a cola falling into the basket was heard.
"Gravy." She said as she grabbed a bottle. Doing a reverse snap kick, the machine rattled and dropped three more. She took two and offered the third to Ron. "You want one." This was a rare moment when she looked at him directly.
Just as Charlyn - or was it Edden was handing Ron the coke, a rat who had crawled up the back of the Nuka Cola machine launched itself at the unfortunate girl.
Rats were highly intelligent, very social beings. And unlike many animals, they had the ability to not only see effect, but also cause. So when the rest of the rats who lived in the abandoned bar saw the woman in the brahmin-smelling clothes crush the hapless old rat's vertebrae, they frenzied. A single volunteer was selected to bring about justice.
Despite Charlyn's superb reflexes, the entirely unexpected attack surprised her completely. Her arms were laden with Nuka Cola bottles, and even when the furry creature landed on her shoulder she didn't drop the precious liquid to be shattered against the hard floor.
Take this you smelly human!
With that, the rat, his claws digging into the leather, bit hard and deep into her neck with teeth hard enough to crush bone and eat the marrow. At this point Charlyn's eyes bulged, and she frantically reached for a weapon - any weapon -, but the rat quickly jumped away. Before anyone had time to react, it had scurried in underneath the rubble, its blood-covered nozzle in a ratty grin.
The cold emotionless void filled Edden, even when blood trickled from behind her neck wound, she didn't care. The rat was what mattered. She grabbed her widow-maker and let loose the double barrels and turned the creature to meat. One dead and another sprang out of nowhere and Edden caught it.
"I... hate.... rats." She said stiffly as her thumb pressed harder into the vermin's skull, and the last pitiful squeak was heard just before the creatures head splattered in her palm like a grape. Looking at the ruined creature in her hands, she cast the creature away. It fell with a wet thud in the dark corner.
Grabbing her bottles she tucked them in the bag. Removing a single stimpak, she gave herself an injecting and felt the healing chem work in a flash as her wounds began to heal. Causing accelerated mitosis of the cells which brought about healing but too many would make you hungry.
"Let's go before more rats jump out of the wood work."
Ron smiles, taking the Nuka-cola. He opened it easily with a knife and drank the entire bottle in two swallows. He threw it out one of the windows and followed Edden out of the bar.
"From that last little nibble, I'd say they don't like you either."
He looks at the map and laughs. "This inn is a real geographical oddity. It's a half a mile from everything, us and the factory. It's to the east if you want to go."
Edden seemed to agree with the captain. "Fine. Let's go. Lead the way...." She turned to look at the old bar. "It was a nice stash den while it lasted. Fuckin' rats." She muttered in contempt. The quickest ways out of town was to follow the eastern block area and traverse through the alleyways to reach outside of Moscow and to find this fabled inn.
A warmth bath would be nice. She thought. Grabbing her shotgun, she decided she'd carry it all the way.
"So, let's go. And when we reach the Inn, I play a tune for you on my violin." It was a promise in gold. Charlyn had been itching to play a tune, one of he tunes she heard on a holo-disk that an old ghoul gave her. The ghoul was very kindly and had taught her many of the extinct sounds long forgotten after the great war. Now she wondered ever became of the ghoul.
*******
Ron walks behind her all the way to the Inn, aptly named the Cold Oasis. He opens the double doors and enters, nodding to the man at the front desk.
"Hey. How's it going? Can we get a-- 'scuse me."
He turns to Edden. "You do want your own room, right?"
A sign on the wall reads
ROOMS AVAILABLE--TWENTY DOLLARS A NIGHT, THIRTY WITH SHOWER
CHRONICLES OF THE VIOLIN BK 1
By: Rama Toulon
AKA Carib FMJ The Nuka Cola Chaser
Inspired by Charlyn Vidal the Red Violin
PROLOGUE
Earlier in the Morning…
“Whoa there, short stuff. This is private property. No trespassing’.” A scarred up mutant sentry barked, at the approaching female, his large green hand in her face. “Get movin’ normie you have no place here. No permission no entrance.”
The female scuffed. She was a fair heigthed 1.75 meters, dark brown skin, a woman of ancient Creole and Negroid heritage, her face was round and her lips puffed a bit, though not huge. She wore a black skull bandanna and adorned in a very stylish single sleeve leather jacket with a white t-shirt with the Cat’s Paw logo on the chest.
“I wasn’t askin’ permission troll,”
“Now, listen here normie, we don’t take jive from n-.” The second sentry didn’t even have time to finish, when the girl grabbed her Colt 6520 Delta elite and her battered but trusty sawed off and fired both in almost harmonious synchronicity. The 6520 dropped a 10mm armor piercer round through the left sentry’s throat, drilling a nasty cavity into the dark green flesh and severing an artery or two in its wake. The sawed off scatter shot, designed for portability and close lethality, not precision shooting, then again, Apple wasn’t in need of long distance attrition.
The double barrels sent a hail of scatter shot at point blank range into the sentry bosses’ chest, tearing him a new windpipe.
Both mutants collapsed to the ground, neither really dead, but with every moment and every breath were getting closer to their graves. Their weezing and pain meant nothing to her, she walked on by, grabbing the pass key from the ripped up mutant boss. As if he could resist.
“I’ll be taking that,” she snatched the card from his neck and left the mutant to have his lungs crushed by the increased air pressure invading the cavity in his chest.
She looked back for a moment and stared at the pens where the Brahmin were kept. There she saw the weirdest thing ever.
“Mooooo.”
A Brahmin with one head. “Mono headed Brahmin…. I knew this place was crawling with freaks. No one is ever going to believe this.” She said to herself. Mono-headed Brahmin were supposed to be some fairy tale. Things made up to amuse children. Apple still had a hard time believing what she saw. Mono headed brahmin.
Entering the farm, she saw a small room, a guard station and a secure looking reinforced door. Sliding her new found pass key across the reader, she heard a faint buzz as well as the releasing of three heavy locks.
The door slid open without even a squeak. And then there was a red stair well winding down maybe twenty feet below. She followed the railing, pistol out, just in case she met any other sentries.
Reaching bottom floor without incident. It was sort of disappointing in a way; she had expected resistance and received only silence.
A wooden door lay before her and she let herself in without even a faint knock. Creaking it slowly, pistol ready. With wush, the door swung open and Apple had her pistol leveled. Lowering it, she could only see a flurescent light tubes hanging above work tables, and a few lit computers and other techno-paraphernalia.
Edging slowly towards a lit terminally, she looked down at the already open file.
Running Search Program…. Accessing Poseidon net…
Enclave NET Files…
Running Diagnostics……… Searching for Subject………
Priority: Observation
Subject: Apple
Alias: The Red Violin
Gender: Female
Threat level: High
Apple hated computers. In her mind as her fingers raced over the cumbersome keyboard, tapping keys frantically, a computer was a waste of breath. Ironic that a computer never breathed, though she had met a cyborg or two that would beg to differ. In the background of what was once the Stranger’s den, Apple left four dead mutant sentries lying in their own blood. On the outside it looked like some pre-war farm, complete with picket fence which incidentally wasn’t white since time and neglect long ago bleached away the lead based pants. Looking on the inside just made her hated this place even more. It was stank of antiseptics and death… It was sterile, though it was covered in what appeared to be living tissue of some sort etched into the walls, and other geneticist paraphernalia. Just behind her was a operating table wet with that bizarre pseudo flesh and of course blood.
Every time she got near the jelly flesh like gunk she could swear it was probing her, feeling her thoughts. It was that feeling that made you think you were being watched. Whatever the stranger was tinkering in wasn’t good. Apple would know, passing her hand behind her neck for a brief moment - as the archaic computer system was searching for the information she required - her finger tips brushed across the bar-code tattoo etched into her flesh. Memories of a small room and bright white light filled her head, and sudden pang of pain hit her skull.
Oddly enough this wasn’t from memory.
“Tut-tut… Have I taught you nothing child.” Came the metallic rasp in her head, only as she looked over her shoulder, it wasn’t a distant memory, it was a man adorned in a black military fatigues, his pitch hair brushed back with two locks dangling at the base of his neck and dark reflective shades on his hidden eyes. His lips formed into a mournful smirk, like that of a father catching their child committing some deed they were disciplined for previously. The Stranger was handsome in a sinister sort of manner. His face was pale, but he was muscled up, fit and seeming well nourished compared the rest of the wastelands populace. His hands were gloved. Apple wondered why he always wore shades, but it was one of those questions for another time.
Funny, Apple thought as she rubbed the back of her scalp, her fingers going through the scarlet tipped hair. Apple could see her already bronzed flesh and oval face in the shades reflection and all she could do was sneer as she saw her own hatred reflected back into her own hateful gaze.
“What?! No Good afternoon, ‘Mr. Essex‘? Have the children of these dark times no manners?” He asked, it was almost a taunt as it was a rhetorical question, especially to a girl who had no more manners and subtlety of a savage deathclaw. Apple was about to reply but before she could even part her lips to give him a piece of her mind, he moved like a blur before she could even grab her sawed off shotgun.
His fist connected sharply with her stomach, pitching her like a rag doll against the operating table. Before she could even gain her senses, she felt his steely grip clench around her lower jaw and felt her body being lifted as if she were a mere doll.
“Y-You…” she began to choke out, both from the tight grip on her lips that distorted her words and the fact she was furious. “Y-You… stole my life… my mind…. U-used me… and threw me away like I was just a play thing.” Her eyes blazed with defiance, a trait which the Stranger had come to both disdain and admire.
Essex tossed her to the tiled floor, knocking the air out of her lungs. “The fly has no favor in the web, child. You are useful to me, that is why you live. That is why I made you better.” He retorted, not caring to justify anything to this girl who was nothing more then a specimen. An experiment and a weapon to be used… and discarded if strategy required.
“W-what? What did you say?”
“Silly thing. I gave you gifts. The least you can do is accept them and not get on like a spoilt child who lost their Nixon Doll. Remember you sold your soul to survive. I delivered… you belong to me. End of discussion.” Essex said, turning his back. “Now leave and only come if and when I summon you.”
Apple wanted to grab her dagger and drive it into his heart, to cut his throat and feel his icy blood bathe her face, but it was almost funny. Thanks to him she could see in the dark and survive in the irradiated land. Then again, thanks to him she lost a life… a child and her eternal soul. Apple the Red Violin, on the ground, on her knees, her palms touching the icy floor, grabbed her stuff, picking up the rickety shotgun and not even caring to look back at the console to see what it may have discovered on its archives.
At the moment it was pointless. Essex had won once again and now it was off to civilization, to the light and people… the things she hated almost as much as she hated him.
Decadent Downtown, Old Moscow, apartment complex area, north Main Street....
PROGRAM RUNNING.....
ENTER the RED VIOLIN
One of those rare places that still remained intact after the war. Old Moscow, Idaho was spared the nuclear war but not spared the dark human survivalist that lurked within. It fell into disrepair and scavengers, and of course, the nuclear winter and the acid rain didn’t make anything easier. The small apartment on the forgotten lane of Pulma, a residential area, there was a small, quaint apartment complex which was muddled with graffiti. Most rooms were intact, some expanded by breaking down walls and sharing into other apartments.
Room number 16A, three main rooms in it. The kitchen which was tidy and would fit in well with the standards of the EPA, even for post war standards. It had a fully stocked fridge from Nuka colas to other products, especially dry foods, the kind that never spoil. A one bed room, which had more room than a standard eight by eleven prison cell. And the main room where an old burned out TV from the pre-war era stood on a stack of books and the coffee table was the main feature. On the coffee table you can see several different books and articles that survived the holocaust.
Sociology and Psychology 101 by Vault Tech.
Two Dean's Electronics, for all those budding new mechanics and electricians.
A large science Journals about micro biology. A stack of Pulp Comics. Three black and white, noir-esque comics that were gritty and violent.
Then there was the Lavender Flower, a pre-war romance novel by fabled romantic and erotica author Dorothy Rixon. Some people could never understand why she went for her cousin.
As you progressed through the rest of the apartment, things seem to change.
There was a sound of shuffling feet and a male voice cursing.
Behind the door, you'd see two women and single man. The man was tall and had a face that was very hard to look at, old poker marks and other horrible knicks. His name was Albert, and Albert wasn't happy. Not happy at all. Not mainly with the proud looking female standing, a double barrel shotgun at her side. But his anger, his grievance was with the brown skinned girl who was in bed, covers over her naked torso.
She had been caught cheating. But not with another man, no with another woman. And that mad Albert, made him see red, and that was the reason why he had a knife in one hand.
He took another step. His already bloodshot eyes seem to get redder.
"Al.... Please don't. You don't understan-" The wife began, her voice shaky.
"Shut... the..." He seems to be so angry that the words came within intervals, a synaptic lapse of judgment that was clouded by primal emotions that drove humanity. "Fuck.... up.... cow.... can't... you see.... Yer man is at work. Don't worry, I settle with you after I deal with the chicra here.
"Yeah, so wanna screw my fuckin' wife, eh?" His voice rose, it was clear with murder and rape intent. The sound of a man who was seeing himself at the edge of everything.
The woman stood and shrugged her shoulders. "It seemed she needed...." she licked her honey brown lips at Albert's wife for spite, "That she needed a woman's touch. I did you a favor." She had enjoyed the lust derived from the woman; she always liked them when they felt another woman's touch for the first time. And she knew how to please.
"A fav...?" He seems to stutter at the words, his hands on his ears as if trying to block out mental interference, and it made him shutter with rage. "A favor... You fuckin' lesbian whore, I am gonna carve you from crack to neck. You hear me, I am gonna--"
The girl simply made a crack sound from her neck and smiled evilly. "You are going to die." She finished for him. The man made his move, but she was faster.
With a whirl and pivoting on one foot, a pale brown figure moved like a blur and swung her Widow-maker to her right, squeezed the left barrel trigger.
BAMMM!!!
A figure is propelled through the darkness of an apartment window and lands awkwardly on a dumpster, two stores down. His shattered remains stare blankly. Back in the apartment room, the barrel smoked as it had laid low a man.
One shell left....
The few inhabitants saw the spectacle, but didn't seem to care. The only one's who seem to take notice were the heavy set men down stares by the old pay phone who saw their comrade fall to his death with a gapping hole in his chest.
They weren't pleased. A second later, feet began to rush upstairs in that noisy shuffle of moccasins and sneakers.
*****
The footsteps come pounding up the stairs, but there is the sound of another set of footsteps coming in the opposite direction. There's a voice in the hallway. "HEY, FELLAS!"
It's followed by the sound of gunfire and several thuds. The door opens, and Ron Spears steps in, Beretta lowered. "Did you kill that fat guy...? Guess you did." Well, his hombres were sorta pissed off. Must be a good shot with that scattergun, huh? Have fun."
The mercenary shuts the door with a grin and a wave.
*****
The woman who blew Albert Taner out the window stood smiling, her widowmaker tapping her shoulder blade. She was a slender girl, she could pass as maybe as young as seventeen or perhaps eighteen, but she was older, you could tell in those shinny amber eyes. She had a round face as if it were perfectly round face - or perhaps a bit of genetic artistry - that even looked girlish.
But she was a woman, either through years of killing or perhaps experience, she was a woman. She was more than a woman. She was a woman who carried a shotgun.
The now-would be widow, sat cringing in bed. She expected a fight, but never expected the slender, chocolate skinned woman to blow her husband out of the window like that, blew out like a candle. The way she carried out the act as if it were like a involuntary reaction. She raised the weapon, squeezed the trigger and death came out from a barrel.
True her husband was a fat slob, but she never wished him death. He never hurt her or beat her, he was always kind, but he wasn't very apt in the art of love, and when she strolled the streets, horny and hungry for pleasure and happened by and saw the young female violinist, she was instantly seduced by the girl. The young, fresh looking teenager. But as she got involved, she realize the girl wasn't as young as she looked, and when they made love, which was the first for Albert's widow; it was a whole new world of colors and flavors. But all that seemed dull as she reawakened in a nightmarish reality where the violinist murders her husband.
"Why did you kill Albert?" She asked from the bed, her legs shivering from under the covers in fear. Any moment she could have urinated on herself in just fear. What made her more afraid is how angelic the girl looked, how pure and clean, not the murderess she saw before her.
"Easy," The girl began. "He had a knife, he threatened me... bam, problem solved." She formed gun finger and made a pow-pow sound.
"Charlyn... I-I. Go, please... Go." The widow began to weep bitterly.
"Fine," Charlyn hissed. She was getting annoyed now. She began to walk towards the window, she didn't even take on the merc, as if absorbed in her own world. Charlyn felt confused, wasn't sure how to feel. She reacted with her usual instinct, and now the woman whom she was falling in love with has pushed her away...
Like so many of the others, she thought broodingly. The violinist was adept at hiding her outer emotions. From the outside one could see a haughty girl, but in the inside, rage was brewing.
Now the merc, She thought as she got a glance at the man. Can't have him thinking I left him ignored. That'd be rude.
Her amber eye's scanned the merc who came upstairs and had gunned down the angry lot of thugs.
A cruel lopsided smile rose on her face and she answered Ron Spears. "I suppose I should thank you for killing those men. So thanks. Anything I can help you with? I was on my way out." She quickly walked quickly past him and took the books on sociology and other materials on the coffee table.
"This is my fee." She muttered in respect to her love affair with Albert's widow.
She nudged the merc by the shoulder with her own as she walked by.
"Oh, yeah, thanks for the help. Though I could have taken them, I am glad your ammo and not mine got wasted." She said coldly. Her hands grabbed the ends of the window and she opened it. The fire escape was still there.
Opening the barrel of the shotgun, she removed the used shell and inserted another one. Smiling happily as it snapped shut, fully loaded. She began to head out of the fire escape and looked back at the merc.
"You want something?"
Ron shook his head calmly. "Where you headed from here?"
She halted in her tracks. Are all people this talkative? asking and knitting questions? Charlyn thought with cold contempt. But with her little memory she had, it was something she had to endure.
"Going away from here before some decides to be a hero and I have to kill someone else.... or get killed." She always acknowledged that there was someone faster and deadlier; reason why she always made sure she was a step quicker... and a little deadlier. "You wanna come?" She offered. She hated walking by herself and perhaps the merc might know something. And if she found anything fishy about him, she'd kill him.
Simple and easy.
She looked back at Mrs. Taner and blew her a kiss. The woman seem frozen in a livid and frightened state. Charlyn decided she had tasted enough of her pain and headed for the window.
"So you comin'? We head down town or something. I saw a place somewhere outside town that looked interesting."
The corner of Captain Spears' mouth turns up in a smile. He nods. "I was gonna go downtown, too. Yeah, I'll come with you."
She gave an untrusting eye, not sparing Spears anything. Honesty was a vice she had in spades.
"Fine," She crept out the window and reached the main stair well of the fire escape. The escape ladder was pad locked to the main stair case. Grabbing her small lock picks, she began to pick at the lock. Her brown bag was placed at her feet. It had most of her stuff, she still had another bag stashed somewhere.
"So, you have a name? Or do you charge in, berettas in hand and save people from a raging mob coming up the stairs?" As usual, she spared no one her dry and caustic humor. No one. She used the tumbler to pick at the lock. At an other time, she would have used her own gun to blast the lock, but doing so at such a close range would brake pieces of steel into her face. And she didn't want that.
Ron chuckles. "Ron. What about you?" He watches her pick the lock and follows her down the ladder, keeping a barely safe distance.
The fire escape began to shimmy slight as Ron made a move forward. "That is very unwise." She said with caution. Her voice alone conveyed the message as she spoke the ominous words from over her slim shoulder.
Snap.
The lock came free and the ladder slid down. "Piece of cake." She tucked her tools away and faced Ron. "The names Charlyn. Some call me Violin." She grabbed the side handles and slid down the ladder military style; hands on the side, legs on the side handles and gently slid down.
Her bag was on her shoulder as she plopped down on the wet snowy side walk. It wasn't as cold as it looked. Summer was climbing weakly to this area o Idaho, and it was welcomed.
Ron waits for her to get away from the bottom of the ladder, then slides almost all the way off of it. Then he kicks off of it and flips backwards, landing like a cat on his feet. He walked after her calmly.
"Violin, huh? You play one or something? My mom used to play one."
She walked ahead of Ron, she wasn't really into small talk and would spend most of her time replying and not looking him in the face. "Yeah, I play a violin." She said tersely.
Passing in a narrow alley, they passed through the ruined area of Moscow, a place of rotting buildings and bones interwoven into the very asphalt.
A small red sign, long has the neon light died from within, but it still stood.
The Jack Rabbit bar.
It had an out of business sign hanging near the sign. As they descended the small steps to the back door, Charlyn once again took out her lock picks and preyed at the lock.
"Have to pick up something’s here." Charlyn said from over her shoulders.
Ron yawns and watches behind them, one hand under his leather holster for his best throwing knife. He watches Charlyn alternately.
"What stuff?"
Entering the bar, it was a very dusty place, the brown was layered by a thick film of gray dust. The sound of her feet were muffled by the gray blanket that was everywhere to be seen. The days light shun through the boarded windows of the long forgotten bar. Taking some matches she had pilfered from her ex-lover, she lit some wax candles that lay standing.
The dull amber light filled the room and the tiny rats creeping about ran. Her foot kicked one of the fleeing creatures in the head, shattered the vertebra and killing the creature.
"One for the rat catcher in the sky." She muttered antipathetically. She hated vermin. The creepy eyes, the hair, the fleas; it was something innate to her. She hated rats - period. Taking glance left and right she saw the bar was the same as she left it months ago.
It was a roomy bar complete with three different dispensing machines. The classic orange-copper tinted nuka cola machine, which oddly after how many years of neglect (and abuse) could still give a fresh nuka cola - this of course, if you knew how to shake it just right - then there was the candy machine. The glass broken and the candies nibbled on and rotting.
The sign of dead vermin could be seen.
The third machine was a coin machine. It was out of service, the red sign painted in bold couldn't be missed.
The bartender's area was webbed, and glasses of old liquor had been long plundered during the end times, before the rebirth of the world. Maybe two or three bottles of booze or copper tops remained. Near the cash register was a packet of expired 9mm JHP rounds. She grabbed the box and sent it to Ron, who caught it.
"Could come in handy," she said flatly.
Jumping over the bar counter, she went near a floor panel and picked up a crow bar that sat webbed in the adjacent nook to her right. Swallowing whatever disgust that welled up inside, she took the bar and removed the sticky material that was meant to entrap insects and small prey.
"I have some -" She thought on the words between her prying and lifting motions to snap the open the boards. "Personal things and other stuff. Oh, and be a dear, Captain Ron and fetch that colorful map on the wall to your... far right; the one of the upstate area." With that, the board snapped and a thick leather duffel bag with multiple straps lay underneath.
"Gravy pot." She said with a confidant smile as she lifted the bag out of the compartment. Slinging the bag on her shoulder and placing the lesser bag within the larger one. It was one fit and it was light.
"Hid it here for years.... and still good. So we can now head up upstate. Find somewhere warm to sleep. Oh, and one more thing - what are you Captain of?"
Ron cocks one of his eyebrows. "I... never said I was a captain." He figures she saw the dog tags and made a wild guess, or maybe even heard of the Nightmare Company or Ron Spears. He shrugged and walked over to the map, grabbing it off the wall and rolling it up. He walks back, taking a moment to really process her question. He remembered all too well.
Fire. Screaming. A tremendous explosion. Men screaming either in horror or rage... sometimes both. The stench and taste of blood. Copperish, like a penny. The musky scent of urine--one of the rookies who couldn't handle himself, maybe, or even one of the bodies that pissed itself a few minutes after death, or maybe that one kid with the little freckles that had been whining about having to piss for the past mile. Mutants roaring, ghouls screeching. The second in command, Chase Segal, holding his intestines and staring at Ron, blood smeared on his face. "CAPTAIN, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!!"
Ron snapped back to reality and coughed. He spoke up, and sounded very shaken.
"I was leader of a group called the Nightmare Company. We were a paramilitary defense group for a Vault."
He says nothing else, because it's obviously a very emotional subject.
Charlyn smiled. "Well Captain, your tags gave you away and well, the way you move, the way you handle your beretta for example, and the dog tags. Obviously you are military. Don't ask me how I exactly know this just call this my 'sixth sense'." She tapped the side of her covered temple with her fore finger. She had a deep insight into many things, she could see little details one ignored and saw a thousand possibilities. It was a handy trait to have, but it was unpredictable and often left her feeling confused when she knew so many things about others and nothing about herself.
Edden.... Something entered her head.
Who the fuck is Edden? She thought. Then after a moment, the Red Violin thought about the name and recalled the place of darkness and remembers a brown skinned man with cold golden eyes calling her that name. He stood next to her and handed her a grenade. His look was gaunt and stoic, the type that didn't show affection, be it for someone or when he was placing a pistol to someone's skull and squeezing the trigger.
He had the eye's of the hunter.
'Remember, Edden. Take cover.' He had said, his voice hinting a sense of concern, but it was hard to decide if it was comradeship or something more...
The past faded and Charlyn was back in the world. A piece of the puzzle set down in the giant mosaic made by amnesia.
"Well, it seems I found something, a piece of the puzzle. Call me Charlyn Edden. Charlyn isn't my name, but do call me Edden if you please."
AWW, GODDAMMIT-- another flashback?
Edden... Eddins... PFC Michael Dwayne Eddins... his body swinging from the wreckage of the watchtower, disemboweled with a trail of organs leading ten feet to the ground, swinging helplessly, his eyes bulging in their sockets with his face black, mouth fixed in permanent agony..........................................................
Ron cleared his throat. "Edden. Pretty name." He tucked the aforementioned dog tags under his shirt.
"I saw an inn about a half a mile north of here. They said they had running water and a working tub in every room."
"Thanks, I think the name is pretty too. Just hope its my real name." She said in agreement. But still she felt some frustration in getting fed bits and pieces of memory. As if someone from within was giving her what it wanted, making her dangle for the carrot before the eyes, so to speak.
Edden gathered her stuff and didn't really pay mind what Ron said till she hoped over the counter and grabbed a coin from her pocket. She was feeling a twitch in her left hand.
"As for the Inn, how far is it from the Nuka Cola Facility on the map?" She asked. She wanted to head there, but some warm water and good bath never killed no one.
Caffeine was low and she had no more caffeine tablets. Reaching in for a silver dollar coin, she dropped in the slot of the nuka cola machine and punched for the nuka cola classic.
Slapping the button there was a rattle but no response. Grabbing each ends of the machine, she began to shake it like a maniac and threw two kicks near the dispenser slot.
The machine rattled and the sound of a cola falling into the basket was heard.
"Gravy." She said as she grabbed a bottle. Doing a reverse snap kick, the machine rattled and dropped three more. She took two and offered the third to Ron. "You want one." This was a rare moment when she looked at him directly.
Just as Charlyn - or was it Edden was handing Ron the coke, a rat who had crawled up the back of the Nuka Cola machine launched itself at the unfortunate girl.
Rats were highly intelligent, very social beings. And unlike many animals, they had the ability to not only see effect, but also cause. So when the rest of the rats who lived in the abandoned bar saw the woman in the brahmin-smelling clothes crush the hapless old rat's vertebrae, they frenzied. A single volunteer was selected to bring about justice.
Despite Charlyn's superb reflexes, the entirely unexpected attack surprised her completely. Her arms were laden with Nuka Cola bottles, and even when the furry creature landed on her shoulder she didn't drop the precious liquid to be shattered against the hard floor.
Take this you smelly human!
With that, the rat, his claws digging into the leather, bit hard and deep into her neck with teeth hard enough to crush bone and eat the marrow. At this point Charlyn's eyes bulged, and she frantically reached for a weapon - any weapon -, but the rat quickly jumped away. Before anyone had time to react, it had scurried in underneath the rubble, its blood-covered nozzle in a ratty grin.
The cold emotionless void filled Edden, even when blood trickled from behind her neck wound, she didn't care. The rat was what mattered. She grabbed her widow-maker and let loose the double barrels and turned the creature to meat. One dead and another sprang out of nowhere and Edden caught it.
"I... hate.... rats." She said stiffly as her thumb pressed harder into the vermin's skull, and the last pitiful squeak was heard just before the creatures head splattered in her palm like a grape. Looking at the ruined creature in her hands, she cast the creature away. It fell with a wet thud in the dark corner.
Grabbing her bottles she tucked them in the bag. Removing a single stimpak, she gave herself an injecting and felt the healing chem work in a flash as her wounds began to heal. Causing accelerated mitosis of the cells which brought about healing but too many would make you hungry.
"Let's go before more rats jump out of the wood work."
Ron smiles, taking the Nuka-cola. He opened it easily with a knife and drank the entire bottle in two swallows. He threw it out one of the windows and followed Edden out of the bar.
"From that last little nibble, I'd say they don't like you either."
He looks at the map and laughs. "This inn is a real geographical oddity. It's a half a mile from everything, us and the factory. It's to the east if you want to go."
Edden seemed to agree with the captain. "Fine. Let's go. Lead the way...." She turned to look at the old bar. "It was a nice stash den while it lasted. Fuckin' rats." She muttered in contempt. The quickest ways out of town was to follow the eastern block area and traverse through the alleyways to reach outside of Moscow and to find this fabled inn.
A warmth bath would be nice. She thought. Grabbing her shotgun, she decided she'd carry it all the way.
"So, let's go. And when we reach the Inn, I play a tune for you on my violin." It was a promise in gold. Charlyn had been itching to play a tune, one of he tunes she heard on a holo-disk that an old ghoul gave her. The ghoul was very kindly and had taught her many of the extinct sounds long forgotten after the great war. Now she wondered ever became of the ghoul.
*******
Ron walks behind her all the way to the Inn, aptly named the Cold Oasis. He opens the double doors and enters, nodding to the man at the front desk.
"Hey. How's it going? Can we get a-- 'scuse me."
He turns to Edden. "You do want your own room, right?"
A sign on the wall reads
ROOMS AVAILABLE--TWENTY DOLLARS A NIGHT, THIRTY WITH SHOWER