D
Draconias Galactica
Guest
Here's part III of my series. If you like it, hate it, or found something wrong with it (but what are the odds of that...sarcasm...overwhelming...THE PAIN!!!) kindly tell me about it. Well, enough of that crap, on with the story.
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Crater Town was little more than a row of lights on the horizon, but at
least it was finally visible. It had been four days since Hawks and
Jake set off for the city. Their progress had been delayed
significantly after their encounter with the Shadow Raiders - Jake had
taken the run-in very seriously and insisted they take a more cautious
route. That had delayed Jake's original estimate of Crater Town being
three days away by another day. Jake didn't mind - he had made it clear
to Hawks he was in no great hurry to go back to Crater Town - but Hawks
could hardly stand it.
"The minute I get there, I'm finding a chewed-up matress and getting
some sleep," Hawks muttered.
"What do you have against dirt?"
"The fact that, this morning, I woke up with it in my mouth!"
"So sorry about that. You know what? I'll get to work right away
replacing all the dirt here with confortable feathers. Would that make
you happy?"
"If you actually _did_ it, then yeah."
"Do you have any idea how long _I've_ been sleeping on dirt?"
"Long enough for it to seep into your brain, probably."
"Into my brain, out the other end, and back in through my nose to be
specific. At least...I don't know, at least nine years or so. Can
hardly belive it's been that long."
"My nose belives you. Find a river and jump in it, will you?"
"The same goes for you too, you know. We should reach Crater Town in
about an hour. When we do, there's this bath house you desperatly need
to visit." The two continued their walk twords the outskirts of Crater
Town without much more "excitement".
Crater Town was a very lively city, possibly the biggest and most
powerful city in the Shadowlands. It had a population of nearly ten
thousand, at best estimate, with no real army (but its citizens were
expected to defend the city if need be out of obligation). Its central
government was a group of 10 council members, elected by the people,
and a triumvirate elected by the council. Aproximatly half of its
citizens had some form of education, most of them gaining one from
traveling to the Archives or linking to it from the Vault Central
Network (the pre-war network was connected to the Archives for reasons
that could only be guessed).
The city was founded by the denziens of Vault 61, almost a year after
they emerged from the Vault. It was started as the above-ground
settlement of Vault 61, in a series of craters about 18 miles from the
Vault that would provide protection to the fledgling settlement. Since
the craters showed no sign of radioactivity, then or now, they were
assumed to be craters from either conventional, high-yield missiles
(fired a tad bit late) or meteors. They were definatly post-war (or
part of the brief during-war era), though. Over the years, Crater Town
grew out of the initial city size, expanding out of the craters. It
also eventually rebelled, freeing itself from the control of the
Vaults. Crater Town and Vault 61 became bitter enemies, until, some
seventy years after its founding, Crater Town took over Vault 61 when
it finally expanded enough to cover the 18 mile gap.
Crater Town was much too powerful for almost any other city to oppose,
except for Dry Run River, with its famed Storming Dragoons. Dry Run
River existed far to the north, at least when considering the
epicenters of the two cities. But both had been expanding for years.
While Crater Town could expand in every direction easily (but usually
prefers to expand Southwards for various reasons), Dry Run River was
too close to the border in every direction except South. With their
sole-expansion in that direction and the ocassional northward expansion
by Crater Town, the two's teritorial borders quickly began to overlap.
The two had been in a sort of Cold War ever since.
True to Jake's prediction, the two reached the outskirts of Crater Town
an hour later. There was no gate around Crater Town, at least not
around the constantly-growing Southern border so their entrance was
simple. A few of the locals who had settled this far out regarded them
with slight curiosity, but nobody made any excessive moves to find out
who they were.
"Hey, do you know if Jack Gray's bar is still open?" Jake yelled to a
passerby. They were a good twelve feet away, seperated by a roadway.
Crater Town had several roadways, some of which were actually as
advanced as brick.
"Open in buisness, or open not closed?" the passerby shouted back.
"Either one."
"Definatly open in buisness, and I doubt it'll close until night."
"How can you tell the difference between day and night here?" Hawks
muttered under his breath.
"Okay, thanks," Jake shouted, finishing his breif conversation. "Let's
go."
"What's Jack Gren's bar?"
"Jack _Gray's_, it's a bar. I assume you already knew that, though."
"I figured that part out already, yeah."
"It's a popular bar around here. They also have a hotel, among many,
many other things. We're spending the night there."
"As long as it has something other than dirt, I'm all for it."
"Don't worry, Gray's has very nice concrete beds."
"I don't know what concrete is, but I'm guessing it's worse than dirt."
"Bingo. Let's get moving, the show's probably about to start." Jack led
the way twoards Jack Gray's. Crater Town had extended a bit from since
he was last here - some two years ago - but it wasn't much larger.
Where they were, there was only about a quarter of a mile of new
structures, mostly empty. Crater Town was about 25% empty buildings,
since the population never grew as estimated. In bad times, almost 30%
of the buildings in the city could be empty. In good times, they
desperatly needed to expand. Unfortunatly, most people died before the
expansions were livable, rendering them useless. But, it kept the
citizens occupied and Dry Run River practically laughing its collective
gut out.
It took about ten minutes of walking to reach Gray's. The bar was a
large structure for a post-war town, at four stories tall. It was a bit
of a strange building though. There was no ground level entrance. A
ramp was on the side of the building that ran from the ground up to a
door at the third floor.
The inside of the bar was odd, too. The third floor had a large hole
cut in the middle of it with a railing around it. Looking down, Hakws
could see the second floor and two large rats beating the crap out of
each other. Aparently this was the "show" Jake was talking about. Jake
also watched the mole rats, except he was actually being entertained by
the fight. The two took a seat at one of the vacant tables around the
railing.
"Gee, how entertaining," Hawks muttered, not very interested in the
mole rat fight that Jake was watching.
"Just because you have no taste is no reason to start complaining,"
said Jake, not looking up from over the railing. "If you're so bored,
how about getting us some drinks?" Jake, still not looking up, took out
a pouch from inside his jacket and tossed it to Hawks. Opening it, he
saw that there were coins on the inside - almost identical to the $150
worth of coins he had. The Chosen One took out one of his own coins and
passed it over to Jake.
"Would this count as money around here?" Jake briefly glanced over at
it and then turned his attention back to the fight. The larger rat was
on the floor, and the smaller one was cutting into the larger one's
side.
"Probably, as long as you don't draw too much attention to it. Go get
drinks." Hawks picked up Jake's pouch of money and walked off. The bar
wasn't too crowded, most of the patrons were over near the railing. The
bartender was sitting down, watching over the floor and making sure it
didn't move anywhere. He had gray hair, and was dressed in what looked
like a lab coat, though Hawks wouldn't have known that. Despite his
age, he somehow managed to look tough enough to take care of any
disuputes that came about. Hawks didn't know why, maybe it was just the
excesivly large sword that was laid against the wall next to him.
"What do you got?" Hawks asked, sitting down. The bartender didn't
bother looking up. _Is everybody here afraid I'm going to turn them to
stone?_ Hawks thought, sarcastically.
"Booze, and watered down booze. Specialty of the house," said the
bartender, grinning.
"Gimme the booze, I guess." The bartender ducked down behind the bar
for a momment, and came back up with an old-looking bottle of booze.
When he handed it over to Hawks, he finnaly looked up at him.
"Hmm," muttered the bartender.
"Hmm what?" Everytime somebody said "hmm" about him in the past, it
rarely ment anything good.
"Nothing, never mind. By the way, my name's Jack Gray. Master of
drinks, women, rats, and graves."
"That's an odd mix," Hawks said, not in any real hurry to get back to
the exhilerating overgrown rat fight.
"Regular John of all trades." At that moment, the rotation of the world
was thrown off slightly by one kite-flying corpse turning over in his
grave. "Usually pays to have everything a customer needs."
"'Cept for rats and graves," Hawks added, mostly to himself.
"Not a rat fan, eh? Then what the hell did you come here for? Did you
need to get drunk right away?"
"Nope, I'm here with my partner. We're just stopping through for a
while."
"Who's your partner?"
"That guy over there," said Hawks, pointing in the apropreate
direction. Since the bar was well lit with torches and some electronic
lights, Gray could see Jake in fairly good detail.
"Hmm."
"Again with the hmm's, what do you mean by hmm?"
"Not much, just that I think I've heard of you fellows."
"What?" Somebody hearing of Jake, Hawks could understand. But anybody
but Jake knowing about Hawks around here was just a bit hard to
swollow. How could anybody know about _him_?
"It's a rumor that's been going around for a day or two. Some guy with
a claw tattoo over his eye," Jack said, pointing to the tattoo of a
bird's leg and talons over Hawks' right eye, "and some guy dressed like
a Twilighter killed some raiders and their horses. The raiders are
supposed to be mighty pissed about it."
"Oh..._that_." _Guess we didn't get all of them_. "So what's the other
guy supposed to be dressed like?"
"A Twilighter. They were some sorta warrior clan from about 15 years
ago. Caused a lot of trouble near Lake Side. They're not around
anymore, but a lot of people still remember what they look like. If
your partner was about 10 years older, I'd swear he used to be one.
How's Jake doing anyways?"
"You know him?"
"Yeah, he comes around here every now and then looking for work. The
boy always gets the job done. It be a shame to see him take the dirt
nap."
"I don't think that'll happen anytime soon. He looks tough." Since he
had never seen Jake fight, that was about all Hawks could say. But he
could tell it would have to be a damned skilled or damned lucky man who
took out Jake.
"You think I don't know that? But I don't know anybody who can last
long with the raiders gunning for them. That's where the graves part of
my job comes in."
"Trust me, me and Jake can take care of ourselves out there. We already
took out four raiders easy."
"Well, for Jake's sake, I hope so. That'll be seven bucks." Hawks dug
into the pouch and placed seven coins onto the bar as he walked off.
"That's the last time I put you in charge of drinks," Jake said. "How
am I supposed to enjoy myself if you take so damn long with the
drinks?" Hawks sat down and tossed Jake his drink.
"This stuff actually makes you depressed, you know," explained the
Chosen One.
"Depressed that you got the watered down stuff, you mean. Was he out of
the good stuff this early? You have to specificy you want the _real_
stuff you know."
"We've got a bigger problem."
"Problems can wait."
"I'm serious. Remember those horse raider guys?" asked Hawks, not able
to remember the proper term for them to save his life. There was
probably a shadow or twilight in there somewhere - people in the
Shadowlands had no immagination when it came to names. "One of them got
away, and - "
"I said problems can wait," Jake interupted, raising his bottle. "If
you've got to worry, then do it _after_ the show. Relax for a bit."
With that, Jake turned his attention back to a fight below them. This
time, it seemed to be human on human with just fists. Hawks muttered
some nasty things under his breath at Jake before giving up and
watching the fight.
***
"I still don't see what you like about those," Hawks said, stretching
his arms. "Maybe if they had dance numbers in the middle of the
fights..." Jake stood up and picked up his bottle.
"That's the last time I try to expose you to a little culture."
"Don't bother, I'm trying to get _out_ of your culture, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember. That's why we need horses."
"Those things with the legs?" Jake sighed and shook his head.
"Yes, those things with the legs. How you lasted long enough to get
from CA to here is beyond me."
"Why do we need horses? Those things smelled _bad_."
"Actually, you were probably smelling the raiders. They don't bathe
often."
"Were you one? You sure act like one."
"I have a exscuse for not bathing often, unlike them. I'm alergic to
water."
"I'm sure. So, why do we need those horses anyways? Speed?"
"That's part of it. They'd cut our traveling time in half, at least.
Plus, they can outrun Shadow Raiders. We can't, and if we run into them
we're definatly going to need to run. I've heard they don't exactally
like us recently."
"Ah, so we're worrying now."
"Yeah."
"That means you're done with the show, which means we can leave." Hawks
started for the door, with Jake following after him a momment later.
"It also means we need more money. A good horse costs more than two
grand around here, and we need _two_ of them. Add in bed and breakfast,
and we're going to need a good five thousand dollars. I've got one
thousand on me, how much do you have?"
"Um...probably enough to get us an inn for a week."
"Well, at least you're good for _something_."
"Hey, don't forget I saved your life a few days ago."
"And I probably saved yours a day before that. Gray's got a few
bedrooms on the top floor. You take care of that part, I'll go hunt
around for some jobs. What are you good at, anyways?"
"Snipering, witty banter, and just about everything else."
"I see. I don't know how many openings there are for a _cook_, but I'll
check." Hawks punched Jake in the shoulder. "Heh, sorry. I'll be back
in about an hour or two. Don't go wandering around too far, it's a big
city, you _will_ get lost." He walked out the door. Hawks turned and
headed back to the bar.
"Gray, you got any rooms for rent?" The old man took out a key from one
of his pockets and tossed it over to Hawks.
"That's room seven, upstairs. How long do you want it for?"
"Probably a week, maybe a week and a half."
"A week's $200. If you stay any longer, it's $50 a night."
"How about $100 bucks for the week?"
"Nah, has to be at least $185."
"Make it $150 and just jack up the extra day charge."
"Alright, deal. Just so you know, I'm only lowering the price because
I'm betting Jake'll be coming to me asking for a job." Hawks took out
his own sack of money and poured out the entire contents onto Gray's
bar. The bartender brushed the cash into a pocket on his labcoat.
"Gotcha. Do you have anything in particular?"
"Depends on whether or not you want to travel and whether or not you
want to be able to stay in Crater Town."
"Huh?"
"Some of my jobs need doing in some other places. Some of the other
jobs, if you pull them off, I doubt you'll be able to stay in Crater
Town. The cops are pretty good at doing their job around here, get my
drift."
"Yeah, I get it. I doubt we'll be taking any jobs outside of town, so
what're the other ones?"
"Come back to me on that one when Jake gets back. Enjoy your room."
Hawks nodded and walked off. That was one thing he didn't like - having
to rely on an outsider for help, protection, or guidance. It wasn't
that he didn't trust Jake - he did. It was just that...most outsiders
were like human trash. They lacked something the people in Arroyo had -
decency. There were no druggies (excluding Haukunin), whores,
murderers, damned slavers, or people who blatently disregarded the law
in Arroyo. Granted, the tribals in Arroyo were pretty simple people,
who would worship anything if it was shiney, but you can't have
anything. Most of the rats in Arroyo were better than outsiders.
But, there was nothing he could do. Jake was right, Hawks wouldn't last
long out here on his own. If Jake hadn't been there to warn him about
the raiders, he'd definatly be dead by now. At least he felt he could
trust Jake. The Shadowlandian was probably his best bet at getting out
of the Shadowlands. After that, he still had to get back to California
and find Vault 13, but that was a problem for a latter date.
Hawks decided to take a walk and see some of the sights of Crater Town.
It had to be more interesting then watching some more rats fight.
Outside, the streets were mostly deserted. Either this part of Crater
Town wasn't too populated, everybody was in a bar, or it was somehow
"night" time and everyone was asleep. How anybody could tell the
difference between night and day around here was beyond him, but it was
a possibility.
The desertion was broken when a dog came rushing towards Hawks, running
as fast as it could. But, it didn't seem agressive - it was just
running. The dog ran in between Hawks legs, and stopped shortly after,
lying down low to the ground. Hawks turned around and knelt down to
face the dog. It was an average sized dog for the post war world, not
too big and not enough meat over his bones.
"Hey!" a voice shouted from behind Hawks. The Chosen One stood back up
and turned around to face the voice's direction. "Get away from that
dog!" It was a ragged-looking man, about fifteen feet away. Even from
that distance, Hawks could see he was pissed off at something.
"Is this your dog?" Hawks asked.
"That dog cheated me! Hand it over!" Hawks blinked dumbly a few times,
as if that would make what he just heard clearer.
"What?"
"He cheated me! Worthless mutt, he was probably using marked cards! I
never loose at poker, especially not to a dog!" None of this was
registering properly with Hawks.
"You mean, you were playing poker...with a dog?! How the hell were you
playing with a dog? _Why_ the hell were you playing with a dog?"
"Why not? He beat the last few guys he played, so I figured why not
try? Didn't know he was gonna _cheat_!" The dog started growling at the
man. Something new occured to Hawks, and registered even worse than
everything he heard previously had.
"You _lost_ to a dog?" He couldn't tell if them man was drunk, or if he
had been missing out on something his whole life and dogs could play
poker well.
"The overgrown rat cheated!"
"A dog?! Explain how you lost to a friggin dog!"
"He _cheated_!!" the man screamed again, getting tired of repeating
himself. "Now move!" That did it for Hawks - he took his spear off his
back and pointed it at the man.
"There's no way I'm taking orders from an idiot like you." Normally
Hawks wasn't the type to kill a man just because he didn't like the
man, but this person...this person was just begging to be killed, for
the sake of sanity. Plus, the dog rated above this man in terms of
intelligence in Hawks' opinion, and the man didn't look like he was
going to be friendly to it.
The ragged man had enough and took out his knife. He charged towards
Hawks, bellowing some sort of war cry as he did. Hawks had an advantage
in being a bit more rational at the moment. Also, his weapon had better
range. With these advantages, he made one well-aimed (or luckily aimed)
thrust with the wooden end of his spear at the man's head. It crashed
into his skull, the hard wood stunning and knocking him backwards to
the ground at the same time.
The dog sprang into action as soon as the man hit the floor. He bit and
clawed at the man ferociosly, ripping a good deal of flesh off of him.
Hawks kicked the knife away the man, but otherwise did nothing to help
the dog. It was easier on his conscious that way, and he might still be
able to stay on the good side of the police that way. After a few
momments of unpleasent screaming, the man finnally stopped moving and
the dog stepped down.
"Nice job," Hawks said, looking over the end result of the dog's work.
"Thanks," an unseen person said. Hawks looked around, but he couldn't
see anybody. "Hey, down here." Something very improbably occured to
Hawks as he did as the voice instructed and saw only the dog - it might
be talking to him. But, all the dog was pant and stare back up at
Hawks. It seemed unlikely, though only a bit more so than a man playing
poker with a dog and loosing.
"I need to get some sleep," Hawks muttered. "I'm starting to hear
things."
"Yeah, _me_," the voice said again. The dog scratched himself.
"Um...who's speaking to me?" Hawks couldn't figure out which direction
the voice was coming from. It didn't even seem to be coming from
anywhere, it just seemed to _be_ there. "Is it you?" Hawks asked the
dog. The dog gave Hawks a puzzled look and then sat down. Shrugging off
the voice for a momment, Hawks knelt down and started petting the dog.
It seemed friendly, to him at least.
It suddenly occured to Hawks that he was petting a dog while a dead
body he helped make was rotting in plain sight. It also occured to him
that it might be a good idea to _move_ the body, to rot well out of
sight. Maybe Gray had some need for fresh, albiet ugly and bloody,
meat.
Hawks decided to just take the body and place it in one of the
buildings that looked like it hadn't been used in a long time. He also
decided to take the dog with him back to the room Gray had rented him.
Acording to some texts he read written by his ancestors, dogs made good
traveling companions. Besides, he had always wanted a dog, the villiage
elder just wouldn't let him have one. He would be too busy with his
"training", which was mostly just killing rats and doing Haukunin's
gardening.
"How about it, you want to come back with me?" Hawks asked as he
stuffed the body under a bed. He could have sworn the dog nodded yes.
The two went back into Gray's bar, Hawks having enough "walking" for
one night.
***
"What the hell is this?" asked Jake as he stepped into the room. He was
refering to the dog Hawks was petting.
"A dog. You've heard of those, right?"
"Yeah, tasty. Why is it here?"
"He, um, proved his worth. By the way, does anybody live in that
house?" Hawks asked, pointing to the building where he hid the body
through the window.
"Doesn't look like it."
"His application's under the bed in there. I figured we could use some
backup."
"Or spare meat. If you want him to come along, I can deal with that, but I'm not feeding him."
"Fine. He's coming with us though."
"I'm also not taking care of him. You're on your own. And he rides on
_your_ horse."
"Fine, fine. Trust me, he'll come in handy. He's vicious." Jake sat
down on his bed and began cleaning his sword.
"What's his name?"
"Um...I didn't think about that yet. Dog?"
"Nah, that's almost as simple as _you_. I doubt you can, but try
harder." Unfortunatly, Hawks was about as good as naming as any given
person in the Shadowlands.
"How about Normal?"
"Well, at least it's better than Dog." There was a knock at the door,
and Normal started growling. Jake put down his sword and walked up to
the door.
"I think he can talk, too."
"That's all in your mind," Jake said, opening the door. In the hall,
there were five Crater Town policemen, each with a nasty-looking spear.
"Are you Jaccob Myers?" asked one of the officers.
"Nope, he's in the bathroom. I'll go get him." Jake closed the door a
bit and then walked off to an imaginary bathroom out of the police
officer's line of sight. Once there, he took out a crowbar from inside
his jacket. Jake raised a finger to his mouth to tell Hawks to be
quiet, but the Chosen One was too busy staring at Normal and waiting
for him to talk to notice.
A second later, Jake ran back up to the door and smacked the first
officer in the face with the crowbar, and then beaned two others over
the head with it. They all fell down, unconcious. The other two
officers quickly pushed Jake down as they rushed in. Hawks, finally
noticing the situation, got up with his riffle drawn.
"Put it down Hawks," Jake said, holding up his hand. "There's at least
seven more downstairs waiting to jump us and Lord knows how many
outside." Hawks, seeing the two officers with their spears less than a
foot away from his chest, decided to follow Jake's advice. "Hey, you
can't blame a guy for trying," muttered Jake to the fallen police
officers.
"You're both under arrest," one of the officers said. Four more
policemen appeared from the hallway with rope. Hawks and Jake's hands
were bound together tightly.
"Does this happen often to you?" Hawks asked, being shoved out of the
room. Normal ran off as fast as he could, not putting up a fight for
his masters.
"You have the right to shut your mouths..."
"Only when I get careless," explained Jake.
"If you don't shut your mouths, they will be shut for you..."
"Think they would belive me if I told them I'm not with you?" Hawks
asked again.
"You have no other rights..."
"Nah. Just go along with them, I'll explain everything when we get to
the cell. Hurry it up boys, I want to escape _sometime_ this century."
The policemen shoved the two out of the room.
**** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****
Now I must go shoot the 3 duckies in the banner to claim my prize. Goodbye.
[P ALIGN=right]-Draconias Galactica
-http://upperpage.tripod.com
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Crater Town was little more than a row of lights on the horizon, but at
least it was finally visible. It had been four days since Hawks and
Jake set off for the city. Their progress had been delayed
significantly after their encounter with the Shadow Raiders - Jake had
taken the run-in very seriously and insisted they take a more cautious
route. That had delayed Jake's original estimate of Crater Town being
three days away by another day. Jake didn't mind - he had made it clear
to Hawks he was in no great hurry to go back to Crater Town - but Hawks
could hardly stand it.
"The minute I get there, I'm finding a chewed-up matress and getting
some sleep," Hawks muttered.
"What do you have against dirt?"
"The fact that, this morning, I woke up with it in my mouth!"
"So sorry about that. You know what? I'll get to work right away
replacing all the dirt here with confortable feathers. Would that make
you happy?"
"If you actually _did_ it, then yeah."
"Do you have any idea how long _I've_ been sleeping on dirt?"
"Long enough for it to seep into your brain, probably."
"Into my brain, out the other end, and back in through my nose to be
specific. At least...I don't know, at least nine years or so. Can
hardly belive it's been that long."
"My nose belives you. Find a river and jump in it, will you?"
"The same goes for you too, you know. We should reach Crater Town in
about an hour. When we do, there's this bath house you desperatly need
to visit." The two continued their walk twords the outskirts of Crater
Town without much more "excitement".
Crater Town was a very lively city, possibly the biggest and most
powerful city in the Shadowlands. It had a population of nearly ten
thousand, at best estimate, with no real army (but its citizens were
expected to defend the city if need be out of obligation). Its central
government was a group of 10 council members, elected by the people,
and a triumvirate elected by the council. Aproximatly half of its
citizens had some form of education, most of them gaining one from
traveling to the Archives or linking to it from the Vault Central
Network (the pre-war network was connected to the Archives for reasons
that could only be guessed).
The city was founded by the denziens of Vault 61, almost a year after
they emerged from the Vault. It was started as the above-ground
settlement of Vault 61, in a series of craters about 18 miles from the
Vault that would provide protection to the fledgling settlement. Since
the craters showed no sign of radioactivity, then or now, they were
assumed to be craters from either conventional, high-yield missiles
(fired a tad bit late) or meteors. They were definatly post-war (or
part of the brief during-war era), though. Over the years, Crater Town
grew out of the initial city size, expanding out of the craters. It
also eventually rebelled, freeing itself from the control of the
Vaults. Crater Town and Vault 61 became bitter enemies, until, some
seventy years after its founding, Crater Town took over Vault 61 when
it finally expanded enough to cover the 18 mile gap.
Crater Town was much too powerful for almost any other city to oppose,
except for Dry Run River, with its famed Storming Dragoons. Dry Run
River existed far to the north, at least when considering the
epicenters of the two cities. But both had been expanding for years.
While Crater Town could expand in every direction easily (but usually
prefers to expand Southwards for various reasons), Dry Run River was
too close to the border in every direction except South. With their
sole-expansion in that direction and the ocassional northward expansion
by Crater Town, the two's teritorial borders quickly began to overlap.
The two had been in a sort of Cold War ever since.
True to Jake's prediction, the two reached the outskirts of Crater Town
an hour later. There was no gate around Crater Town, at least not
around the constantly-growing Southern border so their entrance was
simple. A few of the locals who had settled this far out regarded them
with slight curiosity, but nobody made any excessive moves to find out
who they were.
"Hey, do you know if Jack Gray's bar is still open?" Jake yelled to a
passerby. They were a good twelve feet away, seperated by a roadway.
Crater Town had several roadways, some of which were actually as
advanced as brick.
"Open in buisness, or open not closed?" the passerby shouted back.
"Either one."
"Definatly open in buisness, and I doubt it'll close until night."
"How can you tell the difference between day and night here?" Hawks
muttered under his breath.
"Okay, thanks," Jake shouted, finishing his breif conversation. "Let's
go."
"What's Jack Gren's bar?"
"Jack _Gray's_, it's a bar. I assume you already knew that, though."
"I figured that part out already, yeah."
"It's a popular bar around here. They also have a hotel, among many,
many other things. We're spending the night there."
"As long as it has something other than dirt, I'm all for it."
"Don't worry, Gray's has very nice concrete beds."
"I don't know what concrete is, but I'm guessing it's worse than dirt."
"Bingo. Let's get moving, the show's probably about to start." Jack led
the way twoards Jack Gray's. Crater Town had extended a bit from since
he was last here - some two years ago - but it wasn't much larger.
Where they were, there was only about a quarter of a mile of new
structures, mostly empty. Crater Town was about 25% empty buildings,
since the population never grew as estimated. In bad times, almost 30%
of the buildings in the city could be empty. In good times, they
desperatly needed to expand. Unfortunatly, most people died before the
expansions were livable, rendering them useless. But, it kept the
citizens occupied and Dry Run River practically laughing its collective
gut out.
It took about ten minutes of walking to reach Gray's. The bar was a
large structure for a post-war town, at four stories tall. It was a bit
of a strange building though. There was no ground level entrance. A
ramp was on the side of the building that ran from the ground up to a
door at the third floor.
The inside of the bar was odd, too. The third floor had a large hole
cut in the middle of it with a railing around it. Looking down, Hakws
could see the second floor and two large rats beating the crap out of
each other. Aparently this was the "show" Jake was talking about. Jake
also watched the mole rats, except he was actually being entertained by
the fight. The two took a seat at one of the vacant tables around the
railing.
"Gee, how entertaining," Hawks muttered, not very interested in the
mole rat fight that Jake was watching.
"Just because you have no taste is no reason to start complaining,"
said Jake, not looking up from over the railing. "If you're so bored,
how about getting us some drinks?" Jake, still not looking up, took out
a pouch from inside his jacket and tossed it to Hawks. Opening it, he
saw that there were coins on the inside - almost identical to the $150
worth of coins he had. The Chosen One took out one of his own coins and
passed it over to Jake.
"Would this count as money around here?" Jake briefly glanced over at
it and then turned his attention back to the fight. The larger rat was
on the floor, and the smaller one was cutting into the larger one's
side.
"Probably, as long as you don't draw too much attention to it. Go get
drinks." Hawks picked up Jake's pouch of money and walked off. The bar
wasn't too crowded, most of the patrons were over near the railing. The
bartender was sitting down, watching over the floor and making sure it
didn't move anywhere. He had gray hair, and was dressed in what looked
like a lab coat, though Hawks wouldn't have known that. Despite his
age, he somehow managed to look tough enough to take care of any
disuputes that came about. Hawks didn't know why, maybe it was just the
excesivly large sword that was laid against the wall next to him.
"What do you got?" Hawks asked, sitting down. The bartender didn't
bother looking up. _Is everybody here afraid I'm going to turn them to
stone?_ Hawks thought, sarcastically.
"Booze, and watered down booze. Specialty of the house," said the
bartender, grinning.
"Gimme the booze, I guess." The bartender ducked down behind the bar
for a momment, and came back up with an old-looking bottle of booze.
When he handed it over to Hawks, he finnaly looked up at him.
"Hmm," muttered the bartender.
"Hmm what?" Everytime somebody said "hmm" about him in the past, it
rarely ment anything good.
"Nothing, never mind. By the way, my name's Jack Gray. Master of
drinks, women, rats, and graves."
"That's an odd mix," Hawks said, not in any real hurry to get back to
the exhilerating overgrown rat fight.
"Regular John of all trades." At that moment, the rotation of the world
was thrown off slightly by one kite-flying corpse turning over in his
grave. "Usually pays to have everything a customer needs."
"'Cept for rats and graves," Hawks added, mostly to himself.
"Not a rat fan, eh? Then what the hell did you come here for? Did you
need to get drunk right away?"
"Nope, I'm here with my partner. We're just stopping through for a
while."
"Who's your partner?"
"That guy over there," said Hawks, pointing in the apropreate
direction. Since the bar was well lit with torches and some electronic
lights, Gray could see Jake in fairly good detail.
"Hmm."
"Again with the hmm's, what do you mean by hmm?"
"Not much, just that I think I've heard of you fellows."
"What?" Somebody hearing of Jake, Hawks could understand. But anybody
but Jake knowing about Hawks around here was just a bit hard to
swollow. How could anybody know about _him_?
"It's a rumor that's been going around for a day or two. Some guy with
a claw tattoo over his eye," Jack said, pointing to the tattoo of a
bird's leg and talons over Hawks' right eye, "and some guy dressed like
a Twilighter killed some raiders and their horses. The raiders are
supposed to be mighty pissed about it."
"Oh..._that_." _Guess we didn't get all of them_. "So what's the other
guy supposed to be dressed like?"
"A Twilighter. They were some sorta warrior clan from about 15 years
ago. Caused a lot of trouble near Lake Side. They're not around
anymore, but a lot of people still remember what they look like. If
your partner was about 10 years older, I'd swear he used to be one.
How's Jake doing anyways?"
"You know him?"
"Yeah, he comes around here every now and then looking for work. The
boy always gets the job done. It be a shame to see him take the dirt
nap."
"I don't think that'll happen anytime soon. He looks tough." Since he
had never seen Jake fight, that was about all Hawks could say. But he
could tell it would have to be a damned skilled or damned lucky man who
took out Jake.
"You think I don't know that? But I don't know anybody who can last
long with the raiders gunning for them. That's where the graves part of
my job comes in."
"Trust me, me and Jake can take care of ourselves out there. We already
took out four raiders easy."
"Well, for Jake's sake, I hope so. That'll be seven bucks." Hawks dug
into the pouch and placed seven coins onto the bar as he walked off.
"That's the last time I put you in charge of drinks," Jake said. "How
am I supposed to enjoy myself if you take so damn long with the
drinks?" Hawks sat down and tossed Jake his drink.
"This stuff actually makes you depressed, you know," explained the
Chosen One.
"Depressed that you got the watered down stuff, you mean. Was he out of
the good stuff this early? You have to specificy you want the _real_
stuff you know."
"We've got a bigger problem."
"Problems can wait."
"I'm serious. Remember those horse raider guys?" asked Hawks, not able
to remember the proper term for them to save his life. There was
probably a shadow or twilight in there somewhere - people in the
Shadowlands had no immagination when it came to names. "One of them got
away, and - "
"I said problems can wait," Jake interupted, raising his bottle. "If
you've got to worry, then do it _after_ the show. Relax for a bit."
With that, Jake turned his attention back to a fight below them. This
time, it seemed to be human on human with just fists. Hawks muttered
some nasty things under his breath at Jake before giving up and
watching the fight.
***
"I still don't see what you like about those," Hawks said, stretching
his arms. "Maybe if they had dance numbers in the middle of the
fights..." Jake stood up and picked up his bottle.
"That's the last time I try to expose you to a little culture."
"Don't bother, I'm trying to get _out_ of your culture, remember?"
"Yeah, I remember. That's why we need horses."
"Those things with the legs?" Jake sighed and shook his head.
"Yes, those things with the legs. How you lasted long enough to get
from CA to here is beyond me."
"Why do we need horses? Those things smelled _bad_."
"Actually, you were probably smelling the raiders. They don't bathe
often."
"Were you one? You sure act like one."
"I have a exscuse for not bathing often, unlike them. I'm alergic to
water."
"I'm sure. So, why do we need those horses anyways? Speed?"
"That's part of it. They'd cut our traveling time in half, at least.
Plus, they can outrun Shadow Raiders. We can't, and if we run into them
we're definatly going to need to run. I've heard they don't exactally
like us recently."
"Ah, so we're worrying now."
"Yeah."
"That means you're done with the show, which means we can leave." Hawks
started for the door, with Jake following after him a momment later.
"It also means we need more money. A good horse costs more than two
grand around here, and we need _two_ of them. Add in bed and breakfast,
and we're going to need a good five thousand dollars. I've got one
thousand on me, how much do you have?"
"Um...probably enough to get us an inn for a week."
"Well, at least you're good for _something_."
"Hey, don't forget I saved your life a few days ago."
"And I probably saved yours a day before that. Gray's got a few
bedrooms on the top floor. You take care of that part, I'll go hunt
around for some jobs. What are you good at, anyways?"
"Snipering, witty banter, and just about everything else."
"I see. I don't know how many openings there are for a _cook_, but I'll
check." Hawks punched Jake in the shoulder. "Heh, sorry. I'll be back
in about an hour or two. Don't go wandering around too far, it's a big
city, you _will_ get lost." He walked out the door. Hawks turned and
headed back to the bar.
"Gray, you got any rooms for rent?" The old man took out a key from one
of his pockets and tossed it over to Hawks.
"That's room seven, upstairs. How long do you want it for?"
"Probably a week, maybe a week and a half."
"A week's $200. If you stay any longer, it's $50 a night."
"How about $100 bucks for the week?"
"Nah, has to be at least $185."
"Make it $150 and just jack up the extra day charge."
"Alright, deal. Just so you know, I'm only lowering the price because
I'm betting Jake'll be coming to me asking for a job." Hawks took out
his own sack of money and poured out the entire contents onto Gray's
bar. The bartender brushed the cash into a pocket on his labcoat.
"Gotcha. Do you have anything in particular?"
"Depends on whether or not you want to travel and whether or not you
want to be able to stay in Crater Town."
"Huh?"
"Some of my jobs need doing in some other places. Some of the other
jobs, if you pull them off, I doubt you'll be able to stay in Crater
Town. The cops are pretty good at doing their job around here, get my
drift."
"Yeah, I get it. I doubt we'll be taking any jobs outside of town, so
what're the other ones?"
"Come back to me on that one when Jake gets back. Enjoy your room."
Hawks nodded and walked off. That was one thing he didn't like - having
to rely on an outsider for help, protection, or guidance. It wasn't
that he didn't trust Jake - he did. It was just that...most outsiders
were like human trash. They lacked something the people in Arroyo had -
decency. There were no druggies (excluding Haukunin), whores,
murderers, damned slavers, or people who blatently disregarded the law
in Arroyo. Granted, the tribals in Arroyo were pretty simple people,
who would worship anything if it was shiney, but you can't have
anything. Most of the rats in Arroyo were better than outsiders.
But, there was nothing he could do. Jake was right, Hawks wouldn't last
long out here on his own. If Jake hadn't been there to warn him about
the raiders, he'd definatly be dead by now. At least he felt he could
trust Jake. The Shadowlandian was probably his best bet at getting out
of the Shadowlands. After that, he still had to get back to California
and find Vault 13, but that was a problem for a latter date.
Hawks decided to take a walk and see some of the sights of Crater Town.
It had to be more interesting then watching some more rats fight.
Outside, the streets were mostly deserted. Either this part of Crater
Town wasn't too populated, everybody was in a bar, or it was somehow
"night" time and everyone was asleep. How anybody could tell the
difference between night and day around here was beyond him, but it was
a possibility.
The desertion was broken when a dog came rushing towards Hawks, running
as fast as it could. But, it didn't seem agressive - it was just
running. The dog ran in between Hawks legs, and stopped shortly after,
lying down low to the ground. Hawks turned around and knelt down to
face the dog. It was an average sized dog for the post war world, not
too big and not enough meat over his bones.
"Hey!" a voice shouted from behind Hawks. The Chosen One stood back up
and turned around to face the voice's direction. "Get away from that
dog!" It was a ragged-looking man, about fifteen feet away. Even from
that distance, Hawks could see he was pissed off at something.
"Is this your dog?" Hawks asked.
"That dog cheated me! Hand it over!" Hawks blinked dumbly a few times,
as if that would make what he just heard clearer.
"What?"
"He cheated me! Worthless mutt, he was probably using marked cards! I
never loose at poker, especially not to a dog!" None of this was
registering properly with Hawks.
"You mean, you were playing poker...with a dog?! How the hell were you
playing with a dog? _Why_ the hell were you playing with a dog?"
"Why not? He beat the last few guys he played, so I figured why not
try? Didn't know he was gonna _cheat_!" The dog started growling at the
man. Something new occured to Hawks, and registered even worse than
everything he heard previously had.
"You _lost_ to a dog?" He couldn't tell if them man was drunk, or if he
had been missing out on something his whole life and dogs could play
poker well.
"The overgrown rat cheated!"
"A dog?! Explain how you lost to a friggin dog!"
"He _cheated_!!" the man screamed again, getting tired of repeating
himself. "Now move!" That did it for Hawks - he took his spear off his
back and pointed it at the man.
"There's no way I'm taking orders from an idiot like you." Normally
Hawks wasn't the type to kill a man just because he didn't like the
man, but this person...this person was just begging to be killed, for
the sake of sanity. Plus, the dog rated above this man in terms of
intelligence in Hawks' opinion, and the man didn't look like he was
going to be friendly to it.
The ragged man had enough and took out his knife. He charged towards
Hawks, bellowing some sort of war cry as he did. Hawks had an advantage
in being a bit more rational at the moment. Also, his weapon had better
range. With these advantages, he made one well-aimed (or luckily aimed)
thrust with the wooden end of his spear at the man's head. It crashed
into his skull, the hard wood stunning and knocking him backwards to
the ground at the same time.
The dog sprang into action as soon as the man hit the floor. He bit and
clawed at the man ferociosly, ripping a good deal of flesh off of him.
Hawks kicked the knife away the man, but otherwise did nothing to help
the dog. It was easier on his conscious that way, and he might still be
able to stay on the good side of the police that way. After a few
momments of unpleasent screaming, the man finnally stopped moving and
the dog stepped down.
"Nice job," Hawks said, looking over the end result of the dog's work.
"Thanks," an unseen person said. Hawks looked around, but he couldn't
see anybody. "Hey, down here." Something very improbably occured to
Hawks as he did as the voice instructed and saw only the dog - it might
be talking to him. But, all the dog was pant and stare back up at
Hawks. It seemed unlikely, though only a bit more so than a man playing
poker with a dog and loosing.
"I need to get some sleep," Hawks muttered. "I'm starting to hear
things."
"Yeah, _me_," the voice said again. The dog scratched himself.
"Um...who's speaking to me?" Hawks couldn't figure out which direction
the voice was coming from. It didn't even seem to be coming from
anywhere, it just seemed to _be_ there. "Is it you?" Hawks asked the
dog. The dog gave Hawks a puzzled look and then sat down. Shrugging off
the voice for a momment, Hawks knelt down and started petting the dog.
It seemed friendly, to him at least.
It suddenly occured to Hawks that he was petting a dog while a dead
body he helped make was rotting in plain sight. It also occured to him
that it might be a good idea to _move_ the body, to rot well out of
sight. Maybe Gray had some need for fresh, albiet ugly and bloody,
meat.
Hawks decided to just take the body and place it in one of the
buildings that looked like it hadn't been used in a long time. He also
decided to take the dog with him back to the room Gray had rented him.
Acording to some texts he read written by his ancestors, dogs made good
traveling companions. Besides, he had always wanted a dog, the villiage
elder just wouldn't let him have one. He would be too busy with his
"training", which was mostly just killing rats and doing Haukunin's
gardening.
"How about it, you want to come back with me?" Hawks asked as he
stuffed the body under a bed. He could have sworn the dog nodded yes.
The two went back into Gray's bar, Hawks having enough "walking" for
one night.
***
"What the hell is this?" asked Jake as he stepped into the room. He was
refering to the dog Hawks was petting.
"A dog. You've heard of those, right?"
"Yeah, tasty. Why is it here?"
"He, um, proved his worth. By the way, does anybody live in that
house?" Hawks asked, pointing to the building where he hid the body
through the window.
"Doesn't look like it."
"His application's under the bed in there. I figured we could use some
backup."
"Or spare meat. If you want him to come along, I can deal with that, but I'm not feeding him."
"Fine. He's coming with us though."
"I'm also not taking care of him. You're on your own. And he rides on
_your_ horse."
"Fine, fine. Trust me, he'll come in handy. He's vicious." Jake sat
down on his bed and began cleaning his sword.
"What's his name?"
"Um...I didn't think about that yet. Dog?"
"Nah, that's almost as simple as _you_. I doubt you can, but try
harder." Unfortunatly, Hawks was about as good as naming as any given
person in the Shadowlands.
"How about Normal?"
"Well, at least it's better than Dog." There was a knock at the door,
and Normal started growling. Jake put down his sword and walked up to
the door.
"I think he can talk, too."
"That's all in your mind," Jake said, opening the door. In the hall,
there were five Crater Town policemen, each with a nasty-looking spear.
"Are you Jaccob Myers?" asked one of the officers.
"Nope, he's in the bathroom. I'll go get him." Jake closed the door a
bit and then walked off to an imaginary bathroom out of the police
officer's line of sight. Once there, he took out a crowbar from inside
his jacket. Jake raised a finger to his mouth to tell Hawks to be
quiet, but the Chosen One was too busy staring at Normal and waiting
for him to talk to notice.
A second later, Jake ran back up to the door and smacked the first
officer in the face with the crowbar, and then beaned two others over
the head with it. They all fell down, unconcious. The other two
officers quickly pushed Jake down as they rushed in. Hawks, finally
noticing the situation, got up with his riffle drawn.
"Put it down Hawks," Jake said, holding up his hand. "There's at least
seven more downstairs waiting to jump us and Lord knows how many
outside." Hawks, seeing the two officers with their spears less than a
foot away from his chest, decided to follow Jake's advice. "Hey, you
can't blame a guy for trying," muttered Jake to the fallen police
officers.
"You're both under arrest," one of the officers said. Four more
policemen appeared from the hallway with rope. Hawks and Jake's hands
were bound together tightly.
"Does this happen often to you?" Hawks asked, being shoved out of the
room. Normal ran off as fast as he could, not putting up a fight for
his masters.
"You have the right to shut your mouths..."
"Only when I get careless," explained Jake.
"If you don't shut your mouths, they will be shut for you..."
"Think they would belive me if I told them I'm not with you?" Hawks
asked again.
"You have no other rights..."
"Nah. Just go along with them, I'll explain everything when we get to
the cell. Hurry it up boys, I want to escape _sometime_ this century."
The policemen shoved the two out of the room.
**** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****
Now I must go shoot the 3 duckies in the banner to claim my prize. Goodbye.
[P ALIGN=right]-Draconias Galactica
-http://upperpage.tripod.com