L
lockout
Guest
The original of the thing started out as a spur-of-the-moment whim that wound up somewhere on Interplay's boards during one of their recent "Contests/Not Contests" (imagine that). Since then I've taken the story out of closet, blew the dust off it, and decided to make some additions to it. This is the so-called "improved" version. Whether it is or not remains to decided by you - the FanFic crowd it was written for. Your input matters most, and I'd really like to know your thoughts and opinions of this piece. Thank you. 
All Matt Kennison wanted was to pass through the shoreline stench of this oceanside scrapheap town and head on. It had seemed simple enough, then – just ignore the hopheads and hookers, and keep moving toward Arroyo. Home was less than a day and a half north – conflict was the last thing on his mind, but some people couldn’t think of anything else…or wouldn’t.
It wasn’t my fault, he thought, looking at the two Jetheads near his feet. Any designs on instant wealth that pair had had were over. They weren’t going anywhere, or with anything, Matt decided. His pack was torn, but was still his; only now, the carton of Rad-X and a token box of MicroFusion Cells inside it felt heavier on his back than it should have.
No, he wasn’t to blame for this one, and still, he could have prevented it – what a christless mess he had let himself blunder into; another lousy call, he supposed. Arroyo was closer than it had been in weeks, and he was already beat to shit from the fiasco at Navarro. Then again, bone-tired always seemed to lead to lax, and then straight to carelessness…and why did this have to come down now? Hadn’t the Enclave been bad enough?
Apparently not. Sixteen in his band had started out for that inland shithole, ready to carve their initials into a few cooling corpses; retribution for the Enclave’s kidnappings and assaults in the north. Matt had believed they were ready, and so they all thought: now, he was all that was left. There wasn’t much there to speak of, just some salvaged supplies grabbed in haste off the top halves of Detmer and Wilkinson, a bad state of mind in general, and an inch-wide gash in his combat armor, in particular – about half as wide as the one across and into his ribs. Even now he could see the wet streaks of white below the burn marks, without looking at it. Once had been enough for him, thank you – there was no reason to look more than that. His tape and gauze pads were used up: he was feverish and hurting, and home was the only place he wanted to be.
The idea sounded like a reliable one. A workable solution, Matt believed was the correct phrase, just as he believed that the club-swinging crowd of townies who had walled him off here in Trinidad wouldn’t have a lot to do with the idea. There was nothing new about that. He’d seen their lot too many times; frustrated and angry at a world they had no say in, wanting any excuse to lash out and jettison a scarcely buried fury. Anything will do, stranger, their shining eyes seemed to say as one. Anything at all.
Matt averted his eyes, buying time, not wanting to give them the spark they craved. Anymore, the mobs all looked the same; only the pure meanness on the lean, hungry faces ever changed. All of this began long before he was born, and had gone on well after. The fighting from the before time was over and done, but had it ever really ended? He thought not. They all had had no say in that – today there were only unsympathetic stares and a dead end fury in what remained. Now, he had another sort of it.
They weren’t all that different, he supposed, watching them while they watched him, one pair of tired eyes against fifty that looked far too much like he felt. And he thought that the plasma turrets at Navarro were bad.
They were, but only because people broke a lot easier than the damnable machines did. Machines had run the world at one time, or so he had heard. Even now they could bring you to your knees, and those mechanized trackers at Navarro had. They were the worst – a synchronized nightmare that obliterated his crew, and in short order. But that was on him, and he knew it.
No excuses. He thought there was a way around the turrets, and misjudged it, blew it, a bad call that ended almost as soon as it began. Half of his men were down and dead before they could even cut through the fence, as if they had been expected.
It was possible. They could have been picked up on radar, but realizing it then had been too late. They had been in too deep, lured in as easy as you please and then pinned down along the eastern edge of the compound, the turrets shredding them and the fence in no set order. They were outgunned, and badly beaten from the start. Dear Sweet Jesus, the others died so fast…some of them vanished, clothes and all, then they just weren’t there anymore.
It had been a lost cause, a farce from the onset. There was nowhere to go but back, then dragging himself out of the crossfire in something that resembled one piece was all that was left.
But the Enclave wouldn’t hear of it – they had other ideas, and their goddamn patrols had been relentless. They wanted his head on a post at any price, and had chased him through a maze of pine needles and trip wires in the woods south of Navarro. He had been running scared then, hopscotching over mines as fast as he dared, waiting to trip on a branch or make a wrong step, side a flaming stitch, heart a thudding triphammer in his ears before finally losing them and his rifle in the upper shelves along the eastern perimeter.
There were enough outcroppings there to give fair cover, and nothing to do but wait. He had, as quietly as he could manage, but his med stocks were shot, and the pain was the world – sunset had been a very long time coming.
He gritted his teeth and rode it out, staying on the ledges until dark, and moving higher, changing position every ten minutes or so, listening to the metallic footfalls and the hum of motion sensors below. But the ledges were no better than the ground. Given time, they would have found him. There had been no debating it – they were pack hunting jackals, which he had learned the hard way. He had to get out, and then pull up somewhere else.
The encampment northeast of Rockport wasn’t friendly but wasn’t hostile, either, and he had limped into it and stayed there overnight, just needing to stop and rest. If Barkum, the villager elder, had questions, he hadn’t asked a lot of them. None actually, which Matt thought was decent. It had been late anyway; too late…and he didn’t have any answers for anyone. There had been stilted conversation and questioning looks, and that was as far as it went. Then, one of the post guards escorted him into the council tent and let him collapse onto a table, dehydrated and bleeding, but grateful for a few safe hours of unconsciousness.
That had been two long, hard days ago. Since then he’d been on the move up the coastline, keeping to the back trails and putting as much distance between Navarro and him as he could. But crawling over fallen trees and working around the thatches of bracken on the trails was wearing him out, and fast. There was no choice: he had to break cover, and only stopped in Trinidad on the off chance that the trading post might scrounge up a Stimpak or two…maybe even a Super Stim, if his luck was any better than it had been.
No dice, though, for him or the Jetters.
It shouldn’t have happened, but it had, Matt thought, left arm pressed against his side. He had been here a couple other times, hoping to trade and then get out quick. The strip was nothing to get excited about; it was all dented sheet metal walls over patchy plywood and dry-rotted frames. It was familiar…too much so, maybe. He had been woolgathering when he walked in, not paying attention to the faces behind the junk piles, not really seeing the hungry eyes in the tin shacks. His mind had been on Chitsa and trying to summon any tiny image of her careworn face. And like the rest, it was no good…she felt hazy and distant to him, a bittersweet memory at best.
The Navarro mistake had kept him away from her for too long. He hadn’t seen her in nearly a month, and didn’t see the heads when he walked past the alleyway by Morgan’s Gallerium. But they sure as hell saw him – they must have caught sight of him right off, because they had been laying for him. Just wait for the outsider. Easy mark…kick his ass square, dump him in back of the trash and the rotted boxes, and then off to hook up with their connection.
But it hadn’t worked out that way, Matt thought, watching the crowd with a measuring eye, and with a hint of bitter regret. This wasn’t his fault. Someone had to see those heads come flying out of the alley like a pair of starved vultures and tackle him. They were in the middle of the street, in front of everyone, for chrissakes – but he couldn’t remember seeing any faces. The ground had come up quick and hard – then he was hissing through his teeth, face down and cut, one of Jetters drooling and giggling in his ear like a kid with a new toy. They both had been raving, and probably in withdrawal. How could anyone miss that?
It must have been easy to overlook, because even the heads had missed it. They hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to their catch: they’d been much too busy punching and kicking to see the knife in Matt’s boot sheath, or the hungry in his eyes.
It was over quick after that: they couldn’t see any of it now either. Their mouths were open and slack, eyes bulging sightlessly at a low cloud overhead. At least they wouldn’t be huffing down any more of that shit: their throats were too laid open for any more Jet flights.
And it was done. What happened was instinct, the reflexes of self-defense. Anybody could see that, if they wanted to. The scrawny little pricks had been all over him, without a word of warning. What was he supposed to do after they blindsided him? Curl up on the dirt and get kicked like a dog, while they stole the pack off his back?
“Right…every day,” Matt said under his breath, his own rage now a simmering ember that had given way to a calmer reason instead of blind reaction. And a decrease in pain threshold, he thought, grimacing. God, his side was a solid, fiery sheet. The heads had ruptured the wound; he could feel it oozing under the bandages, a deep, searing throb, bad enough to make him want to cry. If he had been alone, he might have. But he wasn’t, and the irony of his current lot was almost laughable.
Death was a numbing commodity, as common as those who had survived it. He’d seen it, lived with it all his life. He had even caused it on occasion…Orick, the Den, Navarro. And now this, when all he wanted was to go home – just walk away from the pipe-swingers and the stink of more dying. The irony was a scream: you could die laughing…or giggling.
No, he wouldn’t think about that right now: there were more pressing items on his mind. The Jetters were history, and the townies were royally pissed about it. He had held them off until now – they had deferred to his knife; cautious and leery of it, but still closing by inches. He was in no shape for another fight and thought that they knew it. Now, waving a taped and splintery two-by-four at Matt’s knife, a hook-nosed townie stepped out from the front row and said: “Looks like Trinidad’s got a real hero here. You goan use that thing on the whole town, hero? Think you can? I don’t.”
He let the implication hang while Matt pressed his back against a corrugated shed, covering his blind side as the half-circle closed another foot. They could have swarmed him, buried him in sheer numbers…but they hadn’t yet. Why, Matt didn’t know. It would have been easy, and this made him think maybe they were more reluctant than they seemed. With his back secure, he was willing to test it; other options were nowhere in sight.
Then, nodding sharply at the Jetters, Matt pointed accusingly at the dry clay and cuts on his face, and said: “We don’t have to do it this way. I wasn’t looking for trouble the first time. They started this…they tried to rip me off and didn’t quite make it. I’m sorry, but it’s over, and I’m not looking for more trouble now.”
“Don’t look that way to me, tribal,” hook nose said, poking the stud at the Jetters. His eyes had a watery, alcohol look; his face was a roadmap of broken veins. “You get a kick outta killing folks, hero? That what you like, eh? We can fix that easy enough,” he added, grinning, as more two men with short lengths of pipe stepped out and stood on either side of him, taped ends gripped tightly in dirty, callused hands, while the other townies murmured their approval; a low, almost feral urging, hovering unseen over the street as the three moved in…
…And then quickly stepped back when Matt raised the knife chest high and flicked it deftly from his right hand into his left, and then back – now again, the hardened alloy blade in stark outline, tip a vicious razor glint under the sun.
“Maybe you should look again, mister,” Matt said, blinking hard, his vision blurring while he held them at bay, watching the sudden wariness blossom in their eyes, smelling the fear on them…and mentally crossing his fingers. This had a rehearsed, trumped-up feel to it – the tape on their homemade clubs gave it away. Both the sticks and the crowd had showed up in a hurry; only the front line wasn’t quite as brave as they acted. Probably never expected a skinny, beat up tribal to fight back against the hometown mob. Matt hadn’t expected to either, but he wasn’t about to cave in. Fear was his only leverage, his wedge through the crowd. Now if he could only drive it in deeper.
Then he took an aggressive step toward hook nose, knife held low, tip up, gauging his actions as the crowd wavered; all the hard talk falling to soft whispers and shuffling feet as they began to move back. It could work: they weren’t all that eager, and Matt could see a hole opening to his left. It was big enough to get through…but he wasn’t ready to leave yet.
“Mister, you say it’s murder, but I say it’s self-defense,” he told them all in a calm, even tone. “This place is full of hopheads, but I’m not one of them. I didn’t see you around when it happened, and you don’t know me from Adam. Who are you to say different? Where were you when it went down…falling off your seat at the ginmill?”
“You never mind where I was,” hook nose said truculently, feet set apart, rocking backward a little, nearly swaying on his heels. He was dead drunk and full of courage, waving the stud menacingly, but alone. The Pipe Brothers must have noticed it, and then weighed it against the knife and a lack of support. No one else seemed willing to jump in…the crowd had become hesitant, and was starting to thin. They had discovered other places to be, leaving the rest to themselves in an unnatural quiet. Now both men looked at hook nose with uncertainty, and then fell back a step.
“Maybe we should leave him be, Walt”, one of the men said, looking at the open throats on the dead men and scratching the side of his face. The pipe dangled loosely at his side, nearly forgotten. “Rennie and Scooch weren’t nothin but trouble anyhow. I think maybe we could at least –”
“Shut yer damn head, Vince!” Walt flashed, spittle flying from his lips in a fine spray, his bent nose now as ruby as his cheeks. “He ain’t nuthin but a murderin tribal! Cain’t you see that?!”
“I’m not a murderer, no matter what you call it,” Matt said more harshly than he meant to. He should have kept shut and let the two of them go at it – it would’ve made getting out a little easier…but damn this bigoted, backwater asshole! He didn’t want to see what was in front of him, or listen to reason – he was a stupid drunk bully, spoiling for a fight at the wrong time. Matt winced inwardly, but his eyes remained flat and unwavering. All he wanted was to pass through here quick, and then be on his way. Well, you could believe he was leaving; only now, he decided that if liquored-up Walt and his hook nose had a notion of going one-on-one, then Walt might get what he wanted.
Maybe more, Matt thought with disdain, dropping into a painful half-crouch and then stepping sideways, moving left and north, knife tilted higher, eyes searching the crowd for the overeager. Other than good buddy Walt, there didn’t appear to be any, and that was fine. Fearful, indifferent, or plain stupid; either way made no difference to Matt Kennison – he was going home now…and was two steps closer, when Walt cocked the two-by-four over his head and charged in, bellowing like a madman, with Vince a stride behind –
“HUAAAARHH! MOTHERFUCKIN TRIBAL! KILL YOU NOW! KILL Y –”
Then the words were cut off, as if severed, when Walt stepped into a pothole and twisted his ankle. He let out a surprised yelp, then the stud went flying while he went sprawling. The stud arched slowly upward, a tan rectangle, spinning lazily under the blue sky. Then it simply fell to earth, its brief impetus spent, landing with a hollow thunk at Matt’s feet, while Walt groaned, face down on the street.
Matt picked up the stud and tossed it onto a stack of junk, and was surprised to see that the other townfolk had given him an even wider path during the brief commotion. Then he looked back, his own eyes widening as Vince walked up and sat down on Walt hard, pinning him to the ground.
Matt looked at Vince and said nothing. People were peering around corners – staring at them from behind glassless windows and open doorways. They didn’t look happy, but were keeping their distance: the street was nearly empty. If ever there was a second when Matt could believe in God, it was then.
“You might want to leave while you can,” Vince said simply, while Walt squirmed and bled and mumbled something coarse and unintelligible.
“I will,” Matt said softly. “It wasn’t murder, you know.”
“No, I suppose it wasn’t,” Vince said, glancing over his shoulder. “They were just trash; probably got what they had coming. Who knows…you might’ve done us a favor, but you still better get going. Walter don’t see it that way, and I don’t know how much longer I keep his drunk ass down.”
Matt nodded, and smiled a faint ghost smile. Vince probably had a good forty pounds on Walt, who hadn’t made any progress on getting up. Matt had a feeling he wouldn’t be, or not very soon, at any rate. “I need some med stocks.”
“You look like it,” Vince said humorlessly, staring thoughtfully at the reddish gash in Matt’s armor, as if seeing it for the first time. “What the hell happened to you?”
“It’s a long story…maybe some other time. Morgan have any Stimpaks?”
“Morgan died about five months back,” Vince nodded, pressing the pipe against the back of Walt’s neck.
“Fuggin trrbl…”, Walt muttered, arms pinned neatly under him, lips mashed into the dirt.
“The new trader’s name is Stinson,” Vince went on. “He’s a real skinflint, so he might be willing to swap. Gets stock in all the time, so he could have something for you, but I think it’d be best if you didn’t come back to let me know about…whatever. Just hurry, okay?”
“I can do that,” Matt said, head lowered slightly, looking at Walt as one might look at a roach underfoot. Conflict had been the last thing on his mind, but there were always some who couldn’t think of anything else. Even so, it seemed there were a few who were different after all. He thought it could be. “Listen…thanks.”
Vince waved it off. “Yeah…okay. Better get your stuff and get moving.”
There was nothing else to say. Matt took the hint and left, mindful of the hard-bitten faces behind the junk piles, keenly aware of the hungry eyes in the lines of run-down shacks as he walked into Morgan’s Gallerium. The trader, Stinson, was about as suspicious as they got, and as cantankerous as a Brahma in heat. But he was greedy, like Vince had said, and his old eyes lit up when Matt pulled the Rad-X and MicoFusion Cells out of his pack.
His scrapings from Navarro were all he had to show for the end of four long weeks gone wrong. It netted him just three Stims and a short stack of stale jerky, but he didn’t care. It was enough to get him where he was going. Arroyo was the only place he wanted, needed, to be, and despite Navarro and the wounds and the sour taste of Trinidad in his mouth, he felt better when he left than he had when two hopheads watched him arrive.
That was behind him now, and the afternoon heat and the broken white lines on US 101 beckoned. Chitsa was all that remained, and his mind returned to her over and again, while he labored to close the distance.
His shirt was a tacky crimson rag when he made Crescent City. The bandages were soaked, and had fallen off, but the Beavertail here were in full bloom. The scent was like a sweet memory recalled, and the sun rested easy on the ageless Pacific as warmth, love, and a time of healing waited.
It all lay ahead of him – he could see it in the bright pink petals by the crumbled roadside; he could feel it in the wind at his back; a reassuring whisper, lifting and lightening his stride as time and distance melted away.
They were all details now. Arroyo lay just ahead as a red-tailed hawk screamed, solitary and lean, a fading brown speck overhead – a hunter; alive and aloft on the thermals, while pink flowers lay trampled as a shining circle of trackers below began to close.
Matt looked up at the soaring bird of prey, his haggard face serene, left arm pressed against his side. They were all hunters. It had never ended, and never would…but for him, it had. They could have their mechanized world in Navarro, and he would have his. They were heartless jackals, but he had had enough. He would guard what was his and fight to keep it, but he would hunt them no more.
Chitsa would be pleased to hear it. He smiled at the thought and began to walk, the day’s last light cobalt and scarlet, full of life and new promise. There was stock to be tended and crop rows to be weeded farther up the road. He could almost smell the sharp tang of manure around the soft lowing of the herd, then he began to walk faster. Tomorrow would be another, better day; even now he could feel it, and he was sixteen miles from home, humming contentedly under a rising rind of moon, when a northern patrol in Advanced Power Armor finally tracked him down.
Sunset came early that night.
Trinidad
A Fallout 2 Story by Lockout
All Matt Kennison wanted was to pass through the shoreline stench of this oceanside scrapheap town and head on. It had seemed simple enough, then – just ignore the hopheads and hookers, and keep moving toward Arroyo. Home was less than a day and a half north – conflict was the last thing on his mind, but some people couldn’t think of anything else…or wouldn’t.
It wasn’t my fault, he thought, looking at the two Jetheads near his feet. Any designs on instant wealth that pair had had were over. They weren’t going anywhere, or with anything, Matt decided. His pack was torn, but was still his; only now, the carton of Rad-X and a token box of MicroFusion Cells inside it felt heavier on his back than it should have.
No, he wasn’t to blame for this one, and still, he could have prevented it – what a christless mess he had let himself blunder into; another lousy call, he supposed. Arroyo was closer than it had been in weeks, and he was already beat to shit from the fiasco at Navarro. Then again, bone-tired always seemed to lead to lax, and then straight to carelessness…and why did this have to come down now? Hadn’t the Enclave been bad enough?
Apparently not. Sixteen in his band had started out for that inland shithole, ready to carve their initials into a few cooling corpses; retribution for the Enclave’s kidnappings and assaults in the north. Matt had believed they were ready, and so they all thought: now, he was all that was left. There wasn’t much there to speak of, just some salvaged supplies grabbed in haste off the top halves of Detmer and Wilkinson, a bad state of mind in general, and an inch-wide gash in his combat armor, in particular – about half as wide as the one across and into his ribs. Even now he could see the wet streaks of white below the burn marks, without looking at it. Once had been enough for him, thank you – there was no reason to look more than that. His tape and gauze pads were used up: he was feverish and hurting, and home was the only place he wanted to be.
The idea sounded like a reliable one. A workable solution, Matt believed was the correct phrase, just as he believed that the club-swinging crowd of townies who had walled him off here in Trinidad wouldn’t have a lot to do with the idea. There was nothing new about that. He’d seen their lot too many times; frustrated and angry at a world they had no say in, wanting any excuse to lash out and jettison a scarcely buried fury. Anything will do, stranger, their shining eyes seemed to say as one. Anything at all.
Matt averted his eyes, buying time, not wanting to give them the spark they craved. Anymore, the mobs all looked the same; only the pure meanness on the lean, hungry faces ever changed. All of this began long before he was born, and had gone on well after. The fighting from the before time was over and done, but had it ever really ended? He thought not. They all had had no say in that – today there were only unsympathetic stares and a dead end fury in what remained. Now, he had another sort of it.
They weren’t all that different, he supposed, watching them while they watched him, one pair of tired eyes against fifty that looked far too much like he felt. And he thought that the plasma turrets at Navarro were bad.
They were, but only because people broke a lot easier than the damnable machines did. Machines had run the world at one time, or so he had heard. Even now they could bring you to your knees, and those mechanized trackers at Navarro had. They were the worst – a synchronized nightmare that obliterated his crew, and in short order. But that was on him, and he knew it.
No excuses. He thought there was a way around the turrets, and misjudged it, blew it, a bad call that ended almost as soon as it began. Half of his men were down and dead before they could even cut through the fence, as if they had been expected.
It was possible. They could have been picked up on radar, but realizing it then had been too late. They had been in too deep, lured in as easy as you please and then pinned down along the eastern edge of the compound, the turrets shredding them and the fence in no set order. They were outgunned, and badly beaten from the start. Dear Sweet Jesus, the others died so fast…some of them vanished, clothes and all, then they just weren’t there anymore.
It had been a lost cause, a farce from the onset. There was nowhere to go but back, then dragging himself out of the crossfire in something that resembled one piece was all that was left.
But the Enclave wouldn’t hear of it – they had other ideas, and their goddamn patrols had been relentless. They wanted his head on a post at any price, and had chased him through a maze of pine needles and trip wires in the woods south of Navarro. He had been running scared then, hopscotching over mines as fast as he dared, waiting to trip on a branch or make a wrong step, side a flaming stitch, heart a thudding triphammer in his ears before finally losing them and his rifle in the upper shelves along the eastern perimeter.
There were enough outcroppings there to give fair cover, and nothing to do but wait. He had, as quietly as he could manage, but his med stocks were shot, and the pain was the world – sunset had been a very long time coming.
He gritted his teeth and rode it out, staying on the ledges until dark, and moving higher, changing position every ten minutes or so, listening to the metallic footfalls and the hum of motion sensors below. But the ledges were no better than the ground. Given time, they would have found him. There had been no debating it – they were pack hunting jackals, which he had learned the hard way. He had to get out, and then pull up somewhere else.
The encampment northeast of Rockport wasn’t friendly but wasn’t hostile, either, and he had limped into it and stayed there overnight, just needing to stop and rest. If Barkum, the villager elder, had questions, he hadn’t asked a lot of them. None actually, which Matt thought was decent. It had been late anyway; too late…and he didn’t have any answers for anyone. There had been stilted conversation and questioning looks, and that was as far as it went. Then, one of the post guards escorted him into the council tent and let him collapse onto a table, dehydrated and bleeding, but grateful for a few safe hours of unconsciousness.
That had been two long, hard days ago. Since then he’d been on the move up the coastline, keeping to the back trails and putting as much distance between Navarro and him as he could. But crawling over fallen trees and working around the thatches of bracken on the trails was wearing him out, and fast. There was no choice: he had to break cover, and only stopped in Trinidad on the off chance that the trading post might scrounge up a Stimpak or two…maybe even a Super Stim, if his luck was any better than it had been.
No dice, though, for him or the Jetters.
It shouldn’t have happened, but it had, Matt thought, left arm pressed against his side. He had been here a couple other times, hoping to trade and then get out quick. The strip was nothing to get excited about; it was all dented sheet metal walls over patchy plywood and dry-rotted frames. It was familiar…too much so, maybe. He had been woolgathering when he walked in, not paying attention to the faces behind the junk piles, not really seeing the hungry eyes in the tin shacks. His mind had been on Chitsa and trying to summon any tiny image of her careworn face. And like the rest, it was no good…she felt hazy and distant to him, a bittersweet memory at best.
The Navarro mistake had kept him away from her for too long. He hadn’t seen her in nearly a month, and didn’t see the heads when he walked past the alleyway by Morgan’s Gallerium. But they sure as hell saw him – they must have caught sight of him right off, because they had been laying for him. Just wait for the outsider. Easy mark…kick his ass square, dump him in back of the trash and the rotted boxes, and then off to hook up with their connection.
But it hadn’t worked out that way, Matt thought, watching the crowd with a measuring eye, and with a hint of bitter regret. This wasn’t his fault. Someone had to see those heads come flying out of the alley like a pair of starved vultures and tackle him. They were in the middle of the street, in front of everyone, for chrissakes – but he couldn’t remember seeing any faces. The ground had come up quick and hard – then he was hissing through his teeth, face down and cut, one of Jetters drooling and giggling in his ear like a kid with a new toy. They both had been raving, and probably in withdrawal. How could anyone miss that?
It must have been easy to overlook, because even the heads had missed it. They hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to their catch: they’d been much too busy punching and kicking to see the knife in Matt’s boot sheath, or the hungry in his eyes.
It was over quick after that: they couldn’t see any of it now either. Their mouths were open and slack, eyes bulging sightlessly at a low cloud overhead. At least they wouldn’t be huffing down any more of that shit: their throats were too laid open for any more Jet flights.
And it was done. What happened was instinct, the reflexes of self-defense. Anybody could see that, if they wanted to. The scrawny little pricks had been all over him, without a word of warning. What was he supposed to do after they blindsided him? Curl up on the dirt and get kicked like a dog, while they stole the pack off his back?
“Right…every day,” Matt said under his breath, his own rage now a simmering ember that had given way to a calmer reason instead of blind reaction. And a decrease in pain threshold, he thought, grimacing. God, his side was a solid, fiery sheet. The heads had ruptured the wound; he could feel it oozing under the bandages, a deep, searing throb, bad enough to make him want to cry. If he had been alone, he might have. But he wasn’t, and the irony of his current lot was almost laughable.
Death was a numbing commodity, as common as those who had survived it. He’d seen it, lived with it all his life. He had even caused it on occasion…Orick, the Den, Navarro. And now this, when all he wanted was to go home – just walk away from the pipe-swingers and the stink of more dying. The irony was a scream: you could die laughing…or giggling.
No, he wouldn’t think about that right now: there were more pressing items on his mind. The Jetters were history, and the townies were royally pissed about it. He had held them off until now – they had deferred to his knife; cautious and leery of it, but still closing by inches. He was in no shape for another fight and thought that they knew it. Now, waving a taped and splintery two-by-four at Matt’s knife, a hook-nosed townie stepped out from the front row and said: “Looks like Trinidad’s got a real hero here. You goan use that thing on the whole town, hero? Think you can? I don’t.”
He let the implication hang while Matt pressed his back against a corrugated shed, covering his blind side as the half-circle closed another foot. They could have swarmed him, buried him in sheer numbers…but they hadn’t yet. Why, Matt didn’t know. It would have been easy, and this made him think maybe they were more reluctant than they seemed. With his back secure, he was willing to test it; other options were nowhere in sight.
Then, nodding sharply at the Jetters, Matt pointed accusingly at the dry clay and cuts on his face, and said: “We don’t have to do it this way. I wasn’t looking for trouble the first time. They started this…they tried to rip me off and didn’t quite make it. I’m sorry, but it’s over, and I’m not looking for more trouble now.”
“Don’t look that way to me, tribal,” hook nose said, poking the stud at the Jetters. His eyes had a watery, alcohol look; his face was a roadmap of broken veins. “You get a kick outta killing folks, hero? That what you like, eh? We can fix that easy enough,” he added, grinning, as more two men with short lengths of pipe stepped out and stood on either side of him, taped ends gripped tightly in dirty, callused hands, while the other townies murmured their approval; a low, almost feral urging, hovering unseen over the street as the three moved in…
…And then quickly stepped back when Matt raised the knife chest high and flicked it deftly from his right hand into his left, and then back – now again, the hardened alloy blade in stark outline, tip a vicious razor glint under the sun.
“Maybe you should look again, mister,” Matt said, blinking hard, his vision blurring while he held them at bay, watching the sudden wariness blossom in their eyes, smelling the fear on them…and mentally crossing his fingers. This had a rehearsed, trumped-up feel to it – the tape on their homemade clubs gave it away. Both the sticks and the crowd had showed up in a hurry; only the front line wasn’t quite as brave as they acted. Probably never expected a skinny, beat up tribal to fight back against the hometown mob. Matt hadn’t expected to either, but he wasn’t about to cave in. Fear was his only leverage, his wedge through the crowd. Now if he could only drive it in deeper.
Then he took an aggressive step toward hook nose, knife held low, tip up, gauging his actions as the crowd wavered; all the hard talk falling to soft whispers and shuffling feet as they began to move back. It could work: they weren’t all that eager, and Matt could see a hole opening to his left. It was big enough to get through…but he wasn’t ready to leave yet.
“Mister, you say it’s murder, but I say it’s self-defense,” he told them all in a calm, even tone. “This place is full of hopheads, but I’m not one of them. I didn’t see you around when it happened, and you don’t know me from Adam. Who are you to say different? Where were you when it went down…falling off your seat at the ginmill?”
“You never mind where I was,” hook nose said truculently, feet set apart, rocking backward a little, nearly swaying on his heels. He was dead drunk and full of courage, waving the stud menacingly, but alone. The Pipe Brothers must have noticed it, and then weighed it against the knife and a lack of support. No one else seemed willing to jump in…the crowd had become hesitant, and was starting to thin. They had discovered other places to be, leaving the rest to themselves in an unnatural quiet. Now both men looked at hook nose with uncertainty, and then fell back a step.
“Maybe we should leave him be, Walt”, one of the men said, looking at the open throats on the dead men and scratching the side of his face. The pipe dangled loosely at his side, nearly forgotten. “Rennie and Scooch weren’t nothin but trouble anyhow. I think maybe we could at least –”
“Shut yer damn head, Vince!” Walt flashed, spittle flying from his lips in a fine spray, his bent nose now as ruby as his cheeks. “He ain’t nuthin but a murderin tribal! Cain’t you see that?!”
“I’m not a murderer, no matter what you call it,” Matt said more harshly than he meant to. He should have kept shut and let the two of them go at it – it would’ve made getting out a little easier…but damn this bigoted, backwater asshole! He didn’t want to see what was in front of him, or listen to reason – he was a stupid drunk bully, spoiling for a fight at the wrong time. Matt winced inwardly, but his eyes remained flat and unwavering. All he wanted was to pass through here quick, and then be on his way. Well, you could believe he was leaving; only now, he decided that if liquored-up Walt and his hook nose had a notion of going one-on-one, then Walt might get what he wanted.
Maybe more, Matt thought with disdain, dropping into a painful half-crouch and then stepping sideways, moving left and north, knife tilted higher, eyes searching the crowd for the overeager. Other than good buddy Walt, there didn’t appear to be any, and that was fine. Fearful, indifferent, or plain stupid; either way made no difference to Matt Kennison – he was going home now…and was two steps closer, when Walt cocked the two-by-four over his head and charged in, bellowing like a madman, with Vince a stride behind –
“HUAAAARHH! MOTHERFUCKIN TRIBAL! KILL YOU NOW! KILL Y –”
Then the words were cut off, as if severed, when Walt stepped into a pothole and twisted his ankle. He let out a surprised yelp, then the stud went flying while he went sprawling. The stud arched slowly upward, a tan rectangle, spinning lazily under the blue sky. Then it simply fell to earth, its brief impetus spent, landing with a hollow thunk at Matt’s feet, while Walt groaned, face down on the street.
Matt picked up the stud and tossed it onto a stack of junk, and was surprised to see that the other townfolk had given him an even wider path during the brief commotion. Then he looked back, his own eyes widening as Vince walked up and sat down on Walt hard, pinning him to the ground.
Matt looked at Vince and said nothing. People were peering around corners – staring at them from behind glassless windows and open doorways. They didn’t look happy, but were keeping their distance: the street was nearly empty. If ever there was a second when Matt could believe in God, it was then.
“You might want to leave while you can,” Vince said simply, while Walt squirmed and bled and mumbled something coarse and unintelligible.
“I will,” Matt said softly. “It wasn’t murder, you know.”
“No, I suppose it wasn’t,” Vince said, glancing over his shoulder. “They were just trash; probably got what they had coming. Who knows…you might’ve done us a favor, but you still better get going. Walter don’t see it that way, and I don’t know how much longer I keep his drunk ass down.”
Matt nodded, and smiled a faint ghost smile. Vince probably had a good forty pounds on Walt, who hadn’t made any progress on getting up. Matt had a feeling he wouldn’t be, or not very soon, at any rate. “I need some med stocks.”
“You look like it,” Vince said humorlessly, staring thoughtfully at the reddish gash in Matt’s armor, as if seeing it for the first time. “What the hell happened to you?”
“It’s a long story…maybe some other time. Morgan have any Stimpaks?”
“Morgan died about five months back,” Vince nodded, pressing the pipe against the back of Walt’s neck.
“Fuggin trrbl…”, Walt muttered, arms pinned neatly under him, lips mashed into the dirt.
“The new trader’s name is Stinson,” Vince went on. “He’s a real skinflint, so he might be willing to swap. Gets stock in all the time, so he could have something for you, but I think it’d be best if you didn’t come back to let me know about…whatever. Just hurry, okay?”
“I can do that,” Matt said, head lowered slightly, looking at Walt as one might look at a roach underfoot. Conflict had been the last thing on his mind, but there were always some who couldn’t think of anything else. Even so, it seemed there were a few who were different after all. He thought it could be. “Listen…thanks.”
Vince waved it off. “Yeah…okay. Better get your stuff and get moving.”
There was nothing else to say. Matt took the hint and left, mindful of the hard-bitten faces behind the junk piles, keenly aware of the hungry eyes in the lines of run-down shacks as he walked into Morgan’s Gallerium. The trader, Stinson, was about as suspicious as they got, and as cantankerous as a Brahma in heat. But he was greedy, like Vince had said, and his old eyes lit up when Matt pulled the Rad-X and MicoFusion Cells out of his pack.
His scrapings from Navarro were all he had to show for the end of four long weeks gone wrong. It netted him just three Stims and a short stack of stale jerky, but he didn’t care. It was enough to get him where he was going. Arroyo was the only place he wanted, needed, to be, and despite Navarro and the wounds and the sour taste of Trinidad in his mouth, he felt better when he left than he had when two hopheads watched him arrive.
That was behind him now, and the afternoon heat and the broken white lines on US 101 beckoned. Chitsa was all that remained, and his mind returned to her over and again, while he labored to close the distance.
His shirt was a tacky crimson rag when he made Crescent City. The bandages were soaked, and had fallen off, but the Beavertail here were in full bloom. The scent was like a sweet memory recalled, and the sun rested easy on the ageless Pacific as warmth, love, and a time of healing waited.
It all lay ahead of him – he could see it in the bright pink petals by the crumbled roadside; he could feel it in the wind at his back; a reassuring whisper, lifting and lightening his stride as time and distance melted away.
They were all details now. Arroyo lay just ahead as a red-tailed hawk screamed, solitary and lean, a fading brown speck overhead – a hunter; alive and aloft on the thermals, while pink flowers lay trampled as a shining circle of trackers below began to close.
Matt looked up at the soaring bird of prey, his haggard face serene, left arm pressed against his side. They were all hunters. It had never ended, and never would…but for him, it had. They could have their mechanized world in Navarro, and he would have his. They were heartless jackals, but he had had enough. He would guard what was his and fight to keep it, but he would hunt them no more.
Chitsa would be pleased to hear it. He smiled at the thought and began to walk, the day’s last light cobalt and scarlet, full of life and new promise. There was stock to be tended and crop rows to be weeded farther up the road. He could almost smell the sharp tang of manure around the soft lowing of the herd, then he began to walk faster. Tomorrow would be another, better day; even now he could feel it, and he was sixteen miles from home, humming contentedly under a rising rind of moon, when a northern patrol in Advanced Power Armor finally tracked him down.
Sunset came early that night.