After the Vault: Chapter 13
    
    Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of Fallout or anything that 
comprises it. This is a non-profit story written solely for my own 
enjoyment and that of anyone who wishes to read it. The story and all 
original characters are mine. Please don't use them without permission.
    
***
    
    After the Vault
    
    -A Fallout Fan-Fiction by Nutzoide-
    
    
    Chapter 13
    
    An Eye for an Eye
    
    
    For a short while Abigail did not realise that she was awake. She 
had become used to the certainty of the light in her eyes to confirm 
that daybreak had come already - often for many hours already. The 
ability to ward that harsh glare away now came to her instinctively as 
her body came back under her own control, learned from the repetition of 
it day after day.
    
    However, that morning there was no sunlight to burn her retinas, and 
her limbs refused to do her bidding. Instead her head swam in the 
darkness, inflicting its own insufferable pain on her eyes, as if in 
retribution for the burning brightness it was so often forced to 
acknowledge through them. Her first instinct would have been to clutch 
her throbbing head, were her limbs not twitching beyond her control and 
already clutching at something in her bed. Something soft, warm and 
smelling of woman.
    
    "C-Chopper?" Her voice sounded loud in her own ears, but that was 
the least of Abigail's worries. Her shivering was wholly involuntary, 
and she hoped that she was still merely dreaming of her hangover to 
come. She'd had a couple of hangovers in the past, but alcohol had been 
tightly regulated in Vault 42, and this had been the first time she had 
drunk more than a unit or two in one sitting on the surface. Chopper's 
style of surface beer, limp and lacking in both hops and malt though it 
was, was much more easily drinkable than the tasty but viciously rough 
liquor.
    
    "Abby?" The strong arms around her tightened, and Abigail realised 
that though she was clutching her lover as she shivered Chopper was 
holding her even more tightly than that. 
    
    "About time you woke up," Chopper said over her shoulder, moving to 
cradle Abigail's head against her neck. "How am I going to get any sleep 
if you're twitching like this all night?"
    
    "Sorry," was Abigail's instinctive mumbled response, but it did 
nothing to hide her worry. Was she sick? "W-what is this? How much did I 
drink?"
    
    Chopper's hard words didn't disguise her own soft tone either, and 
Abigail could at least take comfort from the fact that Chopper was 
holding her and had not left her to tremble in her sleep alone. "Too 
much," Chopper answered. "Do you feel cold?"
    
    "No." It sounded absurd, but Abigail was warm in Chopper's arms. 
Wonderfully so. She just couldn't stop shivering.
    
    "And I don't think you have a fever." Chopper moved her hands and 
pulled them together again beneath their sheets. "You weren't having 
another nightmare?"
    
    Not that Abigail remembered. In fact, she didn't remember dreaming 
about anything at all. "No?"
    
    "Ugh, you are so much trouble. We'll need to find out if you're 
allergic to beer, or something stupid like that."
    
    Abigail wished Chopper would make her mind up. She was scared enough 
as it was. If Chopper was going to chastise her she should stop stroking 
her hair like that. "Well I'm sorry!" Abigail retorted, feeling as 
pathetic as she knew she sounded.
    
    Chopper paused in her stroking, and for one worrisome moment Abigail 
thought she was going to leave, but instead that hand just wrapped 
around her shoulders and held her tightly again. "And I have to look 
after you when you start making out with your new punk friend in the 
street, and making me look like a fool. Maybe it's your own fault and 
you just caught a cold."
    
    "...I did that?" Abigail couldn't remember that. Or, she almost 
could, but her head hurt too much to think back. "I didn't mean to."
    
    "You get very friendly when you're smashed."
    
    "Did I... do anything with her?" She knew she hadn't - she trusted 
herself and she genuinely loved Chopper, she wouldn't cheat - but then 
how drunk *had* she been. What *had* she done?
    
    "Would I be here if you had?"
    
    Abigail breathed a mental sigh of relief, even though she didn't 
actually know the answer to that question at all. Then she blushed, 
despite her headache, recognising just how naked they both were, and how 
closely Chopper held her. "Did *we*...?"
    
    Chopper snorted, though Abigail thought she sounded a little 
relieved, if anything. "Hardly. You passed out in the street. She and I 
had to carry you back here. Now shush and go back to sleep. Maybe you'll 
be better when the sun comes up."
    
    Abigail certainly hoped so. She did still feel tired, despite her 
trembling body. "Chopper? I do love you."
    
    Chopper huffed, but did not relinquish their embrace in the 
slightest. "Sleep. Now. And get better, so I can stop worrying about 
you." 
    
    Good enough for now, Abigail thought, and she tried to put her 
throbbing brain back to bed.

***
    
    It was with much relief that Abigail did finally rise again. Her 
hangover persisted, taking the few bright rays that shone through the 
shutters and sharpening them into daggers, but the worst of her fevered 
trembling seemed to have passed. Her muscles still wobbled and felt as 
weak as paper, but she did not have to clutch herself or at Chopper 
simply to feel secure. 
    
    She was also relieved to feel Chopper still at her side, and she 
buried her head in the woman's chest, and away from the sunlight that 
speared into the room. "Chopper? Are you awake?"
    
    "Of course. I have been since sunrise. With your eyes I'm surprised 
you never notice it."
    
    "It's not lunchtime already is it? I'm not hungry."
    
    "No, it's not that late yet. But you missed breakfast. The sleep 
seemed to be doing you good so I left you."
    
    She had? "And you came back," Abigail added, feeling warm.
    
    "Of course. I keep an eye on all my patients."
    
    Only someone like her could have made that sound provocative, but 
Chopper's syrupy tongue seemed to manage it with ease. "That's sweet," 
Abigail mewled. It didn't allow her to forget her hangover though. "I 
don't suppose you have a remedy for headaches?" 
    
    "Several. Though I think this might be a good lesson in moderation."
    
    Abigail groaned. "Chopper..."
    
    The older woman sighed and pulled away, and Abigail hoped it wasn't 
wholly out of exasperation.
    
    "Stay put. I'll mix something for you."
    
    "Thank you, Chopper."
    
    Once she was alone in the bed Abigail pulled the sheets over her 
head and curled up. It wasn't very dignified, but it made her feel a 
little better. Chopper had seen her at her worst, and her most 
vulnerable, so she felt safe showing her a little indulgent 
patheticness! She felt less like a weakling invalid curling up like that 
and more like a hibernating mouse warding out an excess of... whatever 
it was that mice drank to excess. If mice even existed any more.
    
    "I think we should get you a few drinks again tonight," Chopper said 
as she tore up some leaves and stirred them around in a mug of hot 
water. "We ought to find out if it was the beer giving you the shakes, 
or just the combination of too much of the stuff and the cold."
    
    Abigail groaned. "What? I've had enough already!" she whined. In 
fact she felt like she'd had enough alcohol for a week!
    
    "So you'll stick to hard liquor for the rest of your life, 
regardless?"
    
    That thought didn't seem any better. "Ugh, okay. But only one or 
two. I don't want to end up like this again."
    
    "That's probably not a bad thing," Chopper said, sounding 
appreciative. "Alcohol is a poison."
    
    "I know," Abigail replied. She'd paid attention in her biology 
classes but she was surprised to hear it from Chopper. Her lover was 
usually so hard headed about health. "So why do you drink so much?"
    
    Chopper brought her herbal concoction over to the bed and pulled 
back Abigail's sheet, smirking. "Who wants to stay sober out here?"

***
    
    Sadly that morning's activity did not prove entertaining enough to 
help Abigail forget her hangover. Or, for that matter, the comparatively 
faint pain in her right hand. She still wore the bandage that Chopper 
had made her the afternoon before, but while Chopper assured her that it 
was healing well Abigail didn't feel the need to be reminded of 
yesterday's introduction to firearms quite yet.
    
    "Shouldn't we wait until I can hold it before I buy a new gun?" she 
asked. It wasn't a particularly hopefully question - both Chopper and 
Rathley were the 'get back on the horse' types - but it did at least 
have some amount of practical merit to it. Was there much point looking 
over the weapons that the merchant had in his shop when she couldn't yet 
hold one to see if it even fit her hand?
    
    Rathley thought that there was. "You know what you want, Sugar, and 
we know what you can handle. Might as well get one while they still got 
some that you'd be willin' to shoot."
    
    For some reason Rathley had taking a liking to her. She hadn't 
realised it until this morning, but the callous man was making 
allowances for her benefit. Maybe it was their chat after the row about 
her Buffout, or helping break him out of prison, or maybe just her 
willingness to go along with them and get herself into danger. Whatever 
the reason, it seemed like Rathley was looking out for her. After all, 
he was there now helping the little girl whose gun had exploded, and not 
off enjoying his ale and whores. Abigail wasn't quite sure whether to be 
grateful or worried that he was making the effort to be a human being on 
her behalf, but at least he knew what he was talking about when it came 
to guns. Maybe not as much as Kyle as far as pistols were concerned, but 
then Rathley was there and Kyle wasn't. He and Sharn were nowhere to be 
found, and hopefully having their promised heart to heart. 
    
    Chopper was there though, and being just as unhelpfully supportive 
as Rathley. "And your cuts weren't bad enough to stop you holding 
anything. That bandage is coming off after lunch you know. At worst 
you'll only need a bit of tape to keep the laceration closed."
    
    Abigail hadn't realised that the word laceration was not supposed to 
be a cause for concern, but she didn't argue. Her head couldn't take it. 
She just sighed and took the gun Rathley had been inspecting from his 
hand. "So, you want me to have a revolver? Won't the cylinder bit jam 
up? I think I need one that won't go wrong."
    
    "Not a chance, small, dark and mysterious," the gunsmith said. "'ya 
want to see how many moving parts a semi-automatic has?"
    
    The grease stained man reached to a shelf at the back and brought 
down a tray, filled with the open carcass of a sleek black gun. Had it 
been intact Abigail would have thought it looked far more reliable than 
the small, clunky and mechanical looking device in her hands, but taken 
apart she was stunned to see all the separate pieces that sat rolling 
around, freed from their casing.
    
    "Oh. And this one?"
    
    The man took the pistol from her and cracked it open show the 
cylinder inside. "That's it. Pretty much anyways, aside from a spring 
and a few bits inside the grip, being double action and all. 'ya want it 
taken apart?"
    
    He would do that? Abigail thought. Right now? She was tempted, but 
she wouldn't have known what she was looking at either way. "No, I 
believe you."
    
    The man actually looked a little disappointed. Maybe he had wanted 
to show off. Abigail did have one question for Rathley and him though. 
"It is still a bit big though, isn't it? Bigger than Albert's."
    
    "No, it's pretty compact for a magnum," the gunsmith replied, a 
little confused.
    
    Magnum? That was a word Abigail knew from the movies, and it worried 
her. "*Those* things?!" 
    
    "You can handle it," Rathley said straight up. "Ammunition's scarce 
for a .357, but this ain't nearly as rough on you as a .44 would be, and 
if you're not gonna be shootin' so much you won't be needin' to hunt out 
spare cartridges."
    
    The shopkeeper agreed. "If it's what 'ya want I've got a couple of 
dozen I can sell, .38 specials for it too if ya' want something lighter 
to fire, but they don't have the same bark! None of them are cheap mind, 
but enough to practice on if ya've never fired one before, and still 
have a full cylinder, plus a reload."
    
    It was then that Abigail was saved from the gun-babble by a voice 
she recognized.
    
    "Hey, Abby!" Casey called, bouncing into the shop to join them. "I 
saw you outside. I thought you said you hated guns!"
    
    Abigail chuckled uncomfortable as the gunsmith raised his eyebrows. 
"Umm, well, my last one did bite me," she said, showing off her bandage 
again, "but my friends are right. I probably ought to have one."
    
    Casey nodded. "Yup, true enough. Nothing says 'back off' to a guy 
than putting a hole in him!"
    
    Seizing that moment Chopper turned and stepped next to Abigail, 
wearing a vicious smile. "Speaking of which..."
    
    Casey looked at her and gave a guilty, apologetic smile. "Aha, umm, 
I really *didn't* mean anything by last night, you know? Honest."
    
    From the doorway Casey's friend from the bar called to her. "Case," 
the scruffy woman Katina said, sounding bored, "are they comin' or 
what?"
    
    "Coming?" Abigail echoed.
    
    Casey just grinned, looking slightly embarrassed. "Uh, I was going 
to invite you guys to lunch?"

***
    
    "So where are the lovebirds?" Casey asked as they dug into their 
fried fruit-veg and barbequed rat. Once again rough cuisine, but it was 
edible, and apparent ant gave the girl stomach problems.
    
    "Making up, I hope," Abigail answered. 
    
    Casey's chewing lips broadened into a wicked smile. "Still? Man, I 
wish *I* had their stamina."
    
    Abigail blushed as her words were turned on her, but Chopper replied 
as if she didn't doubt it for a second. "With them, anything's 
possible."
    
    Casey was just as fun sober as she was drunk, but that might have 
had something to do with the fact that Abigail couldn't see much 
difference. The punkish young woman was still a bouncy, squeaky voiced 
bundle of enthusiasm, eager to talk and just as eager to have them talk 
to her. She was also surprisingly articulate considering that she had 
three rings, a pair of studs and a small safety pin through her lower 
lip.
    
    Her appearance and dress was quite at odds with her light-hearted, 
personable attitude. Abigail wanted to know just how many piercings she 
had, but hadn't plucked up the courage to ask. Casey was *full* of them; 
her lip, nose, eyebrows, and especially her ears were all hung or run 
through with the plain and even utilitarian jewellery. She also saw 
little reason to cover herself with over-hot leather the way most Scavs 
or Mercs did, and her dusty white vest was tight enough to show that her 
accessorising was not limited to her face. Simple army green trousers, 
also tight where it mattered, as Abigail could not avoid noticing, and a 
pair of heavy black boots completed Casey's minimal wardrobe of the day. 
    
    Her hair would also have been punk looking, hap-hazardly bleached 
from a deep auburn into a pale rust colour, except that it had been 
bunched into a pair of pigtails, each sitting high on her head but still 
long enough to brush her shoulders when she turned her head. Combined 
with her bubbly attitude she seemed like she should have been head 
cheerleader for a goth football team.
    
    And it was only now, with a clear if aching head, that Abigail 
realised that Casey didn't *wear* any jewellery. No rings, bracelets or 
necklaces at all. Not even an ornament in her bleached pigtails. Just 
piercings, and lots of them.
    
    As for Casey's companions... maybe Abigail had been a little unfair 
to them the night before. David might be a killer, he admitted it freely 
enough, but Abigail had killed raiders and even two Super Mutants now. 
But whatever his reasons for doing so, David hadn't let it make him dark 
or bitter. Unlike Abigail he wore his black leathers not as a statement 
or as a matter of attitude. It was not worn to protect him either, so 
much as it was just his clothing of choice. 
    
    His smile was pleasant and approachable, and though he did not pry 
himself he was happy to answer her accusatory questions. Abigail didn't 
doubt he was keeping a great many things to himself when he spoke, but 
he admitted enough to make her feel guilty for having had such a harsh 
opinion of him. He just took life in his stride, because what point was 
there with getting angry or upset? 
    
    Beside him, Katina disagreed with his outlook. She was both vocal 
and reticent in equal measure, as her mood took her, and she objected 
that she had a *right* to be angry, if for no other reason than 
*wanting* to be. But that violent mix of temper and brooding silence 
made her seem more human than she had appeared the night before. With 
her alcohol she had seemed too calm and worryingly cautious, as if she 
might break off from a laugh or an argument to murder someone without a 
moment's notice. Now, however, she was just a moody woman who knew what 
she wanted, and gone was the edge of tension in her gestures.
    
    And her appearance was as chaotic as her emotions. Her hair, long 
and pale, was wrapped up in a garish head-scarf of yellow and red so 
that her fringe poked out from under it, and streams of hair stuck out 
at odd angles to fall down her neck or shoulders. She hid her toned 
physique beneath both a chequered shirt and a thin sweater that was 
slowly wearing away. Baggy combat pants covered her legs with the 
fastenings and straps left to hang loose. It had all been less modest at 
the bar but no less random; a T-shirt with obscenities peeling off it, 
sports gloves that she still wore now and shorts that would have looked 
more at home on a pot bellied scout leader, held up with a belt. 
    
    David and Katina also looked like they shared a parent, or at least 
an ethnicity. They were both fairly short and slim, but made of nothing 
but bone and muscle. Katina in particular, what could be seen of her 
beneath her baggy clothing, looked like she could take apart a man twice 
her size. They had the same square nose - though Katina's had been 
broken and re-set at some point - and the same slur in their vowels. 
What differed was their hair: plain, black and allowed to grow into an 
attractive fringe on David, while Katina's messy tresses were bleached 
and dyed until they were lighter than Casey's. It was strange to be able 
to point them out as kin when so many surfacers had blended together 
into a few basic ethnic mixtures, losing their more subtle distinctions 
along the way.
    
    The three of them had brought their charge this time as well, so it 
was this new woman who garnered much of their attention. 
    
    Fran, as they called her, was a woman from another world entirely. 
She was certainly not a wastelander, but at the same time there seemed 
to be no trace of a vault education or the kind of awe that Abigail 
still felt towards the world around her. 
    
    Her skin was pale but tanning, like Abigail's, and her black hair 
was long and well looked after, but in contrast she wore a coat made of 
animal fur and a pale dress that flattered her chubby body. She even 
wore sandals instead of boots, though they were sturdily made.  
    
    Fran was a woman of privilege. In large towns like Corva, or even 
cities reclaimed from the wasteland, there would always be people rising 
to the top. In her earlier years, many miles to the east, Fran's parents 
had been those people. She had been raised with comparative wealth, 
protected by bodyguards, and lived a life of luxury amid those eking out 
an existence in the ruins.
    
    Now she was an adult, the last survivor of her spoilt family and 
inheritor of an entire city that she did not know how to govern. Where 
Erin Goldway seemed intent to succeed in Corva, making herself 
indispensable and admired by her eventual township, Fran had failed. But 
even now she had fled, that dying city was still hers, in spirit if 
nothing else, and it had been decided that whoever took her head would 
be the one who had proved themselves fit to rule. She and her bodyguard 
had fled, taking the few people they most trusted with them, and after 
two years of flight and bloodshed they had arrived in Willets High. And 
yet after all that, she seemed more like a normal person than Abigail 
was now. 
    
    "I am told you are capable, by reputation," Fran said, and she gave 
a pointed, melancholy look towards Katina. "And I don't expect I will be 
allowed to stay here forever. Would you come with us when we pass under 
this 'Cobalt Line' that Casey talks about?"
    
    That was an interesting request. Abigail had not been giving any 
thought about where to go next. She had rather hoped that she could 
convince her friends to help the slaves here is Willets High, but that 
was a pipe dream at best.
    
    "Nope. Sorry, but we're not out for work right now." 
    
    Rathley's reply caught Abigail off guard, and she looked at him in 
surprise. "We're not?"
    
    "Right now what we need is R&R, not bodyguard duty," Chopper said, 
agreeing with him.
    
    "But you've been working here!"
    
    Rathley smirked. "What she means, Sugar, is that she's gonna do her 
thing, I'm gonna do mine," he held up his beer, "and we're gonna get you 
doin' yours."
    
    "My thing?" Abigail asked, confused. "Which would be what? Are there 
any air recyclers to fix around here? A local softball team?"
    
    "Besides sleepin', that's a good question, ain't it? You're good 
with machines? Find one to play with. Check out your gun. Keep that 
pitchin' arm in shape. Read your little PipBoy thing and do whatever it 
is you do with it."
    
    Across the table Casey shrugged. "I don't know, chilling out and 
getting drunk seems like more fun!"
    
    Fran seemed disappointed by the reply, and the reasons for it, but 
she did not press. "Well, if any of you change your minds I don't hope 
to be leaving for some time yet."
    
    "Unless the Radscorpions do start causing problems," Katina put in. 
She smiled at Fran, looking a little evil. "Unless you wanna go on 
another bug hunt?"
    
    The tall, portly woman shuddered. "Ugh, no way Kat. That's not 
funny."
    
    "It's hilarious!"
    
    Chopper on the other hand had a more concerned look as she spoke to 
David. "You were talking about them last night. The guards did take care 
of them?"
    
    "We don't know. I'd assume not, since they haven't said anything. 
The slavers here don't seem like the modest type, but the way they're 
armed they either have orders not to say anything until they've made 
sure the ruins out there are completely clean, or they have a bigger 
problem than they're letting on."
    
    "You meant the scorpions that are eating all the giant ants?" 
Abigail asked, "Like the cook at the hotel said?"
    
    Chopper nodded. "Yeah. They'll eat people given half a chance. Tough 
bastards as well, unless you're armed and you know what you're doing."
    
    Rathley chuckled. "At least the guys here have it half right. I 
expect those fancy guns ain't gonna save you when you've got a stinger 
buried in your back."
    
    "And I suppose you can do better, old man?" Katina said, baiting 
him.
    
    "Damn right. Old Bert and me, I'll bet fifty caps we killed more of 
those fuckers than you've seen in your entire life, Sugar."
    
    Katina just put her hands up, accepting the loss of her trivial 
game. "No bet. I've never been dumb enough to walk into a pack of 'em."
    
    With the conversation back on the other half of the table, Casey 
turned to Abigail again. "So, when's your hand going to heal up? I'm 
always itching to try out a new gun!"
    
    Abigail opened her mouth, but to her surprise Chopper's attention 
was on them and not Katina and Rathley. "Oh, that bandage is coming off 
today," Chopper said. "I'm going to be dragging her off to the ruins 
again once we're done with lunch."
    
    "What?!"
    
    Chopper leaned in and kissed her, transparent in her attempt to 
mollify her. Annoyingly it did work, at least a little.
    
    "A few bits of tape to keep the wound from opening up again and 
you'll be fine. I can even give you a shot of my painkillers if the 
kickback's too rough on it. Better you learn how to aim when you've got 
an incentive to waste as few bullets as possible, hmm?"
    
    Now that was a bit much to ask, even from her. However, it was now 
that she saw Kyle and Sharn coming to join them, and the first thing out 
of Kyle's mouth was, "The range awaits your arrival, ladies. Are you 
ready for your re-match?"
    
    Abigail glared at Chopper. "You couldn't wait until tomorrow?"
    
    "We have plans for tomorrow. They involve being able to shoot."
    
    "And you couldn't even ask me along for my opinion?"
    
    Chopper did not seem dissuaded by her annoyance. "You had passed out 
by then."
    
    Opposite her Casey giggled, and tried to look sympathetic. "Ohh, a 
drunken plan about guns. That bodes well, huh? Well, if you're going 
shooting already do you mind if I come along. I want to see how good you 
guys really are!"

***
    
    After all that there little chance for Abigail to escape, and both 
Casey and Katina joined the five of them in their second attempt to get 
Abigail shooting.
    
    To her surprise, the gun itself was actually not much larger than 
the old thing Albert had given her, now that it was in her hands 
properly. It was aged as well - she suspected most guns had been 
reclaimed from the wreckage of the war - but had been cleaned well and 
treated with care by whoever had last owned it, or by the gunsmith 
himself.
    
    What scared her were the bullets. Or 'cartridges', according to 
Katina and Rathley. They had roughly the same diameter as Choppers 
bullets, but instead of a simple casing the things she was supposed to 
be firing had a huge back end, making it look more like something to put 
down an elephant than any normal bullet. Well, maybe that was a bit of 
an exaggeration, but they were big!
    
    "Not as big as some," Kyle had replied, pulling his own largest 
pistol from his pack. He'd brought it along once he had been told that 
Rathley had recommended the smaller magnum for her, and she'd never 
actually seen him fire the thing. The so called 'forty-four' was Kyle's 
worst-case scenario pistol, and he only had two clips of ammunition for 
it, but he told her about it with a strange sense of reverence. 
    
    "Now hold up one of your bullets next to this one," he said, popping 
one of his .44 magnum rounds out of the clip and holding it up. 
    
    With a sense of trepidation Abigail did as she was told, and it was 
clear that Rathley had not been entirely untruthful when he had said he 
was going easy on her. "Yours will kick until you get used to them. 
These? They'll try to rip your fingers off!"
    
    "That's not really helping, Kyle."
    
    It also didn't help that he laughed in response either. "Fair 
enough, but the point is that you could handle my Eagle if you took the 
time to get used to her. You've got the strength, you're an athlete, you 
just don't have the experience."
    
    Abigail didn't believe him, but at least he was being nice about it. 
"Maybe. Better you than me though. Well, let's get it over with."
    
    Given that they had guests this time Kyle had decided to abandon the 
shooting challenge, and instead had everyone lined up with a can or 
bottle on the wall in front of them. Rathley and Sharn sat back and 
watched, since bringing their shotgun and rifle to a pistol range didn't 
seem fair.
    
    Chopper started off the shooting by missing her target 
spectacularly, but the rest of them had better luck. Casey used a gun 
similar to the one Abigail had lost, and picked her target off the wall 
with little trouble, although she had a very square stance that Katina 
was constantly trying to correct for her. Katina herself also had a 
revolver which Abigail was glad to see, though it was larger than her 
own. Then she heard the woman shoot it. The weapon sounded like a cannon 
going off, and Katina's can was torn in half when the bullet punched 
through it.
    
    "Oh shit..."
    
    "Don't worry about that," Kyle advised. Lining up his own shot. 
"She's firing .44s, like mine."
    
    Kyle the planted his feet, looked down the line of his huge silver 
gun, and mimicked Katina by shattering his bottle on the wall. 
    
    "One of these'll put down a brahmin," Katina boasted, grinning at 
Abigail's hesitance. "Go on already. Give it a squeeze."
    
    Abigail swallowed hard, and set her feet in the way Kyle had told 
her. She looked down at the long cut on her hand and the strips of 
surgical tape that held it shut. Oh fuck, she thought. Here goes 
nothing.
    
    "Get your back straight," Rathley called from behind her, and she 
let out a held breath, wishing he would shut up just at that point.
    
    "Just be prepared for more recoil than last time, and you'll be 
fine," was Kyle's more helpful advice. 
    
    Abigail decided she had better just shoot before anyone else decided 
she needed 'help', so she raised her gun, squinted down the sights and 
fired.
    
    She flinched when the gun bucked violently in her hand, and damn was 
it loud, but then it was over. She was still standing, her fingers were 
still intact, and there was a neat chip out of the top of the wall, a 
few inches from the bottle she had aimed for. She let out a sigh and 
lowered the gun again. "Whew. Heh, yeah, that feels worse than the old 
one!"
    
    "It should do," Rathley replied, "with the amount of gunpowder they 
stuff in those."
    
    "Hey, I guess that's not bad for your first shot," Casey said, and 
Sharn bounded over to them with a grin on her face.
    
    "So? What do you think? Gunner-man was right about how much meaner 
it sounds!"
    
    Rathley just looked smug from his seat among the rubble. "That's the 
plan."
    
    It was a fairly good plan, it turned out. Given her attitude towards 
guns he had advised that she buy a dozen or so of each type of 
ammunition the gunsmith had offered. She would train on the harsher .357 
rounds and they would get her used to how the gun sounded and felt, but 
once she was comfortable with it she would only ever have one of them in 
her gun at any time, as her 'warning shot'. The rest of the chamber 
would be filled with .38s which were easier to fire, but slightly less 
impressive to hear. That way if she had to take part in a fire fight the 
gun would feel a lot easier to use, while her first shot would hopefully 
make enough of a statement to dissuade anyone from starting one to begin 
with, or guarantee a more lethal opening shot if someone else started 
it.
    
    Not that it was going to replace her knives - she was far more 
comfortable and accurate with those - but at least now she had something 
to use as a scare tactic, or against more heavily armoured assailants.
    
    And beyond the sharp flashes of pain in her wounded hand, the gun 
behaved itself just as the gunsmith had said it would. Casey seemed 
surprised that Abigail was such a poor shot, but then she hadn't quite 
realised that that firearm training had been restricted to security 
personnel down in the vault. "I was just learning how to fix the 
ventilation and lighting systems!"
    
    Katina however had been spending more time observing her as the 
afternoon had worn on. After Abigail had emptied her chamber and called 
a halt to her practice for the sake of her throbbing hand, Katina tucked 
her own gun into her waistband and wandered over. 
    
    "You looked more formidable that that. I can't believe you still 
need teachin'."
    
    She had spoken with an idle sort of condescension, but Abigail took 
exception to it. "Life was better when I didn't have to worry about 
guns, and being shot at all the time. And *you* were always pulling 
Casey around because she's standing wrong."
    
    Katina smiled. "Fair enough. But she can fight, at least."
    
    "She is pretty good," Abigail admitted. Casey was nowhere near 
Kyle's level of skill, but she was better than Chopper or herself.
    
    "And at least she's less likely to run up to a raider in nothin' but 
that vest with whatever blunt instrument she found last."
    
    That was exactly what Abigail's own companions were trying to do for 
her. If only Katina didn't make it sound so much like a joke. She 
couldn't help it if throwing sharp objects was as good as her fighting 
skills got.
    
    "And at least I've graduated from throwing ground nuts at raiders," 
she joked. 
    
    She never expected Katina to laugh though, but she did. The scruffy 
woman actually collapsed on Abigail's shoulder, laughing like she had 
just heard the best joke in the world, all her attitude vanishing in the 
blink of an eye. "Hahahahahahah! No wonder Case likes you, vault girl! 
Oh, you two are precious! Hey Case, guess what, vault girl was a rock 
chucker as well!"
    
    Casey looked around from the firing line, surprised. "Really? No 
way! And you said it was a stupid idea! Those rocks saved my life more 
than once, you know?"
    
    "Hey, don't point it this way! Gun down, damn it!"
    
    "Umm... Oops?"

***
    
    That night Abigail took to the beer with more caution. It wasn't 
that the limp alcohol was any worse than the night before, or the 
company any less fun, but after her night of shivers both she and 
Chopper had decided that it was worth seeing if it really was the 
alcohol that had done it, or just the cold. 
    
    Or, Abigail had realised, the combination of booze and pills that 
night. That was most likely. You couldn't drink with aspirin, and now 
maybe she had found out what happened when you mixed alcohol and 
Buffout. All the more reason to rely less on those little green tablets, 
she decided. 
    
    She didn't dare share her late realisation with Chopper though. She 
had received enough of a bollocking about it the first time, and so far 
her scavenged tube of toothpaste was hiding the chemical taste of the 
steroid behind a veil of peppermint. With a strategic bit of tooth 
brushing every now and then Chopper need not know, and it was Abigail's 
business to deal with.
    
    Still, she was pleasantly drunk soon enough, and she was content to 
play with Sharn, Katina and Casey while the others drank and compared 
weapon calibres.
    
    "Bah, as if point-oh-four-three of a centimetre makes any 
difference," Katina said, very loudly. Her baggy clothing was now 
hanging off her as if she had slept in it and just woken up, and it made 
her look far more drunk than Abigail suspected she was.
    
    "A gun's a gun. It does the job. It's a tool. And if your tool ain't 
up to it then you just make up for that as best you can." She grew a 
huge, salacious smile and cocked her head back to the other table. 
"Right David?"
    
    "I love you too Kat."
    
    "Hee, he loves me. And he's good with his fingers," she added, 
wiggling her digits at Abigail and Sharn.
    
    Sharn just gazed lazily back at her, her head propped in her hands. 
"Hm. I don't have that problem."
    
    "Trust me, teach him. No matter how good his gun is, it's worth it."
    
    Abigail was having flashbacks of her old sleepovers with Dee and 
Jaqueline. Abigail had been as interested in gossip, sex, or gossip 
*about* sex as the next girl, but when it was other girls she was 
wanting to sleep with? It would have made for a bit of a conversation 
killer, and she knew Sharn was still wary about Abigail and Chopper's 
physical intimacy.
    
    Not that Casey or Katina knew that, of course. "Eh," Casey sighed, 
"I need to find someone who'll let me drag them around the desert too."
    
    To Abigail and Sharn's surprise Katina looked hurt. "What? You have 
us."
    
    "Yeah, but... you and David are... you know, you and David." She 
sounded earnest about that, if a little melancholy.
    
    "What? Of course not. Well, sometimes, except when it's you and 
David. Or you and me. Or all three of us in a heap."
    
    "Well, yeah, but..."
    
    Abigail blinked, the latter part of their exchange passing her by as 
she looked from Katina over to David at the other table. "Huh? You two 
aren't related?"
    
    "What?" Katina stared at her as if she was mad. "No. And no, we 
*don't* look alike!" Despite the fact that they definitely did, and both 
Abigail and Casey could tell they agreed on that. 
    
    Then Sharn stopped them, wearing an incredulous expression. "Wait, 
wait. You three *do* that?"
    
    "Sure," Katina replied, drunkenly unassuming. "You know. Variety, 
seasonings, all that jazz? We're a sharing lot!"
    
    Sharn just looked confused, and a little cautious now. "If someone 
did that with my gunner-man I'd run her through."
    
    "And what if *she* was a *he*?" Katina asked, obviously looking to 
make trouble now that Sharn's mores were in the open.
    
    "Then I'd 'disarm' the bastard."
    
    Casey sighed while the other two squared off, and turned to Abigail 
with a smile. "I guess Chopper must be good too, huh? I've heard stories 
about her."
    
    That brought Abigail up short. She hadn't a ready excuse for her 
nocturnal proclivities, but then it seemed she didn't need one any more. 
"Umm, yeah. I met one of those stories. She was nice, but Chopper never 
said why she broke up with her. Or she didn't give a decent excuse, 
anyway. But Chopper's a bit like that. She's not very nice a lot of the 
time, until you find all the love underneath that insensitive skin."
    
    "Must be a pretty thick skin, because no-one but her girlfriends 
ever seem to see it," Sharn said, sounding unconvinced.
    
    Abigail shrugged. "It's... personal. She's passionate, very 
passionate, and she just sweeps you up. Even when I'm mad at her she can 
do it. It's really annoying!"
    
    "Sounds brilliant to me!" Casey said, grinning from ear to ear. 
"Maybe we could share sometime?"
    
    Abigail blinked, unable to form a coherent response to that. What 
reason was there not to? Except that she wanted Chopper to herself. The 
passionate Chopper was *her* Chopper. And looking at the other side, 
Casey was fun, and Abigail was attracted to her despite her unsettling 
choice of facial accessories, but actually doing anything would be 
betraying Chopper's trust. Abigail was Chopper's lover, and despite her 
prickly exterior she *did* love her. 
    
    Chopper was a deeply passionate cactus? 
    
    Abigail had to stifle a giggle as soon as she opened her mouth.
    
    "Ah." Casey looked embarrassed. "Silly question?"
    
    "Umm, no, it's just... I don't think..."
    
    From the other table Chopper's voice caught their attention. "I'm 
not available, and I'm afraid you're not my type." She paused, her voice 
getting quieter. "What Abby wants to do is her business."
    
    Abigail found herself sobering up at that statement. What the hell? 
Was she allowing Abigail to sleep with Casey?!
    
    "I'm not going to spend our entire stay trying to separate you two," 
Chopper added. So it was clear there was a line, and from the tone in 
Chopper's voice it made a big difference which side of it Abigail stood 
on. Chopper just wasn't going to stop her crossing it if that was what 
she was intent on doing.
    
    Abigail looked back at Casey, trying not to notice that both their 
groups were waiting for her to speak. "... I'm sorry, Casey. I don't 
want to lose her."
     
    Thankfully Casey didn't seem hurt by that. "Yeah, I didn't want to 
break you up or anything. I just thought it might be fun."
    
    "Well," Rathley said, now that the eavesdropping was over, "if you 
girlies *do* want to play together while you're here, Kyle, Chopper and 
me have been thinkin' about a little run around the ruins. And assumin' 
the Dean's people still ain't back by mornin', we might just wander out 
and take out those Radscorpions ourselves. Properly. Earn ourselves a 
little respect. What do ya' say?"

***
    
    This time Abigail woke to a hotel room that was bright with morning 
sun and a body that was still fully under her own control. Her weak arms 
ached from breaking in her new gun and she barely had the energy to turn 
over, away from the sunlight that tried in vain this time to filter 
through the shutters, but there were no shivers or spasms to scare her 
into full wakefulness. So it was not the alcohol that disagreed with her 
after all. 
    
    Her head did not bother her so much either, and it was with a more 
luxurious laziness, rather than pained retreat, that she tried not to 
finish waking up. No more Buffout with her beer, and probably no more 
before bed regardless, just to be sure. 
    
    She had no time for her own advice that morning though. She just 
wanted to enjoy her lie in before she was roused for either more medical 
study or, if she was unlucky, a bug hunting expedition. If she did have 
to go then having Casey along would be nice, but apparently attracting 
attention to themselves was the last thing on David or Katina's 
schedule, even hidden away in Willets High. The people they were running 
from must have been very persistent.
    
    But soon enough Abigail's bleary dozing was disturbed by the sound 
of the closing door, and the heavy footfalls of Chopper's boots. 
    
    Maybe if I pretend to be asleep she'll be in nice mode and won't 
bother me, she thought. I don't care how late it is. I don't want to 
waste any energy getting up!
    
     To her thankful surprise Chopper seemed to do just that. She 
dropped a few things, but whatever she *was* doing she didn't say a 
word. Abigail found herself trying not to smile and break her slumbering 
act. Thank you, Chopper.
    
    Then, a few moments of blissful non-sleep later, was the sound of 
two boots being removed. And more clothing? Abigail had barely 
considered it before Chopper did pull back the covers and crawl back 
into bed.
    
    But not beside her. Instead Abigail felt one warm, sturdy leg climb 
over her so that Chopper's soft thighs straddled her waist. Somewhere in 
that right thigh was a deep, ugly hole - a bullet wound long since 
healed - but right now it simply caressed her hip, the old scar of no 
matter at all. 
    
    Large, gentle hands - larger than Abigail's own at least - took her 
shoulder and rolled her onto her back with care. It opened Abigail's 
eyes only because she knew she could not keep up the charade any longer, 
but the lack of force or roughness in Chopper's touch might never have 
roused her otherwise. 
    
    Kneeling above her Chopper looked down and pursed her lips. "You 
were faking?"
    
    Abigail was too relaxed by the care with which Chopper had handled 
her to be embarrassed or ashamed, and simply blushed up at her. Chopper 
was clad only in her underwear, and the sheets pooled behind her. "I 
hope you were going to wake me up before doing anything else."
    
    Chopper leaned down to kiss her, just brushing her lips at first, 
but more deeply when Abigail gave in to the desire to kiss back. Chopper 
tasted of ant meat and apple-tomatoes, and it made Abigail realise how 
hungry she was, but more than that she was pleased to have found out 
what Chopper had chosen for breakfast like this.
    
    Abigail was loath to let her go just then, but Chopper pulled back, 
looming over her on all fours. "Would that have been enough of a 
warning?"
    
    Abigail kicked the now uncomfortably warm sheets from her legs and 
nodded. "What brought this on?"
    
    Chopper lowered herself, and nuzzled into Abigail's neck as if 
seeking her own comfort in Abigail's body they way Abigail so often 
sought it in Chopper's. She felt Chopper's fingers trailing down her 
sides, stroking comfortingly. "The missing slavers haven't come back 
after all. You're going to have to put that gun to good use."
    
    Abigail released her soft hold on Chopper, and tried to look her in 
the eyes. "Then this is consolation?"
    
    Chopper pulled herself fully onto Abigail, her heavy breasts and 
twisted bra pressing into Abigail's small bosom. To Abigail's surprise 
she didn't seem in the least worried or apologetic. In fact she almost 
seemed to gloat to herself, and she kissed Abigail again, her eyes 
glowing with triumph. "Why would I need an excuse to take you to 
paradise?"
    
    Abigail caught her breath, a blossom of warmth flooding her stomach 
as Chopper's thumb swept over her navel. "And the scorpions?"
    
    "What about them?" she replied, kissing back down into Abigail's 
neck. "They won't be a problem. I just thought you'd want to know."
    
    That unbridled confidence only made Abigail's cheeks warmer. Maybe 
this was Chopper's display of victory over Casey, or perhaps her lack of 
concern about the Radscorpions was a bluff, but either way she had drawn 
out Abigail's desire with ease. If Chopper wanted to love her now, then 
Abigail would revel in it eagerly. She untied Chopper's brassiere and 
pulled it from between them, and wrapped her legs around the hand that 
edged between them. "Okay. Show me that paradise of yours then."

***
    
    According to Rathley hunting Radscorpions was rather like emergency 
dental surgery; laborious, painful, and with a high risk of infection in 
the most awkward places. They both also tended to leave you wondering if 
it was really worth the effort or the toxic swellings. Either you were 
desperate to have the problem dealt with, or you were a masochist.
    
    He said all this with a casual cheeriness that made Abigail wonder 
if he was just reliving his glory days. Apparently Old Bert had spent a 
week as a hunchback thanks to these creatures and the poisons they had 
pumped into him. 
    
    Casey, Kyle and Chopper had far more measured opinions on 
Radscorpions though. They were not fun critters, but despite their size 
they were still little more than vermin. Vermin that could take on a 
Brahmin one for one and win, but vermin none the less. It was their 
tendency to hunt in packs that made them dangerous. The general 
consensus was that if you had to go after Radscorpions, you needed to 
ambush them before they ambushed you. 
    
    "And don't fight them at night," Rathley added, spitting into the 
urban detritus. "They can see better than you can. Well, maybe not you 
Sugar," he looked into Abigail's sunglasses, "but these slavers? Bought 
it as soon as the sun went down, any money."
    
    It wasn't a cheery thought, but Abigail wasn't in the least worried. 
She had an angry green fairy flying through her head, injecting 
confidence directly into her brain. To her mind it made a lot more sense 
to get the Buffout into her system *before* the fighting started, that 
way whatever powering up the drug gave her had time to get working 
properly. The initial rush of aromatic adrenaline was great, but she 
should be able to push herself further once it had got into her 
bloodstream. She knew that if she was going to be fighting eight foot 
killer scorpions then she was going to crack when it came down to the 
fight. And if she was going to do it anyway then she ought to be making 
the most of every tablet, not popping them any time her nerve broke. She 
had to make sure that she didn't freeze up and didn't flinch. She had to 
be professional about it. 
    
    Even Casey was professional. She had swapped her bubbling energy for 
cautious darting eyes and a grim curl on her pierced lips. When she 
spoke she slipped back into her happy demeanour, grinning at them 
despite her wariness, but she only let her guard down for a moment at a 
time.
    
    "Yeah, I've done Radscorpions before," she said when Sharn asked. 
"Nasty, tough things. It's hard to get close enough to them for a good 
smack!"
    
    She pulled an old golf club from the cylindrical bag on her back, 
and swung it downwards to illustrate. "Trouble was they didn't think 
anything about crawling right up to us, even when Kat and Dave were 
shooting them. You need *really* good aim or a *really* big gun to take 
one down in one shot."
    
    Chopper shrugged, as if that didn't matter. "Just throw as much lead 
at them as you can. They can't walk if you've shredded their legs."
    
    Casey glanced at her, but ignored her advice since she and Rathley 
were the only ones whose weapons could manage that. "The best way we 
found if you're up close," she advised Sharn and Abigail, "was to have 
someone with good aim shooting at the head or side, and someone keeping 
the tail busy to distract it."
    
    She swung her golf club again. "Whoever's clubbing needs to watch 
out for their claws though. Just distract it, then get out of range and 
let your partner shoot."
    
    "Maybe I should have brought a spear after all," Sharn said. She had 
her rifle, and that should be enough, but Sharn was good with long hand-
to-hand weapons.
    
    Similarly, Abigail was not good in a melee, and if these creatures' 
carapaces were as tough as Rathley said then her knives wouldn't do her 
much good unless she was stabbing up close.
    
    "I've got more if you want one?" 
    
    Casey pulled another club out of her golf case and offered it to 
Sharn. "My hockey stick doesn't work to well on their shells, but a 
metal club can crack them nicely!"
    
    Sharn looked at it a moment, then declined. "No, thanks. I'd need 
something pointed. But I'm sure a rifle bullet will do just as well. You 
do have an... interesting collection though."
    
    "Hee hee, thanks! I've never been so good at fighting, but it's kind 
of hard to argue with a nine iron!"
    
    Kyle gave a look at the bulge of her handgun in the pocket of her 
green pants. "And the ten mil?"
    
    Casey looked down her to pocket and smiled sheepishly. "Same as 
Abby. Kat's right, it can't hurt to be prepared. And besides, it's 
cool!"

***
    
    Just as Willets High was not a large town, its surrounding city was 
not vast by the standards that Abigail had been brought up on. The 
fallen skeletons of high rises could be circumvented given time, and 
wide roads offered some ease of passage through the mountains of debris. 
In fact, getting around the ruins was far easier than getting *into* 
them, especially now that its inhabitants made infrequent but regular 
forays to hunt rats and ants, clearing foraging runs for themselves as 
they went.
    
    More worrying than the scrambling over rubble was the looming threat 
of a collapse. Not a single structure, be it a shed or a sky scraper, 
looked as though it still had the strength to support itself. Abigail 
feared that a single sneeze might knock any given building right down, 
and even Rathley in his metal shell would be hard pressed to escape from 
that unscathed. 
    
    And even though the city had been smallish, and only the centre had 
ridden its earthquake plug into calamitous obscurity, it was still a lot 
of ground to search on foot. 
    
    "Tracking these things ain't so easy in here," Rathley retorted when 
Sharn complained. "For such big bastards they don't leave such great 
tracks, even out in the desert. In here we'll be lucky to spot anythin' 
less obvious than a dead shell."
    
    He waved his arm at the fallen buildings, and Abigail could 
understand his point. Even their own six strong party wasn't leaving 
much in the way of tracks in the concrete rubble and sparse dust. 
Looking for the 'pointed ripples', as Rathley called them, of Radcorpion 
tracks would be even harder. 
    
    Rathley continued. "They don't nest in the open though. They'll hide 
up in caves or hollows. That's why I told you to be looking at the 
buildin's. They're gonna be in there, or else in some basement. Findin' 
tracks'll just give us a better idea of *where* to start huntin' 
properly." 
    
    Rathley's idea of 'hunting properly' didn't sound like a great idea 
to Abigail. "If we go inside any of these they'll collapse!"
    
    Kyle chuckled at her worried voice. "If the building they're in can 
hold a Radscorpion it can certainly hold a skinny thing like you, Abby!"
    
    Beside her Casey patted Abigail on the shoulder, commiserating. "I 
think we've just been volunteered." 
    
    Abigail had to admit, Casey was almost as thin as she was, and 
taller to boot.

***

    The day was wearing on and the sun had got very hot when Rathley 
pulled them to a sudden stop. Kyle and Casey froze the second the old 
wastelander's arm went up, but Abigail's attention had faltered under 
the heat, looking for something to keep her Buffout fuelled nerves 
occupied, and she only noticed they were stopping when she walked right 
into Kyle's back.
    
    "Oof, what..."
    
    To her surprise Rathley clamped his hand over her mouth hard, and it 
took her a moment to realise she wasn't supposed to struggle.
    
    "Shh!" he hissed, and while he held her still his eyes began to scan 
the heaps of rubble and the blasted shop fronts that lined the chewed up 
road.
    
    With her head trapped by Rathley's hand Abigail couldn't follow his 
gaze, but both Kyle and Sharn were scouring the ruins as well. What on 
earth could Rathley have heard? There was nothing there. Abigail's 
senses were better than theirs, especially with her head lit up by the 
Buffout.
    
    Then she heard it too. Something was scratching against wood, up 
ahead. Where was that? The sound was faint and difficult to pin down 
among all the grey wreckage, and then just as suddenly as they had 
stopped so did the scratching. 
    
    "Shit, I think they heard us." Rathley reached for the stock of his 
shotgun, sticking from his backpack, and Sharn and Casey followed suit 
with their own weapons of choice.
    
    "But we heard them first," Kyle replied with a confident whisper. 
"So everyone take a shop and make a racket as soon as you see something. 
Everyone get back here, and we let them come to us."
    
    "Fair enough. Pick a door, boy."
    
    He, Kyle and Sharn immediately slipped away to whichever door was in 
front of them, leaving Abigail, Chopper and Casey to look at each other. 
While Casey simply shrugged at them Chopper mirrored Abigail's 
expression, distinctly unhappy with the new plan.
    
    "Gah, fuck it. Go already, I'll check that one. This is *not* how I 
fight."
    
    Abigail shared her girlfriend's sentiment, but she took the cue and 
dashed in the direction Kyle had gone. That was where *she* thought the 
sound had come from, and ran as silently as possible past the shop front 
and into the alleyway between the still standing walls of the two 
buildings there. To her rational mind this seemed very unwise, but to 
her tense, chemically enhanced one it made perfect sense. The alley was 
not wide and offered little chance for the beast to ambush her except 
from the roof, and she was still an athlete, so darting past each 
intersection and eliminating them one by one would be child's play. 
    
    She did not get far before she saw the blood on the windowsill. She 
froze, having already circled to the back of Kyle's chosen shop. The 
window was gone, as they all were, but someone or something had bled 
over the windowsill, either crawling in or out. She touched a finger to 
the stain and it came away tacky, but not wet. It was nearly dry.
    
    Then Kyle hollered from inside. 
    
    "Got her! In the key cutters! Just one!
    
    So she'd been right! The scratching had come from in there. She 
puffed up with pride at the thought. What was more, she was in a perfect 
position to take advantage of it. As long as there were no more waiting 
in the wings she could stop it from retreating further into the shop. 
After all, if they liked to hunt in packs, would just one of them be 
willing to chase Kyle all the way into a five man firing squad? If so 
then job done, but if not she could make sure it didn't escape.
    
    She tested the sill for stability, and when it didn't budge she 
vaulted inside. 

***
    
    Rathley took a step inside the room that sat behind the shop's 
splintered countertop. In one swift movement his body and his shot gun 
came down to face the right wall, and when nothing moved his eyes and 12 
gauge muzzle panned across the room in a swift arc, covering as much of 
the floor as possible. Seeing nothing he strode in and made straight for 
the door on the left wall, one room down and moving on to the next. 
    
    Quick, methodical, and careful. It was a rare mantra for him to use, 
but combating Radcorpions in such confined quarters required it. He 
would be lucky to get two shells off before the arachnids could be on 
top of him, pulling him apart. 
    
    Not that he intended to fight inside. He would have done had 
circumstances been different, but he was with new company these days and 
Kyle's plan was both sound and safe. He had killed enough of the eight 
legged monstrosities to have turned their extermination into an art-
form, almost on a par with the old bastard who had taught *him*. Those 
two shells would be all he needed to put one of the giant critters down, 
knowing exactly where to put his lead at such close range and then 
advancing or retreating as the remaining Radscorpions demanded.
    
    The only reasons not to were Abigail, Sharn, and the stability of 
the building. The two women needed to be introduced to Radscorpions 
quickly, and fighting them above ground was the ideal way of doing so. 
There would be plenty of places to run, and many opportunities to 
overwhelm even a moderate group of 'scorpions. 
    
    And the shop? Well, that had remained standing through a continent-
wide nuclear holocaust, at least one major earthquake, and over a 
century of seasonal sandstorms. One wad of misplaced buckshot might be 
all that kept it from its eventual and inevitable collapse.
    
    But that wouldn't happen today. Kyle's shout echoed across the 
street, signalling his success at hunting down their quarry. Rathley 
allowed himself an annoyed smirk before dashing back out. The boy would 
be cocky as hell about it tonight, the bastard.
    
    And it was just the one 'scorpion? Talk about an easy introduction 
for the girls. Still, as long as they didn't get over-confident about 
their easy kill...
    
    Rathley ran back to the street, just as they all did. Sharn and 
Chopper looked relieved, while Abigail's new punk/goth/raider friend had 
swapped her paranoid look for one of energetic anticipation. *She* had 
the right idea, and who the fuck cared if she took it too far. You could 
*never* be to too careful, but nor should that take the fun out of the 
hunt.
    
    Rathley did not expect to take part in this fight though. He simply 
watched as the Radscorpion scuttled out of the wrecked shop-front, and 
right into Sharn, Chopper and Casey's sights. Kyle was drawing one of 
his own pistols as well, even as he joined them. There was no point in 
Rathley wasting a shell just to add to the wall of lead that would rain 
down on the giant arachnid. His energy was better spent watching the 
alley and streets, because even if there was just the one they were 
about to announce themselves *real* loud. 
    
    The Radscorpion was a large one, but just as Rathley had described 
to Abigail and Sharn. Unlike many other creatures the only major effect 
of the war's radiation on the Radscorpion had been to give it its size, 
and its more potent sting. The thing's body was a full five feet in 
length, maybe more, and then its large claws could reach another three 
feet out from its mouth. Add to that another five feet of tail arched 
over its back, capped with a sizable curved stinger, and even one alone 
was an intimidating sight. It was also covered in deep reddish plates of 
chitin, though Rathley had seen Radscorpions with shells that were 
almost black.
    
    As soon as Kyle had reached his firing line he, Sharn, Casey and 
Chopper all opened fire. Chopper only fired a few short bursts from her 
submachine gun, but for her hitting with two bullets out of seven was 
better that trying to aim properly and hitting with none. Kyle and Sharn 
were far better, each putting two rounds into the creature, while Casey 
managed to add a fifth soon enough. However, both her shot and one of 
Sharn's could only punch into the beasts heavy claws when they should 
have been entering through the weaknesses in its armour around its face. 
    
    But despite their amateurish showing Sharn did put one round into 
its body proper, and with the penetration power that her rifle could 
muster it must have done a world of hurt to the beast's insides. 
Similarly, Kyle knew exactly where to aim and carefully put two bullets 
into the same spot in quick succession, cracking open its shell and 
ripping a dirty great hole in the side of its recessed head. 
    
    Radscorpions were not known for their stupidity however. This one 
knew that it was outmatched, and rather than charge further into the 
hail of gunfire it wisely turned and began to scuttle back into the 
building, letting out its rattling call and trailing its damaged claw 
across the ground as it went. It was not dead, but it would not survive 
long like that. 
    
    It was then that Chopper also realised that her girlfriend was 
missing. "Wait a minute, where the hell is Abby?! God damn it!"
    
    Rathley shook his head and idly wandered over to her side of the 
line. "Give the girlie some credit, Sugar. Who's money says she's in 
there already?"
    
    "What?!"
    
    And just as he said it the Radscorpion reached the wall again, 
crawling sideways to drag its claw as it went, and in an instant its 
exposed tail was grabbed from behind the concrete wall.
    
    "Damn." Kyle exclaimed, watching as the creature dragged Abigail out 
from behind her cover to reveal her with one arm wrapped around its tail 
and another pushing her knife deep between the articulated plates of 
chitin. "Crazy girl. That's one way of doing it I guess."
    
    They all watched Abigail, afraid to fire in case they hit her as she 
yanked the knife sideways, ripping the Radscorpion's tail apart in the 
process. The creature gave a hissing croak of a scream and Abigail 
danced away to let the broken tail hang from its bloody, thrashing 
stump, not quite cut through.
    
    Rathley loved being right.
    
    At the gun line Casey set the safety on her pistol and bounded 
forward, pulling her golf club from her bag. "Now *that's* better! 
Fore!"
    
    They all watched as Abigail stood back, breathing heavily, and 
allowed Casey to bring her club down right on the fleshy wound that Kyle 
had opened up. The Radscorpion must not have had long left to live now, 
but that was one blow too many and its legs finally stopped their 
panicked crawling and let its body fall limp. 
    
    Not that it stopped Casey giving the creature another whack for good 
measure, and even Abigail kicked its tough shell in one last fit of 
adrenal defiance.
    
    Rathley wandered up to them, the gun line in tow, and smiled as he 
regarded Abigail, Casey and Sharn.
    
    "And that, girls, was a Radscorpion. Just don't get cocky. It's only 
easy when you know how."
    
    "Or when it's outnumbered six to one and Abby's feeling reckless," 
Kyle added. "Not that it didn't work. Nice job by the way."
    
    Abigail smiled though her slowing breaths, and as always it was 
clear to Rathley that she looked for Chopper's reaction. For all her up-
tight worrying, at least 'Marie' looked like she agreed with Kyle this 
time. Abigail had kept the creature and herself under control, and it 
*had* been good work.
    
    Rathley made another mental note to piss Chopper off about that 
again sometime. As long as they kept bugging her she couldn't keep the 
Marie thing to herself forever. She had limits.
    
***
    
    That had been an exhilarating battle for Abigail. She had no real 
reason to feel proud, mutilating an already badly wounded animal, but it 
had proved to her that surprise and precision were not only what she was 
best at, but that they could be very effective if only she got it right. 
She had been in no danger from the unknowing Radscorpion at all - more 
dangerous had been the chance of getting shot by one of her own hunting 
party. She did her part, and retreated to a safe distance once the 
creature's stinger had been cut apart so that Casey could finish it off 
without risking her life in the process. Her plan had worked even better 
than she had hoped. She felt like she had been an integral cog in their 
combat machine, and they appreciated her for it.  
    
    And there was the thrill of the fight, of course. The anticipation, 
the potential danger, the heady fuzz of adrenaline tied to her razor 
sharp nerves... Chopper had been right about her, those weeks ago in 
Corva. Abigail *did* like it. Combat was stimulating in a tense, nail-
biting way that was unlike anything else in the world.
    
    Assuming it was going her way. Assuming she could participate, and 
avoid getting herself or her friends killed. But still, thrilling! Or 
was that the Buffout? Did it even matter? However, caught up in the rush 
of the battle Abigail had not turned her attention to why the 
Radscorpion might have be scratching away inside the back of the shop. 
    
    Kyle had.
    
    "It was back here," he said as he led them through the shop front 
and into the rooms behind. The building, like most shops in that part of 
the city, had been built no higher than the ground floor, which was 
probably why many of them were still standing. That being so, instead of 
living above the shop the old owner had evidently found space to live in 
what Abigail assumed would have been office space, rather than having a 
separate home elsewhere.
    
    "I caught it coming out of here," Kyle explained, "but from the look 
of that wardrobe I'd say it wanted in."
    
    True enough there was a large wardrobe on the far wall, and while 
much of the ceiling had caved in over the wrecked bed and furnishings, 
the wardrobe had survived intact. 
    
    Until the Radscorpion had got at it. The front of it was covered in 
scratches and claw marks, from the ground and up four feet of the door, 
and above that the wood had been pock marked and broken through in 
several places by the animal's stinger. Enough wood had been scratched 
or splintered off that the Radscorpion would have got through sooner 
rather than later. 
    
    Rathley pushed to the front, a crooked, scarred smile on his rough 
face. "So let's see what it wanted so bad."
    
    He took hold of the knob and yanked hard. A second later he stared 
grumbling at the knob in his hand, and the still closed door. "Mph, 
well, fuck that then. Your turn, boy." 
    
    Kyle grinned openly at Rathley's annoyance, and dropped his pack to 
get out a crowbar. As he did, Abigail had a question.
    
    "What would a giant scorpion want inside an old wardrobe?"
    
    Chopper gave her an educated guess. "Meat, probably. If one of the 
slaver guards managed to get away and lock himself in. Either it saw 
him, or followed his scent?"
    
    "More like a blood trail," Kyle noted, pointing out a few spots of 
tacky blood that had oozed from under the wardrobe door. That reminded 
Abigail of the blood on the windowsill she had climbed through, and her 
stomach turned slightly at the thought of what the poor man must have 
gone through. Then she remembered that these men were slavers, and was 
this any less than they deserved? Her stomach turned again. Surely that 
should have been a simple question but it disturbed her that no 
immediate decision came to mind.
    
    Chopper and Kyle were proved right when Kyle broke open the wardrobe 
a second later. Sitting in a heap, slumped over itself, was the body of 
one of the slavers. He had no weapon in there with him, and blood 
covered his left forearm as it lay cradled in his lap, looking an 
unhealthy shade of purple.
    
    "Is he dead?" Casey asked, peering in with the rest of them, and 
Kyle checked the body for a pulse. 
    
    "Not quite. Doesn't feel too strong though."
    
    Abigail looked at the unconscious man, pity welling in her despite 
her abhorrence of his chosen profession. He had come out here to try and 
protect the town at the city's heart. He'd just... failed. But put next 
to how many lives he must have ruined, and how many people's freedom he 
had stolen... "So, what are we going to do?"
    
    "That's easy," Sharn said, turning to Chopper. "*Can* we save him?"
    
    Chopper gave her a dark look, before sighing and taking Kyle's place 
in front of the wardrobe. She checked his pulse, his forehead for 
temperature, and examined the swollen, discoloured arm. The man stirred, 
barely even returning to consciousness, but he managed to groan in 
discomfort. 
    
    "Yes. I can keep him alive. Do we want to play hero?"
    
    Rathley grinned down at her, and sucked at his teeth in amusement. 
"Tck, that's why we're out here, Sugar. If we can show 'em up a bit, all 
the better!"
    
    So that was the decision made. It surprised Abigail how much of a 
relief it was to hear that they, as a group, would do the right thing. 
Even if it was for the wrong person - no, a person less deserving of 
clemency than some - he was still a person. Feeling that relief, Abigail 
realised she *would* have felt guilty if they had just stolen what 
little he had and left him to die, curled up in his own scavenged 
coffin. She would have regretted it. It would have changed her, set a 
precedent, and not for the better. Not in the least. 
    
    She actually felt her knees get a little weak at the thought. She 
had just come so close to letting a man die out of pure spite, simply 
because Rathley might have allowed her to. Rathley, of all people!
    
    But while she worried for herself Chopper took charge. "Fair enough. 
Kyle, take the door off this thing and lay it on the bed. Sharn, help me 
get him out of here. He's too far gone to get him on his feet."
    
    Casey retreated to a safe distance while they did as Chopper said. 
"A table? You can't just give him a shot? Uh, actually, do you *have* 
any Radscorpion anti-venom?"
    
    "Yes, but that won't keep him alive now." Chopper and Sharn lay the 
fading man on her makeshift bench and turned his swollen forearm over to 
show Casey. Abigail also watched, and it looked far nastier than it had 
in the man's lap. It was not bleeding, though it was caked in the same 
drying blood as his lap and the wardrobe floor. The flesh had swollen to 
twice its size, and mottled across the bloated purple skin were blotches 
of sunken blackness. A clear ooze seeped from the wound as Chopper 
handled it, from the size of the puncture Abigail was amazed that the 
sting had not emerged from the other side. Evidently it had burrowed 
into his arm at enough of an angle to deliver its poisons properly.
    
    "Either the Radscorion's poison sacks were running dry or he was 
very lucky he didn't get this sting in his trunk. He'd be dead by now if 
he had."
    
    "Oh no," Sharn moaned, "you're going to amputate it?"
    
    Chopper nodded and, from her bag rather than her medical tin, she 
pulled a wide, flat saw - a bone saw - and a wickedly sharp meat 
cleaver.
    
    "The poison is one thing," Chopper explained as she pushed her 
patient across the door, getting him into a position to work from, "but 
his arm is already rotting. Don't want any more bad blood getting back 
into him. Sharn, hold his shoulder and pay attention. You too, Abby, 
hold his hand and try to keep it steady. He's not going to sleep through 
this."
    
    Then, to Abigail's concern, an unpleasant grin found its way onto 
Chopper's face. "Kyle, Rathley? Casey? Hold him down."
    
    And as soon as Rathley had trapped the man's arm in his own, Chopper 
drove the cleaver forward into the man's flesh. Abigail could barely 
believe what she was seeing, or hearing. Chopper brought the blade back, 
and then forward again, slicing through the man's bicep like it was a 
freshly pulled potato. The slaver screamed as well - of course he 
screamed, even half-dead and delirious he could not remain unconscious - 
but Abigail had never had to sit there and listen to pain so close at 
hand before. This man was screaming for his life, screaming for darkness 
to overtake him again as Chopper's blade bit down into his bone, 
grinding to a halt. 
    
    Chopper was talking as she went, instructing Sharn as to why so much 
of his arm had to be removed, and how to check the toxicity of his blood 
by its colour, smell and consistency, but none of it registered. All she 
could feel was the pull of the man's arm in her hands, flexing in agony. 
    
    Chopper made quick change to the bone saw and took another stroke 
forward, as if sawing copper pipe, before a loud, visceral *SNAP* shook 
his whole body. The slaver's scream cut out and he gagged on the back of 
this own throat in shock. Casey recoiled simultaneously, her hands 
flying into the air as she recoiled from the body that had convulsed in 
time with that breaking of bone.
    
    "Aaah! Oh, GOD! Ewwww! Oh god that's so *nasty*!"
    
    As soon as she let go the man's leg flew up, kicking out impotently 
into the air. 
    
    "Casey! Hold him!" Chopper shouted over the gagging screams. 
"Haven't you ever butchered your own meat before?!"
    
    "But he *cracked*." Casey grimaced, wrestling the leg back under 
control. "Ewwwwwww."
    
     Two last strokes with the knife and Chopper was down to the wood. 
And she had smiled with that same grim satisfaction the entire time. 
Even more so when she had finally made it through the bone. 
    
    "You can let go, Abby. It's just dead meat."
    
    Abigail looked down at the hand she held, and realised it was no 
longer connected to the man that screamed in the hands of the others. 
Even though it still twitched in her fingers. In an instant she released 
it, and fought down the urge to throw up over herself. 
    
    We just saved his life, she forced herself to think, blocking out 
the feeling of those fingers or the vicarious pull of the saw. We just 
saved his life, we just saved his life. 
    
    And she could only watch in sickened fascination as Sharn and 
Chopper wrestled with the man's bleeding stump, stemming the huge gouts 
of blood so that Chopper could sew up the arteries and blood vessels 
that now led nowhere.
    
    Wasn't Chopper going to use a stimpak to help stop the bleeding or 
numb the man's pain? Was the cost of them worth putting up with his 
weak, fevered screams? And Copper she really taken such satisfaction in 
dismembering him, even if it was to save his life?
    
    But then, soaked in blood and feeling both tense and nauseous, 
Abigail realised that she had forgotten something very important. The 
thing that had first led her to respect Chopper for who she was, and not 
just because she had saved her life in the desert.  
    
    Chopper was a maverick. She was willing to risk killing a man if it 
gave him even the slightest chance of survival beyond his ailment. Some 
even reviled her because she would try to save those with no other hope, 
and would be blamed for failing when no other doctor, whatever their 
reason, would even try. 
    
    And she was rightly proud of it.
    
***
    The decision then was how best to hunt down the nest from there. The 
blood trails that the slaver had left behind vanished soon after he had 
bled over the windowsill at the back of the shop, probably doing his 
best *not* to leave a trail for the arachnids to follow until that 
point. 
    
    And they had the man himself to take care of, but Chopper had given 
them all an un-amused stare when the subject had come up. "*You* go play 
with the bugs, I'll do *my* job here. I doubt you'll miss the extra gun. 
As if it would help."
    
    She didn't sound particularly self-deprecating about it either, 
despite her choice of words, so the rest of them let her dodge the hunt 
since she had obviously been looking for just this excuse not to go.
    
    "It shouldn't take long from here," Kyle explained, for Abigail and 
Sharn's sakes. "One of these things wouldn't be out far from the nest 
alone. Definitely not during the day. The fact that they haven't come 
down on us already after that racket means they're not up and about with 
their brother there either."
    
    "We stick together and search each building in turn," Rathley said, 
deciding for them. "Then we check the sewers if we have to. Don't want a 
nest swarming a smaller team, so no splitting up. You're looking for 
basements or back rooms if we get to the larger buildings. Somewhere 
dark and private."
    
    There weren't many such places either. Most of the shops and homes 
in the vicinity were single story and uncomplicated, being outside the 
main knot of the ruined city centre. When they did find a cellar or an 
old meat locker Kyle and Rathley co-ordinated them like a trained strike 
force, rather than the cavalier and haphazard fights Abigail had taken 
part in with them so far. 
    
    The same was true as they went down the stairs into the basement 
stockroom of an old toy shop. With the stairway only wide enough for one 
Rathley was crouched at the front with this shotgun levelled at the 
floor below. Behind him Kyle had a pistol drawn over the older man's 
shoulder, knowing what to look for and without an unwieldy weapon to 
interfere with their combined retreat if need be. At the top Sharn had 
her rifle aimed over them both, ready to take the first shot if anything 
moved below them. 
    
    Abigail and Casey waited for the all clear. There wasn't room to 
make use of them and their less reliable aims in that tight stairway 
except to guard the rear.
    
    But the way down at least was clear, and in the settled dust at the 
bottom they saw the wide caterpillar tracks that Rathley had told them 
to look for all morning. Radscorpion tracks.
    
    Kyle whispered for the girls to follow, and remain silent. The 
corridor at the bottom turned fright from the stairs, an open door on 
each side at its far end. The tracks led from both. 
    
    "Kyle, take the back room. Case, you keep 'em away from Sharn, 
Sugar. Abby, you an' me are takin' the front."
    
    Abigail felt as though she was taking part in a spy drama, or a 
dream like the one she faintly remembered from Micasa. It was Special 
Agent Abigail all over again as Rathley had her line up behind him, her 
new, powerful gun in her hands.
    
    "Go!"
    
    On that signal both Rathley and Kyle leapt around the corner and 
into their rooms, and the two groups were on their own. 
    
    However, while Kyle and then Sharn and Casey began firing 
immediately, Rathley had paused to take in the room and Abigail did the 
same. Dry brittle crates of dry, brittle toys lay about in heaps, 
covered with a century of dust and decayed cardboard. 
    
    And at the back their prey rose, stirred by the others' gunshots. 
Two Radcorpions scuttled around to face them, and immediately hissed and 
charged, but left behind them the third member of their brood got slowly 
to her feet. She was not larger, but weighed down with the white, 
writhing infants that clung to her back. At least seven, if not more. 
    
    "Looks like we got here just in time," Rathey quipped, and he 
punctuated it with the boom of his shotgun. "Focus on that one! Drive it 
back!"
    
    That sounded like a fool's move to Abigail, but Rathley was the 
expert and she had to trust that he knew what he was doing. She ignored 
the other Radscorpion that swiftly closed the gap, and instead fired 
three rounds at its partner. Each time she pulled the trigger the hard 
recoil pulled off her aim for the next, but while only her first bullet 
hit its target, the third shot flew past it and into the laden mother 
that had joined the chase. Her magnum powered round punched through one 
of the young and into the mother Radscorpion's back. The pale, weakly 
armoured Radscorpling fell limply from its mother's body, a huge hole 
torn through it.
    
    "Eh, whatever works," Rathley snarled, putting another round of 
buckshot into the now punctured and oozing beast between them and the 
mother.
    
    It was only after that shot that Abigail realised what Rathley had 
intended. His shotgun shell had not stopped it advancing. It had 
hesitated a moment but kept coming at them, into their fire. Only her 
following shot, and another shot from Rathley, had done damage 
significant enough for its self preservation instinct to take over from 
the instinct to attack and feed.
    
    Abigail tried to compose herself, now acutely aware that she had 
only two rounds left in her gun's chamber, but now the second un-laden 
arachnid had reached them, and it lashed out with its claws and tail. 
    
    Rathley was not to be outdone and knew exactly how to handle the 
creature that was now right on top of him. He leapt back a few steps, 
cocking his weapon again, and when he landed he was perfectly poised to 
unload the shell point-blank into the Radscorpions face. 
    
    Abigail, fuelled by adrenaline and still riding her Buffout, had to 
admire his skill. So that was how it was done. She was not about to get 
dispirited by her own lack of ammunition either, and while the 
Radscorpion tried to step closer to Rathley again she put her last two 
.38 Specials into the creature's tough carapace. At that distance it was 
no effort at all for the over powered bullets to punch through.
    
    And that was her ammunition gone. Somehow she had expected it to 
carry her further than that, but if her knives were all she had left now 
then those where what she would use. 
    
    It didn't matter as much now either, as Rathley still had two of his 
own six shells left, and one of those finally overpowered the giant 
arachnid and sent its limp body sliding back across the dusty floor. 
    
    That just left the mother. And her babies.
    
    Rathley cocked his shotgun one more time, and paused. Abigail wanted 
to advance, but she didn't have the distraction to get behind the 
creature this time. Instead she hesitated with him, waiting for 
instruction. 
    
    "If you have to use that take the little ones," Rathley said, eyeing 
her drawn knife. "They're still soft." He reached into his pocket, 
giving up the chance to advance into the wider part of the room to load 
another two shells into his gun. "Leave Mom to me."
    
    That was a plan Abigail could deal with, and they had wasted enough 
time already. The mother Radscorpion had closed most of the distance 
between them, and now that she was close her pale children were swarming 
from her back to cover the floor. Though vulnerable, they were just as 
aggressive as their parent.
    
    Abigail dashed a knife into the one that still remained contrasted 
against its mother's hide and it let out a fractured hiss as the knife 
pinned it to her. Rathley ignored the young advancing on him in favour 
of shooting the mother, and Abigail threw another knife into those that 
threatened him. However, one thrown knife will not kill two infant 
Radscorpions, and before she could make another throw the mother had 
come between her and her retreating partner. 
    
    Abigail swore, but turned to focus on what she *could* do. She 
tossed her knives in quick succession, either killing or maiming the 
young that had come after her, until she was down to her final blade. 
She had thought it would be an easy matter to stab the last two, but 
they were nimble creatures and while she managed to avoid getting stung 
her patched up hand was bleeding again from their small pincers before 
she had killed them both. 
    
    It also took that long for Rathley to kill the last adult, and 
Abigail pulled the dead creature back so that she could get at the door 
again and see what damage, if any, had been done. 
    
    Rathley looked remarkable unperturbed. His trousers were torn and he 
was favouring one leg, but he had killed the mother and the last infant 
that had been harassing him. He had trodden it to death. Taking a closer 
look Abigail could see that his new limp did not come from a large claw 
wound though, but from several small punctures in his shin. The infant 
had not been stamped out of existence without a fight, and had stung him 
repeatedly for his trouble.
    
    Neither of them could pause to celebrate or treat Rathley's wound 
either. The battle was still going in the back room, and Sharn's scream 
brought them both running, Abigail leaving her knives behind in her 
haste.
    
    Four more Radscorpion carcasses littered the floor between the 
shelves there and Kyle, Sharn and Casey stood crowded around a fifth and 
final one. Casey, was laying into its tail with her golf club, her gun 
abandoned, while Kyle hurriedly reloaded one of his pistols. The obvious 
reason for his haste was Sharn, her right thigh caught and bleeding 
between the creature's claws.
    
    But while trapped and in pain, she was not helpless. Her rifle was 
already pointed at her attacker, and one point blank rifle round into 
the creature's braincase caused its claws to go slack and put it out of 
the fight forever.
    
    Abigail ran to her ailing friend. "Sharn, are you okay?!"
    
    Sharn nodded, breathless as she looked down at the dead animal. "I 
think so. They're, uh, faster than they look. And stronger."
    
    "Sia, let me look at that leg," Kyle said, all business, and with 
her taken care of Abigail turned to the other two to see if they were 
okay. Kyle seemed unhurt, though his hard leathers might have had 
something to do with that, but Casey was sporting an angry red scratch 
down her bare midriff, which had torn the bottom of her vest.
    
    "Casey, it got you?!"
    
    Casey just grinned sheepishly, but it was obvious that the meagre 
injury was hurting her. "Yeah, a bit. You think your girlfriend has any 
of that anti-venom left? It didn't get its stinger in me properly, but 
it's kinda starting to burn."
    
    "You and me both, Sugar," Rathley said with a grin, limping back to 
the door. "If you slackers are done down here, let's get the fuck back."
    
    "They *got* you, old man?" That evidently came as a surprise to 
Kyle.
    
    "Eh, this is nothin'. A fuckin' rugrat had a go while I was blowin' 
Mom's head off."
    
    Sharn scowled at him. "You mean 'yes'. Asshole."

***
    
    Rathley, Sharn and Casey returned ahead, eager for some medical 
attention and confident enough in their success to let Abigail and Kyle 
finish scouting for more Radscorpions. 
    
    Kyle didn't expect to find any, and after another half-hour of 
searching the area he was happy to have been proven right. Still, it had 
been worth the effort to make sure no stragglers remained.
    
    And it had given Abigail time to think. She was not only starting to 
get used to combat, and somewhat used to the blood that came with it, 
but she was beginning to *think* at the same time as well. Up until now 
she had always put all her mental effort into the fight, remaining alert 
and tensed for action that might save her life. Now she had plotted as 
she had resumed the last of their reconnaissance.
    
    She had a plan.
    
    But before that came the welfare of her friends. Casey looked 
uncomfortable with her angry stinger scratch, but Chopper had treated 
the 'injury' with distain. 
    
    "You couldn't even get stung properly?" had been her first, 
insensitive question. Unfair, in Abigail's opinion. 
    
    "Well I didn't want to get it stuck through my heart!" Casey came 
back. It didn't make Chopper think any more of her, but unlike Sharn and 
Rathley the thin young woman *had* been able to get out of the way, 
barely. She didn't even need a shot of anti-venom, apparently. A wipe 
over with a root-medicine covered cloth was all Chopper would give her. 
It numbed the burning a little, and would clean the wound enough to let 
it heal on its own. 
    
    "Just treat it as a Radscorpion booster shot!"
    
    Sharn fared far less well. Radscorpion claws were meant for gripping 
prey, not cutting, but in their struggle the inside of its pincer had 
torn open her thigh, leaving a very bloody laceration. That Chopper did 
take seriously. Enough to 'waste' a stimpac and a few stitches of thread 
on her instead of simply bandaging the wound. 
    
    And Abigail had never seen Sharn cry before. Or seen her after she 
had obviously been crying, as was the case when she and Kyle actually 
got there. Sharn was a strong woman. That gash must have hurt far worse 
than any of them had given credit for. It was certainly larger than it 
had looked through her torn trouser leg. Abigail would have hugged her 
if Kyle had not got there first.
    
    Then Rathley, in obvious pain but grinning through it as if it was a 
status symbol. Chopper had pulled the leg of his trousers up to reveal 
an already swelling calf, sporting four angry red puncture marks. Enough 
to warrant a shot of anti-venom from a very old, red bottle. Again, the 
serum was probably something of Chopper's own devising, but both she and 
Rathley looked confident that it would work.
    
    There was, of course, a fourth casualty, now lying awake on the bed 
and with his makeshift operating table cast aside. The one armed slaver 
looked out of it, but he was now conscious. Apparently Chopper had gone 
back to working on him as soon as they had left for their hunt. 
    
    Cable was a young man, physically fit and probably quite alert when 
he had his wits about him. His speciality was exploring ruins, coming 
from many years of living in Willets High, but that had earned him a 
relatively isolated adult life, and even he had not been prepared to 
deal with creatures like Radscorpions en mass, never having even seen 
one before. He could rappel down a destroyed skyscraper as if it was 
child's play, hence his name, but he and his team had underestimated the 
arachnids.
    
    But he was alive, and he was thankful for that. Even more so that 
his rescuers were willing to help him back to the town. 
    
    And if he had underestimated the Radscorpions, they had *all* 
underestimated Abigail, walking at the back and making idle conversation 
with Casey.
    
    Rathley led them back to the town the short way, limping slightly, 
but he made sure to take them through the heart of it on the way to the 
old school. Abigail guessed they made for quite a sight; two limping 
scavs, one with her pants drenched in blood and the other limping and 
with a Radscorpion tail slung over his shoulder, and the rest of them 
either helping those two along or escorting a man that every resident 
would have known. Cable didn't go on 'outside operations' - slaving runs 
to Abigail and company. The city was where he was best and so that's 
where he worked, as one of the Dean's town guards. Now he was being 
brought home and was missing an arm for his troubles. 
    
    The rumour mill started almost immediately. Yes, there had been  
Radscorpions infesting the old city. But they were gone now, as were the 
team the Dean had sent in to deal with them. Unprepared and under-
trained to boot. "Cable owed his life to *that* Chopper?!... I thought 
Rathley had retired... No, I heard he'd been shot already!... Man, you 
can't shoot someone like that and kill him!... Oh man, *that's* the 
chick who killed the Hearts' Super Mutant?!... I thought she'd be 
taller... Man, she must have wiped the floor fighting Radscorpions!... 
She didn't even take a hit!... Neither did that guy, look... What a 
hunk! Who is he?"
    
    The attention was... nice. Even if Abigail bristled a little at the 
'short' comments, they knew who she was. They were talking about her 
like she was someone important! In this vast desert full of people who 
blurred together in their toil and routine, looking for figureheads and 
direction, she was *someone*. The smile on her face was a broad one. You 
couldn't buy confidence like that, even in little green pills.
    
    They arrived at the school with a crowd following behind, and the 
huge man at the door had already called for the Dean by the time they 
reached him. 
    
    "Cable!" The guard blurted as soon as he saw the cause of the 
commotion. "Jesus, Cable, what the hell happened to *you*?!"
    
    "I'd have thought that looked fairly obvious," Sharn said from the 
front, the dulled pain in her leg giving her smile a sharp edge. 
"Suffice it to say, we've been cleaning up out there a little, and found 
something of yours."
    
    The Dean smiled warmly at them all, and especially at Cable himself. 
"For which I must thank you, Chopper and... Shaan? We have dropped a 
ball that we - I - was not willing to part with." His voice fell to a 
sad sigh. "Were there no other survivors?"
    
    They allowed Cable to answer. "No, sir. Those things, they were 
fast, but they were *smart* too. We never knew what hit us."
    
    The Dean nodded. "Yes. Well, welcome home, Cable. And for your 
rescuers..."
    
    Sharn had been ready to negotiate, and Rathley and Chopper had 
obviously been looking forward to watching her rub in their success, but 
Abigail silenced them all with the soft click of her revolver's hammer. 
    
    "I'm afraid it isn't quit that simple, Mr Principle." 
    
    Abigail stepped to the front of the group, the barrel of her gun 
pressing into the nape of Cable's neck. Gasps and fresh, louder voices 
flew from the crowd, but Abigail forced herself to ignore them. 
    
    "You see, as stupid as they might be, I think it's rude not to 
follow surface town customs. Which is a shame, because you lost a lot of 
property recently. Still, it's better than losing family I suppose."
    
    Sharn looked at her in shock. "Abby," she hissed, "what are you 
doing?" 
    
    Casey started to ask, "Uh, when did you..." 
    
    But behind her someone stopped them both. Probably Rathley, or 
Chopper. Privately, Abigail was grateful for that. This was *her* 
scenario, and she wanted to feed these slavers some of their own poison. 
With the worried ripples going through the crowd she needed all the 
support she could get to go through with it. Despite the armed guards 
Willets High was a peaceful town, unused to real violence. 
    
    The Dean's mournful look vanished, to be replaced with anger. "I... 
see. You did not pay much attention last time you were here. *Everyone* 
here is family."
    
    "That wasn't what I heard from Mr Pearcing. You sold his wife, and 
left him in a cell to grieve."
    
    The Dean's anger faded slightly. "Yes. We stole them away. And we 
have taken those with much less need for relocation. But arguing 
business and morals is pointless, Miss..."
    
    "Iseley."
    
    "Miss Iseley. You have found and rescued one of my men. I would like 
him returned to us. I suppose, since he is now in your possession, you 
wish to barter."
    
    Abigail nodded, tense inside but smiling outwardly. "Of course. As 
you say, it's just business."
    
    "Then I will arrange a viewing. Given what we owe you now you will 
have an excellent choice, Miss Iseley. Please, come inside."
    
    The Dean turned and slowly marched inside. Abigail actually felt a 
little sorry for him, despite the 'business' he was in. He wasn't even 
fighting it. 
    
    "Abby-girl, what the hell was that?" Sharn whispered out of earshot 
as they followed. "You didn't even load your gun!"
    
    "That's what I was going to say!" Casey added. "That was a *major* 
bluff, Abby."
    
    "And there goes our reward," Rathley said, far too loudly. "You had 
best not make a habit of this." But from the amused look on his face it 
must have been entertainment enough for him to let it go this once. And 
they were all very well off still, in wastelander terms. They could 
afford to make the statement.
    
    Abigail's statement. She would 'waste' her reward to buy someone 
their freedom, simply because she could.
    
    And it felt fantastic!
    
***

To be continued...

***

And this was supposed to be a short chapter! Heh, that's how it goes.

Please send any comments and constructive criticism to:

nutzoide@nutzoide.net

They are always greatly appreciated, and there is no better reward for a 
writer than to hear back from the readers.

Many thanks to Richard King for his proofreading assistance.

(c) Nutzoide 2009

http://www.nutzoide.net