Now I'm Learning to Love the Wasteland

Charon

Evergreen Mills was in the southeast quadrant of the Capital Wastes–an old steel factory nestled in a large valley, only accessible via the old train tracks. I knew the way. I had made the journey countless times. Running guns in exchange for caps from Paradise and Underworld to the Mill and back again, all under Ahzrukhal’s command. 

The walk felt wrong in spite of the nature of my employment now. The budding warmth in the net of safety turned to something icy cold there in the darkness of my gut, even as the sun beamed brightly with the breaking of morning. Something bad is going to happen. Well, yes, I tried telling myself, bad things happen all the time, to the end of time. 

This, however, was a special bad feeling. Uglier bad. 

“Wilde…” I began. 

My partner looked back at me with a smile. A smile, once weak, now in full force like the sun. My worries felt irrelevant, dashed. She was so excited to find my damn gun.

“I can find a new gun.” I started bargaining once more, halfway trying to convince myself, “Hell, Sally Hatchet had the whole bag of 'em from my last run. Why…” I decided against bringing up the fact that we were, once again, delaying finding her father: “Why go out of your way for just one?”

“You carved letters into the butt, Cher. Don’t pretend like it wasn’t important just because it’s gone.” 

I couldn’t help but grin, private and small, at hearing her nickname for me again. But after all we'd been through in Paradise Falls, the newfound habit of not keeping my mouth shut persisted:

“Wilde.” I said it firm and she turned, surprised as I was by the firmness in my voice. There was no other explanation than the memory of my brother and my first love pushing me, the regret at not being able to save them: “If we do this, we’ve gotta focus on finding your father next. For real this time.”

She coughed, looked to the horizon, sighed: “We will. I promise.”

“Don’t promise me nothing. Promise yourself.” Wilde looked at me with new eyes, blinking at the grit beneath our feet. The sun hiked higher as we got closer to our destination and there were no more words, except to pass a canteen from one another. Once the sand started to give way to rail tracks the cold feeling in me came back, and the farther we went on the stronger it got.

it’s just one more job, I thought, why this? why now?

Tracks on a flat terrain shifted into rises, the rises into the closest thing to “hills” you could find in the D.C. Wastes–tangles of old cars, metal, trash. And there it was. Evergreen Mills was familiar in the ugly way the rush of blood to my head before a fight was familiar, the trigger of a gun, a man on his knees saying,

charlie. please.

I didn’t have the energy to choke away memory anymore. I would have to use them to do better, otherwise they’d destroy me.

how? how? you killed…

I killed. I got me and my loved ones locked in hell. I watched my brother descend into madness. I watched my first love die. I shot my brother. I ran guns for the same man who ordered me to do it. How to forgive myself? Where to begin?

“Cher…?”

Wilde’s voice brought me back to now. I looked at her, standing before the wall of old mill parts that separated our party from certain doom. The ever onward position of her legs, the shaky breath she exhaled despite holding her plasma rifle steady. Her vault suit had been cleaned–an insisted-on courtesy of the folks at the temple. She looked better than new, the angel in blue. Dogmeat dug into the hard dirt nearby, studious and sniffing. And I supposed the “how” was there, in that shortest-longest place nestled between past and future.

“You know more about this place than I do.” Wilde squinted away from the sun gleaming off the scrap in the wall, “I know it's hard but... Help me plan? Please.”

Dogmeat appeared at her side with a long stick, wagging her tail. All the bad in me dissipated with the rare breeze and the “please” from the woman who could order me to my knees.

(and i would kneel, gladly)

I smiled, the rare things in life becoming more; grabbing at Dogmeat’s stick and set to drawing in the sand. Outlining my worry into the real, hard world: drawing the behemoth super mutant caged up behind electricity inside Evergreen’s makeshift walls.

"Avoid this thing at all costs," I tapped at the near-comical sketch.

James

Calibrating the new Pipboy took shockingly little time, as did the rest of our journey west. In fact, there was a strange sensation of time speeding forward, as though every action was encoded–pushing my destiny along with something else. The feeling settled deep into my core when I found myself dazed, blinking from the sidecar of Remington’s motorcycle, wondering where all the distance and errands had leaked out. The horizon sped into blurred smudges beside me, as if to hammer the point. 

By the time we reached our destination, I was so disoriented I couldn’t muster speech. “Smith and Casey’s Garage”--the large sign and the rinky establishment it stood for jutted out in garish, rusted colors; like the carousel rides of the old world against the flat, red-beige landscape. 

Remington found us a way inside using his usual method–jury-rigging, stubborn strength, and luck. A strange deja vu cascaded through my bones when hit by the smell of the interior: flat dust and oily machinery; open and long-drained vodka bottles littered about. If this was shelter to someone, it had been abandoned some time ago. The reminder of my days as a scientist on “Project Purity” made way for frustration, once i realized this was all it was: a small room. Not even the radroaches wanted anything to do with it. I sighed.

The cowboy was shuffling every which way, feeling his hands with the walls. He addressed me without looking in my direction, “What’s up, Doc?”

“Remington..” I rubbed the lined space between my eyebrows, “why on earth did we come here? It’s just….”

An abandoned garage. 

The man said nothing, hummed. His fingers greedily traced a small framed photo of a dollar behind what would’ve been the sales counter of the garage in its heyday. 

Remington whisper-sang words I couldn’t make out, forehead dressed with sweat and concentration. I could only watch, quizzical, as his heavy movements and swaying armless duster kicked up the settled debris around the place. 

I wondered why the humble, framed dollar took so much effort to remove, wondered again why my companion insisted it be gone.

The frame released its placeholder in what seemed like eternities later, all those eternities speeding up my heart rate when I saw what was hidden--so simple yet so blaring--underneath. 

A button. A bright, red button with a square of yellow and black caution tape all around the humble perimeter.

Remington’s hands framed it, a wild and sweaty grin to accessorize his triumph. 

I stepped forward. Again the deja vu feeling embraced me.

“You should do the honors, Dad.” The cowboy moved aside, fanning his face with the costume-y hat he wore. 

Pressing the button was easy–I had done it a thousand times, a thousand other lifetimes: where my daughter was a son; where they were younger, older, different skin colors. Where I’d never gone to Andale, never seen a Gary, where I’d never drank a drop. 

Futures where I passed this point and was never found.

The red circle caved beneath my palm. I turned to face the space behind the garage’s countertop before the mechanism even made its connection. The bolted metal flooring shifted back behind the counter with a rusty growl. The ground before Remington and I opened up, revealing too-bright light and a set of cleaner, tunneling stairs. 

The cowboy’s face looked alien, more beautiful in the light from below than I could ever express. His soft brown eyes smiled ruefully as he said:

“I can’t go past this point, boss. Got other adventures to chase.”

I exhaled, knowing. Remington grabbed me up, unexpectedly, into a spine-crushing hug. I patted at his back, welcoming the intrusion. 

When the cowboy finally let me go, he held me at arm’s length, patting my shoulder lightly. “Go on, Doc.”

Something in his countenance told me he’d make sure someone would find me this time. I moved slowly down the lit stairway as he watched, thankful he could only see the back of my head rather than the tears building in my eyes. My shaking hand reached into the labcoat that held the last memories of my wife and child. I popped a tape into my strange new Pipboy.

“Hi Dad…”

The journey down the steps was practically nothing, but it felt almost too slow to bear. I took it step by step, feeling as if I was about to drop off the face of existence every moment. In a way, I suppose I was.

My daughter’s voice crackled out as the tape ended. The bright light grew brighter, my lungs taking in as much air as they could to stave off panic all the while. I did not turn to see that the Cowboy had already gone. I blinked and wet my lips, ready to face this mysterious destiny. The culmination of my research. The path to the G.E.C.K.

A Robobrain was waiting for me at the bottom of the steps, Vault uniform in hand:

“You’re late.” The robotically feminine voice chirped. 

 Wilde

We snuck into Evergreen Mills with practiced ease. The Mill had no watchtowers, no guard patrol. Only buyers and sellers of devious design knew its location. Only Charon knew the “secret entrance” in the wall. This low guard gave us an advantage. I would take the high path overlooking the valley of the old train yard, pick raiders off with my scoped plasma rifle while Charon made his way through the “Market”--a slapdash network of once-Mill-now-caves that led to where he knew, without a doubt, his Terrible Shotgun waited. 

There was little risk, other than the behemoth. Fewer enemies than Paradise Falls. Easy.

It was supposed to be easy.

The first couple of Raiders went down without a hitch. Dogmeat had been dutifully quiet at my side.  A few more raiders came, crawling out of the traincars in a rage. Dogmeat looked restless and began growling. I couldn’t keep up with all the Raiders–more than Charon had estimated, more than one quiet gun could handle. 

A primal terror swept through my body as Dogmeat began to charge down our hiding spot. I had no other recourse but to follow. 

Things became very loud and very dangerous. Very fast.

Charon 

My part of the plan was smooth as butter. I handled the silenced 10mm Wilde had loaned to me with a nervous stance, but my shots were true. Every raider in the bazaar fell before they even had time to falter. I only paused in what was known as the “strip club”. After I’d eliminated every face I could remember delivering a gun to, I heard the voices from beyond a cell:

“Red Guy. Help us.”

I recognized them from a previous run. They were dancers, emaciated and clad in almost nothing. Staring at them, I could only see a reflection in the hollows under their eyes: myself under Azrukhal’s employ. 

I went and found a key to their confinement. Silent as a grave, I unlocked the women’s cage. 

“Jesus. The stories were true. You’re one big ugly son’bitch.” 

I held the key out until one of them snatched it. I could smell the fear on them.

“Go home.” The voice that came outta me sounded far off.

“...Uh, ok. Fuckin’ weirdo.” The harshness in the hand that took the key didn’t bother me none. There were more important matters to tend to. Get my rifle; get to back Wilde. The goals beat in my eardrums so loud I hardly heard Dogmeat’s barking outside as the women left the cave.

Mei Wong

The small dark figure on the horizon had no shelter and no weapon. They sat cross-legged and eyes-covered like an island in a lonesome, dusty sea. The afternoon sun was beating and glaring into my view. It took a stop atop my horse and a moment of squinting beneath my scarf for recognition of the shape to assert itself in my hungover reality.

The girl. The little smart one from Paradise Falls. I clicked my tongue to spur Ghost in her direction. 

Charon

There was no doubt I looked something like a madman when I snaked around the corner to Smiling Jack’s makeshift stall. The man himself was already in a state of surrender: hands raised and framing his head, sweat beading down the temple, queasy smile playing at his q-tip-ass-head. 

“Red Guy….” I could hear in his breath the amount of strength he had to stir up to even get out the words, “You here to do business… I-I hope?”

“My gun.” I growled. “It’s mine.”

Jack did not turn his back on me, didn’t move his hands. He just slid back real slow. “Sure. Sure. You don’t gotta say it again.” Like I was an irradiated bear huffing at him. Except I didn’t have to say a word. I’d even put my 10mm down. I only rose it again once–a reflex from Jack ducking down under his counter.

“Easy, there. Easy.” he coaxed gruffly. Again with the animal talk. I halfway wanted to just shoot him. But I knew he was rooting around in the lockbox only he could open (he’d bragged about it so many times). And besides. It wasn’t the ‘Wilde’ thing to do.

The speed at which I grabbed up my Terrible Shotgun shocked even me, though my face wouldn’t betray the emotion. Smiling Jack was shaking, eyes rolling to follow my every micromove. I ignored him. The strange clarity of running my finger over the carved ‘W’ on the butt of my gun was near-intoxicating. The urge to take the deepest breath I’d taken in years overcame, followed by a sweeping exhale. Every muscle fiber filled and hardened with resolve. I didn’t know how to thank Wilde for helping me find this again…. For inspiring this growing sense of self. 

I steeled myself, brow lowered like a bull, and walked back through the cave towards the open air of Evergreen Mills. Determined to do so. All that resolve turned to something itchy and grave when I saw Dogmeat rushing up to meet me in the network. Her eyes were white with stress and her teeth gnarled in aggression. She pulled at the hem of my new shirt. I took the hint and broke into a run.

Penny

 The long, calm and cool shadow above me stopped my sniffling. I squinted up. The craziest Mungo from Paradise Falls, balanced on whatever she would call horse (but unlike any kind of horse I’d ever seen in books). 

“What are you doing out here?” I frowned in speculation. 

“Could ask you the same thing, young one.” She looked out at the flat expanse and sucked her teeth, “How long have you been crying out here?”

I couldn’t answer. I was too ashamed. The whole truth was I’d been sobbing since the other kids and I had escaped through Paradise Falls’ irradiated tunnels. Part of it was the relief of finding out the collars weren’t going to go off after all, part of it was the weight still hanging on my neck, but mostly it was missing. Missing Rory–I knew he was dead, I could just feel it. Missing Charon and my brother, who was due for leaving my home at Camp Lamplight any day now. Would they die too? Would everyone I bonded with leave?

The tears came again, and this time it made me red with anger. I clawed at the collar around my neck. And when it was fruitless, I tore at the dirt around me. 

“Hey. Hey.” The Mungo tsked and shifted around awkwardly to reach into some stuffed bags atop the…

“Ghost! Quit moving about so much, girl.” It was the Mungo who was moving erratically. I didn’t see the point in contradicting her.

The Mungo came up with a screwdriver, hopping down off the Ghost. 

“Can I?” She gestured to the contraption around my neck. I nodded.

The Mungo worked with shaking hands. Her lack of stability spoke to me, matched how I was feeling inside. I finally found the courage to let everything escape:

“I missed my shot. My brother's gonna leave home before I can say goodbye... The other kids told me when the fireworks started.”

“We all miss our shots sometimes, darlin’...” A screw came loose, flying out onto the ground with a cold and tiny sound, “Where’s home?”

“I don’t…. I don’t know anymore.” This trust in a Mungo was unlike me, but she’d helped us all escape, hadn’t she? I just couldn’t help but hope the trust wouldn’t bite me later,” I don’t even wanna go back, knowing my brother is gone.”

“Well, you can’t just sit out here, Courier.” The Mungo led me up by the arm. Her way was gentle. She muttered to herself as she led me over to Ghost, “God, I hate the Capital. Got me looking like a fuckin’.... good samaritan out here. Whatever you call it.”

“Ok.” She huffed, “Up we go, up we go…” The Mungo hoisted my strengthless body onto the creature with stringy, muscled arms. Seeing the creature up close, I could see that it was a ghoul. 

“Where did Charon go?” I had the mind to ask her.

“I lent him my horse. He made it to safety, otherwise Ghost would’ve taken longer.”

I didn’t understand how she put so much faith in this animal, but I nodded just the same.

“Whether they stayed in safety…? Well, that’s another matter entirely.” 

Wilde

By the time Dogmeat went bounding down the steep hill that was my cover, there were already too many raiders gathering and alert in the valley of Evergreen Mills. I cursed my trusty rifle jamming at the worst time, looked up to see the makeshift door to the caves opening. Two women–not Charon–exiting. Dogmeat darted through the opening. The Behemoth super mutant in his makeshift cage cried to cover my own panicked yell. If Charon hadn’t made it, Dogmeat would die in there. 

And if they were both mortally wounded… the thought was too much to bear. It made me illogical. So I did the illogical thing.

I ran. Out of cover, gun malfunctioning, to rescue them. Not a hope or a plan in the world.

Charon

Dogmeat burst from the cave first, growling headfirst into the fray. It scraped up time to adjust to the change in light. But the rage would blind me just as swiftly when my eyes found Wilde, panicked and fireless. She’d been using her rifle as a shield. Raiders surrounded her in a nasty swarm, with the two women I’d loosed battering them with anything they could find. It would only be enough to buy me one maneuver.

My head twitched in the direction of the Behemoth Mutant’s pen. I moved with precision and purpose–before anyone in the swarm surrounding Wilde could see me.

Mei Wong

Three miles in and that kid was still sniffling and sobbing. I did not begrudge her for the tears, not after what she’d gone through. I whistled low while we walked, feeling the wind hit the tiny networks of sweat soaking my temples. 

“Can I tell you a story?” I took a moment to fiddle with a compass in my pack, aiming to find the direction to Camp Lamplight. 

“...Sure.” The kid stopped sniffling and took a shaky breath. 

“My Granny loved to tell this one. We had a ranch back in New Reno, yeah.”

“Where’s New Reno?”

“It’s in a desert, a place more desert than here but somehow brighter. Saturated. Listen, now.. You listening? This ranch had been in the Wong family for generations. And my grandma had just welcomed a new grandchild when they all decided to go to the feed store… The way it’s told, all these Army geeks showed up one day…”

Charon

A break in Wilde’s fight appeared just as I reached the giant Mutant in his fucked up pen. The two women I’d loosed had found an opening and were beating back the mass of raiders with nothing but pipes in their hands. Despite this, Wilde was still being ripped asunder. I watched for half a second as the contract flew out from under her jumpsuit. Her panicked, tearful eyes looking across at me for a small forever.

The freakout in her voice rose to a boom, “Charon! Don’t! Charon! I order you not to–”

It was too late. She couldn’t win and I could not stop. I could hear the Behemoth breathing–weak but readied with rage. Smell the ozone on the electrified door. I could waste no time trying to shut it off. I grounded my feet with everything I had, and grabbed for the handle.

The connection would last three seconds–voltage vibrating through my bones and my teeth with an ugly vigor. I gritted and fought, twisting the heavy handled latch up, Up. Voltage ripped through me. A human body couldn’t handle such a literal shock. But I wasn’t a human. I was Charlie McCaron–a creature that had come from hell and back and hell again. 

Everything was a loud quiet, blood pumping through my ears masked background shouting and adrenaline. For that one moment, I could feel it all together–the haggard women helping Wilde beat her assailants, the Dog companion ripping a leg into shreds, my boss clawing for the contract blowing in the errant wind matched the desperate-futile grip of my stubborn feet clawing into the ground. The Behemoth’s cry, too, was my own. 

One look up from my struggle before the final, wrenching push: I saw Wilde breaking out of the fray to chase the contract with blood-stranded hair and desperate breaths. And I felt, in that moment. The full and loud scope of all my feelings for her–elation, peace, repressed passion, restless pining. 

And something funny--I didn't care about dropping my gun at all.

I gave the door an inch’s opening, and the green devil kicked me a mile. The behemoth threw a train car into the crowd of raiders to finish them off before howling away from his torture, his old life. I only maintained consciousness long enough to affirm Wilde and Dogmeat were safe. My body took the cue and fully collapsed into the earth. The electricity left me so wiped out I could hardly feel. All that remained was the light in my brain flooding into fading, and somewhere, some time, just before I lost consciousness–I could swear I heard a baby crying.

Remington

Sure was a fortune that Dad’s quest ended up at a garage. I siphoned off what gas I could from the dormant vehicles in the lot and pulled back the well-loved tarp on my motorcycle, heading for the next direction my gut assigned. 

Faster. Or you won’t make it in time.

My foot bore down on the gas pedal without hesitation.

Penny

“And so Granny looked down at the Good Soldier as he told them to take their trucks and ‘go home.’ ‘Go home.’, he said in clumsy Chinese…”

“You’re being way too confusing.” I told the Mungo bluntly. “What happened to Angel Eyes?”

“Oh, he’s not that important. He just beat the literal living out of the man in charge and grabbed the keys. The Wong matriarch took them and said, We! We will survive.” The sweaty Mungo stopped for what was either comedic or drama effect (honestly I couldn’t tell–the weird smile on her nervous face was tough to read). 

“But You!” Mei Wong pointed at me with glassy, childlike eyes: “You’re all dead.”

“So?” I blinked at her, my grief from Rory’s death persisting in the back of my mind, “Those guys died?”

“Who cares about those guys? Ugh.” Mei Wong ran alongside her horse’s trot again, “The Wongs lived! Came out of that shelter completely changed–granny, especially. She ghoulified. Traveled the Mojave ‘till she settled in New Reno and staked out her claim by going back to the old ranch. Guided generations until I was born. And then… And then…”

Mei shook, and it was down to her core. She stopped without objection from her horse–who she patted quietly for a moment before digging around in a canvas saddlebag to extract some tin.

“Look, the point I’m trying to make is…” She scraped at the bottom of the metal for some scrap of a mint and licked the dust from her fingers, “You live out here, and you may die–the ones you love, too. But once in a while people come along and help you perform a miracle. But you’ll never see it if you give up and stop moving.”

I sorta got what she was saying. But I was arrested by the way she rubbed her teeth now and tightened the gray scarf around her head with a shiver. Her eyes looked glossier, ghostly voids even in the sun.

“What is that stuff?” I wrinkled my nose.

“Nothing you ever wanna fuck with.” Mei Wong snapped, “Now hush. We’re getting you home.”

The dead quiet of the wastes settled over us for a moment, until a strange sound came ripping through the dust; the likes of which I never heard. A louder than loud rumble. Mei Wong and I whipped our heads about at the same time to see another Mungo ripping his way through the flat dirt on what looked like a big, shiny silver bullet. I could barely make out his round shape before he was over the horizon.

Mei Wong sucked her teeth, “Cowboy’s got somewhere else to be. Didn’t even see me.”

“You know that guy?” I was still gaping out at the dust he’d spurred up on his hellpath–a miracle. “You know what he was riding?”

Mei laughed, “He calls it a ‘motorcycle’. And yeah. I know everyone, Courier.”

I was getting tired of my own questions. Not knowing. But I pressed Mei anyhow, “Why do you keep calling me that? My name is Penny.”

Mei looked back at me once to flash a rare, genuine smile, “Everyone in the railroad gets a nickname, Penny. This one’s yours.”

I wouldn’t tell the Mungo I was fond of it. As time went on the terrain got familiar, and I knew we were close to Little Lamplight. I let out a mile’s long exhale when I saw the ancient schoolbus sticking out of the sand like some dead seamonster. I blinked the last of my tears up at the wide too-blue sky, hoping Rory was at rest, hoping Charon and his friend were alive to see the next big thing. Knowing I had press on, through any and all grief, to see more myself.

Remington

I didn’t know when to stop, until two hardly-clad women came running and waving into my path.

“Oop!” I slammed the stopper, spinning wildly for a good many feet. I wrenched my body weight to counteract and bring the damn thing to a full state of motionlessness. I coughed in the sandy cloud I’d created. I was gonna feel this little excursion in the morning, that was certain.

The women were blinking at me wildly, unawares of the danger they’d been in, “Mister? You gotta help.”

“Yes…. er, hello.” I sputtered, wiping the dirt from my face with a scrap of my overcoat. The women weren’t interested in chatting. They gave me no time to cover my vehicle, just beelined straight into a valley obscured mostly by metal walls and traincar parts. I gave the ol’ girl a nervous, apologetic glance and kept on, hovering a hand over my blaster in case this was some raider’s trap.

The women gave me a moment to catch up and pass through a small hole in the wall’s integrity. I entered thicker smoke and grew warier. I had my blaster out and my lucky hat on my head before they could call out to me again. 

“Over here!” 

A nuclear breeze swept through and cleared the remnants soundlessly. I’d walked in on a trap, alright. A trap that had already been sprung. Hastily, by the looks of it. Raiders’ bodies were everywhere in the gleaming sunlight, smashed into the earth by a snail trail of destruction. The culprit at the end of a set of y-shaped train tracks: A dead behemoth. No gun wounds. Likely died of exposure somehow. My guess was he’d gotten his revenge on the raiders and keeled over before even clearing the Mill.

A dog’s barking brought my attention to the other side of the compound, solving the rest of the mystery. A huge haphazard cage told me the Mutant had been trapped there a long time. A sputtering short around the enclosure revealed the fence had been volted, untouchable by human standards. The mutant must’ve gotten out… but how? He was weak. There was no way…

My eyes scanned the ground in front of the broken prison, and there they were.

The blonde was doubled over her ghoul man, rocking and crying. Her Vault suit was torn and bloodied. The dog nearby barked frantic at me now, spinning in stressed circles.

“Help! You ass!” One of the women who’d led me into the compound hissed. 

“Well, shucks.” I brought my hat down from my head and skidded down alongside Wilde as soon as I stirred from my spaceout. 

The Vault Gal’s voice was hoarse with tears. “Remington?!” For a moment, I thought she might hug me.

“Funny runnin’ into you.” I nodded in greeting and holstered my weapon. I coaxed Charon’s hand from her grip and reached for her ghoulfriend’s wrist, feeling a faint pulse.

“He’s hanging on…” Wilde affirmed shakily as she picked up the shotgun laying at his side, “But we’re…”

“In the middle of nowhere, yeah.” I finished her sentence after surveying the carnage around us once more, staring into her face. There was pain in Wilde’s eyes, regret that was unmatched. Dirt and blood grimed to her face. Charon’s breaths were shallow. He coughed miserably.

“No, no.” Wilde murmured to no one more than herself, took up Charon’s hand and ran his fingers across her lips, “It’s not over. It can’t be over.” My next quest came as clear as the women’s voices as they stalked around us: “You have to get them to a doc. They helped us escape.”

I nodded. “C’mon up.” I batted Wilde’s shoulder gently, “We gotta get him into my sidecar. You can ride with me. I don’t know about your dog.”

“Dogmeat.” The pooch’s ears stood at attention at the sound of her voice, “You’ve gotta wait for me at Vault 101. Alright?” 

The smart pup whined, sniffed. Trotted off. She reminded me of Mei’s horse. Something almost supernatural about her intuition. 

It took all of us to get an unconscious Charon secured into my motorcycle’s sidecar. I strapped my spare pair of goggles to his head to keep the dust out. The helmet was too small for him, so it went to Wilde.

“Red’s gonna be okay.” One of the girls tried to will the shoddy fact into reality. 

I smiled, grateful to the pair of women who’d gone through the risk to lead me here, “You two gonna be alright?”

They’d already started back towards the remnants of all the excitement–no doubt to pick at the pulpy mass of raider armor for supplies, bullets. All wild hair, meatless bones and broken teeth, “You gotta go, mister. We’re here. We’re… home.”

Satisfied, I instructed Wilde to hop into the seat behind me and hang on. She clasped her hands around my wide core and screwed her eyes shut in anticipation.

She could feel the short laugh rise in my belly. “Wheels make me nauseous.” She explained as though I were about to rip off a band-aid. I could never relate. There was so much freedom in being so much faster than anything trying to kill you.

“Well, hold onto your booty. And best keep your eyes shut…” I drawled, “I only got one extra pair of goggles.”

I revved the engine, and gunned it like a daredevil to the only ghoul doctor in the Wastes I knew could help a case like Charon. To Underworld.