Now I'm Learning to Love the Wasteland

Mei Wong

Pimplehead was off finding kindling to keep dawn's bite away, whispering to three of his crew. The slimey fuck.

The key to any good bit of fun was disruption. There were several simple ways to do that, of course. Dwindling down supplies. Bribery, poison. Seeding resentment.

Once in a little while, disruption found its way to you.

“They like your funny brahmin. They want it.”

The last of Talon company had spoken. He was struggling with starting a fire. The gangling little freak was the short straw of the group—constantly being hazed and stuck with doing the shit work, most likely. I didn't know his real name and I didn't care. To me, he was a Grasshopper—all limbs and no spine.

“That's no a brahmin.” I said, pulling out my lighter and offering the flame to him, “That's a mare.”

Pimplehead vying for my horse was no surprise. Men with the illusion of power always wanted what was good and rare and could never be theirs.

Ghost'd reunited with me once we hit the outskirts of the city. She avoided D.C. Ruins almost entirely—she was fine with noise and even drawn to fire, but people made her skittish. Fortunately, most kept their distance from her terrible form. Mutants and ferals didn't touch ghouls without provocation, and wastelanders were either too nonobservant or frightened to approach.

And she was a frightful thing, my Ghost. Her ash colored coat, flecked with bone white spots, only made the blackened scars spread throughout more jarring. Her muzzle was reduced to skeletal frame and her ivory mane nothing but tendon-like strands. But it was her neighs that caused even the most stony challengers to wince. Shrill and awful. Despite all that she was gentle and friendly to me. By and by, her appearance was all the better for us both. A potent repellent for the weak and ill driven.

“Where'd you find her?” Grasshopper asked, avoiding my gaze as he snapped a nearby twig and threw it into the budding flames. His left pinky finger was gone. A popular wasteland punishment for recaptured slaves.

“Two Sun. Arizona.” With the fire now burning in the chill, Ghost was slinking nearer.

“She's one of a kind. Like you.”

I smiled. Grasshopper was still looking anywhere but my eyes.

“I know who you are, Sally Hatchet. I've heard the stories.”

I snapped, “I'd choose your next words very carefully, Grasshopper.” I already knew the boy meant me no harm. But there was a part to play. You couldn't get anywhere without people thinking you were either more dangerous or more harmless than what you really were. Show your true colors, the length and breadth of your limitations, and your guts were primed to spill out on the ground.

Grasshopper looked behind us for just a second, then whispered, “I was offered freedom for ...this. But--”

He wanted what we all wanted, needed, every so often—a way out.

And I wanted disruption.

I smiled coyly, “I think we could help each other out.”

Charon

Stealth boys were a disorienting mess. A body could get through just fine (more or less) with the right route and enough ammo. But this—this near invisibility was damn excessive. It was strange to feel so solid, but see nothing more than a shimmering outline of yourself. Vulnerable. Like being naked in a dream or getting startled by your own shadow, only a hell of a lot worse.

The interior of the museum was no comfort, either. Between the piecemeal displays of old world planes and broken columns, the leftovers of a squad of Brotherhood goons were splayed and scattered. If the over-armored geeks couldn't even make it past the entrance...

“I don't like the looks of this.” I muttered.

“Really? I was thinking this would be a nice place for a sit down.” Wilde smarted back.

“No time.”

“Oh, I'm only joking. Would it kill you to laugh?”

Yes.

She tapped sharply away at a monitor housed in the nearest column. A trio of mutants could be heard from a robotics exhibit nearby. Arguing. Their words were labored and blunt. Vein-popping effort with no hope of creating a whole sentence.

I suggested (as quietly as I was able) that we move. Wilde raised a shimmering palm and I could hear the words she wanted to say even in shrouded silence: kindly, hush.

“WE NEED... TO MAKE... MORE.” Mutants were getting closer. Footfalls lumbering with tired ire, voices still back and forth with disagreement. I'd never heard one of the freaks hold a conversation before. And honestly, I didn't care.

A mutant cursed as something crashed to the floor. They were practically down our necks now.

“Wilde...” I whispered in warning. Still tapping away. What was the terminal holding that was so important, anyhow? The only ones I'd ever peeked at held nothing more than computerized journals... maintenance records, customer complaints, innocuous memos and office gossip. More evidence that pre-war people were insane. Same as always.

“Aaand... Got it!” Wilde hissed excitedly.

Then came another kind of tapping. Ruthless and sudden. I ducked instinctively, thinking it was the freaks catching our scent. Wilde's shape merely stooped slightly.

“Turrets.” I heard her smile.

Somehow, she'd rerouted the whole security system. I scratched at my head in dumbfounded awe.

“This way,” She whispered the moment the firing stopped, “We've got to move before the others investigate.”

We stepped carefully over the scraps of ancient aviators and machines, only pausing to search through ammo boxes propped up against sandbags and overturned tables. Silent and quick, like lizards darting in and out of rocks. Nearly joined at the hip out of fear of getting left behind. Anything for a comfort.

Wilde hissed an exhale as soon as the next exhibit in our path came into view. A scaled down vault entrance with its large gear-shaped door marked with an arbitrary two-digit number. Tattered velvet ropes lay overturned on all sides, with a small intact sign to our right that read: TOUR STARTS HERE.

Wilde's voice rang cautiously among the sudden shift from marble to metal walls, “There could be another way around. There has to be...”

“The only way out is through.” I replied, just as softly. I wasn't sure if it was the stealth-boy affecting my tone or if it was the strange, cold air emanating from beyond the false vault entrance. Didn't know why all Wilde's confidence was draining, either. The reasons were of little consequence. We had a satellite to find.

Wilde pulled the lever housed on an important looking console with slight hesitance. A tiny rumble, and the door collapsed inward, rolling away smoothly. The level of noise was enough to put us both on the defensive. But the mutants were probably still behind, dealing with the turrets. The “tour” was a cramped, singular hallway of weathered steel that displayed tiny rooms behind huge, curved windows every few paces. A soft, friendly voice boasted the details of each showcase from programmed speakers. “Spacious kitchen's mom will love!” “Clean, recycled air!” “Bored? The entertainment room will suit your needs!” Behind that one, a lonely projector displayed a single, gray slide reading: PLEASE STAND BY in large, cold letters.

I made the mistake of lingering there for a second, and that's when I saw him: a no-name figure twisted and crouching in the darkness, pressing a bloodied hand against the glass.

The voice was familiar, like I'd heard it faraway and in a dream. Rasping and struggling. A dying man.:

“...everything...I'm so... hungry... everything burns.... Listen. You get out of here, Charlie. Shut the door and don't let that bastard get any of it. Not even a damned paperclip.” As his words went on, strange rabid sounds began to come with them. At one point he paused to abruptly scream, slamming a fist into the window. He then caught his breath,“Go see the mammoth for me... go back to Boston... home...You hear me? Forget about us. You're going to get out of here. Forget ev--” The figure grasped his head with both hands, shrieking once more before disappearing from view.

The figure returned frightfully, nothing but fits, slamming his entire body into the barrier between us, like his lifeforce had been leaked and replaced with nothing but violence. Chunks of skin, clumps of hair clung to the glass with each hammering throe. A name entered my mind just as violently.

“Phillip.... Philly!” The sudden shift in my voice was punctuated with a fist. The window became more like a mirror, the air increasingly like a trap.

A gentle hand on my bad shoulder. I moved away, unaccustomed with the whisper of contact. It was something I barely remembered and didn't need. Just like this goddamned exhibit, just like the image of Philly behind the glass.

“What is it? What did you see?” Wilde asked softly.

“Nothing.” Truthfully, there had been nothing there all along. The cell I'd been staring into was as empty and dead now as the rest. Even the slide "PLEASE STAND BY" had disappeared quietly.

But nothing was quiet on our side, no. You could hear a mutant catching onto our trail, maybe more.

“I know this is difficult...” Wilde urged gently, “But we have to keep moving.”

Such was the way. We made it through the rest of the tour unharmed and without words. I kept my eyes on the path ahead, the tired pear-shaped silhouette in front of me. Wilde's gaze seemed surprisingly narrow, too. I was only partly aware of sharpened pain in my shoulder and the irregularity of my breathing. I'd never experienced such an attack on my senses before. But I would do what I'd always done to the strange and unknown: keep it denied and walled away.

The gear shaped opening at the end of our passage was a welcome sight. The sooner we made ourselves scarce of this place, the better.

There was a collection of pamphlets on the ground as soon as we exited—all advertising vault-tec's ill fated “program”. A dusty bobblehead. Wilde paused to pick that up and stepped onward.

A lonesome, ugly creature well known to guard Mutant territory dragged itself on piecemeal limbs into view. Blubbering and slimy, twisted tongues flailing from its thin mouth. It was something humanoid--but too like a ruddy, crumpled caricature to call it even that. Wilde took a shot at it with her pistol, now equipped with a silencer.

“I hate centaurs. Creepy.” She sighed as its body went limp.

“Is that what you smooths call 'em?”

“What do ghouls call them?” Wilde asked bemusedly.

I spat at one of its wriggling, bloated feet as we passed, “Politicians.”

Something labeled PLANETARIUM was next. I couldn't recall what that meant, but I was sure I wasn't going to like it.

If my jaw wasn't still attached, it would've clattered to the floor. We opened the set of double doors, and found ourselves in a peaceful oasis of a relic. A circular room with sloping rows of soot dark chairs on all sides, closing in around one small island of a platform. A strange projector, round and likened to a giant compound eye, stood in the center. The room was entirely empty otherwise and eerily silent. We carefully made our way down a near-pristine staircase. Little flecks of dust hung in the air like fireflies.

We made it to the center. Wilde was staring into the dimly lit dome above, “What was this place? What did they do here?”

“They” were all dead. What they “did” was build monuments to the very things that destroyed them. This woman's curiosity with the past—however well meaning—was a cumbersome thing. Even Three Dog shared disdain for what was, and that guy was the sunniest personality left on earth.

“Pagan rituals.” I shrugged finally. “Who cares.”

As though the damned room were watching, all lights cut out at once with a hollow noise. I could still see her, of course. My own senses sharpened and adjusted quickly while she stood frozen in place, no doubt blinking away the sudden shift. Her hand primed over her pistol like it was second nature. I mimicked the move, scanning the room for anything that might have caused the short.

The moment was over just as quickly. The projector ignited noiselessly. It splayed color and light all across the dome above. Tiny stars like spattered freckles across colors I couldn't fathom seeing in the real sky. Searingly bright yet oddly cold. It shunted Wilde and I closer together, unknowing, inch by inch. Our hands limp at our sides. The image swirled and rotated slowly, flickered in and out several times, but that didn't stop us from marveling breathlessly.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?”

I was no longer staring upwards. I found my gaze more focused on her. The stealth boy wearing off, her shape in and out of camouflage erratically. One instant a shuddering shape made up of stars, then something solid and smiling. All one in the same. I was euphoric. I was afraid.

“No, I haven't.” My voice was stupid, dry, and tongue heavy. Wilde beamed at me with radium in her eyes and the universe framing her head.

“Well... How about that sit down?”

I did laugh at that. A booming voice lashed out between us like lightning.

“SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME, MAN HAS ALWAYS DREAMED OF—OF—LIFE AMONG--ALWAYS DREAMED... TIME... LEGACY”

It looped, locked in its mistakes. The voice was so familiar, almost comforting. Home. House. Robert House.

The Mutant screams came soon after, the double doors at the top of the aisles bursting.

Wilde and I cursed at the same time.

"Shit."

Remington

“So you see, there's nothing that proves we are not experiencing anything more than a simulation. You've had to have noticed the signs? An impossible shot hitting the target, the inconsistencies in the way our tech works. People walking around with nothin' to say, or just repeating themselves. The physics! The way creatures sometimes twitch after death. Hell, I knew a guy on the road to D.C. that just got himself stuck in the middle of a damn boulder. Not underneath, the middle. No reason or rhyme. It's bugged, man. We're all bugged.”

I puffed. The dog sitting beside me panted patiently.

“You're a good listener.” I thanked her. Australian Cattle, as scrawny as she was clever. We could all learn something from such creatures. They were simple and unafraid to show emotion. I would've been glad to have her on my travels, but something in her alert posture told me she was waiting on someone else.

I was parked right outside of Megaton's heavy walls, sitting cross-legged against a small grouping of rocks and watching the landscape intently. The dog by will, myself by force. Finally scared enough settlers with all my truths. Lucas Simms gave me the boot. My warning about The Enclave was the last straw.

(have you been harrassing nathan

yessir he's a damned enclave worshippin' ass and he's bound to get you all killed! he should be put down. trickery and treason!

...the man is 65 years old

and? i'm liable to knee him in the gut again, if necessary
and his little robot too)

Lucas was kind enough to lower down some food, but I was now declared undesirable in every major settlement in our nation's capital. Such was the lot of a treasure hunter. You go looking for lost legends and you could count on disbelief. But like hell if I was gonna attempt Underworld. Of all the doorsteps to get turned away from, the ghoul cities hurt most. So I'd roam the outskirts, the dead suburbs and shanty shacks and small trading stops. It was closer in appearance to home, anyways. The remnants of something big and important were there, just buried under sand and mostly lost.... Los.

I took a moment to pull at a small chain around my neck, pulling it out from under my shirt. I scrutinized it like I had so many times before—the weathered and dented Sunset Sarsaparilla bottlecap with the familiar spot of rust against a burnt orange logo. I turned it over, just to be sure. The bright cyan five point star on the underside was a comfort. There were more, part of a legend far older than The Wastes. But this one was special, because it was mine. It was the only thing I had on me when the ghouls I'd call kin found me, along with my trusty sniper rifle. “Remington--the Luckiest, Unluckiest Son-of-a-Gun Alive.” I would grow to have little interest in the parents who thought to dump me, only the story behind the “star bottlecaps” and their immortal mascot, Festus. The legends claimed only the pure of heart could hope to find all fifty of the damned things, and only then would Festus bestow his gifts.

I had sixteen so far.

Well, technically... currently... just the one. A very old friend had taken the rest.

Mei Wong

A small, flexible plan was drawn out between little Grasshopper and myself. Pimplehead and his other absentee lackeys returned. I offered to chop up the wood for the fire. Unfortunately, only Pimplehead had the information I desired. It would complicate things. He seemed the strongest of the group. But life was stale without its challenges.

THWACK. THWACK. THWACK. A woman's work is never done. Personally, I preferred the bloody bits over this chore. How did my grandmother keep even a piece of her sanity, doing nothing but ranching?

Ghost was inching a little closer to my side of the fire as it grew, gently gnawing at some brush in the cracked soil. I smiled at her. I could feel the Talons at my back, peeling away with their pupils from the other side of the flames. Only Grasshopper kept his gaze down. I wondered what stories he'd heard. My skin itched strangely as I halfway listened to the others swap unsettling rumors. Vampires in Arefu, a Glowing One that could talk in Springvale. Strange Eyebots in Grayditch that seemed to watch your every move while humming old patriotic jingles. Tiny towns, idle tales. It made me miss the Mojave, in a way.

THWACK. But I had business here.

I hope Linda has a spare cooler I could borrow, I thought. I wonder if she still remembers me.

“What about you, miss?” One Talon cawed.

THWACK. “What about me?” Hiding the terseness in my voice was getting more difficult. The twists in my stomach were coiling all the more. We needed to reach Andale before my impatience and The Fear crept in.

“Have you got any stories?”

“Oh, loads.” I paused to wipe the sweat from my brow, “I heard this one from a trader in Khan territory:

Once upon a time, a girl was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek. As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?" And the snake answered, "Look, bitch, you knew I was a snake.”

“Ha. That's it? No monsters or nuthin'?”

I grinned, snapping the final piece of wood like a bone, “That's it.” They'd see a monster in Andale.

James

This was it. I was going die here. In a dilapidated, suburban house in the middle of nowhere, with a crazy old man who would not permit me to leave.

I looked down at the Pipboy resting in my lap. The screen was cracked and the display distorted. I didn't know how. I vaguely knew I'd been bludgeoned by a small group of people under the guise of traders, just a few miles from a vault I needed to explore. Everything was bleary after that. A voice proclaiming “no more” they “would not have any more guests”.

I woke up here... tired, hungry, wounded. How long...? Exhaustion stifled the urgency.

The same voice—the old man--was muttering now, pacing across the living room with a rifle clutched tightly. He dragged feet with such a fervor, it kicked up clouds of dirt from the filth in the rugs. “People wander in here.... they wander in and they don't come out! ...Has to end, have to believe me. Gladys, oh Gladys--”

I racked my brain for his name for awhile, staring over at a clock on the opposite wall. It took the form of a black cat, working mysteriously. Its teasing, too large eyes paced back and forth just as the other occupant in the house did so. I frowned at the tacky little thing, wishing I could tear it off the peeling floral wallpaper.

“Harris...” I called dizzily, until my patience was stretched, “Harris!”

He stopped. I felt pity mixed with a strange form of hatred in my antagonized, delusional pain. Hatred for his haircut being so similar to mine. The lines in his face creased in patterns I knew would befall me too soon. Hatred for the incessant chanting to his deceased wife, even moreso for the bouts of sanity where we could carry conversations, form escape routes that would never see action. He was desperately clinging to a doomed path for his dead wife.

He was what I was becoming.

(but did he abandon his child
the alpha and omega)

I leaned my head back, gaze dizzily meeting a ceiling fan caked with grime as I gnarled my fingers and pulled at my silver, unkempt hair. I hissed in musty air, drew it out shakily like it was a poison. Finally I asked the old man, “Do you have any scotch?”

“Yes... yes...” Harris mumbled. He creaked over to a mint colored refrigerator. He talked again of escape. I'd heard it too many times to care or hope. Even the desire to try and send a message was thrown out. I was too weak and he was too gone.

Harris handed me a glass and I grabbed the entire bottle with a quaking hand. Harris kept repeating, “We only need. We only need.”

I drank from the bottle, messing with the dials on my ruined wrist computer.

“Divine providence. A miracle.” I finished.

Charon

The green meanies poured in like liquid—all at once, unstoppable, spreading rapidly anywhere there was free space. Wilde unzipped her pack in a flurry, nudging me towards an exit sign glowing dim to the left.

“Run. Get to the exit.” She urged, “Don't come back for me, that's an order.”

There was a tense moment of panicked lockup where I wanted to refuse. Like screaming and being smothered simultaneously. But the contract won out. Same as always. My lungs burned all the way down a long, narrow passageway towards the doors marked with a red sign. Sandbags and a long metal table marked the halfway point. I hurdled over without thinking. Landed and turned around. No time to wonder how.

I could hear her herding the uglies. Breaking bottles and shattering glass. It wasn't right. This wasn't her risk to take. I was expendable, only trained to keep her alive. If she were to perish, what then? What were the rules? What was the point?

I recalled Philly behind the glass and flinched, turning my head as though it would help.

I noticed the janitor's closet then, marked by a broken broom and a bucket. The wooden door was rotted off its hinges. Opportunity piqued when I spied the dormant landmine. A human skeleton was curled nearby. A bone hand still rested on a grenade box and a gun. Poor bastard.

The gun was useless but the mines in the box were still worthy. Just a few shotgun hits and I could draw a number of them here, set off the explosives. Maybe give her time to escape. Good. I could stay out of harm's way, but not without at least doing some harm.

“I thought I told you to get out of here.” Wilde rounded the just as I returned.

“You told me to get to the exit.” I argued quickly. A secret clash of relief and tension at the sight of her alive.

I pulled the pin on a mine, tossing it into the distance, repeated as many times as I could. A few set off, making the rest of our attackers wary, buying time.

“Light.” Wilde hissed at my side, “I need a light.”

I lit a match as quickly as I could. She held one of the glowing nuka colas in her grip, a hasty strip of cloth trailed out of its neck. I lit it. Her eyes fixated on the flame eating at the darkness and cloth, then flickered determinedly to meet mine.

“DUCK AND COVER!” Wilde launched the cocktail with a sudden and tremendous might. It sailed clear towards the center where our opponents had fallen back. Where it fell, the ground became an otherworldly blaze of blue-violet. The fire caused a thick panic. Dominoed to the surrounding mines. Bursts of yellow and metal.

“We need to move. C'mon!” Wilde pulled at my arm, rushing us to the exit for good. Admist the burning in my lungs I felt a strange sense of regret that the planetarium was likely ruined. At the very least, we were a pair coming out alive against a platoon of horrors. Alright as it could be.

We caught coughing breaths as soon as the doors behind us were barricaded. The last exhibit was small and oddly quaint. For a room being full of rockets, anyway.

“The Lunar Lander.” Wilde pointed. The small, one-man craft's replica was still lit by moody lights despite its weathered appearance. A tiny placard with the words “Valiant 11” was still legible, the little American flag planted nearby still upright, but torn and dirty. It paled in comparison to the posters advertising it all over the damned capital, but that was no shocker.

The satellite dish dangled down the front like bait. Wilde gained height by climbing some of the artificial “moon rocks”. Untangling it with care.

Wilde used another terminal near a fire door, thankfully offering us a quick departure. I sneered. The sun was at its peak in a rare clear sky. The Washington Monument was an ugly and grim sight even in the light.

I groaned when I realized it was the last stop on this little expedition.

The Botherhood geeks in their silver power armor were posted on either side of a solid gate entrance. More intact than the structure it guarded. Color of rust and dried blood, identical to the blotchy scarring across my skin. The connecting fence wrapped around in a tight circle of slanted car doors, barbed wire and broken slabs of concrete. The brotherhood's emblem—a winged sword centered through a circle enclosing gears--was emblazoned proudly on a flag hanging nearby. I rolled my eyes and resolved to keep my mouth shut.

“Halt!” One of the knights cried as we approached them, “No civilians past this point.”

Our pace did not change. The two guards turned helmets to one another. One of them shrugged, “State your business, citizen.”

Wilde held up our prize from the museum triumphantly as though it were a severed head, “I'm here to fix your radio signal.”

“I know you. You can go on up," One of the knights responded, "But the corpse has to wait down here.”

(don't say nothin
keep your mouth shut
don't ...get ...attached)

“Excuse you?” Wilde cocked her head.

“You heard me. No undead permitted. No matter how tame.”

Tame? Fuck it. Something felt like it bit me. I raised a fist and marched for him.

“What did you just say about me, Smoothskin trash? I'll snap that helmet off and use it like a fuckin chowder bowl youslimeysonuva---”

“ENOUGH.” Wilde cut through the air between me and the geek. I turned lax in an instant. Though beneath that, my teeth were still gritted. My would-be opponent stumbled back in surprise, like a child being scolded by someone he didn't expect a chiding from. I was more surprised she wasn't scolding me for the outburst, but damn if I'd show it.

Wilde squared her shoulders, “My ghoulfriend goes where I go. If there's an issue with that, you'll have to make due with your shitty signal.”

The pair of guards regarded the pair of us in silence. Considering it.

The sarcasm in Wilde's voice was thick with exasperation, “Or perhaps someone else will come along to fix it for free?”

“Alright. You've made your point.” The other clunked. The helmets they wore distorted their voices. Like the static on the radio had forever infected their throats. Buzzing locusts echoing from within a rotted out tunnel.

Clumsy codewords were exchanged through a nearby speaker. The gate parted like a sea from an ancient story.

The voices beneath the helmets were unsmiling, “Clearance granted.”

The inside of the Washington Monument housed nothing but a golden elevator with red rope stanchions on either side. Two more guards upheld the symmetry of the small, dirty white room. They were silent, though brimming with suspicion.

“Some hospitality for you doing 'em a favor.” I remarked as the doors of the elevator rattled apart. They squealed and inched closed.

“I don't understand it.” Wilde shook her head, “They've been friendly before. They've helped me take down mutants.”

“Enemy of your enemy is your friend. Until that enemy is gone.”

“But the enemy isn't gone.”

“All I'm saying's don't trust them, alright? They've taken more pot shots at my kind than I can count. ….Which reminds me, don't call me 'ghoulfriend'.”

“Sorry. Why not?”

Always with the asking why. I rubbed at my neck as my voice trailed off into a grumble, “It means we're... nevermind.”

The rest of the ride up was shaky and seemed far too long. I hoped the damn thing wouldn't get stuck. A tacky patriotic song played over us. Wilde was half-humming half-bobbing along to the melody while I stared cross-armed at the dirt on my boots and a small hole in the floor.

A cheerful sounding bell dinged and the elevator let us off. Wilde tripped a little and had to pause to reassert herself.

“S'matter? Rads?” I asked. There were no guards posted up here for now. Fortunate.

“No, I—We're just so high up, you know?” In spite of the fear, to spite the fear, she donned an expression of stony resolve and moved towards the broken edge of wall that overlooked The Mall and crouched to examine a collection of blinking machines and whirring tech.

“I can fix this. Simple.” I heard her mutter confidently. I spent the time she took hooking up the whos-a-whats-it dish looking for anything that might aid us. The top floor of this structure held room for very little. All the windows and the roof (if there ever was one) were long gone. Aside from a mini-nuke (which I snatched quickly), the only thing noteworthy was a filthy bedroll and a few boxes of 10mm rounds. Beneath the boxes rested a thin wrinkled comic book.

“Grognak the Barbarian.” I read the title aloud. Issue 7. For one reason or another, I folded it in half and slipped it into my back pocket.

“Lucky there's a toolbox up here!” Wilde was carrying on a conversation even now, when I was pacing the opposite side. “Wasters leave behind everything, don't they?”

“Hm.” I answered noncommittally. I could see Three Dog's plaza—the old world's radio station headquarters, now his--in the distance, deep with the network of alleyways, transit stops and apartments. A thick gray cloud swirled and loomed in that section of the city like a burial shroud. A dust storm was brewing. We weren't likely to be able to breath, let alone travel through that mess.

I rounded the corner of the exposed elevator shaft to find Wilde just finishing up.

“There's a duster blowing towards Tenleytown. Ain't wise to head there yet.”

She frowned as though ready to argue. But our armor was in a poor state and our ammo was near nonexistent. Adrenaline was giving way to exhaustion. She knew as well as I.

The boss stood tall, dusting grit from her vault suit and cringing at the blood concentrated on her boots.

“Just swell!" Wilde griped, "It's one step forward and two steps back.”

“It's Washington.” I replied.

She laughed even though I was not joking. Flipped the dial on her Pipboy radio. “Anything Goes” was playing. Clear as the bell that was her voice. The sound of the renewed signal seemed to instantly refill any brightness that had been chipped away.

“Hear that? It's back! We did it!” She jumped, raising a gloved palm up as though to quiet me, but smiling infectiously.

I squinted. She was still doing it.

“Well, come on! Hi-five!”

With reluctance I lifted my own palm and softly met hers.

She blinked, then laughed spiritedly, “That was, by far, the worst hi-five I've ever gotten.”

“Gimmee a break.” I half chortled and lit a cigarette. We stood in place for some time, looking out and down into the deadened green water in the Memorial Pool and the monuments that lay beyond it, stretched out sadly underneath the bright sky.

“It's all so broken. But still beautiful. Like stained glass.”

"It's just garbage."

"Good garbage." Wilde insisted.

I raised an eyebrow, “You are a very strange smoothskin.”

“Thanks, you're not so bad yourself.” She smarted genially. Then she sighed, “Let's go home, shall we?”

The word rang like the ghost of an old song. Like the banshee cry at the Super Duper Mart. Home. I reached for the comic I'd found absentmindedly. A comfort and a warning.