The day's late summer warmth was coming to an end, and what a day it had been. Her nerves were frazzled, and her body ached.
Miss Vicious did one final search around the Fairfax Ruins complex, making sure there were no more enemies left. There was just one guy, located in a hidden corner behind a trash bin. This time, she spotted him first. Snuck up on the dude. But he had freaked after she'd surprised him. He had run away, not even trying to fight! ... It seemed as though this last raider was completely unaware what had happened to all his friends. Maybe he'd been passed out drunk all day. After she had gotten in his face and then whacked him one with her rusty lead pipe, he wanted no part of her. He had simply run off to the south, and Vicious decided to just let him go.
But the thing is, it was never her intention to fight any of them.
She was exhausted. Sun was going down. Time to get some sleep. The lady defender at Fort Independence had informed Vicious that no visitors were allowed inside the Independence complex; they'd be shot on sight. So getting some sleep safely behind thick walls was out of the question. And ... maybe Defender Anne Marie Morgan was just a little ticked about meeting Miss Vicious Delicious in the first place, then having to perform all her dirty work.
A wasteland crow cawed, and Vicious thought she heard a distant thunderclap as well. Perhaps a storm was coming in. Miss Vicious found a bedroll to crash upon. Exhaustion nearly wiped the former raider out, right then and there. She sat down instead. Decided to take inventory of all the contents crammed into her packs, laying all her worldly possessions on the floor before her.
-- She still had the clothes she had worn into Tenpenny.
-- She also had a set of lingerie she'd found, then stole from some posh lady's dresser. 'Sexy sleepwear', as it was commonly called.
-- Dozens of rounds of ammo. She'd keep all the 9 millimeter bullets, 10 millimeter bullets, and shotgun pellets. Everything else, she'd eventually sell.
-- Enough food and drink to last for at least two days.
-- Enough chems to knock her into the stratosphere: A tube of morphine. A couple syringes each of Jet and Psycho. A pint of scotch. And so many packs of cigarettes, she'd have to leave some behind to go stale.
-- Three guns in total: a 9mm handgun, 10mm handgun, and Chinese pistol. She'd keep the pistol. The other two guns were mutts she'd scavenged from all the raiders who'd been killed. She couldn't carry all these pieces at once, so she hid the two larger handguns in a metal box near her bedroll. She would remember where she put them, and maybe weeks from now she would need to retrieve them, assuming a new group of raiders didn't locate them first.
Miss Vicious smiled. Travelling the wastes for several days, and luckily, she had some things to show for this. Plenty to eat, plenty to drink, she could even get high if she wanted. But first thing she did was knelt down upon the bedroll. She bowed her head. Since she no longer had her King James bible to guide by, so she began to improvise her thoughts into words.
"Dear God," she muttered quietly. "I hope you out there. I hope you are ... listening,"
She paused, as emotions overcame. She did not fight it when tears began to flow.
"I did some really bad things today. I did," she paused again, to wipe her face. "I know this. I don't know if what I did, what I got that Anne Morgan lady involved with, whether it was right in your eyes, or wrong. I ... I am so confused!"
She realized she was speaking aloud just then, and lowered her voice back to a whisper. Took a moment to make sure nobody was sneaking up on her. Gazed at the shadows, now getting very long. Heard nothing. Wiped her eyes again.
"It was
not my intention to kill them! Why they want to attack me, anyway? What did I do? I had no choice! But. And, as you may notice, I left one of them to ... fend for himself. To live another day. Because it
ain't right, God. It ain't right, what happened today. ... But it is what it is. It is what the Capitol Wasteland demands. Right? None of us were born into..."
She stopped and listened again. Gazed around. Nothing. The sun was gone from the sky.
"That is all. I-- that is all."
She carefully gathered all the things she'd definitely need in the future back into her pack; preparing for tomorrow. Then she laid down upon the bedroll, all the adrenaline she'd expended this day, now completely diminished. She was asleep before she knew it.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
"Fairfax Freddy, you out there? Come in!" said the man with the dopey voice from roughly two miles away, speaking into his recently-Abraxo'd microphone. "Yo, Fairfax Freddy. You read? *Ship.* Where they all at?" he asked his nearby left-hand guy. "This ain't right."
"Like I said sir," answered the dopey-voice guy's left-hand guy, the one they called Cheese Head. "Seems like something happened out there at the ruins. We got word from Freddy himself that the lady you had sent out into the western wastes was spotted. Not wearing the Parkstroller suit, but in full raider gear. A bunch of them were out there and ready. Last we heard. Then... nothing. No word from Fairfax Ruins, from Freddy, or anyone else."
"What the *flip*," said the man with the dopey voice, really angry now. He took a swig from his beer, a draw from his Lucky Strike. "What the *flip* happened?"
"Who knows? Maybe Talon Company. Maybe the Enclave. Certainly not the lady we sent out there. That traitor. No way she could have handled them all herself."
Cheese Head's boss glowered, but said nothing.
"And it can't be the Fort Independence Outcasts, if that's what you're thinking," Cheese Head offered. "Though Fairfax and Independence are side-by-side, there's supposed to be some sort of contract between those two. You know, we stay where we are, the outcasts stay where they are. That sort of thing. Never been a problem before."
"A'iight," said Cheese Head's boss, already calming his dopey dog-like voice. He thought a moment.
Becoming head of all raider gangs of the Potomac region had not been easy. One had to be flexible, always ready for a change of plans. Unfortunately, this next plan he was thinking of would cut into some profits. He'd have to spare a few men, at least for a day or two. But this was why he had become the man he was today. The man at the very
top.
"First thing tomorrow, we send a few flunkies out there. Our best recruits. We got to get to the bottom of this one, a'ight? And we gonna lose some time with that deal we was talkin' about. But this got to get done. 'Cause this ain't right."
Cheese Head agreed, not that he had much choice. In the morning, a basic scout & search team would be sent. It would cost them some time and some caps. But it had to get done. It had to get done.
This post has been edited by Renee: Aug 30 2020, 05:39 PM