Chapter Three

The rubble lay like heavy snow, dunes of twisted metal and crumbling rock rising and falling and rising again in an endless cycle before him. Looking around, at the streets signs turned grey and red, and vehicles now more metal cobwebs than whole husks, he could almost forget that people had once scrambled to live here. Not just a handful, or even the thousand or two that now clustered in their towns, but tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands even, if the stories spun by muties were to be believed. They had been crammed into every square inch of this concrete sea, living a life happy and joyful and without the fear of hunger and disease, allowed the luxury of waking up each and every morning without the fear of it being the last.

They feared the bomb, he recalled dimly, his boot grazing a shadowy mark on the ground. Or at the least they had understood why they should have been terrified of it. A great power that only the sun could match, harnessed by men who had only dark thoughts in place of their humanity. Not that having their humanity would have changed anything, he reflected dispassionately. Want was the driving force of everything, might its vessel. Just because they wouldn't have wanted the world to end completely did not mean that they would have been willing to suffer in a world where they had to put aside their power and serve another. It was the same no matter how many people called you leader.

"You spot something?" Hamish's voice was high, higher than any calm soul would be able to match. As a companion he was a fearful creature, jumping at every shadow as if it were out to get him personally. Perhaps he was right. Maybe the shadows were hungry. But if so, then they were out for every living thing equally. That was a less terrifying thought, given that all living things was out to get them too.

"No," Nate replied, realising that he had fallen behind. Picking up the pace, he forced himself to acknowledge for the hundredth time the company he was keeping. For a caravan they were a pathetic thing: a single pack beast to pull a cart that was scarce big enough to carry a man, and five caravaners who looked more like Dustplain scavs than killers.

He could imagine what they looked to a raider, peering down at them with bloodshot eyes from their hidden alcoves. They would see easy meat. Target practice. It was what he saw, following on a few feet apart from his new companions. The one thing that could stop a raider from seeing the same had to be the comedown from whatever poison they had coursing through their veins. Only then, with their reasoning so messed up that they saw an army in place of children, was there any hope of them being allowed to make their journey unmolested.

That could either be a blessing, or it meant their deaths. There was no middle ground to be had. Not when they were in the shifting maze of the rubble of the old world. Though MacCready and Hamish both seemed to have taken their pathetic grouping as a positive, Nate was less inclined to support their reasoning. His experience lent towards raiders not following the normal conventions of logic most people abided by. Even juiced up, they would have a go at them, if only to quieten the voices in their head.

"You don't look like one of the regulars," the taller kid guardsman said with the certainty of a grandfather. "Come far?"

"A few days sailing from the south, so no."

It was as much a warning as it was an answer. Most companions he had ever would have accepted his refusal for what it was and dropped the subject. There were better, safer, topics to discuss than a stranger's past. History had a way of bringing back all the wrong stories for retelling. However it did not satisfy the boy. Indeed, it only seemed to egg on his curiosity.

"Why you come to the Commonwealth?"

"Don't listen to him, mista," the female guard declared, appearing at their side.

The boy turned to his partner, a child who had made the erroneous choice to carry around a weapon that she had no chance of using with any sort of skill. And because of it, her rifle-induced waddle was something else. Siblings, Nate took them for, more out of personal hope than any visual evidence. That or the boy had found compassion in the grey ocean before them, enough to look out for a defenseless little girl, sharing what little he had with a stranger who could just have easily been preparing to gut him in his sleep. No, they had to be siblings.

"Sandy, eyes on Dinky," the boy commanded, his eyes returning to study their adult companion, still expecting an answer that he would find acceptable.

"A letter," Nate finally said, offering the words with a frown, hoping against hope that such a benign object would deter him from filling the air with his voice. No one read other's letters, nor tried to pry out the contents in conversation. That was as much a law as the sun rising in the morning.

"From someone you know?"

"You can't get letters from someone if they don't know you, shithead," the girl Sandy called out as she moved up alongside the brahmin. "How would the traders know to give it to you?"

Nate heard MacCready laugh at the girl's outburst, startling their merchant companion. Instead of turning the boy's attention towards the others, it only seemed to galvanise him towards doubling down on his investigation. His eyes seemed to bore into Nate, two lasers searing into his flesh, or as near to it as a child's eyes could get. It was almost as if he could read the older man's thoughts. If he could read at all. It wasn't like kids surviving by working caravan duty had a time for sitting down with a book.

"The letter from someone you know?"

No. "Yes."

"What does it say?"

"Nothing that concerns you," Nate replied with a tone of dismissal, gesturing for the boy to join his sister. He had already said enough that anyone else would have been satisfied. Yet his temporary aide did not strike him as someone who knew to read people, nor to understand when he was becoming a nuisance.

Expectantly, he glanced to acknowledge that it was not good enough of an answer for the youth, who had already opened his mouth to bark out another inane question. He did not seem to want to drop it, even as his companion became visibly angry at his pushing. Maybe he was simply bored. That was a benign enough reason, if poor. But there were other reasons. Reasons that put the newcomer on edge.

"Get back to your sister," he said, cutting off the kid before he got pushed too far. "And keep your eyes on the road."

The boy almost refused, visibly bristling at the words as if anything said had been some physical assault on his person. He got that look in his eyes, one that older, tougher men could use to get their own way. On him they just glistened, as if holding back tears.

"Gary, come here man."

It was MacCready. He raised his hand, motioning for Gary to come to his side when the boy seemed set on refusing. There was something about the way the older mercenary stood that told them that he would not ask again. Surprisingly, the boy could see that too.

"We'll speak later," he promised Nate, as if that was a good deed worthy of thanks.

Leaving him to the silent contemplation of his duty of bringing up the rear of their paltry caravan, Gary sauntered forward, passing his sister and Hamish with the grace of an injured molerat. Less, if Nate wasn't being so generous.

"Let's keep our heads," Hamish muttered, his voice unable to carry on the breeze. "We got a while to go yet."

After the first hour of their trip Hamish had revealed his map of the Commonwealth, eager to explain why it was that the journey would take the best part of the daylight they had left for them to walk. Nate fell for the rookie error of pointing out that they could try the straight path from Long Harbour to Diamond City, and "be there in an hour."

With the condescending sigh only a parent could match, Hamish set about to teach his new pupil about the state of the rubble ocean they were wading through. He gestured to a series of dark marks on his map, explaining that everything beyond it was gang territory. "And not the kind you can buy off with any amount of money."

So instead of the most efficient scramble from walled town to walled town they shuffled along like snakes, meandering from one shadowy valley to the next. He imagined that their journey looked like a treasure hunt to the birds circling overhead, the party moving from one sharp angle to the next, taking five steps to the side for every one they put towards their destination.

But Nate didn't have to be argued with to accept that the trader had far more knowledge about the land they were traipsing through. If Hamish had the good sense enough to survive the numerous trips necessary in his line of employment, then he was surely a better judge for their route than a newcomer. Didn't mean that he had to like it. Not at all. He had managed fine enough on his own up until this point, but as it stood he had the mayor of Long Harbour to please. And as it was with men like him, a pleased mayor was a generous man. If things didn't work out with Sanctuary, he would need the fall back offered by the opportunities of happy mayors.

The path they were following, more a depression in the dust than anything resembling a trail, suddenly veered to the left. Not the right way, Nate noted, for the hundredth time. He could still hear the soft crash of the ocean waves, and the clicking of mirelurk talons. Beyond it was the soft murmur of civilisation, though the winds could have carried it from behind or beyond. Yet he stayed quiet, nursing his misgivings as well as any wastelander. Instead he turned his eyes to their new surroundings, as if daring the beasts lurking beyond his sight to try him.

The skeleton shapes of buildings rose like tombstones on either side of their path, like a forest of grey and black. Lichen had begun to spread across the bones, looking more akin to a green blanket carelessly thrown upon the corpses than something grown. He could see passing glimpses of what lay within them. There, a skull half submerged in a hill of bones. And there, a rat twice the size of his hand, dead. The rodent had died with its fangs sunk into an outcrop of mushrooms which had blossomed from the rotten remains of a couch. He caught himself smiling at the sight. He had seen wastelanders twice his age make the same mistake.

Even as his eyes ran over the darkened innards of the corpse buildings, Nate allowed himself to breathe a little slower. No guns, old or new. No cloth scraps caught on exposed wire. Though the 'wealth had promised a life of plenty, he was only seeing death, and it brought a soft smile to his face. Rats and bones he could deal with. It was the living that were the problem.

Before too long they came to a sign, standing solitary in what passed for a road. MacCready, somewhat eagerly, approached the post. Dismissing the throaty croak that was Hamish's warning of the shadows out to get him, the mercenary walked forward with all the confidence of a man out for blood. He stopped bare inches from the sign, head swiftly turning to assess the wasteland around them.

"Raiders," he said by way of explanation as his fellows joined him. "Seems they have marked out their territory."

"How nice of them," Nate replied, only half in mockery. He turned to their paymaster, who had decided that it was time to put himself forward and look at the sign for his own observations. "What we doing Hamish?"

"We are gonna go through," Sandy answered before the merchant could dissipate the silence with his own voice. "This wasn't here when we came through the last time."

She sounded confident for a child. Perhaps too confident. A lot of people would tell Nate that such confidence betrayed treachery, that the girl had a deal with whoever had staked the post. Experience, however, always pointed towards ignorance. That was a far bigger thing to be scared of. At least a traitor knew what they were getting themselves into.

Ignorance could be benign enough, helpful even. Ignorance of the poison coursing through your veins, or the sniper already letting out his breath for the shot, meant you died with a bit of dignity, without fear. But ignorance of a preventative fatality, of the threat posed by starving junkies with assault rifles, was an unforgivable sin. Ignorance didn't always just get you killed. It got the people around you killed. And in this instance, Nate had to count himself as one of those people.

"What we doing Hamish?" Nate repeated, toying with the holster of his pistol.

The man looked set to wallow in his own daemons, unable to draw his eyes away from the glistening blood that had been used to paint a flamboyant rune on the metal. His jaw swung intermediately, teasing the formation of words. But as it happened, none seemed to spill out, even accidentally.

"There another way round?"

"Na," Gary informed them. "Not unless we want to start marching through molerat hunting grounds."

He said it breezily enough, as if tracking through predator territory was something that a child could do easily. No, the way he said it made the threat sound tangible, a death sentence as sure as if they were to walk in front of a firing squad. Looking at his fellow travellers, Nate understood that the child's false bravado did not dispel the nature of his words. They were growing tight, the idea of traipsing through a knowingly hostile path having the same effect on them as it did on him. That settled it. Better to gamble for safety than accept a certainty of injury.

"Alright then," Nate declared, glancing up to assess how much light they still had. "Let's get Dinky moving."

Though Hamish was slow to find his normal stride, MacCready and the two children were already stomping into the raider territory with a spring to their steps. For a moment Nate almost reached out to the caravan master, ready to jolt him into action. But the man reached deep and found some hidden courage. With an audible sigh, he took a step.

Click.

Beep.