Book I - The Stolen Path

Chapter 1) Ghost Town Showdown

Pain was his first memory.

He shouted himself hoarse, but too many hands held him down. Then the anesthetics put his muscles to sleep, silencing him. Inside, he remained awake, vigilant in the delirium. A brain trapped in a jar that refused the respite of sensory deprivation.

Had his voice answered to him, he'd have begged for mercy.

As it was, he felt every inch of the steel that carved his head open.

The first instinct past the haze was to punch the wizened face welcoming him back to the land of the living to the roar of vertibird blades.

A murderous headache splitting his skull open once more was his body's way of saying no. He lay staring, unable to turn his head. Not a vertibird. A spinning fan on a wooden ceiling, dry and eaten by time.

'Where am I?'

"Hghmn?" he grunted eloquently. The man cleared his throat, bald, mustachioed head invading his view.

"I said I think you're past the worst," the old man said gently. Practiced fingers found his wrist, listening. The stethoscope was cool against his bare chest. "All this time, I wasn't sure you'd pull through. God above, I can hardly believe you survived the operation as it was, and that was weeks ago."

His throbbing, addled brain cranked to life like an old watch. Gears creaked as disused mechanisms tried to push them in motion, past the layers of rust.

'Weeks?'

'Who's we?'

'Where's my stuff?'

Every time, he drew a complete blank.

His body tried to compensate for his mind's shortcomings. Leaden limbs stretched and pushed, kicking in the balls every instinct that urged him to avoid pain once more. His head, a whole different sentient being, made its displeasure known, loudly and painfully so.

He flopped back on the hard cushion, twitching in the throes of agony. The old doctor's hand helped him along, pressing on his left shoulder.

"Easy there, John Doe. I ain't looking forward to piecing you back together, when you crack your skull on the floor." Still pinning him to the bed with one hand - this old man! - the doctor flashed a small light into his eyes. He squinted. "Do you understand me? People don't survive what you went through, son. They simply don't. Now rest, and don't waste our local share of miracles."

'John Doe? Is that me?'

'What happened to me?' was the question on his lips, but they wouldn't cooperate, and then a syringe slipped into his right arm.

His last thought was how odd it was he couldn't feel the man's hand on his left shoulder. Then darkness claimed him.

The face in the mirror was that of a complete stranger. A stranger without a name.

How could Doc Mitchell expect him to tell if he had done the good 'needlework' he claimed he had? Hadn't the past week proved his attempts wrong at every turn, no matter how many times the doc insisted he was recovering prodigiously fast?

All John could tell was that some bastard used his face for point-blank target practice.

The scar was a long, jagged line along the left side of his head. The stitches had come off long before he awoke, leaving it stubby to the touch where the scalpel had dug out the two bullets that robbed him of his identity. Doc Mitchell insisted most of the scar wasn't due to the trauma or his tools, however, but the product of some old knife wound, inflicted perhaps by a large, serrated blade.

Old or new, the pain was only slightly below atrocious as John traced its bare outline. The short, mostly dark hair that covered the rest of his head like a mat refused to grow over it.

'That's gray. How many years have I lost?'

The lower half of his face mirrored the top, covered by weeks' worth of dark, bushy beard that parted only around the thin line of his mouth. Somewhere in between, bloodshot brown eyes emerged from sunken orbits.

"Well?" Doc Mitchell asked behind the frame of the hand-held mirror, voice betraying his eagerness.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" the doctor echoed, brows arching. "Nothing stirs? Not even a name, a date?"

John shrugged, lowering the mirror on the living room's table between them. "Sorry to disappoint, doc. Sounds like I'll get to stick with the name you gave me. Does that make you my father?"

Doc Mitchell shifted in his stuffed armchair, shoulders drawing together. His eyes traveled to the spotless framed photo hanging above the mantle of the nearby chimney. A young girl in a blue Vault suit smiled back from behind the polished glass.

"You had no papers on you," the Doc said. "It's a name for unknown people, from back before the War. You needn't have taken it to heart."

John shrugged, letting his gaze travel across what he could see of the doctor's house. The dusted wooden surfaces and too extensive space for a single man were becoming increasingly familiar and constricting as the days crawled on. "It's short. Easy to remember. Much better than calling myself Fritz, I'd say."

His right hand brushed absently along the length of the lean, shining rifle propped against his armchair. Some old instinct the bullets couldn't erase, the Doc had theorized.

Etched in small letters between the trigger and the case surrounding the microfusion breeder, was the name 'Fritz'.

A few days after John had stepped out of the small ward in the back of the house, and only after the town of Goodsprings had a chance to take his measure, the doctor had placed the weapon in his hands. His eyes had sought and found the name without fault.

What did it mean? Was it a name, an acronym, some sort of identification? A hint to his past, sure, but useless without framing. He didn't know any more than the doctor did, but the recognition was enough that he didn't allow it out of his sight at any time.

Two days after receiving it, he had recollected what the rifle actually was and how it worked.

'Microfusion hyperbreeder. What a mouthful.' The townspeople and the doctor probably thought it safe enough, without any ammo.

More than a sense of safety, that little bit of knowledge gave John hope that he could remember more. Remember who he was, maybe.

"Agreed," the Doc sighed, shaking John out of his merry trip down memory lane. "I had hoped for, well, something. Kept this trump card for last as the wily old man I am," he chuckled. He walked slowly into the adjacent kitchen, popping his back with his knuckles.

"Me too," John admitted, "but you're too hard on yourself, Doc. If you were less of a good man, you'd be suspicious that my amnesia wiped out only my personal history."

"You don't know that," the Doc said. John heard hot water pouring into mugs; he imagined the doctor mixing a large spoonful of the powder that made for a strong if bitter tea into each. "Might be you recall one of two things, or five. Sadly, my Vault needed a surgeon more than it needed a neurologist." The doctor walked back in, holding two steaming mugs. "We might never know."

John muttered a thank you and sipped his tea. Silence settled, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. It was just there, a recurring presence in the last few days. He found his thoughts quickly shying away from the distress that resided in the whole concept of 'not-knowing oneself', and thus not properly existing. 'Damn books, that's what you get for snooping around.'

He took a sip and switched the mug gingerly from his right hand to his left.

All feeling had returned to the limb just as muscle memory started to reemerge, stirred by exercise after being dulled by weeks of lying in a coma. Things like fisting his left hand under his chin in thought, or scratching himself with the right. Then came reflexes, like bolting up and rolling away from his bed when some voice or steps he didn't recognize approached his door.

That was the day he met Sunny Smiles, the local hunter and sheriff, and her dog, Cheyenne. It was also the day he accidentally punched a hole in the floor, Cheyenne tried to chow on his left forearm, and the four of them discovered something was wrong with his left arm.

Doc Mitchell had run a battery of tests. He scraped off skin samples, but every time they flaked and withered within minutes. More worrying still, they were replaced in moments, perfect down to body hair and skin tone. Cheyenne's bite marks had vanished just as quickly.

John himself had spent hours later comparing the two limbs, touching and feeling, but on the outside, they were identical. Almost too identical.

At John's assent, Doc Mitchell had tried to dig deeper. He ended up blunting his sharpest scalpel, but couldn't even cut through to reach muscle. When he was done, John folded the metal tool into a loop, just with two fingers.

When the next morning, Mayor Trudy had come up to the doc's house to get her radio repaired and didn't mention a word of it, John figured that neither Doc Mitchell nor Sunny had mentioned any of it around town. Even as he'd fixed Trudy's radio, glad for anything to distract him, that still baffled John.

From that day, he started to notice how the Doc always measured his words around him, how his shoulders tensed when they were in the same room, and how he always kept his 10mm at his hip.

That was how John learned to recognize fear.

The front door creaked open, bringing him back to the present. He behaved as two sets of steps, one padded and one less, approached. No grabbing at Fritz like he was deep in enemy territory this time.

How he knew what he would automatically behave like in enemy territory, he didn't have the foggiest.

To no avail, however. Cheyenne was still giving him the stink eye.

"Hey, Doc! I've got your steaks," Sunny Smiles greeted, true to her name and shaking her red hair to get rid of the outside dirt, not unlike her dog would do. She noticed Cheyenne's change of attitude and then him.

"John, you're awake! And not punching!" Her smile didn't falter, and he was grateful for that, but it was hard to keep the frown away from his face. There was no missing the heavy bags under her eyes, nor how waxy her skin looked under the tan of a desert hunter.

"Hey there. Fancy some tea?" He offered and chuckled when she scrunched her nose in distaste and glared.

"Choke on it for me, please." She dropped her backpack on the table and fished out a bound package smelling of juicy meat. "Fresh from the pen, Doc. Someone oughta be grateful for all your hard work."

Doc Mitchell thanked her and took the package to his fridge after a curious peer inside. "Why don't you lie down? You look like you're about to fall over where you stand."

As if the coercive authority of his full doctor tone wasn't enough, a large yawn cut off Sunny's excuse. She looked longingly at the vacant sofa.

"Oh, why not? It's not like I'm going to crawl back home anytime soon."

She unslung her rifle and dropped face first onto the sofa, stretching like a cat, her sigh of relief muffled by the cushion in her face. Cheyenne cast a wary glance at John, then sprawled in a circle at her feet, turning her muzzle in his direction and closing her eyes.

"Nice try, girl," he teased. "Won't fool me again."

"Don't provoke the dog, John," Sunny groaned, righting herself and sheepishly accepting a mug of cactus juice from the Doc. As she sipped the fresh drink, she looked no older than the girl in the Doc's photo, despite her claims of being a few years over twenty.

"So, what's new in town?" John asked.

"Nothing - and that's not a good thing. Chet's still an ass, the road's closed, and there aren't enough people to keep watch and clear the critters from the pumps at the same time." She pointed an accusing finger at him, pursing her lips. "Cheyenne and I are overworked while you loaf around all day here at the Doc's. At least the Divide isn't blowing hell on us."

He took it in kind. Sunny was like that. Honest. Blunt. Tired. Apparently not afraid of him. "I figured between you, the Doc, and Trudy, I'd be lending a hand by now. It's not like I'm shackled up to my bed or anything anyway. What's taking so long?"

"You, John," Doc Mitchell said. He winced and rubbed his temples against what looked like a building headache. John couldsympathize.

"No offense, but Victor carries you in the one night gunfire keeps everyone on their toes, two bullets in your head and that high-tech rifle of yours. Next thing we know, the road between here and Jean's Sky Diving is littered with half the Great Khans that passed through the day before. Many people think you're Brotherhood, and really, we've got enough trouble as it is with the convicts without adding the NCR."

"So, Chet and the others fear that – the Khans, the NCR, take your pick - will retaliate for helping me?" He sighed and leaned back heavily. "Next, he'll blame me for the deathclaws and devil knows what at Quarry Junction."

"Don't let him hear that," Sunny scoffed. "You'll tempt him. Little greedy hypocrite. He was the first out there emptying pockets and the last doubling over a shovel. And all he's doing now is fearmongering and stopping you from taking some of my shifts."

"Now I'm flattered. Not every day someone argues my case so passionately."

Sunny flipped him the bird. "Could be the first for all you know." She froze after the last word left her lips. He waved her off, burying a spike of annoyance. He didn't like it, but it was true.

"Don't sweat it. Being amnesiac has its ups too."

"Yeah. Don't want to hear that." She picked up her rifle, tugging half-heartedly at the bolt. " Sorry. It's been a long night. Cobb shouted his lungs out the first half, and Cheyenne barked at critters for the rest of it." The dog perked up at her name. Sunny fondly scratched her behind the ears. "Scared the living lights out of them too. Good girl. Now, of course, my varmint's jammed. If there's a God out there, Pete will be at the bar and not too cranky to have a look at it."

He let her talk. Doc Mitchell was paging through a book, keeping only a half ear to the conversation, but he looked more than ready to doze into it than read it. The old doctor was sturdy for his age, but he was also well past his seventies, and John figured the excitement of the last few weeks wasn't part of his usual routine. Either that, or his medicine cabinet was always that empty. The skin on his forehead was stretched tight, his cheeks sunken, and his hooded eyes spoke of sleepless nights and a heavy weight on his shoulders.

Not for the first time since he'd awoken, John felt a weight that had nothing to do with physical pain settling on his chest, pressing down on his ribcage. It was an odd sensation, one he couldn't wrap his head around.

These people – Doc Mitchell, Sunny, Trudy and the rest of Goodsprings' citizens – they brought him back from the brink of death, and asked for nothing in return but the time to decide if he was trustworthy. Some of them, like Sunny, already had.

The word, trust, sounded alien to his mind.

He couldn't find it in himself to resent them, though, no matter how much the prolonged wait made him want to punch through a wall, or how his pockets were curiously empty of any money or bottlecaps. What little he knew of his past-self suggested that he would have done the same, at the very least.

Judging by the number of graves Sunny said they dug for the dead Great Khans, probably worse.

Suddenly, the walls surrounding him seemed to bend and converge on him, trying to strangle him.

'I need to get out of here.'

John forced a breath down his lungs. "No need to ruffle Easy Pete. Let me have a look. Then I'm taking breath of fresh air."

The harsh desert sun blinded John for a full minute, leaving spots dancing in his vision. The air was dry, scorching, and the breeze carried dirt and dust rather than relief. The heat on his skin, the sweat already gathering on his forehead and neck weren't pleasant, but nor were they strange. He took comfort in that notion.

The wasteland welcomed him, harsh and unforgiving as it was. He preferred it ten times over the oppressive comforts of the Doc's house.

From the low hill, he enjoyed a clear view of Goodsprings. Two dozen houses in various states of disrepair clustered on each side of two roads of cracked asphalt. Brahmin lumbered in their corrals, the two-headed beasts oblivious and uncaring of everything around them. Small gardens dotted with hardy wasteland vegetables separated each building from the next.

Sunny poked him on the shoulder. "It's not much, true, but it's home. Anyway, you're looking in the wrong direction. The local Strip is that way."

Following her pointed finger, he made out two wide, one-story buildings squatted at the foot of the tallest hill around, the slope dotted with the odd cactus tree. No signs creaked on their hinges in the morning breeze: tall, faded letters identified both the general store and the Prospector's Saloon, though the latter was made more personable by the mismatched collection of neon signs composing the last word.

"Victor found you atop the hill. See? If you squint, you can see the first tombstones and the broken fence."

He didn't need to squint his eyes, but he did so anyway. "I see a fair deal of bloatflies buzzing around too."

"Must be all the blood you lost and the fresh graves." She grimaced and scratched Cheyenne behind her doggy ears. "I'll add them to the list. At least it's not something bigger, or more poisonous."

"Wildlife's quite lively?"

"You tell me. I'm the one on patrol every other day. Quarry Junction isn't that far off, you know? On a clear day, you can see radscorpions and cazadores aplenty from the hill, buzzing and fighting in the valley below. They tend to skirt Goodsprings though. Pete says it's because of all the dynamite they used to dig the mine."

"Maybe they'll pay Cobb a visit."

Sunny chuckled and started down the path, "Ah. Would that they do!"

He tipped the visor of his cowboy hat lower against the morning sun and followed. She led him down the other side of the hill, past a run-down Poseidon energy station that offered its shadow to a packed Brahmin.

"The trader, Ringo. Is he still holing up?"

"You're one to talk," she sniped back. "Yeah, poked his head out once two days ago. Jittery guy, but smart enough to avoid the general store and jingle his caps at Trudy."

"It's not like those Gangers would leave the town alone even if Chet handed them Ringo nicely wrapped up. The NCR correctional facility is what? Thirty miles south of here?"

"And how would you know?"

John tapped the map hanging from his belt he had worked on over the past few days with Doc Mitchell.

"Yeah, pretty much. I knew it was only a matter of time when news of the escape spread, but with I-15 closed off and McCarran one big nest of deathclaws away, they've become bold."

"Then why don't you leave? Doc told me this was a mining town years back, but the vein's long since dried up." Sunny shook her head, but he persisted. He might not remember owning a house or the sense of belonging somewhere, but logic and pragmatism were bulletproof, it seemed.

"You've nothing keeping you here but what? Affection and habit? Until whoever's in charge deals with the deathclaws, you can forget travelers to the Strip and caravans. Primm's a day away, and further south there's Nipton and the NCR Outpost."

"Looks like you've got it all figured out already," said Sunny, spinning on her heel and planting her palms on her hips. She was forced to look up at him, but her scowl was fierce. "Look, John, you seem like a nice guy, and I appreciate what you're trying to do. And yeah, you may be right on some of it. Point is, Goodsprings is home. Not habit and affection. Home. You don't abandon home just like that." Her expression softened, and she brushed away a wild lock of red hair.

"To me, it's all I've known my whole life. My parents rest three stones down where Vic found you. Pete busted his back in the mine and making the houses livable when they first settled. Some of us can't just pack up and leave because some raider in blues got it in their heads they like our spot."

He let her words and the emotions on display on her face soak in. Pride. Fear. Anger. He knew the names, how to recognize those three. He tried to imagine himself in her situation, to sympathize, pitted against unfavorable odds to defend a place and people he held dear, but once more drew a blank. The most he got was a faint sense of distress as he pictured his conjured-up home burning around him, faceless people dead at his feet.

The mental projection spiraled out of control. Dark. Blood. Pain. A chuckle. Black and white. A glint. Two gunshots.

He felt Sunny shaking him; the tarmac scratched his palms and knees through the fabric of his trousers. His breath came in quick, ragged gasps. The world spun and the metallic smell of blood filled his nostrils. And Sunny shouting in his ear was not helping with his pounding headache. Not one bit.

"… back to the Doc's. You need to lie down!"

"No time to lie down," he grunted back but accepted Sunny's lift. She hauled him back onto his feet with surprising strength, making his head spin once more before the world returned to focus. He swiped his right hand across his face, frowning. No blood.

Sunny steadied him, bemused. Even Cheyenne spared him the doggie equivalent of a worried but unimpressed glance. He took a couple of tentative steps, found his legs could hold his weight and pushed himself off Sunny.

"I think... I think just remembered something important."

"Really? What's that?"

"Don't know for sure yet, but… it rings a bell with something Trudy said when I checked her radio. A man in a checkered suit, passed through a couple of days 'fore Victor found me in the graveyard?"

Sunny looked thoughtful for a moment, still searching him for any sign he might topple over any moment, then her eyes narrowed. "Sleek and greasy. Pretty city boy face. Two burly bodyguards. Same suit?"

"Wouldn't know about his pretty face, but that's the one." He exhaled. "Chet'll have to wait."

Cheyenne barked in approval. "What's with the sudden curiosity now? You know him? Is that it?"

He shook his head and touched the scar across his temple. Real and ghost pain mixed together. "I think he might be the one who shot me."

Trudy had precious little to add. No name, no precise direction, no association. Probably a Strip boy, but the stingy kind. Checkered suit. Ungodly amounts of hair lotion for the desert. A silver-plated zippo.

Chet 'knew' a lot of things, though. Worse for John, he had no qualms announcing them to the town at large from the patio of the Prospector. No early drink in his hands to dismiss his words as drunken ramblings either.

"I know you're one of those Brotherhood folks, 'John Doe'. Your kind is not welcome here, nor anywhere else in the Mojave." He spat a glob at his feet, his breath reeking of tobacco. "We wasted tons of meds on your sorry ass, asked for nothing back, and you can't bother to wait for the community to decide 'bout you. Here you are, prancing and strutting as you like. Well then, fuck off. To the road with you, and I might not inform the next NCR patrol your terrorist ass passed by."

John eyed the 9mm on Chet's belt and the similar weaponry carried by the townsfolk training the ugliest looks at him.

'Three total. Small arms, speed on the draw. Elbow to throat, knife between ribs, duck behind motorcycle. Two shots at center mass.'

Before he even realized he was assessing and weighing the rest of the people around him – Sunny and Trudy included – as possible threats and collateral damage, a boxy robot in blue rolled around the Prospector's corner closest to the graveyard hill, its prodigious bulk balancing with the precision of squeaking machinery over a single worn wheel.

The cartoonish cowboy on the screen flickered with static. "Skedaddle, folks! That's one mighty group of bad eggs comin' up the road, armed and primped. Will be on us 'fore we say Sarsparilla, right quick!"

John was the first to act as panic ensued. Chet disappeared inside his shop at the word 'armed'. People started running for their houses or checking their sidearms for ammo. An elderly couple hurried to the brahmin's pen as fast as their legs would carry them and soon were struggling with the lumbering beasts that refused the gift of freedom.

He marched up to the windblown Securitron. As with Fritz, the word was there when he searched for it, as were schematics.

'9mm Gatlings. Pneumatic claws. Alloy casing. Those shoulder pads hold enough space for micro-missiles, or maybe additional ammo storage. Holy hell, it's a fuckin' war machine!'

His heart was pumping faster with the first infusion of adrenaline; a strange eagerness coursed through his convalescent body, brushing away the lingering ailments. His mind cleared, the headache forgotten.

"Victor. Cut the bullshit. How far and how many?"

"Oh, howdy pardner?" The cowboy eyes were two black, fixed pixels, but John focused on the camera lenses just above the screen. He could swear he felt them whirr and zoom on him. One of the claws reached up to tap the rim of an imaginary hat in an all-too-human gesture. "A good dozen strong, the rascals are. They were leavin' Jean's when I rolled down the hill."

'Map. Remember. That's some six miles away, give or take. At a run, half an hour at least, and they won't be fresh. One hour and something if walking fast. Ought to know the town would have lookouts. Plenty of time in either case.'

John grabbed Sunny by one arm and Trudy by the other, careful with his grip. The younger woman was clutching her Varmint, her jaw set and teeth grinding. The elder one was shouting over the small crowd, pawing at people, trying to restore order and herd the stampede.

Both turned to regard him with eyes full of determination and a wince in Trudy's case. They'd wrestled down the worms of doubt and despair that took hold over the rest of Goodsprings. He took the Varmint from the redhead's hands and shot three times into the ground.

'Now they ought to speed up if Cobb is half worth his threats.'

People stopped, turned and watched, wide-eyed. He took them in: most past their forties, the elderly couple, a young family with their child. All that remained of a town slowly choked by the wasteland.

"Victor was exaggerating. There's only a dozen of them, some five miles away by now. They are underestimating you, think you will all cower and tremble like Chet there." He pushed the Varmint back into Sunny's hands, ignoring her stupefied expression, and unslung Fritz from his back. The hyperbreeder felt right in his hands.

"We'll capitalize on that, and they'll pay for it. Gather what weapons you have and hide on the roofs, behind the windows. We'll lure them into a kill zone, and that will be it."

"And who the hell are ye to order us about?"

"Wish I knew. Right now, the only one with a working head on his shoulders, it seems." He walked up to the man who had piped up, the burly arms of a farmer with a scorched face of someone who spent a lot of years in the desert sun and hands as big as plates. They were of the same height, but the farmer had at least two stones on the still recovering amnesiac. John glared at him right in the eye, then grabbed the larger man by his shirt with his left arm and pulled.

The farmer's feet left the ground.

"Do as I say, and live. Or wait for them to come and gut you in your home. Choice's yours."

Silence ensued. John let the man go with a shove, and turned to regard the small crowd. Only the elderly couple was absent, still struggling with their brahmins. A little up the hill, he could make out a silhouette standing in the door leading into the gas station.

"I'll say it again. Gather your weapons and what armor you have. Best sharpshooters on the Prospector's roof and the shop's. Stay low. Not you, Sunny," he said, shaking his head at the redhead. She scowled, but he was already speaking again, a plan quickly shaping up in his head.

"Pete, any dynamite you've left from the mine, bring it out. I'll need all you can get. Those who cannot fight, head to Doc Mitchell's house and stay there until it's over."

The white-bearded cowboy hesitated, suspicion darkening his leathery face, then nodded gruffly and trotted down the road, mumbling to himself. John turned to the Securitron. "Victor, break down the store's back door. Chet's storeroom should be stacked with the Khan's equipment and ammo. No reason to let those go to waste."

"Right away pardner! I like the way you work. It's gonna be one helluva shootout."

"Everyone stock up and get into position! Keep low and wait for the gangers to be out in the open. Trudy, you'll take the first shot. Make sure you have a clean line of fire on this road."

"I hope you know what you're doing," said Trudy, checking the slug into her shotgun, "or I don't think we'll see sundown."

John nodded. She left, narrowing her eyes at the Securitron tearing down the sturdy wooden door with offending ease. John smiled as enraged and then fearful shouts came from inside, letting some of the eagerness and excitement he felt slip through the hard façade he'd kept up so far to deal with the unruly crowd.

Was this blood-thirstiness? John didn't know, but he guessed it couldn't be only that. It didn't feel wrong, like the Doc's personality tests heavily hinted at. The only word he could point his mental finger to was natural, like slipping an old glove on and finding it still fit you perfectly.

Question was, how old was the glove? For all he knew, the dead Great Khans on the road to Goodsprings were probably his handiwork.

'Who the fuck was I before the checkered suit shot me?'

The answer was another blank draw, then a very annoyed Sunny Smiles commandeered his attention, her trademark expression nowhere to be seen.

"What're you keeping me around for? My place is on that roof with the others."

He looked at her. She was vibrating with tension and expectation, adrenaline surging already. At her side, Cheyenne growled ominously, sensing the tension in the air.

John felt his grin widen when he spotted Pete over her shoulder, bundles of dynamite in his arms. Sunny arched an eyebrow at him, and he pointed at the road Joe Cobb and his Powder Gangers would come up from in less than twenty minutes at the earliest.

"Know a good spot for an ambush?"

John flattened on his belly atop the outcrop and listened to the band of Powder Gangers passing not thirty meters away from him, trading jokes but raising far less of a ruckus than he'd have expected after their nightly rounds of threats and bellowing.

Silently, he chided himself for his hubris. His amnesia only felt like half of an excuse.

'These convicts blew up half a prison and the whole garrison to escape. An NCR garrison. Soldiers. Trained soldiers at that.'

So, of course, where Sunny had told him to expect the usual miscellanea of pilfered gear raiders usually possessed – sidearms, baseball bats, the odd trail shotgun or hunting rifle – they were treated with fucking military equipment.

The binoculars had revealed a dreadful loadout and a steep decrease in their odds. At least half the Gangers carried M16A1 service rifles, the kind he somehow knew was standard fare for NCR troopers. Then there were SMGs, both 9mm and 10mm. Joe Cobb himself holstered a .44 Magnum Revolver at his hip. That one could punch through the walls of the saloon by itself and ruin whoever hid behind it.

And of course, dynamite. Everyone carried dynamite sticks in the loops of their belts.

'Thank God at least they don't seem too eager to wear their jailor's armor.' He had spotted only two of the bulletproof Kevlar vests with 'NCRCF' stenciled on the chest, and only one intrepid soul wore the top half of a painted NCR trooper uniform under the sweltering sun.

Most of the information spontaneously popped up after a brief glance, detailed and comprising of ammo, rate of fire and possible variants. Sunny wasn't eager to leave all the action to him but agreed after a muttered, tense exchange to go back with Cheyenne and warn the defenders of the unexpected turn of events. Which, he felt with an utter certainty he couldn't explain completely, he should have predicted!

John pressed his cheek against the ground and focused on the steps a little ways ahead, holding his breath as the last one passed by his position. His left arm held the five sticks Pete spared him, wrapped together with a roll of industrial tape he found in Chet's storeroom. The custom 10mm he gripped in the other hand.

'Now.' He lifted himself into a crouch and at the same time lobbed the dynamite bundle in a short arch. It struck the third to last Ganger in the shoulder and the man let out a small cry of surprise that had the rest reach for their weapons.

The bundle hit the ground and the Gangers turned around. John cocked the hammer and lined the shot through the reflex sight.

It detonated before he could pull the trigger. The sound deafened him a split second ahead of the shockwave that rammed into his chest, sending him staggering back onto his ass. Two smaller explosions followed the first as some of the sticks the Gangers carried destabilized, caught in a chain reaction. Dirt and gravel battered his face and a dust cloud rose around and over the shouting gangers.

John barely noticed the crater as he stumbled on his feet and took off at a run, sliding down the outcrop and up another slope, coasting up the road towards Goodsprings. He passed the stripped skeletons of houses and only stopped to catch his breath at the edge of town.

That was the crucial part: too close, and he'd be a sitting duck. Too far, they wouldn't spot him and give chase.

He forced his legs into another sprint, holstering the 10mm and grabbing at Fritz hanging from his shoulder by a leather strap. Nausea threatened to double him over again but John ignored his body's complaints and pushed harder, grateful for every second the dynamite earned him to reach the next station.

The first bullets whizzed past him as he ducked under the old water tower, sliding behind one of the metal pillars. Five gangers were advancing up the road, blood splattered on their faces or seeping from wounds where gravel on the road turned into shrapnel. Behind them, John could make out other figures staggering out of the fading dust cloud.

'Damn. Still too many.'

Fritz spewed one laser beam after the other. The first went wide as the target ducked behind a rock. A split-second later, the bold convict donning the trooper armor let out a short cry and doubled over, hands on the blackened scorch mark on his belly. John rolled behind another pillar and blasted a third one in the chest when he rose from cover. John threw another stick, but the dynamite exploded a few seconds too early, leaving him blinking against the screech in his ears.

'Damn short fuses.'

Submachinegun fire peppered his position, rattling the pillar. John hissed as lead grazed his arm and then his shin, then bolted away as the shooter stopped to reload. He turned sharply to the left around the nearest corner and sent two more blasts in the gangers' general direction.

His left hand searched the small heap of rubbish at his feet and closed around a shortened fuse. He grinned, sending a silent thank you to Easy Pete and another prayer that this one wouldn't blow early in his face.

The Gangers advanced and John ducked low as shots punched through the old wood, close enough to kiss his brow. Pete's spare zippo produced a flame on the second try, and John counted up to three before he tossed the bundle at the foot of the water tower and dashed in the opposite direction, vaulting over a fence and mercilessly curb-stomping through someone's garden.

The explosion rattled his teeth and shredded an entire section of the house, but the screeching of rent metal and the cries of alarm were music to his ears. The water tower buckled on its last remaining pillar and came crashing down. The ground rumbled under his feet on impact.

John hoped the wet squelch he heard in the cacophony wasn't just a product of his imagination. He circled around the next house and ran halfway back to the main road, his sole company for a long, blissful moment the thunderous beating of his heart and the burning ache in his legs.

Then curses, shouts, and coughing filled his ears.

"Look alive, ya slugs! I want that bastard's head! That fucker is toyin' with us: the worms lacked the balls to face us and called in some hired gun!"

"Cobb-"

"Shut yer trap, Goldstein! We move up to the saloon and rain lead on everythin' that moves. I want this fuckin' shit-stain of a town razed by nightfall! 'round this scrap, now!"

Feet crunched splintered asphalt and more voices cursed. John bolted for the back of the adjacent house, rounded the corner and crouched, leveling Fritz at the Powder Gangers' path, muzzle poking out between a broken section of fence.

They had other plans. John cursed as dynamite sticks sailed high in every direction, long fuses burning, and was already scrambling away when one landed not two meters away from where he lay in ambush. Half a dozen isolated explosions cracked the air and ripped houses apart, turning the small alleys between the abodes into a hail of shrapnel.

John covered his face with his left arm and threw himself through the nearest window as the stick behind him detonated. He landed into an affront to all rolls and the edge of a table drove the breath from his chest before crashing under his weight. He felt at least two ribs crack and managed only a gulp of smoky air that sent him into a coughing fit before he struggled to his feet and barged through the nearest door deeper into the house, Fritz slapping against his side.

He crashed through the nearest window as the roof above his head shattered under another explosion. Prone on the ground, glass digging into his forearms, the world diminished to indistinctive ringing and the pounding pain in his head. The ground against his cheek rumbled and grumbled time and again, threatening to crack and swallow him whole until he was freezing in Cocytus.

'Must have cracked my head, again, to start thinking in literary terms.'

The numbness subsided, and John tasted dirt and blood in his mouth. Levering on his left arm, he lifted on his knees and retched violently, splashing his breeches with bile and what remained of his breakfast. His sense of smell returned next, and he wished it had not. Blearily, he craned his neck to the side and froze.

Smoke rose from the odd fire, but through the broken shell of the house the gangers demolished on him, he had a clear view on the main avenue.

The Prospector's façade had simply ceased to exist.

Clarity returned with the impetus of a battering ram, worse than any headache. With it came the gunfight, the loud bark of service rifles drowned by the alternate boom of shotguns. A silhouette stumbled and fell from the store's roof, but a billow of smoke hid it from sight before he could focus.

Adrenaline rushed through his veins by the bucketload. He was on his feet, deaf to the pain in his chest and legs. He ran, fingers flipping a small switch on the side of his rifle. Fritz hummed to life in his hands in response. Another explosion drowned the gunfire, beating on his eardrums, and then he was charging into the main avenue.

John jumped over the corpse of a ganger and leveled the energy rifle at the nearest figure in convict blues. There was no recoil, barely any aim. With a hiss, three laser beams burned through the Ganger's flesh, melting cloth, muscle, and bone together, fusing his hand to the grip of his rifle.

Four more convicts crouched behind the bulk of rusted cars and boulders in a rough semicircle around Goodsprings' defenders. Dynamite had wrecked both buildings, caving the saloon's roof in, and two bodies were sprawled on the street. Then the two closest Gangers noticed him and the flash of laser fire, but he was already upon the first by the time their rifles were trained on him.

He bashed the muzzle pointed at his chest aside with Fritz and pummeled the Ganger's face with his left fist. It caved in with barely any resistance, bone giving way to cybernetic strength, and the neck snapped back with a loud crack. A wordless cry of alarm was followed by automatic fire, but John dropped with the body and pulled the trigger one-handed through the red mist as bullets tore through the corpse. Once. Twice. The hyperbreeder hissed.

The convict disintegrated into smoldering ashes. Behind him, one of the remaining duo stared slack-jawed before survival instinct kicked in and he started running backward, spraying the whole area with lead from his SMG. John rolled away behind the very rusted car the dead gangers used as cover, but his eyes never left the other man now beating a hasty retreat.

Joe Cobb's flight was cut short by a bullet through the thigh before he could take ten steps. The last convict hesitated and paid for it: the man screamed and fell on his knees as a single laser beam burned through his chest.

"John? Oh fuck, you're alive."

Sunny leaned against the only chunk of the Prospector's façade still standing. Her armor was torn and smudged in blood and soot like the rest of her, even the bandage wrapped hastily around her head. He felt the weight of her bloodshot eyes as he stalked up to Joe Cobb. Nobody else moved inside the Saloon.

The ganger lieutenant's mouth ran the miles his legs couldn't.

"Ya don't know who yer fuckin' with! The Powder Gang rules this slice of the Mojave! No Legion, no goddamned NCR, only Powder Gangers! Ya shoot me and every fuckin' gun this side of Black Mountain will be out for your head, ya hear me you fuckin' piece of –"

The threats dissolved into a gurgle as Fritz charred a hole through his throat. He thrashed for a few moments, eyes rolling up, before going still. Blood in his ears, John straddled the corpse and began wailing on him with both hands.

A minute later he was panting, his hand throbbing, but he felt the anger ebb away. It didn't disappear, but it lost its edge and retreated under the surface, festering and boiling. Thoughts of a bastard in a checkered suit flowed freely.

'You're up next. Soon, very soon.'

Squashing bloatflies and digging graves was nothing short of torture, but John welcomed the menial, manual work of attacking the hard-packed ground with a shovel. Half a stimpak mended his ribs, the other half his hand. Bandages took care of the scrapes and cuts. He flat-out refused the med-x though.

"This has nothing on your scalpel, Doc."

The digging took him the best part of the afternoon. At sunset, Doc Mitchell gathered the survivors to officiate the rites.

Trudy was laid to rest beside her parents and her stillborn son. The damage of the explosion and subsequent cave-in had disfigured the mayor beyond recognition; John helped Sunny wrap her into some spare sheets before they hauled the body up the hill.

Easy Pete had long since reserved a place beside his wife and John dug within the outline of white stones. Sunny nailed his cowboy hat and handkerchief to the rough cross they made from the rubble in the saloon. The two Brahmin elders spoke briefly of him, more concerned with the little girl between them, staring at the bundles that were her parents' bodies with blank-eyed emptiness.

Four more graves he dug, but Doc Mitchell only spoke the words once, thrusting their souls in God's care. A few words were spared even on Chet, who everyone agreed was a greedy, two-faced son of a whore, but nonetheless part of the small world that had been Goodsprings.

John found Sunny much later, nursing a pilfered bottle of moonshine as she stared at a nameless tomb marked only by the two crossed, broken halves of her Varmint rifle driven deep into the freshly moved earth. He sat beside her and accepted the bottle when she offered it without a word, then passed it back. The moonshine burned harshly in his mouth, covering the bile and blood, and John welcomed the distraction for a moment.

"Thank you, John," she said, words only slightly slurred. "For digging it."

"It was the least I could do for Cheyenne. She was a good dog."

"The best," she agreed, nodding at the metal cross. "You two didn't hit it off with the right foot, but she'd have won you over soon enough."

"Mh, no doubt. I'm a sucker for puppy eyes."

"Cheyenne didn't do puppy eyes!" Sunny scoffed indignantly. "She barked and pawed at you, or tore out a gecko's throat when she was having a bad day. Bossy girl."

The silence stretched between them as the night descended. In the distance, the glow of neon on New Vegas's skyline struck out like a sore eye under the canopy of stars.

'Where do Securitrons go?'

"How's Ringo?" Sunny asked, stretching her legs. The empty bottle clinked against a rock and rolled away.

"Doc's positive he'll live. The bullet passed through without nicking the bone. Blood loss's the main issue there." He produced a small flask of whiskey and took a long swig, pressing it into her outstretched hand a moment later. "Mentally, he's a wreck: thinks everything happened because of him."

"You didn't tell him otherwise? Nip it in the bud? Bash him in the head, blunt as you are?"

"Thanks. And yes, I tried, minus the bashing. I don't think I made a headway, though. He kept promising he'd 'set things right' once back at the Crimson Caravan. "

"Please," she scoffed again. "As if their kind could do shit when guns are out blazing. Talk caps and rob you blind: that's all they're good for. Like so many Chets, they think money can solve everything then bang, they're fertilizer. I wonder if their personal hell is some kind of hippie commune where riches are banned or something."

"I wonder if there's a hell out there I can throw Victor in. Shooting its cowboy face to pieces doesn't seem enough."

Sunny nodded. She had barely washed the dirt and blood from her face and hands after they finished stacking the ganger's bodies into the general store cellar, yet thin, dried up lines cut through her smudged cheeks. John hadn't seen her cry, but he also knew she'd stayed an awfully long time at the nearest pump for the results she got.

Her eyes weren't free of tears now. They shone in the moonlight and reflected the same anger John felt; if not for it the raw, oppressive weight on his chest trying to suffocate him would succeed.

"If there isn't, I'll make one for the bastard. Custom built." She hugged her knees, squeezing until her knuckles turned bone white, yet failed to stop the tremble in her shoulders. "Trudy, Pete and the others would still be alive if it didn't roll away at first sign of trouble. Tin can packs a hell of a punch. Would have mowed Cobb and his cronies down and instead left us all to die. It shot Pete when he tried to stop it, goddamn it!"

Sunny's curse echoed in the night and John placed his right hand on her shoulder. Not to calm her - he discovered soon after awaking that he disliked hypocrites – but to show support, union of intent. Sympathy.

'List of bastards that ought to die horribly just got a bit longer.'

Later, she dumped a few buckets of water over her head. Then they searched for a deserted house and climbed into bed. Together.

AN: I've stretched some distances and shortened others as I saw fit. Also, yeah, John Doe has no Pip-Boy. It was no mistake.

Fallout belongs to Bethesda, blah blah blah, if I had the money I'd totally buy the rights, yadda yadda, come and get me you lousy Feds!

Edit (13/04/17): My thanks to Excisium for the thorough editing.

Edit (02/04/18): April is editing time! This time, PartyPat22 comes to the rescue.