Deadman

After having some breakfast and sharing a cup of coffee with Nico, I started prepping my gear. I’d just cleaned and fine tuned everything, but I did a thorough check of everything anyway. I debated whether or not I should bring the las-rifles with me, and in the end I decided to bring two of them. One for the road, and one for Pott’s Field. I had no idea how they worked, but there were quite a few people with both the scientist and engineer jobs in Pott’s, they may be able to figure them out. I left the third one, as well as the pistol with the boat. It was good to have some backup weapons ready, never knew what might happen on the road.

I threw all my gear, as well as my report journals and maps I had been preparing to send to Pott’s anyway. All throughout my prep Nico sat on the edge of the boat, enjoying enough coffee to give a normal person a heart-attack, and just enough for her to feel a small amount of the kick it could provide.

I was done just a short while before the sun came up. Nico and I left the boat. Gus was back at the meat I’d left out for him, and I could hear the sharp smacking as his teeth slammed into it, tearing off pieces and devouring them with gusto.

Nico looked over at the gator and shook her head. “You know, most of us choose to keep radcats as pets. Thana’s just had a litter if you’d like one.”

I shook my head. “Gus isn’t my pet. We have an arrangement. Besides, I’m not great at keeping things alive.”

She shrugged. “Well, at least he’s better than no company at all. If he comes too close to me again though, I may be wearing some new boots.”

I sighed. Nico was always a brusque person. Not big on niceties. That made her similar to me, but I found it annoying in spite of that. I found Deux annoying for the opposite reason. Maybe I just found other people annoying in general. Particularly the two who insisted on being around me when I’d rather be alone.

We left my deadzone and started heading west toward The Cut. Nico had the postman class, same as me, and as a fellow deadman we were able to make much better time than when I’d been traveling with the other marshalls. By midday, we’d made it through two abandoned towns, and circled around a Kaijin settlement to avoid any possible confrontation. Kaijin were wild cards. You were as likely to be attacked by some of them as you were to be offered food and drink. I tended to like them. They treated both humans and Deadmen as outsiders. I appreciated that kind of equal treatment.

We eventually reached a deadzone that I’d explored before. “You familiar with this one?” I asked. Since Nico was a postman she’d traveled almost as extensively as me.

She shook her head. “No, I usually take the lower route to Pott’s, and my route heads East rather than West.”

I nodded. “This one isn’t just rads. There’s a kind of electricity in the air. Some odd visual distortions. Don’t trust your compass. Just keep moving forward, the ground slopes in the direction we need to go. We won’t be able to talk, it gets too loud in the center to hear anything.”

She nodded, and we started walking. Our geigers started trilling more and more as we went. Soon, small sparks of green static began filling our vision. The sparks slowly grew into large arcs of electricity that spread quickly across the ground. They danced around us as we walked, occasionally slamming into the ground with a crackling noise. When they hit us, they simply passed through us harmlessly.

When we were deep inside the zone, the distortions started happening. First, I saw what looked like a man in all black walking ahead of us. Then Nico pointed out what looked like a massive vehicle rolling toward us. It’s treads crushing the ground in front of it as it moved in our direction. When I looked back toward the man though, he was gone, and then the tank disappeared as well. At one point, I saw what looked like a duplicate of myself and Nico heading in our direction. We were mirroring one another’s speed and direction. When we reached one another, we didn’t stop moving, and instead just passed through ourselves.

I routinely checked the ground I was standing on and made sure I was still moving downhill. The sound of the electrical arcs in the air started to fade and was replaced by the trilling of our geiger counters once again. Soon, even those stopped.

When we’d moved a fair distance away from it, we both collapsed on the ground and caught our breath. Even though the sun’s place in the sky told me it hadn’t been more than a couple hours, I felt as if I’d been walking for days. I drank some water, and tore a piece of dried meat in half, handing a portion of it to Nico. She tore into it gratefully, and we sat in silence for a few moments.

Nico looked back in the direction of the deadzone. “What the hell do you think caused that?”

I shrugged. “No idea. For all we know that spot was like that before the bombs were dropped.” I took another sip from my canteen. “You okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Better to go through a zone like that than lose the time going around it. Not like I’ve never seen ghosts before.”

I raised a non-existent eyebrow.

“There’s a deadzone a little east of Horde territory. In the sky, sometimes you can see planes passing overhead, but there’s no noise, and they’re moving so slowly you can make out the details on them. They look old. Pre-war old.”

I picked some meat from my teeth. “You keep a map, or notes?”

She nodded. “Sometimes, when I feel I need it. Prefer to keep it in my head when I can, but the Honored Dead like to know what’s out here.”

“Can I see them sometime?”

“You already would’ve been able to if you ever came back home.”

I bit back a response telling her it wasn’t my home. She and Deux had never been happy with my solitary lifestyle. Deux was nice enough not to pick at the scab though. Nico didn’t have that issue. “I look forward to looking at them.” Learning the wastes secrets had been one of the things I’d always enjoyed. Even as a slave listening to my master discuss with others what they’d seen or heard on the road had been one of my only sources of joy. Of course, the beating I’d get when he realized I’d been eavesdropping instead of working was a heavy price to pay.

I cracked my neck and stretched, standing up as I did. “You ready to keep moving?”

Nico took another sip of water, then stood and stretched as well, adjusting her hat when she was done. “Let’s go.”

We started back on our trek, and I decided to pull out my radio and start fiddling with it. I listened to it whirl and warble as I moved the knobs. Eventually, I came across the station that had been giving speeches. It was just wrapping one up about how the nation would soon rise like an Eagle into the vast prosperity we were promised by our forefathers, then it broke off to play the national anthem.

“There’s finally radio in the wastes and this is what they choose to play,” said Nico shaking her head.

“You’ve already heard it?” I asked.

“Yeah, there’s a guy who lives east of Jasper. Tries to listen to the sounds of the wastes through a bunch of weird radios. He’s part of my route. His family sends him food and letters. Two trips ago he was complaining that one of his frequencies was ruined.”

“Dave?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah, met him?”

“No, Bill told me about him. He’s the reason I got the radio.” I listened as the anthem finished once, then restarted. “What do you make of it?”

She shrugged. “Hard to make anything of it. Could be some nut that cracked the code on getting radio signals through, could be something recorded just after the bombs fell that just started playing now, could be something from across the Cut even. Until they’re toting guns across the wastes, there’s no reason to really worry about it.”

I nodded. She was right. There were too many possibilities about it to really worry about what it meant. I fiddled with the nobs a bit more, and suddenly, an unfamiliar voice bled through. “Those are the coordinates. Please help. We are all escaped slaves. Many of us are hurt. We have food and water, but no weapons or medical supplies. There are only women and children with us. Please, help us.”

I waited a moment, and the message repeated. I exchanged a glance with Nico, who was picking at her teeth in much the same way I felt myself about to. The message played again. A little different this time, but I was able to mark the coordinates. They weren’t far, but they were also definitely full of shit.

Nico watched me write down the coordinates with an incredulous look. “Come on. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a more obvious trap in my life.”

I nodded. “Yep. I’m gonna go kill them.”