After the Vault: Chapter 02
    
    Disclaimer: I do not claim ownership of Fallout or anything that 
comprises it. This is a non-profit story written solely for my own 
enjoyment and that of anyone who wishes to read it. The story and all 
original characters are mine. Please don't use them without permission.
    
***
    
    After the Vault
    
    -A Fallout Fan-Fiction by Nutzoide-
    
    
    Chapter 02
    
    Wastelanders...
    
    
    Abigail was alive. At first, waking in the darkness, she feared that 
her terrible ordeal, and the week of desperate sorrow that had 
followed, had just be a dream or a fevered hallucination, and that she 
was still lying in her vent pipes with those great green monsters 
violating her home.
    
    But she wasn't cold against the metal vent floor. She was hot. 
Perhaps she had died after all, and this was her own dark, fiery Hell.
    
    Put that wasn't it either. She hurt, but it was not the pain that 
befitted her for escaping the fate inflicted on her friends and her 
family. For abandoning them. It itched, and ached, but as she tried to 
count the sensations in her body she realised she could feel a draught 
of warm air pass across her. If fact, she felt it so clearly, she 
realised that she must have been naked, wherever she lay.
    
    She tried to swallow to ease her sudden nervous tension, but there 
was no spit in her mouth, and her throat spasmed in pain. Her tongue 
tasted of copper bearings and vomit. She whimpered audibly as she tried 
to cover herself in the darkness, only for her muscles to burn in 
objection, and turn that whimper into a loud cry. It hurt to move. God 
did it hurt; there was fire in her belly, and an iron nail straining in 
every muscle. Why did she hurt, and why was she naked, and for God's 
sake where was she?!
    
    "Hey, Chopper! Hey, get over here! Vault girl's awake!"
    
    She heard those words from somewhere in the muffled distance, but 
they didn't really register with her. Despite the warmth of the air she 
was shivering, and she didn't know if it was fear or something else 
more completely beyond her control. Gritting her teeth she bore the 
pain in her limbs and back and stomach, and tried to sit up, or at 
least roll away.
    
    The stinging in her skin intensified when a hand grabbed her moving 
shoulder, and forced it back onto the hard... floor? The hand didn't 
feel large, but it held her down with such ease that maybe she was 
lying up within easy reach. She screamed. That shoulder had still been 
tinted green with bruises, and the muscles still sore from the heavy 
impact the shotgun had made against it when she had blown that bastard 
monster to kingdom come. And it hurt even worse than that as someone, 
or something, pinned it down.
    
    "Stop it! Let go of me! What are you doing?" her screaming made her 
cough, and pain filled her dry throat again. "Who are you? Why can't I 
see you?"
    
    She swung out with her other hand, only to have it caught by a much 
larger pair of hands, and someone grabbed her kicking feet and held 
them down as well. She was surrounded, and helpless, and their hands 
stung so badly against her bare skin. Then something hard pressed 
against her forehead, and a woman's voice spoke into her ear, clear and 
cold.
    
    "I am holding a gun to your head. Stop struggling, or I will kill 
you. Do you understand me?"
    
    Abigail froze, petrified. The pain in her body hung on in her tense 
limbs. Was she going to die there, blind and helpless, after everything 
she had tried so hard to endure?
    
    "Nod your head if you understand me," the woman's voice repeated.
    
    "Chopper!" a lighter female voice exclaimed, but Abigail was too 
focused on the sound of the cold woman, and the metal against her 
forehead. She nodded, trembling.
    
    "Y-yes. P-please don't kill me." 
    
    "Good," the Chopper woman replied, and the hard metal was taken 
away. "From now on do exactly as I say. I am trying to help you, but 
you are just going to injure yourself if you thrash around like that. 
And I'm not going to try and heal anyone who makes me work for nothing. 
Understand?"
    
    Abigail nodded again. "A-Alright. I understand." She slowly let 
herself go limp, and true to Chopper's words her muscles slowly let go 
of their vicious aches. "But," she added as the smaller hand was 
removed from her bruised shoulder, "w-where are my clothes? And why 
can't I see? Was it the drugs? Am I b-blind?" 
    
    Chopper and the others, they sounded like one girl and a couple of 
men, all laughed. "Blind? Maybe," Chopper's mocking voice answered, 
"but I wouldn't know. You were walking with your eyes shut when we 
found you, and you'd probably passed out already. You collapsed right 
into Kyle's arms as soon as he touched you. I wrapped up your eyes 
because of the blisters."
    
    Chopper paused, evidently thinking. "Then again," she said, "your 
pupils weren't contracting properly either. Now that you've woken up I 
guess we'll find out soon enough."
    
    "What, you serious?" one of the men asked, mirroring Abigail's 
quiver of concern. "She might not see after all? Damn."
    
    Chopper didn't make it sound like anything to be concerned about. 
Either that or she just didn't care. "She got off lightly, if she got 
through that much of her Rad-X bottle on her own. Don't you know the 
meaning of 'overdose' girl? You're lucky you're not dead, or twitching 
like a mantis."
    
    Another man spoke up after that. "Did you seriously think you could 
cross the Cobalt Line? Because that's where you were coming from, girl. 
You can't just knock back some Rad-X and expect to come out the other 
side."
    
    "Kyle!" The lighter woman's voice again. "She's from a backwards 
vault-town, or maybe even a closed vault! She was still wearing that 
suit! Maybe she just didn't know, did you think about that? I mean, 
look at her!"
    
    Abigail trembled, feeling far too exposed to these people, and tried 
to cover herself again only to have the Chopper woman's hands restrain 
her. They would be looking at her all right, and she couldn't return 
the violating favour. What did she look like to them? "My clothes..."
    
    "Don't worry, you haven't got anything we haven't seen before," 
Chopper said, followed by an afterthought. "And the men won't try 
anything. They're not the rapist type."
    
    "Thanks for the vote of confidence," the gruff one replied 
sarcastically, but it didn't do anything to make her feel better.
    
    "Just lie there and try to rest up," Chopper continued. Then Abigail 
felt a long, sharp pain as something was pulled from her arm. Had she 
had a needle in it all that time? "That was the last RadAway pack I 
want to give you after your last overdose, but this," another jab, 
"will work for the pain, and the RadAway after-sickness. Try to sleep 
through it, and we'll give you some food and take off the blindfold 
when the sun's gone down. We'd better not risk your eyes after what I 
saw of them."
    
    "I..." Abigail stumbled over her foul tasting tongue. Now that 
Chopper had mentioned it she didn't feel too unwell, but behind the 
aching in her muscles her head throbbed a little. An after effect of 
the drug, according to the packets. "Thank you."
    
    Chopper made a noise of approval. "Heh, listen to that? Even a vault 
dweller can show more gratitude than you bastards." But despite her 
harsh words, she said them light-heartedly. "Now get out and let her 
sleep. You shouldn't even be in here Rathley, so take your wandering 
eyes somewhere else."
    
    The gruff man huffed and Abigail heard a rustle of cloth. "It's a 
damn shame. She's kinda small, but that's a decent body." His voice 
faded. "At least she ain't goin' ghoul."
    
    That tremble of fear sitting inside her was fanned by that parting 
comment, "What happened? What's wrong with me?"
    
    "I should say 'a lot', but you got of lightly, girl. You just look 
like you've been lost in the wastes a while, which I'm guessing isn't 
far from the truth. It might take a bit, but you woke up, so you'll 
heal. Now shut up and let the shot put you out. The sooner we get you 
up and about the sooner we can break camp, but you might as well sleep 
out the meds 'till sundown." 
    
    Her saviour made it sound as though she wasn't worth her time until 
Abigail heard another rustle of cloth. "And you're welcome."
    
    Abigail lay blindfolded, naked, and alone, or so she guessed. She 
couldn't hear anyone now, at least. And true to the Chopper woman's 
words she was feeling drowsy already, despite her aches and her 
questions, and it wasn't long before she fell into a deep, dreamless 
sleep.

***
    
    She woke again suddenly, when a sharp pain flared across her right 
arm. She cried out, and instantly remembered where she was. "What was 
that?! That hurt. Uh, Chopper? Is that you?"
    
    "You remembered," came the dry voice of the unknown female doctor, 
"I'm touched. Are you planning to sleep all evening as well as all 
afternoon?"
    
    Abigail found her stomach turning over in nervous excitement, and a 
fair amount of hunger. "It... doesn't hurt as much now. Can I get up?"
    
    "Slowly," Chopper advised. "And try not to fall off the table."
    
    Abigail felt the light sting of Chopper's hands against her 
shoulders as the doctor helped her to sit up. Her legs fell down, over 
the edge of the table she was evidently perched on. "Can I ask, where 
am I?"
    
    "In a tent in the wasteland," was Chopper's flat reply. "We're 
camped up as close to the Cobalt Line as we dared to stay, thanks to 
you. This is our third night here. If you hadn't woken up by tomorrow 
we'd have slung you over Rathley's back and got going."
    
    Abigail winced as the bandage around her head was tugged and 
unwrapped. Chopper wasn't being to gentle about it either. "Ow! C-
Chopper, that hurts!"
    
    Just then she heard the lighter female voice cut into the tent. 
"Chopper, you're not brutalising her are you? Oh for God's sake..."
    
    The tugging stopped, and Abigail heard a little scuffle. "Sia, she's 
*my* patient!"
    
    "And you've got the bedside manner of a pigrat! Get out and leave 
her to someone with a bit of tenderness!"
    
    To Abigail's surprise Chopper didn't put up much of a fight, and 
soon enough a much more gentle set of fingers finished unwinding the 
bandage around her eyes. "She's a good doctor whatever the men say," 
the new woman, Sia, said, "but she doesn't know the first thing about 
caring for her own patients. There you go."
    
    Abigail tried to blink, her she could still see nothing but 
darkness. "I... I still can't see!"
    
    "Hold on, your eyes are still shut. Let me clean off all that muck, 
and then try to open them." Abigail felt a damp cloth against her 
eyelids. It stung as Sia wiped the dried 'muck' from them. "Ugh, you 
poor thing," Sia commiserated. "At least the blisters are gone. Just a 
little more."
    
    Abigail sat as patiently as she could, trying not to twitch away 
whenever she felt something come loose from her sensitive skin. She 
tried hard not to think about the pus that must have covered them.
    
    "Okay, try now."
    
    This time, when she tried to blink, her eyelids did as they were 
supposed to, and she saw a pair of vivid emerald eyes looking back at 
her. Abigail broke into a huge smile. She could see! The candle in the 
woman's hand was dim and cast a poor, stark light, but when the 
blurring faded she could see as clearly as ever. "I can see!"
    
    The young woman smiled back at her warmly. Her skin was darkened by 
a vivid tan around her face and neck, and across her hands and 
forearms, but Abgail had never seen an incomplete tan without tan lines 
before. The colour just faded beneath her truly bizarre yellow-greenish 
clothing. Her slender face and her too-bright toffee brown hair - 
thick, ragged, and brushing her shoulders, like something from an 
golden oldie rock band - were dirty as well, but she did not look like 
her condition mattered to her in the least. 
    
    "Hi, I'm Sharn! What's your name? Or do we get to keep calling you 
'Vault Girl'?"
    
    In contrast to Sharn's (or wasn't it Sia's?) lack of concern about 
the state she was in, Abigail was all too aware of her own appearance. 
If her eyes had been sealed shut with dried pus, she must have been a 
state, and she covered her chest with her arms. "Abigail. Abigail 
Iseley."
    
    She had been so grateful to see another living soul again that she 
had stared at Sharn's dusty face like she had been an angel. But, once 
she had torn her eyes from Sharn's own, she looked down to see what had 
become of herself. Her bare skin was hideously red, as if she had been 
rubbed raw, but her hands positively flamed with angry, peeling skin 
where they had not been covered by her jumpsuit. And no doubt her face 
was the same. The hideously bright sun had burned her skin badly, so 
much so that they were not simply red by the candle-light, but almost 
painted in day-glow marking ink.  The sides of her feet looked raw and 
wounded as well, though she only felt a minor ache in them as they hung 
just above the floor.
    
    Sharn ducked down to meet her gaze again. "Hey, it's okay. You look 
a bit rough now, but you'll heal right up. Ohup, just close your eyes 
again Abee-Gale, you're bleeding."
    
    Abigail reached up to touch her face, and felt the blood trickling 
from her eyelid. Her breath quickened, but Sharn brought the cloth up 
to dab it away.
    
    "There you go. See? Just a little cracked skin."
    
    But Abigail's walls had already started to corrode. Her relief had 
finally caught up to her, and without that pain to keep her controlled 
she began to cry in earnest for the first time since she had left her 
empty vault. 
    
    "Oh, baby," Sharn cooed in sympathy for her, "it's okay. You're okay 
now." She put her arms around Abigail, and though it stung her skin, 
Abigail was grateful for someone to hold as she let go of her pain and 
fear.

***
    
    Abigail did not cry herself into exhaustion, she had already slept 
too much, but when she was done she could smile again at the young 
woman who had comforted her. "Thanks," she said, once she had composed 
herself as best she could. She pulled back and felt like an awkward 
fool, sitting there naked and burnt to a crisp, sobbing into the arms 
of someone who she didn't know, and who couldn't possibly understand 
why she had cried so hysterically. But she was grateful for it.
    
    "So what happened?" Sharn asked, looking genuinely sympathetic. 
Though her face was dirty, she had clear and honest eyes, and Abigail 
did not hesitate in speaking the truth.
    
    "Monsters, giant things with guns... They broke into our vault. They 
killed everyone."
    
    Sharn looked at her with concern, and Abigail didn't know whether 
she believed her or not, but she acted as though she did. "And you 
escaped alone, and came through the Cobalt Line? Your vault was still 
underground?"
    
    Abigail nodded, letting it all escape her. "We couldn't leave. And 
we didn't want to. The Radiation was too bad; even the stupid Garden of 
Eden kit didn't work. But I couldn't keep Vault 42 working on my own. I 
would have died if I stayed. If I was going to die anyway, I had to try 
and find people up here."
    
    "Well, you found us," Sharn comforted. "And the monsters? Are they 
still in your vault?"
    
    Abigail's eyes darkened, and her face set in anger. "I killed that 
bastard! We killed one when they broke in, and the injured one blew its 
own stupid head off, and I did the same to the last of them! And I hope 
the people that did it cut the evil one up slowly! But..."
    
    "So," Sharn summarised for herself, obviously thinking it over, "you 
were the only survivor then. You poor thing." 
    
    But by now Abigail had to wonder if the woman wasn't just humouring 
her. Did she just think it was a fanciful tale or hallucination? 
However, before she could claim the truth of her story Sharn smiled 
again, and it instantly made Abigail reconsider her budding distrust. 
With that smile, and in Abigail's emotional flood, Sharn could have 
persuaded her that chocolate wouldn't even melt in her mouth.
    
    "Come on Abee-Gale, let's introduce you to the others, before they 
think I'm keeping you for myself." She pointed to the bag in the corner 
of the tent, which Abigail recognised as her own. "Your clothes are 
there, and some boots. I bet they're too big for you, but you can 
probably put them on better than the tight things you were wearing. 
Make sure to tie them so they don't rub on your blisters." She gave 
Abigail a last reassuring look before leaving her to dress herself. 
"I'll tell them you're coming. Shout if you need help, but I know 
Chopper's painkillers are really strong, so I'll leave you to it."
    
    Abigail didn't know whether to call after her and ask for help, or 
to be grateful for the privacy at last. She looked down at herself 
again. She was getting skinny - or skinnier - and in the pale darkness 
her skin looked more tender than raw for the most part, but she wasn't 
too hungry and she didn't actually hurt unless she prodded at herself. 
Remembering how she had felt when she first woke up, she guessed that 
the shot she had been given was doing its work.
    
    She eased herself off the table gently. In fact, looking at it, it 
didn't seem to be a table so much as it was three planks of wood that 
slotted together, two planks at either end holding up the longer, wider 
third. And no wonder Abigail had felt cold. There was a hole in the 
table surface just below the centre, in which sat a shallow pot, 
roughly at groin level, which Abigail could easily guess the reason 
for. The tabletop was also the most unpleasant shade of red-brown, 
until it reached the edges and the strange colour of the wood could 
show through. She didn't want to think what kind of surgery had been 
performed on it in the past, because it looked to have been unpleasant.
    
    She winced as she walked to her bag. Her feet were tender against 
the sandy floor, thanks to her rows of blisters. The tall, room-like 
tent allowed her to stand upright and stretch herself out, for which 
she was thankful. She needed all of that room to pull on her jumpsuit 
without it rubbing too badly against her skin. It only stung, but it 
was a discomfort she still tried to avoid.
    
    The boots were worse. She could put them on easily enough, but they 
would not tie tight enough not to rub her feet. In the end she went 
without, and just pulled on a pair of socks she found by the bag, 
hoping that their owner wouldn't mind. They at least helped cushion her 
against the ground.
    
    After that all she had to do was muster up the courage to pull back 
the tent flap. Then she would see the surface of the earth, and the 
moon, for the first time. The thought excited her. She knew Chopper had 
said it was a desert, there would probably be nothing to see but sand 
and sky, but she had never seen the sand and the sky for real. And she 
would see her rescuers, all of them, and what on earth could she 
possibly say to them?
    
    Then, as se was mustering that courage, she heard Sharn's loud 
exclamation.
    
    "We are *not* going to sell her! I can't believe you're even 
thinking about this!"
    
    Abigail's enthusiasm died instantly.
    
    "Kyle, tell me you're not seriously considering this!"
    
    The male voice she had heard before, stern but far less gruff than 
the other, replied, and now that she was trying to listen in Abigail 
could hear their conversation in full. "It's an option, Sia. This run 
has been piss poor, and if we end up wanting to cut her loose, we 
should at least try to make something out of it."
    
    "Kyle!" Sharn, or Sia, said, sounding appalled.
    
    The other man, Rathley if Abigail guessed correctly, spoke up. "Hey, 
she'll be a pretty lookin' pet when she heals up some. I'd rent her, if 
she weren't so scrawny."
    
    "Oh shut the fuck up, Rathley!"
    
    "Serious, what if she's a drama queen, or some weedy little damsel 
after livin' in a vault all her life. I mean, come on, you said she was 
still safe and all pampered up underground! She's not gonna know the 
first thing about real life!"
    
    Abigail could hear Sharn bristle. "And she'll learn. She must have 
been schooled down there. She's probably got more book learning than 
you two jerks combined."
    
    "But what's she been schooled *about*?" That voice was Chopper. "I 
went to Vault City, down south. They were schooled all right, and they 
were the worst collection of bureaucratic, paranoid and elitist relics 
you could ever hope not to meet."
    
    "Oh, fuck you Chopper, fuck all of you! She survived the Cobalt Line 
and you're not even going to give her a chance!"
    
    "Sia..."
    
    "No Kyle, don't 'Sia' me, and don't expect to be getting any for a 
long time either! I'll tell her not to bother coming out to meet you 
bunch of pricks!"
    
    "Sit down Sharn, we're not deciding anything." Chopper again. "I'm 
not letting go of her until she's fit, and if she really recovers fully 
she's not ending up in a flop house. I wouldn't waste a body like hers 
that way." 
    
    Abigail would have run right there if she had known where she might 
run to. But there was no bunk room to flee to, and no library to hide 
in, and no gymnasium to take out her anger on. She was exposed, without 
the safety of her vault walls around her.
    
    She stepped out of the tent on tender feet. The surface, it seemed, 
was dark. A bright fire lip up the campsite, but little else beyond the 
few large boulders behind the fire, and the tent. Abigail tried to look 
out beyond them, but the white sand, no longer blinding, simply 
disappeared into the darkness on every side.
    
    But the stars, they were more beautiful than Abigail could ever have 
dreamed. They hung soulfully and small in the black sky, but glittered 
with a gentleness that Abigail had so badly needed just then. And they 
never seemed to end. They simply trailed to every unseen horizon, their 
patterns only broken by the thin, majestic sliver of silver that had to 
be the moon.
    
     Abigail swallowed dryly, holding back her tears, and padded towards 
the sound of the voices. They were right. They owned her now, if only 
because she was completely at their mercy beneath that endless sky.
    
    The four of the surface people sat around a camp fire. The air felt 
clear and cool, not like the burning air she remembered from the cave 
outside the vault, or the blinding desert beyond, but the fire was hot 
as she approached. The combination of fire light and the ineffectual 
moon lit everything in a gentle, but highly contrasted glow, casting 
curious, waving shadows past everything at odd angles, and the 
flickering firelight seemed brighter than her vault lights by 
comparison, though it was only small.
    
    "Abee-Gale!" Sharn, or Sia, or whoever she was, stood up suddenly 
and ran to her. 
    
    Abigail looked into those trustworthy eyes with trepidation. "You're 
going to sell me?"
    
    "No baby. Whatever you heard just then, ignore it. They're being 
pricks, and I won't let them. I told them what you went through, and 
they do understand."
    
    "Don't coddle her, Sia. She's seventeen, at least. She's no child." 
    
    Chopper's voice came from the figure who had only looked over 
briefly, before turning back to the fire and the cup she was stirring. 
She, like Sharn, looked dirty and dusty, and wore the most bizarre 
clothing, but unlike the younger woman the dust on her features looked 
as though it made her old, so Abigail couldn't tell her age from just 
that glance.
    
    "I'm nineteen," Abigail said, though her voice held none of the 
defiance that she had wanted it to. What, in the end, would have been 
the point?
    
    Sharn gave the woman an unimpressed look before taking Abigail's 
burnt hand and pulling her to the fire. "Ignore her. Come on and sit 
down."
    
    Abigail winced in Sharn's grip, "Ow, that hurts!"
    
    Sharn let go immediately. "Shit, I'm sorry. Come on, sit down here 
and meet everyone. They can't get rid of you once you've made them like 
you!"
    
    Abigail swallowed hard at the mention of being sold again, and her 
dry throat felt sticky and uncomfortable. A fact that Chopper noticed. 
The fire-lit woman stopped stirring the tin cup and held it out to her. 
"Drink this first. And drink it slowly. I tried to feed you when you 
were out, but your stomach's in bad shape. It's just this and root 
paste 'till you can handle real food."
    
    Abigail took the cup. It smelt of saline, and putting it to her lips 
it tasted of the same.
    
    "Drink it," Chopper insisted, and Abigail nodded in agreement.
    
    She did. It tasted horrible, and wasn't just salt water. It was 
slimy. She did drink it as slowly as she could, given the foul taste, 
but she wasn't even finished when she began to gag on it.
    
    "Keep it down if you can," Chopper said, watching with a wry smile.
    
    Abigail dropped the cup as she coughed, spilling the last dregs of 
the nasty liquid, but after a few dry heaves she managed to keep it in 
her stomach, and she spat out what little acid saliva filled her mouth, 
to make sure it stayed that way.
    
    "That was cruel Chopper," Sharn berated, but the woman just watched 
with amusement.
    
    While she tried to keep her stomach under control, Abigail returned 
Chopper's gaze. She wore the same kind of strange clothing as Sharn: 
all oddly stitched yellow-green leather and cloth. But while Sharn's 
made a short jacket to cover her arms, which left a tight and grubby 
top to cover her midriff, Chopper's was a full coat, buttoned up. And 
they both wore tough trousers, Sharn's tight and Chopper's loose around 
her legs. 
    
    But that's where the similarities ended. Chopper had to be ten years 
older than Sharn, who Abigail guessed was in her mid twenties or so, 
but as she had already noticed, Chopper probably looked older than she 
really was, because of the dust and sand that covered her. Her hair was 
also much neater and longer than Sharn's, lush chocolate brown 
underneath the dirt and actually brushed away from her face, and cut 
away from her eyes and ears. It was plain and greasy, but it seemed to 
fit. Her face was rugged, but in the way that Abigail's mother had used 
as a complement for a good looking man, rather than as a pejorative. 
Her skin was also not as tanned as Sharn's around the face, but still 
looked weathered, which was way it seemed to hold the dust so 
unfortunately.
    
    Sharn, standing up, had seemed to be Abigail's height. A little 
short maybe, but Sharn was obviously less skinny and better built; 
still lean, but wider everywhere, and especially across the hips. 
Chopper, in contrast, was above what Abigail knew as average height for 
a woman, and though she wore her coat she seemed to be sturdy and well 
filled out beneath it. Her face and hands gave the same impression. 
Underneath the coat she was probably not thin, and would have a proper 
woman's shape rather than the careful, lean muscle that Abigail could 
see on Sharn's stomach and arms.
    
    Chopper wasn't exactly attractive. Sharn, for all her dirty skin and 
her wild mane of hair, was attractive. Perhaps it helped that Sharn had 
been the first of these ragged surface people Abigail had seen, and had 
been shown to be caring beneath that untamed image. Chopper was more... 
She had a smirking cast on her face; a look in her eyes that held some 
sort of unsettling animal quality. And unfortunately, Abigail guessed 
that the animal was the kind to toy with its victims. She felt 
threatened by it, like a sick mouse being tended to by a stray cat.
    
    "I'm sorry," Chopper said, still smiling. "But I did warn you. Don't 
be surprised if it hurts like hell coming out tomorrow either. Your 
skin isn't all that needs healing."
    
    Abigail blanched.
    
    "Don't worry. The meds in that water should help."
    
    Looking down at the cup she dropped, Abigail decided she would try 
and be more careful with the next one. Which she guessed was the point.
    
    "Chopper, haven't you said enough? Abee-Gale, this is Chopper. She's 
a bitch, but at least she'll keep you alive."
    
    Abigail decided not to pursue that description. Especially since, 
with that look in her eyes, she didn't trust Chopper not to slip 
something into her medication, or just to stop treating her altogether. 
"Um, it's just 'Abigail'. Or Abby."
    
    "Well then Abby - that sounds better - these two bastards don't 
deserve an introduction, but since they are going to behave or end up 
miserable for a very long time, they're Kyle Montanya on the right - 
he's got a normal name like yours - and Rathley on the left."
    
    Kyle on the right was the younger of the two men, perhaps a little 
older than Sharn. He was also the cleanest of them all by far, and it 
did him a lot of favours. He could even have been called handsome, and 
if he was Sharn's partner or husband it was easy to see why on looks 
alone. For someone who lived in a desert, he could have passed for a 
properly groomed vault dweller if he had only worn the jumpsuit. He was 
well built for his height, which was tall but not so far as to be too 
intimidating, and had a very flattering jaw line, which he had taken 
the effort to shave. His hair was bleached almost white, and cut in 
close to his head, so it spiked up and inch or so because, like 
everyone's hair, it was so unwashed. 
    
    Then, jarring against that appearance, was the very broken tooth in 
the lower left side of that flattering jaw. It was such a small flaw 
compared to those of the other desert-battered three, but that was what 
made the sight of it crawl in her skin. He was the one that looked 
*normal*.
    
    He wore what looked like a leather and hide chestplate, with a 
tattered leather jacket which, while battered and torn up down the 
front and back, did at least cover his arms. Similar leather and hide 
pads had been buckled around his thighs, over a faded and dusty pair of 
jeans, or something similar.
    
    "Hey, don't mind the talk, Abby," he said. His voice did sound 
strong and hard, but put to his face it made him seem less dangerous 
than she had assumed from his voice alone. But Abigail was not at ease 
with it. He might have been cleaner than the others, but he was abrupt, 
and Abigail could not forget the harsh words he had used when she had 
still been blind. 
    
    "We're not planning anything," he went on. "Chopper and Sia aren't 
going to let you go anyway, at least until you're healed. Whether you 
like it or not."
    
    They were reassuring words, but they still dredged up her 
powerlessness against the four of them. She felt like a lesser being, 
even as he seemed to try and ease her worry.
    
    Sitting a few feet from him Rathley flashed her a smile. "Well, 
apparently I ain't got a normal name," he said, his gruff voice 
sounding far more friendly now she was looking at him, "but it's the 
only one I got, Sugar."
    
    Sharn gave Abigail a helpless look. "Don't take that personally. To 
him you're either 'boy', or 'old timer', or 'sugar'."
    
    "Eh, I'm no good with names," Rathley said with a shrug. "It keep me 
civil with these sensitive types around."
    
    Rathley was much older than the rest of them, but he had the same 
problem that Chopper did, in that the dust clung to his face to make 
him look older still. He could have been thirty five or fifty for all 
she could tell. Either way, the desert showed on his skin, taking him 
beyond rugged and into weather-beaten and craggy - to a point that 
scared her, deeply highlighted as he was in the shadows from the fire. 
He also had several prominent scars on his face, one across the ridge 
of his cheekbone and the other straight down his chin and lower lip, so 
that a glimpse of his yellowed teeth showed, especially in his smile. 
His hair was black and weather blown, longer than Kyle's but still cut 
short, and greying freely around his fringe and ears.
    
    He had a sort of roguishness in his wrinkled eyes, but it was a 
self-knowing one that, like Chopper's animal magnetism, was more 
unpleasant than flattering. It was a selfish and self-satisfied charm 
that he seemed to think would get him what he wanted, and only because 
he wanted it. As it was, he looked like he was happy just to admire the 
view, which consisted of herself and the still annoyed Sharn, and it 
made Abigail shift uncomfortably in her seat.
    
    He didn't wear armour like Kyle, but just a pair of battered 
trousers and a short sleeved shirt, which looked to have been stained 
by everything from charcoal to blood at one point or another, and 
several odd, lurid colours Abigail could not even begin to guess at. A 
couple of deep scars showed through small holes in that shirt, and 
Abigail didn't like to think where either had come from.
    
    "And Sugar over there calls herself 'Sharn'," Rathley said, pointing 
to the young woman in question, "but she's Sia to everyone else, and 
don't let her tell you any different."
    
    Sharn shrugged. "It's a long story, and it doesn't really matter. 
And if you can remember my name, 'Old Timer', then use it. Anyway, out 
here in the desert, we've got to look out for ourselves. Chopper's our 
doctor, Kyle and Rathley play at being big tough men, and I get to talk 
us out of the messes the three of them make, because I'm the only one 
smart enough not to mouth off at our employers."
    
    "I see." Actually, Abigail didn't see at all, it was a bit much for 
her to take in. She was still worried about what the quartet would end 
up doing with her. Of them all, Sharn was the only one who had even 
managed to make her feel safe, and even she looked wild and dangerous 
when that trustworthy smile failed to appear.
    
    "Well," Abigail said, working up the courage and taking the four 
pairs of eyes on her as her cue. "I'm Abigail Iseley, from Vault 42. T-
thank you for finding me." 
    
    Kyle nodded, looking thoughtful. "Glad you got out of there. A vault 
in the middle of the Cobalt Line - it's no wonder no-one ever found 
you, stuck out there."
    
    Abigail felt the salt water in her stomach churn. "Those monsters 
did."
    
    "Doesn't matter to them where you are," Rathley said darkly. "If 
they want to, those Deathclaws'll get you."
    
    Abigail was about to ask, but the other three rolled their eyes and 
Kyle threw a rock at the greying wanderer. "Screw your Deathclaws old 
man. You're too old for fairy tales."
    
    "And no-one ever told me Deathclaw stories where they had guns," 
Sharn added, bluntly. "Abby, your monsters had weapons, right?"
    
    Abigail nodded. "Big miniguns, like in the films. And a flame-
thrower I think. They..."
    
    She didn't want to think about that any more. If she did, she'd 
either start crying again or throw up her medicine. The images were 
already flashing in front of her eyes.
    
    Sharn had sensed her discomfort, and put an arm around her. "It's 
okay, Abby, don't worry about it. Just so the old codger knows it's not 
Deathclaws."
    
    If they weren't her monsters, Abigail didn't want to ask what they 
*were*. With a name like that, she didn't think she needed to. She 
wasn't ready to hear what deadly things were waiting for her out there. 
"I... I think I'll go back to the tent now. I'm getting tired again," 
she lied. "It must be the medicine."
    
    She let Sharn and Kyle watch on with concern as she got to her feet, 
and saw that Chopper was watching her as well, and seeing right through 
her. Thankfully though, she didn't say anything, and instead just took 
the tin cup from Abigail's spot by the fire.
    
    "Nice going, codger," Kyle said behind her, "you scared her off."
    
    "You too, prick," Sharn threw back at him, "taking about selling 
her! I'm going to sleep with her and Chopper tonight."
    
    "Go ahead," Kyle retorted. "She can be your share this time."
    
    Abigail tried not to pay attention to the quarrel behind her. She 
just wanted to get back into the tent, within those safe canvas walls. 
The sky was pretty, and the white sand looked strange and exotic, but 
with monsters and Deathclaws out there, she didn't think it was worth 
the fear she felt.
    
    But at least she was alive, she told herself. She had to be grateful 
for that. And that she could get about by herself, and still had all 
her faculties, as far as she could tell. 
    
    And as uncaring as the doctor appeared, Chopper had slept in that 
camp tent with her, if Abigail had heard Sharn correctly. She had been 
tended to by a skilled medic, which was more than she could have hoped 
for in this barren place.
    
    Abigail didn't know what to think of it all. She would never be able 
to sleep, but if that was what it took to stop her mind from going 
round in its frightened and uncertain circles, then she would certainly 
try. She wished she had thought to put sleeping pills in her medical 
kit, but then, the bag that it had been in wasn't in the tent. In the 
end she just pretended to sleep on the sandy floor when Sharn and then 
Chopper finally retired, and somewhere along the line, she managed to 
fall into her own fitful dreams.
    
***
    
    Abigail ran through the corridors as fast as she dared, her long 
plait and its gold hoop tie bouncing against the backs of her thighs as 
she went. She slowed only to dance past anyone who was still going 
anywhere so late in the morning, and offer them a belated 'Good 
Morning'.
    
    "Morning Abby!" one of the more boisterous old mothers called back 
after her, even after Abigail had past her. "You're running again! 
Late, are you? Try not to trip over your hair!"
    
    Abigail had been chastised for running through the crowds since 
before she could remember, and she took the cheerful telling off in her 
stride. "Yes, I'm running late, Mrs Westley, and I promise not to hit 
anyone!"
    
    "Tell that to your pigtail!"
    
    Abby took the hint and grabbed hold of her trailing hair, and tucked 
the little hoop into one of the belt loops of her jumpsuit, just keep 
the dear old busybody happy.
    
    "Thank you!"
    
    Abigail laughed at the thanks and put her eyes back on where she was 
going. She had to get up one floor, but if she appeared at work through 
the vent hatch she would end up being another ten minutes late for the 
telling off the senior techs would give her. So, it was either ten 
minutes there, or five to grab breakfast from the kitchen on the way to 
the elevator.
    
    It wasn't a difficult choice. The huge kitchen in the main level six 
corridor was virtually empty by the time she reached it, but almost 
anyone on her level who had actually wanted breakfast had sensibly got 
there well before her, and got to work on time afterwards. The huge, 
polished metal tables stretched out in three rows of four, enough for 
all forty or fifty diners on that level to eat together, but now they 
were mostly bare, except a few late runners like herself and the usual 
gang of supposedly retired hydro-farmers. 
    
    "Abby!"
    
    And Gillian, her old classmate, an instigator of the dreaded 
dreadlock fashion that had swept the vault some years before. 
    
    In truth that fashion had originally been an excuse for the 
nocturnal girl not to bother taking such pains over her hair, like Abby 
and their other friends did, but the end result had caught on for a 
little while.
    
    Abigail skidded to a stop beside her table "Hi Gillian! How was the 
nightshift?"
    
    Gillian had even worse trouble getting out of bed in the morning 
than Abigail, and so had kept up her terrible habit as a student and 
actually asked to be put on the maintenance team's night shift. It 
meant that they hadn't been able to work together the way they had 
first intended, but they wouldn't have anyway, with Marcus still 
tutoring Abigail on the job.
    
    "Eh, the lighting on level four is still flaky," Gillian said as she 
finished her late snack. "I couldn't find the problem, and neither 
could Peter when he passed it on to me yesterday. Seriously, there 
shouldn't be anything wrong with it. If you and Marcus don't take it on 
today, see if you can get him to take a look at it on the side." She 
yawed hugely and brightened, "You're still on for our tournament this 
week? I'll make sure to get up early to make it this evening." 
    
    "Not even my parents can stop me tonight, I've got free rein! And 
I'll be taking that statue back from Jacquelyn as well."
    
    "Oh? You've been getting that throwing arm back into practice 
specially, have you?" Gillian grinned,
    
    Then the girl lurched forward as four neat blossoms of blood flew 
from her chest, spraying red across the shining tabletop and up 
Abigail's face. Behind Gillian, as she lay gasping across her 
breakfast, the whirr of Boss' gun slowed and fell silent. And behind 
the hideous brown giant, the gore ran in rivers across the kitchen 
floors.
    
    The monster grinned and lifted the gun to point at Abigail, and the 
whirr began again. "Stupid little human girl!"
    
    Then flash of the gun blinded her...

***
    
    ...And she stayed blinded by the brightness as she woke with a 
scream. She flung her hands up in front of her in a futile effort to 
ward away the nightmare bullets, before she realised that the pain was 
not from any gun, but from her tense and aching muscles.
    
    She shut her eyes and covered them with her hands. It wasn't 
gunfire, she realised, but the white surface and the brilliant glare of 
the sun that blinded her. "Sharn!" she called instinctively. "What's 
happening? Where are the walls? I can't see, it's too bright! It 
hurts!"
    
    "Abby? Wait guys, put the roof back! Chopper!"
    
    After a moment of confusion Abigail felt the brightness beyond her 
eyelids withdraw. Then tent was dark again, but instead of having a 
candle to light it a line of brilliant white reached in through the 
cloth doorway from the outside. Abigail opened her eyes to see Sharn 
looking at her with concern, and Chopper wandering in, stirring a spoon 
in the same tin cup that Abigail remembered from the night before. And 
somehow, she had been moved from the floor to the table again in her 
sleep.
    
    "What's the problem now?" Chopper asked as she mixed the salty 
medicine.
    
    "She said it was too bright when we took the roof off." Sharn 
motioned to the cloth sheet that once again hung over them. "Do you 
think being underground so long damaged her eyes after all?"
    
    "Hardly," Chopper replied. "You could see all right last night, 
couldn't you?"
    
    Abigail nodded.
    
    "Then there's nothing wrong with them. Your vault did have lights, 
didn't it?"
    
    Again Abigail nodded, "But nothing as bright as that. It hurts to 
look at it."
    
    Chopper gave her a flat stare. "You're not supposed to look at the 
sun, idiot."
    
    "The ground too!" Abigail defended herself. "Everything's just 
white."
    
    Chopper thought for a while, and Abigail hung on her answer. "I 
guess you might be right then," she finally said to Sharn. "If she's 
been living in a cave all her life. Here."
    
    She handed Abigail the mug she had been mixing. "Drink that - and 
try and keep it down again - and I'll find something for your eyes. 
Rathley will just have to do without them."
    
    Sharn looked after her with an expression of disbelief. "You're 
going to steal his shades or something?"
    
    "Yep."
    
    Abigail grimaced and sipped her salt-water, trying not to gag again. 
The stuff was revolting, but it did lubricate her dry and sticky 
throat, for which she was grateful. Even if it didn't sit well in her 
stomach.
    
    By the time she had drained the cup, all of it this time, and had 
told Sharn of her grandmother's dislike of the vault's lights, Chopper 
was back, holding a pair of glasses. Of course, Abigail had seen shades 
in movies, but living in her dimly lit vault no-one had ever actually 
worn a pair, no matter how cool they seemed. They wouldn't have been 
able to see a thing. Come to think of it, had the vault ever even had a 
pair in its vast inventory?
    
    Chopper put them on her face, and though they pressed against her 
still painful skin the world grew several orders of magnitude less 
bright through the large lenses. It was a surprising change. Abigail 
could see that Chopper and Sharn's clothing was not the same kind at 
all, but made of different materials, of different shades entirely. 
That distinction had been lost in both the stark light of the bonfire, 
and the glare of the sunlight that shone through the gap along the tent 
door flap.
    
    And Sharn's skin was not a contrast of tan and caucasian white, but 
of a pale olive shade and a proper dark tan. And Chopper's skin was not 
so pasty, nor did the dust seem to line it so heavily, and her hair 
could be seen as a deep brown that verged on the black. 
    
    She looked at her own hands. They no longer looked so bright and 
hideous, but simply burnt. It was a condition that she could recognise, 
which meant... This was how the surface world was *supposed* to look, 
or at least as close to it as her eyes could stand.
    
    As she marvelled at her newly shaded world Chopper took her arm, 
rolled up her sleeve, and slipped a needle into her vein. "Hold still. 
This will do for the pain again, until tomorrow morning. But don't let 
it make you drowsy this time. We're moving."
    
    "Moving?" Abigail echoed, stepping painfully from the medical table 
once she had suffered the shot. "Ow. Moving where?"
    
    "Back to Corva," Sharn said. 
    
    "A town north east of here," Chopper explained, putting her needle 
into an old white and red first-aid tin that sat by the bags. "The 
closest one to the Cobalt Line, at least on this side of it." 
    
    "Oh yeah," the heard Rathley said from outside, "you're gonna love 
that place."
    
    Sharn punched the door curtain. "Shut it Rathley, she'll be fine."
    
    What worried Abigail more than that was the look Chopper gave the 
younger woman. An 'Oh, you think so?' sort of look.
    
    "It's a trading town mostly," Sharn added, also noting that look, 
"because if the wind changes the wrong way the crops all fail, because 
of the radiation."
    
    Abigail heard her, but did not show it. She was edging to the 
swinging tent flap. She squinted as she drew the cloth back, but the 
sight did not blind her. Instead she saw the surface in its entirety 
for the first time. 
    
    And it went on forever. The sky was so brightly blue it looked like 
it had been painted by a child, and filled with meagre tufts of cotton 
wool for the streaks of cloud that lined it. She did not try to look at 
the sun, though despite her good sense she was tempted, but instead 
looked down. The ground was no longer white, but a light tan yellow, 
bleached but unmistakable. 
    
    And it was not just sand, as she had thought in the darkness the 
night before. The sand surrounded their camp, and made for a somewhat 
comfortable bed or floor rug, but beyond that even more of the ground 
was hard and dry earth, lined with cracks that ran together until they 
disappeared spider-like near the horizon.
    
    Abigail found her head swimming just looking at it. It was one thing 
to see the surface on the cinema screen. It was another to feel lost 
upon it for real. She felt a hand grab her shoulder painfully, and she 
realised that she had been about to fall off balance just looking at 
the wide immensity around her.
    
    "Easy girl," Kyle said. His hair looked less white and stark now 
through her shades, and she could see the faint pock-marking of long 
healed scars or bites across his neck, that had been invisible the 
night before. They gave his clean look more character, and a subtle 
worrying edge. "Don't start fainting on us now, or we'll have to carry 
you again." He grinned. "You look good in his shades."
    
    And from behind her a sheet of cloth came out of nowhere to cover 
her head, followed by Chopper's voice as she passed by. "Put that on 
Abby, and come out of the way while they pack up."
    
    Abigail untangled herself from the pale brown cloth. It was a cloak 
or robe of some kind that reached her rear, with a hood and long, 
extended sleeves. Abby followed the doctor, and found herself being sat 
on a rock by the side of the camp. She was glad that the painkiller 
seemed to be kicking in, because it made for an unpleasantly hard 
stool.
    
    "Make sure to wear that when you're in the sun," Chopper said 
seriously. "Your burns are bad enough already." Then she pulled her red 
and white first aid tin up beside her again and opened it. Inside it 
was just a mass of empty hypodermics, a few bottles of liquid, a couple 
of clear plastic pipes and a collection of bulbous, gnarled roots. And 
a thick plastic tube, which Chopper got out.
    
    "This stuff is valuable," she said as she squeezed some of it into 
her hands. "Never seen it before or since, so I hope you appreciate 
getting to use it."
    
    Then she took Abigail's red and peeled hand in her own, and rubbed 
them vigorously. It hurt like hell, mostly because Chopper was so rough 
about it, and Abigail tried to pull her hands away with a shriek.
    
    "AHH! Stop it! Anngh, that hurts!!"
    
    Chopper didn't let her go however, and as soon as she was done she 
filled her hands again, and smeared the stuff into Abigail's face. 
Hard.
    
    "AAAAAH!" Abigail screamed to high heaven, which brought Sharn and 
Kyle running, but their objections did no more to dissuade the doctor 
than Abigail's tears did.
    
    Again it was, mercifully, over quickly. Chopper rubbed her own hands 
over themselves to make the most of what remained of the cream. "We 
need to toughen you up, Abby," she said, and this time without the 
amusement in her voice. "Or else you're not going to last out here."
    
    She left Abigail to recover her wits in Sharn's far more tender care 
while she gathered her things.
    
    Abigail was somewhat gladdened by Sharn's concern for her, and the 
coarse, spiteful names she called the doctor after she had left, but 
the cream did at least feel cooling once the pain had ebbed. She looked 
down to the tube that Chopper had left on top of the first aid box. It 
said "Clear Shield Creme - Factor 30". 
    
    No, Abigail was worried for much more than the pain that throbbed in 
her hands and face. She was worried that Chopper was right. 

***
    
    Walking, it turned out, was much harder than Abigail could have 
expected, even pumped full of Chopper's painkillers. To begin with her 
feet were just too tender. Her blisters had been healing, but her feet, 
like the rest of her, were still sore and shaky from her exposure to 
the Cobalt Line. She had forced them back into her vault shoes because 
she needed something to protect them from the hard earth. The boots, 
even padded with the thick socks that Kyle allowed her to hold on to, 
would have torn her blisters back open with the rubbing, because they 
were simply too loose. But, since she could walk, she walked. Either 
her feet and legs were made to hurt, or her whole body was by someone 
carrying her on their backs. This way she was at least using her 
muscles again, no matter how badly they protested.
    
    And she was grateful for the short cape. The heat of the sun soon 
made its presence known on her back, and more than once she looked up 
to the sky, to see where that heat came from, only to be hit by the 
blueness above the mountains. It was clearer than in any picture or 
film she had ever seen. Clouds did not lounge in huge fluffy clumps up 
there, but snuck their way through the hot sky, as if trying not to be 
noticed for fear of evaporating completely.
    
    And the land that passed stayed similarly bare. The hard earth was 
far more prominent that the blissful patches of sand, contrary to the 
deserts she had learned about as a child. She had only been given a 
cursory education on the outside world, but one that had left an image 
with her that was now being proved more than a little inaccurate. 
Occasional tufts of wiry vegetation or the odd cluster of bare, dry-
looking trees grew, here and there, and the occasional few bones or 
large, dried-out insect shell served to remind her of how unforgiving 
and oblivious to her needs the dry surface really was. Nothing grew 
with any strength, and what did would apparently be found by wandering 
animals and eaten for what nutrition or moisture it contained sooner or 
later.
    
    As the day wore on she found that the dry and prickling heat stifled 
her more, wresting her attention from the remarkable, barren scene and 
returning it to her own ailing body. That heat was quite unlike the 
carefully controlled atmospheres within the vault. There was no 
moisture in the air, and she grew thirsty quickly. Thankfully when she 
asked for her canteens she was given one of the large skins that her 
water supply had been decanted into. However, that, combined with the 
mashed food that Chopper had prepared for her, proved too much for her 
eager but still healing stomach. The mashed roots were woody tasting 
and it hurt to swallow the gooey mix, but after her recent liquid diet 
she was too anxious to fill herself, and the meal did not stay down.
    
    She was more careful with what remained, once her belly had settled 
down again, and finished what she had not already thrown up with well-
advised caution. Soon afterwards Chopper was proved right yet again, 
when Abigail dropped behind them to relieve herself. It was bad enough 
that the desert was open and afforded no privacy or utilities at all, 
but it was yet another vicious reminder that her body still had a great 
deal of recovering to do.
    
    After she had dried her eyes she caught up with her rescuers as well 
as her swollen and aching feet could manage, and finally worked up the 
courage to speak to Chopper again after what she had done that morning.
    
    "You were right," she admitted, deeply embarrassed. "It hurt."
    
    Chopper nodded, "We noticed."
    
    Abigail would have flushed scarlet, if her face had not already been 
so badly coloured by the sun and the irradiated air. "And I'm 
bleeding."
    
    "Still?" Chopper huffed in annoyance, and re-adjusted her bags on 
her shoulders. "Not much I can do about that. If it's just your 
plumbing, the meds in the water should help."
    
    Abigail voiced her concern about the alternatives. "And what if it's 
not?"
    
    "Then hope your body knows what it's doing. I can't just rip your 
kidneys or bladder out and expect you to be better off." She gave her a 
sideways look. Abigail's worry must have been written all over her 
face, because Chopper waved it off as nothing to worry about, though 
she probably didn't believe it. "If you were going to die, you'd have 
done it already. Otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time and supplies 
on you."
    
    It was hard to feel grateful when her saviour kept saying things 
like that. Chopper obviously did care, otherwise why *had* she kept 
treating her so diligently, if with rough hands at times? But Abigail 
also wanted to resent her for her attitude. Sharn obviously tried to 
keep her spirits up, and tended to succeed, and Rathley seemed to exude 
a natural carefree attitude that Abigail found catching, even though 
she desperately wanted to dislike the obviously immoral man.
    
    Abigail decided to change the subject. As they had walked she had 
wondered: while she was grateful that she was not being made to carry 
her own packs for the sake of both her comfort and their pace, none of 
the others seemed to be carrying them either.
    
    Chopper gave her a careful look before answering, and Abigail had to 
wonder just what had gone through her mind at that point. Did she plan 
to lie, or was she just considering how to break some sort of news to 
her? Surely with her attitude, the doctor would not ease any blow that 
had to come.
    
    "We kept everything we could, but you weren't the only thing to soak 
up the radiation out there. And *you* can at least be treated for 
radiation poisoning. The tins would have been a decent idea if you'd 
eaten them sooner, but carting them around just burned your back worse 
once they had soaked up the radiation. The rest of you is healing 
better, but you'll have scars there no matter what because of that. The 
water flasks seemed better - everything with your vault logo on seemed 
to have survived fairly well actually - but we shared out and diluted 
the water with ours and tossed the flasks anyway. After making camp for 
three days to fix you up we were running low, and it wasn't 
contaminated enough to be a worry. I've got your stimpaks and med kit. 
You'll have to tell me what a few of those bottles are, but that was 
bright, filling it up like that. And Kyle has your books packed up with 
the tent.
    
    "We tossed the gun though, and the rad counter. The counter was dead 
- it was getting readings from itself, erratic ones at that - and the 
gun was too hot to be worth carrying around. Even if you tried to sell 
it someone'd grow an extra finger off it and want their money back. If 
you want a gun we can pick a decent one off a raider for you. Bullets 
are what would have been worthwhile, even if they had been irradiated. 
We saved the ones that were in it before we got rid of it."
    
    Abigail took it all in with a feeling of relief. Her things were 
still okay for the most part, and she seemed to have chosen well. And 
Chopper had actually paid her a compliment on her own first-aid kit, 
even if it was only in passing. 
    
    But when Chopper had mentioned raiders, Abigail's eyes had strayed 
to the large bulge at Chopper's waist. 
    
    She had only seen the gun for a second, but it was more than just a 
pistol. It was too large to be one of those, and had a curved magazine 
curling forwards from underneath it. It didn't look anything like the 
'Uzis' she had seen at the cinema, but she guessed it was something 
similar, and less boxy.  The other three all had weapons as well, 
either hidden beneath their clothes or with their handles emerging from 
the packs that they carried. "Is that what those are for then," she 
said, pointing to the concealed gun. "Do people raid travellers a lot 
up here?" 
    
    Chopper raised an eyebrow at the question. Evidently she hadn't 
expected Abigail to want to know, or to have even noticed. "There are 
five types of people in the wastelands," she explained. "The first 
would be you vault types, but they don't count. They're not 
wastelanders. They just sit in their vaults, or wall themselves up in 
shit-holes like Vault City, and pretend the rest of the world doesn't 
exist if they don't look at it. 
    
    "So, first there's us types. We travel and hire on to protect 
caravans, or try and dig up tech relics to sell, or find mercenary work 
from town to town. Second are the townie types. They farm, buy and sell 
from the traders, send out caravans to make sure they get what they 
need from other towns, and best of all they've got most of what you 
could want in one fixed place, and they defend it because it took 
effort to build up. Then there's the tech-freaks, called the 
Brotherhood of Steel. They're a group, or a church, or God knows what, 
that hordes and studies technology, and never fucking do anything else 
with it. They just keep it to themselves. You can tell them because 
they've got the biggest guns, armour that makes them fucking 
untouchable, and they won't even look at you unless it's to blow your 
head off or take something you've got that they want. Maybe both, in 
that order, if you're unlucky."
    
    She frowned deeply, and Abigail guessed that she had first hand 
experience of these people. And from her expression it seemed as though 
she wasn't exaggerating. "Then again," Chopper continued, "don't expect 
to see them. They don't march out of their holes unless they have to. 
Anyway, after them there's the tribals. Most of us want to build up, 
but they've gone the other way, worshipping the sun, living in stick 
huts or caves and listening to ancient spirits from when the bombs hit. 
Personally, I think they're just drugged up to the eyeballs on broc 
flowers, but at least they don't make trouble for anyone but 
themselves.
    
    "And last, scraping the bottom of the gene pool, are the raiders. 
They group together, arm themselves up as best they can, and either 
attack caravans or make raids on the towns and villages. They take 
everything they can, so they can trade away anything they don't want or 
can't eat for more bullets, better weapons, and paying off assholes to 
get their next tip for an attack. If you're out here and not carrying a 
weapon, you asking to be gutted by those bastards."
    
    Abigail wondered whether she had been better off not knowing. "And 
what about the giant monsters? Are they raiders?"
    
    Chopper laughed long and loud at that. "You're as bad as Rathley. 
I've never seen a Deathclaw, they're tales to scare kids at night, and 
I've never seen your green monsters either. I've seen some real nasty 
creatures out there, and worse people, but never a giant green raider."
    
    Abigail's heart fell. Even if Sharn believed her, Chopper obviously 
didn't. "Oh." She tried to ignore her disappointment, and her desire to 
convince the doctor of her story, and turned her mind back to the 
raiders. "Should I have a gun too then? I definitely don't want to be 
robbed and left to die here."
    
    Chopper gave her another amused look. "Try to walk without limping 
first, then we'll think about giving you a weapon. We've guarded 
caravans before, so I think the other three can guard little old you."
    
    That sounded all the more condescending because Chopper, though 
taller by more than half a head, was not playing that card. Abigail had 
stopped growing upwards at the age of seventeen; she was as fully grown 
as she was going to get for now. But Chopper was mocking her age. The 
woman's previous comments about treating her like a child were 
obviously a matter of personal convenience.
    
    "So you won't protect me with that gun if we are attacked?"
    
    Chopper laughed again. "Ha, are you kidding? I'll be making for the 
closest bit of cover I can find if anyone starts shooting. Personal 
protection is their payment for having me along, or I wouldn't be 
travelling with them at all. I can shoot straight, but I'm no fighter. 
This thing," she said, patting the sub machine gun, "is for when the 
shit starts flying."

***
    
    Kyle called a halt to the journey early, well before sundown, when 
they came across a suitable outcropping of rocks and dry brush to set 
up camp beside. He had justified it by the iguana hunting they would 
get around the nooks and crannies of the rocks, but the real reason was 
obvious. 
    
    Abigail could not move another step. The painkillers had begun to 
wear off an hour before, and the full day of trudging across the 
wasteland had already murdered her legs. Her old blisters had also 
begun to bleed again, and Sharn had bandaged them carefully and made 
sure she had eaten what she could before allowing Chopper near enough 
to do anything. 
    
    Abigail had winced only half-heartedly as the needle had sunk into 
her arm. It was nothing after the slow burning in her feet, and the 
sharp thump of putting one foot in font of the other for hours on end. 
Chopper *was* right. She needed to toughen up badly, because that one 
day had drained her of everything she had. Kyle and Sharn, putting 
aside their quarrel for the moment, had needed to help her for the last 
kilometer or so, because she hadn't been able to walk on her own after 
that. In the vault she had been so fit, and in such good shape. She 
needed to reclaim that, just as soon as her body would let her.
    
    She had fallen asleep soon after the medicine had begun to do its 
work, and taken the edge off her discomfort. 
    
    "Sia's right Chopper," Kyle said around the fire that evening, once 
he and Rathley had hunted up their dinner - Kyle with his knife and 
some lightning reflexes, and Rathley with the old scare and smash. He 
scraped out the last of his iguana's entrails and spitted it from the 
pile of brush twigs, before holding the lizard over the campfire to 
cook. "That girl can't take the pace. She's sick and she's hurting. And 
how are her feet going to heal, walking her like this?"
    
    Rathley argued the other way. "She ain't got a choice if she don't 
want to get left out here, boy. We don't have the supplies to camp for 
another three days while she lies around. Why else are we eating these 
bastards?" He waved his iguana stick at Kyle and Sharn. "There ain't 
much eating on 'em this side of town; they're as scrawny as she is."
    
    "Well, we've got enough water!" Sharn argued back. "We can't make 
her do that again or she's going to collapse! Hell, she would have done 
if we hadn't propped her up!"
    
    Chopper just skewered her iguana. "Of course she was going to 
collapse. She spent three days unconscious with me pouring nothing but 
liquids and mush down her gullet through a tube, and RadAway into her 
veins. And that's after overdosing on Rad-X *and* surviving at least a 
day and a night on the Cobalt Line."
    
    Now she had their undivided attention. "You knew it was too much?" 
Sharn looked livid. "What the fuck is wrong with you, Chopper?"
    
    "Rathley's right. We didn't plan to stay out anything like this 
long, and she can't heal properly out here either. So, I took the 
chance to find out what she's made of. She was obviously in decent 
shape, and she had a good head on her to bring what she did from her 
vault. Stuff which, incidentally," she said, giving a pointed glance 
towards Rathley, "she's getting back. They're only spoils if she's 
dead."
    
    The craggy traveller pulled his iguana-on-a-stick out of the fire, 
and began to peel it with his knife. "She'll get it back if I get my 
shades."
    
    Chopper shrugged, "I'm sure she can trade for a pair. My point," she 
said, turning her own dinner over on the fire, "is that she lasted 
eight hours out here, only the day after she woke up. She's damn lucky 
we found her, but luck couldn't have kept her alive for us to find 
after what she put herself through. And today she pushed herself better 
than some townies would have in her state."
    
    She gave her companions a smile that might even have been proud. 
"She *could* push herself better than most townies would. And if her 
insides heal like the outsides are, then she'll recover all right. 
There's no way we're selling her. She's got potential."
    
    Sharn and Kyle were both smiling by the time she was finished. 
"Thanks Chopper," Sharn said, giving Kyle the first fond look she had 
all day. "We'll train her up right, won't we, gunner-man?"
    
    "I think we'll work out something, as long as she wants to stick 
around."
    
    Rathley spat out the claw he was chewing around in response. "Bah, 
Chopper just likes her now 'cuz she takes those brutal treatments."
    
    "Rathley!" Sharn warned, but the older man just waved her off. 
    
    "Whatever. Like you said, man, she can be your share. Just as long 
as I get my shades back." He took another bite out of the skinny 
lizard. "At least she looks good from the back. And there ain't too 
many girls who have hair past their ass like that."
    
    The other three stared dully at him, and replied in chorus. "We saw 
you notice."
    
***

To be continued...

***

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