Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 65: Right Behind You Baby

*WARNING*
Graphic violence and sexual themes

--------------------------------------------------------------

It felt like hours that Kelly was shackled up in the cage, eyes riveted on the vertibird as it pursued her tenaciously. Her eyes were plagued by a film of rheumy fatigue, turning the gunship's form into a muddy blur. She searched for the blaze of a red wing on steel shoulders, but there was no sign of Maxson. If it was him up there, he must have lost the cloak in battle or torn it off himself.

The creature hauling the wagon moved at a steady gait, devouring up the sand dunes and rattling the wagon's treads over barren stretches of parched soil. The Bloodlands were more barren wastes of dust than desert sands, but the impression of it left the same dry, scorched, sandy taste in her mouth. Her wrists ached with her efforts to break free of the shackles, the rusted metal digging into her narrow bones and trickling blood down her arms. But the pain helped to keep her sharp against the exhaustion and onset of heatstroke.

The slaver guard with the taunting grin stood with a sigh, creaking his spine and stretching his legs. "Brotherhood want show?" He flung his arms up in a wild gesture of incitement, shouting out to the vertibird shadowing them. "Want show? Yes? I give you show!"

The sound of his fingers pulling at the knot at his crotch sent Kelly's pulse through a surge of bile-curdling dread. He moved around to the opening of the cage and let himself in, still wearing that sick grin. "Let me see how you please Elder Maxson with those tasty lips." As he lowered down to his knees and freed his enlarging organ, he grabbed up a handful of her hair to angle her head where he wanted it. But Kelly had other ideas where she wanted her head. She headbutted his precious organ, squashing it back at an angle that made him yelp. With the spare time, she drew her knees up and bashed out with her tied ankles, shoving him out of the cage. He rolled back into the secured ramp of the wagon, hands cupping his organ protectively.

"Little bitch!" He sprouted back to his feet in a flagrant rage, his member drooping flaccidly before he reached for it again and began to stomp at her, likely with the intent of choking her with it.

Kelly shielded her face with her hanging elbows as a strike of vivid red blazed at his back, setting his ratty shirt up in flame. He screeched and careened forward, but Kelly kicked out again with strength born only of adrenal reserves and sent him toppling back over the wagon's edge. His charred body rolled through dust and fell away.

"Dumb fuck." The other slaver was coming at her from the side of the cage, something sharp between his fingers. She tried to pull away from him, but he reached through the bars and nicked her on the arm with a tiny arrowhead before the vertibird could veer in closer for the soldier to take a clean shot. The raider just sat back amongst the dynamite and glared in a silent dare at the vertibird, knowing he was safe as long as he remained where he was.

Kelly peered at the small cut on her arm, wondering at the clear gel that trickled out with her blood.

"Redshade," the raider explained nonchalantly. "Lethal. Will kill in maybe hour."

She exhaled with ripe panic and flicked back to him.

He gave a crooked grin. "But I have Halcyon." His fingers teased a push-pen injectable at her. Modern, laboratory grade. "If you good, I will cure. Redshade in small dose good for feisty whores that bite." Where did he get his hands on modern medicine like that? She had never heard of Halcyon in the Commonwealth, or even throughout her pre-war military career. And what was Redshade? A native poison?