Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 76: Red Awakening

Clay-Crawler still hadn't mastered the art of running in his power armor, and it was a near painful experience as his limbs shifted and bunched beneath the heavy framing in an effort to keep a coordinated tempo. It didn't help his plight that a bullet had punctured through the joint on his left leg and hydraulic fluid was seeping free.

A shout of pain erupted from behind him. "Shit! Shit-shit-shit!"

The raider struggled to look back at D-Con, his left leg locking up at the knee joint and nearly toppling him. The man was stumbling but had pushed himself back upright.

"Keeping running! Don't stop, Clay! Keep running!"

The frantic strain in the voice of the nonchalant man was enough to frighten Clay-Crawler into a new burst of speed. The Red Claws were giving ardent chase, hunting for their blood in bouts of war cries and gunfire. His own clan from his early childhood, wanting him dead!

An arrow thwanged from overhead into the sand, and his armor crunched the wood underfoot as he ran over it. If D-Con was hit and killed behind him, he would cry a lot, loudly, and for a very long time. He might never stop crying.

The thought of that much pain spurred Clay-Crawler to a halt as he waited for D-Con to catch up.

"The fuck are you doing?! Run you stupid retard! RUN!"

"RUUUUUUN SLOW OLD FUCK!" Clay-Crawler screamed back at him, partly in spite, partly to encourage. The psychotic pitch of the scream seemed to shut D-Con up as he sprinted past him, sand kicking up behind his sneakers.

The raider took one last look back at his pursuing brethren before running on, their vibrant red garbs and warpaint like splashes of wild blood through the desert's pale skin. His shotgun was in hand, but he refused to fire back on them like D-Con was.

Over the next sand dune, Camp Talion rolled into view and D-Con puffed something inaudible but no less elated. They pushed harder as scores of the Brotherhood poured out from the gates, moving out into a welcome mat of firepower to protect them.

D-Con and Clay-Crawler found themselves caught out in the field of crossfire as the Brotherhood opened up on the rushing tribals, sheltering their heads and stumbling as rounds skimmed over and around them. D-Con bared his teeth and swore while Clay-Crawler screamed for everyone to stop killing each other.

"Hurry! Move it! Get inside!" A Brotherhood commander was bellowing out at them.

They were almost there, only a hundred strides from reaching the Brotherhood's protective mass, when something whizzed out and entangled D-Con by the ankles. He plummeted face-first into the sand, a bola wrapped tightly around his ankles, and Clay-Crawler couldn't stop immediately in the enhanced momentum of his power armor, having to bound over the man in order to keep from trampling him. In his struggle to stop, his damaged leg finally locked up and caused him to tip forward. They both went down.

Brotherhood were shouting and Red Claws were cheering, a mesh of mayhem fighting over two stranded idiots. The Red Claws were closing in, even as the soldiers slaughtered them. The two of them weren't dead yet, suggesting the Red Claws realized their value and now wanted them alive. They would take them and make them face the Red Rite, even if they lost all their hunters to get them. Clay-Crawler remembered the Red Rite even from his witness as a young boy. He could never forget the horrors.