Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 86: Following In Her Footsteps

Danse rode the shifting currents of the desert in his phantom steel. Unflinching at the lashings of radioactive dust storms in the day that tried and failed to impede his progress, impede his will.

Like a dead man walking, nothing would impede his will.

He walked through the crimson radiation storms that reigned over the nights, bearing down through the ravaging teeth of the winds and the raw power that cracked open the skies with thunder and lightning, moving his very bones to the esoteric rhythm of man-made nature.

This godforsaken land was mankind's legacy.

Damned if he was going to lose her in it.

In the gullet of the red night, Danse brooded on what he would do with Kelly when he found her. Would he rather throttle her in his hands and declare his hate or crush her in his arms and declare his love.

Love.

That word.

In elicited terror in him once more.

A full day and night on her tail without a hint or whisper of her also induced terror in him. He should have brought Dogmeat along with him, but the chances of the canine being killed were high, and he couldn't bear to think of the pain it would cause Kelly if she lost the dog again. He would have to double-time it if he wanted to catch her.

She had always been fleet-footed, but how fast could she move while injured? How bad were her injuries? She should have taken his power armor instead of giving it back to him. The stupid woman. She was a slip of a thing. The cold nights could induce hypothermia. The radiation could spike beyond the recommended levels for unshielded ground units. The mere thought of her out here, alone and wounded, sapping herself with chems just to keep herself going... that toxic inhaler on cracked lips that were his.

He recognized that his mind was shifting into the dark realms from protective to possessive, the very distinct difference between himself and Maxson when it came to Kelly. But he didn't have the damnedest clue how to combat that. The Brotherhood never taught him how to war with love and lunacy. And right now, he didn't even care to redress his malfunctioning mind. All he could think of was Kelly and her own lunacy. What if she overdosed? What if she hadn't even made it this far and was dying in a shallow cave or buried in sand after the storms? What if he had missed her? She had been right in her holotape message to him. She was untraceable out here.

"You can't track me in a desert that moves."

The hell I can't.

The weight of his guilt dragged heavily on his heartbeat. The guilt of negligence. If he hadn't been so merciless, she might have felt she still had the support of the crew. Instead she felt so alone that she made it a reality for herself.

It took all of his self-control to keep from charging across the wastes at breakneck speeds and getting himself killed in the process. He was chasing a ghost, a whisper, as her Railroad call sign entailed. Her footsteps were mythical, the sand eating them up in her wake. The landscape was so nondescript that there were limited sites for her to have taken shelter at, save for animal burrows, stunted trees and screes of vegetation. She was small enough to fit in some of the burrows he had inspected on passing, but hopefully not stupid enough. Then again, she did have her moments...