Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 141: The Calm In Her Chaos

Clay-Crawler and Ochre boldly left the Bleeding Abyssal through the front entrance. The Hell Gates were a burned monstrosity after the battle, the carnage of the Red Doom, and then the nuclear airstrike. Great steel plinths and giant chain links were remarkably still intact on each flank of the rocky cleft, but they served no purpose now. Just as the Bleeding Abyss itself. The raider wondered what would become of their relic. Would they be repurposed by whatever clan reclaimed the canyon, or would they be left to fade and wither into obscurity, objects for children far into the future to eternally wonder on?

Would he be remembered at this sacred battle site for his heroic deeds and the claiming of his battle name, Dragon-Rider? Or would it be remembered as a place where he lost his dignity?

Either way, Clay-Crawler would be glad if he never saw the Hell Gates and the Bleeding Abyssal ever again.

Ochre dragged him through the radioactive canyon ruins with admirable stamina, though he would never tell her so or thank her for it. Several times she had to ease him off her shoulder in order to scout ahead for hostile wildlife or clear away rubble to make them a path. Each time, he played with the idea of shooting her in the back. But in the end, he knew he would never make it out of the passages alive without her.

"That ankle of yours," she said once they finally breached the open sands outside the canyon. "It's fucked bad. I did what I could but I'm no miracle worker."

Still mired in chems and nightfire gasses, Clay-Crawler was only distantly aware of the throbbing agony in his left ankle. It wasn't a pretty sight, however. The splint Ochre had made for him was long gone, broken by the raiders as they tossed and turned him about. The wound where his bone had split through flesh was bulbous, red and tight with inflammation and crusted in a greenish sap. And the grazing pellets of his shotgun blast in attempt to free himself from the bear trap had only served to spread the infection.

He shrugged at her as they stumbled on, more to get her red hair out of his face than anything. "Mutation will heal it."

Ochre lifted her brows cynically. "Must be one hell of a mutation ya got there. How many kisses ya had?"

"Two."

"And your mutation was gills? Why so confident in ya healing ability then? We only get one gift after the second kiss, and by the looks of ya, yours ain't healing."

He demurred in silence. In fact, he had little confidence in his body's ability to heal after the ordeal he had endured, but the idea of losing part of his leg to infection was unthinkable. Not after losing his arm.

Ochre caught on to his insecurity. "Look, the healers will do what they gotta do. Would ya rather die or lose a leg?"

His rage was meteoric. "If you not left me down there, leg would not be so bad! This is your fault!"

Her rapid response was to shove him off her shoulder, letting him fall hard. The sand was a cushion, but still a blaring jolt to his internal soreness.

"Stay here then," she spoke down at him, not angrily, but with a chilling ease. "Let that wound fester until you die, painfully. Or crawl yourself back to the Sandbox."

Despite the finality of her threat, she stood and waited for his decision. It was humiliation. It was a cruelness he would never forgive her for. Clay-Crawler only glared up at her.

"If you were a true Bloodchild, you would take it on the chin like a warrior and get over it. The Red Claw ethos is steeped in the acceptance of war. We do what we have to for the good of the clan. I did what I had to do. And I would do it again. You're acting like a spoiled child who didn't get his own way. It proves you're no Red Claw. Ya just a spoiled, sheltered, pretty little slave boy. You have no idea what it really takes to survive out in the Bloodlands. I'm guessin' that's why they sent ya out here to find me. It was a test. And as far as I'm concerned, ya failed it."