Fallout: Fury Blood

Chapter 150: Peace Is A Pipe Dream

Under the full moon, Clay-Crawler consumed it's ether. Viscous and effervescent, milky and alkaline, it was a paradoxical pathway to the garden of paradise locked away inside his own mind. With all of his senses he could see, taste, feel his destiny unfolding before him, a great passage through himself and outbound in the stars, where the Lost Voices of the apocalypse waited for him to join them.

"Ether of the Moon will ease the senses," Pandora's-Box said as Clay-Crawler mounted the back of his rad-dragon. It purred under him, content under his weight, bonded with him through mutual trauma. "Together, your heart will beat, your minds will meld. Together you will hunt, together you will consume."

Don't shit yourself. Don't shit yourself. Don't shit yourself.

As he found his throne upon his dragon, he was detaching from himself. Peeling off his own body, slipping out from under his own skin. His spirit soared for new refuge under the skinsands.

Pandora's-Box's voice prowled under his new skin. "Don the skin of the sands. Become the land. Reforge the bond that made you."

Before the raider knew it, he was no longer in the deep catacombs of the Sandbox, no longer under the layers of the desert's skinsands, but in the skies, pouring out across the surface of the moon. The rhythmic lunges of the dragon beneath his loins was an extension of himself, a lending of power both frightful and magnificent.

Together they hunted until the sun split the sands anew, raider and dragon fully satiated and bonded, together, with the land.

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The vertibird labored over the rolling ocean of sands until it reached the Firesteppes South of Lex Talionis, forced to a sweeping crawl as the over-capacity weight in it's troop load drained the fusion core to dangerous levels.

Grand Zealot Richter settled them down in the rugged shrouds of rock East of Delta Dune known as the Carcass, the only visible semblance of cover for miles. From the air, the rocks did look like the ancient sprawled carcass of some great serpent, curving rock formations like a spine with each vertebrae spiked in salute to the sun. Maybe it was. Some dormant mutant snake calcified in place by demonic forces. Anything was possible in this forsaken land, Kelly thought gloomily.

The shadow of his eyes, chasing her, consuming her.

It was a wild stroke of luck that they had reached this place before the vertibird lost power. A wild stroke of luck that they had managed to escape Camp Talion without being pinged and obliterated by Brotherhood air control. The riots had provided all the cover they had needed. Or had the Elder purposefully let them go?

He had seen her. Kelly could still feel his eyes on her like a pair of superheated lasers, hunter-killer beams of power seeking her across the desert.

She was still seeing them, hunted by them, when Piper shook her gently by the arm. "C'mon, Blue. Let's get you out of this heat."

They had landed behind the shadow of the Carcass, but the heat and dust in the air was still a blight in her lungs. Coughing, she allowed Piper to usher her off the gunship and under the natural awning of the rocks, where they hunkered down with Dogmeat while the rest of the crew unloaded the gear. They had packed enough for at least a week, as much as the vertibird could handle. Most of it was water.

"No wonder the tribals don't even squat here," Cait said as she dumped some of their tanks of water in the shade, "there's nothin' here. No plant life, nothin' to hunt. It's dry as a bloody nun's cunt." She tossed Kelly a fresh bottle of water, sipping from her own canteen with a disgruntled grimace. Piper had to fend for herself, it seemed. Cait had been overly protective of her since carrying her through the riots, and Kelly suspected it had something to do with her changing stance against the Brotherhood regime.