A Little Help Here!

Strange Visitors

It was late in the afternoon and lone wanderer Dodger and her bodyguard Charon had just finished a late lunch at Moriarty's Saloon. Well, it wasn't technically Moriarty's anymore since he was mysteriously found dead in the back room about a year ago. It was Gob who proudly ran the place now. The name of Moriarty had stuck, but it didn't really bother anyone.

Jericho was snoring in a dirty chair in the corner, Nova was charming some young gentleman up the stairs, and a couple unknown wastelanders were sitting further down the bar talking quietly and nursing on some whiskeys.

*POP! tssss * Charon opened a bottle of beer while Gob slid a Nuka-Cola down the bar to Dodger who gently caught it in her hand. "Thanks, pal," she smiled at Gob and took a swig.

"Haven't see you in a while, where you been this time?" Gob asked and picked up a dirty glass to clean it. After Dodger had settled in to Megaton, she picked up odd jobs which often meant being courier between settlements.

"Well," she began, "Simms had a package to send over to Arefu, and there weren't any caravans going that direction, so I took it myself."

"Arefu?" Gob pondered. "That's where Lucy West is from, right? How's her family doing?"

Dodger and Charon glanced at each other and took a sip of their drinks. "Uh, not super great, I haven't broken the news to her yet..."

Gob frowned, "Aw man. That bad?"

She sighed. "Yeah. It turned out to be a little more than an ordinary mail-run. We came across some... underground vampires..."

Gob looked up from the glass for a moment. "Vampires? Now this is a story I gotta hear!"

"It was a big waste of time if you ask me," Charon grumbled.

Dodger rested her elbow on the counter to begin their adventurous tale. They talked quietly amidst the clinking bottles and soft conversations from upstairs.

Not far into the story, light poured in from behind them, the warm glow catching sweetly on Gob's face and arms as the front door opened. After the momentary murmur of shuffling feet and bumping jackets, the faint radioactive haze reappeared in the shadowy room as the door closed behind a handful of wasteland strangers. Gob continued cleaning the glass as he carefully watched them mosey over to the two whiskey-drinkers at the end of the bar.

"Well, Roth boy..." one of the newcomers huskily half-whispered at one of the seated guests and slapped his hand firmly on the man's shoulder.

The short man spun around in his chair and drunkenly asked a little too loudly, "Bruce? We set to go? Been waiting here for half an hour. How long's it take you girls to get ready?" He took a sip of his drink.

Bruce harrumphed and said in a hushed voice, "Hey, you could have helped us, woulda gotten done quicker..." A few of the others mumbled in agreement. " Yeah, it's ready. Let's go." He grabbed Roth's glass and finished off the whiskey himself.

The two at the bar stood up and joined the group of men, bringing their total to seven as they began to slowly waddle their way to the door.

They all looked pretty ragged and tough, but surely weren't beggars or raiders. And they seemed too ill-mannered to be decent caravaneers. A couple of them had greasy, seemingly empty canvas shoulder bags which most likely had been previously used to carry tools and scraps. None of them were openly carrying a weapon, although Charon suspected they each probably had a pistol or knife inside their dusty jackets. The tall older one called Bruce was wearing what used to be some sort of officer's hat, sun-faded except for the original deep blue where an emblem had been freshly ripped off. They all had odd-shaped scars up and down their arms. Who were these guys?