Fallout: Born Unto Trouble

17. New Love

Elizabeth never actually wanted to be a courier.

She could have been something else; could have joined the army, or became a wandering doctor, a teacher, a bartender. Yet she chose to be a courier. It felt right at the time.

As a courier, you sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do. Kill or be killed, as they say; and Elizabeth didn't want to kill. She was a pacifist by nature, but she learned that it was necessary to survive.

She's terrified of that. She doesn't know what she has or hasn't done before she was shot in the head.

But the world around her wasn't as bad as she thought it would be. On her journey to Primm, she was only ambushed by a group of geckos, which weren't a problem for her.

She was afraid of killing people. People who feel and think and love and breathe. It was horrifying to take that away from someone with a slash of her knife or a single bullet.

She gnawed on her bottom lip as an NCR soldier warned her that Primm was dangerous, that some convicts from a prison had taken over the town, and she went on ahead since danger wasn't something that completely registered in her head.

She crossed the overpass and was almost shot again.

She dived behind a car and checked her 9mm to make sure it was loaded. She poked her head out to get a good look at the enemy. There were only a couple of convicts, so she could probably take them.

Just a couple of shots later, all the escaped convicts were dead. She never realized that she had a steady hand and a good aim.

She searched through all of their pockets and came up with just a few caps and some ammo, then pocketed them and walked to the Mojave Express office.

There was another courier lying dead against the front of the building. She closed his eyes and searched him.

It was a contract, like her own; he was supposed to deliver fuzzy dice to the Strip. Nothing to be killed for.

She finally walked into the Vikki and Vance Hotel, and was stopped by Johnson Nash, who ran the Mojave Express office there in Primm. She asked him about her lost package.

"I'll tell you whatever I can. Do you have a delivery order you can show me?" He asked her. She pulled the order out of her pockets, and handed it to him. He read it, and gave it back to her.

"You're talking about one of them packages. That job had strange written all over it. But we couldn't turn down the caps."

"What was strange about it?" She asked, putting it back in her pocket.

"That cowboy robot had us hire six couriers. Each was carrying something a little different. A pair of dice, a chess piece, that kind of stuff. Last word I had from the office, it looked like payment had been received for the other five jobs. Guess it was just your chip that didn't make it," he then sighed and looked a little irritated, "first deadbeat we hired to do the job canceled. Hope a storm from the Divide skins him alive. Well, that's where you came in."

"He canceled?"

"Yeah, got this look when he saw you next down on the Courier list. His expression turned right around, asked me if your name was for real. I said sure, as lack of rain, you were still kicking. Then he turned down the job, just like that. I asked if he was sure, it was good money. No, let 'Courier Six' carry the package, that's what he said- like that Mojave'd sort you out or something. Then he just up and walked out."

"Do you know who he was? Where he went?" She felt uneasy.

"No idea. Sounds like you two had a history for him to act like that. And turn down the money, too. Hope he didn't see any trouble in that package of yours. Maybe he thought your name was bad luck. Not for me to say."