Fallout 3 - Beautiful Stranger

Chapter 2 Part 1

Before she realised what she was doing, Patience began moving towards the collection of huts. Valrie made a half-hearted attempt to stop her, but she shrugged away the outstretched hand.

Slipping between rocks, shallow dips and low hills of the landscape, she circled around to the rear of ramshackle buildings. She felt no fear, no excitement. She didn't even know why she was doing this. All she knew was the urgent sense of impending violence that she felt upon seeing the armed woman outside the huts.

She couldn't explain it. The woman Valrie had mentioned, Sierra, meant nothing to her. She even considered that these 'raiders' were only visiting the woman, but something told her different. Something, somewhere deep in her fractured memory, told her that this was a bad situation and she found herself moving towards danger. It almost felt like she had no control in her actions.

With cautious steps, she closed the distance between herself and the female raider. She could see the raider, now, dressed in battered brown leather clothing. A strapless top, hugging her breasts, with one shoulder pad of the same leather. Tight pants, studded with small spikes on the thighs and a hip holster with some kind of revolver attached to a loose slung belt. On her head, the raider wore a kind of helmet with attached googles and two antenna-like protuberances on top. The raider looked odd, to say the least. She also carried an assault rifle, held pointing upwards on her shoulder.

Patience waited for the raider to turn her back, in her lazy pacing, and moved. Silent, crouching, she stepped up to the woman's back. Before the raider knew she was there, Patience threw her arm around the raider's throat, clenching her tight against her own chest, linking her hand with her other arm and laying that arm's hand on the back of the raider's head. She pushed with that hand and pulled with her other arm, choking the raider in silence.

She kept the hold tight until long after the raider stopped kicking and struggling. Hands that scrambled, clutched and scratched against the arm at her throat began to lose strength, falling to the side. The body fell limp and heavy and still Patience held the raider locked in the choke, giving the raider no chance to recover. No chance to live.

When she felt certain the raider was dead, Patience lowered the body to the ground, dragging the body to the side of the hut, out of sight.

She moved, then, to the door of the hut the female raider had been guarding. She made no sound and even she found that surprising. With care, she laid her head against the door and listened.

"Come on, Sierra! I know you got caps! I know it!" A male voice and sounds of things tossed around. A radio and music playing in the background. "I'm a nice guy. I don't like hurting ladies. Unless they deserve it. Tell me where the caps are and we'll leave. No-one gets their pretty face smashed in, okay?"

"I don't have any." A female voice, now. Mumbling. Soft. "I spent my last caps yesterday."

"Now that's a lie. That's bullshit." The sound of glass breaking against a wall followed by a short scream and a whimper. "Now I gotta hurt you to make a point."

That sense of danger told Patience she had to move and she had to move now. Without thinking, she pulled her sidearm from its holster and, pointing the weapon with one hand, she yanked open the door with the other. She stepped through the door, sweeping the muzzle of the gun until she latched on to the face of the man whose voice she had heard.

He was quick. As soon as the door opened, he pulled the woman, Sierra, close and tight, covering himself with her body, using her as a shield and pointing a gun from under Sierra's arm. Patience was quick, too. Without thinking, she switched the gun to her left hand, crouched and covered most of her body with the door and wall. She didn't even know if she could shoot, let alone left-handed.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" The raider was clever, able to hide much of the normal targets on his body by the frame of Sierra. "Friend of sweet Sierra, or someone out to steal my action? How'd you get past Baby-Doll?"

"The woman outside? Leather armour, weird fucking hat?" Patience kept her pistol aimed, unblinking. "She's dead. I choked the shit out of her."

"Damn. That's a crying fucking shame." He didn't sound the least bit upset. "It seems to me, we have ourselves an impasse. Now, I know I'm going to shoot you if you don't let me leave. You and pretty little Sierra here. Sure, I could get dinged, but I reckon I'll get you worse than you get me. So, it stands to reason that we both get out of this alive and without any hurtful injuries, am I right?"

"Wrong." Her unblinking eyes used the raider's monologue to seek out a viable target. His mistake came when Sierra shifted the tiniest amount to the left, exposing his knee.

Her first shot rang out, filling the cabin with the supersonic clap of the bullet and the explosive concussion of the gunpowder, ringing her ears. The bullet tore through the raider's kneecap and out the other side, carrying along blood, bone and flesh to splatter and hit the wall behind.

His knee destroyed, the raider collapsed to the right, losing his grip upon Sierra, reaching out with his gun hand to arrest his fall and exposing his chest and head.

Somehow, in the blink of an eye, Patience had risen, stepped through the door, swapped the gun back into her right hand and had fired two more bullets. The first slammed into the raider's chest, sending a gout of blood splashing against the wall. The second penetrated the raider's eye, burying itself deep into his skull, obliterating his brain.

Before his body even hit the floor, Patience had grabbed Sierra, pushing the shocked woman behind her, guiding her to the door, all without taking her eye from her opponent for even a fraction of a second. She continued pointing the gun at the dead raider until she felt satisfied that he was, indeed, dead.

In a movement that seemed well oiled and practiced, she straightened to her full height and replaced her weapon to its holster.

"Jebus aitch Christ!" It was Valrie's shocked voice that she heard.

"You mean Jesus." It was an automatic correction. It didn't even seem as if she was doing the talking.

"That's what I said, Jebus." Valrie stepped into Patience's line of vision and it was like a spell had broken. Patience shook her head. "You're a god damned one woman killing machine. God damn!"

Patience looked down at the body of the raider. Three precise shots, hitting three exact targets. It would seem that she did, indeed, know how to shoot. She only wished she knew how she knew.