Chapter Text
Belknap Crater
990 Days Gone
“That’s the last of them.” A large Drifter in a hooded half-poncho tossed the blood-stained cloth bits of a Ripper sigil on the fire. “Sil and Adrian are getting rid of the last of the graffiti, but they expect to be done shortly. I’ve got the usable wood from the sigils and barricades stacked by the visitor centre so we can start ferrying it over to the Mountain in the next day or so.” The Drifter walked over to a woman standing at the edge of the crater, staring out over the valley. She had her hood down, and her wavy dark hair had a thick white streak in it. “Whatcha lookin’ for?” he asked her. His voice was a baritone undercut with a faint purr.
The woman let out a sigh. “Trying to see if I can spot my ex from here.”
The Drifter laughed. “Jo, you know you’re going to have to go talk to him at some point.” He patted his friend on the shoulder, then wrinkled his nose as the wind shifted. “Whew, smells like a horde nearby.”
“A smallish one, but yeah.” The woman nodded in the general direction of the caves. “They moved into the farthest cave almost as soon as we cleared out the wreckage that the Rippers left behind.” She looked up at her companion. “I say we cull them on the way out, while they’re still groggy.” She sighed again. “I’ve half a mind to lure them to that camp at the Hot Springs, let them tear apart that slaver and her guards.”
“Do you want to punish the innocent for the sins of the guilty, though?” The big Drifter nudged her. “You know they’ll go after the slaves too.”
“No.” She shook her head, then put up her own hood. “No. We’ll figure out some other way to bust up that operation.” She looked back at her friend. “I know Mark will take as many of that Tucker woman’s prisoners as he can, given the animosity he has for her--one thing we definitely agreed on was that slavery was evil and to be opposed at all costs.”
“Except that his idea of slavery includes things like paying taxes and obeying laws that he personally doesn’t like.” He patted her on the shoulder, and looked back to see two more hooded people walking toward them with scrub brushes and buckets in hand. “Hey you two.”
“Hey.” One of them, a smallish female with a curl of platinum blonde hair peeking out from under her hood, smiled. “We got the last of the graffiti.” She sniffed at the air for a moment. “Are we culling a horde today?”
The older woman nodded. “I think we should--we need to be careful though; I’m getting hints of Reacher.” She grimaced. “I still remember what one did to Coop’s team--crafty SOBs.” She made a tooth-sucking sound and took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly. “Let’s get fire and traps ready.” She took out her radio and activated it. “O’Leary, come in.”
“O’Leary base here,” a boyish reedy voice replied. “What’s up, Jo?”
“Belknap Crater’s cleaned up, but we’ve got a horde taking up residence in the nearby caves. We’ll be culling them before we come home.”
“Roger that--I’ve got dinner on the fire; it’ll be ready when you get home. O’Leary out.”
O’Leary Mountain
One hour after sunset
Jo put back her hood and ran a hand through her black hair as she sat down at the communal table with a bowl of venison stew. “Sil,” she said, “please don’t ever scare me like that again.” She chuckled and dug in with her spork. “Taking on those two Reachers could have ended very badly for you.” Jo shoveled some stew into her mouth and smiled a bit as she chewed a fatty bit of meat.
“It was a calculated risk,” Silvia replied as she sat down with her own bowl of stew. “It also provided some valuable data, and Adrian had me covered with his BFG so I knew I’d be okay if I tripped on something.” She shrugged and stabbed a piece of meat with her spork. “In any event; we won’t know our own capabilities unless we test them...and you do know,” she said as she put the piece in her mouth, “that we are going to have to figure those out at some point.”
“Fair.” Jo scratched her head and ate a few more bites of stew. “Okay, so that’s a Ripper outpost fully dismantled and a horde culled. We also got some blood and tissue samples that should hopefully give us some updated data about the Swarmer and Reacher sub-strains.” She looked over at the large Drifter that she’d spoken with at Belknap Crater. “Do we have enough bits and bobs to put in the next cache for Lost Lake, Hal?”
The large man put his hood back to expose a white mohawk that blended in with his pale skin. “More than enough. Most of the weapons we recovered are in pretty shit shape though, so Sam and I are gonna strip ‘em out for parts.” He took a deep sniff of his stew. “Did you put mushrooms in this, Jack?”
“Yep! King Boletes and Golden Chanterelles. I thought about tossing in some white truffles that I dug up, but they would have clashed with the juniper berries.” A stocky Drifter sat down with his bowl of stew and put his hood back to expose wisps of red hair against pale freckled skin. “Would have made everything taste like motor oil. So I figure I’ll save the truffles for something else.”
“Are they gonna keep?” Hal asked in between bites of stew. He raised an eyebrow.
Jack nodded, a confident expression on his face. “The truffles? Oh yeah--truffles keep pretty easy as long as they’re kept dry.” He looked over at Joanna. “By the way, Boss--”
“You don’t have to call me that,” Joanna replied with a slight shake of her head. She put another bite of stew in her mouth. Her single lock of white hair fell into her face, and she brushed it back behind one ear.
“Well yeah, but we’d all be on slabs or worse if it wasn’t for you.” Jack drank some of the broth from his stew. “I mean, I had no fucking clue what our former employer was doing until you showed me all the evidence James gathered.” He sighed. “And then there’s what’s slowly making its way up the I5.”
Silvia nudged her friend with her foot. “Our work was all done in good faith. I mean, we all believed we were helping try to find a cure for the Freaker virus, or at least a way to blunt its impact.” She finished off her stew and tipped up the bowl to drink the remaining broth. “Goddamn Jack, this stew is amazing.” Silvia set her bowl down on the table and picked up a clean rag to wipe her mouth. “My point is that rather than beating ourselves up about being played for saps by our ex-bosses, we can keep doing what we’re doing. And that’s culling hordes, clearing ambush and marauder camps, and trying to help the settlements however we can. That way, when the wave does come, the camps will be that much stronger and we can all fight the good fight together .”
“Hey Jack, there any of that venison stew left?” a female voice radioed. “We’ve got some curious littles that may like some.”
Jack got up from the table. “On my way,” he radioed back. “I made way more than we can all eat ourselves.” He smiled and picked up the large pot of stew and some extra bowls, then headed over to the gate. “Hey there,” everyone heard him call out as the gate opened. “I’ve got some venison stew for you. No need to push or shove, there’s enough for everyone! Jo, you gotta come see this.”
Joanna stood from the table and looked over to the gate. She walked over and watched as a group of Newts stood by the picnic table outside the gate. The mutated children each took turns dunking a bowl into the pot and eagerly consuming the contents. One Newt tested her bowl for edibility, only to shrug when she determined that it wasn’t something that could be eaten. When the pot was empty, the Newts put their bowls on the table and scampered back into the trees to watch as Jack and Joanna picked up the cookware and brought it back inside the gate. “Huh,” she remarked. “That’s interesting. Newts usually hang out where they can be well out of reach of potential threats.” She looked up at the guardpost. “Hey Sherry, you seen our little friends here before?”
The gate guard shrugged. She still wore her hood up in the darkness, but a lock of pure white hair peeked out from underneath and the half-moon made her chalk-white skin seem to glow a bit. “They’ve been here every time I’ve been on gate duty, mostly just hanging out and people-watching. Tonight’s the first time I’ve seen any of them approach the gate.”
“Hmm.” Joanna pondered this.
“You think they’re just checking us out?” Jack raised an eyebrow.
Joanna shrugged a bit. “Possibly--It may explain why they’re well outside of their normal comfort zones. Hmm.” She started walking back toward the tower. Jack hustled after her, pot and bowls in hand.
“Wait wait--Jo, what’re you thinking?” He nudged her a bit. “You’ve got that look on your face.”
“When you brought the stew out to the Newts, ”Joanna replied, pausing in mid-step, “did you show them how to use a bowl?”
Jack raised both eyebrows. “No--I just dipped a bowl into the pot and handed it to one of them. The others waited until I gave them each a bowl, and....Huh, they must have taken one with them.” He dropped the bowls into the empty pot, and looked back to the trees to see the faint outlines of the Newts in the trees watching the camp. “Wonder why they decided to come say hi?”
“More likely they feel safe approaching us, or they were drawn in by the smell of your wonderful cooking. If they wanted to try anything hostile, they’d have done it the second you went out to share our dinner with them.” Joanna smiled. “Do me a favour; tomorrow, when you’re out and about...”
“Take notes, and see if the Newts try to copy whatever I do.” Jack grinned. “I can do that.” He nudged Joanna again when he saw her yawn. “I’ll let everyone else know. And you were up way before any of the rest of us Daysiders today--so you really should go get some sleep. Go on,” he said with a smile, nodding toward the tower. “We’ll keep the noise down. And Jo?”
“Hmm?”
“You know we’ll find a way to unfuck this planet.” The diminutive botanist-slash-camp cook winked and smiled.
Joanna smiled tiredly. “With optimism like that, how can I doubt?” She ascended the stairs to the main sleeping area and briefly cast her eyes toward Peaceful Lake as she got to her bunk, then flopped down to get some sleep.