Chapter Text
.
drink from the well
of your self
and begin
again.
—Charles Bukowski, excerpt from the poem, “mind and heart”
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Catch Me (Can You?)
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“I mean it, sir,” Lucy says. She widens her smile until it hurts. She likes the look of this one: he’s got clear eyes, maybe even friendliness there. Could they be partners? Lovers? Please, let this time be different. “I don’t want to kill you.”
The man in question keeps grinning at her, shotgun pointed unerringly at her head. There’s a coil of rope ready on his shoulder, giving him an air of confidence the previous one lacked.
“Then do as I say without a fuss and there won’t be a problem between us, yeah?” he says.
“Please, mister,” Lucy says, hands still raised, “I’m not worth dying over. Could we talk instead? Work something out?”
The bounty hunter’s smile and whatever softness she thinks she sees drops. “Woman, you’re the best goddamn payday I’ve seen in over twenty fucking years. Now, for the last time, put those cuffs on or I’m going to stop being so nice. I’ll drag you all the way if I have to.”
Lucy tries to not let the disappointment sting too much. She should be used to it by now. “Okay,” she says, defeated. Her hands lower. “Okay, I’m coming out.”
The floorboards of the old shack creak as she bends to pick up the handcuffs he’d tossed at her. They glint, polished to a gleam. The disappointment grows. It’s obvious he treats the things in his possession with attention and care. In that single moment, she daydreams what could’ve been.
Lucy surges forward. She shoves the twin barrels to the side just as the gun fires and buries both sets of small fangs into his forearm. Clothing fills her mouth, then blood. A hard punch has her tumbling to the floor. Something trickles down her temple, and when she pulls her fingers away, she finds them wet with liquid the colour of amber honey.
She’s still contemplating what runs through her veins when a heavy thud reminds her of what’s happening. The man’s choking where he’s fallen, movements becoming less and less coordinated as he fails to get up. He soon stops moving.
Before the man’s completely dead, Lucy kneels by his side. “I’m really, awfully sorry,” she says, “but I can’t go back.”
As gently as she can, she strokes his sweating forehead. His eyes dart around like birds, trapped in a paralyzed body. They fix on her now, terrified.
“Shhhhh.” Lucy keeps her tone soothing. She’s stopped crying after the fourth or fifth one but that doesn’t erase the pang of regret. “It’ll be over soon,” she says, and then proceeds to stay with him until he dies.
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Lucy hurries on after covering the body, the abandoned shack she’d thought she’d use as a home proving no safer than all the others. She moves deeper into the wasteland, where there’s nothing but sand and desolate bluffs for miles and miles. As much as she yearns for the company of others, perhaps isolation’s her only chance at peace.
As she walks, Lucy lifts the handbill she’d taken from the man’s coat pocket and stares at her own stenciled face. It and the 50,000 REWARD – DANGEROUS, MUST RETURN ALIVE AND IN GOOD CONDITION beneath are heavily creased, as if he’d folded and unfolded it many times. She wants to crumple the poster and bury it deep. Heck, maybe bury herself along with it, if only to make herself invisible and untraceable. Just the thought of the Enclave finding her has Lucy shivering and peering over her shoulder.
She starts jogging soon after.
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The abandoned town springs out of nowhere, jutting like rotting teeth. Lucy hunkers on the surrounding dune to observe it, burying her bare feet in the sand. She’s been burned by seemingly empty places before.
She waits until her patience runs out and slips into the farthest shambling house, head on a swivel. A skeletal family’s there to greet her in the dining room, a last meal of Vault-Tec’s Plan D in front of each of them. Lucy’s eyes fly wide. She rushes over and her delight compounds: all the bottles are half full.
She chugs them dry, enjoying the poison’s banana flavor. It tastes better than what they’d given her in her cell, that’s for sure. She hiccups, belly sloshing with a rare fullness as she moves onto the next crumbling husk, then the next. The only footprints she finds are hers.
She’s searching for more bottles when she hears a clotted growl close by. Lucy sinks low and crawls to a broken window, listening. It seems like it’s coming from the next house. The growls peter off into a plaintive mantra of Roger, my name is Roger before going quiet.
Lucy debates only for a moment about what she should do, pity quickly outweighing fear. She’s been put through enough tests with near-feral ghouls to know if that she hurries, the years of experimentation could do some good.
She makes her way over, peering around every corner until she finds a ghoul hunched in a corner, scalp sloughed off in patches. He’s clutching at himself, moaning his name. He jolts when he notices her.
“Aw, shoot,” he says. He twists, as if battling a deep, profound hurt. “You need to clear out, smoothie. Like, now. Don’t know how, how much longer—” As if on cue, he breaks out into a vicious snarl, aimed at her. He reels back with supreme effort. “Oh,” he says, shuddering. “Oh, dear.”
“It’s okay, mister,” Lucy says. “I’m here to help.”
Hope shines naked across the ruined, noseless face. “You got vials?”
“Something like that,” she says. She begins rolling her left sleeve.
“I’m a bit low on caps at the moment but I’ll pay you back, honest, I’d be . . . what are you doing?” he asks, shrinking as she kneels close, arm outstretched.
“Bite down,” Lucy says. “My blood’s good for you.”
“Miss, I don’t think—” but then the ghoul’s snarling again, features contorting. Lucy takes that moment to shove her forearm into his face and winces as his teeth latch on. At first he chews with abandon, gnawing and tearing, but as his sanity returns, he delicately holds her arm in place as he drinks with purpose. Lucy tries to count the swallows, some integral part of her diminishing the more he takes.
Once she thinks he’s had six she shakes free, knowing if she gave him too much, he’d fall asleep. The ghoul lets go without a fight, detaching with a loud aaahh.
His eyes are damp when he says, “Man, I thought I was a goner! Hope you don’t mind me saying, miss, but you taste better than any vial I’ve ever had. Ah, shoot! I’m so sorry, I’ve really taken a bite out of you.”
“It’s alright,” Lucy says, returning her arm gingerly to her side. Already the shredded viscera’s meshing slowly back together, one fascial layer at a time. There’s a pleasant lightness in her chest. “I’ll heal. What you took should last you at least a week. Hopefully that’ll be enough time for you to get more of your medicine!”
The ghoul licks some of the blood off his chin before admiring a droplet on a fingertip. “Dang, I see why your bounty’s so high now!”
Ice immediately runs in her veins. That’s not the real reason for her obscenely large reward, but Lucy’s crestfallen regardless. Please. Please, not again.
He blinks. “Oh. Um. Don’t worry about it, miss. After what you did, I wouldn’t dream of turning you in.”
Lucy tries to smile but her heart’s not in it, the joy of saving a life a fading thing. Is there nowhere she can go without bounty hunters haunting her steps? Maybe she should try living in a cave.
“Good. I really don’t want to kill you, mister,” she says, standing.
The ghoul stands as well. He’s dressed in a shabby suit jacket. “Roger. Rog, to my friends! You can call me that, if you’d like.”
A beam of sunlight pierces her gray mood. “Hi, Rog. I’m Lucy. I don’t think I’ve had a friend before.”
He sticks out his hand. “Well, happy to be the first.”
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Roger leaves not long after, promising he’d return with new clothes for her. She needs to blend in and learn how to hide in plain sight, but when they’d combed the ghost town, they’d only found disintegrated fabrics. You’re quite distinct for a smoothie, he’d said, eyeing her gray Enclave smock. Very, uh, recognizable.
Lucy tries not to worry when Roger doesn’t show up after four full days. She waits for her new friend, restless with possibilities. Would they travel the wasteland together once she’s disguised? She wants to believe a life’s out there for her, one of friendship and love, free of pursuit or the Enclave’s shadow. She’s excited to be intimate with someone one day and wonders what her first time will be like, and with whom. Would she have children?
When she’d overheard her keepers’ plans to breed her, to see if the offspring she produced proved just as valuable, she’d been horrified to her core. It was one thing if she was an experiment and treated as such, but to inflict the same or worse onto her babies?
No. Lucy couldn’t bear it. She weaponized years of good behavior and escaped that very night.
Lucy distracts herself by making the most of her solitude. She sleeps in the house with the least decrepit roof and finishes collecting every bottle of Plan D. Best yet, there’s a pond of irradiated sludge not too far away.
She finds time to swim in the gunk every day, diving to the bottom and retrieving cans of radioactive filth. She takes a knife from one of the kitchens and uses it to pry the lids open, swigging the fluorescent goop. It’s so strong it has her sitting dizzy and happy, hiccupping. Sometimes after swimming she suns herself on the rusted top of the partially submerged car, the pond’s residue hardening into a gray paste on her skin. It flakes like ash when she’s done.
As much as Lucy enjoys herself, she’d happily trade it all to see Roger again.
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Lucy studies the empty horizon on the morning of the fifth day. If Roger isn’t here by the following sunrise she’ll move on without him, the familiar disappointment sharper than usual. He seemed so adamant he’d return to her.
After taking a few fortifying sips from the last of the Plan D, Lucy heads to the sludge pond, thinking she could enjoy her usual dip while she waits. She tucks the knife in her waistband. Maybe there’s a can she’s missed along the bottom.
She’s by the water’s edge about to take her smock off when a lasso loops around her upper body. It constricts with a jerk, making her stumble and fall to the side. Lucy’s spinning on the ground, trying to get her bearings, when a tall figure steps around the rusted car, rope in gloved hands.
He’s a ghoul. Whereas Roger’s face had been sagging with an almost wet quality, this one’s the opposite, skin contracted tight and leathery, eyes sunken. There’s a focus to him that hones on her now, sharp enough to carve.
“You’re not Roger,” Lucy says, struggling to her feet in the loose sand.
“Nope.” He’s covered in weapons, ammo, and dressed in dull old clothes and a hat. He finishes securing the first line onto one of the car’s doorframes and begins circling around, prepping a second coil of rope at his hip. He smiles at her, predatory. “Lucy, right?”
She goes cold. She’s only told one wastelander her name.
“Don’t blame Rog, sweetheart,” the ghoul says. He has the audacity to wink at her. “He likes to yap when given a drink or two.”
Lucy bristles. “You hurt him?”
“Ain’t done sh—”
She’s rushing at the bounty hunter but is yanked to the ground, out of slack. He keeps his distance with a mocking little whistle. Lucy grabs the knife from her waistband and cuts the rope. She’s barely through the first when the second lasso’s around her chest. She runs at him again, not giving him a chance to knock her off balance. He waits at the last moment before redirecting her momentum, twisting her down so she falls onto her back beneath him. He’s heavy when he straddles her chest, knocking the knife aside.
Lucy doesn’t need to win a contest of strength with him. All she needs is to bite. Which she does, between a glove and sleeve cuff, irradiated blood hot on her tongue. She’s shaken free a moment later, hand in her hair tightening with a punishing squeeze.
“A biter, huh?” he says.
The ghoul adjusts his position to force one of her own wrists up and this time it’s his teeth on her, just as deep. She feels the moment he registers it’s not entirely human blood in his mouth, grip loosening in surprise. Using his distraction to her advantage, Lucy lurches up to plant another bite, this time on his folded inner thigh. She’s pulled off again, tears springing in her eyes from the force of it.
Muscling through the pain, some of her hair rips from her scalp as Lucy lands a third bite, closer to his knee. The ghoul wallops her twice across her temple. Her vision’s spinning when a hand clenches around her neck, pinning her down. She stares at him, astonished he’s moving and alive after a triple dose. It’s nearly all she currently has. He bares his teeth at her, chin dripping honey-red.
“Hope you like gettin gagged, sweetie,” the ghoul says. He traps her arm back under his leg and begins searching for something in one of his duster’s pockets. He’s tugging fabric free when his motions slow. He blinks. He then gives his head a shake before resuming. Lucy watches with increasing hope, grin growing across her face.
The ghoul notices. He studies her with a low hrrn, grip tightening around her neck. He sways before righting. His frown deepens, brows drawing low.
“I’m not going back,” Lucy says. She can almost hear the wheeze of his lungs now.
“Got fifty thousand reasons sayin you are,” he says, but he sounds distracted. He sways again, almost pitching forward. There’s enough weight on her throat that, for an instant, she can’t breathe.
The ghoul’s then staggering away, as if attempting to put distance between them. He makes it several feet before stumbling in the loose sand, then covers another five steps before he’s sagging against the side of the submerged car. Lucy watches as he stands there, head bowed, doing nothing but holding himself steady. He turns. His legs give out when he attempts to push off, folding as he slides against the car’s rusted tire.
He doesn’t rise again.
Lucy takes several minutes to bask in the overwhelming relief. She waits for her heart to stop fluttering like a frightened bird. Thank the gosh darn heck.
By the time she removes the lasso and walks to the ghoul, his fingers have stopped twitching. When she crouches in front of him, his eyes snap to hers. Still alive, Lucy thinks, amazed. She briefly wonders if all ghouls are as resistant as him, hoping it won’t take much longer.
As she waits for this latest bounty hunter to die, she can’t help but lick some of his blood off her lips. The earlier sips of Plan D feel long ago. Ghouls are radioactive, aren’t they?
Lucy straddles his lap, fearless. There’s nothing he can do to her now.
Having never been close to another person like this before, at first she just leans against him, bandolier pressing into her as she enjoys the novelty of their hips slotted together. He smells of gun oil, leather, and somewhat like an old nail. But the longer she’s there, the more the yearning builds. Lucy wraps his deadweight arms around her waist the best she can and hugs him back. She tucks her head under his chin as she does, listening to the sickly churn of his body as she soaks in the false intimacy.
She then grinds on him for a while, relishing the muted pleasure, indulging in the fantasy he’s staying still for her willingly. She sighs, wishing everything was different. She wants to believe the lie.
Lucy pushes the ghoul’s head and hat to the side and buries her face in the wrinkly column of his neck, nosing it for a moment. He really does feel like pitted old leather, skin rasping against hers. When she bites down, it’s not to inject venom but to puncture. Blood fills in her mouth as she begins to drink.
She guesses she won’t get a buzz from it but enjoys the salty tang anyways. It’s not as pure as the cans from the pond nor as flavorful as Vault-Tec’s poison, but the radiation sits well in her stomach regardless. She takes several indulgent swallows before pulling away.
When Lucy turns the ghoul’s head forward again, a furious glare’s waiting for her. She blinks, startled. Despite his paralysis and the time that’s passed, he seems just as alive as ever. Unable to meet the burning gaze, she closes his eyelids, one at a time. Later on she’ll wonder if she imagined them fighting to reopen.
A part of her squirms. Lucy knows she wouldn’t want to be treated this way if their roles were reversed. Well, it doesn’t matter now. She bites his neck again, this time to pump the last of her current venom reserves. If he wasn’t dying before, he soon will be.
“I told you I’m not going back,” Lucy says in his ear, then leaves the ghoul where he slumps and hurries away, unable to wait for Roger any longer.