In the Wasteland
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Click the double asterisk (**) links within the text to open a new window and hear the music.
-----------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER TWO: THE ATOM BOMB
-----------------------------------------------------------
You could go great places with me, kid. Jo thought about Burke’s promises as she walked home, still buzzed. This settlement is just a dump.
Blair was sitting on the steps by the backdoor, half in shadow from the lamp light. That was the place where Jo usually sat.
“What’re you doing?” Jo asked.
“Waiting for you. I told Mrs. Garrett I would stay up to let you in.”
Jo hadn’t thought about coming back late, that the doors would be locked.
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry about earlier, Jo. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
But Jo knew it was true that she should have taken the afternoon off if she couldn’t stay awake. And she wondered how the conversation had gone with Mrs. Garrett when Blair volunteered to wait up for her.
“Mrs. G mad I was out?”
“No. Worried, a little.”
“Sorry,” Jo said. Burke had offered her an insane amount of money if she would help him. Based on what people paid for a meal at Edna’s Edibles, Jo could eat for years. She turned the doorknob, but stopped to look back Blair. “You see me when I get up at night?”
“Yeah. I have.”
“If you’re going to make fun of me about it, go ahead.”
“There’s nothing to make fun of.”
“Like what kind of wimp gets scared so easy.”
“Jo,” Blair said. “You’re not exactly a wimp.”
“What about Vault-trash?”
“I shouldn’t have said that.” Blair shrugged, admitting surrender. “But sometimes you are a stubborn punk. Now can you please just go inside? I’m tired.”
I bet they treat you like shit in that diner, Burke had said.
But it wasn’t true.
-----------------------------------------------------------
When Jo told Sheriff Simms about Burke’s job offer, he gave her the guns and her bat back.
“I had a feeling about that slick bastard,” Simms said. “What kind of sick fuck…” He shook his head. “Well, he’s about to get his ass arrested and questioned. You’ll be the first to know how it goes.”
“I want to be there,” Jo said.
“Suit yourself, kid. How you wanna play it?”
-----------------------------------------------------------
The doctor gave Jo some pills to help her sleep, and some to help her concentrate. She took one of the uppers before talking with Burke again. She had the afternoon off to meet with him at Moriarty’s - as she and Simms had planned.
“Something that’s important to learn, Jo, is to never look back.” Burke showed her the half-assembled pulse charge device. He left it on the small table between them. Jo could already see how it should go together. “Help me with this and I can brighten your future.”
Atomic blasts were bright, too. Jo could tell from the charge pack that Burke would have to have something inside of the missile as well - to react to its signal.
Sheriff Simms loomed in the doorway.
“Excuse me,” said Burke. “But this is a private matter.”
“It’s not so private if that thing on the table is what I think it is. Why don’t you come to my office and answer a few questions.”
“All right.” Burke raised his arms gently. “You are the law.”
Jo was edgy from the pill she’d taken. As Simms turned away to say something to Moriarty, she watched Burke reach into his coat.
She leveled her gun at Burke’s face and squeezed the trigger. Loud red viscera across the wall, like something that had shattered horribly.
“Fuck!” Simms jumped back. The half-faced body in the striped suit slumped out of the chair and onto the dirty metal floor, one of his legs still twitching as if electrified. Simms took the silenced pistol out of the body’s hand. He also reached for the sunglasses that were in Burke’s shirt. Later, Simms would tell Jo to take the shades. “You’ll want these. They’re damned hard to find.”
“I think he already did something to the bomb.” Jo’s gut was rising because of the blood smell.
“What? Motherfucker.” Simms used the toe of his boot to turn Burke’s jaw - about all that was left of his face. Jo tried to run out of the room before she vomited.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The diner fell silent after the gunshot.
“Mrs. Garrett!” Tootie yelled from the kitchen. Blair pulled her composure back together enough to force a smile for the people she was about to seat.
“We’ll be with you in just a moment.” She walked straight into the back.
“I’m right here!” Edna went to Tootie.
“What was that?” Natalie asked.
“We call it a gun, Natalie,” Blair said. Nat frowned.
“I mean what happened? Did someone just get shot?”
“We’re staying inside until the sheriff lets us know,” Mrs. Garrett advised.
Blair went upstairs to see how Jo was. Undoubtedly the gunfire would have woken her, and that would not be a pleasant thing to wake up to. Blair was a little scared about it herself. But she found their room empty. Jo’s leather jacket was on the back of the chair.
Mrs. Garrett walked in behind Blair quietly.
“Do you think…?” Blair asked.
“We don’t know,” Edna said. But her eyes seemed weighted by the knowledge that both of their concerns were probably very well-founded.
It was almost an hour before an ex-raider named Jericho walked down to the diner and spread the word about Moriarty having to scrape Mr. Burke’s brains off the wall. And mop up all the blood.
“But Mr. Burke was the last person who seemed violent,” Blair said. She imagined a mix up at the saloon.
“Yeah,” Tootie said grimly. “He was so fancy.”
“It was some Vault kid who did it,” Jericho said. “Took the whole top of his skull right off.” Jericho tried to show them with a chopping gesture at his eye level. Blair watched Mrs. Garrett close her eyes in disgust.
“Well, there’s only one Vault kid…” Natalie said.
“You’re a real Sherlock Holmes, Natalie,” Blair shot back. How could Jo have actually done that? And to Mr. Burke of all people. “What was she trying to do, rob him?”
“Now Blair…” Edna began, but Blair spoke straight from her racing mind.
“I’ve had to share my room with her all this time and she’s a murderer! That’s probably why she got thrown out of the Vault! How could you let her stay with us?”
Nat, Tootie, and Mrs. Garrett were all staring at Blair, seeming appalled by her behavior. “Oh, for crying out loud,” Blair said. “What?”
Jo was standing in the entrance of the diner with a revolted scowl. And she still didn’t look like a killer - that face didn’t seem capable of it. There was something about her eyes that floored Blair, even when they were cold and furious.
“You won’t have to share your room anymore.” Jo walked past them and through the back.
“Blair.” Edna looked pained. “Jo just helped the sheriff disarm the old bomb. Mr. Burke was on his way to detonating it. Jo shot Mr. Burke in the saloon because he was pulling a gun on Sheriff Simms. Thank goodness she was so quick on the draw.”
Blair had to sit down. Her stomach sank. “The bomb…”
“I would never have put someone in your room if I had even the slightest inkling of uncertainty.”
“I know, Mrs. Garrett.” Blair put her head down on the table. “Oh god.”
-----------------------------------------------------------
Blair was ready to go up to their room and eat humble pie. To apologize to Jo for everything. But how would she explain it? I can’t believe I said that? I’m sorry I was so ready to assume you were a killer?
After a minute or so of staring at the door, Blair opened it.
“Jo, look, I’m sorry I was such a moron.”
The room was empty. All of Jo’s stuff was gone: the messenger bag, the helmet, the bullet-proof vest. Her leather jacket. When she told Blair she wouldn’t have to share a room anymore, she’d meant it.
“Fuck.” Blair bit her lip. She tried not to cry. “Fuck.”
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sheriff Simms gave Jo the empty loft apartment out of gratitude. It could use some cleaning up, he said, but it had running water and the pipes were good.
Outside, Jo watched the wind carry swatches of dust across the sky. She hadn’t escaped the Vault just to be trapped some place else. Everything she could see was bordered by the serrated edges of Megaton’s walls.
There had to be more out there - people who weren’t so ready to change their minds about her. Jo couldn’t believe Blair - ready to call her a thieving murderer on a moment’s notice. And at the same time totally oblivious to Burke! Oh, he couldn’t possibly do any harm in that nice suit!
But Jo had killed him. She supposed that did make her a killer by definition. And she must have been a killer even before that, since she took out at least one of the security guards as she left the Vault. Maybe more than one.
Had there been a way to avoid it? Jo couldn’t see how. Those security guards had beaten Doctor Palmer to death, and Burke was a second or two away from shooting Sheriff Simms. Not to mention the bomb.
They were the killers first. So what was a killer of killers called? Was there a word for that?
Jo tried not to think about the way Burke’s head had shattered apart and his body kept twitching after she shot him. It made her feel sick again. Not just vomiting sick, but sick inside. She hadn’t meant for it to happen that way, but had acted as fast as she could to stop him.
And she had.
The next day Simms introduced Jo to the general store owner, who was eager to hire a scavenger. Jo put on her helmet and Kevlar vest. With a great clank, they opened the gates for her.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The wasteland was a terrible place. Blair remembered the huge pelt on the floor in the living room of her father’s suite. It was from some kind of monstrous, mutated bear that had been shot out in the wasteland. That was the kind of thing childhood nightmares were made of.
Blair hadn’t had nightmares since she was a child.
The first night she had the room to herself again, she was still under the illusion that Jo might return. By the second night, Blair realized that - even if it wasn’t for all the hard feelings - Jo had no good reason to come back. With her own apartment she wouldn’t have to work for Mrs. Garrett anymore. And that solved the problem of irregular sleeping.
In the diner, people talked about Jo and the scavenging she had been hired to do for the general store.
“I hope you said goodbye,” Jericho told them. “Raiders are going to tear that kid apart. Walking into that old Super Duper Mart? Suicide.” He seemed to delight in telling them all the different ways Jo might die out there. Mrs. Garrett was on the verge of kicking him out, except that one day she regained her smile and the upper hand because they heard that Jo had not only returned, but set out on another job already. “Beginner’s luck,” Jericho said.
Sometimes Jericho stayed until closing, waiting at his table for Blair to tell him to leave. He would always watch her and smile - not with the kind of smile Blair liked to see. If Jo had still been there, Blair bet it wouldn’t be happening. She probably wouldn’t hesitate to kick him out.
“How old are you?” Jericho asked Blair one night. “Eighteen?” Blair was almost twenty.
“We’re closing now,” she said. Just like we do at the same damn time every night.
Mrs. Garrett and Blair later made a deal so that she wouldn’t have to talk to Jericho at closing time anymore, but he didn’t stop being bothersome. Repeatedly ordering liquor, for example.
“For the last time!” Mrs. Garrett yelled. “We do not serve alcohol! Even if I found some that wasn’t irradiated - which I never have - we still wouldn’t carry it. You’ll have to go to Moriarty’s, which I think might be better suited for your tastes all around!”
“Get the fuck out of my face. I’ve got business to take elsewhere.”
“And keep it there!” Edna called after him. After Jericho was gone, Nat and Tootie applauded Mrs. Garrett from behind the bar. Blair was relieved.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Blair wanted to apologize to Jo, had wanted to since the day it all happened. But Jo was always gone. By the time Blair would hear she was in town, she would have already left again.
Blair went to the back office and started writing a letter several times. But it never read back the way she wanted it to. It was too easy to sound insincere on paper. Finally, as she realized how much ink and paper she was wasting, she wrote a note that was only one sentence:
I was such a moron, I’m so sorry. -Blair Warner
Did it seem pretentious that she included her last name? Wasn’t it obvious enough? But Blair didn’t want to cross it out or use another sheet. She was already considering the best way to explain herself to Mrs. Garrett for using so much of their office supplies.
After her shift, Blair went up the zig-zagging walkway on other side of the crater, to where Jo’s house was. She slipped the folded note through the rusty mail slot on the door.
Jo didn’t come back that week, or the next. Or for several after that. Blair propped the spare bed up against the wall again, and moved her desk back to the place it had been in before.
For a while, no one talked about Jo.
And then the word spread through Megaton that there was another radio station. Edna tuned their cabinet radio to a wavelength that had previously been little more than garbled static. It was now loud and clear: a pastoral guitar strum and a man’s trilling voice. **
…don’t want to set the world on fi-ire
I just want to start
A flame in your heart
In my heart I have but one de-sire
And that one is you
No other will do
“Actual music!” Nat said. Tootie just screamed and started swaying to the song. “Megaton,” Natalie nodded at Blair and put her arm around Mrs. Garrett’s shoulders. “This is the life, huh?”
“I think I’m in love!” Tootie declared. She danced to the rest of the song, and then a DJ picked up.
“Galaxy News Radio: we’re radio free wasteland and we’re here for you. This is Three-Dog, bow-wow: your jockey of discs and teller of truths. I fight the good fight with GNR as my gun. Our sound goes out across the wasteland - now farther than ever thanks to some help from the Lone Wanderer. That kid has a look in her eye that screams, ‘I’m the one that can get shit done!’”
Natalie shot them a conspiratorial smile.
“Do you think he means Jo?” she asked.
“Well,” Mrs. Garrett said. “There are a lot more people wandering out in the wasteland than you’d think, Natalie. And a lot of them are alone.”
“Now for a little update,” Three-Dog said. “I’ve heard that Reilly’s Rangers were stuck on a roof in Vernon Square, pinned down by super mutants for days. A brave soldier named Theo was killed in the line of duty, but the others have been rescued. Do I suspect some vault-dweller intervention? I certainly do. Good work, 101.”
Blair froze.
“So,” Natalie grinned at Mrs. Garrett. “You think it’s another girl escaped from Vault 101 and went to the capitol?”
“Our Jo!” Mrs. Garrett mused. “Oh, what do they put in the water down there?”
Three-Dog continued, “If you’re out there, Wanderer, this one’s for you.”
The recording this time was grainier: the meandering guitar and piano, with a woman.**
May-be / you'll think of me / when you are all alone
Maybe / the one who is waiting for you
Will prove untrue / then what will you do?
May-be / you'll sit and sigh / wishing that I were near
Then / maybe you'll ask me / to come back again
And maybe / I'll say "Maybe"
-----------------------------------------------------------
Reilly had ginger-colored hair, a beautiful face, and referred to the super mutants as “huge cocksuckers.”
The Ranger compound was tucked into the basement level of one of the half-collapsed concrete buildings in DC. The florescent light in the bathroom flickered and seized, but didn’t come on all the way. Jo could hear the radio playing “Maybe” through the door as she brushed her teeth. Three-Dog had said the signal now reached across the wasteland. Did that include Megaton?
“Word travels fast,” Reilly said. “Across the airwaves in less than half a day and there goes my team’s reputation maybe. Guess that’s just the bitch of getting rescued.”
That previous half of the day - everything that had happened after Jo had picked up the Rangers’ distress signal - had seemed to last forever. The Rangers were on a roof waiting for the soldier who had their back-up munitions. Jo had found him dead in the stairwell, where he had probably been for two days.
Super mutants. Tall and broad enough to fill entire doorways. Towering in the old hotel’s entry. Jo moved with near-silence and was quick on the trigger. The firefight quieted as Jo and the Rangers reached the old metro station. They ran, guided through the dark by flashlights, as Reilly lead them back to the compound. Their safe house.
Jo wasn’t sure if she had expected Reilly to be purely grateful. But the whole team probably would have died up there if Jo hadn’t brought up the munitions cases. And what kind of reputation was being dead?
The disappointment was just as poignant as the bruises from places where thick Kevlar combat armor had stopped the bullets. It was just as poignant as the headache already coming on, withdrawal from the pills Jo took to stay awake. But the worst would be when her body started to flush out that chalky stuff she had taken to slow dehydration almost to a halt.
Jo sat on the edge of her bunk, which was across the room from Reilly’s. Reilly had offered Jo a job as a mercenary with the Rangers and Jo had said, “Maybe.” The way Three-Dog talked about her - the “Lone Wanderer” - the news would sure save Reilly’s reputation.
“I wake up from nightmares,” Jo mentioned, since they were sharing a room. If Blair had woken up from them, she figured anyone might.
“Not with these you won’t.” Reilly doled out three white tablets from a glass pill bottle. Jo took one, and ate some kind of freeze-dried ration as a chaser. It was still a few hours before Jo could drink much water, on account of the anti-dehydration drugs.
While Jo lay in bed, before the wave of numb opiate pleasure eased her into sleep, she thought about her old room with Blair. She thought about Edna’s Edibles. Mrs. Garrett had been the only person who asked for Jo’s help and then expressed open gratitude for it. Maybe it had been foolish to think everyone in the wasteland was that way. The people Jo knew in Megaton were different. Even Natalie and Tootie were always so honest-eyed, if obnoxious at times…
Blair. Jo fell asleep remembering the time Blair had waited up for her.
-----------------------------------------------------------
( CHAPTER THREE: MAYBE)
NOTE AS OF OCT 24: I just wanted to apologize because it might be a while (maybe even until winter break) before I'm able to post the rest of this. I have a particularly heavy course load this quarter and am in the process of applying to hella grad schools.
As always, thanks for reading!