Chapter Text
The courier hefted a huge severed arm in both hands, grunted, and then dropped the damn thing like a chunk of firewood. Right in front of Arcade's face.
"Well now, Arcade Gannon, what do you think about that?" he asked in his curious and friendly tone.
Arcade leaned back, blinking. He'd been trying to nap in the shade of a corrugated metal lean-to. He'd been up all night with one of Novac's newest mothers, a sick baby crying into his shoulder.
"Oh, for me, you shouldn't have."
"Think it could still work?" The courier pushed it even closer with the worn-out toe of his left boot. "Then we'd have two."
Arcade's hand patted around for his glasses, and he knocked them over by accident. His brain thought they were on the crate by his cot, but he wasn't back in the Old Mormon Fort, hadn't been for a little while. "Then you could wear one on each arm to accessorize, couldn't you?"
"Well, that would be tacky," laughed the courier, jovial as always. Like some kind of dusty Santa Claus. It was the bushy beard and mustaches, and that wild mass of dusty hair that his cowboy hat barely kept a lid on. The bent back, the way he shuffled and limped when he walked. The gray eyes that watched you. How old was he really.
Before the incredible episode with the stealth field, Nelson, and the showdown at Cottonwood Cove-- Arcade Gannon thought he knew.
The courier's dirty-nailed fingers placed the glasses frames in his hands, and when Arcade could blink clearly.. yes, a super mutant arm, the right one, severed two inches above the elbow.
"Yes, that's a Stealth Boy, like the other one.. looks less damaged, though. In stand-by mode, you can tell by the little tick on the dial. It'll drain out that way."
The courier's bushy bearded face arranged into confusion, then caution. "And then what happens?" he said. The Pip-Boy was as much technology as he dared to use, and even that was new to him. He'd fired two rounds into a cactus the time he accidentally discovered it could play the radio. God have mercy.
Since that whole rocket episode, Manny's sister had blown into Novac with her scrawny husband and all her pointy little urchins. Right now the tribal children were standing up from their game of Scorpion Gladiator; their mohawked and spiky-haired heads were riveted in Arcade and the courier's direction.
"I don't know.. I guess they recharge." Arcade sat up, sighed. No way to go back to his nap now.
"They make you crazy as a shithouse rat," Boone said as he and Veronica wandered up.
"And invisible and shithouse crazy just isn't the way to go through life, my friends," Veronica said.
"Oh, I don't know about that," the courier said. "Can't you entertain the possibilities?" When he smiled, Arcade couldn't be annoyed-- he was harmless, really, like an eccentric uncle. The good kind, who didn't breathe fumes in Arcade's face as he swore, over the point of a knife, that the duty of the last true Americans was to cleanse the mainland from the mutant corruption. Not that kind at all. The courier was a good man, inoffensive, who limped and shuffled from town to town, drawing letters or packages out of his long pockets, bringing well-wishes and gifts, news and postcards. He shook hands, kissed babies, and told wild stories about places he'd been to. It was easy to travel with him, an easy pace, sleeping under the stars or eating hot plates on kindly strangers' porches. The courier had some notion to find the man who tried to kill him, but only to find what became of his delivery.. he always said softly he didn't want trouble. He never wanted trouble.
'The thing about being a courier,' he told them one time, maybe more than one time.. it was something Arcade would remember when it was too late. 'The thing about being a courier is you can give people what they want most.'
...
Veronica grinned. "Uh oh, here they come," she said.
The children-- mostly Manny's sister's-- gathered around to marvel at the mutant arm, poking at the mortifying flesh with a stick.
"Look if you want, but don't get too close," Boone told them. "That's dirty."
The one with the pokiest mohawk and spikes, we'll call him Pointy Vargas, crouched nearby to study the arm with intensity.
Boone watched like a wolf watches a cub.
Veronica wrinkled her nose exaggerratedly, and then winked at one of the kids. "Ew, it's as big as you are, isn't it?"
"And just as smelly," one of the siblings said, sparking off a half-hearted round of shut up/no you shut up. Their attention was absorbed in that nasty purple arm. Flies were coming.
Little Pointy had his hands on his knees. Then he put his palm on the ground, leaned. Then hands on his knees again. He was thinking it through.
The thing to watch now, Arcade realized, was the subtle shift in the way Boone stood. This was going to get good.
Then, just as the hand of the Vargas child hovered over the mutant's hand, Boone reached out and grabbed him on the shoulder.
What a scream. And when he screamed, all the other children screamed too. The courier gave a comical, over-exaggerrated yell with flailing arms and flappy coat that turned it all into laughter and giggles.
Veronica faced Arcade, mouth open, her eyes crinkled up with hilarity. "Hoo boy, I think a little pee came out."
Boone kept his hand on the boy's shoulder a moment, gave him a reassuring squeeze. "That's dirty, make you sick," he said.
It turned out that Manny's sister wanted to cook the arm, when she caught wind of the courier's find. She was a tough, stout tribal woman who walked like Dinky would walk. Arcade wondered how she had generated so many offspring with her husband, who weighed a splinter tenth of her preponderance.. 'Do it like frogs, maybe,' the courier had leaned in to tell him once, the crazy dirty old man, who laughed happily at all of his own jokes. 'You just let it out I guess-- God bless.'
Boone didn't like the idea, cooking that nasty arm. You can't eat that, he said. Feed that to those kids.
He was in Sgt Boone mode now but Manny's sister had known him all her life, wasn't impressed by skinny Craig, Miss Boone's little boy... a story for another time.
All the while, the courier was trying to figure out a way to get the Stealth Boy off of there. The arm kept flipping and rolling up, smacking him at one point, to the laughter of the children. The courier made a big show of being offended and Why-I-Oughtta smacking it back.
Arcade said they should just burn it, really.
Manny's sister looked at them like they were stupid, and contended that they could burn it, and then eat it.
It turned out a moot point in the end.
"Oh, what did you do?" Veronica laughed. "Now look."
The huge mutant arm had vanished. Poof! Gone.
"I guess my hand slipped." The courier rubbed his hat and then smiled, shrugged. He liked to take it easy. "But now we know the Stealth Boy still works."
"Oh, beautiful," Arcade sighed.
"Cheer up," the courier said. "I expect it'll turn up somewhere soon."
...
That night, around the cookfire, Manny Vargas lit a flashlight beam underneath his chin. "Gather round and hear a story of betrayal and revenge," he whispered. "The story of.. THE CRAWLING ARM."
...
The evening had gone by in rare form. A central bonfire, a community barbecue, everyone talking and laughing, telling stories. The kids clambered over everything, over everyone, before their energetic hoopla subsided to sleepy nudges and hugs. Half of them on Boone, who said nothing, only listened. One of the mohawked boys made himself comfortable, fast asleep with a fist in Boone's shirt. The sniper patted his back slowly and listened to the courier tell about this one time in Mexico.
Veronica and Manny flirted shamelessly with one another, Manny Vargas with his gentle voice and warm chocolate eyes, the casual way he would touch you when he talked. Chris Haversham scowled a bit, but he was getting better at integrating with the townsfolk. Daisy Whitman and the courier talked about places they'd gone and things they'd seen, though Arcade could only hear the courier's half, since the man was two beers drunk and talking in a voice big as Dinky. He spilled half his third, too. His hands shook sometimes. Arcade noticed that the first time he met him. Shaky hands in grubby half-gloves.
ED-E took patrol, and took it seriously.
Someone had hung a hat on that cow skull they brought back from Repconn. The mighty Antler.
Now the fire burned low. Boone helped Manny's sister put the kids to bed, and then went up into the rex's mouth. A comfortable quiet fell over the town and Arcade allowed himself to just live in the moment.
"So, the girl.. I like her," Manny said, after awhile. "Smart. Funny. Cute. And she likes Dinky, that's big. I approve."
"That's always an important basis for a relationship.. does your partner like dinosaurs, and what is their favorite dinosaur?"
Manny let out a smoky chuckle. His long tanned arm fell over Arcade's chest, and Gannon took the cigarette in his fingers.
"Tyrannosaur of course. Bad-ass volcano king. That's how I knew this was the place."
"I'm more a triceratops kind of man, myself."
"So y'know, she's a good arm wrestler, too," the sniper said. "Took me by surprise at first, but three out of five, I could have had her.. "
Even on the floor mattress his long legs went over the side, but it felt grounded, more firm, than the broken bed frame. He took in a lazy smoke, letting the mattress soak his weight. Too many nights on hard ground. The courier could sleep anywhere, anytime, and Boone, too. If Boone could stay asleep long enough.
The thread of conversation came back to him, after a minute or two of curling smoke. "Veronica's not his type, exactly," he said.
"You know, I don't know," Manny said. "I don't know his type, he's so damn shy with them.. but I think a spunky girl like her, I don't know. They like each other enough, you can see that."
"It may be.. but I think ol' Veronica likes the ladies more."
"Son of a bitch. Are you kidding me?" Seeing Gannon shake his head, Manny fell back on the mattress and laughed. He had a free laugh that just bubbled out. Nice to listen to.
"I think Boone's the only, uh, normal one in our outfit."
"Just him and the robot?"
"Just him, that robot's got it bad.
"I saw him tweaking it earlier."
"Boone was trying to see if ED-E would play the radio. But hell.." Arcade popped up an eyebrow and said in his sleaziest tone, "You start playing with a guy's knob and dials, you got a friend for life. "
Manny thumped the mattress with a fist and there was that laugh again, huge and lovely.
"I.. I'm glad Boone's got some friends now," Manny Vargas said softly, when he recovered.
They traded the cigarette back and forth awhile, til it had gone down to nothing. The night was pleasantly cooler, and the mattress was body-warm. Manny was sliding a hand up and down Arcade's back, and Gannon drifted, not knowing whether he wanted to be asleep or awake, warm and content, until the first shot cracked outside.
...
It went quick.
Boone and the eyebot held them off as best they could.
Bullets thudded into meat, stayed. Rays burnt flesh but held no stopping power.
The nightkin smashed through the town's defenses. Too many, a whole troop's worth, each one a wall of shielded thick skin and staggering strength.
Shot after shot peppered them, but Boone couldn't seem to break through. He swung down out of the rex's mouth, hanging by a tooth before he kicked off the side and landed, ready to fire again.
Manny ran out in just his trousers, rifle ready. Arcade too. It was going by so quickly that it was hard to make sense, but he knew there was no way out of this. If they could buy time.. the kids might make it free.
Boone never wavered, never gave up, even when one of the hulking bastards advanced on him. It swatted the rifle away like a toy, and when it did, Boone brought out his knife.
Manny fired. Oh shit. Craig was done. They all were.
When the monster lifted him like a doll, Boone put the blade into his eye.
The monster screamed, squeezed, and then flung Boone away. His body bounced off the second story railing, flipped, and hit two doors down from the courier's open room.
It was the moment that broke the town's resolve. Craig Boone had been as steady and constant a figure as that damn dinosaur, as much a fixture as the rex.
The bonfire had kicked up. Flames and screaming.
The troop leader snorted and roared, stalking around, lashing out at scrambling settlers who ran out of the crossfire. Manny saw it coming, towering, with the fires backlit.
Oh God. Craig. See you on the other side, brother. All your pain be healed..
And then the Voice spoke.
Loud and deep came the voice, from no earthly source that any could see.
WHO DARES DEFY THE WILL OF ANTLER.
...
The nightkin leader froze. Literally froze. His outstretched hand hovered in the air a scant two inches from the end of Manny's rifle.
WHO DARES, bellowed that horrible voice, DEFY THE WILL OF ANTLER.
It was the moment that broke the nightkin troop. The whites of their eyes were showing, their broad backs hunched in with indecision. The stabbed one's rage was subsiding to a keening of pain.
There was a thin acrid smell of fuel in the air, one that Manny would later associate with Chris Haversham and the tin cannisters he brought back from the Repconn facility.
"Mighty.. Mighty Antler," the nightkin leader breathed.
YOU ARE NOT FIT TO SPEAK OUR NAAAAME, came the terrible voice.
Then Manny saw fire, and Novac lit; one of the nightkin shrieked the worst sound you ever heard, its body engulfed in black and yellow flames. It died hard.
The Follower doctor was quick on his feet, taking advantage of the moment to shove people back into motel rooms, get them barricaded up.
Veronica was nowhere to be seen. That eyebot hovered by Boone, its tendrils flexing and unflexing. There was a red light but it stayed its attack.
Manny didn't know what the hell to do, or what the hell was going on, but the nightkin were buying it big.
Now the burned nightkin was a charred heap putting off flames and foul-smelling smoke. Now the ones that Novac had fired against were feeling their wounds at last, the rush of adrenalin and brute rage no longer a bulwark.
The one Boone had shot, in particular, was leaning heavily against some wreckage, its breathing thick and labored.
"Mighty.. Mighty One, Great One," the nightkin leader breathed, its deep voice wavering with terror. "We.. you.. you have returned to us."
WE NEVER LEFT.
There was a shimmering in the air. One of the wounded nightkin took a knee, the first of them to do so. It moaned with the loss of blood.
SO QUICKLY DO YOU ABANDON OUR WAYS.
Fire, something moving in the flame, in the smoke.
SO QUICKLY DO YOU FORGET ALL WE HAVE TAUGHT YOU.
Something struck Manny deep in his heart, in his primordial soul, the fear of the spirits and the unknown.
The nightkin let out a cry. "No, Great One.. no! We will do anything you ask.. please forgive us."
The air shimmered and danced. A shape formed. A man but not a man that Novac knew; but there was something old in it, something terrible, and the nightkin crumpled like frightened children. They went to their knees. They went flat out. That one laid down to die, and did.
The man stood strong, a man who bowed to no other man or to anything else upon the earth. He had a streaming mane of hair, a wild beard, like the Old Gods, dressed in stitched leather with streaks of ash all about his body. His head was the skull of a brahmin, the conduit of Antler, who had led the remnants of the Master's army out of the fires of the apocalypse.
YOU BEHOLD A GOD.
...
"You folks have some trouble in the night?" came the sympathetic voice of Lt. O'Donnell, a tough-faced fellow with an unfortunate skin condition.
"We're good, thanks," Manny Vargas said.
"Sgt Boone all right?" The lieutenant and line of troops peered into Novac, where the legendary Craig Boone took in the morning breeze from the comfort of a stained overstuffed chair. An honest-to-god eyebot hovered nearby, playing a soft jingle.
Vargas wiped his face with a hand, shook his head. "Yeah, yeah. He uh, the doc's got him pumped full of feelgoods, so he's in a great mood right now, he doesn't know what the fuck. He killed two nightkin last night."
The First Recon Murder Machine had a lazy smile on his face and he was arranged in the chair in such a way that it looked like he was watching the bighorners that were milling around the interior of the compound.
When did Novac have..
"They attacked you? So many of them?"
"It uh, it was a misunderstanding. We worked it all out."
It looked like Novac was still working it all out.
The settlers were standing about uncertainly. The kids, though, they were having a great time, a whole mess of tribal-looking kids sitting up on the mutant sheep.
Lt O'Donnell and his troops looked at each other. Somebody shrugged.
The draft of O'Donnell's report would look later look something like: 0200 troop of stealthed nightkin attacked town of Novac; nightkin were confronted by Antler, the Skull God; nightkin believe Antler to be their master and guide; Antler has become the consort to Mother Dragon, locally known as Dinky the Dinosaur; nightkin promised to revere the town as holy ground and have brought bighorner as tribute. 0 dead, 1 injured, 12 toy t-rexes permitted to nightkin troop which has peaceably dispersed.
...
"Two beers and you run around crazy and invisible, setting people on fire, turning into a god.. wow, what a lightweight," Arcade said to the courier, who was ambling around as his usual shuffly self. "It usually takes me a couple hours of hitting the sauce to self-deify." Arcade had come to realize the man wasn't actually fat like he thought; he just wore his pack under that damn tatty coat he never took off.
"How's Boone doing, is he going to be all right?" The big gray eyes looked apprehensive.
"Bruised ribs, maybe cracked.. he'll make it, he's tough. All we can do is make sure he's comfortable."
The courier nodded slowly. His beard looked especially unkempt this morning. There were still streaks of ash in it. "Well, he does look comfortable. I don't think I've seen him smile."
"I don't think I've seen his eyes. Ever. I had this notion that if he removed his sunglasses, he'd have sunglasses underneath. Now look at him, grinning and half cross-eyed."
"Looks like we got ED-E to play music after all."
"Oh, best friends," Arcade trilled in his most sarcastic voice. A defense mechanism. The whole thing was still processing. Registering. "Listen. That was, uh, some quick thinking. We'd all be dead."
"Don't know that," the courier said, shrugged. His shaggy head bowed a bit, and he rubbed his arm slowly. He still wore the Stealth Boy from the night before, a detail that didn't sink in until later. "I just told a little lie, that's all."
"And who does it hurt, really? They wanted a god, you were a god, mutants caught on fire, Boone's hurt but he's okay, the baby Khans think this was the greatest thing ever, the crazy nightkin are all happy and best buds now, they've all got little t-rexes to hug.. "
"Now Novac has a bunch of mutated sheep."
"Yeah, yeah, the mutated sheep." Arcade shrugged. "I got to say, though, I.. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I really didn't.. I didn't know you had that in you."
The courier seemed to hesitate, and then he smiled. There was that wily uncle smile again. "It's what we in the business call a command voice," he said.
"Well I gotta tell you.. a little pee came out."