Chapter 1
The drumming of the NCR Ranger’s heart drowned out the wailing cries of the caravan’s children. They had been running for hours, being chased across the Mojave by a pack of roaming rad-scorpions that had ambushed their group. When they had left New Reno seventeen days ago, there had been eighteen of them. Twelve members of the caravan, some of which included a few children, five NCR troopers who were armed with the standard .556 service rifle, and him, the Ranger.
But now there were only seven of them left. Five out of those twelve caravanners, two of which were children, a trooper and himself were all that remained. As they ran through the blistering desert, the trooper glanced over his shoulder to see if the rad-scorpions had given up their pursuit yet, only to find that the pack of giant mutated monstrosities were still chasing them.
“Why the hell are they still after us, I thought they would have gotten their fill on the damn Brahmins?!” He shouted before turning around and taking aim with his service rifle.
Several loud cracks echoed off the valley walls as he fired. Only half of the rounds managed to hit the two-hundred and fifty-yard targets, and none of them even made so much as a dent in the hardened, grayish-blue carapaces of the five-foot arachnids.
“Don’t waste the ammo!” The Ranger shouted back as he kept his pace, leading the survivors.
The trooper gritted his teeth and turned to follow up the rear of the group, taking note every half a minute on the distance of the closing rad-scorpions. After several minutes of further running, they had made it out of the valley and paused to gather their breath.
“They’re getting closer, they’re a little over two hundred yards behind us.” The trooper said as he moved next to the Ranger.
“That’s the least of our concerns now, Greenhorn.” He replied.
“What? How the hell is that the least of our concerns?”
“Look.” The Ranger answered as he pointed towards the east.
The trooper looked to where the Ranger was pointing, and he immediately understood his meaning. On the horizon was a massive radiation storm, and by the feel of the wind, and by the look of the fast moving, sparse clouds directly above them, it was heading their way.
“Shit.” He muttered.
As the trooper pondered on their desperate situation, the Ranger was scanning the surrounding area. His eyes stopped searching the empty desert when he saw in the distance a large silhouette. He reached into his rough, worn satchel and pulled out the scope that had been broken off of his anti-material rifle.
He brought it up to his face, peering through the red stained glass of his enclosed combat helmet and into the distance through the scope. He could see clearly that the silhouette was in fact a pre-war junkyard. He studied it further, trying to see if there were any signs of life, but quickly came to the conclusion that it had long been abandoned since the time that the bombs first dropped and irradiated the Mojave.
“Greenhorn,” The Ranger said to the trooper.
“Yes, Sir?”
“Tell them to start taking Rad-X,” he said as he put his scope away and turned to face the trooper. “I found what looks like a junkyard, there’s a good chance we might find some shelter there. Once they take their pills, we’re gonna haul ass to it.”
“Understood.” The trooper said as he began to turn away.
“That goes for you too, Greenhorn. Take the Rad-X, you’ll be just as vulnerable to the storm as them.”
“Yes, Sir.”
As the trooper left the Ranger to tell the other survivors to take the medication, the Ranger unholstered his Sequoia and began inspecting it. It was the only weapon he had now, other than the combat knife he kept strapped to his belt underneath his worn duster. His primary weapon, a anti-material rifle chambered in .50 MG, had been destroyed in the ambush with the rad-scorpions. The Ranger cursed at himself for allowing it to get destroyed, if he had that now those mutated desert bugs wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Two-hundred yards? If I still had my girl, I could take those bastards out from over a thousand away.” He thought to himself as he continued to lament over the loss of his precious rifle.
He quickly shook the thoughts from his head. The old veteran knew that there was no point in focusing on what he could not change, and the past was certainly one of those things. He opened the dark-blue steel cylinder of his Sequoia and counted the remaining .45-70 government rounds within. There were only three left, the Ranger took out the two empty brass casings and placed them into his satchel.
He reached up to the bandolier that he wore over his combat armor and pulled out two rounds from it, reloading his Sequoia and closing the cylinder. After re-holstering the revolver, he turned to face the group of survivors.
“Are y’all ready?”
