49 Vol. ll Chapter 2 "Don't touch that." (Part 2 of 2)

From the opposite direction she heard people along the road. Pained, anguished noises. Mixed with shuffling steps and the clanking of chains. Rosie looked at five people in front of her, two young men, three women of a similar age to her. All beaten, chains around their waists connected to a heavy log.

Each wore a tight fitting collar around their neck, leather, buckled, and a mounted steel box with a red light on it. The chained people couldn't meet her gaze, staring at their feet, broken, resigned to their fate. A look she'd seen for years on the people she'd left behind. Even in her drained, numb state it made her anger stir.

"Put that around your neck." One of the masked people threw one of the collars at her feet. She couldn't make out his face, wrapped in red cloth, eyes fully black and a rasping tone to his voice.

"Listen, I don't know what happened to your friends, whatever she told you it was an accident." Rosie tried to explain, to try and get some kind of grip on the dire situation. The only response was the racking of a shotgun. Hoping to just buy time Rosie put the collar on.

Another masked person came over, throwing metal chains at her feet and crouching by her side. The same cold, dark, inhuman eyes and face hidden behind red cloth.

Rosie watched as the person opened packs of powdery bandages and started to wrap her arm. She'd seen them before, the treatment for a broken bone. She felt relieved, until she saw that it wasn't her wound they were wrapping, it was the pipboy, soon to be encased in the hardening bandages.

Rosie needed to do something. She wouldn't be parted from the device she felt grateful to have, and it seemed more vital than ever out here in the new, old world. Rosie yelped as if pained by the rough treatment of her wounded arm. Not a difficult act to pull off given the bone deep cut. She curled into a ball, quickly sending the emergency signal by holding down both buttons and the sidewheel for a few seconds.

"Can you do something about this?" The masked woman with the bandages spoke with the same rasping tone, not acknowledging Rosie. The man pressed a button on the small device on his belt, and the collar around Rosie's neck started beeping.

She didn't understand what it was. Judging by the whimpering coming from the others wearing a collar at the mere sight of the device in the gloved hand, it wasn't good. Her focus drawn by the nature of the ominous signal Rosie didn't notice the cloth masked man getting uncomfortably to her face. Not until she could do nothing about it. He pulled the red cloth away to reveal what passed for his face, freezing Rosie in fear.

Deep, full black eyes set in sunken sockets. A nose replaced with a hole, and yellowed teeth plain to see through rotting, translucent skin. She relented, letting the masked people think they had the upper hand. Rosie knew that's when people make mistakes, like letting her see the radio transmitter that controlled the collars.

The boot laces holding the cut down rubber soles on Rosie's feet snapped a few miles back. She could see the blood seeping from inside her vault issued socks. The laceration above her elbow opened up almost as soon as she set the emergency signal going. Being nowhere near a network meant the pipboy triggered a notification every five seconds. Moving just enough to keep the hardening bandages from sticking to it completely. The fresh blood providing an expanding weak spot.

Despite these wounds, to say nothing of the tight collar padlocked around her throat, Rosie felt numb, without pain, without thirst. Even the heavy, awkward shaped log her new peers were chained to and forced to carry didn't bother her. Everything seemed quieter somehow, removed, distant.

Her focus shifted to the people in red cloth masks. Full black eyes, what little skin they showed, burnt, rotting. Inhumanly indifferent toward the people they put collars on. The more information Rosie tried to gleam by watching the four of them, the more her anger built. Pushing against the numbness, bringing the suppressed pain to the surface. She had to stay calm, not something Rosie had a lot of experience in.

Rosie kept her mind quiet. Knowing that the masked people were overconfident. Arrogant in their attitude towards the people they presumably bought like they did her. Although she did wonder if they paid more than a handful of metal discs and injectors for the others.

"Don't touch that!" The young woman chained next to her harshly whispered as Rosie pulled at the collar around her neck. "It's explosive."

Talking was clearly against whatever new set of rules that now governed Rosie, yet the dark haired woman beside her broke them.

"I'm Rosie, where are we going?"

"Andrea. They're taking us to The Grand, west of here."

"Why?" Rosie had an idea, she just needed it confirmed, and she wanted Andrea to keep talking to her.

"Sell us as slaves." Her voice broke as she said the word Rosie didn't know.

"What's a slave?" Andrea looked confused by the question.

"We are. We have to do what they say or they blow the collar." Andrea whimpered. Rosie was done taking orders, at least she was heading west.

The further Rosie walked down the eight lane blacktop the more her anger built. The more her rage pushed against the numbness she felt, driving it out and letting the pain creep in. Each time she saw the cruel indifference from her black eyed captors her small hands balled into white knuckled fists.

When one of the four other captives would stumble or lose their grip on the log they were forced to carry, it fell, dragging them all down to their knees. If it didn't hurt to talk, thanks to the somehow tightening collar locked around her neck, she would have yelled at them. She wasn't wearing shoes and she could walk. Most of all her anger built towards John. He could be held like this too, if he'd of only listened they could have gone together and avoided all this.

She tried to distract herself. Looking around at the blood red trees, the endless blue, the people, and whatever her captors were. All living on the supposedly uninhabitable surface, but that just brought her back to the lie she lived under. And that brought more white knuckled anger. Especially as it appeared she'd simply traded one Overseer for another.

Anytime their red masked captors would stop everyone froze. Rosie watched intently as they seemed to bicker. Each checking something on their wrists, then one pulled away his cloth mask to yell at another. She tried to listen but couldn't focus on anything but his face, or what used to be a face. No wonder they wear masks, she thought, finding satisfaction in the pain they must be in.

Argument resolved, the lead captor actually spoke to Rosie and her collared captives directly. "You're moving too slowly, we're going to walk till it's dark and you can rest your pathetic smoothskin bodies." Rosie thought she saw a smile on what passed as his face, arrogant, mocking, cruel. Maybe the new, old world wasn't all that different and that thought brought a real smile to her actual face. She knew how to exploit that kind of weakness.

Rosie's captors led them a short distance from the road. Stopping by a ruined house, partially smothered by collapsed earth from the forest above. The relief from not standing on near bare and bloodied feet, mixed with the fallen night, left Rosie so drained she didn't even notice why they'd stopped. Not until she heard the sound of water. Then the pain in her feet and the bone deep cut on her arm seemed trivial to the dryness in her mouth.

In what seemed like an act of profound generosity to the inhuman slavers, they allowed one of the younger men to be let off his chain. He filled a bucket with water from an old pump at the side of the house. Only after arming the collars of course, each one beeping in unison.

Unless the lead slaver decided to amuse himself by letting one start charging, just to see the already broken people squirm. Another mistake, Rosie thought to herself, one she could use. And with the encroaching dark, combined with a feat of endurance, one she could begin to exploit.

Rosie looked down at the bone deep cut on her arm, seeing it made it real, sending spikes of pain through her entire body. She tried to block it out, but the near constant movement of notifications on the pipboy under the cast had prevented any attempt at healing. The flesh swelled outwards from the crude laceration, oozing blood. Another bright idea, she thought to herself, although it worked better than she hoped.

The young slave returned with a bucket of what passed for water. Stale, dirty, and portioned out one pitiful ladle full at a time for the amusement of sadists. That made her angry enough to not drink it. Or so she thought before a soothing drop touched her cracked lips, reflexively taking a massive gulp, which only made stopping all the harder.

Rosie summoned every ounce of will she could find and held the water in her dehydrated mouth. Letting the desperately wanted water drip through her cracked lips. Mixing with the blood soaked, loose plaster cast around the pipboy. By the time the luxury of a second ladleful of water came around, she even managed to drink a little.

A decade of repairing poorly designed junk meant Rosie's slender hands were well used to clawing and pulling at things. Something that helped as she tore at the weakened cast, starting with the blood soaked edge and following the line of drops down.

Every sharp tug or unexpected rip sent shooting pains from her lacerated arm. Her captors took little notice, sat talking amongst themselves, relying on their crude tech and not their dead eyes. Andrea however took notice.

"Hey, you go out of range the collar blows, you know that right?" Rosie didn't, she also didn't care. Radio signals were child's play to manipulate, literally in her case.

"I'm going to jam it." Even those few words felt like a struggle to get out.

"Will it jam mine too?" Andrea lent in all but mouthed the words, Rosie nodded. She didn't see why it wouldn't, but she answered before really thinking it through. "Help me with this."

Rosie helped Andrea pull the chains taught. Using them to unscrew the threaded eye bolts from the heavy log they were bound to. Going painstakingly slowly, barely a sixth of a turn at a time, to avoid detection and the warnings of their fellow captives.

Rosie didn't care, she wanted to get away from all of this, she wasn't going to waste her best chance. Andrea's bolt came free first. Rosie feared she may just run, but she helped with the last few turns. Then kept watch as they wrapped the chains around themselves to keep them quiet.

"Listen, we should go in different directions, then head south. Follow the river, it'll take you to Bakersfield, you can't miss it. Ask for the Marshall, he'll send help, and I'll do the same. Got it?" Andrea had a plan. Rosie nodded, although she had no intention of going south.

The pipboy freed along with herself Rosie ignored the new notifications, for now at least. Scrolling straight to the high frequency mapping pulse options, setting them to near constant for the next hour. That would block anything getting through, especially the junk tightly strapped around her neck.

Tension built as Rosie readied herself as best she could. Mainly by breathing deeply and shutting out pain. Watching Andrea's half raised hand as she picked the perfect moment, then it came.

Rosie pressed send on the freed pipboy and bolted without looking back. Driving the pain from her mind as she reached the cover of the house. An intense spike of agony shot through her foot just as she began to scramble up the slope to the dark forest above, but it vanished as quick as it appeared.

Rosie told herself that she'd go south, find help for the others, but in her heart she knew where she was going. Home, back to the Vault. She wasn't ready. She couldn't help these people from things she didn't understand. She hated the feeling, but hated the thought of going further in this world alone more. She couldn't even cry from the dehydration.

Rosie reached the precipice and hauled herself up and over into the dark forest. Unable to take even a moment to breath upon hearing the rasping voices shouting and screaming threats. Barely running on empty, Rosie got to her bloodied feet, taking a few steps into the trees.

A shadow from her side morphed into a man and scooped her from the ground. A broad arm squeezing what little breath she had from her slender waist while a stinking hand covered her mouth.

Rosie thrashed as best she could, sinking her teeth into the glove, the only thing she could think to do, and to little avail.

"Easy Vault Girl, easy." Rosie bit down harder upon hearing the recognition in a deep voice she didn't know. She stopped as a figure, clad in black, stepped from her own shadow, holding something round at Rosie's eye.

"Stop." The cold woman's words, and something whispering from the back of Rosie's mind put a halt to any further resistance. The woman lowered what Rosie knew to be a suppressed ten millimetre, somehow, and looked right in her terrified eyes.

"Are you jamming the collar?" Rosie nodded. "Good, is this doing it?" She took her left hand and raised the pipboy, Rosie nodded. "Are they all jammed? The hand released from Rosie's mouth ever so slightly, yet she felt too scared to do anything but nod. "Alright listen, you're going to stay behind me and if you so much as twitch, I'm putting a bullet in your knee." The thick arm lowered Rosie to the ground and collapsed in a heap. Drained, breathless, trying to stop herself falling face first into the dirt.

The woman issued hand signals as a third armed figure came from the shadows. Only to disappear back into them, submachine gun raised. "Move." The pale blue eyes, human eyes, stared down at Rosie from the black mask. She half staggered from tree to tree till they were close to the edge, overlooking the people she'd abandoned. "Stop there, don't move." Rosie couldn't if she wanted to. The woman took a scoped, bolt action rifle from her back and laid down. Positioning herself far enough away from Rosie to draw on her.

The blast of a shotgun snapped Rosie from her stupor as the red masked slaver threatened the three remaining captives. One with the shotgun, the other kicking while frantically pressing the jammed remote. The only other one she could see had caught sight of her tracks. Following them right into the path of the black clad man, his presence hidden in the shadow of the ruined house.

A deliberate noise drew the slaver's attention. Right before a burst of cracking gunfire illuminated him in flashes as it tore through the rotten chest. He stayed standing for longer than seemed possible, until the woman next to Rosie fired. Hitting the red mask, splattering the rotten wood with rotten brains

Instantly another cracking burst of gunfire echoed from inside the house. Drawing the pair away from the collared slaves long enough for two more precise sniper shots. Followed by blasts of fire from the advancing shadows as they fell.

"Hey, you want that thing off your neck?" Rosie didn't move, within seconds the woman picked the padlocked collar and threw it aside. Letting Rosie inhale her first free breath all day. "Small sips, or I'll take it off you." The woman held a water canteen out, sloshing it back and forth to draw Rosie to it.

Her hands trembled as she took it. Fearing it being taken away, forcing herself to sip the clean, crisp water slowly.

"You're in bad shape, we need to get somewhere you can rest, somewhere safe." Rosie didn't have a choice, she'd have done anything not to have the fresh water taken from her.

As the three black clad figures stood above her, Rosie tried to pay attention, at least these were real people. "Get them back to Bakersfield. Get stims, saline, gauze, and as many antibiotics as you can. We'll get her back to camp. I don't want to take her much further, if she goes into shock…" The smaller of the two men left, effortlessly bounding down the slope. Ready to move the freed slaves along.

"Easy Vault Girl." The broad man crouched to help as the woman bandaged her feet and arms. Her mask pulled up, and a worried look on her face.

"Rosie." She didn't want to be called Vault girl

"My name's Charlie, the big guy there is Paul, he's going to carry you ok. It's not far. I need you to stop jamming the collars so we can radio our friend." Rosie offered no resistance, doing as asked.

And with that the large man picked her up and started to walk. The only thing Rosie could do before passing out was to try and picture the broad shoulders as John's, not armed strangers in the dark forest.

"Maelstrom, Whirlwind. How copy?"

"Solid copy Whirlwind. The client wants an update."

"Package is free and clear, confirmed headed south. Shit, ghouls and slavers, we should charge him double. There's something else, secured secondary package…code Victor Delta."

"Solid copy, sit tight. Maelstrom inbound."