Chapter Text
Disclaimer: I do not own Calvin, Hobbes or any other characters derived from the Bill Watterson Comic Strip featured in this story.
"Where? The corpse of what the world used to be."
"When? The silence after the end of everything."
"Who? Us, the survivors of the destruction. We, the stragglers, the scavengers, the survivors. In this time when the world has resigned itself to a twisted, gargling death, we use our strength and our minds and our fearlessness to take what we need and what we want from the blighted land and the nightmarish mutations that roam it. We are indomitable. We are ruthless. We-"
"Calvin!"
The skinny, tall, wild-haired young man turned his head back, away from the awesomely devastated landscape that he had been dramatically gazing over. "What!? Can't you see I'm in the middle of something?"
A few feet away, next to the battered gladiator jeep, stood a feline creature who looked as if its body had been reshaped into an imitation of human form, with a tiger's head and a furry, humanoid body. Its looks were awkward, but it held itself with a grace and elegance that you didn't see in most mutants, even the sapient ones.
"Everything's loaded, we're ready to go. Unless, of course, you're not finished talking to nobody."
Calvin scowled and turned away from the cliff to walk over to Hobbes. "For your information, fuzzball, I was cementing the monumental importance and utter coolness of who we are into the very fabric of this place with my immortal words!"
Hobbes rolled his eyes. "I'd rather not be cemented, if it's all the same to you. Can we go now?"
Calvin grunted and shook his head. "Fine." He opened the jeep door and got in, taking the wheel. Hobbes, as he was getting into the opposite side, said, "I think I should drive this time."
"What? I'm a perfectly fine driver!
"You're also the one who talks to landscapes! I don't know if I trust your mental abilities behind the wheel."
Calvin started the engine and began to move the jeep. "At least I wasn't the one who nearly crashed us into the acid pit!"
"No, you were just the one who drove right through that nest of Bitewarpers and nearly got our eyeballs gnawed out of our skulls."
"It was either that or try to make the jump over the pit!"
"And who was it that set off that old landmine and made the pit in the first place?"
The two continued to bicker as the jeep drove on through the sand. The weathered and scratched vehicle made a small but persistent path away from the cliffs and further into the desert, weaving in between the weird and jagged rock formations that sprouted around them like giant twisted bones. The sky above was a never-ending cloud of ash, veiling the sun and making the entire world around them a dismal gray.
It was the Ashen Plain. And it was after the end.
A few miles later, after the duo had stopped their arguing and settled down into a sullen mutual cold shoulder, Calvin finally asked, "How much longer until we reach the forest?"
Hobbes consulted a wrinkled, dirty piece of paper with a map crudely drawn on it. "Looks like about half a day's drive."
Calvin looked around. "It's getting dark. Well, darker, anyway. Let's stop here and make camp." Hobbes nodded.
They killed the jeep engine and exited the vehicle. Hobbes opened the back and got out a bundle of kindling and an old lighter. Calvin picked a spot and cleared away the surface-level sand to make a shallow pit. As Hobbes brought the kindling over and set it in the pit, Calvin stared off into the distance. Hobbes, having started the fire, looked up to see him reaching down to take a quarter out of his pocket. Calvin began to flip the coin, over and over, and with every toss, he would mutter something too quiet to make out.
Mutter.
Flip.
Mutter.
Flip.
Mutter.
Flip.
Mutter.
Flip.
Hobbes, uneasily, said, "Here, let's roast some dinner." He held up a couple slices of ambiguous pink meat. It was only after he had skewered his with a stick and held it over the fire that he looked up to see Calvin walking over to join him, having come back from whatever faraway places his mind had been.
As they cooked their food, Calvin mused, "I wonder what kind of meat this is?"
Hobbes made a face. "Maybe we don't want to know."
Calvin grimaced. "Good point."
After eating their dinner (the meat was tasteless, but they suspected that those who had sold it to them had done that on purpose so as to spare them from the unappetizing original flavor), the two laid out their ratty sleeping bags in the low red light of the dying fire. All else around them was pitch black, there were no stars to be seen in this part of the world.
"G'night, Hobbes," Calvin whispered.
The tiger mumbled an unintelligible response, already half-asleep. Calvin settled in, doing his best to forget about the untrustworthy grit of the sand underneath him and the staleness of the air.
A sharp pain. Something was poking at Calvin's arm, and it wasn't going away. He opened his eyes.
At first, the world was a confused leakage of red light in deep blackness, but as his eyes adjusted to make sense of what was before him, Calvin realized that the hot, wet air he felt brushing over his skin was panting breath. He couldn't see the jaws that the breath came from, but he could see the sickly greenish glow of the feral, predatory eyes.
In an instant Calvin realized, using instincts that he had built up from years of surviving in this world, that the thing was going to snap at his face. He turned his head and craned his neck as much as he could, feeling the movement in the air as what sounded like razor-sharp teeth clapped together just an inch from where his face had been. He opened his mouth to yell for Hobbes, but the monster, as if sensing that he was going to call for help, slammed a hairy paw down on his throat. What was supposed to be a yell came out as a strangled choke.
The claw was just beginning to pierce Calvin's flesh, he could feel the trickles of blood going down his neck, when the fierce yowl of a jungle cat rang through the night, and the monster's pressure vanished from Calvin's body. He jumped up, croaking, and fumbled around in the sand by his sleeping bag for his flashlight. Finding it, he turned it on and shone it on the spot where Hobbes wrestled with a four-legged, furry grayish-green creature about his size. The monster's talons like long rusty knives swung and swiped wildly, but it was no match for a mutant tiger, and soon Hobbes got up and shook himself off as the monster lay dead at his feet.
After wiping some black, sludgy blood off of his fur in a coolly triumphant way, Hobbes remembered that Calvin was there and turned to him. "Are you alright?"
Calvin nodded, and pointed towards the abomination's carcass. "What was that?"
Hobbes looked back down at it and shrugged. "Just a mutant, I guess. Looks like an irradiated wolf."
"You don't usually see anything living this far out in the Plain."
"This one must've just been an explorer."
Calvin turned his flashlight back towards the sleeping bags. "Just the same, I think we'd better sleep in shifts the rest of the night. Wouldn't want the rest of this guy's pack to suddenly surprise us, if there is one."
He held out his fist, and they rock-paper-scissored for it, with Hobbes losing. As he took a seat in the sand, idly playing with a stick of unused kindling, Calvin opened his sleeping bag, paused and said, "Hobbes?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks, buddy. I owe you one."
Hobbes looked up and smiled. "Don't mention it." He held up his extended claws. "These bad boys needed a workout, anyway. They were getting antsy."
Calvin chuckled, zipped himself in his bag, rolled over, and tried his best to go back to sleep. The idea of having Hobbes on lookout duty helped him do so.
And so the two friends survived another night, hard and cold as it was, on the ruined planet. They didn't have much, but they had each other.
Notes:
This story was originally started by WorldsWorthWords on Fanfiction.net, whose writing skill I still envy. Thanks for taking a chance with this one.
Chapter Text
The great forest, even as dead as it was, was still breathtaking as it stretched out over the silent hills. To Calvin, the trees looked like ghosts, tall and pale, arranged into silent watching crowds.
It was spooky, yes, but at this point anything was better than the Ashen Plain. They hadn't seen any more monsters like the one that had attacked them, but he still didn't trust that wasteland. It almost felt like, if they'd stayed there much longer, the dust would have gotten into their bones and sucked away their moisture from the inside out.
Stupid, of course. But all the same he was glad to be out of there.
"Spooky," Hobbes said, looking around as Calvin drove the jeep slowly down the old dirt road through the hills, probably the only road left for miles and miles around.
The teen grunted. "They're just trees, Hobbes. They can't hurt us."
Hobbes held up a paw. "Well… you do remember that one time at the Greenwell Outpost, don't you?"
Being reminded of that particular incident still made Calvin feel like shuddering, but he didn't want to look scared, so he held it in. "Well, these trees are dead. They're just husks. Completely devoid of life of any kind."
Hobbes looked around doubtfully. "Wasn't the Ashen Plain also supposed to be devoid of life?"
Calvin Hrmphed and said nothing else. He hated when Hobbes had a point.
Suddenly, a growl came from Hobbes's furry tummy. Then another.
"Just out of curiosity," Hobbes asked, "I don't suppose we're anywhere near a place to stop for food?"
Calvin shook his head. "I want to get through some more of the forest before we stop. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we reach the Toshka settlement."
A few seconds passed before Hobbes asked, "Do you think there will be anyone left there? The last time we went by, the population was rather scant."
Calvin shrugged. "I don't know. But we need to get more supplies somewhere, and Toshka is the closest chance we have."
Hobbes glanced back at the food bags in the back of the jeep, which to him looked pitifully empty. "I'd definitely agree about needing more supplies."
"At least in some places we can hunt or pick our food, scarce as those places are," Calvin muttered. But clothes, and gas for the jeep… those things, we'll need to buy, or trade."
"It's hard to believe that people here still have gas… or any other type of fuel," Hobbes remarked.
"Well, some people were smart," Calvin muttered. "They stocked up in preparation for something like this. Now, everybody relies on them."
They drove on. As they passed the uncountable numbers of dead trees, Calvin wondered how these forests looked in their prime, in the days before The Fallout. When he was younger, he no doubt would have scoffed at such a simple name and would have demanded one that better conveyed the scale of the destruction and corruption and rot and disaster. But now, he accepted the fact that no phrase could convey the mindless devastation of it all.
Calvin shook his head and tried to focus on the road ahead. No need to spend extra time dwelling on the past anyway. The present required too much worry as it was.
Eventually, the path took them up another hill, and at the top they came across a clearing. Here Calvin stopped the jeep and they both got out, relieving kinks and cricks in their necks and backs.
"Snack time?" Hobbes asked, his green eyes shining with eagerness.
"Uh huh," Calvin said as he went to the back of the jeep and opened the back. He proceeded to pull out a lumpy bag full of small edibles. After carrying it back and gently depositing it on the ground, he sat down with Hobbes.
"Now remember," he warned, "we don't want to eat too much. It's still almost a two-day drive to Toshka. And that's assuming we have a clear path where nothing goes wrong."
"Which it never does," Hobbes said, and sighed. He reached over and pulled a small snack out of the bag. It looked a little like an extremely burnt, gray, crusty cookie. He picked a little chunk off and looked at it in a not-particularly-appetized way.
"They didn't exactly send us the choicest of delicacies, did they?" he sarcastically asked.
Calvin snorted as he bit into his. "Hey, with the kind of food in THAT market, just be glad that it isn't moving."
They both ate their meager rations in the day's orange glow, the ashen plane's enormous dust cloud now thinner and further away, but still covering the sun. It had been several weeks since either of them had caught the slightest glimpse of the sun's true brilliance.
Hobbes looked over at Calvin's cookies and remarked, "Say, I think yours are all slightly bigger than mine."
Calvin looked down at his own crust-cookies. "What?" he asked in confusion. "No they're not. You're just imagining." He took another bite.
Hobbes reached over and snatched one.
"Hey!" Calvin cried.
Hobbes, undeterred, held up Calvin's crust alongside his own, to compare them. "See? Yours is clearly bigger than mine. I call for a redistribution of the rations so that both parties get an equal share."
He reached for more of Calvin's crusts. Calvin pulled them away and said "That doesn't prove anything! Those particular two just happen to be different sizes. Leave mine alone!"
Hobbes, now on all fours, crawled over as he kept trying to reach them. "I think," he said as his claws swiped towards the food, "that your judgement is compromised, and as such I will be taking over temporarily as the chief snack distributor. And with my authority, I declare an immediate emergency re-rationing!"
By this point, Calvin was batting Hobbes's paws away as Hobbes grappled for the rations. Hobbes leaped forward, mouth open for a desperate bite, and before they knew it the two were wrestling around in the dull dry grass. Hobbes was a big feline mutant, but Calvin had made himself impressively fit during his ongoing quest to survive. The two rolled and wrestled and clawed and growled.
Eventually, Calvin cried "Time out! Time out! Let go of me." The two separated, and sat there panting and massaging their aches.
"Fine," Calvin sighed after a few minutes. "Redistribute them however you want, just make sure we both get an equal number."
"Okay," said Hobbes, and happily went about doing so, any trace of animosity gone now that he was handling a snack. Calvin sighed and looked around idly.
The forest reminded him of the one that he had explored in his backyard, when he was just six years old. It used to contain streams and large oaks and birds and pines… back when everything was familiar and perfect and cheerful.
Back when he thought he had the world figured out.
"There," Hobbes finally said, and pointed at two piles. "This pile is mine, and that pile is yours. They both have equal amounts of small and large."
Calvin didn't see how the two new piles looked any difference from the piles they had had before, but it wasn't worth the trouble to say anything about it, so he grabbed a handful from his pile and started to chow down on them.
Time passed, and the two ate. Calvin had just swallowed a crust when he saw something. Something that wasn't trees or sky.
He put down his food and pointed. "Hobbes, look!"
Hobbes frowned and raised an eyebrow. "Aha, trying to make me look away so you can steal some of mine, huh? Well, nothing doing, buster!"
"No seriously, you moron, look!"
Reluctantly, Hobbes did. He stared. He set down the crusts in his paws, which definitely meant that what they were looking at had all his attention.
"Is that smoke?"
Calvin nodded. "Yeah. I think it's coming from the other side of that hill, there."
Hobbes looked back at Calvin, concerned. "A forest fire?"
Calvin shook his head. "I don't think so. It looks too small and contained, see? Unless the forest fire just happened to be starting, it looks like…"
He paused. Hobbes finished for him. "A contained fire. A fire a person would make."
They looked at each other. Then without saying a word, they both jumped up, grabbed the snacks, and raced over into the jeep.
They drove down the hill and through the forest, weaving around the corpse-trees and through whatever clearing they could find in pursuit of that distant ribbon of smoke in the sky. Neither of them spoke, they each felt like nothing should be said until they saw for themselves just what was at the bottom of it.
Eventually they were at the top of the hill and could see down the other side. They couldn't make out the source of the smoke through the trees, but they knew that it was close, right near the bottom. Down they went, and soon they found themselves exiting the white dead trees and coming into an open at the foot of the hill.
As soon as they came out into the open, they immediately saw the house. Calvin sped up towards it without even meaning to. It was the first sign of human habitation that either of them had seen for weeks.
The house was more like a fancy cabin, with a two-floor height of sturdy brown wood. However, it was apparent that the place was not being taken care of well. Parts of the walls of the house were slowly rotting away. The smoke was coming out of its crumbling stone chimney.
Calvin slowed and stopped the jeep as they approached the porch. He and Hobbes looked at each other.
"What do you think?" Hobbes asked.
Calvin got out of the jeep, slamming the door behind him. "Let's check it out. Can't hurt," he added, even though they both knew that this wasn't exactly true. Hobbes got out, and Calvin felt underneath his jacket, to make sure that his handgun was still there. With continued practice, he was able to pull it out in a flash, like an old western gunslinger.
They walked towards the porch. Besides the smoke still coming out of the chimney, the two didn't see any other signs of anyone else. The windows looked dark and empty. Some were cracked and broken.
They reached the porch steps and went up. The wood creaked beneath them. On the porch was a rocking chair, rocking ever so slightly in the breeze. Calvin found the sight a little spooky.
He glanced over at Hobbes. "Well, let's see if somebody's home." Hobbes nodded.
They both took a step forward on the porch, and Calvin's eyes widened as the weight under his foot disappeared. Suddenly, there was a loud cracking crash, and they were both tumbling down through the air. They each hit hard dirt ground, face-down.
Calvin sat up, grunting and spitting dirt out of his mouth. Besides him, Hobbes arched his back as he did the same.
"What was that?" he asked in bewilderment.
Calvin looked up. A few feet above him, he could see the roof of the porch in the sunlight. He looked around. He and Hobbes were in a hole, only a few feet wide, that had been dug beneath the porch. It was tall enough to stop a fully grown person from escaping.
"Some sort of booby trap, I guess," Calvin answered. "Those boards were thin and fragile, and wouldn't hold much weight. But they were placed just right so that we didn't notice something was wrong with the porch floor until we were on them already."
"Pretty smart," Hobbes said, getting up and smoothing down his fur. Calvin got up too.
"I think we can climb out," he said. "Here, give me a boost, will ya?"
Hobbes bent over and cupped his paws, giving Calvin a leg up. With Hobbes's support, he was able to haul his skinny frame up over the rim of the hole. With some grunts, and grimacing from the pain of the wood scraping against his abdomen, he pulled himself back out onto the porch. Once out, on his hands and knees he turned around and reached down for Hobbes. The tiger mutant used the claws and grip on his legs to scrabble his way up the wall of the pit until Calvin was able to pull him out.
They both shook themselves off and got up.
"We'll have to watch our step," Hobbes said, looking around carefully for any other traps.
"Yeah," Calvin agreed. "And everything else, too."
They walked over to the door and slowly opened it. Inside they saw the cabin's large main room. It was dimly lit by the faint sunlight streaming in, dust particles swam through the sunbeams. But no one besides the two friends was in sight.
"Look around," Calvin whispered, "see if you can spot any more traps."
"There," Hobbes said, pointing. Calvin followed his gaze and saw, down on the floor just beyond the doorway, a thin loop of rope. If they had taken a step in without looking, someone could have easily pulled on the rope and tripped them. Calvin looked around. The rope trailed off into a room behind a door in the wall that was open a crack.
"Come on," Calvin said, as they both entered and stepped around the loop of rope.
"Hello?" Calvin called out to the slightly open door. "Is anybody in there? We don't want any trouble, it's just been a really long time since we've seen anybody else. We were wondering if you had any supplies you could loan us."
"Especially food," Hobbes added. "Food that doesn't taste like charred ash crumbs would be very nice."
Calvin kicked him in the knee.
"Shut up, you moron," he hissed, and turned back to the doorway. "Like I said, we don't want any trouble. We just want to talk. We didn't know anybody lived out here."
There was a moment of silence. Both of them took another slow step forward, watching the thin opening into the dark room behind the door.
Suddenly the door slammed all the way open with such unexpected force that Calvin jumped back, nearly bumping into Hobbes who also jumped. Faster than Calvin had been able to process, faster than he had been able to move his hand to his gun, someone with long red hair jumped out of the darkened room and pointed something at them.
It had been a while since he'd seen one in person, but Calvin could still recognize what a double-barreled shotgun looked like.
"If either of you takes one more step," said the girl holding the gun, "your brains will be all over the floor!"
Notes:
:D
Chapter Text
"If either of you takes one more step, your brains will be all over the floor!"
The girl had long messy red hair, and a wild and fierce look in her eyes. She couldn't have been older than thirteen or fourteen.
"Who are you?" she demanded in a hard, determined voice. She was wearing worn scraggly jeans and a shirt that might once have been red but was now just a splotched pinkish. Her gun was still trained right at Calvin's chest. Calvin thought he could see a shadow of a tremble in her hands as she held the rifle, but it was so slight that he wasn't sure it was even there at all. He found himself, entirely against his will, being impressed.
"Take it easy, kid," he said. "We're not here to-"
"Who—"
She took a step closer—
"—are—"
Another step. The rifle was now a few inches away from Calvin, enough so that he got just a touch more nervous—
"—you?"
Calvin took a deep breath. "I'm Calvin. And that," he made the tiniest of motions to his partner, afraid that anything too sudden would set off the girl's trigger finger, "is Hobbes."
Hobbes put on a nervous smile. "Um. Charmed to meet you."
The girl was obviously not satisfied with their answers. "What are you doing here?"
"We're nomads," Calvin said, as calmly and evenly as he could. "We were going through the forest to get to the Toshka settlement, but our supplies were dwindling. We saw the smoke from your cabin, so we came over, hoping to work out some sort of exchange with whoever was here. It's been weeks since we've met anyone."
The girl stared at them through eyes sharpened with suspicion. "How do I know that you're telling the truth? How do I know that you're not here to steal from me? Or hurt me?"
Calvin was starting to get a little exasperated. "Look, kid, would I have called out and let you know we were coming if I wanted to get the drop on you? We don't want to hurt anyone or steal anything! Now will you point that gun somewhere else?"
Hobbes cleared his throat. "Calvin, she's just a kid." He looked back at the girl. "I understand being scared, but we really don't want to hurt you. I think you'll see that soon. What's your name?"
The girl stared back at them for a moment, eyes hard, lips curled inward, making her mouth a thin line. Finally, she said, "Evelyn. I'm Evelyn." Then she nodded towards Calvin. "And I'll take my gun off of you, if you throw yours away first." She nodded down at Calvin's hand, which had stopped near the inside of his jacket.
Calvin scowled. "That's not fair, why should I lose my gun if you keep yours?"
"Because," the girl said, "if you don't, I'll shoot you anyway. Your gun's no use if the bullet reaches you before you reach it. You have nothing to lose. Do it."
Hobbes gulped. "Uh, I see her logic, Calvin. I suggest you do as she says …for both our sakes."
Calvin, still frowning, slowly reached down to grasp his gun. He removed it from the holster, slowly, carefully. And with a grimace, he bent over and placed it onto the wooden floor.
When he stood back up, Evelyn said, "Good." And, slowly, she lowered her rifle towards the floor, while still clutching it with both hands.
"There," muttered Calvin, sulkily.
Hobbes spoke up. "Do you just live here by yourself?"
"Yes," said Evelyn, her tone neutral.
"What happened to your parents?"
She frowned again. "It's none of your business. You two might as well just go ahead and go. I have nothing worth trading, and if I did I wouldn't want to trade it."
Calvin, disgruntled and in a foul mood at having been caught off his guard, felt like doing just that, and glanced back at the door. But Hobbes seemed more concerned with the kid. The striped mutant took a step forward and asked, "How do you survive out here by yourself? Do you ever meet anybody else?"
Evelyn shrugged. "You two are the first ones I've seen out here. I eat from the cans, drink from the well. If I want meat I set some traps in the woods."
"Hobbes?" Calvin snapped. "A word?" He gestured over to the corner of the room. He and Hobbes went over and exchanged some harsh words, still under the suspicious eye of Evelyn.
"Hobbes," Calvin whispered, "it seems to me like you're expressing an unwarranted amount of concern over this kid. What's the deal?"
"I'm just worried," Hobbes replied. "She's all alone out here. You know there's nobody else around, we haven't seen anybody the entire time we've been driving through."
"So? She seems like she's doing just fine to me. None of our business. I say we do as she suggests and get on our way."
Hobbes frowned. "Are you honestly telling me," he said, "that you would have no qualms about going out and driving away right now, and just leaving this little girl out here to keep fending for herself? All alone?"
"Absolutely," said Calvin.
Hobbes raised his eyebrows and stared hard into Calvin's eyes.
Calvin twitched uncomfortably. "Well… probably."
Hobbes kept staring.
"Look, it wouldn't matter anyway, she obviously wants us gone."
Hobbes kept staring.
Calvin was starting to sweat a little. "I-I know what you're trying to do, and it won't work!"
Hobbes kept staring.
Finally, Calvin sighed. "Okay, fine. Maybe I'd feel a little better if we cleared some things up first."
Hobbes smiled and nodded. He knew his human friend quite well. "Let's just try and get a little more out of her. Only to get a better view on the situation."
Calvin mumbled a reluctant agreement. There was a moment of silence, before Evelyn said, "So are you two done?"
They both turned back to her, Calvin's mouth pinched into a grimace of anger, and he was about to retort when Hobbes spoke first. "Are there raiders around here?"
Evelyn's brow wrinkled, this time in a confused way. "Raiders?"
"They drive around, looting and razing, things like that. Are they the ones who…" he paused, looking uncertain, before continuing "…took your parents?"
"No," said Evelyn, her face still hard. But after a second, Calvin and Hobbes could both see the glistening in her eyes. No tears actually ran down her face, but her eyes just kept getting shinier and shinier.
"What are you looking at?" she demanded, in a strained voice. Hobbes stepped forward, slowly and softly, and said "Nobody's going to hurt you. But we can help you."
Evelyn didn't respond, but was breathing heavily now. Hobbes glanced back at Calvin and saw that there was no animosity in his face anymore, just a mildly empathetic discomfort.
"So," said Hobbes, back to Evelyn, in that same reassuring tone, "was it raiders?"
She shook her head. "No. It was the ones… Dad always called them, 'Collectors'. They came and they," she paused, visibly swallowing, before continuing, "killed Mom and Dad. They didn't find me, Mom hid me and told me to…"
She paused again, then finished. "...they killed Mom and Dad. After the Collectors were gone, I came out and… found them." Incredibly, she still held her harsh poker face, even as she spoke of finding the corpses of her parents.
"Oh," said Hobbes, his voice full of horror and pity. "I'm sorry."
Calvin looked away from them, keeping his face neutral. Evelyn held Hobbes's gaze, and didn't say anything.
Hobbes took a breath and said, "Evelyn, we're going to help you. We promise. We'll make sure you're safe."
"I don't need…" Evelyn said, but she trailed off. Looking down at her feet, she laid down the rifle and sat down on the floor, just sitting and staring at her knees.
Hobbes got down beside her. In one of his rare overtly cat-like moments, lay down and showed his belly, making deep purring sounds. Evelyn looked over at him, her eyes unsure. After a moment, she reached over and began to tentatively rub his tummy. Hobbes stretched his legs contentedly.
A minute later, Calvin came and sat down beside them, and started petting Hobbes himself. And there they were, for a while, sitting and petting and purring and looking at their own feet.
After a while, Calvin cleared his throat and stood up. "Okay, okay. We gotta get moving."
As Hobbes began to get up too, Evelyn looked at Calvin. He was half-expecting her to argue, or say something snippy, or threaten him with some other weapons that she had concealed somewhere on her person. But all she did was say, "Where?"
Calvin shrugged. "Anywhere that isn't here."
"But," said Hobbes, "won't a house probably be safer than any other shelter we might find?"
Calvin looked out the open door to the clearing and trees beyond, and frowned. "I dunno. I just don't feel completely comfortable in an area where raiders, or whatever they were, are known to frequent."
"But this is her home," said Hobbes. He looked down at Evelyn. Evelyn had her eyes closed, seeming to be thinking hard. Then she opened her eyes and said "Let's go."
She said it so decisively that even Calvin was surprised. Hobbes put a paw on her shoulder. "Are you sure? You might not ever be able to come back."
Evelyn took a look around her large, empty home. "I'm sure. Nothing left here, anyway." She shrugged. "And the pantry was getting low on food."
"Okay then," Calvin said. He hesitated for another moment, then muttered "…so can I have my gun back?"
Evelyn made a face, thought this over for a bit, and then nodded. Calvin cautiously went over and picked his revolver up off the ground, casting Evelyn a sour look before putting it back under his jacket.
Evelyn, not seeming to notice Calvin's glare, got up from the floor and dusted off her jeans legs with her non-gun-holding hand. Such a small thing, but the lack of self-consciousness about it was a reminder that she was, in fact, a child. This was something that, despite her size, was still easy to forget when she was pointing a rifle at you.
Calvin headed towards the door. "The jeep's this way. If you want to take anything else, kid, grab it now. I'll get us powered up, and then we're out of here."
He walked out onto the porch and went down the front steps. Glancing back, he saw Hobbes following, with Evelyn close behind. The kid must have been fine with just her rifle and the clothes on her back. Oh well, suit herself. Calvin was not buying her any other clothes though. Not even if they found the last Macy's left on the planet.
He got into the jeep and started it as Hobbes and Evelyn approached. "I get shotgun," said Hobbes hurriedly. Evelyn gave him a funny look, then glanced down at her rifle.
"Well, you know," said Hobbes, gesturing at the front seat. "Shotgun. You call shotgun, you get the front seat. Not like your weapon, or anything like that. You know…" he trailed off awkwardly, before waving his paw. "Eh, I was just trying to be funny. Sit wherever you want, kid."
Evelyn shrugged and got in the back. Hobbes gently took her gun and put it with the other supplies; Evelyn was reluctant to give it up at first, but let go quietly after a moment. Then Hobbes climbed in next to Calvin. "Are we ready?" said Calvin, looking around at the other two. They both nodded.
Calvin began to turn the jeep around so they could drive back the way they came. As they pulled out of the clearing, Hobbes said "So, Evelyn… know any road trip songs?"
"No."
Hobbes thought for a second, then grinned. "I know one. Calvin really, really hates it."
Calvin gritted his teeth. "Please, no." But Hobbes gleefully began singing as the jeep rolled on between the trees, and Evelyn finally half-cracked a smile as she bumped around in the back.
Atop a nearby hill, a figure watched the Jeep drive off through the corpse-trees through a dusty pair of binoculars. After a few more seconds, he lowered them and turned to the band of armed men waiting impatiently behind him.
"So, boss?" The foremost rogue asked. "Didja see her?"
"Yeah," the leader of the band revealed, his voice deep and gravelly. "I saw her." At that statement, several men cheered.
"She's outta the house, but just drove off with the two new survivors," the leader continued. "A kid 'an a mutant."
"So… what do we do, boss?" an aging individual near the back of the group asked. The leader fell silent, putting a beefy hand to his chin.
Finally he answered, "Search the house. If the chip ain't there… then we hunt the girl and her new friends down."
Notes:
:D
Chapter Text
"Row, row, row your boooaaat, gently down the streeeam…"
"...Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dreeeam!"
"Okay, one more verse and I'm throwing you guys out of the car!"
Hobbes and Evelyn broke down into laughter as Calvin's knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. After 57 tedious, repetitive verses of the nursery rhyme, he had had just about enough, already fondly remembering the quieter, more familiar life with just Hobbes for company. It wasn't the only song they had been singing either. At least Evelyn was in higher spirits, now.
To calm himself, he looked out at the soon-to-be diminishing sunlight through the ash and gauged how much time was left for driving. It had only been a few hours since they had left the cabin, but thankfully, the dirt road through the great forest held up well for being heavily dusted with ash. Behind them, a steady cloud of gray-white was kicked up by the wheels. At their speed, they would soon be clear of the forest and among the muddy plains of the Lake Erie Valley.
"Alright, fine, fine!" Hobbes chuckled, recovering first and straightening. "You give us a song, then!"
A devious thought popped up in Calvin's head, and he grumbled, "Alright, fine. Evelyn, ever heard of, "Yellow Submarine?"
At this, Hobbes groaned, and Calvin grinned. "Please don't. You know how that song gets stuck in my head."
"Your karma," Calvin shrugged.
"How does the song go?" Evelyn asked.
"Oh, no," Hobbes groaned. Calvin cleared his throat and took a deep breath.
"In the town where I was born,"
"Lived a man who sailed to sea,"
"And he told us of his life,"
"In the land of submarines..."
"So we sailed on to the sun,"
"'Til we found a sea of green,"
"And we lived beneath the waves,"
"In our yellow submarine..."
"This is catchy!" Evelyn said, smiling in the rearview mirror.
"Oh, you just wait," Hobbes grumbled, and clapped his hands over his ears.
Grinning from ear to ear, Calvin continued. "We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submar-"
Suddenly, his singing was cut off by an inhuman screech some distance away, making everyone jump and causing Calvin to instinctively slam his foot on the brake. The car stopped instantly, and everyone was yanked forward before their seat belts caught them.
After a few moments, Evelyn said, "What was that?!"
Hearts hammering, everyone listened in silence for another sound. Nothing else reached their ears, save for the rumbling of the jeep's motor.
After a few more seconds of quiet, Calvin said, in an instinctive hushed voice that didn't help them at all, "I don't know."
"A mutant, maybe?" Hobbes offered.
"Most likely," Calvin agreed. "Let's keep moving."
He put his foot on the gas and pressed down. The jeep began moving again, albeit slower. To combat the increasing darkness, he also turned on the headlights for added illumination; only an hour of driving remained before the darkness and the ash would make going any further dangerous.
"Are we in danger?" Evelyn asked, her voice holding a faint shiver under its level tone. "I mean, will that thing attack us?"
"No idea," Hobbes said. "But I've never known a feral mutant not to attack, so be on your guard."
"Should we get my shotgun?"
"No," Calvin said. "Let's put some distance between us and whatever that thing is first."
And, so, the trio drove on in silence, too anxious to say anything else. Everyone kept an eye on the dead trees and foliage bordering the narrow, quiet road as minutes passed. The car continued to roll along, avoiding obstacles; fallen logs; holes; ditches. In some places, dozens of lifeless, ash-covered twigs occasionally scraped against the jeep's sides. Every harmless bump of the vehicle against the uneven ground now held the possibility of danger for its occupants.
Finally, after a solid thirty minutes of driving, Calvin slowed the jeep and listened once more for a single sound that might reveal if whatever had caused that screech was still there. The piercing sounds of mutants were loud enough that sometimes, they seemed closer than they really were.
Silence.
Finally, Calvin sighed. Taking a look at the gray-blue sky, he turned to his companions.
"Alright, guys," he began. "It's getting dark, so we should make camp soon."
"What about the mutant?" Evelyn asked. "It might still be out there."
"Well, we can't do anything about that," Calvin said. "The risk of crashing or the jeep getting ambushed is a lot more possible during the night."
"So is getting ambushed while asleep," Evelyn pointed out.
"Not if we take turns standing guard," Calvin countered. "That way, one of us can watch over the other and we can still get some sleep."
"Don't worry, Evelyn," Hobbes assured her. "It's the safest option. And you don't have to stand guard; me and Calvin can rock-paper-scissor over it."
Evelyn closed her eyes, like she did at the house, and seemed to be thinking it over. After a few seconds she opened her eyes and nodded. "Alright. You guys are the experts. But first, I want my shotgun."
Calvin was about to answer in the negative when Hobbes caught his attention. The tiger was looking at him with an eyebrow raised. C'mon, Calvin.
Calvin responded with his own challenging look, and for a few seconds, they stared at each other in silent dispute.
Finally, Evelyn spoke up. "Uh… hey, lovebirds?"
Calvin whirled around, breaking eye contact, then sighed and turned back to face the windshield, rolling his eyes. "Alright, fine. C'mon, let's get your gun." He reached over to open his door. Evelyn did the same, and both of them exited the car.
Outside was dark and gloomy. The headlights illuminated the gray, dead trees, their branches creaking and swaying softly in a barely perceptible breeze. Calvin pulled out his flashlight. Behind him, Evelyn reached out a hand to feel the white-tipped twigs of a mummified sapling. They crumbled like dust. Thousands of ashen twigs and withered leaves crunched under the two humans' feet and soot particles swam eerily in the glare of their flashlights. The whole scene signaled "Creepy," to them.
Calvin and Evelyn reached the back of the jeep and opened it. Evelyn, with some effort, climbed into the jeep's flatbed and slowly stepped over the supplies stowed there. Hobbes had tied the shotgun securely to the side of the truck, and now Evelyn knelt down to untie it.
"What's wrong?" Calvin asked, impatient.
"I just gotta untie it," Evelyn called back. "I need a minute."
"Well, hurry up," he grumbled, uncomfortable in the darkness, surrounded not by the jeep's safe interior but by angles of ambush, and turned to look at the dead forest. Something- a smell, maybe- didn't agree with him.
Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed a flicker of movement. His head snapped around to investigate further and he felt his heart give a solid thump. His left hand reached inside his jacket for his gun. Nothing moved.
Had he imagined it?
No. No he had not. His sixth sense was going crazy. Something was out there, stalking them.
Several seconds passed. But nothing showed itself. Still, he stood with baited breath, his index finger brushing softly against the weapon's handle.
"Calvin?" he heard Evelyn ask. "What's wrong?"
Calvin turned to answer. But just as he was about to explain what he saw, he noticed the girl's eyes widen. Deducing that it was already too late to turn around, he desperately flung himself to one side to avoid the attack. And not a millisecond too soon. A rush of air met his ears. A large form brushed past him, teeth snapping together. Something clipped his shoulder. He felt himself flung to the ground, hard, and felt the flashlight roll out of his hand. Somewhere nearby, the attacker skidded to a stop.
Evelyn screamed.
Not missing a second, Calvin looked up, drawing his revolver out of his jacket. In front of him, the growling form of a wolf-like mutant whirled and leaped towards him. With cat-like reflexes, Calvin lifted and extended his pistol, pulled back the hammer, took a fraction of a second to aim, and squeezed the trigger. A slug ripped through the mutant's shoulder, half-illuminated by the flashlight laying on the ground. The irradiated being jerked to one side, its charge momentarily halted. For a second, hope trickled into Calvin before being extinguished as the monster turned back toward him. Then, with surprising speed, it bounded the rest of the way and slammed into him as he fired another shot that missed.
Suddenly, he was on the ground, the monster on top of him. Claws raked his arms, eliciting a yelp of pain from him as he desperately tried to claw at his knife. The creature's breath was overpowering. He could feel the mutant's jaws about to close in around his neck…
An ear-splitting boom rang out across the forest, and Calvin's face was splattered with flecks of black blood and pink-white brain tissue. The mutant's weight went limp.
A second passed. Two. Three. Tentatively, he opened his eyes.
On top of him lay the unmoving corpse of the mutant that had attacked him. It's black, unnerving eyes were still open, staring at him. Still filled with rage. His heart was pounding like a jackhammer, and he realized that the monster's teeth had been inches away from slicing into his neck. As the shock began to wear off, a new wave of pain emerged from his cut and bleeding arms. He gritted his teeth in agony and tried to move the carcass off of him.
"Calvin!" came Hobbes' voice. Calvin heard footsteps, and a few seconds later, the mutant's deceased body was lifted off of him. A new rush of air filled his lungs as he took a deep breath. The next second, Hobbes' face appeared over him. "Are you okay?!"
"Yeah…" Calvin groaned, and tried to prop himself up. "I'll be alright."
"Here," Hobbes said, kneeling down to help him up. "Let me help you." With the mutant tiger's help, Calvin got unsteadily onto his feet.
"Oh, jeez…" Hobbes muttered. "Your arms."
Calvin looked down at them. They were still bleeding and covered with bits of ash and dead leaves, but the pain was tolerable. Hobbes began to help him to the back of the jeep. "We gotta get those cuts bandaged," he warned, "or it might get infected… or worse."
"Wait," Calvin mumbled. "...killed it?"
"What?" Hobbes asked.
Calvin took a second to steady himself, then asked, "The mutant… did you kill it?"
Hobbes shook his head and motioned to the bed of the jeep. Calvin looked up. There, breathing heavily with eyes still wide with terror, stood Evelyn, clutching her shotgun with pale hands. As Hobbes shined his flashlight in her direction, Calvin saw a small trail of smoke rising up from the tip of the barrel.
"Hey, Evelyn," Hobbes called out. "It's okay. The mutant is dead."
Evelyn's only reaction was the clunk of the shotgun dropping out of her hands. Then, after a few more seconds, she dropped to her knees and covered her face with her hands. A few small sobs escaped her.
Hobbes helped Calvin up onto the jeep and walked over to Evelyn.
"Hey, Evelyn…" he said. The girl looked up at him and unexpectedly wrapped her arms around him. Hobbes, surprised, hugged her back after a few seconds. For a little while, Hobbes comforted her as she sobbed into his fur.
Then, Evelyn detached herself from him and noticed Calvin. Gasping, she rushed over to him, Hobbes right behind her.
"Are you alright?" she asked. "Your arms!"
"Here," Hobbes said, grabbing the medical kit out from under a bag of supplies. He opened it and pulled out a roll of bandages, a pack of cotton swabs, and a flask of disinfectant. He went to work, swabbing off the excess blood and dirt and pouring half the flask onto the cuts. With infectious mutants involved, one could never be careful enough when cleaning wounds.
"I'm sorry we left you over here," he said. "I should have taken care of your wounds first."
"Naw, it's alright," Calvin assured. "Evelyn needed you more at the moment."
He looked over at her. "You okay?"
Evelyn nodded, downcast, and wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Calvin winced as Hobbes poured more of the disinfectant onto his arms. Finally, he took the bandages and wrapped the cuts securely.
"There," he said. "That should keep you going."
"Let's get back into the jeep and get out of here," Calvin said, cautiously moving his arms around, and kept the pain off of his expression. "I am not sticking around for more mutants to find this guy's carcass." He motioned to the corpse of the being that Evelyn had killed, its head sporting a gaping, oozing hole.
Hobbes nodded, and, helping Calvin down, took a step towards the jeep. Then, as an afterthought, he reached over and grabbed the shotgun. The three silently walked back, getting in and slamming the doors shut.
Hobbes took the wheel so that Calvin could let his arms and hands rest, and the jeep began rolling down the road again. In the passenger's seat, Calvin watched the path continue its uneven winding through the ghost world, occasionally inspecting his bandages. He tried to keep from looking in the rearview mirror, where he could see Evelyn, her eyes gloomy as she sat hunched forward, her hands on her lap.
After a few minutes, Calvin sighed, turned and said, "Hey."
Her eyes shifted up to look at him. "What?" she asked, softly.
"First time seeing a mutant?" he asked.
"No…" Evelyn said. "Sometimes I'd see one from the cabin… one came to the porch one time."
"But you've never seen one attack?"
She shook her head no, staring at the back of the driver's seat.
Figuring that he wasn't helping, Calvin turned around to face the road again when she said, "I'm sorry."
"For what?" he asked.
"I don't… I mean, I- I just didn't… I froze up, and then you almost died and I was scared-"
"Hey," Calvin said, finally understanding. "Hey, listen."
She looked at him.
"It's okay to be scared, right? It's okay," Calvin assured her. "You saved my life. I would have been dead if you hadn't shot it." Suddenly, he became aware that Hobbes was looking at him. "Shooting that thing took guts, and you have 'em."
Evelyn nodded, quietly reflecting. Then she said, "Thanks…"
"Yep," he said, nonchalantly, and turned around again, ignoring Hobbes's wide grin. "You'll be alright, kid."
And so, the trio drove on, again in complete silence. The last of the sun's faint light disappeared, prompting Hobbes to slow the jeep down. After another thirty minutes of driving, he stopped the car and pointed. "There."
Calvin followed to where he was pointing, and saw a small hill near the side of the road. At the top was a barren spot, perfect for setting camp.
"Alright," he said. "Let's get up there and unload."
Notes:
:D
Chapter 5: A Tense Confrontation
Chapter Text
"Oh, come on!"
Hobbes sighed as Calvin tried, in vain, to push the jeep out of the mud puddle that they had driven in. "Maybe you should go easier on your arms," he suggested.
Calvin turned towards him with a withering glare. "Well maybe, if you had been looking out more, we wouldn't have gotten into this mess!… literally!" He pointed at the giant mud puddle to emphasize his point.
"Hey!" Hobbes exclaimed. "I had to stand guard throughout most of the night because you got yourself roughed up by a mutant! Now I've got only a few hours of sleep in me!"
He crossed his arms. "Don't blame me for this."
"Guys," Evelyn broke in, an annoyed expression on her face. "I'm pretty sure complaining isn't gonna help us push the jeep out."
"It might!" Calvin retorted immediately.
"No, it won't," Hobbes sighed, and glanced at the stuck car again. "But I don't know if we even can push this thing out together. This mud puddle is closer to a small pond than an actual puddle."
"Well," Evelyn said, walking over to the other non-muddy side of the jeep, "We might as well try, right? C'mon!"
Calvin offered a few halfhearted grumbles, but both him and Hobbes lined up on either side of Evelyn without any further complaints.
"On three," Evelyn stated. "One, two, three!"
Everyone pushed as one with all their strength, and slowly but surely, the car began to move forward, out of the slough. It pays to have the strength of a mutant tiger on your side. Calvin thought, and pressed even harder. Suddenly, the jeep lurched forward, the back right tire emerging fully out of the muck, and using the rest of their effort, the trio pushed it safely onto dry land.
"Alright!" Calvin cheered after everyone had caught their breath. "Let's get going."
All of them did just that, clambering into the jeep. Her two companions quickly joined her, with Hobbes once again taking the driver's seat. He turned on the ignition, and put a hand on the clutch before looking over at Calvin. "Hey, how far is the Toshka settlement now?"
Calvin, also curious, opened the glove compartment and consulted the same wrinkled, dirty piece of paper that they used for a map. After some silent reviewing he said, "Only a few more hours."
"Good," Evelyn grinned. "The place is near Lake Erie, right?"
"Yeah," Calvin confirmed. "I mean, what's left of it."
The jeep started to move, again, quickly becoming a speck in the distance, surrounded by vast expanses of nothing but mud and dust.
And a few miles away, three large, bulky vehicles followed after them, each occupant ready to kill and armed to the teeth.
The winds had picked up slightly as the jeep rolled by an old chain-link fence that surrounded most of the Toshka settlement, suggesting that rain was coming.
Inside the vehicle, Calvin, Hobbes, and Evelyn looked out of the windows at the decrepit buildings that covered the town's ground. Each one looked just as miserable, their roofs and walls made of corrugated iron and wooden planks. A few were sturdier, having been made of old, chipped bricks and shingles, but those few looked insignificant in comparison to all of the other houses. A few people walked along the streets, stopping to look at the three as they rolled by.
"Seems sorta sad," Evelyn noted.
"What'd you expect?" Calvin asked. "Not a lotta successful towns and cities around anymore."
"Well, there is New York City, right?"
"Yeah," Hobbes chuckled. "That bastion of a city has resources to last them for decades. Not to mention it being one of the only remaining active harbors."
"Ever been there?" Evelyn asked.
"Nope," Hobbes said. "The closest we got was the Black River. Ever been there?"
"No."
"Everyone hates it," Calvin told her, re-entering the conversation. "The river is so polluted and oil-filled that it shines jet-black in the moonlight. Dip a toe in there and you might be able to live for another few hours, maximum."
"Shines in the moonlight, eh?" Evelyn asked. "That sounds kind of pretty."
"In its own way, I suppose," Calvin admitted. "But wait 'till you smell it. I'd bet a hundred caps that you'd faint from just a single whiff of that riverbank."
Hobbes chuckled. "Yeah. Calvin almost did."
"Did not!"
"Yah did too!"
Evelyn grinned in the back seat. Sometimes it seemed like her new companions acted more like bickering eight-year olds than the mature, fully grown best friends that they were. She craned her neck to look out of the windshield.
In front of them lay a square courtyard of sorts surrounded by buildings and containing several dozen stands. Some were empty, but most were manned and had several customers standing in line in front of them. Some walked around the courtyard, ignoring the stands. Others sat on rotting benches, smoking cigarettes. The sight made all three of them feel like they had found a whole different world, after days of lonely driving.
The car slowed to a stop a dozen yards from the first market stand, where Hobbes proceeded to turn off the ignition. He reached over to open his door.
"Evelyn," Calvin turned to address her, "you can get out with Hobbes. I'll be with you guys in a second.
Evelyn nodded and opened her door, quickly reaching the tiger. Both of them waited for a minute while Calvin rummaged around inside of the jeep, before emerging with an old, beat up metal box with a lock on it. "Let's go."
"What's the box for?" Evelyn asked.
"Bottle caps," Calvin said, confusing her.
"For what?"
"Money."
At first, Evelyn thought it was sort of ridiculous. Bottle caps as currency didn't seem very reliable. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that it made some sense. Bottle caps were common, and could be found all around. They were durable, recognizable, and weren't easy to make. There was a set amount, and it couldn't be changed.
"Let me guess," she said. "Different brands equal different amounts?"
"Nope. As long as it's a bottle cap, it's good. Makes things a lot simpler for everyone."
The three began their shopping with a visit to the nearest stand, made out of dirty folding tables and a faded blue tarp over it that sold several different types of rations in old ziplock bags, all of which looked rather unappetizing to Evelyn. After a bit of bargaining, the vendor unceremoniously dumped a dozen squares of… something into the canvas food bag they were utilizing.
"Do you know what that is?" Evelyn asked.
"No idea," Hobbes replied. "But you can't be picky when it comes to stuff like this." Beside him, Calvin took several Coca-Cola bottle caps out of the box and slapped them on the folding table in front of the vendor, who collected them and put them in a box of her own.
"Okay, Hobbes," Calvin asked. "What's next on the list?"
Hobbes held up a small piece of paper and scrutinized it for a few seconds before handing it to Calvin. "Here, read this for me. Your handwriting is undecipherable."
Calvin snatched the paper out of his hands and looked at it before frowning. "Whaddaya mean? This obviously says 'Meat!'"
"I think you gotta retake the first grade," Hobbes snickered.
"Shut it, smartypants. Let's buy some meat."
The three rotated over to the butcher stand, where several large pieces of strange meat and fish hung on hooks from the plastic tarp roof. The vendor, a large broad man clad in a blood-splattered apron, turned to address them, a meat cleaver held firmly in one hand. "What'll it be?" he asked, his face tired and gray. Flecks of red dotted his cheeks. "I got a new batch of fish from the lake a couple of days ago."
"The lake still has fish?" Hobbes asked, very surprised.
"Well, carcasses preserved by the ice-cold mud, but what'sa difference, eh, mutant?"
For a moment, Calvin stood in silence, calculating the amount of protein they would need to keep them running. The rations would be a bit scarcer now that Evelyn was on the team.
He stopped, surprised by his thoughts. Him and Hobbes had met the kid not two days ago, and he already considered her a part of the team? I mean, she did blast that mutant to bits with her shotgun, and save my life, but…
"Hey! Boy!" the man said, jolting Calvin out of his thoughts. "Are you gonna buy somethin'?"
"Uh, yeah," he confirmed, and quickly completed the calculations in his head. "I'll take one-hundred pounds of the most nutritious meat you've got."
The vendor nodded, and turned his back on them to separate several hunks of meat from the top of the stand. As he placed the meat on the table, Calvin in turn bought out a couple dozen bottle caps and plunked them down. As the vendor took the currency, he looked up at them with a curious expression. "Y'know, that's the biggest sale I've made so far today. You three must have some serious dough."
"We manage," was all that Calvin revealed.
The man shrugged, and turned to attend to another customer. The trio began moving away. After a dozen minutes of wandering and asking around, they were standing in front of a small brick structure, bargaining with the man behind the counter. The potent, yet somehow slightly pleasant smell of petroleum surrounded the structure- a fuel shop.
"Seven bottle caps per gallon," the vendor said, his hands on the table
"You think we're gonna pay that absurd amount?" Calvin asked, making a practiced face of disgust. "Three bottle caps per gallon."
"Fuel is scarce, you know that." the man growled. "And importing it from the Rotten Apple is spendy… how 'bout six caps?"
"Just 'cause you get 'yer product from fancy schmancy New York City doesn't justify this price," Calvin sniffed. "But since you offered to lower, I'll pay one more cap per gallon."
"Nope," the man refused. "Six."
"Four!" Calvin snarled. "That or nada."
"Alright, kid! How 'bout this? Five caps per gallon, and that's final."
Calvin took a second to look over at Hobbes, who nodded. "Deal," He declared, turning back to face the vendor. "We'll take eight gallons."
The man nodded, and reached over to clasp the adolescent's hand. As he disappeared from the sales window to get the product, Calvin opened the metal lockbox and carefully counted out the amount.
"Nice bargaining," Evelyn said.
"Thanks," Calvin nodded.
A minute later, a bustling alerted the three to the fact that the vendor was returning, and they all turned to face the man who handed them eight cans of fuel. After uncapping one and smelling it to make sure that they weren't being swindled, Hobbes nodded and they all took several cans. Walking back to the jeep, Calvin opened another, larger box situated against the jeep's main body, and the three of them all deposited their fuel into it.
For the next hour, that's how it went. Since fuel was such a valuable resource, Calvin and Hobbes assigned Evelyn to guard the vehicle while they went to get everything else. Asking their way around the market section of town, crossing off items, spending more caps, and securely storing the bought articles in the jeep, they had soon checked off every item on their list but one.
"What's next?" Hobbes asked, carrying a small coil of paracord around one shoulder. Reaching the Jeep, he stored it in a box amongst their other groceries and goods close to Evelyn, who seemed to be enjoying her role of guard. She sat atop the metal fuel box in the back of the bed of the jeep, her shotgun propped up beside her. It did the trick. She looked rather intimidating with her fiery stance and her shotgun.
"Ammo. For Evelyn's shotgun and my revolver," Calvin read off. "Evelyn, I need your shotgun to see what kind of ammunition it carries."
"It's a 12 gauge and fires 3-inch shells," Evelyn told him. "But two and three quarters will work just fine."
"...Oh," Calvin said, surprised. "Alright. 3-inch. Let's go, Hobbes. I think I saw the ammunition store back this way. Then we're just about done."
Calvin's hunch proved to be true. And he, Hobbes, and Evelyn were soon making another business transaction inside of a small warehouse.
"What kinda guns do you have?" a distasteful lady behind the salescounter asked.
"A Colt Python, fires point-357 magnum cartridge rounds, and a shotgun firing 3-inch shells."
"Just a sec," the lady said, and bent under the counter. As she rummaged around, Calvin looked inside of the warehouse. Wooden crates were stacked against the walls, and a few transport trucks were parked in the back. An emblem, consisting of a U.S flag in the confines of a circle surrounded by a rose flower, was stamped in black and white on both the crates and on the backs of the trucks.
New York City's new seal. He was buying from the Rotten Apple.
"And how much ammo for each?" the dealer asked, straightening. "For the shotgun we have 16-round ammo bandoliers and twelve-round ammo boxes."
"Let's take one of the former and two of the latter, " Calvin began, burying his discontent, and stopped to calculate the amount that he would need for his pistol.
"...and?"
"And forty rounds for the Python," he finished.
"Alright, all in all, that makes 30 caps for the forty python rounds, the bandolier, and-"
"Woah, hold it!" Calvin interrupted. "Now, I'm sure that your ammunition is good, but with the amount that we're buying, thirty whole caps is borderline-"
"Hey!" the lady interrupted, and pointed to a nearby sign. "You see this, kid? Take it or leave it,' is our motto. We're not like some of the other schmucks around here. You wanna buy from NYC? You take the price we give or ya hit the road."
"Now listen, woman-" Calvin started, angry.
"Do I hafta call security?" the lady asked, and gestured over to a mutant standing near them. The sapient being growled, and cracked its knuckles.
Looking at Hobbes, Calvin confirmed that they were on the same page, and with a sigh, counted out exactly thirty bottle caps. The crabby saleswoman accepted them without a word, and in turn, the requested product was procured to the purchasers.
"Man, she was a tough old bird," Hobbes said as they walked back through the market stands. "Left no room for argument."
"Yeah," Calvin nodded. Looking over at him, Hobbes noticed his best friend's stiff manner and his frustrated countenance. "Hey, you okay?"
"Did you see the emblem on the crates in the back?" Calvin asked, looking at him.
"Emblem? What do you…" Hobbes stopped for a second. "Oh, goodness. Is this about New York City again?"
"Yes!" Calvin exclaimed. "Every time we stop at a settlement or a town, there's always someone being sponsored by that city, selling a product! No wonder the ammo cost thirty caps… we're just lucky that the fuel store wasn't part of them too… otherwise our money would have disappeared."
"Y'know, sometimes I think you exaggerate," Hobbes said. "They sell good ammo, and fuel."
"But it's not worth the price," Calvin shook his head. "What else is on the list?"
"Your handwriting, remember?"
"Right," Calvin rolled his eyes, and looked at the list. "A large tarp and- ow! Hey!"
Angrily, Calvin watched the man that had just stumbled into him run off. He checked his pockets to make sure that he hadn't been pickpocketed, before noticing that his sudden assailant wasn't the only one running. Something was wrong. All around them, people were swiftly walking or running away, while others were scrambling to take down stands and pull down metal barriers on their cashier windows. People were yelling, a few anomalies at first before the entire marketplace seemed to be fleeing for safety.
"What in the world is happening?" Calvin yelled to be heard over the panic and noise as people all around them rushed away.
"Something bad!" Hobbes shouted back. "Let's get to the jeep!"
They immediately began running for the vehicle, situated at the other end of the marketplace. In the distance, Hobbes could hear something… something like a vehicle speeding towards them. "Something's coming!" he exclaimed, and pumped faster. Calvin followed suit. The noise grew lounder and louder, until it seemed as though the vehicles were almost on top of them. Then, as they ran, Calvin and Hobbes knocked into a straggler also trying to get away, and all three of them fell to the ground a dozen feet from the jeep.
Looking up, Hobbes saw Evelyn at the Jeep, motioning for them to get up!
Suddenly a crash sounded as a stand near them was run over, and before the two friends could get up, three armored Humvees roared into the marketplace. They quickly encircled Calvin and Hobbes as they skidded to a stop. Armed figures clinging onto the sides of the cars jumped off, as another man on top of one vehicle manned a mounted machine gun. And before they could get away, Calvin, Hobbes, and the man that they had bumped into found themselves surrounded and held at gunpoint.
Calvin's first thought was to draw his pistol, but he immediately realized that such a thing would get him killed faster than he could blink. Slowly, he removed his hand from his jacket and raised his hands by his head. Beside him, Hobbes dropped the money box on the ground, stepping in front of it to conceal it slightly.
"Hobbes! Where's Evelyn?" Calvin hissed, and Hobbes looked around. Evelyn had suddenly disappeared from her spot by the jeep, and was nowhere to be seen. He looked again at the men that had surrounded them. Perhaps a dozen humans were pointing their guns at them. Most had the look of outlaws and ruffians, sporting brown jackets, dusty gear, goggles, and red bandannas covering all but their eyes.
"I don't know," he hissed back, and looked up at the sound of a door slamming.
Another human exited one of the armored cars, his face also covered by a bandanna, albeit black. The way he carried himself suggested that he was the leader of this band, and Calvin noticed the assault rifle in his beefy hands as well as the muscles rippling under his long, torn, woolen gray overcoat which sported a dozen pockets. Dark, muddy rubber boots stepped towards them, partially covered by a pair of baggy brown pants. And under a mop of oily hair, a set of one-way, obsidian glasses rested on his nose.
His monstrous form stepped closer to them, until he was a mere ten feet away. The other man that they had bumped into began trembling slightly, his eyes filled with fear. For a long while, the figure in charge simply stared at them under the dark, dark pair of glasses.
Then, one hand reached up to rip the bandanna down before sliding off the glasses, allowing for a full view of a chiseled face sporting lines of cruelty. A nasty scar stretched from his chin all the way across his lips, with it finally ending just shy of his forehead. A part of Calvin's brain pegged him as strangely familiar.
Interestingly enough, the guy seemed surprised to see him.
"Well, well…" his voice was deep and rough. "Of all the things that coulda' happened today, I was not expectin' this."
"And just who are you, anyway?" Calvin had to ask.
For another good fifteen seconds, he stayed silent. When he spoke, it was traced with a tinge of humor.
"What'sa matter, Twinky? You don't remember me? Cause' I sure as hell remember you."
For a few seconds, Calvin's brain went into overdrive as he put the pieces together. Then, he stood in silent shock for what seemed like an eternity before exclaiming one word; the name of the rogue standing before him.
"Moe?!"
Chapter Text
"Moe?!" Calvin exclaimed, not believing his eyes.
Moe laughed openly and loudly. "Aw, man! The one person I never thought I'd see again just shows up outta nowhere! Y'know, with how easy you were to push around back in first grade, I'da never thought you'd make it in this wasteland!"
"Calvin," Hobbes asked, "How do you know this guy?"
Before Calvin could answer, Moe spoke first. "Well, Mutant. Me and Calvin were good acquaintances back before the war happened!"
"You were my worst enemy," Calvin growled. "You pushed me, kicked me, and punched me all across the playground."
"And what fun it was, wasn't it?" Moe chuckled. "At least for me." He clapped his gritty hands, and two of his men walked over and grabbed the other pedestrian that hadn't gotten away in time. They dragged him back to the armored cars, with him pleading and scared witless.
"So!" Moe boomed, recapturing the duo's attention. "How about we get down to business?"
"What do you want?" Hobbes asked. "Caps? Fuel?"
"Oh, no, no, no," Moe laughed. "I want something much more valuable. Something that I know your new little friend has on her."
For a few seconds, both of them were perplexed as to what Moe meant, before realization hit them. "Evelyn?" Calvin asked, confused. "But she's just a kid!"
"So she hasn't told you," Moe grinned.
"Told us what?" both Calvin and Hobbes asked at the same time.
"Well… I'm not telling you now," Moe smiled. "All you gotta know is that she has something and I want it. Where is she?"
Both of them stayed silent, prompting a sigh from Moe. "Look, fellas. I'm in a hurry right now. You just hand her over to us, and I'll let you go free!" He spread out his arms as an added gesture of peace. Calvin didn't buy it. "Well, how do we know that if we do turn her over, you aren't gonna double-cross us and kill us?" he asked.
"Why, Twinky, what would give you that sort of idea?" Moe asked with mock hurt.
"I'm going off of my past memories of you, and besides, you hold all the cards here. Not us."
"Wait a minute, Calvin," Hobbes interjected. "Are you actually considering turning her over to this guy?"
Calvin sighed. "Look, Hobbes. Look around us. We're stuck here, surrounded by deadly raiders, possibly about to get shot, and why? Apparently, it's because Evelyn has something important that she didn't bother to tell us. We're in a world of trouble because of her! She betrayed my trust... and you know that I don't trust easily."
"Well, no matter what she hid from us, she's barely a teenager!" Hobbes countered. "She might not have been quick to trust us either. After all, she's barely known us for a day. I, for one, am not gonna sell out a kid. And anyways, we don't even know where she is! She's gone."
"Yeah. She probably left us and ran off," Calvin grumbled.
"Bang!"
Startled, Calvin and Hobbes looked over at the trucks, and beheld the limp corpse of the pedestrian that had been dragged off earlier. Blood poured out from the back of his head, forming a maroon puddle on the concrete ground. "Well, she'd better turn up quick, unless you want to become like him over there." Moe gestured to the man's dead body. "Boys, fan out and find her!"
As the majority of his men started to spread out in search of Evelyn, Moe leaned against one of his vehicles; the one with the 50. Cal machine gun mounted on the top, and took out a cigarette. Looking around, Hobbes noticed that most of his men were acting the same way. Several were smoking, others conversing and laughing. The raider in charge of manning the machine gun was leaning back, a can of beer in one hand and the other hand resting on the car roof. "Pretty casual atmosphere 'round here," he remarked.
"Nice observation, Mutant," Moe nodded as he let out a breath of smoke. "We've built a sort of… reputation. These people round here ain't gonna try anything. I know that for sure." The shattering of glass caused them to look over, where a trio of Raiders were in the process of breaking one of the windows on their locked jeep to open it. They began checking the entire vehicle for their target.
"So, Calvin," Moe grinned, regaining their attention. "I've just gotta know… how did you manage to survive? I mean… you were a runt back in first grade!"
"And why should I tell you?" Calvin retorted, keeping his voice firm and steady.
Moe shrugged. "Well, because the only thing keeping both of you alive right now is my curiosity over how you've managed to keep living this past decade."
Calvin didn't say anything, his mouth a thin line. It was clear he got the message.
"Alright," he sighed. "I was on my own since I was eleven. I got by fine on my own 'till about two years ago, where I met Hobbes. We've been bouncing from place to place all across the East Coast, trading and scavenging, right up to now."
"That's it?" Moe asked, an eyebrow raised. "Pretty boring."
"Well, what more is there to tell?"
The three of them were silent for a little while, Calvin refusing to elaborate further, Moe looking rather deep in thought, and Hobbes unsure of what to say or do to help their situation at the moment. Finally Moe said, "Alright. Nice, nice… say, you had a stuffed tiger you used to drag around way back when. Wasn't his name, 'Hobbes,' too?
"Why are you so interested about what I've been doing over the past ten years?" Calvin asked, fed up with Moe's questions.
"I'm just catching up with an old acquaintance," Moe shrugged, and touched his half-smoked cigarette to his lips. " After all, it's not every day that this sorta thing happens. But if you don't wanna talk about that, then how 'bout you tell me the story of how you met that girl, Evelyn?" To reinforce his question, he casually brushed a hand over his handgun, which looked like a cannon with its wheels missing stuck in a holster.
"Well, we met her just a day ago," Calvin shrugged. "We were eating, and saw smoke off in the distance. When we looked, we found an old house riddled with booby traps."
"Wait," Hobbes realized. "She was expecting someone to come for her. That's why she had the traps set!"
"She was waiting for you to find her," Calvin agreed. "But we got to her first."
"That you did," Moe nodded. "I was right on your trail since you drove off from the house."
"Hold on," Calvin said, "and answer me this. How long have you been chasing Evelyn?"
"Six damn months I've been trying to find her," the raider answered. "It took me that long to find out where that house was. I only got to the place the first time a day ago, to see her drive off with you two."
As Moe kept smoking, the one question on Calvin's mind was what Evelyn had on her person that was causing such an uproar. Not in a long while he had been on his own had he seen something create this much commotion. Coincidentally, the same question was on Hobbes' mind as he thought back to when he and Calvin were in the house with Evelyn. 'Dad always called them, 'Collectors', she had said. 'They came and they…killed Mom and Dad. They didn't find me, Mom hid me and told me to…'
He sighed as he replayed the scene in his mind. No kid should have gone through that kind of thing, to have their parents taken away from them at such a young age. The only other person he knew who had gone through such a traumatizing experience was…
Wait a minute.
He tried to remember what Evelyn had said in the house. 'Dad always called them, 'Collectors.' They came and they… killed Mom and Dad.'
'Six damn months I've been trying to find her… I only got to the place the first time a day ago, to see her drive off with you two.'
"Hey, Moe," he suddenly asked.
"Huh?"
"You said that you had only gotten to the house a day ago, right?"
"That's right, mutant. Why?"
"But… then-" Hobbes was about to say, when suddenly, his ears twitched.
For a second he tried to decipher the strange rumbling noise in his ears, before he whipped his head around to look behind him, where their jeep, the jeep that was supposed to be shut off, was barreling straight towards them. And in the driver's seat was-
"Outta the way, Hobbes!" Calvin yelled, and Hobbes snapped out of his frozen state. The vehicle roared forward with power, startling raiders and eliciting surprised shouting, and at the last second, he grabbed the money box and threw himself to the side. The jeep slammed into the Humvee behind them, the force causing it to smash against a tall curb. Immediately, the entire Humvee tipped over and fell on its side. A scream came from the machine gunner on top.
As soon as vehicle was useless, the Jeep reversed gear and backed off of the knocked-over vehicle, the front carriage landing heavily on the ground where it began speeding around the market in a tight circle, causing Moe's men to scatter to avoid being crushed.
"Shoot that car!" Moe yelled, having gotten back on his feet. The rattle of gunfire sounded as the raiders opened fire with their weapons, dozens upon dozens of bullet holes impacting the jeep's aluminum surface. Still, it didn't slow, now driving straight for Calvin and Hobbes. With a sudden turn, it skidded 180 degrees around so that Moe and his men were on one side, while Calvin and Hobbes were shielded from them on the other, and came to a halt.
"Get on!" Evelyn shrieked from the driver's seat before taking up her shotgun and firing at the raiders. The two got off of the concrete and didn't bother getting in, instead hopping onto the jeep's side, clinging on by wrapping an arm around the broken glass windows digging their feet into any foothold they could get. Evelyn slammed her foot on the gas, and the battered jeep frantically sped away, heading towards the marketplace's exit road with bullets still flying after it, mostly in vain. Pulling his revolver from his jacket, Calvin sent several parting shots at Moe, who was trying to rally his men. The next second, they were gone, racing out of the Toshka Settlement and off into the distance.
"...What in the hell was that!?" Moe shouted at his men, furious. "What the hell just happened?! You let them get away! All of them!"
"She- she surprised us, Boss," the nearest man stuttered. "It just happened so fast that-"
-he was cut off by a sudden right-hook that sent him sprawling. The others backed away as Moe stepped towards them.
"I don't want excuses from you! Any of you!" he shouted, pointing a finger at them. "We've been spending six months trying to get that chip, and I'm not about to lose it! C'mon, patch Tony and Vinny up and tip that truck back over! Regroup!"
As his men scrambled to get their new tasks done, Moe turned and looked back at the exit to Toshka Station after Calvin and that Mutant… Hobbes.
"I've gotta hand it to you, Twinky," he muttered. "You've become one tough bastard."
The jeep slowed to a stop on top of one of the yellow-brown hills adjacent to Toshka Station, allowing Calvin and Hobbes to hop off of its side and onto solid ground. Immediately, Hobbes rushed over to the Driver's seat, where he found Evelyn, breathing heavily and leaning back in her seat with her eyes closed. Her hands, still shaky, gripped the steering wheel like a lifeline.
"Hey, Evelyn," he said, before reaching in to turn off the ignition. The rumbling of the motor sputtered to a stop. He tried again. "Evelyn."
Her eyes opened to look at him, and she said, "Y-yeah?"
"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" the tiger asked.
"No, I'm okay," she breathed, before allowing herself to lean forward, using her arms and hands to brace herself against the wheel. Her forehead touched it and she let out a cumbersome sigh.
"Alright. Well, we gotta get moving," Calvin told them, coming up from behind. "I took a quick look at the Jeep. It'll run, but we've gotta get it to a repair shop at some point soon."
"Agreed," Hobbes nodded, and stowed the money box in the back of the jeep, on the floor. "Evelyn, could you get in the back seat?"
"Yeah," she said, and clambered into the back of the jeep, allowing Calvin to take her place. Hobbes followed suit, walking around the front and hopping into the passenger's side. Both doors slammed shut simultaneously. Reaching down, Calvin twisted the keys, and the motor rumbled back to life. "Where are we headed?" Hobbes asked.
"Anywhere that isn't here," Calvin answered, and tossed him the crudely drawn map. "Here. Look at this and find a place to go. I'll start driving."
While Hobbes consulted the map, Calvin pressed his foot on the gas and the jeep's wheels began turning. And slowly, they rolled across the mud flats and rocks until Toshka Station was just a blip in the rearview mirror. The wind was now a strong breeze, and cool air slipped through the jeep's surface. Of course, there was no heater anyway, so it only made the existing cold colder.
"Okay," Hobbes suddenly spoke up. "I see three options, but you're not gonna like 'em."
"Shoot," Calvin said, his eyes on the road.
"One, we drive for three days to the Harrisburg Ruins back through the dead forest. It might take a little time, but we can hole up there for a little while."
"Do you think that they're gonna fight against Moe?"
"I don't know. His band seems well-equipped. But we could easily disappear in Harrisburg's bazaars and streets. Plus, we have a cache of bottle caps there," he pointed out.
"What are our other options?" Calvin asked.
"Well, I don't know if you'd agree with 'em," Hobbes told him. "Besides Harrisburg, the only other places that can stand their ground against Moe's band of Raiders are the Cleveland Scrappertown, and New York City."
"Out of the question," Calvin said abruptly.
"Yeah, I thought so."
"Excuse me," Evelyn said from the back seat. "I have a few questions. Who is Moe? Why can't we go to New York. My dad told me that it was well-defended. And what's a Scrappertown?"
"Ask Hobbes," Calvin's clipped tone came from the front, causing Hobbes to look over at him with a quizzical expression.
'Oh. He's still mad at her,' he realized, and turned to look at Evelyn.
"Apparently, Moe was one of Calvin's childhood classmates," Hobbes said. "A big coincidence for sure. He was the leader of the raiders who have been following us."
"Following us?"
"Yup. Ever since we left the cabin. Do you think they might be the collectors you were talking about?"
"I'm not sure." her tone was clipped slightly. "What's with these Scrappertowns?"
"There are dozens of of them dotted all across what used to be the U.S," he explained. "They're very fortified towns inhabited by a certain breed of survivors: Scrappers. They live in, and near junkyards, hunting for all kinds of things to trade, sell, or use to make things."
"Hence the name?"
"Yep. Scrappers are tough. They're very resourceful. A lot of other people consider them vermin who will do anything if paid the right price. Most of 'em place themselves before everything else. Don't trust one."
"They sound like varmints," she agreed. "So why did you even list it as an option?"
"Well," Hobbes said, "Scrappers don't take crap from anybody else. Their towns are probably the most fortified places outside of New York City. You can't get in without their permission. They also have a rocky relationship with raiders. They've been know to kill each other if their respective borders are broken."
"So Moe wouldn't dare and try to get us while we're in there," she realized. "But what about New York City?"
"Oh, well the Rotten Apple doesn't really suit Nomads like us," Hobbes said. "It's for people who want a chance to stay in one place without worry. Probably the only really really functioning city left in the U.S. Besides," he jerked a thumb at Calvin, "Calvin would never go."
"Why?"
"You're going to have to ask him."
A scoff came from the driver's seat, suggesting that he wasn't going to answer the question.
For the next thirty minutes, no one said anything. Calvin began driving back in the direction of the great forest, back to the spooky corpse trees. To pass the time, Evelyn focused her attention on the two red dice swinging from the rearview mirror, clicking every time they bounced together. Strangely enough, they showed numbers like seven and the PI symbol instead of one through six.
"Hey, Evelyn," Hobbes spoke up.
"Yeah?" she asked, looking away from the transfixing dice.
"Just out of curiosity, how did the raiders not find you?" he asked. "I saw them check the jeep."
"I found the spot where you guys keep your money box," she answered. "Under the backseat."
"No way," Hobbes laughed, looking back at the seat. He and Calvin had made a secret compartment under the seat to hide their valuables. "How did you fit?"
"It was a really tight squeeze," she admitted.
Chuckling, Hobbes leaned back in his seat. No matter what Calvin thought of her at the moment, she really was as resourceful as a scrapper. Still, even he was wondering what she had that Moe had wanted so badly. And he guessed that Calvin wasn't going to wait long before asking her.
As night fell over the wasteland, the jeep rumbled to a halt on top of an incline that overlooked the road leading into the great forest. The headlights turned on, providing an adequate light source for setting up camp.
The three of them got out, with Calvin clambering onto the back and tossing down sleeping bags and provisions to Evelyn and Hobbes. In no time at all, Hobbes had a fire going with the help of their old lighter and a pre-prepared bundle of kindling, as well as Evelyn collecting and breaking off ashen branches for fuel. Soon a large pile of fuel was stacked up against a flat rock; enough to keep the fire running for a while, despite the corpse branches already having most of their fuel burnt out of them in the past.
Finding an old frying pan, Calvin set it over the fire and rummaged around for the meat that they had bought from the butcher in Toshka. Finding it, he cut off a few thin strips and slapped them on the pan. It didn't take long for them to start to sizzle. At the same time, they had water collected earlier on run through the detoxifier, seeping it through an activated charcoal mix, also freshly restocked from Toshka station. As an added precaution, the detoxifier had an in-built distilling mechanism that purged the last traces of pollution from the water.
During the process, barely any words were spoken between Calvin and Evelyn. She had picked up that Calvin was angry with her, but kept quiet. If he wanted to say something, he would.
As they began eating the bland meat with mostly fingers and washing it down with detoxified water, Calvin sat down against a rock and Hobbes and Evelyn watched him take out that old quarter of his. Rhythmically, he began flipping it, muttering something out every time it landed.
Mutter.
Flip.
Mutter.
Flip.
Mutter.
Flip.
Mutter.
Flip.
Mutter.
Flip.
Finally, Evelyn asked, "Why do you do that?"
Calvin looked up, a look of annoyance in his eye. "Why do you want to know?"
"Just curious."
Shrugging, Calvin ignored her and resumed muttering and flipping. Hurt by the callousness in his voice, Evelyn sighed and looked at him. "Y'know, it's rather rude to not answer someone's question."
"Well, what if I don't want to let you know?" Calvin asked, his voice cold and detached, letting the quarter fall into his palm and studying it intently as if trying to figure out some sort of secret about it. The lines on his face were unwelcoming. Bitter.
"Well," she asked, staring at him, "why wouldn't you want to let me know?"
"Maybe because if I went and let you know, you'd get us in a lot of trouble," he said, looking up at her. Then he added, "Again."
For a few seconds, Evelyn didn't speak, before her eyes widened. "Calvin, are you talking about what happened back at Toshka? With those-" She caught herself, before continuing: "-those Raiders? You don't blame me for that, do you?"
"As a matter of fact, I do," Calvin said looking at her pointedly. "And I have a feeling that you know why."
"I don't," Evelyn shook her head, composing herself. "I don't know why they're after me."
"...I never said that they were after you."
From his seat by Calvin and Evelyn, Hobbes silently let his friend's intense interrogation happen. He might have said something in defense of Evelyn, but he himself was rather worried by everything that had gone down today. If Evelyn was hiding something from them, they needed to know. At Calvin's sudden accusation, he distinctly heard her breath hitch slightly.
Another second. Then she said, "Well, it seems like that was the case. They were looking for me all over."
"...All of this makes no sense," Calvin shook his head. "Driving through the forest, we find you in a decrepit old cabin, the house booby trapped in preparation for a fight. The next thing? The three of us are surrounded by Raiders, or maybe collectors, and their leader is a person that I used to know! Then he tells me that he's been looking for you, and that you have something that he wants!"
Calvin's voice had reached a new threshold, frustrated and clearly accusing. Calming himself down, he placed his hands on his legs and asked, "Where's this thing that those Raiders want, Evelyn?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Evelyn said, her face set in stone-hard determination.
"I don't believe you," Calvin said, finally pocketing his quarter. "Show. Us. The. Thing!"
"Or what?" Evelyn asked, angry and challenging as she stood up. For a moment longer, the two of them glared furiously at each other. Then, just as it seemed like he was about to back down, Calvin drew his revolver, the barrel facing in Evelyn's direction.
"Calvin, what are you doing?!" Hobbes asked, standing up. "Are you really going to shoot her?"
"Depends."
Across from him, Evelyn had her hands raised in front of her in a placating gesture. For a few seconds, she was frightened before her face changed. Giving a little realizing grin, she put her hands back down. "You're not going to shoot me."
"Try me," Calvin growled.
"The hammer on your gun isn't pulled back," she argued. "You don't want to shoot me."
A few more seconds went by before Calvin lowered the revolver slightly. "Yeah, you're right," he sighed. "I'm not going to shoot you… here's what I'm going to do."
He lifted the weapon back up and pulled back the hammer. "I'm going to ask you one last time to show me whatever you're hiding from us, or we'll pack up and leave you here for Moe and his Collectors!"
Evelyn stopped, hesitation apparent in her eyes. She was afraid, although Calvin could barely tell. Seeing her weaken, he pressed forward.
"Evelyn, whatever you have with you has just gotten us into a world of trouble," he told her. "You saved my life… twice, which is why I really don't want to shoot you. But you gotta be honest with us. Otherwise… I'm leaving you here."
"I don't know if I can trust you," Evelyn said.
"Now I feel the same way," Calvin said. "What do you have?"
For another few seconds, Evelyn didn't move, before finally caving. Reaching into her pocket, she drew out a small, heavy pouch and placed it tentatively in Calvin's hand. Surprised at the weight, Calvin put away his gun and undid the strings. Opening the pouch, he reached a hand in, expecting some sort of diamond or something. Instead, his hand pulled out a small, card-sized computer chip.
For a minute, Calvin was utterly confused, looking at the object that he held in his hand. But that's what it was. A very heavy, complicated-looking computer chip. Looking up, he noticed Evelyn's shiny eyes. Her face was downcast, almost ashen in color. Still dumbfounded, he looked at her as she sat there.
"That's all that Moe wanted?" Hobbes asked, softly. "A computer chip?"
"Evelyn?" Calvin asked. "What's so important about this thing?"
For a quarter minute, Evelyn sat still. Finally, she sighed. "It was from my parents… it's military."
"Why would your parents have a military computer chip lying around?" Calvin asked. Instead of clearing things up, Evelyn had just made his mind develop a thousand new questions. And he wanted answers now more than ever.
"What exactly did your parents do? For a living, I mean?" Hobbes asked.
Evelyn was silent for a minute as she recomposed herself, wiping her eyes and taking a few shuddering breaths. Finally, she said, "My Dad was a hunter… he caught food for us during the war and afterwards, and sort of kept the house clean. He taught me how to shoot and survive. My parents' roles were sort of switched. Dad kept the place in good condition, and my Mom worked at a military base."
"A military base?"
"Yeah… most of her work was classified, but I think that she got the computer chip from there. I remember when she brought it home… it was a few days before the Fallout."
"So what's about this chip that makes it so damn important?" Calvin asked.
"I don't know," Evelyn admitted. "But it was important. After we emerged from the bunker that we were in during the Fallout, we drove back to our house. I didn't know how we would survive, but my parents said not to worry. They had some sort of plan."
"A few months after the Fallout, the collectors started to show up. It happened once every month. My parents would talk with them, and they would give us supplies. For a lot of the time they had the chip hooked up to an old computer. They never included me in any of it, but they told me that that chip was very important. And since we got food and supplies from the collectors, I never complained."
"But back at the house, you said that the Collectors attacked you," Hobbes said.
"Yes… but they only attacked us after… Well, something happened. A week before… I lost them, my parents were excited about something… they were smiling, laughing. Then, a few days later, they were worried about something. I could hear them arguing in their room. I couldn't hear them well… I wasn't nosy, they were just arguing so loud. But it was something about the computer chip… and the next time the collectors came…" She shuddered. "They argued with my parents… I was watching from my bedroom window, and the collectors pulled their guns on them. My Mom ran inside and told me to hide in the basement. We had a hidden basement where we kept our supplies. She… she was crying when she gave me the computer chip. She told me to keep it safe. She said she was sorry, and that she… loved me…"
She sniffed and wiped her eyes again. "Then she told me to wait until the collectors were gone. She gave me Dad's shotgun and closed the hatch… I heard shots and screams. And when I came out… the- the rest you guys know."
For a whole minute, no one talked.
"...I'm sorry, Evelyn," Calvin murmured at length, prompting her to look up at him. "I didn't know."
She weakly nodded her head in a sign of knowing, and brought her knees back up to her forehead. Then, suddenly, a loop of arms enveloped her as Hobbes wrapped her in a hug. Not long after, Calvin joined them, although uncomfortable. Still, the gravity of what she really had gone through finally reached him, and after another second, he let go of his awkwardness. She had, in less than one day, lost everything dear to her.
Calvin could relate.
An hour later the fire had been neglected enough to the point that there were only embers left, and the stack of firewood had been greatly diminished.
Reaching over, Hobbes tossed a collection of sticks and branches onto the embers, and the flames began to grow again. All three of them hadn't said much of anything in those sixty minutes, each one of them preoccupied. Calvin, in particular, hadn't said anything. Hadn't taken out his quarter again. He had sat back down and slowly watched the fire die down… before Hobbes refueled it.
"I'm sorry, Evelyn," he said abruptly. "I get why you didn't want to show us the chip."
"It's okay," she whispered. "I wouldn't have liked me either if I got us in danger."
Silence fell over the little camp again, the only sounds being the soothing crackling of the fire pit. In the distance several crows suddenly cawed, the sound traveling faintly over the land.
"So," Evelyn suddenly asked Calvin. "...are we good again? Cool with each other?"
"Yeah," Calvin chuckled. "We're 'cool. But you can trust us. You know that, right? We're all in the same boat, here."
She nodded.
"I guess now, the only thing we can do is find a way to get away from Moe and his collectors," Calvin shrugged.
The mood suddenly became much lighter with a feeling of resolution from all three of them. It wasn't long after that Hobbes said, "Well, I'm gonna hit the sack, fellas."
"That sounds like a good idea," Calvin agreed, and stood up, along with Evelyn. As Hobbes began to take their provisions and lock them securely in the jeep (to prevent unwanted visitors in the night), Calvin went to kick out the fire. But as he drew his foot back to do so, a faint sound reached his ears.
The strike of lightning.
Hobbes heard it, too, and both of them peered into the distance where, suddenly, another flash of jade lightning illuminated the sky, revealing for a split second large, dark, rolling clouds moving closer. Another flash and Calvin saw a thick, white, ghostly fog under the clouds… no, not fog. Rain.
Acid rain.
At the same time, both of them came to the only possible conclusion.
"Okay, change of plans, guys!" Calvin shouted, and Hobbes met him by the fire. Evelyn, confused, walked over as well.
"What's going on?" she asked. "Did you see raiders?"
"No," Calvin shook his head. "Worse."
"There's an acid rainstorm heading for us," Hobbes told her.
"Well…" Evelyn racked her brain. "Couldn't we just sit it out in the jeep?"
"That would have been a possibility," Calvin admitted, "if the jeep didn't have bullet holes punched everywhere in it like a sieve. Plus, the windows are broken. If that rain sweeps in from the side, we're toast. It'll be on us in… maybe five, six hours."
"So, what do we do?" she asked, a tinge of worry in her voice.
"The only thing we really can do," Hobbes said, and raced to the jeep. Rummaging around in the front for a few seconds, he rushed back and presented the crude map again. "We've gotta get to a place where the rain won't get to us. Let's see..."
After a dozen seconds, Calvin stood up and began walking towards the jeep. "Dammit." Hobbes sighed and did the same.
"What's wrong?" Evelyn called after him.
"There's one place where we can get to in time, and it just so happens to be the worst possible choice," Hobbes told her. "It's the Cleveland Scrappertown."
"With all the mercenaries and double-crossers?"
"Yep," he sighed, "and it looks like that's our only option. It's less than a day's drive, and if we throw caution to the wind and go fast, we might get there in time."
"And we can't do anything else?" Evelyn asked, now rather nervous.
"Nope!" Calvin exclaimed from over at the jeep, having already begun securing items in the back. "Start packing, and let's get loaded up! We've got no time to lose!"
In no time at all, they had everything in or on the back of the jeep, fueled by a determination to escape the storm, or else feel their own skin corrode and fall off. Clambering in, Hobbes took the driver's seat, as he could better see the road with his night vision, while Calvin rode shotgun and Evelyn took up the back.
Turning the keys, Hobbes felt the familiar rumble of the jeep's resilient motor, and pushed a foot on the gas pedal. Slowly, he guided them down the hill they had set camp on and rolled onto the dirt road. He switched on the headlights and they lit up with an audible clack. The sulfurous wind blew through the shattered windows with vigor… a warning of what was about to come down on them.
Hobbes drove faster, the uneven road causing the jeep to bump. The atmosphere was tense. Eerily quiet as the occupants of the vehicle waited to see if they would make it… or if they would not.
They were in a race against death.
Notes:
Well, damn. This chapter was pretty interesting to write, but I think I did a good job. If you have time, please leave a review and share your thoughts and ideas with me! Smarmysmirk, over and out.
:D
Marina Artist (Guest) on Chapter 1 Sat 19 Jul 2025 07:35PM UTC
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