» Thu Dec 16, 2010 3:29 am I know its a bit of a long read, but I was feeling descriptive, just bear with me, and I'll have the second part of this chapter up in a day or two, and I'll continue it if a few people show interest. Please read, and don't hold back with the criticism, my standalone writing may have degraded a bit in the last year or so.
Lead Wind, Brass Dust
A Narrated Excerpt From the Life of Lawrence Errant, Vagabond and Gunslinger
Lawrence awoke in the bed of an old military supply truck, the mottled grey-and-tan scarf he wore pulled up over his eyes to keep out the sand that the torn Olive Drab canvas stretched over the 4x6's bed allowed through. It was through one of these many holes in the Canvas that came the ray of sunlight that had awoken the wanderer. With a grunt of annoyance, he reached up and pulled the scarf down to his chin, revealing his face.
Lawrence Errant wasn't particularly young or old, around his late twenties, his scraggly brown hair hanging loose around his face, while his chin and upper lip were snicked with uneven patches of 5:00 shadow. His dark green eyes flecked around the bed of the truck, assuring that nothing had been disturbed since he had made his rest here the night before, then reached into his pack, resting beside him, and removed the brahmin-skin water bladder from within it and poured some of the slightly-irradiated creek water into a dented tin cup he had unclipped from the back of the brown canvas pack.
First he took a deep sip of the liquid from the cup, swishing it around his mouth to get the groggy taste from his mouth, then splashed the rest of it on his face to help wake him up, and loosen up some of the grime that was perpetually caked onto his skin. Wiping his face with his sleeve, the man then replaced the bladder and cup to the bag and stepped out of the back of the a broken-down truck, parting the canvas curtains to reveal the dreary expanse of the Nevada wastes.
Nevada hadn't been hit too hard by the bombs, but radiation or no, the Mojave desert had never been a particularly hospitable place. The truck had been as much a godsend as the sandstorm that had driven him to it, the man realized as he recalled the events that had brought him here.
He had been stopped off in the small traders town and travelers hub of Searchlight the night before, about halfway between the ruins of Bullhead City and New Vegas proper. The two cities couldn't be more different, while Vegas itself had been almost entirely spared of the bombs, Bullhead, being home to a somewhat large military complex, couldn't have been hit worse. The entire southern half of the mid-sized city, near the base, had been blown to hell, the area now too irradiated and ghoul-infested to be inhabitable.
The northern area, little more than residential areas and apartments, had been Lawrence's last destination, finding some old book for a rich New Vegas resident, some manual on robotics technology. The high-roller apparently wanted to get the old Vegas Robco plant up and running, how, Lawrence had no idea, but it wasn't his job to know how, just to get him what he needed.
The book hadn't been too hard to find, and he had found it, along with a few other manuals the man had requested, in the Bullhead Library of Technology, and had then headed back towards Vegas, along the cracked asphalt path that was Nevada Highway 95. As it had gotten darker, Lawrence had stopped into Searchlight, rented a room above the bar, a cheap, not-so-reputable place run by a portly, one eyed former Powder Ganger.
Lawrence had then spent the evening, like he spent most evenings, getting hammered at the bar. About a half dozen whiskey shots in, he had noticed a group of shaven-headed bikers taking a surprising interest in him. The biker gangs had gotten more and more common as some scientist up at the NCR had figured out how to distill diesel fuel from pre-war rubber and plastics. The NCR mainly used the fuels for their supply trucks and patrol buggies, but of course, rich enough criminals or businessmen could buy or scavenge enough of the precious fuel to run bikes. There had even been rumors of the NCR funding some of these gangs to gather "Infrastructure" for them.
The unsavory men continued inquiring about him to the barkeeper about Lawrence, and the wanderer had decided it would be a good idea to retire for the night, and headed back up to his room. The bartender had made him check the two .45 Long Colt revolvers and the double-barreled 12 gauge shotgun he wore openly when he had started buying drinks, but in his pack he still had a smaller 5-shot .32 Caliber revolver, and the twin barreled .357 derringer he wore on his left ankle on him. Propping himself behind the rooms desk, perpendicular to the door, and brandishing both handguns, Lawrence then waited. He had been in enough of these situations in his 26 years.
Just as expected, not fifteen minutes later, he heard a banging on the door. Then a bashing then the *Snick-Snick* of a pick and wire working their way through the doors simple lock. Less than five seconds after that, the door was open, revealing the three shaven-headed men standing in the hallway. The burliest man came in first, brandishing a heavy iron crowbar. Behind him were the two others, one of them apparently the lockpick, holding only a 6 1/2 inch switchblade while his other hand fumbled the wires and pins into his jacket pocket, and the last man, mid-height, carrying a baseball bat. Lawrence could see a gun on the crowbar-wielding mans belt, a heavily-rusted Browning Hi-Power, but he could tell that none of the men expected him to be armed.
"Look, we weren't paid to kill you..." the man opened, and, not needing to hear a word after, Lawrence stood, braced his shoulder against the side of the desk, and put a .32 Caliber round from the revolver into the mans torso. Immediately, the burly gentleman doubled over, clutching his collapsing lung. As the man keeled over onto the floor, he fumbled for the handgun on his belt, and Lawrence put another round into his torso, this one impacting his heart, and the mans grasping hand fell limp.
The baseball-bat wielding thug then rushed forward at Lawrence, swinging the blunt instrument wildly, and was promptly cut down by a single well-placed .357 round to the front of his skull from the derringer, and his body falling atop that of his burly comrade. The vagabond stepped over the bodies as he left the room, ducking to pick up the first mans Handgun and rack the slide, then immediately ejected the handguns magazine and dropped the pistol itself atop the bodies after hearing the grating sound the rusted pistol made as the slide clicked back, while sticking the magazine in one of his packs straps many pouches across his chest. 9mm rounds made perfect barter items.
The third of the biker thugs, the lockpick, had ran out after seeing his two comrades gunned down, and there was now quite a bit of commotion coming from the bar floor. As Lawrence walked down the stairs, he noticed the surly Bartender brandishing a pump-action riot shotgun, the weapon pointed upstairs, while the weaselly thug was now holding a snub-nosed revolver in his quivering grasp.
Manipulating one handgun in each hand, Lawrence aimed one at each of them, the Derringer trained on the bartender, while the .32 faced the thug. As expected, neither fired. The bartender out of a lack of initiative to do so, the thug out of knowing that Lawrence could put two slugs into him before he could pull the trigger. A few of the bar patrons that hadn't rushed out at the sound of gunfire brandished weapons, a few firearms while the rest carried mostly blunt objects, but none of them trained their guns on the Vagabond.
"I haven't done anything here..." Lawrence began, then waved the Derringer he had trained on the barkeep to show that he was talking to him. "You don't want your bar to suddenly become possession of your next of kin, do you. I know people like you, you've finally retired a life of doing heinous things for no good reason, and if you were smart enough to leave the powder gangs, your probably smart enough to know not to [censored] with New Vegas business, or at least guys with guns aimed at you in general. So why don't you lower that shotgun, or at least aim it at that sniveling lowlife." Lawrence finished by moving the derringers aim from the barkeep and snapping it into his waistband, still keeping his pocket revolver aimed at the now-hyperventilating biker.
As expected, the barkeeper didn't shoot, and instead turned his aim on the thug. Lawrence knew the proprietors type, always willing to switch sides based on who has the most leverage at a given moment. Those were the people who survived in the lawless Mojave wasteland.
"You, you said there wasn't going to be no violence." The portly man shouted at the thug, waving the shotgun wildly at him. "You think you and your type can come in here and start things. I told your lot that I be runnin' a respectable business now. Not that I wanted them sendin' kneecappers in every few weeks to scare my customers and shoot up the bar. Now get out, and tell whoever your lot's workin' for now not to send anyone back." The slovenly man shouted, and Lawrence had no doubt that he had been fine with this plan until bullets started flying.
Nonetheless, the rat-like biker quickly nodded and rushed out of the bar, and a few minutes later, Lawrence heard the roar of an engine as his motorcycle took off. Lawrence then lowered his .32, though not holstering it yet. The barkeeper did the same with his shotgun.
"Now, you.." The one eyed man spat, apparently talking to Lawrence. "You had best get out of here before I have to shoot ye' myself. I would ask a fee for unsettlin' my drinkers and leavin' me with two bodies to clean up, but I'm sure I'll be able to make somethin' decent off of what they had on em' and those motorbikes that belonged to the two you put down." The portly proprietor muttered, smiling to himself. Those two motorcycles would be worth twice what it would cost him to pay off whoever the thugs sent back to deal with him.
"Fine then, give me back my guns and refund my room cost, and I'll be out of town before the sun sets." The rugged vagabond responded as he snapped open the .32 and removed the two shells he had spent, letting the casings fall to the floor as he replaced the rounds from one of his belt pouches. The barkeep then set his two revolvers and the shotgun down on the counter, but gave no sign of returning his money. Lawrence would have argued if he had the time to bargain.
"Fine, I'll sell you the shotgun. Sixty NCR Dollars, and thats giving you a good deal there. I need the walking cash." Lawrence muttered, and reholstered the twin Single-Action .45 LC revolvers, one on his left thigh, the other across the small of his back, and the barkeep counted out the roughly-printed New California Republic bills onto the counter, which Lawrence immediately snatched up and counted to make sure it was all there. Fifty-five. Close enough. Without another word, the wanderer hitched up his pack and walked out of the bar and set off along the road out of Searchlight, hoping to cover as much ground towards New Vegas as possible before the rest of the thugs crew came after him.
It was about after an hour of heavy walking before he heard the telltale sounds of engines some distance behind him, the beams of their headlights striking out around him in the quickly setting sun. A simple pickup deal had ever cost him so much trouble...and soon it was going to cause quite a bit more.
