ONE


Beneath an amber sky, and inland from a wild ocean.

It was midday in Baja, and the sun hung fat in the sky. It was hitting the ground with harsh, dry heat. Locusts chirped. They were happy for the sun's rays, as the mutated insects fed off of the ultraviolet. These locusts were not giant; they were harmless.

The curling waves smashed onto the sand with a rushing noise, and it echoed across the township ahead. The sand eroded around them, and the resident population of Mirelurks struggled to keep their egg hutches in check. Young were lost to the surf frequently before they could mature. The empty, picked-clean husks of their shells littered the beach. The dead Lurks were young and old, male and female. Further up, the dry and crispy skeletons of pre-war beach goers collected in piles. It was a shingle of dead. The shoreline before the dunes was a natural barrier of bones. There were not only human bones here, as the chassis of malfunctioned robots were interspersed. Past the dunes filled with barb wire and sandbag bunkers was another graveyard.

Atomically powered cars, caked with rust and blown askew by atomic winds, sat idly. They baked in the sun too, chips of browning metal peeling away exposing radiation and dead occupants. The dead of the nuclear holocaust were in positions of fear and wonderment. Some died clutching their children, screaming as they were set ablaze. Others made it to the water, only to find it was boiling.

As all bets were off, a few adjacent died punching their fists through skulls. Maybe it was the skeletons of quarreling lovers choking themselves, or of families divided tearing each other apart. In any event, the atomic fire had rendered everyone who used to live in Baja unto death. Shadows of people closer to the blast, those disintegrated, were etched into whatever was behind them. Offshore, oil rigs non operational burned eternally, and the intense heat reduced them to their concrete pylons. Past the highway bordering the shoreline, the town of Rosarito Beach stood vacant of buildings save a few.

A swath of homes behind the Beach Hotel had survived the bombs, but only because the Hotel itself still stood. Buzzards circled overhead, and inside the homes and yards milled dozens of men clad in the New California Republic tan. Rangers on the rooftops set up sharpshooter positions, calculating MOA and servicing weapons. The soldiers down below were drinking harsh liquor and puffing on whatever tobacco was available. This place had no standard protocol.

These men, so acquainted with paperwork after every kill and endless drills, let their procedures die here. The heat caused them to strip to undergarments from the waist up, white shirts and tank-tops stained with sweaty grease. Everyone doused each other with cool water, from faucets within the homes or spigots without. The NCR troops fought heat stroke. The men on each line were nervous for action, but nervous for lack thereof. The stress was palpable.

Snipers are knocking out buzzards, or riflemen are drilling lead into the Mirelurks on the beach. The heavy projectiles tear through their cartilage and silica, leaving them broken in heaps. Service rifles and repeaters dropped imagined opposition. Soldiers were blowing off steam.

Near the hotel, the line moved to either side of the high-rise. Although its windows were shattered, its innards spilled, the massive hotel stayed solid in the face of the apocalypse. Concrete barriers and razor wire kept it safe from raiders and other threats. Behind the barricades were teams for crew serviced weapons. Heavy machine guns, Anti-tank rifles, and tripod-mounted Gatling Lasers. They tinkered and repaired, and awaited orders to move. Liaisons from posts of higher authority observed them. The front line messengers passed papers with trajectory and calibration information tailor made for each crew.

Someone with a missile launcher shouted in alarm at the rest of the fortification, pointing into the distance with a free hand while he cradled his weapon. A woman in tan armor with binoculars spoke to him quickly, and he moved his launcher a little. The NCR behind him cleared away, and with a loud crack-fwoom a missile was away and burning fuel. The launch shook the air around the trooper, and his head rattled. In seconds it exploded on contact with a shock wave and a pop. A concrete divider was in ruins, and a naked girl covered in dirt and holding a sniper rifle stood up, screaming. Her back was charcoal, burned black by the missile. She clutched at her injury, and her weapon clattered on the tarmac. She was silenced, going slack against the ground when a single shot tore her skull apart. A ranger on the line next to the launcher man moved the lever on a repeater, and cordite chased a spent cartridge. The dead nvde woman was made to rot all day in the hot sun. The soldiers did not confirm the kill or retrieve the body. She cooked and buzzards picked her eyes out.