Chapter 44: Duo

Nico placed a hand on the rope she kept at her waist. “It’s my job to bring you back to Pott’s, not let you galavant around pretending to be a hero.”

I shook my head. “I’m not being a hero, I’m being a Marshall. This’ll earn me points. Besides, we’re starting to get pretty close to Pott’s as it is. What if these raiders switch tactics from laying traps to ambushing Undertakers?”

Nico took her hand off the lasso and picked at her teeth. I could see the wheels turning, but I was also pretty certain I had her convinced. There was a reason she chose to be a postman, rather than staying in Pott’s. She was like me. Liked the action, couldn’t bear to stand still for too long. She just happened to be a bit more grounded about it than I am. Still, if I could give her even a half-decent reason to go for a scrap, or trek through an unknown deadzone, she’d take it.

“I’ll send you half the points I earn…”

She let out a reluctant sigh. “Fine. Let’s do it.”

I fought back a smile, thinking that if she saw one she might change her mind, and instead just nodded. We began walking toward the coordinates they’d given us. Each of us keeping our senses open and scanning to ensure that the trap wouldn’t be sprung earlier than the coordinates. Eventually, we found ourselves off the main path we were taking through deadzones and down to a series of side roads that worked their way off an old exit and through several small neighborhoods.

We were nearly to the point we’d been given on the radio when I started to smell the scent of gunpowder. I looked over at Nico who nodded at me. She pulled a small pistol out of her jacket that had a silencer on it, and held a combat knife in her other hand. We began circling around the point carefully. It was in the center of a cul-de-sac, and so we found ourselves weaving through dead trees in a wide circle around it until we started to find our targets.

There were a number of women arrayed on the rooftops, all with their guns ready, but laying down and generally at ease. I counted around a dozen, and a few more were in the center, looking unarmed and friendly, but I could smell the gunpowder on them from where I stood. I looked to Nico to start picking targets with her, and found that she was already gone.

I didn’t bother looking around for her, if she didn’t want to be found she wouldn’t be. I decided instead to pick my own targets. I moved to the nearest of the houses quickly and quietly, drawing my sword. I figured I could take a few of them out before the others were alerted.

I ran up to the house and quickly jumped up to it, pulling myself onto the roof. The two women who’d been waiting for an easy ambush reached for their rifles when they saw me, but I’d already closed the distance. I made two quick slashes of my sword and they were dead.

I ducked down onto the roof and laid myself flat, just in case I’d been seen, but there was no reaction. I looked over to the next house. They were all clustered closely together, and I gauged that I could leap to the roof of the next one fairly easily. I ran, and jumped. Fortunately, I was right about being able to make the jump. Less fortunate, was the fact I managed to land on top of one of the other raiders. I briefly became a tangle of limbs with a confused and terrified woman who began screaming at the top of her lungs. We rolled off the roof and I heard a snapping noise as she was crushed beneath me. Two more voices shouted above me on the roof, and I barely managed to pull out my pistol before a couple of raiders popped over the side of the roof with their rifles ready. I froze one, and unloaded on the other, dropping her. I fired a few more rounds at her frozen companion and they were both dead. Unfortunately, now the rest of them knew where I was. I untangled myself from the corpse below me, holstered my pistol and drew my rifle.

Rather than getting back on the roof, I jumped through a broken window into the house itself. I stayed low and listened as what sounded like dozens of footsteps all made their way to my position. I leaned past a wall and aimed my rifle at the door. It came open, and I opened fire, dropping another raider immediately. There was a sound behind me and I whipped around just in time to see another woman with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire charging toward me. The veins on her neck were pulsing, a telltale sign of blitz.

I activated freeze and dodged away. My ability froze her movement, but not her momentum. She slammed hard into the wall that was behind me, going halfway through it. I fired a couple rounds at her and then swung my rifle back around to the front door. There was a raider about to fire on me. Suddenly, a rope landed around her throat, and was drawn taut. The woman flew backwards with such force I heard a neck snap. Nico then appeared in the door, carefully re-wrapping her rope and placing it on her hip.

She checked her pistol, and wiped her knife clean on the edge of a dead woman’s jacket. “The rest are dead too.”

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I nodded. “Good job.”

“Thanks.” She looked around at the hole in the wall, the blood splatter that had hit me and my disheveled appearance and raised an eyebrow. “You too.”

“I was distracting them for you.”

“Sure you were. Let’s loot the bodies and go. We can divvy it up later.”

I nodded and began going body to body, picking up ammo, usable weapons, and a few other odds and ends as I went. I received the usual notification,

Excellent work Marshall! You’ve successfully performed a secondary goal of your job ‘Combat’! You’ve earned 60 Patriot Points!

I shot thirty of the points to Nico. She’d earned them. All of the bodies that were surrounding the house I’d taken cover in had their throats cleanly slit, or a single bullet wound to the heart or head. Overall she’d actually done more of the work than I had. I felt a little embarrassed at that. I’d just recently been in situations fighting giant mutant bears and assaulting a heavily defended compound, yet the first time I worked with a fellow deadman they’re the ones doing the heavy lifting. That being said I knew that If I’d gone in guns blazing I was sure I would have outperformed Nico, even before becoming a Marshall I was better in a straight up fight than she was. Nico never got into a fight like that though, more cautious than I was, more suited to the shadows.

I finished my looting, noting as I did that almost all of the women had a small tattoo of a spider somewhere on their person. It looked like there was a new gang in play in the wastes. The tactics they used reminded me of the encounter I’d had with Angela on our way to the black woods. I could only guess how many foolish men they’d managed to kill and rob so far.

Once Nico was done, I led the way back to the route we’d been taking. I felt refreshed overall. There had been a time not too long ago when I wouldn’t have taken an unnecessary risk like that, but things were different now. After I was done in Pott’s, whatever decisions they made or lectures they gave me, I didn’t see myself reverting any time soon.

When we were back on the route, Nico and I exchanged some gear based on what type of ammo we used, or what we thought was worth more points.

“So you get sixty points for every combat?”

I nodded. “More for completing investigations. Those tend to be a lot trickier though.”

“A class that rewards getting into fights. Seems you’ve found your calling.”

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