Echo In the Machine - Chapter 2
An expanded tale written from prompts while playing ECO MOFOS!!
Start from the beginning of my ECO MOFOS!! Solo Playthrough story HERE!
CHAPTER 2: WESTBOUND
It had been longer than I could remember since I’d headed west toward New Ashington.
I usually kept clear of Corpos and anyone else that messed with my mojo. My routes ran east, through the Wastes toward Pillbox Alley. Familiar food, drink, and whatever passed for companionship when the Ruins got too quiet. It was all East for me. The wilderness to the west was a change of pace and something I sorely missed. What I didn’t miss were bandits, transient factions and people who asked too many questions.
But I promised Bob a solid.
So I loaded my gear, dusted off my hat, took stock of my Juice, and made sure Ole’ Sixey was still in working order. The old six-shooter had seen better centuries, but it still made them stand to attention when it had to. I slipped it back into its holster and pulled on my trench coat. The coat felt right. It was heavy enough to block the wind but light enough not to slow me down.
Before I left, I calibrated my locator device and tapped in the droid’s serial code. A faint pulse blinked on the screen, pointing west. Sleeping or not, the machine was still out there… hopefully exactly where we’d buried it.
The weather was strange in a good way. Sunlight broke through high clouds, and the wind shifted just enough to keep the heat from settling on my shoulders. As I left the ruins, the dead scrublands vanished into woodlands, and then the trees opened up around a lake so clear it looked like a piece of the sky had fallen into the earth.
I’d forgotten how close this place was. Almost a full day’s walk, and yet it felt like another world. Something stuck in time from an unmolested world of yesteryear. The water was so inviting I nearly walked straight into trouble.
Two figures were near the water’s edge. Not Punks. Definitely not Corpos. Their clothes were patchwork armor and scavenged parts, and they moved like they didn’t care who saw them. Bandits of some kind.
I froze behind a half-fallen tree, heart thumping against my ribs.
Dammit. Not yet. I had just left my goddamned property behind. I wasn’t dying over a drink of water.
But they hadn’t seen me. Both were too focused on the lake, crouched low and scooping water into dented containers. One laughed loud and shoved the other, splashing him hard enough to start a splashing battle. Their voices echoed across the water’s surface.
I slid my hand to Ole’ Sixey and eased it out of the holster just in case there would be a disagreement of sorts.
I noticed a black magpie stitched onto the shoulder of one of their jackets, with a chain hanging in its beak. FKA. Finders Keepers Association.
A loosely affiliated group of scavengers. Predators. They waited near soft roads and bunker openings, then stripped Wasters clean when they wandered in alone. Their gear, their shoes, and sometimes even their teeth. It was strange to see them this far from any habitation. Two against one though. There was no need to poke into something that didn’t concern me, even if most FKA members were really cowards deep down.
The splashing turned into another burst of laughter, and that gave me my chance.
I stayed low and worked along the far tree line, slow and quiet, keeping tree trunks between me and the lake. My boots found stone and bare ground without thinking. Branches and leaves slid past untouched. For a moment, it felt like I was good at this again.
I slipped past them clean and left them behind like they never mattered.
Farther down the bank, a runoff stream trickled into the lake through a small spill of rocks. I crouched there and filled my canteen, keeping one eye on the goons and one on the trees.
Either their lookout was dead, the water had dragged them back into some half-forgotten childhood game, or I was better at this than I remembered.
By the time the lake vanished behind the trees, my hands had stopped shaking. I checked the locator again… still a ping. I lifted my eyes and kept moving.
CHAPTER 1 - THE MESSAGE | CHAPTER 3 - STRANGE AIR
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