Part 3 here: https://steemit.com/game/@olmech/trapper-walsh-a-dance-with-death
My last encounter with a Radscorpion had been much too close for my liking. I had done everything correctly and am fortunate to be alive to tell the tale. It was only a matter of time before I drew the short straw. I had to find a way to stack the odds in my favor and soon. I do not fear death but I am in no hurry at all to prove it and I could not simply stop what I do. It's all I really know how to do and at 37 years old, I am getting to be an old man for this day and age. There are after all just so many times a man can draw from the deck and high card death.
Back in the days before the Great War, American soldiers were equipped with power armor. These suits of armor allowed human beings to do things they ordinarily would not be able to do. Huge weapons could be carried with ease and they were radiation proof. If I could get my hands on one of these suits, I could safely enter the Glowing Sea instead of having to skirt the edges and draw my quarry out. The heavy armor would protect me from close encounters like the one I had just survived.
I remember from one of my hunting forays into the hills to the north having actually seen one of these suits about twelve years ago. It had been abandoned for one reason or another and even then was probably not capable of being powered up. In a way it would be a shame to move it or try to do anything with it because it had stood there for two hundred years or more as a monument to what once was. I wrestled with the idea for a while and decided that the past is past. I would try to retrieve this suit and make it a monument to the future. It would take about two days to reach the place I remember it being and I knew that I would be unable to get it working where it stood. Hell, I don't even know anything about these things at all. I would enlist Pops for help and together with his team of brahmin, we would drag it back home if need be.
Pops and I eventually found the large metal skeleton right where I had remembered it being twelve years earlier. Still it stood looking off into a vast eerie world as if it had been charged by its previous owner to do just that. Everything on the suit was stiff and rusty but even if it had been in great condition, I had no clue how to get in it and make it work. Bringing the brahmin turned out to be a smart move. We hitched the team up to it and pulled the suit down on its back, then rolled it over on its chest. There seemed to be less things on the front of it that would snag the ground as we pulled it with the brahmin. We then set out back in the direction of home with our iron trophy in tow but getting it home would be the easy part. Getting the thing running again would be an education and I needed to find a teacher.
We got back home late on a Sunday. I left the machine laying down in front of the house then went on up to see Mom for some food. I showered and went to bed after that knowing I had to leave out early the next morning if I intended to meet the caravan on Tuesday. I really hoped they would know where I could find someone to help me with my new toy.
I met the caravan Tuesday morning and offered up my problem to them. One of the guards told me there was only one place to go in all of the Commonwealth for information on power armor. He told me to see someone named Rowdy at the Atom Cats garage over on the coast due east from where we were. I winced at the thought of having to go all the way to the coast. That would take ten days under the best of conditions. I thanked them for the information, traded for provisions and went back up on the mountain.
I told Pops of my plan to head out east to find this place and that he should allow me about a month before he got worried and came looking for me. This should allow me plenty of time to get there, spend some time learning what I needed to know and then get back home. I knew there would be obstacles and I allowed for that in my timetable. Nobody just walks across the Commonwealth without encountering beasts, Raiders or sometimes Gunner mercenaries. I would take a couple of days to get rested up and then head out. I did not like long trips and rarely took them. I did not really care for people much either but if I am going to adapt and survive, I had to find a new way of getting things done.
More to come...
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