Chapter 2 Chapter 2: Ghost of the Van
The cold seeped into my bones, a deep, aching chill that adrenaline could no longer hold back. My fingers, stiff and clumsy, fumbled in the pocket of my worn leather jacket. I pulled out the candy jar, a relic from a sweeter world, now scuffed and clouded, its contents a far cry from sugar.
The lid popped open, the click unnaturally loud in the silent dark. I pushed aside the greasy rags I’d stuffed inside to muffle the telltale rattle of pills. My private symphony of survival. A quick inventory in the dim light, my fingers counted by touch. Seven white tabs: Rad meds. A week’s worth to keep the creeping rot at bay, if I was lucky. Three green: painkillers, for the kind of hurt that makes you want to lie down and never get up. Two blue-yellow caps: Angel-Kiss, saved for a real celebration, or a day when I had to outrun my own exhaustion.
And at the bottom, the prize: three pale-blue capsules. Moon-Stims. Military-grade focus, razor clarity. The Sisters’ favourite. One should be enough to keep the wolves of sleep at bay till sunrise. My hand didn’t hesitate. I tapped two into my palm. Go big or go home. And I had no home to go to.
I tossed them back, the bitter chemical taste coating my tongue, then chased them with the last fiery swallow from my hip flask. The homebrewed moonshine wasn’t meant for sipping. It was a weapon, burning a cleansing path down my throat into my gut, shocking the cold from my system for a heartbeat.
I settled back, the chemicals already beginning their cold, electric hum in my veins. My gaze fell on the Wastelander, his face pale and stark in the starlight leaking through a crack in the hut. The lines of his jaw, the set of his eyes… a ghost tugged at my memory.
He looks a little like Dog.
Older, maybe. More weathered. But the same strong jawline, the same quiet intensity around the eyes, even in unconsciousness. A hollow ache bloomed in my chest. I missed Dog’s broad chest, that solid wall I leaned against after long patrols. I missed his eyes, always smiling, always crinkling at the corners, finding the joke in everything, even the end of the world.
Six months.
That’s how long it’s been since it happened. Two months since I last saw a real town, a festering trading post that didn’t last the night. And none with walls as strong as Oasis.
Six months since I lost my six traveling companions.
Six months since I gained my freedom, at a price that still feels like chains.
It wasn’t a mission I’d chosen. My recent… missteps, a tendency to question orders, a taste for improvisation, had earned me what the High Mother called a “period of reflective service.” A demotion, plain and simple. My penance: lead a team of greenhorns and malcontents on a half-baked mission to infiltrate some backwater called Hope’s End and convert it to The Sisters’ way. In other words, bend them to the yoke of the Sisters of Mercy. A task so far beneath me it stank of insult.
We came bearing gifts like serpents in silk: medicine for their sick, weapons for their defence, and promises of a glorious new future under The Sisters’ protection. The town was ours before we even finished talking. The headman, a greedy little man with eyes too small and too hungry, sealed the deal in five minutes of grunting in his dusty shack. A few well-faked moans, and he was spiritually converted. My team had similar success: trade secured, loyalty bought, and, most importantly, a charter for a Sister-approved church in the heart of their high street. Our foothold.
Then the shooting started.
By morning, the air had shifted. We gathered in the town square, my team, myself, every man of age from the town, to display our wares and seal the deal. But gratitude wasn’t in the air. Hunger was. Greed thickened the square like smoke. The sun glinted on twitching, sweaty faces. Their eyes weren’t on the medicine. They were on the van. On our guns. On us. The tension pulled wire tight.
The first shot didn’t come from us. It took Dog, the only man on our team, our tracker, my part-time lover, clean through the forehead. He dropped without a sound. I didn’t feel it then, not really. The shock was too vast. But every night since, I’ve felt it, the cold, empty hole torn through the world.
We froze, a tableau of betrayal. The headman stepped forward, grinning, his voice slick with false reassurance.
“Now, ladies, just drop yer iron, nice and slow. Do that, and none of ya’ll get hurt.”
I didn’t think. I drew my pistol and shot him first, right through his smirking mouth. A .38 slug for his lying tongue.
Chaos. Screaming chaos.
Our van, the only way out, sat ten meters behind us, doors wide open. It might as well have been ten miles. Only three of us reached it: me, Marly, and June.
And of the three, I was the only one not bleeding.
Most of the supplies we’d brought, our bribes, our foothold, spilled out the van’s back doors as Marly slammed the accelerator. Bullets hissed past like angry hornets, pinging off the metal frame. In the end, it was those same supplies, and the town’s bottomless greed, that saved us. Their brawling scramble to grab what they could slowed their pursuit, buying us the precious minutes we needed to escape.
Nearly half an hour of reckless, bone-rattling driving later, the tension finally eased enough to breathe, to speak, to take stock. While Marly gripped the wheel white knuckled, I crawled back to June, curled in a foetal ball between the last few crates.
“You good?” I asked, forcing brightness into my voice I didn’t feel. The van stank of blood and gunpowder.
“Those bastards got me twice,” she hissed, pale faced.
“Why’d you start shooting?” Her glare was sharp as broken glass, full of accusation.
“They killed Dog!” I snapped, fumbling bandages, trying to soothe wounds and anger at once.
“Dog was one man. We could’ve talked our way out. We could’ve finished the mission,” she muttered, turning away.
“Marly, you hearing this?” I called up front, my voice strained. “June thinks we should’ve dropped our guns and played nice with the men who just executed us.”
Marly smirked over her shoulder, a dangerous gleam in her eyes. “Classic June. Always knows best when the shooting’s over.”
The conversation died. I patched June up as best I could, then dropped into the passenger seat beside Marly. The wind whipped through her short hair as she drove, window down, a faint, serene smile on her lips. The setting sun gilded her profile. For a moment, it felt like just another drive, just another mission.
“Did they get you too? Let me see,” I asked, scanning her torso for blood.
“Later,” she murmured, soft, distant. “Nothing bad.” Then, almost to herself: “I love driving.”
For those last few moments, with the wind in her hair and that peaceful smile, she looked like an angel carved from fire and light.
The van veered gently, gracefully, off the road. It wasn’t a crash. It was a sigh. The tires found a soft ditch, and we rolled to a gentle stop.
“Marly?” My hand went to her arm.
Her head tilted toward the window, as if admiring the view. But the pool of dark blood spreading in the footwell told the truth. She’d been dead the second she was hit, a gut shot hidden by her jacket. How she held on, how she drove us this far, was pure will.
June’s voice broke the silence from the back. “Hey, guys? What’s up? Marly, you drive like shit.”
I stumbled from the van, the world tilting. Even after a thousand deaths, this one twisted in my gut like a hot knife. I bent over, hands on knees, retching into the dust until nothing was left inside me but the acid taste of failure and grief.
The distant snarl of dogs snapped me back, to this freezing hut, the Peacemaker heavy in my lap, the Wastelander’s shallow breathing beside me, and the phantom taste of bile still sharp in my mouth. The Stims buzzed in my veins, ensuring I wouldn’t forget a single, agonizing detail.
The night was long. And memory was its own kind of punishment.