>>End stasis

//Stasis ending…

Glory’s optics flickered open, her processor back to full functionality in a fraction of a second. The first thing she noticed was the temperature; far higher than it had been when she’d entered stasis. But, she supposed that was only normal, given the weather common in the Great Southern Desert.

She slowly sat up and looked around, noting Needles and Dixon still asleep in their own beds. Needles reminded Glory of a corpse; completely still and silent except for the barely-noticeable rise and fall of his chest. Dixon, meanwhile, snored loud enough to wake a corpse, and it honestly surprised Glory that neither she nor Needles had been woken by the noise during the day.

She stood up, pulled her boots back onto her feet, and shuffled out to the main part of the longhouse, where the fire pit waited. Wilkes sat in almost the exact same position they’d been in when she and Needles had gone to sleep that morning, and barely twitched when Glory approached.

“Are you alright?” Glory asked.

They nodded.

“Anything interesting happen while we were out?”

They shook their head.

Glory decided she wasn’t going to get any interesting conversation out of the suited figure, and she instead sank down to sit beside them, and wait for the other two to wake up.

Outside, the sun’s descent beneath the horizon was mostly complete, though there was still enough time to watch as the last sliver disappeared from view, leaving the sky a brilliant blend of pinks, oranges, and reds.

“It’s beautiful,” Glory breathed.

Wilkes, of course, said nothing.

Glory had expected sitting with Wilkes’ eerily still, silent figure to be tense and awkward, but it was almost… comforting? Familiar, perhaps. There was no expectation to speak, so they instead simply existed beside each other. At least, until Glory heard shuffling behind them. She could still hear Dixon snoring loud enough to collapse the building on top of them, so she assumed it was Needles. And, moments later, the skinny healer came to sit beside her.

“Good evening,” she murmured, earning a low hum.

He yawned, jaw cracking as he stretched. After a moment, he slipped Glory’s jacket off his own shoulders and deposited them back onto hers.

“It’s nighttime,” Glory protested. “You’ll get cold again.”

“You need it more than I do.”

No, I don’t, Glory wanted to protest. Needles knew. But…

Was he offering a way to pretend to be more human? Even at the expense of his own wellbeing?

The determined glint in his icy eyes convinced Glory that she wouldn’t make him accept it back that evening, so she reluctantly slid her own arms through the sleeves, tugging it closer around herself. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he insisted.

Dixon’s snoring stuttered, and he snorted. The three of them turned around to watch as he jerked upright in bed with a snuffle, only to grimace in pain. “Evenin’,” he rasped, one hand hovering over his ribs.

“Good evening.” Glory stood with a stretch, and Needles all but leapt to his feet and hurried over to check on Dixon’s ribs, earning annoyed grumbled and half-hearted swats of the marshal’s hands.

“Get me outta this bed,” he grumped. “I feel like a damn invalid.”

Glory and Needles shared a look, and Glory hurried over to help Dixon over to the nearest chair at a nearby desk. Glory assumed it was the mayor’s desk—it, like the chair Dixon had inhabited the previous morning, had been one of the few pieces of furniture not pillaged and destroyed.

Dixon glared heatedly at the far wall as Dixon undid his shirt to check on his ribs. Though it was difficult to tell with his dark skin, Glory figured he was covered in bruises, with the way he kept flinching with every little touch.

Or, perhaps, ticklish? Not that he’d be likely to admit it. The corner of Glory’s mouth tried to tug up in amusement, but she quashed the reaction.

Finally, Needles stood and backed away from Dixon, turning to face Glory at the threshold between the front of the longhouse and the back.

“Is he all right?” Glory asked softly, concern bleeding into her voice despite herself. Dixon was infuriating, stubborn, foul-mouthed, and he could be incredibly rude (especially to Needles), but he was also a skilled marksman, and he no doubt knew the area around Black Sun better than any of them. The thought of Dixon succumbing to his wounds was… distressing.

Needles half-shrugged. “He’s doing better, and I did say that we could leave this evening. I would prefer keeping him for at least a few more days, just to be sure, but if I tried to do that, he’d probably try to sneak out without us, and that’s just asking for his ribs to get worse.”

Glory nodded. She only had basic first aid programming installed, but it was a basic fact that injuries could be made much, much worse if one didn’t properly take care of them.

“But…” Needles sighed. “I understand his urgency. Madman clans tend to not be gentle with their slaves. If we don’t stop them; if they reach their destination with their new slaves in tow—”

“A lot of Black Sun’s surviving population won’t be survivors for much longer,” Glory finished, earning a nod.

“Exactly.”

“Hey, geniuses!” Dixon called over to them. “If you’re gonna gossip ‘bout me, the least you could do is include me in the conversation.” His voice was deliberately, deceptively light. He was trying to convince them that he was in a better mood than he had been that morning.

Glory didn’t believe it for a second.

She and Needles trekked back to stand at Dixon’s side. He’d pulled his chair a little closer to the desk while they’d been talking, and had begun going through the mayor’s belongings. Glory’s gaze immediately drifted to an old bottle of wine laying on its side, and a trail of shot glasses, all of which somehow fit perfectly inside the drawer. Well, at least they understood the mayor’s priorities.

“Wine,” Dixon snorted. “Never understood the guy’s obsession with wine. Always been more of a hard liquor guy myself.”

“And I thought humans lived to defy expectations and stereotypes,” Glory muttered, earning a sideways look from Dixon.

“You’re weird,” he said, setting the bottle on top of the desk and continuing his rummaging, only to run across a folded sheet of paper that had been hidden under the bottle. “Hello. What’s this?”

He unfolded the note, his gaze sweeping over the rough, jagged writing. Glory did her best to read over his shoulder, her stress levels rising sharply as she realized exactly what the letter was.

Proclamation:

The Order of Vindictus do hereby claim the citizens of Outpost 173 “Black Sun” under the Law of Conscription, totaling 57 men, 48 women, and 11 children under the age of twelve years.

Let it be known that the Mayor of Outpost 173, Jefferson Davis, attempted to avert this Law of Conscription by offering the people under his care willingly, so long as Vindictus agreed to leave Mayor Davis and his son Mason Davis (age 17 years) free and unspoiled.

The Order of Vindictus is not some corrupt agency of tyranny to be swayed or bribed by heretics. Mayor Davis and his offspring was conscripted like everyone else under his care, and Mayor Davis is to be made into a foreman in his new life, to administer his people as he did before.

All other citizens of Outpost 173 who do not meet the criteria of conscription are to be purged.

If it be a heretic reading this proclamation, know this: Vindictus serves a master you could not possibly hope to overcome, and they will cleanse this world of the tyrants’ rule like a great wind. You may fall under Vindictus’s rule, or you may be crushed beneath our heel, but you will not stand in our masters’ way.

Glory to the Order and our masters

Vannevar Baroque, Scribe of the Order of Vindictus

Dixon’s hands began to shake. His wide eyes flitted back and forth over the note again and again, as if trying to will it to change right before his eyes. As if he were hallucinating.

“Cultists…” Dixon’s grip on the paper tightened to the point where Glory worried he would tear it. Glory gently tugged the paper away from him; if nothing else, it’d be useful evidence, if they ever ran into this ‘Order of Vindictus’.

Needles came up behind Glory to read the note as well, and his eyes widened as they scanned over the page. At the end, he looked to Dixon, who was glaring at him.

“Did you know?”

“No.”

Dixon took a deep, shaking breath. “Do you know these people? This… Vindictus?” He snorted mirthlessly. “Stupid name.”

“It is the sect my brother and I belonged to,” Needles admitted softly. “But we were… banished. You think members of Vindictus would willingly work with the fallen?”

“What happened?” Glory asked.

Needles shook his head. “I don’t know, exactly. Ghost did… something that displeased the Order. He was banished. I was given a choice—renounce him and wholly give myself over to my covenant, or join him.”

“And you chose your brother,” Glory concluded.

“Why would you stab your brother in the back to help us if you willingly jumped into that cannibal shitshow to stay with him?” Dixon demanded.

Needles’ gaze drifted down to the floor. “After the exile, Ghost was… different. He was no longer the brother I once knew.”

“Yeah, yeah. Too bad, so sad.” Dixon sneered. “I’ll ask you again; did you have anything to do with this?”

“No!” Needles snapped. “We were exiled years ago! I have no idea what they’re doing dragging entire villages off into the desert, or why they would be working with the madman clans! This has never happened before!”

“Do you think the mayor’s attempt to bribe the cultists is what prompted this attack?” Glory asked carefully.

Needles frowned lightly, and shook his head. “Not if the Order already had it in their heads to attack the village, for whatever reason. Though it probably sealed the townsfolk’s fates. The Order finds it insulting to be bribed by someone they consider to be beneath them.”

Dixon's frown deepened. “That still doesn’t explain why they’d be workin’ with raiders, though. I thought cultists did their own dirty work.”

“Normally, they do,” Needles agreed. “This is… something else. Something I’ve never seen before.”

“Wonderful.” Dixon shifted forward with a groan. “Listen, the Mayor might’ve been a slime ball, but the people here don’t deserve that. We need to find them, an’ soon. So lemme know the damn verdict, doc. Am I good to move or not?”

Needles sighed. “Well, I have good news.” Despite his words, he wore a frown.

Dixon snorted again. “Sure as hell don’t look like good news, judgin’ by the look on yer face.”

“It’s good news for you, I suppose. Not-so-good news for me, as your healer.” He stepped forward and prodded gently at Dixon’s chest, earning a pained hiss but little more. “You are, indeed, doing better than you were this morning. So long as you promise to take it easy and let the rest of us handle any more strenuous tasks, I suppose I can’t keep you here.”

“Good.” Dixon immediately tried to stand up, only to groan and stagger into Needles. Glory hurried over to help the ex-cannibal with his unruly patient.

“Slowly!” Needles snapped. “Be careful! You’re nowhere near fully healed!”

“Healing takes too damn long,” Dixon grumbled, but he obeyed Needles’ command. He notably leaned farther into Glory than Needles, but at least he didn’t look like he was about to attack the man. “Get me outta here.”

Glory helped him hobble out toward the front of the longhouse, where Wilkes had stood to greet them.

“The raiders were workin’ with cultists,” was the first thing out of Dixon’s mouth, earning a slight twitch from Wilkes. Glory had no idea how to interpret that gesture. “We’re gonna get ‘em back.”

Wilkes nodded.

“You don’t need to come with us, y’know,” Dixon said.

Wilkes shrugged, then shook their head, stubbornly stepping in line with the rest of the group, arms crossed over their chest.

The foursome stepped out into the cool, gray desert at dusk, and almost immediately, Dixon shrugged Glory and Needles away. “I’m fine. If I need help, I’ll ask for it.”

“No, you won’t,” Glory said.

Dixon huffed a breath. “Whatever. Point is, I’m fine.”

“All right.” Needles held his hands up placatingly. “All right. Just… be careful, please.”

“Yeah,” Dixon grunted. He took a few steps down the main road through the town before stopping again. For a moment, Glory worried his stubbornness had hurt him, but he instead seemed to be staring off into the distance.

“Are you… all right?” Glory asked awkwardly. Of course he wasn’t all right, but she wasn’t sure what else to ask.

Dixon, however, didn’t take offense. “They deserve a real burial.”

Glory’s brows furrowed. “The raiders?”

“Fuck, no!” Dixon spat, before calming. “The old folks. The ones the raiders didn’t want.”

“Do we really have the time?” Glory asked tentatively. “Every moment we wait, the raiders—”

Dixon broke away from her with a growl, interrupting her delicate question. He half-hobbled towards the still-standing metal outbuilding that Glory and Needles had taken shelter on top of that morning and pulled the door open, revealing the interior of a rickety toolshed.

Pulling out one of several rust-coated shovels, he made his way to the edge of town and began to dig.

Glory, Wilkes, and Needles looked at each other for a long moment, before Wilkes trailed over to retrieve a shovel and join him. Another minute, and Needles followed as well. Glory waited the longest, but she’d finally sighed in defeat and joined her companions as well.

The four of them certainly worked quicker than Dixon would have just on his own, but it still took an excruciatingly long amount of time to dig a pit deep enough for all the town’s elderly citizens. Their charred corpses were impossible to identify, but Dixon didn’t care. He remembered most of their names, and as soon as the bodies were covered, he went to work fashioning a large marker from planks torn off the mayor’s longhouse, and began carving names and dates into the warped wood. When he finished, he had thirty-seven names etched into the wood, though Glory had counted forty bodies interred into the mass grave.

She kept that to herself, however. Dixon was already unstable—who knew how he would respond to the information?

At the end of it all, they stood and surveyed their work. Dixon’s chin rested on top of his shovel’s handle, the corners of his downturned. “’T’s funny, almost,” he mumbled. “Most of those folk—” he nodded over the graves, “—ain’t never been farther ’n their front doors. Now they won’t never leave.” He sighed. “My Aunt Hazel used to say Death was the great equalizer. That no matter your stature in life, powerful or powerless, Citizen or Wastelander, we all end up in the ground at the end of the day.” He glanced over to his companions, who gazed evenly back at him, and shrugged. “It’s just what she used to say.”

Glory fidgeted in place, her fingers flexing into fists, then flattening out rhythmically. “I’m… I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” Needles murmured.

Dixon nodded stiffly. “Well, at least they’re at rest, now.”

Glory didn’t really understand—they’d already been dead; how did their bodies being buried put them to ‘rest’? But she knew humans could be… illogical about their death rites. She kept her mouth shut.

They left the raiders’ corpses where they fell—to be feasted on by carrion birds or ripperbeasts, or whichever creatures came through.

“We should get movin’,” Dixon announced, straightening up. “We’re burnin’ moonlight. Spread out an’ see if y’ can’t find any supplies. We’ll need them.”

They abandoned their shovels by the makeshift graveyard, and turned to head back into the ruined settlement, pawing through charred buildings. There wasn’t much to find, though Dixon did retrieve the minigun Lucy had abandoned in the middle of town, and a bit more ammunition. Somehow, Needles had managed to locate some basic medical supplies and bottled water, which ought to endear him to the rest of the group at least somewhat. And Glory spotted Wilkes stuffing some more of what looked suspiciously similar to Lucy’s explosives into one of their coat pockets.

Now slightly better prepared, they lined up and headed north-east; the same direction Lucy had gone the previous morning.

Alone.

Glory didn’t expect to find her alive again, but Dixon appeared slightly more hopeful now. He walked with confidence, though there was still a slight limp to his stride.

"It's a fairly straight shot from here to Sanctum Mesa," he said. "Maybe a day or two's walk."

“And what if the raiders attacked them as well?” Glory asked.

Dixon’s stride faltered momentarily, but he continued on with a scowl. “Sanctum Mesa’s a bigger settlement—more people, more guards. More deputies. If they did, Sanctum Mesa would’a put up a helluva lot more fight.”

The moon stretched high into the desert sky as they continued their long walk across the dark sand.