Raiders, five of them. Armed, clambering through broken doors and over rubble towards them. Robco spoke in his flat, even tone, “Junior, Rusty. I love you.” A panel slid open in the cab of the truck, the boy disappearing through in an instant. The older man ran the treads like everything was fine to buy time. John lent forward trying to reach the shotgun, but the lead raider drew a pistol, firing twice in the air.

“Don’t move! Shut it off, get down here.” Growled the lead raider, pistol aimed at them, his pack like gang surrounding the side of the truck. Each one armed, sickly looking. Wearing crude armour and tattered clothes, thick with grime. The sound of the gunshots sent John’s adrenaline racing, bringing the uneasy feeling of electricity massing in his spine. Priming his nerves as it did before, sharpening his vision, magnifying details.

As he climbed down from the truck, held at gunpoint, the green outlines and scrolling data returned. It showed him the outline of something in the back of the truck, something wide, heavy, mechanical. He couldn’t make it out even as data related to it scrolled past. John felt a hand on his shoulder coaxing him to turn and kneel. Robco did the same. He looked calm, which calmed John, allowing him to delay the nightmare, dreamlike state creeping through his body. “Caps, gimme the caps old man!” Demanded the lead raider.

“Got no caps, taking bots to sell, not going to buy.” Robco sounded passive, calming the tension.

“What’s in the back? Chems? Booze? Water? What you got old man?” John looked at the lead raider, his scarred face grimacing, twitching, sickly.

“Just my old dog Rusty, you leave him be he won’t bother you none.” The lead raider flicked his wrist sending a pair of raiders to the back of the truck. He stepped back, stuffing his pistol clumsily into the waistband of his tattered jeans. Standing like a ruler awaiting tribute as the other two closed in on John and Robco. Sawn off shotgun levelled at John by one, a small revolver held menacingly over Robco by the other.

The pair at the back of truck cleared John’s eye line, triggering whatever the boy and his grandfather kept hidden. A glowing red eye illuminating the canvas, and in a low, bone chilling, synthesized voice it emitted two words.

“Threat detected.” Something rotated into place with a clunk, then spat white hot led through the air, through the thin canvas covering, and through the raider’s chest. Repeating the process in an instant to put another bullet through the second raider with an equally loud boom. Leaving three. And sending the nightmare, dreamlike state into overdrive.

Time slowed, data scrolled. Each of the raiders were highlighted in green, percentage values being calculated, assigned to each in turn. The weapons they held pulsed green. Catalogued, interpreted, by the system running in his head, dotted lines drawn from them, around them. Then finally a green person shaped outline almost moving through the world.

Trying to assert some form of control, John stopped fighting the flow of information, going with it instead. John began to see what started unfolding before his eyes, inside his eyes. A plan, a schematic, laid over the world showing him what to do, all presented in impossibly slowed time. Data stopped scrolling, percentages locked in at ninety five, person shaped outlines fixed. Instinctively John shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, lowering his arms. His muscles tensed, nerves super charged with electricity. A single word flashed inside his eyes.

*EXECUTE*

John bolted to the side, moving his head from the double barrels while getting to his feet. His trailing arm struck the underside of the shotgun, following the dotted line, aiming it under the raiders jaw. His attacker's own finger pulling the trigger. His sickly face removed in a cone of blood and bone, expanding quickly, even in the impossibly slowed time.

Next the green outline drew John’s hand to the pistol tucked in the leader’s waist band. His scarred face seemingly unaware of John’s movement. Still turned to his pack members getting cut down at the back of the truck. With an iron grip John took the pistol, firing as soon as he could. A bullet ripped through the exposed skin at the raiders waist, expelling red flesh downwards from the back of the tattered jeans. The pistol slide flew back, loading another round. Arm outstretched, John pressed the heated muzzle against the raider’s visibly pulsing neck vein. He fired without hesitation, creating a blanket like wave of blood in the air.

John stood fully upright as he moved round the leader, dying faster than he fell. Robco had drawn his pistol. Moving as fast as he could in the impossibly slowed time that clung to everything except John. The last attacker managed to aim the small revolver straight at John. With confidence in the green outlines laid over the world, John took aim with the pistol as the revolver fired. He watched a bullet propelled from the snub barrel with flame and smoke. John didn’t move. He didn’t know if he could move beyond the person shaped outline he followed. Riding the current of the nightmare, dreamlike state.

The revolver bullet struck the crude armour on the dead leader’s back, hanging lifeless and still failing between them. John fired, hitting the last raider standing just above his bloodshot, bruised eye. Like flipping an off switch his body went limp. Dropping slowly as Robco finally got a shot off, catching the already dead body in the gut.

The red indicator bloomed fully in his peripheral vision. The same iron grip that took the pistol, held it rigidly while firing, released with same intensity. The gun dropped just as the glowing red eye targeted John then powered down. Ending the threat, snapping time back to normal and laying bare the carnage John had conjured.

Robco got to his feet, taking in the events that unfolded in a blink of his eye. John stood motionless save for the deep, rhythmic, breathing. “Junior?” Robco shouted with concern.

“I’m ok.” A muffled response came from inside the truck. “Is John ok?” John saw Robco look at him, looking at the man who needed to be rescued from a ghoul yesterday. The man who struggled to shoot a bottle this morning. The man who just killed three raiders with their own guns.

“He’s…he’s fine, just shook up is all. Stay put now, we’ll be moving in no time.” The older man approached John slowly. His flat, even tone breaking through the return of ever deafening silence. “You’re ok John, we’re all ok, now we gotta get moving but we need to clean up first. Five minutes and we’re gone.” John nodded. He watched as the older man quickly checked the bodies at the back of the truck. A strange look on his face, almost relief. Not just relief that they were dead, something more specific, as if they'd told the older man something. “John, get his feet.” The older man grabbed the arms of the dead, scar faced leader, John grabbed the feet. Robco nodded to a partially collapsed, red brick building. They lugged the dead leader inside, blood pouring from him like a burst pipe.

They dragged the leaking body into the first room off the hall. Concrete floor covered in the wooden boards that had been the ceiling. Rotting furniture, peeling wallpaper, a home once. “This’ll do.” Robco said as he began searching the dead man. First he took his boots. A dull, stained, fixed blade knife, dropping out. He retrieved a pouch. A magazine full of ammo, and a few small metal canisters fitted with plastic mouthpieces. John wanted to ask what they were. He didn't, afraid one question would break the dam he felt in his mind. The only thing holding back the flood of questions without answers.

Next came the man who held a gun at Robco, more leaking, more lugging, more looting. Then came the corpse John avoided looking at. Knelt, slumped forward, face, jaw, forehead, all gone. He approached looking over the slumped, dead shoulder. Something crunched under his heavy work boot, teeth. With an unceremonious kick Robco pushed the corpse onto its back. Blood and pulped grey matter came spilling out of the opened skull. More lugging, more leaking, more looting.

The crude armour that hadn’t stopped a bullet from a small revolver. It looked like it did more harm than good to the raider wearing it at the back of the truck. Steel plate blasted inward. Flesh burnt. Organs ripped apart. The mechanical glowing red eye had eliminated the threat it detected.

By the time they dumped the fourth body the older man’s strength started failing. “You know we gotta do this right.” He said through heavy breaths, “Bunch of their pals show up, see dead bodies and tracks. Maybe next time they shoot first.” John nodded, he understood.

The last raider had been bare chested. John rethought his opinion of the crude armour. He looked through the hole where a stomach should be. Everything from the ribs down to the waist gone, replaced with a blood filled cavity. John took the legs, Robco the arms. After a few steps the older man’s grip failed, dropping the body while John kept moving. Muscle tore, skin ripped, leaving the body in half. Blood laced with shit pouring out, making a colour that reminded John of organic recyc.

The older man covered his mouth as he turned away from the smell. “I got this.” Said John, the first words he’d spoken since starting the gruesome task. With determination he grabbed an arm in one hand and a leg in another. Dragging the split carcass into the building. He dumped the dead raider beside himself, beside his slaughtered pack. John turned to leave, only to stop in the doorway, remembering what Robco had done. He checked the pockets of the legs, stuck shut with blood. He felt a thin metal cylinder, pushing it up and out, an injector. Next he undid the simple leather boots, finding a key attached to a white circular shape. John took the objects with him, finding Robco at the back of the truck. His face covered with patterned cloth below the eyes.

The older man filled brightly coloured plastic buckets from a tank under the cargo bed. He raised his hand so John wouldn’t get too close. Wearing a thick rubber glove up to the elbow, Robco mixed powder that looked like the natural rock faces into the buckets.

John raised the injector, plus the key to show the older man. “Don’t waste nothing out here.” Robco pointed to the pile of looted guns and items on the truck gate, John threw in the injector along with the key. “Almost there, take a bucket. Don’t get it on you.” The noxious mixture fizzed and popped as it sloshed around in the bucket. Robco stopped John at the door to the first floor room. “You don’t need to see this.” He put the bucket down and stayed in the hall as the masked, older man set about his gruesome, practised, work.

John couldn’t help himself, he peeked round the door to see the mixture eating away at the bodies. Fizzing, hissing, corroding the evidence of what he’d done.

It wasn’t the smell, maybe the sound, but John couldn’t be near it. He went back outside walked to the corner trying to rid his view of red. Only to see more of it at his feet, darker, dried, but red all the same. Drag marks leading down the block into an alley just before a sign in the same shape as the on the key he found. He heard Robco refilling the plastic buckets, tipping them out over the red around the truck. The mixture reacting, breaking down the viscera left in their wake. John beckoned Robco over, showing him the trails and matching sign. The older man looked around. “We go lookin for trouble we might find it.” He looked at John, “Then again, maybe we can handle trouble.”

John waited at the corner while the older man retrieved the looted key from the truck. When he returned Robco handed John the pistol he’d taken from the scar faced leader. An uninvited thought, unearned knowledge, told him things he understood but couldn’t explain how. Forty five calibre, semi automatic, with a seven round magazine. “It’s loaded, follow me, stay quiet. Anything goes wrong you drop your gun and get back to the truck, Junior’s got Rusty ready.” John did as instructed, relieved almost to have a task complete.

Guns drawn, the pair moved quickly, quietly down the block. Past long empty brick buildings with broken windows and rotting doors. They followed the dried blood trails to an alley before the metal sign. The alley was littered with bodies on either side. Right of them. Stripped naked, dumped absent respect, picked clean of anything even slightly of value. “Animals.” Robco sounded like he wanted to scream. They stood at the steel and glass door. Robco silently used the key, turning it bit by bit till the lock gradually retracted. Cautiously the older man pushed the door open reaching up to stop an old bell from ringing.

Inside light made it through recently cleaned sections of the large window. John saw out a long counter, lined with stools, ceramic mugs stacked at the end, and six dirty, old mattresses. John tapped Robco on the shoulder, “Six.” He whispered. Both understood they were not alone. Robco advanced towards a door at the far end of the counter, pistol levelled. He pushed open the door and John followed into the washroom.

There on the cracked tile floor lay the sixth raider, two spent injectors stuck in each arm. John thought he looked dead. Overdosed on whatever was in those injectors, Robco held his hand over the human animal’s mouth. “John, get me the injector you found from the back of the truck and the medkit from under my seat. Tell Wallace to sit tight we’ll be rolling in five.” John turned to leave the ruined washroom when the older man stopped him. “Your gun John, Rusty won’t like it.” With the thought of what happened to the last people Rusty didn’t like still fresh in his mind, he gave Robco the pistol. He jogged to the truck, calling out from the corner just to be safe.

“Wallace, it’s John.”

“Is Pop Pop ok?” A concerned, muffled response came for somewhere in the truck.

“He’s fine, he needs me to get something from the truck.” John moved calmly, eager to stay on Rusty’s good side. “Sit tight Wallace, we’re rolling in five.” His grandfather’s exact words seem to calm the boy.

“Alright I’ll be ready.”

John returned to Robco, finding relief from questions in doing simple tasks. He watched as Robco started to unpack the medkit on the counter. Robco took a small canister with a bright yellow cap. He’d already found a pile of old white aprons and filled a few mugs with water. “You can clean up in a minute, but right now I need you to look mean.” John wasn’t sure what he meant but he followed him back to the apparently not dead raider.

Robco handed John back the forty five calibre pistol and made sure he held it so the raider could see it. “I need to ask him some questions, don’t say anything, just go with it. Don’t shoot him unless you have to. He’s going to be real cooperative, trust me.” Say nothing, that I can do John thought.

Robco carefully removed the empty injectors, twisting the end to retract the needles. Then used the man’s own belt to bind his hands. Robco stuck the yellow end of the canister up the nose of the dead looking raider, squeezed it from the bottom, and stepped back. Standing next to John, hand on his holstered pistol.

The seemingly lifeless body started twitching, getting more and more animated. Then sat bolt upright with a sharp intake of air, fear in his eyes. Like he woke from a dream into a nightmare.

“Morning sunshine.” The older man spoke in a tone that didn’t match his words. The now very much alive raider skittered back along the broken tile floor.

“What did you do to me?!” The raider pleaded, with equal parts fear and anger.

“You know what that is in your nose, right.” The raider removed the canister and threw it away from him as far as his bound, sickly, arms could. “That’s right, it’s an opiate blocker. All that med-x in your veins, gone.” The older man snapped his fingers, the raider’s bloodshot eyes widened in sobering realisation.

“Ripsaw is going to fucking kill you old man.”

“Tall fella, scar on his face? Bad news, my friend here shot him dead with his own gun.” John stepped forward, catching sight of himself in the last remaining piece of broken mirror on the wall. His pallid face covered in blood. Robco knelt to get the raider’s attention back on him and away from the large, muscular man with a face spattered in red. “Good news for you though, now we get to talk and if I like what you got to say, you can have this.” John understood and held out the injector, the raider’s eyes glued to it.

Robco gestured for John to leave so he went back out to the counter, finding the water, an old apron, and a mirror. On some level John knew he’d been covered in blood. Somehow it had been hidden from him until he could do something about it. He soaked the apron, pressing it to his face for a moment, and started wiping down the shiny blue vault-suit. The blood came off easily from the hydrophobic, high tech material.

Raised voices from the bathroom, followed by sounds of struggle, drew John’s focus. “Hey, I got the old man, got his gun. You throw me the needle and I'll let him go, or he dies, you hear me! I’ll kill him gimme that x and you both walk.” The raider sounded desperate, not for his freedom, for a fix.

“Do what you have to John.” Robco’s tone remained flat and even as ever. John took the pistol, aiming at the door. No electricity, no green outlines, nothing but his rhythmic breathing and an idea.

“You got a deal, open the door and I’ll throw it in.” The raider pulled the door inwards, smart enough to stay hidden. John threw the injector deliberately wide, bouncing off the wall landing just in front of the closing door.

“Where is it?! I don’t see it, I’ll shoot him!”

“Relax, it’s right outside the door, it’s so close you can take it.” John chose his words carefully, it worked. The door opened and a sickly hand reached through, grabbing at the floor. Getting more and more frantic with every failed attempt. Until he poked his bloodshot, sober eyes round just enough for John to put a bullet between them. Robco emerged a moment later, retrieving his gun from the body.

“You ok?” John asked, placing the gun back on the counter.

“Just my pride, fucker dislocated his own thumb to slip the binds.” The older man started taking notes on a small pad, recording the conversation with the raider while it stayed fresh in his mind. “There’s a room in back full of stuff these animals took, let’s load it up then get gone. And John, thank you.” John nodded and began taking the raider’s ill gotten gains to the truck. Backpacks, clean clothes, far better than the raiders wore. Crates of bottles, ammo, along with a scoped rifle, and a box of pistols which he left for Robco, still wary of Rusty. The pair stopped outside while Robco started taking notes while walking the grim alley, inspecting each corpse in turn. John wanted to ask why, he didn’t.

“Junior?” Robco half shouted as they approached.

“Pop Pop are you ok? Why did John take the medkit?” Wherever the secret compartment was in the truck, it didn’t stop the boy of no more than eight from knowing what happened.

“I’m fine, cut myself on a broken coffee cup is all.” The items the raiders stole were loaded. With the evidence of the attack melting away, literally, John took the opportunity to clean up. rubbing gel on his hands to clean them. “How’d you feel John?” He thought about his answer for a moment.

“I…I don’t feel anything.” The older man smiled.

“Shock, that’s ok it’s normal, wait here.” John didn’t feel like he was in shock, he didn’t feel anything. More than that, he hadn’t felt anything since the nightmare, dreamlike state started. It felt as if he’d spent the last thirty minutes moving rocks, not bodies. Disposing of scrap, not people, firing rivets not bullets. And somehow as if he sensed less too. His face and hands were covered in blood, but he didn’t notice, he didn’t try to wipe it off. He couldn't even smell it. He couldn’t smell anything now, as bodies dissolved ten feet away. Robco returned from the front of the truck with bottles and cloth.

“Drink a little of this, then all of this” John threw back a glug of whiskey and chased it with the ice cold Nuka Cola. “Sugar will help.” The older man said as he squeezed gel from a smaller bottle onto a relatively clean rag and handed it to John. The gel, matched with Robco’s direction, made short work of the remaining blood on his face.

Robco threw back a whiskey himself. “You look pale, no paler than usual I suppose, but you better rest.” The older man paused, “I know you’ve got questions, and there’ll be time for that later. You trust me right?” John nodded, he trusted the older man more than he’d trusted anyone in a decade, except for Rosie. “Good, now you don’t have anything to worry about, stand still, don’t make any sudden moves.” Before John had chance to worry the older man threw back the canvas curtain. The contents of the cargo bed he’d kept hidden, now revealed.

Mounted to rails, a huge, broad, robotic torso. Curved, rusted, plate armour over pistons, steel gears, exposed clusters of wires. The single glowing red eye brightened from behind the steel bars that protected it, or protected others from it. Heavy hydraulics on each shoulder pressurised. Driving the right heavy, thick, arm into position. Three short gun barrels for a hand, sheathed in armour plating. “Relax.” Robco said, John wasn’t sure to whom. “Junior introduce Rusty to John.” Looking down at the fizzing red matter, the remains of the two people Rusty was last introduced to, John should have been afraid. He wasn’t. Fear wouldn’t do any good in that moment. The low synthesized voice spoke.

“Friendly identified.” The glowing red glare reduced. The shoulders lowered, taking the right arm down, the left rusted and immovable.

“John, meet Rusty, my old guard dog.” Robco smiled. “Found him in a swamp years back. Managed to haul him out fix him up some. Never could get that damn left arm moving but the right sure is sweet, and the legs came in handy too.” Robco kicked the rolling metal treads that drove the truck. He looked John in the eye, “That’s why we had to clean this mess up, surprise can be your best weapon, remember that.” John would.

“Now those benches are comfier than they look, you lie down and try to rest.” John pulled himself up, past Rusty, into the back of the truck. Filled with containers of scrap, bits of robots, tools. All manner of items looted from the corpse of the old world.

John sat on the bench, just enough room for his six foot plus frame, drinking his ice cold Nuka Cola. A panel slid open in the floor, and the boy crawled out with ease. Sitting down opposite John, smiling, relieved to be out of his hidden compartment. “What do you think of Rusty, pretty neat right.” For someone raised on tales of killer automatons being sat next to one felt like a difficult feeling to explain. Or it would have been if John didn’t feel numb, dulled to the world around him.

“It’s pretty neat alright.” John saw Wallace sensed something was off, the boy went to crawl back through the hatch. As he knelt he spoke, his back to John.

“Pop Pop says sometimes even good guys have to do bad things to stop worse things happening.” John realised Wallace had flipped the switch, killing the two raiders. The boy of no more than eight understood this world better than John did. And with that he vanished into the secret panel and the rolling clanking sound started up. Leaving the small, abandoned town and leaving John numb. His mind stilled, his feelings switched off. John didn’t know if he felt more scared or grateful.