Vol. ll Chapter 17 “Talent of a misspent youth.” After passing the south gate, the contents of the market place shifted again. Now they sold weapons. Rosie’s excitement became replaced with something she enjoyed nearly as much. She could make better weapons than anything for sale here. A small pistol grip, pump action shotgun drew Charlie’s attention. She racked it and handed it to Rosie. Right away she could tell it had been made from scrap. The grips made from folded steel, the barrel and body from pipe. Even the welds were poor. “No good?” Charlie asked, seeing the disdain on Rosie's face. “I’ll make you one better than that.” Charlie laughed and put the gun back. Rosie felt pride in her craftsmanship. A good deal more than whoever made this shotgun. They continued through the weapon stalls, watching people buy crude arms and armour. Poorly restored rifles. Repurposed scrap forged into as body armour. Submachines made from old pipes that looked more like grease guns from the Vault. Then there were the edged weapons. Double sided axes that were far too big, long swords that looked impressive but were too heavy to anything with. Even shields made from road signs and manhole covers. All of it impractical at best. “You don’t seem impressed.” Charlie seemed pleased with that. “Who would buy this shit, I mean honestly.” Rosie pointed to an oversized hammer. “What kind of idiot lugs that around all day.” Charlie burst out laughing, Rosie joined in although she didn’t find it that funny. Despite the poor quality of the wares on sale, the time spent at the weapons stalls had not been wasted. Rosie picked up a few nice ideas, and they had a lead on subsonic ammo. Every trader they had asked gave the same answer, Virgil, Ghoulhouse, followed by contempt that Charlie shared. Rosie had been in the dark sanctuary filled with Filth before with Brandon. He had an affection for that place that neither Rosie nor Charlie understood. “We don’t have to go in there.” Rosie didn’t like the way Charlie had begun checking her pistol and the knife in her boot. “No, it’s your day. And if what you want is in there then that’s where we’re going.” Charlie wouldn’t be dissuaded. “You can wait here if you want.” Rosie didn’t like the idea of being alone, yet the sight of Charlie growing tense made her own stress worse. “Absolutely not.” Charlie pulled her into a quiet alley. “The Filth in there are obsessed with old world tech, they find out about…” Charlie tapped her arm. “I don’t know what they’d do, but I know what we’d do, and we don’t have all day to spend cleansing rotters.” Charlie took a moment to breathe, snapped an anti-rad tablet in half and swallowed it. She offered Rosie the other half who didn’t need it. “Welcome to the Ghoulhouse.” Rasped the masked deputy as they made their way up the steps to the blacked out door. “Here to see Virgil, where’s he at?” Charlie already looked impatient and hadn’t even gone inside. “End of the hall, take a right. Auditorium, can’t miss it.” The deputy opened the door and heavy air filled with incense seemed to spill out. “Stay close.” Charlie took a deep breath and headed in, with Rosie at her back. Charlie bounded down the dark hall, ignoring the old world relics on display and trying her best not to get close to the ghouls. Some sensed her unease and tried all the harder to greet her, however others took it as an insult and lingered deliberately in her path. Rosie kept pace, trying desperately to tamp down the rising fear and anger creeping up her back. She wanted to look at the cleverly designed toys of the old world, and knew Charlie would let her, but that would mean keeping them here longer. Outside the auditorium everything had been lit with pre-war lamps or candles, it could have been the dead of night. Inside however, the midday sun poured in through tall windows and long skylights in the ceiling. Listening room, Rosie thought to herself trying to translate from the medical book. The floor sloped at a gentle angle toward a raised stage. The wall behind it covered in high end weaponry, and in the centre a ghoul sat at a terminal on a wooden desk. “Hey, you got subsonic ammo?” Charlie called out before taking another step. “Check the board.” The ghoul rasped and pointed with a metal arm. Rosie became instantly intrigued, she found herself staring. Virgil wore a white vest and canvas trousers, no effort to cover his ravaged flesh, or the arm. Halfway down the bicep flesh met steel in a cleverly designed mounting. It looked different, older maybe, than the Assaultron style forearm which had been upgraded. Black eyes locked with hers. As if to punish her the ghoul took a cigarette from the pack on his desk, held it in yellowed teeth and lit it with a spark between metal fingers. Virgil drew in a deep drag of grey smoke and exhaled slowly. Smoke escaped from the torn skin around his neck and cheeks, cloaking his skull like head. Rosie didn’t bat an eye. “Nice arm.” Rosie decided to play Virgil’s game. “Yeah. A gift from Uncle Sam.” Virgil didn’t take his attention from the terminal. “Your uncle made it for you?” Rosie asked. Virgil snorted with amused derision and Rosie heard something similar from behind her. “Where’d you dig this one up?” Virgil spoke over her, addressing the other person who got the joke. “Don’t mind her, she thinks The Unstoppables counts as a book.” Charlie’s lie amused the ghoul, and told Rosie to drop the conversation. Instead she looked at the goods for sale, and worried four thousand and change wouldn’t be enough. The ammo boards had a simple design, example bullets tied to it and their prices written in chalk next to them. Things started simple enough, yet as her eyes scanned along the ammunition became more advanced. Cross sections began to appear showing tungsten rods embedded in the bullets. Hollowed out tips with examples of shot bullets next to them, coated copper, that bloomed into spiked circles. Shotgun shells that opened up into pointed star shapes, others that were packed tight with tiny darts. And finally subsonic rounds, they seemed almost tame by comparison. “Call out what you want, the bot’ll pack ‘em.” Rasped Virgil, lighting a cigarette with the burning stub of another. Rosie wanted to see this bot in action, but thought better of asking. “A dozen of the three hundred Blackout. Twenty of those hollow point nine mil, and ten of the armour piercing five five six.” Rosie figured that would be more than enough to reverse engineer her own versions. The ghoul tapped away at the terminal, at a good pace for someone with one good hand. “It’ll be a minute or two. Take a look around, there’s always a deal to be made.” Rosie wondered if there really was a bot at work in the back, or if it was a ploy to keep people spending. Either way this place had the best selection she’d seen so far. “You got forty mil rounds or grenades?” Rosie asked, hoping Charlie wouldn’t ask why. Virgil pushed back from his terminal without leaving his old office chair. “High explosive with a variable airburst fuse.” He lumped a dull green ammo tin onto his desk. Virgil rolled down the line of crates at the back of the stage, below racks of high end weapons. Light machine guns, missile launchers, artillery shells, and even a flamethrower. “And anti personnel fragmentation grenades.” He heaved a wooden crate onto the workbenches. “You know this shit ain’t cheap right?” “I’ll take six of each.” Rosie understood she had a lot of caps, and needed the hand grenades, but buying just them might arouse Charlie’s suspicion. Later, Rosie thought, I’ll tell her later. “We’ll take these too.” Charlie tossed down an armful of knives. Oval handles with a small crossguard, a double edged blade that tapered to a sharp point, and fully black. Even the sheaths were black. “F.S. fighting knives, classic. Like me.” Virgil seemed to approve of Charlie’s choice. “Anything else?” Rosie made one last sweep. Inspecting the quick release mods and attachments so she could make her own. After picking out some tungsten wire, copper pipe sections and some other metal scraps, Rosie nodded to Charlie who let her take the lead. “Alright ladies,” Virgil took a gulp from a glass jar and lit another cigarette with a spark. “The frags and forties, that’s twelve hundred. The ammo is five, the knives are a buck fifty a piece. And the rest I’ll throw in for two hundred to round it out to twenty five hundred.” Virgil sat back, his boots on the desk and smoke cloaking his head. Charlie made a dismissive noise and stepped back. “Fifteen hundred.” Rosie countered, instinctually moving backwards to be at eye level. “Get out.” Virgil took his feet from the desk and went back to his terminal. Rosie squashed her frustration at getting something wrong. “Eighteen.” “Twenty two, and I’ll throw in some tac belts.” “Two. Come on, you don’t have time to wait around for me to count out all those caps.” Rosie smiled, hoping her quick response would win him over. “Listen Red, I’m a hundred a forty nine years old, all I got is time.” Virgil flashed a yellow toothed grin as Rosie’s face dropped. “Lucky for you I got a thing for mean brunettes.” Charlie scowled as Virgil winked at her. “Two thousand it is.” Virgil hit a key and a clanking Protectron bot lumbered out from a back room and handed him an ammo tin. He checked it over and placed it with the rest of the items at the edge of the stage. Rosie threw the pouches up one at a time. Virgil weighed them on a simple scale and tossed them through a small hatch in the wall. “Where do you think he got all that stuff?” Rosie asked as Charlie breathed in the fresh air outside the Ghoulhouse. “They probably remember where most of it is. Ex military would be my bet.” Charlie seemed to respect that, but it only lasted a moment. “Plus they can soak up the rads. You got a good deal though.” “Thanks.” Rosie thought so too. “How much you got left?” “Two thousand and change.” “Right then, follow me.” Charlie had something in mind, Rosie couldn’t get a sense of what as they turned inwards, approaching the Tower.