The rest of day passed in a flurry of activity. Mitch took apart sections of the kitchens. Hawkins stripped the best of the wood panelling that lined the walls. JoJo ferried the scavenged supplies down to the ground floor. Billy let Carol help him take the long seized engine block out of the best of the three remaining six wheeled trucks. All while John learnt to use the T-51. The lack of under armour didn’t present a problem because the older armour didn’t have an inner frame. John’s feet sat level, and actually in the boots of the shorter armour. The T-60 felt nimble, responsive, built to operate in urban environments. The T-51 didn’t, it stomped relentlessly forward like a boulder falling down a slope. Despite it’s older design, John found two advantages as he rumbled up and down the yard. First, the armour had more raw strength. Thicker plates made from fewer parts meant punches and kicks carried more weight. Larger pistons drove them harder. The second advantage, and perhaps John’s favourite thing about the armour, turned out to be something mundane. Getting in and out took a fraction of the time. The one piece backplate simply hinged open like a door once the thigh and upper arm plates retracted. “You got it?” Billy asked for the third time, still sceptical. “Yeah.” John squeezed the simple controls, checking the clamp like mechanised grips were shut tight. “Fingers and toes!” Billy yelled as he worked the last bolt free and the truck engine shifted. The engine didn’t move more than an inch. “I told you I had it.” John smiled wide, easily seen with the armour helmet set aside. “Where do you want it?” John joked, casually tossing the heavy engine aside, and enjoying the thud as it hit the ground. “Get what you want from the basement, we need to do a weight check. We’ll take the best stuff with us and lock up what’s left.” Billy didn’t seem to regret offering John first pick, despite losing out a chance to sell a working T-51 to the Brotherhood. It helped that John told him the caps would be fake and they’d rather trade the armour for a bullet. John found himself starting at the skeleton in the personal Vault. Bones of the long dead weren’t an uncommon sight to him now, yet rarely had he known anything about them. Now he knew the soldier's life story, and had a sense of his final days. John knew how it felt to be useless, to be trapped. He wasn’t going to leave the general like this. He started with the flag of a country that ceased to exist a century ago. John made sure to match the striped one with uniforms in the pictures. The flag had musty smell, cut with a tinge of cordite. He laid it flat next to the bones he’d forced Billy to help him move to a safe area. As John took the stained and tattered uniform off he saw more metal grafted to bone. Every limb had screws and plates, mesh and rods around the spine. He served well, John thought, knowing injuries like this came from combat. His eyes fell to the desk, reading the carving for at least the twentieth time. John thought about what they’d found as he carefully unpinned service ribbons from the fraying uniform. The pump action grenade launcher JoJo took with glee, had been left loaded, a round left chambered. The minigun had a thousand five mil rounds, which everyone but John took to be a lot. Even the heavy machine gun a had a few tins of ammo. The most surprising thing however, had been stored underneath the low plinth the armour once stood on. Half a dozen fresh cores. Sara always said pre-primed fusion cores were like wastrels with honour, few and far between. Although John heard her father in those words. He stared at the unassuming steel crate that no one else wanted to touch. The black primers were volatile if mishandled. The yellow fuel cell of the core could be hammered and thrown around all day, even an active core could take a beating and stay pretty much stable. However the explosive primer needed to kick start the fusion reaction took special handling. The ammo, the weapons, the fresh cores, the running machine and weights, each helped John see. The general hadn’t come down here to hide like the people in his Vault. He’d come down here to wait for a chance to serve again. Only when that chance had been lost, had the general gone to a well earned peace. John would help him be of service again. John took a deep breath and thought of his training in the kill house. He almost could hear Sara shouting that a teammate had died, so he must take their ammo and keep moving. This is just like that, he told himself, then hammered the flag wrapped bones till they were little more than pale gravel. John picked the shining and untarnished metal free and realised he’d erased the evidence of how the general died. As John looked at the shattered fragments, he wondered if that had been what he really wanted. Outside the sunset cast orange light over the dusty yard. The armour, absent any kind of automated operating system, stood where John left it. Billy punched Hawkins in the arm as he started to scoff and mock, then took him inside. JoJo understood instantly, both flanking John and standing to what passed as attention for Rangers. John laid the battle worn flag out flat on top of the viewing platform, weighting the corners with small rocks, trying to imagine the general surveying his troops. He thought about Elder Maxwell, wondering if the general ever brought food and sat with the lowest amongst their ranks. John doubted it, not with a separate mess upstairs. He knew though, from the photographs alone, that this commander had never betrayed one of his men. For an instant John pitied the elder, Sara would never forgive him, and his honour would be forever stained. The pity evaporated as John’s thoughts turned to Rosie, and where she’d be sleeping tonight. “Do you want to say something?” Joanne asked as the three trained soldiers honoured their long dead counterpart. “Rangers never die, they go home. Welcome home general.” Jolene saluted, as did Joanne. “He served.” John placed the ribbons and name tag atop the flag covered bones and gave a Brotherhood salute. “Hi…” Carol had been waiting for them, picking up on the private moment. “Mitch wants you to come upstairs.” Candlelight flickered above the clean table cloth in the officers mess. Billy sat at the far end of the table big enough for ten, scrawling in his notebook. “It’s almost ready.” He stood, put out his cigarette and wafted the lingering smoke away. “John, sit.” Billy pulled the cushioned chair out, smiling wide. “Don’t forget to pack these, they’re solid silver.” Joanne relit the engraved candlestick after inspecting it and placed it back. “Plus I might need to murder someone in the conservatory.” The others laughed but John didn’t get it. “We’re taking all this shit don’t worry.” Hawkins entered and sat at the table, smiling for the first time since John had met him. Billy tore a page from his notepad and handed it to him. Carol came in from the kitchen carrying gold edged plates, something round and crispy in the middle. She laid them out in front of everyone and poured drinks. John and Billy both saw her fight back tears as she sat at the table like everyone else. Mitch entered from the kitchen, a little flushed, but with a bounce in his step. “Gentlemen, ladies, our first course this evening is a soft shell ‘lurk and tato croquette, pan fried in chilli oil.” Mitch took pride in his cooking, and rightly so. John picked up the silver cutlery and sliced the crisp circle in two, eating half in a single mouthful. The chilli oil infused tato held a gentle heat that brought out the rich flavours from the leftover meat. “You’ve out done yourself Mitch.” Billy poured everyone a drink of the pre-war whiskey he’d found a few cases of. “Couldn’t have done it without our new sous chef.” Mitch raised a glass to Carol who’d been slowly dabbing her eyes with a napkin. “Well, the kitchen is your domain Mitch, but no one works at the Bathhouse without my approval. Downstairs anyway.” Billy waited for Carol to respond, she didn’t. “What do you say Carol? Two hundred caps a week, and we’ll throw in a room till you get your own place. Plus a free bath whenever you want.” “You want to give me two hundred caps a week to cook?” Carol sounded unsure. “We bake and prep for a couple of hours in the afternoon, then we start the real work at night. It’s hard, but it’s fun.” Mitch invited Carol to work with him in the Bathhouse kitchen. “You’re free now Carol.” John remembered what Robco told him on his second night above ground. “You can walk out of here right now and go wherever you want. Even if you don’t like working there you can leave.” “And you get days off.” Billy found the right words as Carol burst into tears. “Yes!” She stood and hugged Billy before throwing her arms around Mitch. John threw back his drink, savouring the sharp and smokey taste. Finding a great sense of pride in freeing a single person from slavery and setting them on a path to a new life. The main course consisted of pastry wrapped steak, presented under a silver dome. Met with the knocking on the table as Mitch cut thick slices that revealed a perfect shade of pink. Accompanied with floured and fried tato slices, parboiled carrot sticks, and a red sauce. “Is there any more gravy?” John asked, eager to soak the stale bread in it. Mitch whispered something to Carol as he took the plates away. “It’s a jus.” She repeated, getting prodded gently by Mitch to repeat all his words. “You ignorant savage.” Carol looked down awkwardly until John laughed. “Is there any more jus?” John didn’t care what they called it. Mitch put a little pan down as he took John’s plate, holding it for Carol to see. “Clean plates Carol, that’s what we want.” John saw how Mitch enjoyed the thought of sharing his skills. It gave him hope that others would be excited to teach his people new things, and those wanting to leave the Vault had a great deal to learn. “Alright,” Billy lifted a finely made box onto the table, made from brushed aluminium. “We hit a real score today, even after we take care of Sal. Hawkins and I reckon we’re on for thirty thousand caps on this run alone.” Billy let his hand rest on Carol’s shoulder. “Spilt six ways.” Everyone around the candle lit table nodded and smiled, even Hawkins. “That, and the fact that today is John’s birthday is cause for celebration.” John still didn’t understand the small cheer that went up. The handshakes, the over the top kisses from JoJo on both cheeks made him think birthdays were something quite special. Billy began blowing out the candles until only on remained that he set in front of John. “We’ll get you a cake when we get back, but for now.” John had no idea what Billy wanted him to do. “Blow it out stupid.” John did, to a cheer and knocking on the table, then Billy slid the top from the aluminium box. A soft blue light, that everyone but Carol and John knew, became the only light in the room. Billy reached in a produced a bottle that looked like Nuka Cola, apart from the liquid inside that glowed bright blue. “Happy birthday John.” Billy placed the bottle in front of him. “What is it?” John asked gently rocking the bottle to make the thick, luminous liquid inside move. “Nuka Cola Quantum. Found it downstairs.” Billy started lining up shot glasses. “Now you can drink it neat, but nothing beats a Blue Bomber!” Billy poured what John knew to be good vodka into all the glasses and opened a bottle of the glowing blue liquid. He poured it on top of the clear vodka and there is sat, floating without mixing. The glowing upper half of the shots became the only light in the room as everyone took one. “Gentlemen, ladies.” Billy paused for a moment, the blue light projecting upwards giving everyone an eerie glow. “Happy birthday John.” “Happy birthday John!” Everyone repeated and threw back their shots, plunging them into darkness. “Oh and fair warning,” Billy added in the dark. “It usually comes out the same colour as it goes in.” It took John a moment to work out what that meant, then he joined in the laughter. After toasting to the Bathhouse's latest chef. The haul they’d been tipped to. And a more respectful toast to the long dead general, John found himself approaching a very different kind of drunk. The Quantum cola didn’t really taste of anything but had a powerful effect. It seemed to amplify the speed and potency of the alcohol, eliminating the tiredness that accompanied a long day and more than a few shots. “I thinks I likes birthdays.” John had been drinking straight vodka for a while now. JoJo had taken the bed in the basement, Mitch and Carol pulled exercise mats into hall and crashed out. Leaving John, Billy, and Hawkins drinking at the top of the stairs in the open reception area. “Nexts year we’lls do it up right, close the Bathhouse, get Robco ands Lou down. Find your girl.” Billy had been setting the pace. He lent in so the half awake Hawkins wouldn’t hear, then shouted. “You tell your girl abouts birthdays too.” “I will, thanks you Billy.” John looked forward to telling her about something else denied them. Though not as much as seeing her green eyes. Hawkins stirred and woke, seeing Billy and John passed out. He couldn't resist checking his find one more time. He found it right where he’d left it, bagged and hidden in the truck oil tank. Hawkins smiled to himself and spent the caps he would get for such a prize in his head while he took a leak. The bright blue puddle he’d left made him laugh. And there, in the hazy blue light pushing against dark night, he saw a flash of claws and a glimpse of fangs.