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’Two chunks of meat from their bodies should be enough. Hunt ...quietly, so as not to draw more.’
Cyrus had almost asked why they couldn’t hunt together as they had been. Despite their lack of congeniality, their different approaches to combat made them an excellent fighting team. They regularly gave the ghost people a run for their money in ruthless efficiency. However, his eyes had fallen on God’s freshly-treated arm, the bandages already discolored by dust and Cloud residue. The gas bomb had done a number on both of them, but God had taken the brunt of it. At the time, he had refused to rest any longer than strictly necessary; Cyrus wouldn’t look a gift brahmin in the mouth now.
Unfortunately, for all of the abandoned refuse littering the resort town, he hadn’t managed to find a rifle suitable to his skills yet. The holorifle he had apparently been lent on arrival after the security system had stripped him of all “foreign items” was a sorry replacement in the hands of someone who hardly knew how to reload a plasma pistol, and the automatic rifle he had managed to salvage had run out of ammunition almost as quickly as Dean ran out of compliments. Instead, he was left relying on a police pistol from the station, though it too had begun running disconcertingly low on bullets. He hoped to save them for emergencies, if at all possible.
Rummaging through his duffle bag for options, his hand brushed the short stack of frag mines he had accrued in his stay, and he gave them a pensive consideration. God had warned him to hunt quietly, but - Cyrus reasoned - surely minor explosions fit into the category of environmental white noise in the villa, considering the number of explosives Dean made use of. With proper planning, he wouldn’t even need the pistol.
Picking out a location was the easiest part; a narrow corridor with a bear trap already set smack in its center served perfectly. Despite - or perhaps because of - all the grief their recent encounter with the seeker had caused, Cyrus had come to appreciate how deadly a combination these maws paired with explosives could be. Now, he would turn the shadowy corners and oppressively tight, choking architecture that the ghost people adored to his advantage. In the two centuries following the Great War, this town had evolved into a vicious but starving predator, and Cyrus was willing to bet that it was desperate enough to turn its teeth against itself without much convincing.
After laying the mines, the task of hunting became largely an elaborate game of chicken crossed with hide-and-seek, skulking around Salida del Sol in an ironic reversal of the usual dynamic between the locals and tourists. Dishearteningly, though he had no desire to engage with them directly, the ghost people proved to have little interest in pebbles clacking off of walls or the rustle of junk inside of the metal bucket he had picked up along the way. The only thing that seemed to interest them were signs of life: a cough, a footstep, a glimpse of fingertips hesitating on the corner of a wall. The ante was high as he carefully lured a harvester back to the spot he’d prepared.
Once they were in the proper configuration, Cyrus showed himself to his prey fully, backing away down the covered alley in tense anticipation until the harvester triggered the trap. A piercing, inhuman howl ricocheted off the walls of the cramped tunnel in the seconds before the frag mines tripped and conveniently butchered the creature on his behalf. Picking through what bits were left, he grabbed what looked like half of a leg by the scrap of torn hazmat suit still encasing it and threw it into the bucket. It wouldn’t help contain the stench, but it would keep their oddly oily and luminescent blood off of his hands.
He reset the trap and laid fresh mines, all the while keeping his head on a constant swivel lest another happen by before he was ready. He did his best to sweep the remaining ghost bits away from the area as he went without touching them, though he wasn’t certain the ghost people registered corpses of their own kind as warnings the way humans did. If anything, they probably used them as signs pointing to potential prey.
Locating and luring another ghost person proved as tedious as the first; though his methods were no less effective, and he couldn’t argue with results. This time, he scooped a hardy chunk of singed torso into the bucket - ribs if his eyes and their anatomy didn’t deceive him. As he turned to begin his delivery, a glint from a pile of rubble mounded at the base of one wall caught his eye. The harvester’s knife spear, still intact, laid amongst the debris where the blast had tossed it. He bent down and took it up, testing the shaft briefly to confirm it hadn’t been compromised. God refused most weapons he was offered, but Cyrus hoped to convince him that having one and not needing it would be better than the inverse once the show started, and the ghost people began swarming.
It was only a short walk back, but Cyrus still nearly wretched from the smell emanating from the bucket. Even the Cloud didn’t smell this bad. What in the known universe had it done to the locals’ physiology to turn their blood into radiant sludge and make their flesh stink like rancid formaldehyde? He pitied God for having to consign himself to its consumption, but lauded his resolve in being willing and able to choke down this mess for the mission’s sake. Had it been another time and place, Cyrus would have offered to season and cook it for him, to attempt to mask whatever flavor this odor was trying to warn of. Alas, he had the luxury of neither time nor fresh ingredients, and besides, God’s pride likely wouldn’t have allowed him to accept such a “sycophantic” gesture. Cyrus expected he’d resent that remark of God’s for some time to come, or at least until he said something even more asinine.
“Hey, God,” he called as he approached the gate, not wanting to take him by surprise. “This should be enough, right?”
He held up the bucket and watched God slowly turn to face him, his eyes focused not on the offering but on Cyrus himself. They were unfamiliar eyes.
“Rhrrrrrr…”
It was an unfamiliar growl as well, not one of disgust but of hunger.
Cyrus took half a step back as he slowly lowered the bucket of chum. He felt his skin clam up, goosebumps forming along his arms at the sound.
“...Dog?” he choked out in desperation, hoping that the beast would recognize him despite their having never met directly. God had told him of how he could still hear things, albeit faintly, when in the “basement,” and he prayed that Dog had heard him from his cage. This wasn’t how Cyrus had hoped they would be introduced.
“RhhhhaaarrrRRRRRRRR!”
In the blink of an eye, Dog leapt and was upon him, knocking him to the ground. Cyrus felt the air rush from his lungs as he hit the pavement, and everything flashed red before his eyes momentarily. When it cleared, Dog’s face filled his entire view, teeth gnashing and spit flying. He felt fingers pressing into his shoulder, as though Dog was preparing to tear it from his body. Panic set in.
Knowing his assailant weighed several hundred pounds more than him, Cyrus didn’t even bother to struggle. Instead, in the haze of adrenaline, he twisted his wrist sharply and managed to thread the knife spear’s head into the sliver of space between them. He watched in terror as Dog’s teeth rent the metal with a grinding screech of steel. His mind had gone blank, but as Dog tore the head from the spear with a flick of his neck, he became aware through the chaos of something seeping into the sleeve of his jumpsuit: blood, but not his own. It was cold.
Groping around in a panic with his free hand, Cyrus found the bucket, blessedly close to his side. When his fingers brushed something rigid within, he blindly grabbed the object and yanked out the leg he had retrieved earlier by the bone. Just as Dog swallowed the now-unrecognizable spearhead, Cyrus managed to jam the leg into his mouth after it. A spray of bright blood splattered his face and glasses as Dog’s teeth pressed into the flesh. A sickening snap sent a shiver down his spine as he realized just how strong Dog’s bite was.
As the super mutant tore the drumstick from his hand, Cyrus felt his glove tear away with it, caught in the beast’s teeth. Luckily, Dog took to the morsel happily, giving Cyrus the seconds he needed to extract the second chunk of flesh from the bucket. Even as the last of the leg bone shattered between Dog’s teeth, his eyes were on the next piece, watching ravenously as Cyrus waved it in his face and tossed it towards the gate behind him before he could try and take his hand off again. The rack of ribs left a glowing trail as it skidded across the ground.
Dog leapt after the morsel, having nearly already inhaled it by the time Cyrus was shakily pushing himself into a sitting position. Slick with the ghosts’ oily blood, his hands trembled as he clicked through the recordings saved in his Pip-Boy with forced control and played the clip of God’s voice.
“Dog,” the tiny speaker crackled, “back in the cage!”
The command had barely finished playing when the super mutant retook God’s distinctly straighter, prouder posture. He ran his tongue over his teeth, tasting the still faintly-glowing ooze that stained his mouth. As he wiped the remaining ghost blood from his hands onto his pants, he finally noticed Cyrus staring up at him wide-eyed from the ground, shuddering and breathing heavily.
“What?” he asked cooly, gaze narrowed in contempt. “Were his table manners that bad?
“In any case, you’re good at fetching…this should keep him where he belongs. For now.”
Cyrus silently pushed himself up from the ground, wincing as he put pressure on his wrist. Once he had his footing, he took a moment to inspect the damage. It seemed that Dog had taken some skin along with the glove, and the leather being torn away had left a nasty friction burn as well. When he’d stood, he’d been pressing dirt into the wound.
God froze when Cyrus gingerly turned his hand over and manipulated the muscle to get a better look. His eyes darted from the hand to the ground where Cyrus had been knocked prone and then over to the bucket that had been crushed underfoot after Dog had rushed after the thrown piece of bait into the cage. When God’s eyes fell upon him once more, they looked almost...nervous.
“...trouble with the trappers?”
“Dog got overzealous,” was all he offered in a monotone mutter. Part of Cyrus hated the tremor in his voice as he failed to compose himself in time. Another part of him, though, felt a guilty twinge of satisfaction as God winced subtly at the revelation.
“He doesn’t know well enough not to bite the hand that feeds him,” God tried to explain in an uncharacteristic haste. “Not when he gets like that.”
It wasn’t really an apology, but then, Cyrus hadn’t expected one.
“It’s my fault,” he countered dismissively, almost as a reflex, as he dipped back into the doctor’s bag they had raided earlier for its meager remnants. “I took too long getting back. I’m not much of a hunter without a rifle.”
As he washed and dressed his wound, discarding the brown leather satchel now that its resources were truly exhausted, he could feel God’s unusually attentive gaze still on him.
“I had to find a bear trap, plant explosives, lead them into it-”
“How clever.”
Cyrus had anticipated the sarcasm, the scorn, and he shot God a withering glare in response. What he hadn’t expected was for God to flinch and have the self-awareness to look vaguely ashamed. He met Cyrus’s eyes once more before turning his back on him.
“I’ll wait...send the signal, we’ll be ready.”
For a long moment, Cyrus stared at the nightkin’s back, uncertain how to feel. He turned to leave, stepping over what remained of the handle of the knife spear, when a thought struck him. Reaching into his duffle bag, he pulled out one last frag mine and the saturnite knife he had, by some miracle, managed to scrub clean with Abarxo. Returning to the gate’s threshold, he nearly reconsidered, easily half a dozen excuses coming to mind for why he shouldn’t bother God or himself. Ultimately, though, he couldn't convince himself to be so callous.
“I know you’ve talked about having trouble wielding weapons, but neither of these requires much finesse, and they may be better to have than not. Just in case.”
At first, he thought his offering would go unacknowledged, but after a slight hesitation, God reluctantly glanced over his shoulder.
“A single explosive and a weapon so small I could scarcely grip its handle. I’m waiting for the punchline, but I’m beginning to suspect you might actually be serious. How disappointing.” From the tone of his voice, Cyrus guessed they had regressed to square one.
“It’s, uh. Incredibly sharp. The knife. You’d be hard-pressed to swing it at something and not take a limb off. You wouldn’t need to worry about the ghost people getting back up.”
God snarled, and Cyrus unconsciously took a step back.
“I’ve no use for your concern. Lay your obsequious offerings at the foot of another idol.”
“No.” The word, stubborn and defiant, was out of Cyrus’s mouth before he could even think, but he found he had no regret for saying it.
“What?” the man hissed, clenching his teeth furiously.
“Whatever makes you think that showing even the most basic kindness is excessive and unnecessary… I’ll sooner choke on it myself than watch you do so in some misguided display of self-sufficiency.”
Slowly, God turned to face him, and Cyrus retook the inch he had relinquished a second earlier, squaring his shoulders and refusing to break eye contact.
“Swallowing sorrow that is not your own is a dangerous feat, not to mention a fool’s errand.”
“But one worth the risk, in my humble opinion.”
“Hn. You are ignorant, naive to how wildly out of your depth you are.” God’s voice dropped even lower, barely a rumble in his chest, as he returned Cyrus’s gaze, unblinking. “You have no idea the depths of my fury and regret.”
“Even so, I stand by what I said.” He didn’t expect the truth of that to reach God, to pierce both his thick hide and the palisades he had resurrected around his heart, but it was the truth nonetheless.
There was a tense pause. The pair exchanged stares, appraising, making mental notes in the margins of their understandings of one another.
“I didn’t take you for suicidal.”
When God finally broke the silence, he seemed to have recovered some of the playful edge in his sarcasm that Cyrus had come to find oddly comforting. He may not have been suicidal, but he wondered if all this teasing ridicule wasn’t making him a bit of a masochist.
“You seem so eager to down every poisonous cocktail you’re offered. There are things in this world more toxic, more persistent, than even this damnable Cloud…”
With a scoff, God turned his back on Cyrus once more, though this time it felt far less like a final refusal.
“Go. I’ll await the signal.”
This time, Cyrus did as he was told, though not before setting the mine and knife at the inside foot of the gate, and began the brief walk back to the town square for the next leg of their mission. He could only assume God’s quip had been a disapproving jab at his earlier attempt to replicate one of Dean’s martinis, as if the choking, coughing, burning, and lingering itching sensation down his esophagus hadn’t been punishment enough. It had been bad enough that Cyrus had sworn to himself that he would never take Dean at his word again after that.
Once he was alone and well out of sight of the switching station, he felt his hand, still shaking, slipping into his duffle bag in search of a remedy. His fingertips slid along the cold, smooth, glass surface of the single bottle of steady he had found in the entire villa. The idea of a brief reprieve was tempting. It wasn’t as though he would need it for his primary purpose here when he couldn’t even find a usable rifle. He toyed with the thought of some off-label use for a minute, before sighing and digging out one of the dozen half-empty packs of cigarettes he had found instead. For all their convenience, the vending machines lacked a code to produce fixer, and he wasn’t willing to play spin-the-bottle with another addiction out here, where he was the closest thing to a medical professional for miles out.
’After all,’ he thought as he struck a match and lit the pitifully limp stick between his lips, ’I’m not much of a gambler.’