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In the glare before the afternoon even hits, the world doesn’t make shadows, as stealth and cunning as a life of survival becomes eventually, and it is hard to hide.
“Wait a sec.” MacCready’s eyes are trained on the road ahead of them, keen to threats.
“Uh huh.” Tex squints at the sun, oblivious. “On your six like paint on canvas, Mac.” She can’t think of a term of endearment that fits; None will do, her efforts to sum him up in a single word are made in vain.
There is a dog in their tracks, a few paces ahead, and like any other living thing in the Wasteland, it is succumbing to what mankind has wrought. Frail and knobby and hunched over like a vulture, the dog does not move toward them.
She hears a whimper like it’s coming from the depths of the ocean, bubbles of air, the choking of a submerged voice, fast fading with the sun as a cloud passes overhead and tucks the sky’s glow under a corner, rendering it lifeless.
Torn from daygazing, Tex is struck by the dog’s presence as more than those distant yelps, its disembodied pleas for mercy.
“She needs-- Fuck. MacCready, get me a goddamn stimpak.”
“We’re out as of that last stop, Texas. You-- you know, you got that shot in your arm and a mutant decided to charge you, for heck’s sake. I swear, no one should be so beautiful and so careless at the same time.”
Not smiling, not totally in love with this shit right here, right now, Tex has a tin of Cram out and open in front of the dog.
“You’re rambling, Mac. We got any RadAway?”
The poor dog is speckled with sores and burns all over her legs. Her teeth upon calm and careful inspection are yellowed and worn to stumps or just jagged, rotten, and half-sized. Her tongue is dry, her nose chapped. It’s rads or mange or a little of both, plus the agonizing creep of death.
“RadAway and a flask of water,” Tex amends.
Her legs are weak-- the dog’s, although Tex is ragged as she settles onto parched dirt and gray grass. They feel the earth beneath them, together in their quietness. Both understand the pain of this barren life.
MacCready, Tex thinks, is lucky as hell this is everything he knows, even when she gets a deep down pang to cup his unwashed, stubbly jaw and explain how she’d trade her life for him to get a taste of what it was like once upon a time-- for him to know green, to be green. To understand travel, industry, art, all of it. To have and make a history for himself that could be read generations down the line by schoolchildren in neat rows, all wearing T-shirts and checked jumpers and smiling.
Maybe she’ll write him a meaningless, small thing when they can rest again. A poem, a song, a line or two that won’t be misheard. But here, this dog-- this message to them both of the whole notion of inevitability, of that poison of death, is also a poem in a way.
“Laika,” Tex murmurs to the dog. “Laika-- you like having a name? Long as it’s gonna fucking last, I mean, but you’re going out with grace. She was in the space program, another Laika, and died with the stars. Died up in them.” She administers a dose of RadAway, knowing it won’t do much. The dog shrinks but stares up at Tex with eyes only as clear as the nearest source of dirty water.
They’re both caught drowning as a familiar hand falls to Tex’s shoulder.
“I can make it easier on your friend here. Mercy kills weren’t in my contract for the record, but I think that arrangement was voided when I started saving your dang live without expecting any caps for it.”
“You just want a kiss for the hell I put you through.”
“I want her to rest easy. I want you to. I can do this-- I mean, I’m a pretty good shot.”
“I’m aware, MacCready.” She looks at him-- at her friend-- under the warmth of the reemerging sun. “Step back, do it really fucking humane. I’m gonna stick with Laika here, okay?”
MacCready moves quietly and settles against their packs. He readies his rifle like his life fucking depends on it, and his shot flies. It hits Laika’s head, a clean entry. She lowers, collapses, and bleeds beside her last friend.
Tongue out, eyes huge but slitting slowly shut, she catches a glimpse of arms reaching out to pet her before she finally succumbs.
“Find the stars, Laika, honey. I know you can now. You got this.”
That night, over half cups of cheap vodka and with legs stretched across abandoned railroad tracks, Clara Texas reads her friend MacCready a poem, the words meandering and all her own. She assumes the sentiment lost, that it’s a fruitless effort, but then it is echoed in not so many words, in plainer ones like the quiet whisper of the Wasteland at night.
“I love you too,” MacCready tells her. And then he smiles, long like the space between a dead dog and the stars above.