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Vash had expected the town he and Wolfwood rolled into to be inhabited. It had been a bustling little place the last time he’d been through.
Granted, now that he thinks about it, that was maybe fifty years ago. A lot can happen in that amount of time, but it still saddens him to find the place thoroughly deserted. There’s no signs of a fight and nothing has been destroyed, so Vash hopes that, whatever happened, the wonderful people who lived here had the time to leave and make lives in a new place.
Sitting in the sidecar of Angelina II Vash looks around sadly. He climbs out and walks out into what’s left of the old road through the middle of town.
“This place looks abandoned, Spikey.”
“Yeah…” Vash mutters. “It wasn’t always.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t, but that doesn’t really help us now, does it.”
“Probably not, but I guess we can poke around, maybe we’ll find something fun?”
“Doubtful,” Wolfwood sighs as he gets off the bike too. “Doesn't look like anyones been through here for years.” he mutters to himself.
They wander down the road, and Vash finds what’s left of an old store, food still lines the shelves.
“Everything in here went bad years ago.” Wolfwood says, holding up an old package of some kind of bread. He squeezes and it just crumbles to dust in his hand.
“Yeah, but hey, these cans of beans should still be fine!”
“Great…” Wolfwood says, his lack of enthusiasm is not lost on Vash.
“I know, I'm sick of cans, too.” Vash says, empathizing because he really is sick of it. There’s only so many things that they’re lucky enough to get in cans. Beans, soups, nothing that’s super filling. “Better than being hungry though.”
“Doesn’t look like they have any water.” Wolfwood grumbles.
“Sorry, I really thought this place would be a great place to stop. I hadn’t heard anything about it becoming a ghost town, and it’s still on the map.”
“I do wonder what happened though.” Vash says, carrying his armful of canned food outside, Wolfwood on his heels.
“Doesn’t really matter, not like you can do anything about it now.”
“I guess not, still though, it does suck.”
After dropping the cans off with the bike, Vash and Wolfwood walk down the road. Most of the buildings look like abandoned houses, but tucked between two buildings, there’s a hand pump with a metal bucket under the spigot.
“D’you think that thing still works?” Wolfwood asks, his thumb pointing down the alley.
Vash watches as a drop of water falls from the nozzle, down into the bucket below , his brow quirking up in disbelief. “Maybe, can’t hurt to try it.” he says, wondering what it’s connected to, to be able to get water from underground. There could be some sort of cistern, he supposes, that plant fed.
Jogging over to the pump, Wolfwood grabs the handle, lifts and pushes back down over and over. The entire assembly groans, the joints squeaking from disuse. Wolfwood pumps for a full minute, throwing his entire body weight into it, but nothing but a few drops of water come out.
“Guess it’s dried up after all.” Vash says.
“Might be why the town is abandoned.” Wolfwood says, but he can’t help think that it’ll work if he keeps trying. “But, it’s dripping, so the water has to be coming from somewhere, right?” Wolfwood continues pumping, but nothing ever comes out.
“Just stop, it’s not going to work.”
Wolfwood just kicks the pipe, cursing it.
“Whatever, I guess there’s at least what’s collected down there.” Wolfwood says, squatting down and pulling out his canteen.
“I don’t know, Wolfwood.” Vash looks down, into the bucket, grimacing. The water looks fine, but when he kneels down and sniffs it, something doesn’t seem right. “It smells kind of off.”
“It’s fine, there’s nothing even floating in it.” Wolfwood says, easily brushing off Vash’s worries. Their canteens are too close to being dry to be picky right now. He dunks his into the four inches of water that’s collected in the bucket. He takes a small sip, smacking his lips together as he thinks about it for a moment. It might taste a bit metallic, but it has been sitting in a metal bucket. “Eh, it’s hot, but I think it’s fine.”
“I think i’ll pass anyway.”
“Fine, it’s your loss then, don’t complain later when you're thirsty.” Wolfwood teases. “I’m not gonna share.”
It doesn’t take long.
They’re on their way again, cruising on the motorcycle through the desert after deciding their next destination. A five hour ride to the next city.
But it’s only about thirty minutes in, and his stomach starts to hurt. Then it starts to cramp. And not long after that, he starts to sweat.
He should have listened to Vash. He was never wrong about things like this, but Woflwood decided to try his luck anyway. He tells himself he’s fine, he’ll be fine. He just needs to hold out for… five hours.
Wolfwood swallows back a lump in his throat, it’s going to be a long ride.
Eventually the stomach ache starts to worsen, the cramps becoming more and more severe, more pressing and more piercing. It hurts so much that he’s having a hard time keeping the bike going in a straight line, white knuckling the handle bars and biting the inside of his cheek.
At some point the cramps evolve into churning, his entire stomach feeling like it’s flipping in his abdomen. Saliva floods his mouth, and in the next second Wolfwood is slamming on the brakes so hard that Vash tumbles headfirst out of the sidecar.
But that’s the last thing Wolfwood is worried about as he all but falls off the bike, tumbling into the sand and heaving until he’s vomiting. He retches, the contents of his stomach burning like acid as they violently expel from this throat.
Vash unburies himself from the sand, shaking off the shock of suddenly being tossed from the bike without warning. He looks around, but he doesn’t see anything that would have made Wolfwood slam on the brakes.
When he turns around though, he sees what the problem is.
“Wolfwood?!” Vash exclaims as he scrambles towards him, dropping to his knees. “Are you okay?” Vash realizes that’s a stupid question as soon as the words leave his mouth, especially when Wolfwood heaves painfully, his back arching as he throws up what looks like bile.
“That’s it, just let it out.” Vash grimaces, wrapping an arm around Wolfwood’s shoulders, helping to support him as the heaving starts to let up, becoming dry and unproductive.
Wolfwood is left with just a bad taste metallic in his mouth and more cramping in his belly.
“I fear you might have been right, ‘bout the water.” Wolfwood pants, letting himself lean against Vash. The bout of vomiting has taken everything out of him.
“I think that’s safe to say,” Vash agrees, comfortingly rubbing Wolfwood’s arm. “I don’t want to say that I told you so, but…”
“Yeah, yeah, you told me so.” Wolfwood sighs, wrapping his arms around his aching belly. “Please, spare me until I feel like I'm not dyin’.”
“Let’s move away from this spot.” Vash suggests, helping Wolfwood to move away from the vomit soaked sand and into the little bit of shadow afforded on the other side of Angelina II.
Vash reaches into the sidecar, fishing out his own canteen. “Here, this is clean.”
Wolfwood takes the smallest sip of water, only for it to come right back up almost immediately after.
“Okay, damn it, we need to keep going and I need to get you out of the sun.” Vash curses, realizing this is worse than he thought, and with no visible shelter for miles, he knows Wolfwood isn’t going to like what he needs to do. He takes a deep breath before saying. “You’re going to have to ride in the sidecar.”
“No. nuh-uh, that is not gonna happen.” Wolfwood argues.
“Can you drive?” Vash asks, almost daring Wolfwood to prove that he’d be able to sit up and drive. “Stand up and get on the bike with our hurling.”
Wolfwood, to his credit, does try. He takes a deep breath, and gets half way to standing before his face goes gray and he has to slap a hand over his mouth as he falls back to his knees.
“Mhmm, that’s what I thought.”
During the five hour drive, they end up having to stop ten more times, Wolfwood retching green bile into the sand, the movement of the bike exacerbating his nausea.
Thankfully, by the time they pull into town, Wolfwood’s stomach seems to have stabilized, or at the very least he doesn’t feel like he’s going to expel everything from his body at the smallest movement.
When the bike slows to a stop, he stands tentatively, waiting for his stomach to cramp and is pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t.
He follows Vash in a daze, arm wrapped protectively around his sore stomach, every muscle in his abdomen and back tense and stiff. Then he follows Vash to the room he’s gotten them.
Wolfwoods pretty sure he hasn’t been so happy to see a bed in months as he collapses to the lumpy mattress.
“Doin’ alright over there?”
“Mmm… yeah, think the worst of it’s passed now.” Wolfwood mutters, curling into a ball on his side to try to relieve some of the pressure on his stomach. “At least I think I'm done hurling.”
“That’s good,” Vash says, his voice soft as he perches himself on the side of the bed. He presses a damp rag to Wolfwood’s forehead, dragging it down the side of his face. “But maybe next time you'll listen when I say something is a bad idea.”