Chapter Text
When Tracy Bowman first arrived at the Starlight Drive In with her little ones, it was to the prospect of hard work and at least temporary shelter. But it was good, or at least it was better than how she'd been surviving so far. It was work with her hands in the dirt, and with a weapon only to defend herself if needed. Dirt was clean, not like blood. She had enough of blood.
She kept her head down, metaphorically speaking, but also literally as she was assigned to growing carrots and gourds. She knew a thing or two about the stuff, though she didn't elaborate on the source of that knowledge, and nobody asked her to. Another settler, Georgie, knew a thing or two about mutfruit, and between them and two of Tracy's kids, they managed to keep a handsome garden for the entire settlement.
It gave her the opportunity to keep an eye on her two eldest, who were shooting up like weeds and were beginning to get that dangerous look in their eyes that kids got when they were just settling into their stupid phase.
Her youngest Claire was not any smarter than her other two, but at least she was a tiny thing. Six or seven--Tracy had lost count a bit during her bad days, and Claire hadn't been old enough to keep count herself--but bold as you please, and taking full advantage of the opportunity to run wild.
And Tracy didn't need to keep an eye on Claire to hear her shrieking and laughing when she was off with the other kids on the settlement. There were only two besides Tracy's own, a boy and a girl a little bit older than Claire, but she ran them ragged around the Drive In.
"Keep away from the water," Tracy would say daily, "and keep away from the screen."
And Claire would listen, or if not, one of the other adults would chase her off from where she wasn't allowed, but mostly Claire mumbled an 'okay, mommy,' and ran off to play, while Tracy and her other kids and Georgie tended to the garden.
That was life for Tracy Bowman and her family.
It wasn't until weeks later, when the carrots were just getting big and the provisioners brought new seeds, that Tracy was startled out of her thoughts on subsistence agriculture by a question she did not expect.
"Mommy, are we not supposed to play near the screen because of the ghost?" Claire asked, blinking up innocently as she scraped her bowl clean and licked her spoon.
"What ghost?" Tracy asked, taken aback by the question.
She knew about the booby-traps at the doors, because they were still waiting for someone to come and defuse them. The settlement was expanding, and they might find a use for that big old building. Claire might have not been aware of the booby-traps, but then where had she gotten the ghost idea?
"The ghost in the screen," Claire said, and Tracy frowned, wondering if maybe the projector was going off at night, or something of the sort. "His name is Angelo."
Tracy's next thought was, imaginary friend.
"You gave the ghost a name?" she asked.
"I didn't give it to him, he told me it!" Claire replied, in the kind of annoyed tone little children always used when the adults were being slow on the uptake. "He lives in the screen."
"What does he look like?" Tracy asked.
Claire thought about it for a bit before answering.
"He's really big and he has orange pants. I think. I only got a little look at him."
"Is he scary?" Tracy asked.
"Mm, no. He tries to scare us, but he's not very good at it because he never yells," Claire replied.
Well, that was... singular, Tracy supposed. A new settler? A squatter? Tracy tried to think if she'd seen anyone with orange pants lately, but she had to admit she didn't pay that much attention to other people.
Then Claire hopped out of her seat and ran outside to play, and Tracy had a long day of work ahead of her, so the whole thing was put away from her mind.
It was a few days later, as Tracy was plucking fat, succulent carrots from the ground, that she heard the shots. A pop off in the distance, and then another, and another.
Georgie emerged out of his modest mutfruit orchard, his jaw working in worry, and he fixed his burnt eyes on the horizon. He was long-lived for a ghoul, not quite pre-war but just about, and thus took all the dangers of the Wasteland in stride. No molerats, radstorm or swaggering raiders ever made him so much as raise an eyebrow in alarm, but this time he looked at Tracy with something akin to worry on his face.
"Ain't that where the kids were playing?" he asked.
Tracy's heart wrenched in her chest, and she looked off towards the screen. They weren't supposed to, but that was where their voices had been coming from. Tracy dropped her bucket, startling Georgie and sending carrots spilling everywhere.
She wasn't sure when she started running, but she did, with a speed only desperation could have given her.
Tracy came across the ferals first, their heads split open across the pavement. Three, four, a pile of desiccated limbs and loose, spongy skin, but dead.
She found Claire huddled against the wall of the building, wiping her nose with her sleeve while tears cut streaks through the dirt on her face. Tracy scooped her up, and ran back, towards the diner and towards shelter.
She propped Claire up on the hood of a rusty old car and checked her for injuries, but found nothing except the common childhood scabs: a skinned knee, some small scratches. No sign that a feral ghoul had ever gotten its teeth in her.
"You alright, Claire?" Tracy asked, voice shaking.
Claire nodded.
"Angelo shot them, mommy," Claire replied, still sniffling, but her tears now starting to dry.
Tracy remained stunned silent for a few moments, before turning to look at the screen. Up on the roof, if Tracy squinted against the sun and really focused, she could almost maybe see something moving on the roof of the screen.
"Angelo who lives in the screen?" Tracy asked.
Claire nodded.
When the settlers all gathered together that night, it was partially to discuss new defenses, but mostly to argue about how some strange man with a disturbingly good aim had been living right under their noses the entire time and they had not noticed.
"Well, he hasn't killed us yet, he probably doesn't mean us ill," Georgie had opined.
"That's bullshit and you know it," another settler, Emily, had retorted. She was a rough one, constantly patrolling the perimeter, pacing like a dog whiffing vermin, and muttering to herself constantly. Figured she'd take it the worst of them all.
Somewhere at the middle of the spectrum was Lyall, who adjusted his spectacles nervously, scratched at his bald spot, and advocated on ignoring the entire thing. Nothing bad had come of the situation so far, maybe nothing would.
Even Sarah, Tracy's eldest, seventeen and figuring herself an adult, opined that they should just give the man a wide berth and maybe he'd eventually leave. Cary and Wilhemina Foster, the parents of the other two kids in the settlement, advised that maybe they should take precautions.
They were still all discussing what to do when Tracy slipped out and made her way to the vegetable patch.
Her upended bucket of carrots was still where she'd left it, and she filled it back up, carrot by carrot. She picked off and placed three carrots aside as she did, and tied them together with string afterwards, like she was going to sell them off at the market.
She had no idea what she was doing when she walked up to the screen and knocked on the side door. Maybe she was still plum stupid, the same kind of stupid that had her run from home at fifteen and have three kids by three different men whose faces she didn't even recall. But like everything she did, it seemed like a good idea at the time. She knocked and she waited.
She didn't expect an answer and that was all well and good, because she didn't get it. But as the wind died on a bit, she heard the scuff of shoes against the floor from the other side of the door, and she figured this was as close as she'd get.
"That was my kid you saved," Tracy said. Her tone was a bit too harsh, sounding like she was scolding the man for what he did, but Tracy rarely had any softness left for anyone but her children. Still, she tried. "That was my Claire. I'm going to leave something for you here, okay?" She placed the bundle of carrots on the ground before the door. "It's not a bomb," she added. "But if it's not gone by morning, I'm taking it back. Would be a waste of food otherwise."
Then she left. She wasn't sure what that would accomplish, if anything. But there it was. A payment of sorts. A... thank you.
She went back to the dingy shack she inhabited with her kids, curled up behind Claire on the mattress, and slept with her baby against her chest. She slept deeply for a while, and then lightly until morning.
The next day, the carrots were gone.
Tracy wasn't sure, but she thought that maybe she was pleased about this.
"What do you think about this whole thing?" Tracy asked Georgie the next day.
He'd set up a low table and a few patio chairs in the shade of his mutfruit. 'Union rules,' he'd said with a grin. He whipped up some of that Old World lingo sometimes, and explained some things his parents had told him about pre-War life. He'd been the one to tell them all about what a drive-in movie theater was, and how it worked, though Tracy still only half-believed him.
Anyway, he liked working slowly as he cleaned his mutfruit trees of dead wood and vermin, and taking frequent breaks, sitting in his chair and admiring his little trees. Carrots and gourds were not quite as aesthetically pleasing, but Tracy joined him that day, because she wanted to pick his brain.
"I say leave him," Georgie replied, before taking a gulp of beer. The cooler next to the patio chairs was the other thing that occupied Georgie on his breaks.
"You're a ghoul," Tracy pointed out bluntly.
"Yep," Georgie agreed.
"People don't much like ghouls."
"Nope."
"What if he decides he doesn't much like you one day?"
"Would be a tough break for me, then, eh?" Georgie grinned, displaying rows of yellow, chipped teeth. Not a reassuring image on any level, not on a purely visual one, nor in regards to Tracy's hopes for his continued survival.
Georgie must have sensed Tracy's disapproval. He passed her a beer and shook his head.
"You think we should be more neighborly with him?" Georgie asked.
"Maybe," Tracy said.
"Show up on his doorstep, with an apple pie? Ask to borrow a cup of sugar?"
"What's apple?"
"...See, questions like that illustrate why people don't act neighborly anymore. Apple used to be a fruit. Made good pie. Got extinct when the bombs fell."
"Okay," Tracy said. "What's the cup of sugar for?"
"We're getting besides the point here. What is it that you want to do about the guy? It seems like everyone got their say on this issue except you."
Tracy thought about it for a little while, and realized she hadn't completely figured it out either before sitting down for this talk with Georgie. But she didn't like having some unknown element nestled so near their settlement, practically under their floorboards, and she wanted to assess him before she decided what ought to be done about the man.
"Talk to him, I guess," Tracy said.
"Well," Georgie said, "talking's free. It's the listening where things tend to fall apart. Good luck."