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How long had he been there? It had to have been at least a week, judging from the bodies of the nomads he had been traveling with. Picked mostly clean of good meat by scavengers, the smell was atrocious as it rotted in the dusty windswept plains of the Outer Zone.
Though he didn’t need to drink or eat, the dryness left his mouth and eyes feeling blistered and whipped by the wind and sand. He strained against their binds again, lashed up on a telephone pole had not been where he expected his time as a ranger to end, but here he was. He went deep into Legion territory to find allies for the NCR; to hopefully pull apart the Legion from the inside. All he found were people too frightened to stand against them.
Yet, he did find the Seventy and Six tribe. They were nomads in the truest sense of the word that he’d not seen since the old days of the Khans, Jackals, and Vipers. They loaded trucks and motorcycles and traveled through the remains of the Outer Zone looking for valuable scrap and anything worth trading, and had found themselves being crushed by Caesar’s goons on their passages through the loose borders they insisted were written in stone. He thought maybe the Seventy and Sixes would be a great ally in disrupting Legion supply routes.
And now they were all dead.
In the circle of vehicles they parked for the evenings, a pile of bodies and tires had long since smouldered out. The acrid smell of burnt bodies and rubber lingered though. Those unlucky enough to be crucified had passed from exposure and were mummified by the dryness of the air. So now he was here, pinned up on a cross waiting for some enterprising scavenger to put him out of his misery.
He’d seen a pack of coyotes pass through and pick apart what little was left of the burn pile and a murder of crows helping themselves to the crucified and, most recently, a band of scavvers ripped out what was worth taking from the vehicles and the leavings from the Legion attack on the caravan.
He had begged them to cut him down or put him out of his misery through dry and cracked lips and through and they’d just laughed.
And now he was just left hanging, waiting for the crows to work up the gumption to pull him apart, strand by strand until he finally died.
“Todo, you wait out here and keep an eye out, I’m going to head in, see if there’s anyone or anything here,” the faint voice caused him to open his bleary eyes , he must have dozed off again. He saw the blur of blue and gold making its way into the circle of vehicles.
He slowly blinked, trying to clear the glaze that blurred his vision and struggled to try and say something to get their attention. They went around checking through the remains of the camp for supplies while turning a sympathetic gaze to each of the crucified Seventy and Sixes. When she approached his side of the bonfire of death, he inhaled raspily and let out a ragged noise that would to some ears sound like a word.
The blur leapt back in shock before rushing up to him, “Shit, you’re alive?” She clamoured up to him, his fogged vision finally coming back to him as he saw her, a bonafide Vault Dweller, straight teeth and everything. She was struggling to undo the binds as he started to come to once again.
The guttural noise left his lips again, this time more audibly, “Help.”
“I’m trying scarecrow, just bear with me,” she removed the lash from around his left arm and he instinctively wrapped around her to keep himself from swinging down by one arm, “Christ you’re light. We gotta get you some water and food.”
All he could manage was the raspy sound of the word help, hoping that it would suffice for a thank you until his strength was back.
As she undid the other lash, she lowered the two of them down, without the weight of his body straining against the cross, he could tell she was right. He was more weighted from the vandalized combat armor he wore than mass from his own body. She laid him down against the base of it and held her canteen to his lips, cool clear water slaked what felt like an eternity of thirst.