Nevada: High Roller (Fallout New Vegas)

Chapter 2: Mojave Killer

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The first thing I was aware of when I woke up that very next morning was harsh, hurried, muffled voices. 

Might have been down to the pillow I'd yanked over my head, but, y'know, who's to say?

Sleeping in the back storage room of a saloon in the middle of the wasteland hadn't been as dreadful as you might think. The only issues really had been that I'd occasionally get cut on smashed glass or, like that day, be woken up by ongoing business in the next room over. Not like there was even a door to blot out the sound or anything.

Fact was, I was staying there rent-free. Would have been easy for most wastelanders to kick me out on my ass. Also would have been easy for most wastelanders to fill my grave over with fresh cement to keep me down there, but the folks of Goodsprings weren't like most wastelanders.

I hadn't slept all that great that night. Truth be told, I hadn't been sleeping well for a long time, but that last week was the worst. And no, it wasn't because I was sleeping on a hard wooden floor with only a pillow and no covers. That, strange as it sounds, felt like home.

You get used to it after a while.

Doc Mitchell had passed it off as a reaction to head-trauma, but I didn't have the heart to tell him about the nightmares I'd been having -- ones that had far extended since before that bullet ever went through my brain. Didn't want to tell him, either. It'd just open up a can of worms and I wasn't about to jump at the chance to talk about it. 

So I just went along with it, nodded and agreed: head-trauma. That's all it was.

And maybe there was truth in it, y'know? I wasn't a huge expert on medicine or anything, but I'd flicked through some of the comics I'd brought back home for Virginia a while ago. Some of those medicine journals. Didn't help all that much, but the pictures were cool.

Doc Mitchell had grown up in a Vault -- one of those glorified holes in the ground they'd built way before whatever big-boom had fucked the world so hard it'd never recover. 

               Point was, they got nice treatment down there and probably passed along old-world medical knowledge through generations. He knew what he was talking about.

Pressing my hands against the slightly sticky, liquor-stained floorboards, I pushed myself upright and, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, did my best to resist the urge to let myself slump back down. The incessant gabbling from the next room over made that easier.

"This is your last warnin', Trudy..." I could make out the gruff voice of a man emanating from the bar area. Nobody from Goodsprings, I was sure of that. "I'm gettin' real tired of repeatin' myself."

My fingertips rested against the sturdiness of the wall beside me as I tentatively raised myself up to a standing position. He probably didn't know I was in that back room, otherwise he wouldn't have been so bold as to threaten the owner of the saloon like that. I was counting on it: the element of surprise.