Nevada: High Roller (Fallout New Vegas)

Chapter 8: In Hell With Good Company

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"So, this is it, huh?"

Boone mumbled his words somberly, unable to able to rip his eyes away from the bill of sale, held firmly in his calloused hands. He scrunched his brow, deep and harshly as he leaned in closer to read and re-read each word. Splashes of red rolled down, dripping from the crinkled paper.

"This..." He stared at the bill, blank-faced. "This is proof that Jeannie was the one who sold Carla?"

"Found it in some safe she had behind her desk." I managed, blinking through the thick, hot blood that coated my face, sprinkled with chunks of spongy brain matter that I was still raking out of my hair with my fingers, which fell to the ground with a pitter-patter, tapping off the blacktop's surface. "Name's on it -- ain't no doubt 'bout that. She is- was, the one."

I wasn't sure exactly how long it had taken for Boone to abandon his post up in the mouth of Dinky The Dinosaur, nearly two-hundred meters west back down the road, or how long it had taken for that screeching, wailing white-noise to die down enough for me to regain my vision.

A couple minutes, maybe, but I had no exact measurement.

However, the two things I was sure of were these: Jeannie May Crawford's head had gone up in an explosion of red after Boone's bullet had ripped through it easier than a hot knife through the skin of a Molerat, and that he'd taken the bill of sale from my hands while I'd been incapacitated on the ground.

And now?

Now he knew who had been responsible for selling his wife -- and his unborn baby with her -- to Legion slavers. That long month of waiting for an answer had finally come to an end with one bullet. 

One bullet, and one piece of paper.

Bloodied spit dribbled from my mouth to the ground. I wished I'd closed my mouth when Jeannie's head had split open like a can of Cram, sending her hunched body slumping down pathetically to the ground with the clatter of her double-barrel shotgun on the blacktop. 

I cleared my throat, using the sleeve of my black duster coat to wipe across my tired eyelids made heavy by fatigue and a sudden coating of hot blood.

The stuff was slick against my skin. It dripped down from the left side of my face, caught up in the splash-zone after the impact of Boone's saving bullet had ripped right through the noggin that old, finky bitch.

     In my hair. Down my neck. Beneath the fabric of my bandanna, hanging loose around my collar.

Even, I was sure, down from my neck and beneath the front of my shirt. I could feel a bead of the red stuff trickling slowly down between my tits. Wasn't the first time I'd been showered with blood, and while I didn't have an issue with it usually, the feeling of her blood on me made me feel -- for lack of a better word -- icky.