Nevada: High Roller (Fallout New Vegas)

Chapter 25: Getting Edged By Death Is A Group Activity

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"Nevvie!"

Her voice snapped me to attention, and when my eyes opened, I found myself squinting sharply beneath the blinding rays of the Mojave sun beating down on the cracked, dry earth of the El Dorado Dry Lake, staring down at my hands splayed out in front of me.

I pushed myself to my feet, disorientated yet feeling my heart pounding in my chest, burning up in my lungs, like I'd been running. 

Had I been running? 

I wasn't sure. 

I couldn't remember how I got there. But I was there, in the midst of complete nothingness and without a sense of direction. Even the roads, usually far off in the distance, the Helios One building, was void from sight -- vanished, taken away. 

                I didn't know how I knew where I was, but I did. I felt it in my gut, deep in there and wrenching.

"Nevvie, help me!" 

Virginia's piercing, desperate and pleading screams cut through the expanse of the dry lake. A jolt ran through me. I spun on my heels. Nothing. Nothing in sight but the flat, yellowish surface, brushed over by sand that began to pick up on a light breeze.

"Vi?" I called out, tilting my head down to block out the bright, white sun with the brim of my hat. "Vi, darlin', where are you?"

I turned, almost circling myself with a crunch and gravelly scrape of dirt underfoot that breezed over a dusting of sand over my boots, the wind beginning to pick up across the dry lake's surface enough that small stones began to roll like tiny tumbleweeds.

There she was, perhaps fifty feet away. 

Her pastel-pink dress, embroidered with tiny purple, blue and pink butterflies and flowers, had been dirtied around the hem, sticking patches of yellow, dried earth to her kneecaps. Tears rolled down her chubby, freckled cheeks, rolling down across her dimples and onto her wobbling chin as she held back sobs. Her varmint rifle, broken by her feet in two, and her shaking hands clutched tightly in small fists by her side as she stared across.

"Vi..." I felt myself trying to move towards her, and yet the distance never closed. "Vi, I'm here, darlin'. I'm right here."

"Nevvie!" Her voice wobbled in anguish. "Nevvie, help me!"

As if emerging from the dust itself, shapes formed around her. 

      Tall and menacing, and donned in dark leather chest-plates, red drapes of fabric emblazoned with the yellow stitching of a prancing bull, metal shoulder-plates left blank or marked with a red 'X,' goggles and helmets, some round and circular and some wearing galeas. All faceless, marked with a swirling black space where their faces should've been, and all armed with glistening silver machetes.