Fallout 4: AR

16. The Long Road Ahead

"I thought Nick said to go north," MacCready argued. It was the first thing he'd said all day and, of course it was a complaint. We were heading out from Diamond City early the next afternoon, armed with a tidbit of scrounged information about a group called the Minutemen. My Pip-Boy's DATA screen came in handy to record the information Nick had, scant as it was. They were known to have helped people in the past, had a reasonable likelihood of containing one or more members familiar with technology, and unfortunately were apparently running for their lives after a devastating attack on their headquarters in Quincy. MacCready had woken up with a vicious hangover and had been silently brooding until now.

"Ye-es," I drew the word out. "He also said they may have headed west, which is where this flyer is directing us." I handed him the wanted poster from the night before. "We can kill two birds with one stone- clear out the old subway tunnels and maybe pick up traces of the Minutemen."

Squinting from his headache, he perused the post. "Hmm, no reward but we keep what we find? Raiders?" He stopped suddenly, peering more closely at the sketchy map drawn on the paper. "Uh, Boss, got a minute to talk?"

I looked at him. He actually looked legitimately concerned about something. "Sure thing. What's on your mind?"

"First off, I want to thank you for..." and he tugged on his cap, pulling the brim down in a futile effort to conceal the hint of color blushing his cheeks. "Look, I don't make it a habit to drink myself insensible. Thanks for, well, for just being there."

I smiled. "No worries. You looked like you just needed time to work through... whatever it was." Before he could respond, I added, "Besides, I never got a chance to thank you for saving my life from that car explosion."

"Boss," he said sternly, rolling his eyes a little, "that's what I'm paid to do, keep you alive. You don't need to thank me for it."

I huffed at him. "I'm going to anyway. Get used to it. Now, you were saying?"

MacCready glanced down the road nervously. "I don't usually go around sharing stuff like this, but you've been pretty straight with me, so I'm going to be straight with you. I'm a freelancer now, but I didn't used to be. Used to run with a big mercenary company called the Gunners. They're barely one step above raiders, ruthless and violent, taking contracts for any reason as long as there's bloodshed involved. They mow down anyone, and I mean anyone, who gets in their way. I couldn't take that kind of life, so I cut ties with them pretty quick."

I nodded. "Having a conscience isn't a bad thing. What does this have to do with going west?"

He tapped the flyer. "It's the area. The raiders in the tunnel are probably not part of their gang, but we'd be heading straight into the range of a couple of Gunner squad leaders named Winlock and Barnes. That's the group I used to run with, and those two have been hounding me for months, warning me to stay out of their territory." He let out a bitter bark of laughter. "In fact, about the only reason I was available for Hancock to hire me is because those assho- ugh, those idiots have been driving away my clients. No one wants to hire former Gunner. I've been trying to earn enough caps to buy them out, get them off my back."

"How many caps do you think you'll need?" I asked. Bullies are the same everywhere, I guess, "though I doubt paying them off would work."

"I'm with you there." A sigh. "I don't know. Problem is, even if I paid them off with every cap I owned, they'd probably still put a bullet in my head anyway as an example." He started pacing nervously.

"You're a sniper. Couldn't you just take them out?" I suggested. Kill or be killed, I thought resignedly, though this is my bodyguard we're talking about here. I kind of like having him around.