“You should perhaps... build it more rigid.” the low voice rolled as the two figures starred down the throat of the great mine-shaft. From its dark throat the echo of the makeshift crane and winch they had constructed went crashing down into the void. There was nothing to see of it, only hear it. Its descent crashing forever and echoing back up. In his mind, Adam Macenzie counted the seconds as heart beats until he heard the final splash as it hit water. He ran the numbers in his head and concluded: it was very deep indeed. But on the ledge just below them the corpse of the radstag they had just killed was laying in a heep in the ashen rock and he wanted it.
Adam Macenzie, a swift twenty-nine year old looked bright for his age and had not shed his youth in those years despite everything. In Greenbriar County he was considered the best of the lot with his soft but clear brown eyes, dirty blonde – and literally dirty – hair, deep rolling voice, and sharp angular chin. He was sharp on the rifle, and clear in the head. Had not taken to chems, on account of his tendencies to seizures and how they killed his ma and as people surrendered to this tendency were looking up to it as a trait of powerful personality. Although he did not talk much, he was considered – ironically – the height of conversation even he rarely listened and detached himself from it. He was not listening to his partner now, the oak-strapped gray-green mutant that half lay across the ground with a shallow expressionless look in his eyes as he drolled softly into the pit and spoke about how the wench Adam had spent the afternoon building needed to be more rigid.
“It was the spruce struts.” he said. “It was the spruce struts. They could not hold the weight. It was not enough rigid. It could hold the weight not.”
Adam thought about responding to him, but could not bring himself to it. He was considering the cause lost. The stag was twenty feet down and the boulder is lay on – its neck broken from the fall – was just too much. He hated himself, thinking it was safe to chase the animal so close to where it was known a mine was. But that was life as it was. “Perhaps the Moth Man will eat it.” he said bitterly, ending his mutant companion's rumbling about structural rigidity.
Dog-Hound was maybe ninety year old super mutant. Perhaps a century. Perhaps more. It was hard to say. His skin was thick and cracked, yellowing and graying and greening at once until he resembled merely a mossy boulder if left motionless. He was not gifted with intelligence, prone to single subject obsession. “Perhaps if the stag were more rigid.” he said, continuing the topic along a new line of thought, “And it might just the cliff climb up.”
“Climb up a sheer cliff-face?”
“Yes.”
“The edge extends out [i]over[i] it, Dog-Hound.”
“I have seen it. Seen it from rigid animals before.” Dog-Hound said without missing a beat. It is certain he has seen many things, no one doubt that. But many doubt exactly what it is he has seen. They however do not doubt his strength, and Adam today and hoped to have him carry a stag or a yaoi-guai for him after field-dressing it. And the hunt had started well when he got up this morning. The sun was not even up and they had found the trail. He should have known it would not go so well. But oh well, the Devil giveth and the Devil taketh and so it goes. He would just have to take on a new trail later.
He picked up his rifle and began to move off. But then Dog-Hound said, “Perhaps if climbed.”
Adam turned around to him and and shook his head. “No, that won't do.” he said, “We have better luck to find something else. I still have half a day. What about you?”
“Sleep need I no.” Dog-Head said, shaking his head. And it was perhaps true. But he was also known to be found standing motionless, unblinking into the distance for long periods of time. Perhaps that was his sleep, and he didn't quiet know it.
Adam didn't chose to acknowledge the comment, and began to move on. Turning to look out passed the trees and the brambly brush he looked out over the valley. Its long expanse bathed in the light of the sun. The mountainsides covered in the mat of the decay and the gradual regrowth of Appalachia. As far as he was concerned: it was his home and in a manner of speaking his kingdom.
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