Steppe Tanya Chapter 08

The giant insect flew at me so fast I could barely make out its segmented red eyes and wide orange wings. I only had time to throw myself backwards, which I immediately realised was the wrong move, as it easily tracked my movement and adjusted mid flight to crash right into me. Even as I was falling I realised it wanted to pin me so it could sting me and if it did I would die.

I turned as we dropped, rolling over and throwing the insect’s back into the ground. There was a strange whooshing chirp as I did, though it didn’t come from the creature's mandibles, but from beneath me, in its thorax. The insect was the size of a large dog, with an armoured carapace covered in small black bristles that rubbed painfully against my wrists as I wrestled against it. 

The cazador was stunned for a moment, not expecting for me to be on top of it. Its clawed feet writhed as it bucked, trying to get itself upright. Its barb was beneath me, unable to curl up into position to sting my back, but in its flailing it almost grazed one of my thighs, only being stopped by the thick fabric of my jeans. Without giving myself a chance to think or hesitate, I wrapped my legs around the joint between its abdomen and thorax, pulling my extremities out of range of its probing. 

It kept throwing itself around, each push of its wings bucked us up and down until we were both on our side. One of my arms was pinned, but I wasn’t willing to let it shake me loose, so I wrapped my free arm around its abdomen and grabbed its writhing wing at the narrow base, squeezing and crushing with all my might. The insect grappled me now as well, it’s six legs wrapping around my torso and digging into my back. I gasped in pain as its legs writhed,  shredding through my Khan jacket in an instant and tearing at my skin. 

I reached up, past its snapping mandibles, and jammed my thumb into its red eye with a crunch. The speed of its writhing doubled, but I was able to roll to the right, freeing up my left arm to jam my thumb into its other eye. Blinded, and making chirping shrieks of pain, the cazador gave one final titanic buck, and threw me loose. When I hit the ground, the pain of the sand entering the cuts on my back had me freezing up with a shuddering gasp, but the cazador didn’t notice. In its pain it was rampaging, scuttling about violently. It bumped into the wall of the boat shed and frantically began to sting the wood repeatedly. Slowly, I stood to my feet, rubbing my wrists where the hairs on the insect’s torso had cut my skin while we were wrestling. 

I cast about for a weapon of some kind, but there was nothing at hand except some ancient planks of wood. Just inside the door of the boatshed was what looked like a half finished nest for the insects, and my fellow Khan, Briggs, was laying on his belly inside, unmoving. Beyond him was a shelf with oars, which were probably my best bet. I might be able to bludgeon the thing to death with one of those. The sound of flapping wings caught my attention, and I turned my head to see what looked like another cazador, rushing towards me from over the horizon. 

The only thing I could think to do was slam the boat shed’s roller door shut with a squeal of an old metal wheel that hadn’t moved in decades. Outside, I heard the whistling chirps of the two abominations, as one of them pushed against the door, probing for a way to get through, but unable to open it. Not knowing much about the creature’s habits, I decided not to assume my own safety, and hurried over to claim one of the oars. 

As I passed Briggs, I saw his eyes moving to follow me across the room. His lips moved briefly, trying to say something, but I didn’t have time to pause and help him. In my rush I accidentally stepped on something that crunched, and when I looked down I found a dead pigeon under foot. The floor of the shed was littered with debris. Dead animals were everywhere, rats, crows, dogs, and even a horse was curled up with what looked like a giant grub the size of my forearm sucking from its carcass, there was even what looked like a long dead cowboy. 

Whoever he was, I had no idea but I almost cheered at the sight of him. If he died with his gun, I would be saved. I held my breath as I flipped open his jacket, but the holster was empty. It must have been in his hand when the cazador dragged him in here, and now it was lost somewhere. The only thing he had I could make use of was a boot knife still in its sheath, which I quickly tied to the end of the ore with his boot laces to make a spear.

That done, I hurried back towards the door when I noticed the horse’s eyes rolling in agony. It wasn’t dead, it was being eaten alive! Looking back to Briggs, I realised he’d had a small leathery egg sac planted right in the crook of his armpit. So that was what these bugs did. They stung you, paralysed you, then dragged you in here to be eaten alive by the next generation of their young. I stopped to quickly squash the egg, and stabbed the writhing grub on top of the horse for good measure.

The poor beast looked like it was already on the verge of death. The patch on top of its haunches where the grub had been gorging was nothing but a hairless mess of scar tissues where the little abomination had repeatedly bit into its host to suck its blood dry. The smell of old feces and urine from the horse was rank, it must have been here for a few days at the very least.

There was scratching at the door, as well as on the roof, and I realised that there was now more than one cazador trying to dig their way into the building. The wounds on my back were already hurting so badly that I was worried some of the tendons were damaged, and there was another deep cut on my front, right above my right breast that was still bleeding. Being X only knew what kind of filth was on those monster’s claws, and now working its way through my system. I was likely infected with parasites and worse, now.

Then I noticed a bulge in Brigg’s jacket pocket.

“Is that a gun?” I asked, bending over to check. It wasn’t a gun. It was a small leather bundle, full of empty old syringes, what looked like some healing powders, and two little bottles of medicine. One of them I recognised as morphine, called Med X here for some reason; it was obviously stolen from the Follower’s clinic because of course my criminal tribe couldn’t respect private property. 

Again, he tried to say something, but he was clearly struggling to breathe. I leaned closer, putting my ear to his lips. “-vehughmmm. Hhhaaaetivehoom.” He hissed, unable to speak clearly.

I stared down at him, before shrugging. Whatever was in the unmarked bottle, I doubt it could do him much harm at this point. I filled one of the syringes and injected it into his thigh.

A look of relief crossed his face, and he slumped back down. I couldn’t tell if I’d helped his recovery or just helped him get high. Either way, I left his satchel on his chest, and looked about for more that I could use.

Above me, I heard roof tiles falling free and shattering on the ground outside, while the first of the cazador’s legs scratched at the wooden boards overhead. 

The only thing in the room I hadn’t checked was what looked like a tool cabinet in the corner. When I threw it open I found nothing but old, empty beer buttles, rusty wrenches and a bottle of turpentine. 

Wait a second.

Moving quickly, I took the bottle of turpentine to the front door where I could still hear the scratching coming from. Looking through the glass window, I could still see two of them out there, uninjured, while the one I blinded earlier was still flailing in agony. My appearance at the window seemed to drive the two into a frenzy as they rushed straight at the glass. They shattered it with their faces, but weren’t able to fit through at the same time. I ripped the cap off the Turpentine, took a swig and sprayed a mouthful of the awful stuff into their faces. They recoiled, not liking it, and liked it even less when I did it again, but lit the next spray on fire with Boone’s cigarette lighter. The little black hairs that covered their carapaces burned up instantly, as the insects recoiled, flying away and rolling around on the ground.

“Look out!” Briggs whispered at me, his voice hoarse, and I spun around to see the cazador that had been digging through the roof finally forced its way inside. It got its head through, but a piece of the timber it had snapped got caught on something, and suddenly it was stuck. It flapped its wings furiously, trying to break free, but the wood bent without breaking, and it was stuck for the moment.

Well, I knew what to do. I swapped the knife at the end of my oar for a rag soaked in turpentine and lit it on fire. I held the flaming end under the cazador’s body and it shrieked. Flailing back and forth, it finally broke free by pulling its head back up through the hole it made, and rolled off the roof, rolling and flailing in pain until it fell from the roof and crunched into the ground outside. I breathed a sigh of relief, turning back to the door. Luckily, the old wood hadn’t caught fire, and the three injured cazadores seemed to have begun fighting each other. The one I wounded earlier was biting into the freshly burnt ones, who were now attacking it.

It must have bumped into one of them by accident and stung it blindly.

For the moment, I seemed to have found a reprieve. 

Briggs was sitting up when I glanced at him, though he looked pale and shakey, and he had vomit staining the front of his shirt. He seemed like he was trying to inject himself with Med X, though he had shaking hands. 

“You’ll kill yourself, let me do it.” I told him, taking the syringe away. “How much?”

“The five mark.” He whispered to me. “Cazadore venom hurts so fuckin’ bad.”

“I’m sure it does.” I mumbled, quickly injecting him. 

He immediately breathed out a sigh of relief as the drug washed his pain away, and I’m sure left him feeling pleasantly high. He began to explain what happened, even though I hadn’t asked him. “I saw the horse tracks. They weren’t even a day old. Followed them here, and as soon as that smell hit my nose, one of the goddamn things was on me.” He shuddered, though the expression of pain lessened significantly as the medicine took effect. “Fuckin’ demons, man.”

“What about the horse?” I asked. “It’s what this whole misadventure was for, is it too late to save it?”

He shrugged, before climbing to unsteady feet. He limped with each step, leaning on me as together we walked over to where the beast was laying on the ground.

“It’s a goner.” He said, shaking his head. “Amazing that it’s still alive.”

Looking at the horse, I felt a strange squeezing sensation in my chest. Probably exhaustion. Whatever I felt, it did seem like a waste to come here and fight off a nest of these monstrous things only to have nothing to show for it. 

“Can you try and treat it?”

He looked at me with obvious reluctance, but when he saw my face, he sighed and shrugged. “I guess we gotta try.”

He filled a new syringe all the way up with the unmarked bottle, and injected it into the horse’s neck.

“What is that?”

“Antivenom, cazador antivenom.” Briggs looked at me with a shrug. He talked constantly as he worked, maybe to distract himself from his pain, or maybe uninhibited by his morphine high. “I always like to keep it around, just in case of shit like this. Next chance I get, I’m adding radscorpion and nightstalker antivenom as well.” 

“Give it some Med X as well.” I told him.

“Come on, Mags. Look at it. Ain’t no way.”

“Just do it.” I told him. “We’re here for horses, anyway. Let’s just try our luck.”

He grimaced, before completely filling the needle with Med-X, and injecting the entire thing into its neck. Slowly, the panicked rolling of its eyes slowed down. Its legs twitched once, then twice, and within a few minutes it rolled over to its belly, clods of filthy mud clinging to one side of its face. It whickered weekly, licking my hand as I used my fingers to brush the worst of the mess from its face.

“That ain’t a slippie.” Briggs murmured, after a moment. “That’s a charger.”

“A charger?”

“Yeah.” He said, surprised, reaching up to remove some of the dirt from the top of its head, revealing what looked to me like two broken horns. “Yeah, see? That’s a charger, from out west. Damn.”

“Is there something wrong with chargers?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I mean, it depends on what you’re looking for, right? Chargers’ll give you a good bite if they’re in a bad mood, or even knock you flat on your ass with a headbutt. They can be angry bastards. That ain’t so bad though, they’ll crush up a radscorpion or nightstalker that messes with ’em, or freak out if someone they don’t know tries to steal them. Chargers are a lot stronger than a slippie, grow bigger and can carry a lot more, and they’re less picky about their diets, so they’ll eat just about anything that grows. The problem is they bounce a lot when you’re riding them.”

I blinked at that. “What’s the problem with bouncing?”

“We’re gonna be in our saddles all day, Mags. If we’re riding slippies, and you’re riding a charger, your ass is gonna feel it more than mine. Plus it’s easier to shoot from a slippie’s back. More level.” He raised his hand flat in front of us and moved it in a line, as though comparing the motion of the two.

“Then who uses chargers?”

“NCR.” Briggs spat. “Rangers prefer ‘em.”

“Why?”

He looked at me like I’d asked the stupidest question he had ever heard. “Chargers for charging.”

I nodded slowly, imagining it. For a nomad who expected to be riding from sun up to sundown on a regular basis, the smoother, more even gait of the slippie meant less wear for the rider and was thus preferable, but for the NCR who were engaged in war with that luddite Caesar in the east, a good cavalry charge would probably be every bit as effective as they were in medieval times, and a more moody and aggressive horse could be preferable. Obviously, against a more modern opponent equipped with machine guns and mortars, a cavalry charge would be a disaster, but the deplorable conditions of the wasteland had made the ancient methods of war reliable and effective once again. 

“What about a work horse?” I asked Briggs. “Would a charger be good for a plow?”

He shrugged. “I mean, they’re alright. Probably better off with a two header, though. They’re bigger than Chargers, but stupider, and less bitey.”

Two headed horses? I suppose if there were two headed cows, why not the same for horses? “Where do all these different mutants come from anyway?”

“Mutants?”

“Yeah. Are there any normal horses left?”

He just looked at me, confused and seeming kind of offended. “Slippies are good horses. Don’t call ‘em mutants.” 

“Right. Sorry.”

Shaking his head at me, Briggs looked back at the charger, who was now finally standing up on shaking legs. “Slippies come from somewhere in the North East. Followers and Canaanites called it the Gate when they traded with us, but I don’t know anything about it, just that it’s the only way through the mountains out that way, apparently. Two heads come from the coast, I think. West of California, and North. Never been that way. Don’t know anything about it.  Chargers… I dunno. Grandpa said they didn’t used to be anywhere, and then they suddenly were here. All coming out of Death Valley, and the Big Empty.”

Of course he had to explain to me what those two locations were, but it wasn’t too long before I had the picture. Horses from the pre-war mutated into the various different post war varieties when exposed to different conditions. People after the war noticed the different capabilities of the different kinds of mutants, and used them for specialised purposes, probably eventually forgetting that there was ever such a thing as a normal horse.

The charger that Briggs had followed in here wasn’t exactly suitable for the nomadic lifestyle, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t trade it for caps at a later date.

When I checked what was going on with the cazadors out front, it seemed that two of them were dead from their frenzied infighting, and the other two were nowhere to be seen. Not exactly comforting, given that they could fly, but armed with our oars we carefully stepped out front. Slowly, gingerly as if each step still hurt it, the charger followed us outside. Luckily no cazador swooped down to attack us, it seemed they had enough of us after I set them on fire. 

Rather than head up the hill straight away, we diverted to the riverside to get a drink of water for the wounded charger, who had likely been left on the ground like that for days. The horse didn’t hesitate to drink its fill, walking straight into the water and letting out what sounded like a sigh of relief as the weight was taken off its legs while it lingered there in the shallows. It trailed the accumulated dirt and filth in the water, and watched us with a look that I took to be exhausted gratitude, but I admit I have no real experience with horses.

After washing his hands, Briggs took the time to wash out my wounds and treat them with the healing powder. He wasn’t able to sow them shut without twine, but he gave me his Khan jacket so the cuts wouldn’t be exposed to the air. 

If it wasn’t clear before, this highlighted just how dangerous the wasteland was. Someone would have to be a mad man to willingly wander it alone, or at the very least more experienced with how dangerous the local wildlife could be. It was foolish of me to willingly break the group up, and from now on I needed to make sure that no one who was under my command went anywhere alone and unarmed ever again.

After cooling down and getting his fill, the charger emerged from the water and I had good look while he was dripping wet. He was a stallion, though quite thin and malnourished in addition to both of his horns being broken. If he was out here alone by himself, he probably wasn’t in great health before being stung by the cazador. Just below his chin was a little tuft of black hair, almost like a goatee. In fact, as I looked at him I could have sworn he looked almost like someone had deliberately spliced just a hint of mountain goat DNA into a horse. The haunch that had been scarred by the cazador grub had what I realised was a mark on it. Shredded badly by the repeated bites, little hints of a brand were just visible, including what looked like an F or the start of an R in the top left. 

“Briggs, look at this.”

He came over, and saw what I was pointing to immediately. “Yeah, that’s a ranger’s charger, alright. Reckon that dead guy was his former owner?”

“No, that body was too old. If they both got stung at the same time, there would have still been a grub on that old cowboy.”

Briggs nodded at that, thinking. 

On the other side of the charger’s scar tissue was the remains of a different letter, just the rightmost prongs of what looked to me like an E. I pointed to it. “What’s this?”

“The R was for Ranger, that looks like that last bit of someone’s name.” He shrugged.

“Well, if his name isn’t on it, and he’s not here to claim it, then I guess this soldier is ours.” I came up to the front of the horse, where he was half heartedly chewing at some grass just on the shore. My new underling didn’t react as I stroked his mane, and even leaned into my hand as I patted at and rubbed his haunches. 

Eventually, as an exhausted, sodden and miserable group we slowly climbed our way back uphill. It was a bit of a hike due to the state we were in, and I didn’t want to ride the soldier either, given how weak he seemed to be. No sense in killing the only reward of our little misadventure.

Finally we arrived at the little grass flat at the top of the hill, where Holler was still riding in slow circles around the bighorners to herd them together and keep an eye out. Only now did I notice how often he was looking up, checking for cazadors no doubt. Manny and Boone were where I left them, watching us approach, but looking relaxed. 

“You run into some trouble?” Manny asked, taking a puff on his cigarette.

“Fuck off.” Briggs spat, and staggered away.

“He got stung by a cazador.” I told Manny, then patted the soldier’s muzzle. “This fellow was in their nest.”

For some reason Manny gazed at me, unblinking. Boone sat up in his seat, also staring at me through his sunglasses.

“What?”

“You went into a cazador nest without a gun? Just by yourself?” Manny asked, disbelief in his tone. It took me a moment to realise he was questioning my intelligence. Of course it was an incredibly stupid thing to have done, but my only defence was ignorance. If I’d known what a cazador was at the time, I would never have gone down there.

“If I knew it was a cazador nest, I would have come back and asked you to help.” I reassured him. To prove the point that the lesson was learned, I took off Briggs' jacket, and turned to show him the deep cuts across my back. “One of the things grabbed me, and its claws did that. If I’d been even a little bit slower it would have stung me, but managed to roll over and get it under me. Then I jammed my thumbs in its eyes.” 

While I waited for a reply, I pulled the jacket back on. When none was forthcoming, I turned to find the two of them staring at me, incredulous. There was a long moment as they stared, until Boone’s cigarette burned down to his fingers, and he dropped it with a curse then stamped it out.

“Look, I’m sure there are better ways to deal with the things, but it was the best I could do at that moment.” I defended myself, feeling faintly embarrassed. “I managed to burn the rest of the nest up by starting a fire with some turpentine.”

“I-” Manny opened his mouth then closed it. “I think I need to report this to someone.”

“I mean if that’s your protocol?” I shrugged. It seemed like common sense that the NCR would want to destroy any cazador nests it encountered, especially one so close to their new camp at Bitter Springs.

-----

When Melbourne and Tan returned, they brought with them a pair of slippies, loaded down with the supplies they recovered. They had dozens of guns, half a dozen sets of reinforced leather armour, bags of ammunition, two thousand caps, an entire case full of nothing but jet, and a box with some emergency medicine. 

Briggs and I broke that last one open right away, not even waiting to leave NCR territory. Some stimpaks, healing powder, and deworming tablets dealt with the damage the cazador had done, leaving behind just a few scars. To help the Soldier back to health, we used a surgical tube to feed some electrolytes, deworming pills, and healing powder directly to his stomach, otherwise he wouldn’t eat them. Despite the Charger’s reputation for ill temper, he was surprisingly compliant as long as I was the one handling him.

It seemed that the Khans preferred to use weapons they could make themselves, out of things they could easily scavenge. It was a crude mix of homemade submachine guns chambered in 9mm, and double barreled shotguns in 20 gauge. The submachine guns were too small in my opinion, needing some kind of front mounting if they were to be fired with any accuracy. They had a lot of recoil, making them difficult to aim when held with the intended pistol grip. 

Eventually, I was going to modify mine to make it easier to shoot in controlled bursts, but for now I favoured the double barreled shotgun I kept in a bandolier. It was crude, made from cracked, unvarnished wood, with what looked like repurposed pipes for the barrel. It was wrapped in copper wire, and had a screw in the top of it to act as a sight when you looked down the groove. As haphazard as the thing was, it had a wooden underside where I could place my hand, meaning I could shoot it with better comfort and accuracy than the submachine gun. 

When we left Bitter Springs, I rode a slippie along with the rest of the gang, not wanting to stress Soldier until he was feeling stronger. He followed along behind me, looking healthier and healthier as the day wore on. I noticed dead worms in his feces, which would explain why he was so malnourished when we found him. He responded quickly to firm commands, not needing to be told twice to come or go, and whenever he got too far from me he returned quickly when I whistled.

I don’t know what Briggs was talking about. These chargers seem quite usable to me.

-----

Melbourne and I briefly detoured to the Followers Clinic as we passed through Vegas, partly to offer them their share of caps for the work order that we used, and partly because I insisted on it. Not only was Ezekiel a friend I could work with, but as a representative of the Followers he could help negotiate deals on their behalf that I knew would be important for our future. The knowledge of the Followers was an incredibly powerful tool that I could scarcely believe was being so severely underutilised. 

When I stepped through the front door to the clinic, I drew a few gasps from the regular patients there. Now armed with the weapons and armour from the stache, Melbourne and I looked much more fearsome then when we set out. I was no longer wearing just the Khan jacket over a faded white shirt, but a set of reinforced leather armour with the Khan jacket over the top, and a pair of sunglasses. Spurs jangled on my feet with each step I took, but I ignored the frightened patients and stepped deeper into the clinic.

While Melbourne sorted out payment at the front counter, I found Ezekiel in the back offices. He was sitting at his desk, working at a computer on some kind of report when I stepped into his room. He twisted in his chair to look at me, but froze at the sight of me. His eyes went up slowly, rising from my chest to my face, his expression shocked. 

“Ezekiel, I want you-”

He gulped.

“-To come with me to Red Rock.” 

He blinked at me. Once, then twice. “Oh, right.” He hesitated for a moment, seriously thinking it over. After opening his mouth and closing it once, he glanced between me and the report he was working on, before finally shrugging. “You know what? Fuck it, why not? I’m an anthropologist, and a grown man, and I get to choose what I study and how. Julia doesn’t get to tell me how I do my research.”

I grinned widely. Not wanting him to get a chance to change his mind, I took his hand and bustled him outside. “You know how to ride a horse?”

“Uh. No?”

I had never learned to do it in my previous lives, but the muscle memory of this life had. Riding horses came as effortlessly to me as flying did. With an agile step up, I easily hopped into Soldier’s brand new saddle, freshly purchased from Cassidy Caravans. I offered my hand to Ezekiel, who took it, and with a tug I pulled him up into the saddle in front of me. 

I wrapped my hands around him, taking the reins, feeling him stiffen in his seat with what I presumed to be fear. It was his first time riding, after all. “Don’t worry, I’ll be good to you.” I promised him. And I would be. As the first new hire I managed to bring to the tribe, I would make sure he was kept safe and treated with due respect. There was no way I was going to lure other Followers out to Red Rock if they knew we treated them poorly.

Melbourne shot me an amused, disbelieving stare, before I gently pressed my spurs into Soldier’s sides.

Despite everything that had happened, and the awful world that I was now trapped in, I felt a strange lightness in my chest as we rode West towards the setting sun and an uncertain future.

-----

New Companion Unlocked!

Soldier the Horse. He's a bit of a fixer upper, but he's loyal and he can carry a lot of weight.