Erwin rolled on, oblivious.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:01, Sun 07 June 2015.

Yollie allowed the warm breeze to blow over her features, taking in the life-giving power of the sun. Her well-tanned skin was used to its touch and the heat rarely bothered her. She kept her eyes and ears open to the elements, waiting for the Earth to speak to her.

Her grandfather had taught her at a young age that the Earth Mother was always eager and willing to speak to her children, would they only listen and look. He was from the old world, of course, but the old ways had allowed him to not only survive but thrive in the new world - the only world Yollie had ever known.

As the truck rolled on, the Earth Mother spoke and she listened. Movement near the cars hidden away in the greenery on the north side of the road, but it was only the birds going about their business; no bad humans waiting to hurt them.

She tried to get the Crow's attention with a small wave of her hand. "Look," she said squinting her eyes and pointing to the omens of death circling in the distance.

"The death-eaters." The tell-tale sign of buzzards circling a kill didn't necessarily mean all hope was lost, but it did mean that death was near.

"I'm not seeing anything," Christmas answered herself, staring through gaps in the windshield shutters. The shades rested on the tip of her nose as she looked through the passenger window and breathed tentative relief out into the scrubland. Her gaze lingered on the pair of rust-fucked rigs; for a second she sought ghosts of old paintjobs instead of hidden crews of killers. Christmas sighed.

"I-don't-see-shit," she murmured, in weary do-re-mi singsong.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:25, Mon 08 June 2015.

"A lot of bones and skulls among the wrecks and ruin. Bad spirits in a place like this." Crow said loud enough to be heard by the others. As he spoke he put away his field glasses and readied his rifle.

Lucas drove on, the familiar old wreckage a reminder of the violent past that he had no need to be reminded of.
His eyes stayed on the road ahead.

Then over the next slight rise in the road ...Lucas could see a car up ahead!
As the image resolved, ...it looked to be a station wagon.  Lucas almost smiled, but instead sucked at a fiber stuck in his teeth.
"That youse ride mister? ...I figure I'll tow it in.
That'll be quicker. ..Just in case it ain't just a busted hose.

Where did youse say youse got jumped ...by dem loonies?
...How far away was dat?"

New life seemed to fill the man and he pointed excitedly to the rusted old station wagon.

"There it is!  Slow down, this is it."  He struggled past Christmas, opened the passenger-side door and began climbing out.

He hung from the side of the truck and yelled to Crow and Yollie.

"There it is!  It's up ahead!"

When the rig slowed to a safe speed, he jumped to the blacktop, got to his feet and sprinted for the station wagon.


The station wagon was a rusted old late-model American make, resting on knobby all-terrain tires attached to a lifted suspension.  Sun-faded aluminum roadsigns bolted to the rear and side windows served as makeshift armor.  It rested in a shallow gully about ten feet from the blacktop.

Scaff ducked down into the cab.

"Hey Boss!  We got a dead one!" he yelled, then returned to his gun.

A man dressed in ragged buckskins lay spreadeagled in the dirt in front of the station wagon's driver's side door.  Half his head had been blown away and a trio of vultures hopped and picked around the bloody remains.  A single-barrelled hand shotgun of postwar manufacture lay by his outstretched hand.

Yollie crouches as the Wrecker comes to a stop. Slightly pulling the arrow back and giving her surroundings one last check before moving forward with Crow to take in the situation.

She sits for a moment and breathes, listening, feels and sees her surroundings.

91 vs. 60 for Luck to come upon something useful. No go; 20 vs. 50 on Sense to call upon her inner hunter and get a better idea of her surroundings and any possible ambush/problems/anything really in the vicinity.

Lucas takes a thorough look at the surroundings, looking for anything odd on the ground surface around the car, such as a concealed pit, before slowly moving the Wrecker around to a position to hook up the tow.
The truck moving slowly enough that jumping off would not be difficult.

00:52, Today: Lucas Mancuzo rolled 32,40 using d100,d100. Spot for Lucas, Scaff.  Both succeeded. (Lucas has Conceal skill if that is relevant? )

Lucas spoke just loud enough for Scaff to hear.  "The rifle should do, Scaff-boy, if any loonies pop up out've a hole.,"

When he was satisfied with the trucks position, Lucas grabbed his shotgun from the drivers door rack. He opened the door and looked around carefully before stepping out...

"Beth!  Beth!" the man shouted.  He ran to the car and kicked the buzzards out of the way.

PM

Christmas hopped down from the cab, cursing the old buzzard for clambering over her. She hit the ground, head swivelling where Scaff's didn't, shotgun shoulder-slung, scuffed semi-auto clacking ready. She gave the corpse's head-ruin a once over and watched for trouble before trailing the married man.

Today: Christmas rolled 7 using 1d100. Spot (52).

The man slowed his pace, his hands outstretched.

"Beth!  It's me, Donnie!  Don't shoot, okay?"

He took a tentative step up to the car door.

"It's me.  It's me.  I got a tow truck.  We're going to East Highland.  It's okay."


He glanced over his shoulder at Lucas and his passengers.

"She's alive!"

"Body has been here for about three hours," says Yollie to no one in particular. Maybe that information would help with something, maybe it wouldn't. She found it odd the tidbits of information she could ascertain from a scene, but knowledge was knowledge and all knowledge was power - or so she had read somewhere.

She moves to the car carefully, letting the Crow go first, since he knew much more about what could help this woman survive the long run.

Erwin pulled up at his careful distance and took up his watch.

Lucas lifted one gray eyebrow and pursed his lips at the news.

Then he click-clacked a shell into the chamber of his military-style shotgun,
before stepping off the truck.
He walked over to the car ..then took a quick dive down to the dirt with the shotgun to look underneath the rusty wagon.

Lucas announced to the others "Once in a while ...one-a dese loonies will hide underneath!"

Lucas checked for any rocky obstructions underneath.
Then he took his time getting up again as he felt some discomfort from the dirt dive. He dusted himself off, and then looked all around the car for anything unusual.
(Booby traps or loonies hiding inside)

When he was satisfied, he started hauling out the chains and gear from the rear of the truck to attach the station wagon for the tow.

(Normally I would not try to do that much in one post, but I know our RL time is limited...)

"Huh. I thought oldster set out before sunup. Guess Beth murked him." Christmas squatted over the remains and combed the pockets for takeables, eyes darting from gunsights to wreckage. Only the smell really bugged her, and not enough to pass up potential brass or another pair of shades that looked like the wrecker's face. She rose, pistol held to the horizon.

"Could be there's still crew of his near, so y'know..." Christmas trailed off, stepping towards old man Donnie and Yollie. She peered into the back of the station wagon and assayed the damage with only the leanest of medical understanding.


(Also posting ahead in the interest of rl time.)

Once everything looks relatively safe, her keen senses not picking up anything too unflattering or dangerous, Yollie searches in her messenger bag. She walks up to Crow.

"I have this." She holds the little tub of antiseptic ointment she made from herbs around the area. Her knowledge was limited to first aid and field-healing, but that didn't mean she wouldn't at least try and help out.

Crow emerged slowly from the truck taking the time to take in the scene. Given the neighbors it seemed likely the woman and had been found and killed. Rifle in hand, Crow moved cautiously waiting for the others to make their way down to the station wagon and confirm the man's story.

Something smelled wrong and it wasn't just the dead man.

When Yollie approached him he replied "I can take care of patching her up. But I want to be sure it isn't a trap. How about someone have a look and see if she is really in there."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:02, Fri 12 June 2015.

Donnie had yanked open the car door and was gingerly bringing Beth out.  She tried to give him the revolver clenched in her hand but it fell to the dirt.  He got his arm underneath her legs and slowly lifted her from the car.  A strangled cry tore from the diminutive woman as he moved her.

He laid her down in the shade created by Lucas' rig, then stripped off his shirt to protect her from the hot asphalt. His own wounds were clearly visible, but they were shallow and seemed to be clean.

"She needs that ointment," he said to Yollie.

He quickly unfolded a buck knife from his belt and sliced Beth's homespun shift from the waist to the collar, then tore it away so that it revealed her back.  The angry red wounds inflicted by the crossbow bolts were already festering.

Seeing Beth in the flesh, Yollie's heart went completely out to her. Here was a woman hanging on to life by a thread, sitting in the baking sun with only the hope that her beloved would come back to rescue her.

She ignored Crow, running over to the woman and kneeling beside her.

"Shhh, don't worry. This won't hurt. It will make the wind feel cool on the cuts. It will heal you. It's OK." Yollie reached to her canteen on her left hip and pulled it.

"Take a sip. Don't drink too fast. Just a sip." She held the canteen to the woman's parched lips before taking out a glob of the ointment on two fingers and gently applying it the wounds that were not super deep and just relied on the body naturally healing itself to be fixed.

"This will keep the fever away."

As she applies the ointment, she begins humming a soft tune in Apache, the language of her grandfather's people back in the before times. They were a people of the sun, like her, and their words had survived until now. What better time than the present to use them?

"Earth Mother bind you, keep you, heal you. Earth Mother take you, made you, restore you."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:25, Fri 12 June 2015.

'

Looking at the others he spoke quietly "Keep an eye out and let me work."

Seeing the woman Crow moved to the wounded woman, while Yollie gave her water, Crow set down his rifle and accessed her condition to see what if anything could be done for her, and to see if she stood any chance to survive.

Given the state of the wounds it seemed likely that the crossbow bolts had been cover in shit or something else meant to cause infection and kill its target one way or another. That meant rather than ointment what they needed was to be cleaned and likely debrided. Crow kept maggots for just that kind of work, but that would come later.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:49, Fri 12 June 2015.

"The fuck else we gonna do, Motormouth? Just patch her up," Christmas snapped, patience thin.

She slunk away from Donnie and retrieved the revolver Beth'd tried to hand off. Yollie's shotgun rested over her shoulder. The shells she'd taken from the corpse looked like complete shit and were slipped into her 'last resort pocket', where they enjoyed the company of a switchblade comb and a sachet of pre-bomb dijon mustard. Christmas stared out into the scrub, got a good look at Erwin's weird car and approached Donnie.

"You must of rammed past like twelve back there," she offered, by way of smalltalk.

Donnie glanced up at Christmas.

"There was more than that.  Damn arrows were plunking off the car line hailstones.  I hate going into the hills.  They can hear you from a mile away and they know the hills like the backs of their hands.  They have these damn ambush sites already dug out on general principle.  When they see you coming, they just pick a spot and hide."

He squeezed Beth's hand as Yollie applied the ointment.  Beth shuddered and coughed.

"We've never had much trouble before," Donnie continued.  "People know us and they know we're there to trade.  We keep an eye out for things they need, and bring it with us on our next run.  Maybe somebody thought they could take it all at once, I don't know."

Again, Yollie chose to ignore the Crow. His way of talking was not what hurting people needed to hear, but she couldn't deny his skill. She sat by Beth, helping where she could and applying ointment and giving the woman water.

First Aid 98 vs. 55; so much for the assist. But I can sure pour a mean sip of water.

"Beth my name is Crow. I am as close to a doc as you are going to find these days. I am going to do what I can to get you ready to move. Once we get you back to the truck stop I will be able to do more."

Crow checked his bag and pulled out a scapel, and and what looked like a tube with a valve on it.

"It might hurt a bit."

Tearing away her top he made an incision in between her ribs and inserted the small tube to allow the pressure to equalize in her chest cavity to alleviate her collapsed lung.

The internal bleeding would require surgery. That was not going to happen here.

Turning to the others "We need to move her. A blanket or a sleeping bag to get her into the truck."