Pile Body Upon Body

(Based on Fallout: New Vegas)

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A dead black billowing of smoke rose up out of the small town of Nipton, California, charring the purple Mojave sky above. The smoke could be seen as far as the NCR-manned Mojave Outpost further west and where it could be seen, a shutter of anxiety accompanied it. The rangers haven’t heard communication from their troops indulging themselves in the town’s vices for a few days now and they haven’t been granted the reinforcements that would allow them to send a squad over to check in. Sensibilities give way to priority in times of war and General Oliver ordered NCR soldiers to fortify Camp McCarran in Vegas as well as the roads between Boulder City and Hoover Dam leaving most of the camps elsewhere with a skeleton crew. To rangers stationed at the Mojave Outpost, it feels as if they were given direct orders to sit and drench themselves in worry about what the hell is happening out East under all that smoke.

However, a lone courier makes their way into the town, the smell of soot and smoke becoming just as overwhelming as the sight of all the blackness blanketing the sun leaving Nipton in a veil of burnt-orange hues and shadows. There was nothing to hear in the desert town, just a certain kind of silence that felt foreign for a place like this, a place that catered to all the kinds of desires that men could have. Quick cheap fun. But stepping closer the sound of fire crackling became the ambience and a putrid smell flooded the courier’s lungs. Undeniable. The smell of death.

Out from that stench and smoke came running a man, delighted and with his arms flailing upward, prancing straight out of the town and away from all that mess behind him. Getting closer, there was a look of pure bliss on him, an ecstasy and euphoria masked over his face as he danced nearer and nearer until finally bumping right into the courier as if he was looking right past them, not a care in the world.

“Yeah! Who won the lottery!? I did! Haha! Smell that air! Couldn’t you just drink it like booze haha!” the man shouted not just at the courier but at the entire Mojave desert and toward all of California.

“Are you feeling all right?’’ The courier tried to bring him down to earth and get some answers, but the man assumed his ecstatic demeanor. His glasses were broken and hair disheveled and the NCRCF embroidery on the pocket of his stained blue shirt can barely be made out behind a layer of dirt and grime. Indeed something awful has happened in the town he was fleeing, everything but his tone gave it away.

“Are you kidding me!? Never felt better! Yeah!” he yelled, no, sang it. The sound of all that music in his chest turned almost crazed with every rush of voice that came out of his mouth.

Trying to get a handle on the situation, the courier asked, “Lottery? What lottery are you talking about?”

The man looked almost offended that the courier didn’t know about the lottery he just won. “What lottery? THE lottery, that’s what lottery. Are you stupid? Only lottery that matters! Oh my god smell that air!” he proclaimed for the last time, walking past the courier and out westward into the open desert, arms reaching toward the sky as if trying to hug the late afternoon sun, skipping and singing all the way past the horizon. Yeah, the California horizon seemed like the place to be but the courier faced back toward Nipton, and with a sense of unease in the pit of their belly, began walking the dirt road into town.

At first sight Nipton looked like any typical town in the Mojave with homes and stores in a state of neglect due mostly to the dwindling of populations rather than any immediate nuclear blasts. If there was an atrocity that happened here, it was abrupt and arrived on foot. Making their way to an intersection, the courier heard the stomping of feet and rustling of metal and leather. Sidling up to the side of a storefront, they peeked over the corner, getting a clear view of the main road heading north directly to the town hall.

It was a road decorated in an unthinkably gruesome hatred. Pikes lined the East and West sides of the dirt road and pierced through the top of them were the severed heads of men and women, their necks cut clean all the way through but no blood was dripping. Or perhaps whatever blood was left in them already fell and stained the dirt and rocks below them a ghastly shade of gray like the casts of shadow from the twelve o’clock sun. Further down nearer the town hall, six men, three on each side of the road were crucified up on telephone poles, their arms spread out and wrapped with rope on wooden boards bolted down to their makeshift crosses. All their heads slumped down, while some were still writhing a bit, what little life they had left giving in to simple muscle spasms, the rest were dead, as stiff as the wood they were adorned to. They had to have been there for some time. Down at the front of the main building were two piles of tire fires and next to them were about ten men carrying rifles and machetes, some with spears. It was obvious at first sight who these people were, even if the courier didn’t want to believe it. All of them were dressed in sports gear no doubt taken from the ruins of the University of Arizona way down in Two-Sun. Their legs were bare under their knee-high maroon, black and brown pteruges and their heads protected under biker helmets tied around with gray wraps and some stitched at the front with a fanning of dark feathers. Attires hearkening back to the gladiators of ancient Rome but so crude and survivalistic in its construction, desolate. There was no doubt about it. This was Caesar’s Legion and they were here not only past the Colorado River but through Nevada and stepping foot right into California. Right on the doorstep of the New California Republic.

Before the courier could take in another second of the putrid scene, a loud moan came out of the general store he was leaning against. He opened the door, almost taking it off its hinges, and entered to find a man sitting in the corner, wearing the same NCRCF outfit our lottery winner had worn. However, this man was not sharing the other’s high sense of elation.

“Hey, how the hell did you survive the Legion out there,” the courier said to the man trying to keep their voice low enough.

“Luck, that’s how,” he responded in between painful breaths and with a ‘fuck the world’ sort of tone to his voice. “I’m just that fucking lucky! You’re looking at the second place winner of the Nipton lottery! That asshole Swanick took first place, so him they let walk!”

“Yeah, I think I saw him flee the town. What the fuck is this lottery about?”

“It ain’t like we came to Nipton to play it! Me and my crew had it worked out to kidnap some NCR troopers who come to town to get laid,” he admitted. “Had it all worked out with the scumbag mayor. We were gonna ransom them off, keep their weapons for ourselves, a nice score.”

“Things didn’t go according to plan, I assume,” the courier said as they creeped up to the east wall to look out through a hole in the wood. The Legion still all out there, death, fire and all.

“Funny. So, we get in position and next thing we know, we’re surrounded by those fucking Legion freaks,” the man said in a half dazed recollection. “They dragged us and everybody else into the center of town. And that asshole with a dog on his head, he starts talking about how we’re bad people! He said we need to be punished for what we did, not all of us, but some of us. And then he gives everyone a fucking lottery ticket.”

“Yeah, and then what happened?” the courier asked, still scouting outside.

“What do you think?” He said angrily, looking at the courier across the room then down at his legs. “He started drawing tickets and that’s how people got punished. First up was the ‘lucky losers.’ They got decapitated, guess that’s ‘lucky’ because it’s pretty quick. Then came the crucifixions. Goddamn but those went on and on and on. Third-place runners-up got enslaved. I got the fuck beat out of my legs, and the winner they let go free.”

The courier walked back toward the man and leaned against the counter with the rusted out cash register on it, pulled out the tray and grabbed the three bottle-caps and two $100 dollar NCR bills still in it. Then checked the shelves for any food, or stimpacks or weapons. “What happened to the Nipton mayor? He get out of dodge?”

“Him? When his ticket came up, they burned him alive on a pile of tires,” he said, adjusting himself to take pressure off his crippled legs.

The courier came back over to the man and reached into their side satchel. “I can spare some Med-X for you.”

“Then you’re a fucking dream come true, ain’t ya? How much you gonna give me?”

There was plenty in their bag, they counted. “I can spare like five doses.”

“Five doses!?”, he exclaimed. The first time he showed any sign of levity in his voice. “A fella could put himself out of his misery with five doses.”

The courier handed him a few syringes, not five, but before the man could even respond, the store front door burst open and two Legionnaires marched through and grabbed the courier by the shoulder and arms. “Profligate! Hiding like a coward. You’re coming with us.”

The two Legion soldiers dragged the courier out of the store, the darkened sun still bright enough to blind their eyes, then marched them through the city of the dead and in between those spikes of heads and the poor souls dying slow deaths hanging there from the telephone poles. The gutteral sounds some of them made inflicted the courier’s ears like an infection they knew they weren’t gonna get rid of for some time. They were brought all the way up to the bottom of the stairs of the townhall, the heat of the tire fires around them singeing the hairs on their face and arms and the smell of burning rubber and meat pervading their nostrils. The soldiers brought them straight up to the face of the man in charge. The asshole with the dog on his head or rather looking at him up close, it was a coyote pelt shading his head like a hood. Covering his eyes were black goggles and underneath them was a satisfied smirk.

“Don’t worry, I won’t have you lashed to a cross like the rest of these degenerates. It’s useful that you happened by,” he stated with an eerie sing-songy cadence in his voice. “I want you to witness the fate of the town of Nipton, to memorize every detail. And then, when you move on? I want you to teach everyone you meet the lesson that Caesar’s Legion taught here, especially any NCR troops you run across.”

Catching their breath, the courier responded, “What lessons were taught here?”

The man smiled again. “Where to begin? That they are weak, and we are strong? This much was known already. But the depths of their moral sickness, their dissolution? Nipton serves as the perfect object lesson.”

“But why? Why like this?”

“Nipton was a wicked place, debased and corrupt. It served all comers, so long as they paid. Profligate troops, Powder Gangers, men of the Legion such as myself, the people here didn’t care. It was a town of whores. For a pittance, the town agreed to lead those it had sheltered into a trap. Only when I sprang it did they realize they were caught inside it, too.”

“You captured everyone?”

“Yes, and herded them to the center of town. I told them their sins, the foremost being disloyalty. I told them that when Legionaries are disloyal, some are punished, the others made to watch. And I announced the lottery,” he explained, pulling a few tickets out from his elbow pad and then tossing them into the fire. The courier’s eyes followed the tickets into the firepit and inadvertently caught a glimpse of the charred bodies that littered them then instinctively looked back upon the Legion leader as if his own eyesight met the burn of the flames. “Each clutched his ticket, hoping it would set him free. Each did nothing, even when ‘loved ones’ were dragged away to be killed.”

“I get you going after NCR, Powder Gangers, but some were innocent citizens,” the courier tried to make sense of it all.

The man with the coyote pelt on his head laughed a mocking sort of laugh. “Innocent? Hardly? Cowardly, though. They outnumbered us. Yet not once did they try to resist. They stood and watched as their fellows were butchered, crucified, and burned, one by one. They stood and hoped their turn would not come. Each cared only for himself.”

The courier shook their head not so much disagreeing with what was said but to shake out all the imagery and preaching. All the ruckus on their brain that came into it ever since they set foot in Nipton. “All right, all right, all right, I’ve heard enough,” the courier said. “I’ll do as you ask.”

The leader signaled to his men to let go of the courier. “Now go, and teach them what you learned here. What Vulpes Inculta, Caesar’s greatest frumentarii and his men did here today. And what they can expect from Caesar and the undying forces of his Legion once we march further west. There will be more lessons in the days ahead.”

At that Vulpes ordered his men to grab their gear and head out east down HW-164 back into Nevada. The clench of anxiety eased up on their heart and the Courier took another look down Nipton road at all that death once again. Another look at an atrocity displayed methodically and deliberately. A true showcase of evil on full display like a statement, a message being sent to every soul, every society that has the audacity to place their homes on the path westward along every and all roads leading to the Pacific. A message of death signed by Caesar himself, folded and placed into an envelope stamped with the blood of the profligates.