Wasteland: A Landmark of RPG Innovations
Epilogue
Chunk offered to dig both graves for us, so I have time before
nightfall to write what happened:
We lit a fire outside of town and settled down to lick our wounds. I'm not
wary of lighting a fire outside any more--we've just been to hell and back,
and whatever finds us out in the desert isn't going to be a fraction of what
we experienced in there...
The rumors about the war machines were true. The locals had their own names
for them based on what they did or looked like: Slicerdicers and Chopters
were a mass of arms and blades. Warroids were essentially high-powered
humvees (except humvees don't drive themselves around firing roof-mounted
assault rifles). As for fighting them, the slicerdicers and
chopters were relatively easy to take out--just don't let them get close to
you. The warroids spooked us until we realized that a single LAW shattered
them into a mass of platinum metal shards. But the Cyborg Commando...
We'd never seen a Cyborg Commando before when it just appeared out of nowhere
and started running toward us. Kylie thought she could take it on and bolted
toward it like a jackrabbit; we screamed after her, but she was already off
and running. She ran at an angle, banking the other
direction to confuse it. Just as it raised its weapon to fire, she ran up the
back side of a car, sprung into the air with a high forward flip that allowed
her to look straight at it from above--upside down--and emptied a clip into
the thing. Her legs swung back down to the ground as she landed on both feet
about three yards directly behind it. She turned around and looked at us, a
huge smile on her face. But her smile slowly dwindled to a quizzical look as
she realized it hadn't fallen down yet.
The Cyborg commando rotated its torso around the waist 180 degrees and fired a
burst right into her face.
I froze as she crumpled, but Vlad started cursing in Russian, getting a LAW
ready. Chunk was silent as he ran toward it wielding the proton axe we had
found a couple of buildings back. It turned out the LAW was useless: the
Cyborg could jump out of the way long before the rocket got there. Chunk
couldn't get the ax to connect because the thing could run one way and shoot
another--Chunk couldn't get close enough to use it. Doc tried his best to
evade the mayhem, but he caught a bullet and lay on the ground, seriously
wounded. Slowly, almost as if in a daze, I laid flat down on the ground in
sniper fashion, pointed my AK-47 at the waist of the thing, and fired a single
shot. The Cyborg's torso was liberated from its legs and it fell, a dead hunk
of metal.
Upon examining it later, we found that Kylie's little maneuver had indeed
caused damage to it. My lucky shot wasn't really so lucky; it was merely the
straw that broke the camel's back. If she hadn't done that, I might not be
here to write this, since we didn't know how to handle it. Now that we've
seen one, we can deal with it. There's got to be more of them.
Stupid, stupid Kylie! Why did she have to do that? I guess I can't
blame her; she always loved that move. She used to tape her ankles every day
to practice it, thinking it would be useful for surprise attacks. I guess we
didn't expect to come across something that couldn't be surprised.
Of course, that wasn't the only surprise today. Losing the Mayor was almost
comical; he stepped on a land mine in the middle of the street and blew
himself sky high! It turns out that the people of New Las Vegas had found
that the best way to fight against the killing machines was to booby-trap the
whole place with land mines. I knew he didn't have decent perception skills,
but geez, you'd think you'd see a land mine sitting in the middle of the
street! Probably a fitting end, considering what had happened to his wife.
Like I said; comical.
Okay, okay; I know it's tragic. But you've got to have some sense of humor out
here, no matter how twisted, or you'll just go crazy.
In dragging Doc to a local healer today, we heard more rumors. Rumors I
really don't want to think about. An android plague under the city in the
sewers. Someplace called "Base Cochise" that is supposed to have an arsenal
of weaponry. And an insane robotics inventor called Finster that wants to
take over the world... or was that an insane computer that wants to destroy
the world?
I can't remember; I gotta lay off those snake squeezins. 'Course, with
what's coming up, booze is the least of my worries...
Jim Leonard is the co-founder of MobyGames, and can be reached at trixter@oldskool.org.
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