[[I want to see some kisses you butts lol, had to work over time to get this out this late.]]
We got two days, Rose said. Work, eat, sleep, and recover, then we will move on. June caught me by the elbow before supper and steered me through the farmhouse. "C'mon," she said. "You smell like cordite, shit, and road."
"You..," I gave her a look before sniffing myself and said, "...right," and she laughed and dragged me through her house. The washroom was a square with a tin tub, a pump sink, two buckets sat full on the floor, steamless, which means it was cold... A bar of soap, a rag hung at the window.
June closed the door with her foot, dropped the latch, and started peeling off her clothes. Shirt first, then bandana, then the dust-stiff jeans that rasped down her legs, and finally her boots.
"Use the left bucket first," she said. "Get the worst of the road off, then the right to finish. Mama's rules. Also mine."
"Right," I said as I started to undress as well. I wasn't one to get embarrassed by being naked; plenty of nurses cleaned me when I was sick back on my earth for years.
"You a doctor now?" She grinned as she watched me hang my lab coat.
"Found it," I said, folding it over a hook. "On a dead lad and it me, I figured he didnt need it no more besides Pockets are good."
"Can't argue that." She bent to wring a rag. "We had doctors here few days back. Folks passin' through. White coats like that. Called themselves Followers of the Apocalypse." She said it oddly. "Patched up old Pete's foot, checked the ghouls' lungs, told Daddy to boil the pump water longer. Good people; a little nerdy."
"I know about them," I said. " But I figured they would be more out south near New Vegas, I hadn't expected them to be this far up North."
"World's stranger than we think." She flicked water at my shins. "Don't just stand there."
We got on with it. The water went brown at first contact. I was really overdue for a wash. I scrubbed the crease on my thumb and the faint streak where a bullet had parted my hair earlier. The skin there was pink.
June's body was actually really fit, but then again, that made sense cause she lived on a farm. Her Breasts are fuller than mine, the kind that swing if she were to move around. She had a decent tan line. A scar the size of a thumbnail on her right hip. My eyes drifted lower and saw the smooth, soft hair below, natural, tidy enough you could call it "kept". I was a little jealous. My breasts are smaller, and I wasn't as fit as her, and my hair below was wild, kinda like a forest.
"Where you from, really?" she asked, wringing out her rag. "Rose said 'New York,' but you don't talk like any New Yorkers I met."
I worked soap into my hair with both hands, careful of the sore spot. "Vault near New York," I said. "Not in the city proper. Underground, actually, near got myself killed leaving my vault. Came up… a little over a week ago."
Her brows ticked up. "You new-new."
"Aye."
"And already shootin' mutants off a wagon."
"Wasn't plan," I said. "But the world's not takin' request off me."
She snorted. "Ain't that truth."
She set a spare set of clothes on the counter for me, a good cotton shirt, faded blue but something that didnt smell like sweat; clean jeans that had seen a patch or three. "My spares, you're about my size if I pretend you've got bigger hips."
"Thanks," I said. I wasn't going to look a gifted horse in the mouth, but that comment stung a bit. We took turns with the mirror. I used the comb she handed me to drag clean lines through my hair. She even gave me a razor to trim down there. I did the best I could. June watched without speaking, but she had that look like she had something to say.
"Nice curl to yours," she said, matter-of-fact. "Shame hot water's only for the winters."
"Or for people with four generators," I said.
She grinned. "No wonder Levi looks like a busted fuse around you."
I rolled my eyes. "Don't start."
"Oh, I'm already started." She leaned her hip against the sink, wiping at a streak of dirt on her lower thigh. "You into him?"
"No," I said. Easy as breathing. "Not into men, really."
June lifted both hands to fake-cover herself like a poster pinup, eyes wide in a send-up of shock, then dropped them with a short laugh. "Well, that solves one problem."
"Does it?" I said, side-mouth.
"Mm-hm. Means I don't have to pretend to be nice to you for his sake." She said it with a smile. "Kidding. Mostly."
I shrugged. "You can be any way you like. I'm not… chasing him."
"You ever chase anyone?" Her voice was teasing, not cruel.
I thought about the way my chest settles when I watched all those robot anime's in my past life. About how I spent more time sick than actually meeting people, so I ended up liking robots. "Things I like don't always have… body heat, and are usually made of metal or silica," I said.
She squinted. "You mean robots."
"Aye."
"Not the strangest thing I heard in my life." She dipped her rag again. "My cousin once said she'd bang a deathclaw if she could. Tho she did bang one of our horses, lucky Daddy never found out."
I coughed a laugh I hadn't planned. "That's… ambitious." I mean, I wasn't one to judge when I wanted to get down with what people would compare to a toaster.
"Stupid," June said, pleased. "She was drunk. She also once kissed a Ghoul to see if it would blush. It did."
We both ended up laughing now.
"And girls?" she said. I lifted one shoulder. "Maybe. I don't know. People… scramble me. And I'm busy. And I'm…" I waved a hand in the soap fog of the air. "Figuring out how to live my life outside of a cage."
"Fair," she said, and didn't push. "If you ever decide yes, you'll know. Or you won't and you'll try anyway." She twisted her hair into a rope and wrung it, water pattering back into the bucket. "Men or women, same rule: if they can't carry two feed sacks and keep a fence mended, they ain't for me."
"I don't think Levi could carry one," I said, deadpan. She laughed. "Oh, I'll have him carrying two by winter if I have my way." Then, softer: "I like him. Been a while. He's dumb in the spots that make a girl feel special. And he tries hard."
"He does," I said. "I've seen working hard as far as I've been in the group."
She nodded like I'd confirmed something basic. "Daddy'll keep an eye on him. Means Daddy'll keep an eye on me, too. He still treats me like im some little kid."
"I noticed," I said. "He always cleans that gun of his?"
"He cleans it when he's nervous," she said, then caught my eye in the mirror.
"Useful man," I said, cause I didnt really know how to respond to that.
We finished the buckets down to the last friendly inch, wiped the floor where we'd splashed, and hung the rags up in even lines. June tossed me the blue shirt. It hit my chest and I pulled it on. It fit, if not a little loose, but it worked.
"You look… less like a lab rat now," she said, approving. "Keep the coat, though. Pockets are pockets."
We stood in the doorway a second, listening to the house. Boots creaked on boards somewhere. The laugh of a ghoul out in the yard.
June bumped my shoulder with hers, friendly as a nudge from a well-trained brahmin. "You alright, Vaultie?"
"I am," I said. "Cleaner, anyway."
"Good." She flicked my tied hair. "Next time you find hot water, think of me. I'll be here with my buckets like a pioneer."
"I could make you a water heater if im still around in the future," I said.
Her smile went crooked. "You make that, Daddy'll marry you."
"No thanks," I said. "I don't like the idea of marriage."
"Fair." She slid the latch back with a quick thumb, and the door sighed open. "C'mon. If we sit around much longer, they'll think we fell in."
We stepped back into the hall, hair damp, skin scrubbed, clothes swapped. She had made me leave my dirty clothes there and said she would have them cleaned before I left. "What do I call you when it's just us?"
"Vaultie works," I said.
"You know what I mean, what's your real name, sugar?" She asked.
"It's... Morgan, just Morgan." I admitted, I would never again use the last name of people who would allow me to die, who would give up paying for me ever again. And we made our way back outside and grabbed a bowl of stew that had been made.
We ate on the porch steps with string lights buzzing like lazy bugs above us. The stew was heavy and good, brahmin, a little mutfruit, herbs someone coaxed out of the dirt. People spread out in clumps across the yard. The Handies drifted around the edge of it all, doing their fussy evening checks like old aunties.
Levi wedged in on my right, trying not to sit too close to June and failing. On my left were the twins, Lena and Mara, eating like they hadn't seen food in a week, which is to say, normal. "Anything… weird ever happen out here?" I asked, halfway through the bowl.
June tapped her spoon against the rim, thinking. "Define weird. We had a sow climb a ladder once."
"That's just ambition," Mara said.
"Weird like… makes no sense," I said.
June's mouth did a little tug like she'd hooked something. She set the bowl on the step. "Alright. You ain't gonna believe me."
"Try me," I said. Levi perked up. The twins stopped clanking their spoons and leaned in.
"Early this spring," June said. "Night so clear you could see stars. We'd just finished stringin' the west lights and Daddy was celebratin' by yellin' at nobody to shut the gate softer. Normal stuff."
Lena grinned. "Romantic."
"Shut up," June said pleasantly. "Next morning we walk the fields and half the tatos are laid down in circles."
Mara chewed more slowly. "Like circles… circles? Or drunk-cow circles?"
"Like perfect circles," June said. "Not trampled to hell, either. Laid down. Tops bent one way, stems bent the other, clean as you please. Rings inside rings."
"Tracks?" I asked.
"None," she said. "No prints. No cart marks. Gate still chained. Fence wires are high and shown no one had mess with em. I walked it with Daddy. Twice. No breaks, no drag marks. Nothing."
Levi let out a low whistle. "Prank?"
"Prank my ass," June said. "Somebody tries walkin' across our rows at night, we know."
I watched her face as she said it. Not telling a ghost story. Just reporting.
"What about the Handies?" I said. "Patch, see anything?"
"Patch logged perimeter like normal," June said, frowning off toward the shop. "No anomalies flagged. He did note a signal hiccup just after midnight. Radio spiked, then dropped. He chalked it up to the weather."
Levi shifted. "So what, some crazy crop artist snuck in, tiptoed through without leaving a footprint, made art, and left."
June shrugged. "Daddy says it's a fool with too much time. I told him fools leave tracks. We didn't find anything even after searching most of the day."
Mara nudged Lena with her knee. "Okay, I'm invested."
Lena looked at me. "You got a face on, Vault Mouse."
I did. Couldn't help it. The pattern she described pinged something in the back of my skull. "I think—" I started, then shut my mouth. I tried again. "If you… had to guess?" I said to June.
She cocked a brow. "You're the one signed up for 'weird.' Guess is your job."
"Aliens," I said, deadpan.
Levi snorted stew. "Like from space?"
"Aye," I said, already regretting it. I lifted both hands and pushed my hair up and did the dumb meme pose I remembered. "Aliens."
Lena choked laughing. Mara slapped Levi's shoulder. June stared for one solid second, lips fighting a smile. Then she lost it. Even Harlowe, two posts down, glanced over at the sound.
"You're adorable," June said, wiping her eyes. "Aliens."
"Laugh all you want," I said (and I was laughing a little too), "but your taters didn't lay themselves down in perfect rings in the dark."
"People make mazes all the time," Levi said. "Cornfield stuff. Scare kids, I heard the stories when I was a kid."
"People make tracks," I said. "You just told me there wasn't any.'"
Mara pointed her spoon at me. "She's right. If it was human, June or her dad would have found a hair or a print of some kind."
June leaned back on her hands, gaze on the dark beyond the porch lights. "I don't know that it was aliens. But I know it wasn't us." She glanced at me. "We plowed it straight the next day. Crops didn't seem bad anyway. Mutfruit came in fine. That was that."
"Just the once?" I said.
"Just the once," she said. "Never before. Not since. Dogs didn't bark. I went out twice with a lantern that night to check the pump. If somebody was out there, they hid from me on the ground I've walked since I was little."
The porch talk rolled on around us. Someone somewhere started a low song, some old pre-war tune. Ghouls hummed along off to the side. Patch angled past with a tray of tools like he wanted to be part of the conversation. I bumped Levi's knee with mine.
"Okay," Levi said, still amused. "Let's say it was aliens. Why'd they make circles and leave?"
"Signature," I said.
"What?"
"Mark. Hello. Test," I said. "Or they were bored. Or they like art. Or they wanted the Handies to have static in their logs and somebody to scratch their head later. I don't know. I didn't bring a manual with me when I—" I shut the door in my mouth.
"When you… What?" June said, eyes on me now. Not sharp. Curious.
"When I got here," I said. I dipped my head at the field. "From under the Vault."
"Well. If they come back, they can leave us a note next time. 'Thanks for your taters. Love, aliens.'"
"Maybe they did, and you plowed it," Mara said.
"Maybe they did, and Harlowe burned it," Lena said.
Harlowe, as if on cue, knocked the ash out of his pipe with three neat taps. Something rustled then. A ripple out in the rows where the corn met the tatos. It moved left to right, low and quick, then stopped dead.
All of us went still on instinct. Even the twins put their bowls down without clank. Levi's hand went to the small of his back where my 9mm sat tucked, and he looked to me with big eyes like Is this…?
June didn't breathe. The porch behind us kept moving, laughter, metal against ceramic, someone scraping stew out of a pot.
The rows shook again. "Don't…" I started, but didn't know the end of the sentence.
Levi swallowed. The leaves exploded.
"BLAAARGH!" a voice howled, and a shape came out of the crops, hands up, a ghoul skin pale in the porch light. A bucket went airborne. Levi yelled a noise with no word in it. Mara and Lena both did the same in harmony. My bowl fell as i pulled up my charge pistol hands shaking.
"God—!" June jerked but her second reflex was to laugh, hard, even while she clutched her shirt. "Ruth, I'm gonna shoot you!"
Ruth, of course, bent over laughing so hard she had to brace her hands on her knees. "Y'all looked like you seen the end times," she got out between wheezes. "Mara, you made a noise like a steam kettle."
Mara threw her spoon at her. "I hate you."
Lena picked up her bowl like she'd never dropped it, face scarlet and grinning. "I was ready to fight," she lied.
Levi tried to hand me my spoon and missed twice. "I was… I was going to—" He looked at the porch, panicked that Harlowe had seen his fear, then relaxed a fraction when he realized half the adults were laughing outright. Of course they were. They'd set Ruth on us like kids at a sleepover.
I let my breath out slowly; I hadn't meant to hold. My hands did a small shake and then stopped, steadied by the dumb normal of everyone laughing at themselves.
"Alright," June said, wiping her eyes, pointing at Ruth. "That's your fun for the week. Go haul buckets."
Ruth winked, blew a kiss at the twins, and vanished back into the row she came from with a rustle that sounded too loud now that we knew what it was.
"See?" Levi said after a beat, still jitter-laughing. "Crop circles. It's just ghouls."
"Ruth didn't lay down a section worth of tatos without footprints," June said, poking him in the ribs. "Don't try to logic me out of my own dirt."
Mara nudged my shoulder. "You good?"
"Aye," I said. "Just forgot my heart is in charge of my body for a second."
Lena grinned. "It'll do that."
I picked up my spoon and found the stew still warm, which felt like a miracle. The porch hum came back on its rails. "Aliens," I said, mild, like a toast.
Levi groaned. "She's never letting this go." June bumped me with her knee. "If it is, and they come back, you can go out and shake hands. I'll be here takin' bets with Mara on whether you make it back."
"Rude," I said.
"Realistic," Lena said.
We settled into the kind of quiet that comes after a scare, looser than before, a little giddy for such a dumb reason. Patch rolled past again, humming to himself. He paused, head plate tilted a hair like he was listening to something I couldn't hear, then carried on toward the shop.
Across the yard, Harlowe was telling someone about the time a taterboar tried to court the generator and got its tusks stuck in the flywheel. The ghouls had hit the chorus of their song and were making it sound better than it had any right to. June stole the last spoonful out of Levi's bowl without breaking eye contact.
I finished my stew and set the tin down and leaned back on my elbows, eyes tipped to the dark over the fields. If I told them the real reason the circles made my stomach feel weird...
"Alright," June said, standing, stretching her back. "Second helpings before Daddy locks the pot. Lena, Mara, you're carryin' the jars after." She looked back at me, eyes bright. "Hey—if it was aliens, and they come back, you're going to have to deal with em."
"I will," I said.
We laughed again. We ate again. The night settled deeper. Just us and bowls and lights and the sound of people who would hopefully have my back.