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Moonlight in Vermont

Prologue

“Hey Doc...,"

The man with the brush gun clasps his hat to his skull with a palm and turns to face you. Wind whips the brim into seizures.

“...you still good back there?"

You knew what he was going to ask. It was the fifth time he'd called back since the snow had started that afternoon. You'd found it insulting up until your jacket soaked through; now you were pretty sure he was trying to tell you something.

“I'm from The Point, mister. It's like I said: the snow don't bother me."

The truth was you hadn't felt your fingers since dinner. You'd stripped your gloves to eat and that was the end of it. Fuck vasoconstriction.

“And what about the Cap'n?"

Captain Peachfuzz lumbers beneath you with what seems much the same drunken inevitability he has been nye-on a month now, but you don't know shit about brahmin.

“Look, mister, I said I'd be there this week. Big as the advance was, I don't wanna' find out what happens when I don't show. Bet you don't either."

“Press hard enough and we won't have to find out. Weather like this, it don't take much."

“I know, Charlie. I said this ain't my first storm."

You round a bend in the trail and the wind catches you like a hammerblow. The sea spreads dark and wide to your East, whitecaps whipped up into a low simmer, and breakers growling. Charlie laughs.

“It's about to be."

“What's that supposed to mean?"

“It means get off the fucking brahmin before you get blown off. You ain't seen shit like this."

He stops dead and you let him. They said Charlie was the best there was; could'a done a lot cheaper if all you needed was pack animals.

“Jack! Shannon!"

His voice cracks like a whip over the wind. The coyote and nightstalker riding at your rear flanks perk up.

“We callin' it sir?"

Shannon's voice was almost as even as always, but you've learned to know relief when you hear it.

“You heard right. That guy back at Diamond said the bridge for highway one's out. Probably yankin' our chain, but this ain't the weather to find out."

“Sure ain't, sir. And I know he won't say nothin', but you know Jack ain't built for this kind of weather."

The nightstalker's ears flick back, but he doesn't comment.

“I know. See to 'em. Figure we'll do Newburyport like usual, but the marsh is real loose so we better lead the animals from here. Doc? Why don't you give Jack a look. He's freezin' on accoun'a you after all. I'll take care 'a Bullwinkle and the Cap'n."

Charlie wasn't shy about orders, particularly for someone you were paying. A few weeks ago you'd been ready to deck the bastard, but there was only so much you could do when the son-of-a-bitch was right all the time. You drop to the snow, legs suddenly numb from riding.

Jack isn't as tall as he looks on the mount. If it weren't for the cowboy hat he'd only make it a bit past your nose, and the drunken stagger in his walk isn't doing him any favors. Shannon, who's got him under the shoulder, stares daggers.

"What's up, Doc? Looking for a little job security?"

She'd been on your case since Diamond City, but the venom seems fresh this time. She stares down her muzzle at you as if it were the barrel of her rifle.

"I didn't know he could get this bad."

It was the truth, stupid as it sounded. The son of a bitch looked like he died hours ago.

"Uh huh. Doctor."

She thrusts a pair of halters into your palm.

"Well, if you don't know nothin', make yourself useful."

Peabody bays mournfully, and Aesop snorts a jet of steam against your jacket.

The Newburyport Light still stands proudly at the gates of the Merrimack, though the bricks have been blasted to sand with the centuries, and the edges worn smooth and round. The old keeper's house had been a restaurant once, and maybe a lodge or a trading post or something since the bombs fell. But the furniture is gone now. A brick fireplace stands alone against the western wall, hearth piled high with debris and wedged with a copy of Junktown Jerky Vendor for tinder. Charlie levels his brush gun on the plug. You cup your ears.

Bang!

It echoes from the windows and beams like a church bell. Shannon flinches. Jack, who's folded like a kitten in her arms, is too cold to notice. Charlie works the lever.

Bang!

Your ears are ringing, but you hardly mind. Know storms or not, you know frostbite, and you're getting there. And Jack. You really hadn't been thinking, had you? Were you tired? Cold? Stupid?

Bang!

The fire flickers to life. Shannon slumps forward to it, clutching Jack to her chest and working the tissue of his shoulder with a paw. Maybe she sniffled a little. Charlie sits beside them, gun in his lap.

"He'll be alright, Shan. They just get a little slow. That's all."

"I know, sir. Sometimes so slow their hearts stop."

You stay by the door and rifle through your packs, pretending to look for something important.

"It hasn't stopped yet. It's not going to."

She snorts.

"Should'a stayed in Goodneighbor. Got no business pressing up this far this time of year, bridge or no bridge. Whoever wants that SOB so bad can wait."

"Jack's a big boy, Shan."

"I know. It's just-"

"It's dangerous work we do. He knows it, same as you. We try to do it right, but we got to do it. Bring the wasteland together and all that."

"And not get bought by Crimson?"

"Or shot by the folks that want so badly to meet our Good Doctor, here."

He says it loud enough to make it clear he knows you're listening.

"We'll be more careful. If things do turn sour with the clients we'd better be in fighting shape when it happens. That means you, too, Doc. And Jack? I'd rather he tell me when it's getting too cold, but if he's 'gonna be all stoic, see you do it for him, alright?"

"Right."

"Let me know when he comes around. Cooking Salisburies in the meantime; figure we could use the pick-me-up."

"Thank you, sir."

"You know you don't have to call me that."

She smiles faintly.

"You know you love it."

An hour and a hot meal had Jack well enough for a hand of Caravan. He'd been a bit stiff and tired-looking, but he smiled easily as he nuked the 10 and everything on it you'd been counting on and raked in another 150 of your caps. Then he and Shan had retired, so to speak, though you could hear them going at it through the ceiling. Charlie laid on a bedroll by the fire and set to leafing through a magazine he'd found in the attic.

The wind had picked up through the evening. The windows rattle softly in their panes and whirling snow builds on their edges in thick, sticky globs. By now the waves are big enough to thunder over the crackle of the fire. Charlie's right. It's different.

You're no stranger to winter. The Point's perched on Great Erie's southern shore, and in the colder months the thick, gray clouds that wash in from the water bury its rusting skeletons in so much snow you could almost forget the bombs fell. That's how you got your start, actually: Frostbite. You were just a teenager with a combat knife and a pre-war dimestore book about a doctor, but folks there had nobody else to turn to.

It hadn't been pretty, but in time the amputations got a little cleaner and then turned to surgery, and pneumonia claimed a few fewer settlers. Doc Kildare, they called you, after the doc in the story, and word got out you were the best there was.

You liked to think that was true, and sometimes it really did seem like it. Get a winning streak going and it felt like you could fix anything. Save anybody. Even the biggest guns don't afford that kind of confidence. But the clatter of the wind on the siding has you on edge. There's something inevitable about it. It makes you feel small.

Sleep doesn't come easily. Your pocketwatch is broke, but the fire's burned low, and Charlie's since snuffed his reading lamp and stumbled out to take first watch in the lighthouse cab. Maybe thirty minutes ago there'd been a distinct round two up above, but that was the last you'd heard of Jack and Shan.

Now that you were alone you couldn't help envying that scaly son of a bitch, laying up there all comfy with that 'yote wrapped around him. She was a fine piece, too. You turn against your ego and maybe better judgement and let yourself imagine.