บท 68: Bullet for a bullet

The laser beams left black marks on the man's chest, his clothing scorched away leaving blackened flesh behind. He wasn't dead though, he still attempted to raise his gun, Afton's VATS wasn't over though.

*PEW, PEW, PEW, PEW*

With a good deal of his chest turned to ash, the man dropped to the floor lifelessly. Afton uses VATS again to survey the area, the remaining three gang members were all shooting up towards the top of the derailed cargo train, Afton was able to get a glimpse of Karl's Stenton cowboy hat as a bullet whizzed over it, the man frozen in time as he was dropping into cover.

He takes a good long look at the enemy before releasing VATS, he was out of action points and would have to do this manually.

*PEW, PEW, PEW*

He begins firing away, some missing while others hit non-vital area's. He drips behind a large rock for cover as the gang members turn towards him. The sound of bullets whizzing past as they try their hardest to hit him or Karl.

Karl isn't able to get anymore shots off as they continually fire at his position, Afton did his best to draw their attention away but one of the enemies was able to keep him suppressed by firing non-stop with their 9mm pistol.

Soon enough they stop shooting at Karl's position and start advancing on Afton, two sprint up in attempt to catch him off guard and put a bullet in his skull. Afton fires a couple shots off as they advanced, hitting one in the chest and causing him to fall backwards.

As the other gets close he lunges at them, pushing their 9mm away, causing them to pull the trigger and fire into the air uselessly.

A punch hits Afton's stomach and causes him to drop his weapon, but he retaliates with a headbutt, using the distraction to grab their gun with both hands and force them to release it.

*BANG!*

The trademark sound of Karl's gun going off seals the fate of another former-Powder Ganger. The man currently wrestling with Afton reaching behind him and pulls out a rusty-looking kitchen knife, attempting to plunge it into his gut.

Afton bends forwards while locking the man's arm in place, barely stopping the knife from piercing his stomach, he sweeps the man's leg and slams the man's arm against his knee, completely dislocating the elbow as a loud *Crack!* sounds out.

Picking up the knife Afton thrusts it into the man's throat, finally ending their life. He takes a moment to recover but doesn't realise there is one guy left... He hears the sound of a gun being cocked and looks up, spotting the man he'd hit earlier with his Laser pistol pointing a revolver at him.

*BANG!**BANG!*

Two gun shots go off, one killing the last gang member and the other sending a bullet through Afton's shoulder. He falls onto his back as blood gushes from the wound, momentarily thinking about ignoring it and bleeding out.

The sound of feet running on sand can be heard and Karl leans next to him with a worried look, "You alright kid?!" he quickly asks, looking at the hole in his recon armour that's slowly straining red with blood.

"... Probably?" he mutters semi-sarcastically.

Karl breaths a sigh of relief and sits him up, "Alright kid, let's get you fixed up. Can't have you losin' too much blood, we still need to carry all this stuff back." he says as he unclasps and unzips the recon armour to gain access to the injury.

Afton groans, in pain, "Is the bullet still in me?" he asks, not able to see if he has an exit wound on his back.

Karl shakes his head, "We'll take it out when we get back." he says as he wraps Afton's arm up after cleaning it with alcohol.

They slowly begin looting the area, finding a good amount of ammo and food, not much water but that's to be expected. They pack up all the weaponry the gang members had on them and loot the corpses, finding a good amount of caps that they split in between each other.

The feeling of a hundred caps sitting in his pocket almost outweighs the pain pulsing from his shoulder. Karl packs up the bloodied NCRCF uniforms belonging to the gang members and they head back.

Chivez head had exploded so they'd use the uniforms as proof of his death, isn't much else they could do besides that. Eddie knew Karl wouldn't lie about something like this either.

Afton fingered the new .357 revolver on his hip, unlike the last one he'd found, this one hadn't been damaged by an explosion. It was in relatively good condition, and he was going to use the better condition parts from the damaged one to improve this one.

He played the New Vegas Radio on his Pipboy as they walked back to the prison, enjoying the old songs he'd never heard before. Though, after an hour he could already tell that the radio station didn't have many songs available, the same songs having already been played a few times over...

Once back Karl immediately left to tell Eddie that Chivez had been dealt with. Afton took a seat where he usually operated on people who needed it, applying pressure to his shoulder that was still thrumming with pain.

He took out some MED X and injected it into his shoulder, the powerful painkiller causing him to sigh as the pain washed away. He unwrapped the bandages and started going through his wound with a pair of sterilized tweezers, looking around for the bullet that was presumably still lodged in his body.

Blood gushed from his body and he was having no luck, he wasn't good enough with medicine yet to get a bullet out of himself, so he just stuffed some gauze into it and waited for Karl, the man said he'd do it when they got back so hopefully he'd know what he was doing.

Time froze abruptly and Afton was confused to see the notification,

[WELCOME TO LEVEL 4]