Chapter Text
The odd groaning sound reached her ears again. Dinah glanced up from a worn and tattered copy of the Blue Fairy book. The oddly organic moan sounded, and she threw down her book. The woman had been resting her feet on the counter, her heavy spiked boots crossed over one another. The merchant swung them down and pulled her .44 pistol from her holster. The junk shop she owned had been quiet all day. Unusual but not unheard of. Despite her heavy shoes, she stealthily creeped towards her front door and glanced through the peephole. Nothing. What in tarnation.. She pulled the door open and stepped out, pistol still held in her hand. She scanned the empty ugly tiny trading town. Nothing, again. Dinah moved to the side of her establishment, towards one of the workbenches. Something was propped against her store wall, blood smeared on the whitewashed aged brick. The copper headed woman scanned the environment once more. Nothing more than a tumbleweed and a tied up Brahmin stirred in the empty town.
She knelt down in the redden soil, and gently checked for a pulse on the scarred body. Faint but there. Dinah was a cautious woman but never heartless. She quickly pat the body down and pulled a holster, and several knives from the man, and shoved them in her satchel and around her own waist. The man mumbled something.
“Mister you are not in the best shape. I am just gonna get you fixed up ok.” The woman once again scanned the barren slowly darkening desert, and turned back to the slumped man. The woman appraised the man’s frame. He looked at least several inches taller then her, but he looked muscled.
“Alright sir I’m gonna lift you now k?”
Naturally, the injured man did not answer. She bent her knees and managed to pull him over her shoulder like she’d seen in pictures. It worked and she was able to carry the man into her store. She gently dumped him onto his back on her own bed. The light was much better inside, and Dinah could see now that the man dumped on her lap was most likely a Ghoul. His nose was rotted away, and his face was gnarled. It didn’t matter. Maybe he was just a wastelander. Just one warped by the rads. The ghoul was also still bleeding. His leather vest and dark shirt was saturated with his blood. Dinah exhaled and ran to her med cabinet and grabbed some cleanish cloth, rubbing alcohol, a stimpack and a sewing kit. She managed to grab a lantern to shine more light.
“Look old man, I am gonna have to clean up these wounds. Please don’t kill me.”
She unbuttoned the vest and tore the ancient shirt off the man. Two large crude chunks were carved out of the ghoul. These were deep, but not so much that the man would be dead. Unless he had been laying out there bleeding out.
Dinah grabbed the bottle of alcohol, a roll of bandage tape and some thin cotton. She then glanced at the man’s face, he seemed to still be drifting in and out of consciousness. “This is going to hurt like hell.” She poured the antiseptic over the first wound festering over his right pectoral. The man hissed and growled like an animal, and attempted to move.
“Sh sh. I am trying-“ she was grabbing the cloth to stop the bleeding from the first wound. She temporarily taped the cloth with a few strips to secure it. She would have to prop him up to secure it better later on. “You’re okay.” The next wound was carved onto the man’s abdomen midline. She repeated the same process, the man not resisting quite as much. She finished the procedure with a stimpack, and gathered the precious medical supplies back into her locked cabinet. She then turned back for the man. She decided he probably needed stitches, so she started sterilizing the needle by running it through a struck match. the young woman quickly glanced out the window, it was essentially night. She decided to flip her open sign, and lock the doors. She then secured her home by pulling a heavy cabinet flush against the door. Whilst she was doing this, she could hear the man’s moans turn into more coherent murmurs.
“Just want to remind you, that I am not here to harm you. Only help.” She grabbed the cleaned needle and black thread from the store counter and walked back to him. She pulled up the cotton; blood and off colored ichor covered the bandage. The Stimpack must’ve done it’s trick because as she gently placed her cool hand on the man’s chest, his hand went up to roughly grab her hand. She fearfully looked at the man’s now open eyes.
“What the hell are you doing missy?” A dangerous voice with a southern drawl came from his dried lips.
“I was going to sew up your gaping wounds sir.”
The ghoul glanced at his wounds. “How would I know that you weren’t the one carving me up to sell at this here..” He then glanced around at the packed junk store. “Fine establishment?”
“I simply found you unconscious and bleeding all over my brick walls. I wouldn’t be healing you if I wanted you dead. Now, will you please let me go so I can sew up the rest of your woun-”
The man almost panically attempted to find his weapons. “Where the fuck did you put my gun you little urchin?!” He turned to look around him.
“On me-” The ghoul did not hesitate to lunge for her. He was greeted with her .44; it’s muzzle against his forehead. “I’ll leave my weapons and your own over there. You can have them back after I sew you up. Deal?”
“ I am a very foolish person to make deals with sweetheart.”
“Well you are not exactly in the best position to be complaining old man.”
He regarded her for a moment, and released his grip on her wrist. “And what would you get out of this deal?”
“Not dying would be preferable, or not being stolen from. That’s pretty much it.”
She was not foolish. She kept her eyes on him as she backed up to set his gun on the counter, as well as her own. Luckily the man did not move, if he did she would have shot him without a second thought.
“Now, may I please sew up your nasty wounds?”
“Be my guest darlin’.”
“My name is Dinah.”
“Well too bad, not gonna remember that.”
She walked cautiously back to the reclined ghoul. She threaded the needle and poised her hand over his skin. Dinah glanced up at the man now watching her intensely. “This is going to hurt like heck.”
The man shrugged. “Used to it with a body that’s falling apart. Do your worst.”
She put her hand down on his chest, still surprised at it’s warmth. She started the careful and tedious process of sewing the man’s leather tough skin together. “Your body is sure warm mister. Do you have a heat stroke?”
The man barked a laugh that would’ve once been warm and charming. “That's how my skin is. Another gift from the wasteland and the rads.”
“Oh.”
The man glanced around as she was halfway for his first wound. “What the hell do you sell in this shack?”
“The better question is what I don’t sell, I mostly sell parts. I scavenge, take apart and sell or restore too.”
The ghoul winced as she pulled the string tight and knotted.She then started on the second wound.
“Bounty hunter right?” Dinah asked not looking up from her work.
“No, I raise one headed brahmin.”
“Funny. I assume you simply lost count of the bounties you’ve completed?”
The man only nodded. “Wait,” He paused and touched his torn shirt. “Why the hell did you tear this? It’s the only one I have.”
“I’ll just give you a new one. I am sure I have some.”
“You’d just do that.”
She tugged again, it seemed to sting. “Yes.”
“For free?”
“Uh huh.” She hummed, snapping the string with her canines. She then stood and grabbed the bandage tape and more cotton. Dinah motioned for him to sit up. “Take the duster and vest all the way off.”
“Excuse me?”
She held up the tape and fabric. “I need to be able to wrap it securely around your torso. Can’t do that with clothes in the way.”
The Ghoul flashed a sly grin at her. “Little lady, if you had wanted to see me shirtless, you could’ve simply asked.”
Dinah despite herself blushed. The stupid man noticed.
“Don’t have a lot of men coming on by and making jokes like that to you doll face?”
She swallowed and simply walked over to him after he obeyed her command. After she snuggly tied the badge over both wounds, she stood back to survey her work. The ghoul too glanced down at her work and nodded. “Hate to say it missy, but you seemed to have done a mighty fine job.”
“Thank you.”
The man quickly swung out of the bed and Dinah quickly scurried to grab her weapon off of the counter.
“Hold you fire hellion. I was just grabbing my weapons so I can get out of your hair.”
The young red head was putting her supplies away as she called back to him. “I do not think that would be smart sir.”
“Why?”
“Well, I am pretty sure there’s a sand storm incoming.”
“How the-”
The radio in the corner of the store that had been quite playing Frank Sintra and Dean Martin started to let off garbled noises.
“The radio tells you the weather?”
“No.” She pulled out a can of pork and beans from a cupboard near the medicine cabinet. “Only if there’s a sand storm. I think it has something to do with the blocking of radio signals.”
The ghoul turned to the window closest to him. He glanced through the small part of exposed glass. As Dinah had said, it was starting to get hazy with dust.
“Shit.”
“Told ya.” After setting herself on the counter, she had managed to open the can and offered it to him. “Hungry?”
“No. Am thirsty though.”
“Here.”
The ghoul was hit with a carton of water. He gently picked up the mostly clean water. Dinah mistook his amazement for suspicion.
“I boiled it today. I’ll drink it first if you’re worried about-”
The ghoul did not answer. He leaned on the counter where she was still sitting. He took a long swallow from the carton.
“Please, drink the whole thing if you need it. I have plenty still in deep storage.”
The eyes that still retained a bit of original color in them caught her own. “Foolish thing to say to a stranger who might kill for clean water.”
Dinah only shrugged. “Well, I trust you.”
“Again I advise you against trusting me, or anyone out here.”
Dinah bent over the counter and grabbed a dark cotton button up and gave it to the ghoul. He put it on and they stayed in silence for a few more moments. “How’d you end up bleeding on my doorstep, bounty hunter?”
The man had moved across from Dinah and was resting against the wall, his weapons next to him. His eyes were closed. “Some Ghoul hunters. They wanted a piece of me for some sideshow or recipe or something. Told me it was for a good cause as they were carving me up like a turkey.”
Dinah felt disgusted. “That’s barbaric.”
The Ghoul opened his eyes and regarded the young woman perched above him. He chuckled darkly. “Little lady, I have no idea what world you lived in, but our reality is barbaric. I have had way worse done to me. And done worse.”
Dinah stayed awake until the Ghoul fell into a fitful sleep. She grabbed her own blanket from her bed and gently spread it over him before falling asleep upright, her pistol in her hand facing the man.