A nuclear car drove from north to south, and the dust of Arizonsang was lifted all the way, but it was not as dry as in the east, and there were even some small lakes in the desert rocks, because the Colorara River was on the west side, and this side was downstream of the Hoover Dam, and the water flow was much less than upstream, but it still raised the water table.

Gillian and Andy sit in the car, aiming for the Bloomfield Space Center in the south.

"Can you tell me about your friends, I mean specifics."

Andy looked ahead, vaguely sensing a rickety figure coming out of a cave near a cliff to the southwest.

"Uh... Yes, if you want to know, I'll tell you everything I know. As I said before, the original members of the Rusty Hooks belonged to a larger gang in Phoenix, and then an incident occurred that caused Kyle to leave Phoenix and wander the south with someone willing to follow him, and that's when I met them and joined them. ”

"There were probably less than thirty of us... If there hasn't been a lot of attrition or increase recently, then this number has probably not changed, as I said before, until Kyle left Phoenix with them, the name of the organization was changed to the Rusty Hook Gang, the name is entirely because of Kyle's nickname, the origin of the name Rusty Hook Kyle is that he had a hand cut off with a machete in a gang brawl, after which he replaced the severed hand with a rusty iron meat hook. ”

Andy burst into laughter when he heard this.

"Is he a pirate captain? Hook hand, rusty hook Kyle, haha. ”

Gillian laughed as well, but then she admonished Andy sternly.

"Kyle is not a gentle and intelligent man, but on the contrary, he is a pure predator, don't say that in front of him, his kind of cautious eye will immediately draw a gun and shoot."

As the car drove closer, Andy could now see the man completely, limping out of a wasteland vagrant's dirty suit, and behind him there was a deep dark cavern from which a half-dried stream stretched out, and he was staggering along the edge of the stream.

The filthy man saw Andy and called out for help with a frightened face.

"Wait! Wait, help me! ”

Gillian was startled by the horrified expression on his face, and it was at this moment that Andy saw a disgusting creature crawling out of the stream, it looked like a large non-phosphorus snake covered in mucus more than two meters long, with purple-green skin, several red eyes on its head, and a mouth like a suction cup full of teeth.

"Oh my God, that's a witch snake."

Gillian pointed to the strange creature and said, Andy also knew this name, he had seen it in the nursery and the upper reaches of the Hoover Dam, but the skin of the witch snake he saw at that time was mainly black, not as annoying purple green as in front of him, and he still can't forget the huge witch snake that he encountered in the nursery that may have grown into a huge body under the influence of GEcK, especially when he saw it swimming in the muddy water.

"How are you witch snakes here... The color is so strange? ”

Andy asked as he stepped on the brakes.

"Many of the witch snakes downstream of the Hoover Dam live in caves with water, which may be caused by differences in living conditions... Shall we save him? ”

Gillian watched the wasteland nomad crawl towards the atomic humvee that had stopped, but the snake that crawled out of the stream behind him magically did not immediately attack him, but simply watched him run towards Andy and the others, which seemed a bit unusual.

Andy raised his hand to stop him from running to his side.

"Stop!"

The wasteland wanderer sobbed and froze in place.

"Help, those monsters.... Whining.... It's horrible... Woo..."

Andy looked at the witch snake not far away, meandering around the damp stream, and after a moment raised its head, its red eyes staring at Andy and Gillian, and then opened its chrysanthemum-like mouth in protest.

"What's the matter with you? Why did those snakes just let you go? ”

The wasteland wanderer bobbed his head from side to side, apparently having an emotional breakdown.

"I don't know! I don't know! A few of us really couldn't find water to drink, so we went to the cave to find water, and after a few sips, a large group of the monster came out of the depths of the water, and my companions were attacked. I don't know what's going on, anyway.. Anyway, I ran all the way out of the hole. ”

His gaze caught Andy's big iron and immediately seemed to grasp a life-saving straw.

"Please... Save my friends, they may not be dead yet. ”

Andy always thinks that there is something wrong with this man, so he tells Gillian and Blackie to stay in the car, and he goes alone.

"That's what you guys got into, didn't you?"

He pointed to the hole that flowed from the stream not far away, and after getting confirmation from the wasteland wanderer, he walked straight to that side, and as he approached the stream, several purple-green skin witch snakes crawled out of the water, the most recent one directly bent and tightened, like a spring, and the mouth full of teeth bit towards Andy's body, and if it bites, it will be immortal and crippled.

"Bang-"

Raising the python with one hand, the witch snake that flew over after a loud bang turned into a mass of minced flesh in the air, and the other witch snakes did not live long, they were all shot by Andy several times, and for a moment the stream was dyed a strange color by the dirty blood of these witch snakes, and a disgusting fishy smell filled the air.

Let this bald middle-aged wasteland nomad lead the way, the two walked into the cave one after the other, this cave is very humid, and the dry environment outside is really a world of difference, not to mention that there is clean water filtered by the soil layer to drink, even here to cool for a while is not happy, but unfortunately not only humans will think so, in the absence of weapons to walk in unsuspecting is to find death.

The trembling bald middle-aged man walked slowly in front, and the witch snake that sprang up from the darkness from time to time always made him scream and squat down with his head in his hands, and Andy indifferently shot these attacks with the help of V mode, and the monsters with their flesh were not sturdy one by one, and the flesh and blood were splashed everywhere.

"It's funny."

Andy looked at the balding old man with suspicion.

"One or two can be explained as a coincidence, why do these monsters selectively bypass you? It's not going to be some trap you've set up... Or are you a witch snake? ”

Andy himself thought it was a little funny, but the bald old man couldn't laugh at it.

"Oh my God, please don't play this joke on me, it's really scary, we were so thirsty that we ran in and drank water, and we only took a few sips, and when I looked up, I saw that the monsters had crawled out and bitten on them, God, someone pulled the monster off their bodies, and they had been bitten out of a big blood puddle... vomit.."

He couldn't help but vomit on his knees, not because of the disgusting scene in his mind, but with the lighting of the beep-boy on Andy's arm, a series of terrifying things were illuminated in the darkness.

On the edge of the waterhole in the cave, a large number of witch snakes gathered into a group, three or four people fell there, three of them were obviously dead, their bodies were all bitten by the witch snakes out of the big holes, these monsters drilled in and out of these big holes, the corpses swelled to several times the size, they wantonly gnawed the internal organs and flesh of the corpses, and even the blood of the corpses was sucked dry.

Now it was not so much a corpse as a human skin wrapped in a large number of witch snakes.

Only one corpse was still intact, but judging by the large hole in the stomach and the pale face of paper, it was also a dead man.

The bald old man shouted the names of several people, and his tone was very sad.

The old man hurriedly hid behind Andy, but his legs and feet were not sharp, and he stepped on a pool of water and slipped directly and fell to the ground, but those witch snakes that crawled quickly still ignored him as before, and crawled towards Andy who was farther away.

The two guns were raised, and the sound of gunfire echoed in the cave, so that the bald old man covered his ears and did not dare to move.

When he looked up again, he saw a blur of rotten flesh.

Andy had already put away his gun and walked over to several corpses, kicking open a few broken human skin pockets, the corpses that were still intact were miraculously not devoured by the snakes, which happened to be similar to their ignorance of the bald old man, so... Why is that?

Approaching and kicking the corpse, some liquid leaked from the large bloody hole in the stomach, and the snakes burrowed into the man's body, but instead of continuing to eat from the inside out, they did something and then retreated, judging by the habits of those insatiable monsters, it was not right.

The bald old man sobbed and got up.

"Alas... How so? My good brothers... This is a place where we shouldn't have been, and we shouldn't have left New California! The original propaganda of the NcR Eastward Expansion Movement was all deceptive, there was no good thing here, it was all pests! I must find a chance to go back, and if I stay here any longer, everyone will die, everyone will die! ”

He was chattering like a psychopath, but Andy ignored him, because the corpse had gradually changed after he had kicked it, and something was squirming in the bloody hole in his abdomen.

The squirming became more and more violent, and then spread to the whole body of the corpse, Andy took a closer look, but there was a small yellow worm-like creature in the flesh and blood because of the disturbance crawled out of the depths of the flesh and blood restlessly, the black sucker mouth was full of small fangs, with their wriggling stretching and contracting, making people chill.

The larvae of a witch snake.

Andy took a few steps back abruptly, and once the baby snake invaded the flesh, it would bite and grow rapidly in the flesh, causing the infected to bleed badly until all the internal organs were gnawed into honeycombs, and the death would only be miserable.

The bald old man behind him was still crying sadly, Andy looked back at him, so there is only one feasible explanation, the reason why those witch snakes uncharacteristically let go of this corpse is because this corpse has become a warm cradle and cafeteria for their next generation, so... The reason why he was let go by the witch snakes...

"Don't cry, now worry about yourself rather than crying your friends."

The bald old man looked up in confusion, not yet understanding the situation.

Andy pointed to the corpse in front of him that had been used as an amusement park by the little witch snake.

"Most of you are infected with those little bugs, so these witch snakes will ignore you, do you feel that something is moving in your body?"

The old man's expression instantly stiffened, and then he began to scratch his skin like crazy, he panted and messed around with red eyes for a while before taking off his clothes to reveal his dirty upper body, only to see something in his stomach bulge slightly, and then return to the same as before.

"Ahh Yes!!! No! I don't want it! ”

The bald old man lost his mind at once, and he ran towards the mouth of the cave with a crawl.

Andy shouted that he didn't hear it, and looked back at the dark and deep cave pond, according to what he had seen at the nursery before, it is estimated that this pond is connected to underground fissures full of groundwater, and the witch snake can use these fissures to swim around and go out to hunt, once a prey approaches, it will either burrow into its body and eat it clean, or it will be parasitic in the body to lay eggs in the body.

The old man didn't know when he was infected, these people dared to drink water casually in the wasteland, and it might be okay in New California, the river water on this side of Colorara was full of witch snakes, and even the fish caught had to be carefully heated, otherwise if they were half-cooked and eaten, they would run out of stomach and diarrhea, and at worst, they would be infected with witch snake larvae and die.

"Don't run!"

Andy ran out of the cave after the crazy old man, and saw that he didn't run out of a few steps before his legs fell to his knees, and he vomited two mouthfuls of black blood.

Gillian was dumbfounded not far away, and Blackie screamed vigilantly at the old man in front of her, and the smell in its nose made it think that something was wrong with this man.

"You...."

Andy knew that the man was hopeless as soon as he looked at the puddle of black blood on the ground that something was wriggling inside.

Soon after, the old man fell to the ground, and a young witch snake spoiled past his face, and then disappeared into the depths of his flesh, and even if he was still panting, it was clear that he would not live long.

"We have to..."

Gillian stopped talking.

Andy bought some healing needles at Hoover Dam, which were not only very expensive but also mixed, some of which were defective products that the wasteland merchant found to refill the packaging himself, and Pip-Boy marked them one by one, but he didn't have a choice, even if the effect was poor, it was not ineffective, and he bought it after bargaining with the vendor.

Knowing that he should have scavenged more on the reservation in the first place, Marty didn't dare to let others know that he was selling drugs, and he could use this to blackmail him, and he also wanted him to stop doing that kind of kissing... I'll leave when I'm done with Tibbetts Prison... As for now.

"Do you think the needles will save him?"

Andy walked up to Gillian and shook her head in pain.

"Can't be saved, he's infected by the witch snake, right? According to the method of the tribesmen, if you want to live, you have to drink a poisonous earth medicine, wait for the fragile witch snake to be poisoned in the body, and then find someone to open his stomach and take out the large witch snakes that are still alive one by one, but we don't have those things on hand, and we can't operate on them at all. ”

The old man let out some moans from his mouth, and black blood began to flow from all seven orifices.

Andy was thinking about simply giving him a shot, when suddenly out of the corner of his eye, he seemed to see something at the entrance of the cave, and when he turned his head, he saw a huge witch snake crawling out of the cave along the stream, one was thicker than the previous two, and it crawled slowly along the current, and its four-meter body was completely revealed.

V mode is turned on, and the name of this monster is directly revealed.

It came to Andy's vicinity, its head raised and its mouth open, a thick, foul-smelling saliva flowing from its teeth, a purple-green, slimy monster that made people shudder to look at.

Andy moved his neck a few times, and the pistol in his hand was replaced by a self-charging pistol and a plasma pistol, of which there were not many bullets left in the plasma pistol, and he still needed to find a chance to collect some.

The huge witch snake pounced on it with multiple blood-red eyes, and at the same moment, in the midst of Gillian's scream, Andy opened fire.