A machete swiped the pillow in two, and if Hull hadn't woken him up just now, the pillow would have ended up with his head.

Andy pulls out his pistol and looks at the men who sneak up on him, one wearing a welder's mask and the other covering his face with a cloth.

"Yo, you're smart."

The welder's mask slowly pulled out the machete, the blade of which had already sunk into the bed, and it was clear that the knife was going to kill.

The masked man held out his finger and pointed at Andy.

"Hand over what you brought from the bottom of the Grand Canyon!"

Andy looked at the two guys in front of him, his head was full of question marks, he was able to come out of the Grand Canyon to show that he was not easy to mess with, they came in the middle of the night to sneak attack the dead hand should know this, so they did this despicable act, but since they have woken up, why don't the two not only run away but also rob here seriously?

"Huh? Are you sure? ”

Without saying a word, the welder's mask poked the tip of the knife towards Andy.

"Less!"

Andy dodged the knife sideways, and the masked man was about to draw a pistol and raise it to aim, but before he could shoot, a gunshot rang out, and the masked man's head turned into a ball of blood and splashed on the wall, and the headless body fell to his knees.

I thought this would make the welder mask know that he was afraid, but he just shouted and raised the machete to continue to approach, Andy put on the Hercules power fist and grabbed the machete and crushed it directly, and then added a punch to hit the welder mask's face into a flower, and he rolled in the air and flew backwards to break through the wall of the shed.

................

The next day, Andy found Krimson with two bodies.

"What's going on?"

He threw the body in front of Krimson.

"Why would someone shoot me with a knife while I was sleeping?"

Krimson made a flat look at the two men, and then beckoned a man wearing a miner's helmet and carrying a shovel to come over and dispose of the body.

"Ah, these are two hooligan poisonous insects, they usually do evil, drink some wine and take some medicine, you don't have any IQ in your brain, you can clean them up is considered a good deed, I thank you on behalf of Poldonk."

Andy stared at Krimson for a moment, a little speechless.

"You... Aren't you the mayor of Bodunker? Do you know that these people have problems and don't deal with them? ”

Klimson touched his beard and explained unhurriedly.

"Why should I deal with it? Podonk is a free town, there are not many rules here, except for refusing the interference of the NcR, there is no strong consensus, if you want to do evil, then you have to make sure that you don't get caught or cause public anger, if you do evil and are killed, it is just deserved. ”

"Then again..."

Krimson pointed to the man who was packing the two bodies.

"These carcasses need to be disposed of properly, the quickest way is to throw them into a coyote-infested area and eat them cleanly, if they are hastily buried, there can be a bad change, and the most undesirable thing to do is to throw them into the Grand Canyon... You see those monsters down there, right, man-eaters? ”

Andy looked at the sacks that contained the corpses, and it turned out that this was how Podunk was going to dispose of the corpses.

"Don't you have a cemetery?"

Krimson stroked his beard and shook his head.

"There is no cemetery in Potunke, and the dead are either taken by their families to be buried in a distant place or incinerated on the spot, or... If there is no one to dispose of, it is up to our corpse collectors to feed the corpses to the coyotes, there are so many uranium mines in the ground that those glowing stones can turn people into mad ghouls or worse man-eaters, which is not okay. ”

Andy felt that there was nothing more to say, and after asking where the measles was, he said goodbye to Krimson.

He walked to the western edge of the town and saw an old factory there, and through the windows that had been turned into holes, he could see that there were many complex equipment piled up inside, and it was not for nothing that people lived far away from here, because the radiation was very strong in the vicinity.

Silently change into a radiation protective suit and move on, measles must not care about radiation, it is estimated that it will feel very warm...

Upon entering the factory, Andy saw measles looking at him with a silver metal rod.

Hearing footsteps, he turned his head slowly.

"What? Did you agree to my request? ”

Andy knew that it was measles and didn't recognize him, and was about to take the opportunity to play a set of measles as a representative of the reservation and ask Podunk something, but who knew that the ghoul turned his eyes and directly saw that something was wrong, although the helmet of the radiation suit covered his face, but the muscular body could not hide it.

"No, there's no such sturdy slippery skin in this little town... Is that you, Andy? ”

This statement directly interrupted Andy's thoughts.

"You can recognize this, measles."

Measles walked over with the silver metal rod about the thickness of his finger and looked it up and down, and in a moment, the geiger counter of the beep-beep boy was noisily raised a notch.

"Wait, don't come here, what's that in your hand?"

Andy was so frightened that he took two steps back, and Measles raised the stick when he heard this.

"It's a fuel rod, it's designed to be used in a nuclear reactor, and its zirconium shell seems to be a little cracked."

Immediately afterward, he stroked the fuel rod in an admiring tone.

"How beautiful, what a gift from the Holy Spirit of the Wasteland, such an inconspicuous stick, it contains almost the same energy as 300,000 cubic meters of natural gas, and it cannot be exhausted even if it is used for hundreds of years for conventional household or industrial use."

Andy took two more steps back, although he didn't know what natural gas was, but the thing in front of him was making the Geiger counter frantically alarm, and to be on the safe side, he first took a few tablets of anti-radiant with the beep boy.

"You put that stick down first, and we'll talk."

Measles casually threw the fuel rods in his hand into a trailer with a large pile of fuel rods inside.

"I thought you might not be able to come up again, it seems that I still underestimate you, what about below?"

"Awful."

Andy pulls out the vial of anti-radiation medicine that measles gave him.

"I'll give it back to you."

Measles didn't reach for it.

"You keep it, Andy, maybe you will have a chance to use it in the future... Talking to the mayor of Podonk, I confessed that the mayor of this shabby town was almost a nominal person, and he couldn't restrain the inhabitants of the town, which led me to doubt that the agreement with him would be valid in the long term. ”

Andy agreed, after all, he had just slept in the middle of the night and broke into a robber with a knife.

"I think so..."

The measles walked over with his hands behind his back, his purple skin glowing strangely in the sun, something he hadn't seen before, and the intense radiation from the Grand Canyon seemed to have had some effect on his body.

"The guy named Krimson said he still needed some vote from the people here to finally get our partnership going, but I think the chances of a vote going through are almost zero, because I can see that the people here are afraid of me... They dislike me, or to put it bluntly, they discriminate against me and the race I represent. ”

"In their eyes, we're not much different from the Grand Canyon species known as man-eaters, and it's true that we're occasionally attacked by our crazy kind... But these were nothing more than excuses they were looking for for their own short-sightedness and stupidity, and they should have understood that cooperating with the reservation and leaving here in search of a new life was their only alternative way out, because the town was rotting. ”

Measles raised a hand in front of his eyes and clenched it.

"Have you seen the boys of Potunke? Many of them have strange diseases or are born with deformities, the reason why this is not only because of the harsh environment of the Grand Canyon, which is too closed to add fresh blood, many of them are inbred and addicted to alcohol and drugs, plus they often go to the Grand Canyon to scavenge for radiation and poison gas pollution, and finally give birth to a large number of deformed children with birth defects. ”

Andy hasn't had the opportunity to reach out to the children in Podunker, but after listening to such a methodical analysis of measles, he also thinks that the situation makes perfect sense according to the measles explanation.

"So what do you suggest?"

Measles' dim eyes looked at the town outside the factory gates.

"The reservation will send a group of professional miners and technicians, we will repair the automated mining facilities and smelters here, the fuel rods made from the uranium ore mined in the Grand Canyon are the resources we want, and we are willing to pay for them and dividends, I don't think this is a slippery place to settle down, staying here is just a slow suicide, I hope they can choose to leave after they get enough bottle caps."

Andy knew that Krimson was unlikely to agree, not to mention the rejection of ghoul racism in the hearts of the inhabitants, and from the perspective of profit alone, these proposals were more like reservations seeking to encroach on the land and resources of their Podonkers.

"You're in a hurry, just explain the situation to them and reach a preliminary cooperation first, those dangerous uranium mines are no threat to you, if you can make the Podonks understand that cooperation between you is a good thing that can help them avoid danger and gain benefits, they will definitely agree immediately."

With that, Andy thought about what Measles thought about the future of Bodunk.

"It's really remote and isolated, I'll go see the kids later... If, as you say, then it's really not a place to live, I'll try to convince them to go somewhere else, like... To the south, the people on this side aren't very smart, and it will definitely take some time for them to understand this, and you need to be a little patient until then. ”

Measles looks indifferent.

"Whatever you want, Andy, if you can help, of course we can give them time to think slowly, anyway, we have more time than you guys."

Andy was a little surprised to hear measles say this, it stands to reason that the reservation should be more eager to reach a partnership with Podonk to obtain uranium mines and restore energy supplies, why did he say that he wanted to help mediate measles but only said that it didn't matter?

After thinking about it, Andy thinks that this may be another consideration for measles as a way to distinguish ghouls from human thinking, as he said, ghouls have a much longer lifespan than humans, and the town of Podonk seems to have reached a dead end, and it is estimated that it will completely decline in less than ten years, and then it will be uninhabited and managed, and the reservation can be driven into it for a long time.

Walking out of the uranium mine, Andy first followed the sound of children playing to find some Podonk children who seemed to be taking turns using a bow and arrow to shoot at a wooden target placed in the distance, but none of them hit the target, all of them shot crookedly, because they didn't even know how to pull the bowstring, so most of the arrows fell directly to the ground.

Andy observed for a while, those children were generally weak and weak, some had an abnormally slender arm, some even had more or fewer fingers, and some had pale eyes and obvious abnormal vision.

Perhaps the San Diego men are old and sick, and the people of Podunque Town seem to be strong for the time being, but in time the next generation of Pordonque will not be much better than the one north of the Grand Canyon.

Measles is right, there is no future here.

A woman came slowly carrying a basket.

"Are you the one who everyone said fell into the Grand Canyon and walked up again? Do you know how to shoot arrows? It's better to teach the children. ”

Andy glanced at her, the woman was dark, rough, yellow, yellow, bloodshot eyes, and obviously suffering from radiation sickness.

"I'm not very good at it... However, I have heard a Buraku friend talk about the skills of archery, which can indeed make people shoot more accurately, but only if they have the strength to pull the bowstring steadily and aim at the target. ”

He pointed to the bow made by a very layman that the children used as toys.

"If there is a child who has mastered the skill and pulls the bowstring, and because of the lack of strength, he misses the release and the bowstring rebounds, which may cause serious injury, so... Instead of teaching them how to draw a bow and shoot arrows, let them continue to play like this, because they should learn how to shoot as early as possible rather than bow and arrow. ”

The woman sighed.

"What you're saying is that these kids... No one can say how many of them will survive to adulthood, as for learning to shoot, it is even more unlikely, bullets are too difficult to find, and the rest are left to go to the Grand Canyon to use for self-defense, how can it be their turn to practice? ”

She took a few cactus fruits out of the basket and handed them to Andy.

Andy didn't pick it up.

"Thank you for your kindness, I know you don't have enough resources here, so let's keep it for the children."

The woman took back the fruit, but instead of leaving, she made another suggestion.

"Forgive me for being abrupt, but lately some people in the town have been asking for help to improve everyone's living conditions, and if you are willing to help, we will all be grateful to you, and I know that with your ability, you will definitely be able to do a lot of things that none of us can do."

Andy immediately agreed, and the woman told him to go to an old one-armed miner named Jack Hammer, who lived in a shack on the eastern edge of the town.

....................

When he came to the east side of the town, he inquired about the Potunks and found the old miner, who was sitting outside the door of his hut and laboriously making some strange bows and arrows.

"Hello, are you Jack Hammer?"

The old man looked up and rubbed his old and dull eyes.

"Oh, it's me... I haven't seen you, could it be that you're new here? If yes, that's great, we're in need of some new people here, and there are two girls who haven't had children yet, because there are no men in town who are not related to them at all, do you need me to introduce you? ”

Andy thought back to the vicissitudes of the woman's appearance before, and had no interest in it...

"Well, still no, Jack, I heard you're looking for help."

Jack immediately stood up in high spirits.

"Oh, yes, yes, I'm researching one thing, there are signs that there was an army stationed here to guard the uranium mines before the war, although it was a long, long time ago, but their reserves of ammunition should still be usable, these equipment can protect people from man-eaters and other monsters, but no one knows where."