An Encounter in Cajun Country

An Encounter in Cajun Country
Date: 10-6-2224
Location: Evangeline, Louisiana

Larry Breaux told me not to come here. Swore Lafayette and everything around it was a death trap. Yet here I am—deep in Cajun country, standing where Acadia used to breathe. His paranoia never moved me.

We came into Evangeline, Bayou Cannes cutting the horizon, and memories pressed in. Frog Town. Rayne. Fishing with my grandfather before the fire fell. Cajun men in boots, tough hands pulling catfish as long as your arm, gators bigger than the boats that hunted them. Hard people. Straight people. But that’s gone. The land feels stripped bare.

What hit me first wasn’t the memory—it was the smell. Death stacked on death. Fresh. Rotting. Human and animal alike. Too quiet. Even before the war, silence in Cajun country was a warning.

The water broke. A Gatorclaw rose—mutated, scaled, hungering. Clancy froze. “Sir,” he stammered, “I’ve seen them before… back home. They don’t leave survivors.” His voice cracked. Childhood fear clawing at him.

We opened fire. Bullets tore flesh but not enough. Pinball’s beams scattered harmlessly. Larry? He vanished up a tree, swearing he’d “cover us from above.” Cover never came.

The beast charged. Barley’s grenades were all I had—gas. I threw them anyway. The haze only made it wilder. Jaws opened, shadow over me. Then my hand found it—mine. One throw, one gamble.

BOOM.

The world shook. Plasma. Bone. Green rain. The thing scattered across Cajun dirt.

Silence again, except for our breathing.

Clancy stood shaking. His rifle still hot. His fear hadn’t vanished, but he hadn’t run either. He swallowed hard and whispered, “I never thought I could stand through it. But I did.”

I looked him over. “Fear’s not your failure, Lieutenant. It’s the proof you’re still alive. What you do standing in it decides if you stay human.” He nodded, eyes hardening. The boy was starting to become something.

Pinball buzzed close, burnt but loyal. Larry slithered down the tree, shaking, eyes wide as the plasma dripped from branches. “This stuff,” he muttered, “we could sell it. Jar it, haul it, trade it clean. Worth more than bullets.” Always scheming. Always angling profit.

We bottled what we could and sat under that same tree. I checked my Pip-Boy—hydration levels low. All I had left was one bottle of Big Chief Soda. Sweet, useless against thirst, but better than nothing. I drank it down slow, thinking. Water was scarce. Scarcer than trust. Out here, thirst will kill you faster than bullets or beasts.

When sleep finally came, it was heavy. I thought of home. Not a place on a map—just the memory of it. Funny. I’ve survived claws, mutants, swindlers, and storms… and still all I want is to lay eyes on home one more time.

Morning broke with Clancy still watching the Gatorclaw’s corpse, his silence saying more than words. Larry was already spinning plans, counting profit on plasma that hadn’t even cooled. Pinball whirred, eyes scanning, ever watchful.

The wasteland doesn’t wait. Neither will I.

Big Chief Mike Marcel signing off.