Steel Waste

The group doesn't immediately move after eliminating all the Gecko's, Karl has them skin the creatures, gut them, and harvest any edible parts.

It's fortunate that Afton levelled up his survival otherwise he'd have no idea how to skin an animal. His 30 points in survival actually forced into his mind what the most nutrition part of the creature would be. As such, he cut the liver and hearts out separately. These actually contained less radiation than the rest of their bodies, which made them for prime eating material.​​

The group continued on their way and eventually reached their camp on a ridge, another burnt-out campfire sat there, this wasn't the first time they'd used this spot for an ambush. Karl started up the fire and immediately started grilling some Gecko over it.

You couldn't go easy on the meat of the creatures out here, you need to almost burn them to kill any parasites that may be inhabiting their flesh. Not to mention the high levels of mutation can often lead to new and peculiar diseases.

"Any idea when the NCR caravan is going to come through?" Afton asks as he chews on the slightly charred Gecko heart.

Karl shrugs, "Tonight or early tomorrow morning, NCR think we wouldn't notice them at those times..." he says after finishing Gecko leg and standing up, "Toss me your bag son."

Afton tosses the backpack to Karl as the man rifles through it and finds some sort of cord? No, looking at it closer it resembles the fuses that top sticks of dynamite... Huh.

Karl has Afton hold it as he starts to unfurl it while walking down the ridge, he started to wonder how they had so much but realises that they'd most likely gotten it from the miners in Sloan, they couldn't very well light the dynamite and chuck it where it needed to be.

The man continues this until he reaches the middle of the road, pulling out three sticks of dynamite and tying their fuses together before stuffing them into one of the cracks in the road. He follows this up by kicking dirt over them and the black fuse that was clearly visible.

He did a good enough job as you'd definitely not notice it unless you knew about it beforehand. Afton was pretty impressed to be honest, he hadn't expected any of the Powder Gangers to be this... Professional.

Once Karl gets back he looks at the group, "The fuse'll take about a minute to reach the payload, if you spot the caravan make sure to light it early, taking out their brahmin will prevent them from runnin', as well as securing whatever they have on 'em." he explains.

"Sounds like a plan, hear bang, and shoot 'em up." Tommy confirms cockily.

And so the waiting began, everyone was given shifts to keep watch during the night, couldn't attack an NCR caravan without being fully rested after all. Plus, they didn't know when it'd actually be coming, for all they knew they'd be waiting an extra few days due to some delay.

It was the dead of night and they'd killed the campfire to prevent being spotted, Afton had put his blue NCRCF jacket over his recon armour as the temperature had dropped quite a lot.

His watch was almost over when he spotted some movement down the road, a caravan. They didn't have any lights as they knew they were walking through Powder Ganger territory, unfortunately for them that wouldn't be enough.

He quickly woke everyone up and gestured towards it, using VATS to target everyone and count their numbers... Eight people, seven looked to be ordinary grunt soldiers wearing something similar to what you'd see the American army wearing in the middle east, or at least, that's what Afton thought.

Each had had similar-looking rifles in their hands and were walking either side of the two brahmin that had huge packs strapped to them.

The one remaining person was wearing dirty almost block metal upper body armour with a similar colour helmet. It only protected his shoulders as his arms were vulnerable from his biceps to his hands.

He had some sort of revolver strapped to his hip and lead the brahmin, probably the guy who owned them... Afton looked to Karl who nodded, he lit the fuse when he judged the group with be over the trap, letting the fuse fall to the floor as it sparked to life.

Fortunately, it'd continued burning even while smothered by dirt, the NCR wouldn't see this coming.

"Get rid of the one in combat armour first, probably the most dangerous one of their group... Other than that, stay in cover while the grunts waste their ammo like they were trained to do." he says almost mockingly.

"I'm itching to kill these fuckers, come on, walk faster you pricks." Tommy says as he cocks the hammer on his .357 revolver.

...

...

The group continue to wait, the man in combat armour had just stepped directly under where they'd buried the dynamite...

*BOOM!*

An explosion erupts and killed the one in combat armour almost instantly, his legs flying off in different directions as the armour that was to protect him turned to shrapnel and penetrated his body.

The brahmin closest to him had one of its legs blown off, it gave a loud squeel as it fell to the floor, uselessly trying to get up to run by failing miserably.

The one behind it wasn't all that injured, just a few cuts from shrapnel, it turned to but a *Bang!* rung out through the area, Karl was standing on the ridge and had just fired his .44 Magnum, hitting the brahmin in the leg and causing it to fall to the floor with the other.

The NCR grunts who'd been knocked over by the shockwave quickly shook off their surprise and started firing their rifles at Karl who dipped back into cover.