Joel was sat down on his camping bed, his back against the pillow and wall. He was reading a magazine entitled Guns and Bullets. It was an issue he had never read before and he had hoped there would be something in it about shooting scoped rifles at long distances, something he’d never really gotten the hang of and wanted to due to recently acquiring a Winchester rifle. No such luck though. There was a section on disassembling and reassembling the AK-47 but that was relatively easy. Easy enough that he’d mostly managed to teach himself with a little bit of tinkering anyway. 

Sighing and closing the magazine he got to his feet, as did Chomsky who had been laid down next to the cot. He gave the dog a scratch behind the ears whilst looking around his small apartment wearily. It wasn’t very clean, it looked more like a military stockroom than someone's bedroom honestly. There were crates of ammo lying around, guns and even swords rested against the walls around the place and an open locker filled with armor, holsters and sheathes was in the corner. Everything an enterprising mercenary might need, or in the case of the dozen or so bladed weapons, want.

Suddenly the phone rang, startling Joel. He almost smirked. There were only a handful of people who had his number. His family and one or two employers covered most of them. Either way they would likely have something for him to do and in his mind almost anything was better than sitting around at home. He walked over and answered it.

“Hello?”

“Get your ass over to the Desperado now! Before one of those fucking waste rats burns it down!” Some asshole shouted down the phone. Joel recognized the voice, just another semi-important made guy from one of the town's better paying families.

“How many of them are there?”

“How the fuck should I know!? Bitch who reported it to me said a shit ton. Maybe a dozen.”

“All right. 400 caps.” Joel spoke plainly.

“400!? You outta your fuckin’ mind kid?”

“Fine. Let the place burn. You can tell your don how you lost him a sizable part of his income because you were too cheap to hire a decent merc.”

“All right! All right. 400 caps it is. Get over there now, I want those fucks dead before they do any irreparable damage.”

“Understood.” Joel said, hanging up.

He went over to his locker and began quickly gearing up, putting on everything he had since he’d be going up against so many enemies. Finally he grabbed his AK-47, putting the sling over his shoulder and grabbing three spare magazines for it. A hundred and twenty rounds should be plenty for ten or so raiders, even with his aim. He slid one of the magazines into the rifle and pulled back the charging handle, heading out the door and whistling for Chomsky to follow him.