The weary figure's layers of tattered fabric gently flutter with the ever-present Westward blowing winds of the shattered Valley formerly known as Tucson. Grumbling, they fumble with the not-quite properly sealing lid of their canteen grimacing at the picture the range finder feeds them through its peep-sight. They tap their compatriot on the right, who's presently asleep face-first in the Sonoran dirt, a similarly weary and vaguely feminine voice protests the disturbance.
"Charlie, get the fuck up, you're gonna piss yourself laughing.", Webster says, checking the dusty and aged notebook full of pre-measured ranges and visual landmarks.
Somewhere past the twisted Qwik Mart sign (100 meters) and the flipped over Tahoe (250 meters), a walking procession of five staggers their way through the August morning heat. They pass over cracked pavement and asphalt carefully, but not quite careful enough. One of them is some kind of garden variety dipshit, having attached a classic bright yellow flag to their backpack. Fluttering, the crudely illustrated banner features someone's attempt to recreate the famous "Don't tread on me" flag from yester-year, it looks more like a child's drawing than it does a serious attempt at embroidery. Tracing the path of the group of likely-hostiles, Webster squints as the omnipresent Sonoran sun glares off one of the few remaining shattered panels of safety glass clinging to the frame of a long-inoperable Ford F-150 Super-Max complete with birthing hips and a crew cab.
Charlie can't believe her fucking eyes. This far into the end of the world and those anarcho-libertarians she fought in Vegas inexplicably made their way to Tucson. What used to be a 5 hour drive has since become something of a slog to the tune of about 6 brutal weeks of long-distance hiking, many different types of roving bands of highwaymen (half of them psychotic cannibals) occupied the territory between the north Phoenix Crater and the Vegas Sinkhole. They weren't easy to wriggle past unless you had numbers. These idiots had numbers a plenty in Vegas, waving around the tattered Snake Flag where-ever they went in the name of some guy named "Joebody" (his name was Jobe, he was a used car salesman from fucking Salt Lake City, and a convert to Mormonism). She gently levels her rifle, careful to avoid making a glint as the two lie prone atop what used to be a Circle K's convenience store.
"Webster, is that 200 or 300 meters?", Charlie asks as she stifles a giggle.
"250 plus or minus a rattlesnake or three's length", Webster replies with a barely concealed enthusiasm for the show yet to play out.
"Sick. I'm hitting the flag guy first, if they act like the guys in Vegas, someone'll go to pick the flag up before realizing they should help the guy."
Charlie's piece of shit pawn shop Mosin Nagant barks abruptly, its heavy 7.62mm wide projectile rocketing at super-sonic speeds down-range and striking the snake-flag waving piece of shit cannon fodder directly in the jugular. A spray of crimson soils the flag of yellow as the man clutches at his neck, wordlessly gurgles, and falls over. The four other gentlemen begin hip firing their near-identical AR-15's, spraying bullets everywhere except where they need to go. One realizes their bannerman is who's dead, pulls the flag (and the scoped rifle) from his cold, dead hands, and then in a moment of shocking and unexpected violence has the back of his neck turned into an entry wound for the second round in Charlie's box magazine. He finds the pavement to be more comfortable than standing and decides to take a dirt nap in a puddle of his and his buddy's blood.
The men scramble back to whence they came, but so-sectioned into the carefully curated killzone, Charlie easily nails each with a shot to the neck. They were wearing full ass battle-rattle, modern-ish gear with quality equipment, no reason to put holes in the uniforms and even less a reason to go for headshots thanks to half of the men wearing helmets. Sure, some of those were bike helmets but helmets none the less, and those'd go for decent trades back at the marketplace. Individualistic, crass, arrogant, the lackies of Vegas Libertarians were remarkably similar in being over-equipped and under-trained; making for easy pickings that often represented the hordes of ghoulish idealists who thought they'd get to finally engage in unregulated capitalism as lords of their personal domains.
Turns out, slavery to old flags looks the same even when it's supposedly a flag of rugged individualism. Crying shame.