Georgie was not born to be a raider, not at first. This was something that occurred later, when his mind started to decay but his body remained, and he slowly become imprinted on the lifestyle of a fiendish drug addict. His body was scarred by track marks, his eyes bloodshot from just a few hours ago when he crushed mentats and poured it into them—there was a lot he would do, simply because he was Georgie.

Mama always told him that she loved him dearly, her little boy, and Papa worked hard to keep them fed by tilling the fields for whatever various crops they could grow in the mostly lifeless earth. Georgie helped, and brushed the scant hairs of the Brahmin herd to keep them happy and content. He slept on the floor in the living-room of their tiny shack, next to the family mutt dog, Big Bark.

But now, Georgie sat watching men tear at each other in an arena. The floor was so thick with blood that it had turned black, and the gargling screams of men as they perished incited even Georgie to hoot and holler in glee. “O-o-oh, blood, blood, blood, blood!” Georgie shrieked happily, thrashing his arms upward and cocking his head far to the right, with an uncannily, perturbing expression of delight.

“Look, look, look at that, look at that, so much blood, dark, red, flesh,” Georgie clasped his hands together, vibrating with the joviality of the room—everyone was being so festive, at least in his opinion. They were celebrating the strength of that man—Bedlam—or maybe the weakness of his opponent. Either way, Georgie was excited.

He produced some dried, salted squirrel meat he had been hiding in his pockets, and chewed on it. Georgie would not, likely could not compete in the arena without laughing uncontrollably, and so for the most part, he was not asked to contribute in this way. Loopy, as they called him, was mostly a Rottweiler that could be used in a real fight—once he was unleashed on an opponent, he was insatiable, driven by drugs and the mental deficiencies caused by them.

“Oh so good, very good, fine, great, superb, good, good, g-g-good,” Loopy said to Bedlam, replaying the fight in his mind. “Why not eat, devour, taste, the flesh, his skin, killed him, for food, to eat—ahahaha, he is good, he is good!” he was stuck, looping around the same vicious thoughts in his head, consumed by negativity and horrors around him.