G
Guest
Guest
There are stories of heroes in the wasteland. Some that have even evolved into local legend. But the heroes of those tales are never what people think.
No Remorse
Adrian felt for his Desert Eagle through the leather hip-holster for the tenth time that hour. Making sure it’s still there he told himself, half believing what his mind said. He would never
admit to the true reason he kept grabbing at his weapon; he was trigger happy. Firing a weapon gave him such a feeling of power, something he’d never know until he toyed with a 10mm on the gunnery range of his vault. That feeling of power was amplified ten-fold by the little bottle of pills he’d stolen from the med-lab. A capsule crunched between his teeth as he plodded through the barren desert. The feeling he’d come to know and love swept over his body. He’d also convinced himself that he wasn’t getting
high, he was resisting radiation. But Rad-X was never intended to be chewed like candy, and didn’t have quite the same effect that it should have had. The harshness of the charred scape
faded away as his senses dulled. He felt light-headed, and happy to be alive, a feeling that one would be hard-pressed to find in the stark sets that covered post-nuclear Earth.
Dawn came earlier than Adrian expected. The Rad-X and water flask (filled with whiskey) had dulled his senses to the point where he didn’t notice the passing of time. He glanced at his
battered Pip-boy out of habit. He didn’t really care what time it was, it was just another asinine gesture that made him think of the life he’d left behind. Another pill snapped between his canine-teeth.
Toward midday, Adrian saw a town on the horizon. He smiled a very unpleasant smile and involuntarily reached for his weapon. [Just checking.] He still didn’t believe it though. He started toward the town his Pip-boy called “Walden.” With a town came people. With people came conflict, and with conflict came killing.
He drank alone, a common sight in the wasteland. To the bar patrons, he was just another errant gunslinger, too absorbed in his own problems to give a hand to anyone but himself. No one had
the courage to approach him about the ongoing raider problem that plagued the Walkill Valley. The residents all wanted help, but most were too proud to ask for outside assistance. [The raiders will come to us, and he’ll help then,] was the common sentiment among the population. The night wore on however, and the raiders didn’t attack. The ravaged citizens eyed the rifle that was slung over the wanderer’s back. It seemed well cared for, a sign of a man who knew how to use a gun. But some could tell that he preferred his pistol, seeing the way his hand kept twitching when it passed the holster. Some took it as a bad sign, and strayed away.
Midnight came, and the stranger still sat at the bar in the same position. He never moved, except to unscrew the cap of a small, plastic bottle and put a pill in his mouth. His eyes were transfixed on a single point on the wall. The bartender, who had set a drink in front of Adrian earlier without being prompted, finally spoke. “Son, it’s midnight and we’re gonna be closin’ up soon. Why don’ ye find a place ta sleep? I gotta few rooms here, and yer welcome ta stay fer free.” The room fell silent, waiting for a response from the stranger.
There was a crunching sound, then the man spoke, “Yeah.... that’d be good. Thanks, old man.”
The stranger downed the beer that was set before him hours earlier in a few short gulps, then he stood. A patron next to him was about to start up a conversation when there was a resounding crack. Adrian grinned ear to ear, anxiously drew his Desert Eagle and ran out into the street.
The body of a man lay face down in the dirt road that ran through the middle of the ramshackle town. Adrian spotted a muzzle flash in the distance, then a crack as the bullet hit the wooden wall of the bar that he’d just run out of. Hardened by years of experience, Adrian dropped to the ground and crawled behind a rusted barrel. ["Not enough cover"] an emotionless voice told him from the back of his head. Adrian crawled into an alley, between the bar and a small house. He holstered his pistol, un-slung his rifle, and waited.
After a few minutes, three men came into the town, one had a scoped hunting rifle and the other two carried sub-machine-guns of an unknown make. Adrian picked his target carefully, barely
moving as he looked down the night-vision scope on his 30-06. The three passed fifteen feet in front of him, looking around for the man they’d missed. One spotted the alley that Adrian lay in, but he was too late to say anything. There was a deafening crack in the small alley. A bullet passed right through the raider’s eye, spraying his companions with blood and pieces of brain-matter. One panicked and fired his SMG frantically into the alley, missing completely due to his lack of control. Another crack sounded and the second raider dropped to the ground. The last one dived into the nearest building, a latrine.
He frantically fired out the door, hoping to hit anything. [These goddamn farmers are supposed to be a push-over!! Raul never said anything about guards!!] The raider thought as he tried to reload his rifle. He fumbled the clip because he was shaking so bad. “First day on the job, eh?” A cold voice spoke from the doorway of the out-house. The raider looked up only to see a pistol pressed against his forehead. He closed his eyes and
muttered incomprehensibly, fumbling his words. “I said where’s your base!?” The man with the pistol yelled at him.
“I- I’ll sh-sh-show y-you... sir.” The ex-raider sputtered pathetically.
“On your feet.” The pistol wielding man in the desert-camo pants ordered.
During the hour long trip to the raider camp, the former raider heard the psycho muttering to himself and occasionally there was a crunching. [“What the hell are you doing, Adrian?”] A voice in Adrian’s head asked. [“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were doing something good.”]
“Shut up.” Adrian told himself.
“I didn’t say anything!” The ex-raider protested. The two continued to plod on through the night, Adrian’s pistol still pointed at the back of the ex-raider’s skull.
When the raider’s camp was in sight, Adrian asked how many raiders there were. The captured raider told him 30, then 27, then 35. Adrian eventually got fed up with it. The ex-raider begged miserably for his life, but Adrian was too far gone with his Rad-X high to understand anything the blubbering man said. He drew a long knife, serrated on one edge and razor-sharp on the other.
Adrian left the body of the cowardly raider gutted on the hill where they had first seen the camp.
He scouted around the camp, checking for guards and any fortifications. There were none. The raiders were celebrating something around a large bon-fire in the center of their camp. He then spotted some pitiful figures tied to stakes in a small pen that was once used for keeping cattle. He counted three women and two men, bound and gagged.
[“Are you actually considering helping those prisoners?”] The voice asked. Adrian tried to ignore the voice, but it persisted.
He eventually gave in, after an hour of counting targets and planning an assault. “What do you want from me, voice?” he whispered harshly, not quite believe he was talking back to his mind.
[“First of all, my name isn’t voice.”]
“Okay, what should I call you then!?”
[“Call me... Maim.”]
“Then tell me, ‘Maim’, what the hell are you doing in my head!?”
[“You’ll understand eventually, Adrian. For now, focus on the task.”] To Adrian, the voice sounded excited at the prospect of killing. He shook his head, chewed another pill and took to cap off the rifle scope.
The camp was in a bad position, it was surrounded by hills, obviously to hide the camp, which was made up of tents and a few of what looked to be old houses. The hills mad it easy for Adrian
to get a good view and were excellent for picking off the targets below.
He waited for the raiders to get really drunk to make his move. It took hours of “celebrating” for them to finally become inebriated enough to make an attack and not have a formidable force to contend with.
Dawn was approaching. Most of the raiders had passed out around the pile of embers that was once their fire. A handful were still stumbling around, still whooping and yelling with the same
vigor they’d had hours ago. Two had made up their minds to wander to the cattle pen where the prisoners were kept. One of them began to cut the clothing off of a bound woman. Something
inside Adrian’s head made him want to assist the helpless prisoner, who struggled impotently against her bonds. He looked for a moment through the green haze of the scope, seeing only solid green silhouettes. No, the timing is wrong... One raider stood by and laughed while his companion began to rape the prisoner. Maim cackled as Adrian looked away from the pen, trying
to put the heinous act that he let happen out of his mind. He gazed through his scope at the last handful that weren’t passed out. He counted five that weren’t terribly drunk, obviously the
cautious ones of the band.
[“Now.”] Maim told him. The voice was right, the raiders were beginning to fall asleep.
The first rifle shot took a raider through the center of his chest. Adrian mechanically worked the bolt on his rifle, firing a second, well-aimed shot. The second bullet tore through a raider’s lung, dropping him to the ground with a dull thud, as he struggled to breathe. The third took a kneecap off one of the raiders, who was caught off guard and collapsed in an awkward position. The fourth finished him. The fifth round left a large hole in a female raider’s head. Adrian then had to reload his rifle.
The remaining non-drunk raider tried to run to a tent to get his weapon. He tripped over one of his sleeping comrades, taking a nose dive into the dirt. He tried to scramble up, but a bullet blew through his chest and dropped him like a wet sandbag. No stumbling, no drama, just a straight drop. The wound didn’t kill him right away, he was left to die in a pool of his own
blood, still telling his mind he'd not been shot. That did it for the threatening ones.
The raider that was well into raping his victim was blown off the woman by the force of the explosive-tipped bullet entering his gut. Through the scope, a large pool formed beneath the
agonized man. He looked around dumbly, not quite understanding what had happened to him. His companion had run to a house when he heard the gun shots and hid there, confused; used to
being the predator, not the prey. The sniper used his remaining four rounds to shoot some of the unconscious men laying on the ground.
He then entered their camp as some of the raiders were coming-to. The sun was coming up, bathing the landscape in a pale red glow. He put a bullet in each raider that stirred, the
resounding blasts from his pistol had wakened a few from their alcohol induced sleep. When his gruesome task was finished, nearly every raider lay dead, some in their spilled beer and
rotgut. Evil laughter echoed in Adrian’s head as he stood over the writhing rapist that had tried to crawl out the cattle pen. He had a massive gut wound and was slowly bleeding to death. He
stared into his executioner’s icy blue eyes and examined his scarred face. There was no emotion, the eyes were distant and he moved away with cat-like grace. The man died there on the floor of the brahmin pen like the animal he was.
Adrian sat on the wooden fence and stared at the bound prisoners. Three ravaged women, and two broken men. He put his head in his hands as his combat (and drug) high wore off. He didn’t take another pill. For the first time in twelve years, he let the effects fade. The memories of his old home came back to him.
It was a massive underground vault, built to shelter people from the cleansing pillars of nuclear fire that ravaged the planet. He was born in the vault, his grandparents had entered it and made it their home and lived out their lives, fat, dumb and happy.
Adrian worked for eighteen years after he finished his mandatory schooling, as a technician, fixing computers and other broken things around the vault. He had hated the monotony of his
work so much, he left the vault with a small cabal of people that wanted to see the outside world. The group lasted for five days on the outside. Every person that had left, including Adrian's wife, Mara, died on the outside, except for him. He was found by a merchant party that had stumbled upon his failed expedition. He was carried back to the vault and treated for massive amounts of radiation poisoning. He vomited up everything he ate and wasted away to almost nothing but a walking skeleton. Eventually, he recovered from the poisoning. But the scars on his mind were still there. He lived in mortal terror of radiation for over a year, constantly taking Rad-X. When he was healthy enough to return to his job, he started chewing the tablets to get the full effect all at once and distract him from the daily grind. He turned to target shooting as a hobby, and when the novelty of that wore off, he started chewing Rad-X on the shooting range. As a result, he wound up putting a 10mm round into the range supervisor’s shoulder. Then he was cast out.
For the next eleven years, he wandered, honing his weapon skills to perfection. He had been constantly wandering north, his vault was beneath the ruins of Annapolis, Maryland. Now it was
just a memory that he tried to drown in drugs in alcohol. In a single moment of clear thought, before he took another pill, he realized what Maim was, and the voice put it into words for him.
[“I am the result of eleven years of indiscriminate killing and repressed memories. I am the result of eleven years of chewing anti-radiation drugs. And I am a representation of your ‘killer instinct.’”] Adrian felt nauseous, his head throbbed and his hands shook. Slowly, with a shiking hand, he raised his Desert Eagle, his best friend for eleven years, and shot the five helpless prisoners. Five obscene crimson pools gathered under the lifeless people. The nausea faded and so did the throbbing in his head. He was merciless, he was ruthless, he had no remorse, no regrets, and no sorrow. And in his own twisted way, had set the prisoners free.
He walked to the north, alone as always.
Epilogue-
The population of the surrounding settlements finally worked up the courage to investigate the abrupt ending to the raids. When they found the slaughtered camp and the dead prisoners, it was assumed the ex-raiders had shot them before the killers were all gunned down by the heroic stranger. He became the toast of the town, even though he was never seen again in those parts.
Adrian shot himself in Maine when he ran out of pills.
His justification: "Maim made me do it."
No Remorse
Adrian felt for his Desert Eagle through the leather hip-holster for the tenth time that hour. Making sure it’s still there he told himself, half believing what his mind said. He would never
admit to the true reason he kept grabbing at his weapon; he was trigger happy. Firing a weapon gave him such a feeling of power, something he’d never know until he toyed with a 10mm on the gunnery range of his vault. That feeling of power was amplified ten-fold by the little bottle of pills he’d stolen from the med-lab. A capsule crunched between his teeth as he plodded through the barren desert. The feeling he’d come to know and love swept over his body. He’d also convinced himself that he wasn’t getting
high, he was resisting radiation. But Rad-X was never intended to be chewed like candy, and didn’t have quite the same effect that it should have had. The harshness of the charred scape
faded away as his senses dulled. He felt light-headed, and happy to be alive, a feeling that one would be hard-pressed to find in the stark sets that covered post-nuclear Earth.
Dawn came earlier than Adrian expected. The Rad-X and water flask (filled with whiskey) had dulled his senses to the point where he didn’t notice the passing of time. He glanced at his
battered Pip-boy out of habit. He didn’t really care what time it was, it was just another asinine gesture that made him think of the life he’d left behind. Another pill snapped between his canine-teeth.
Toward midday, Adrian saw a town on the horizon. He smiled a very unpleasant smile and involuntarily reached for his weapon. [Just checking.] He still didn’t believe it though. He started toward the town his Pip-boy called “Walden.” With a town came people. With people came conflict, and with conflict came killing.
He drank alone, a common sight in the wasteland. To the bar patrons, he was just another errant gunslinger, too absorbed in his own problems to give a hand to anyone but himself. No one had
the courage to approach him about the ongoing raider problem that plagued the Walkill Valley. The residents all wanted help, but most were too proud to ask for outside assistance. [The raiders will come to us, and he’ll help then,] was the common sentiment among the population. The night wore on however, and the raiders didn’t attack. The ravaged citizens eyed the rifle that was slung over the wanderer’s back. It seemed well cared for, a sign of a man who knew how to use a gun. But some could tell that he preferred his pistol, seeing the way his hand kept twitching when it passed the holster. Some took it as a bad sign, and strayed away.
Midnight came, and the stranger still sat at the bar in the same position. He never moved, except to unscrew the cap of a small, plastic bottle and put a pill in his mouth. His eyes were transfixed on a single point on the wall. The bartender, who had set a drink in front of Adrian earlier without being prompted, finally spoke. “Son, it’s midnight and we’re gonna be closin’ up soon. Why don’ ye find a place ta sleep? I gotta few rooms here, and yer welcome ta stay fer free.” The room fell silent, waiting for a response from the stranger.
There was a crunching sound, then the man spoke, “Yeah.... that’d be good. Thanks, old man.”
The stranger downed the beer that was set before him hours earlier in a few short gulps, then he stood. A patron next to him was about to start up a conversation when there was a resounding crack. Adrian grinned ear to ear, anxiously drew his Desert Eagle and ran out into the street.
The body of a man lay face down in the dirt road that ran through the middle of the ramshackle town. Adrian spotted a muzzle flash in the distance, then a crack as the bullet hit the wooden wall of the bar that he’d just run out of. Hardened by years of experience, Adrian dropped to the ground and crawled behind a rusted barrel. ["Not enough cover"] an emotionless voice told him from the back of his head. Adrian crawled into an alley, between the bar and a small house. He holstered his pistol, un-slung his rifle, and waited.
After a few minutes, three men came into the town, one had a scoped hunting rifle and the other two carried sub-machine-guns of an unknown make. Adrian picked his target carefully, barely
moving as he looked down the night-vision scope on his 30-06. The three passed fifteen feet in front of him, looking around for the man they’d missed. One spotted the alley that Adrian lay in, but he was too late to say anything. There was a deafening crack in the small alley. A bullet passed right through the raider’s eye, spraying his companions with blood and pieces of brain-matter. One panicked and fired his SMG frantically into the alley, missing completely due to his lack of control. Another crack sounded and the second raider dropped to the ground. The last one dived into the nearest building, a latrine.
He frantically fired out the door, hoping to hit anything. [These goddamn farmers are supposed to be a push-over!! Raul never said anything about guards!!] The raider thought as he tried to reload his rifle. He fumbled the clip because he was shaking so bad. “First day on the job, eh?” A cold voice spoke from the doorway of the out-house. The raider looked up only to see a pistol pressed against his forehead. He closed his eyes and
muttered incomprehensibly, fumbling his words. “I said where’s your base!?” The man with the pistol yelled at him.
“I- I’ll sh-sh-show y-you... sir.” The ex-raider sputtered pathetically.
“On your feet.” The pistol wielding man in the desert-camo pants ordered.
During the hour long trip to the raider camp, the former raider heard the psycho muttering to himself and occasionally there was a crunching. [“What the hell are you doing, Adrian?”] A voice in Adrian’s head asked. [“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were doing something good.”]
“Shut up.” Adrian told himself.
“I didn’t say anything!” The ex-raider protested. The two continued to plod on through the night, Adrian’s pistol still pointed at the back of the ex-raider’s skull.
When the raider’s camp was in sight, Adrian asked how many raiders there were. The captured raider told him 30, then 27, then 35. Adrian eventually got fed up with it. The ex-raider begged miserably for his life, but Adrian was too far gone with his Rad-X high to understand anything the blubbering man said. He drew a long knife, serrated on one edge and razor-sharp on the other.
Adrian left the body of the cowardly raider gutted on the hill where they had first seen the camp.
He scouted around the camp, checking for guards and any fortifications. There were none. The raiders were celebrating something around a large bon-fire in the center of their camp. He then spotted some pitiful figures tied to stakes in a small pen that was once used for keeping cattle. He counted three women and two men, bound and gagged.
[“Are you actually considering helping those prisoners?”] The voice asked. Adrian tried to ignore the voice, but it persisted.
He eventually gave in, after an hour of counting targets and planning an assault. “What do you want from me, voice?” he whispered harshly, not quite believe he was talking back to his mind.
[“First of all, my name isn’t voice.”]
“Okay, what should I call you then!?”
[“Call me... Maim.”]
“Then tell me, ‘Maim’, what the hell are you doing in my head!?”
[“You’ll understand eventually, Adrian. For now, focus on the task.”] To Adrian, the voice sounded excited at the prospect of killing. He shook his head, chewed another pill and took to cap off the rifle scope.
The camp was in a bad position, it was surrounded by hills, obviously to hide the camp, which was made up of tents and a few of what looked to be old houses. The hills mad it easy for Adrian
to get a good view and were excellent for picking off the targets below.
He waited for the raiders to get really drunk to make his move. It took hours of “celebrating” for them to finally become inebriated enough to make an attack and not have a formidable force to contend with.
Dawn was approaching. Most of the raiders had passed out around the pile of embers that was once their fire. A handful were still stumbling around, still whooping and yelling with the same
vigor they’d had hours ago. Two had made up their minds to wander to the cattle pen where the prisoners were kept. One of them began to cut the clothing off of a bound woman. Something
inside Adrian’s head made him want to assist the helpless prisoner, who struggled impotently against her bonds. He looked for a moment through the green haze of the scope, seeing only solid green silhouettes. No, the timing is wrong... One raider stood by and laughed while his companion began to rape the prisoner. Maim cackled as Adrian looked away from the pen, trying
to put the heinous act that he let happen out of his mind. He gazed through his scope at the last handful that weren’t passed out. He counted five that weren’t terribly drunk, obviously the
cautious ones of the band.
[“Now.”] Maim told him. The voice was right, the raiders were beginning to fall asleep.
The first rifle shot took a raider through the center of his chest. Adrian mechanically worked the bolt on his rifle, firing a second, well-aimed shot. The second bullet tore through a raider’s lung, dropping him to the ground with a dull thud, as he struggled to breathe. The third took a kneecap off one of the raiders, who was caught off guard and collapsed in an awkward position. The fourth finished him. The fifth round left a large hole in a female raider’s head. Adrian then had to reload his rifle.
The remaining non-drunk raider tried to run to a tent to get his weapon. He tripped over one of his sleeping comrades, taking a nose dive into the dirt. He tried to scramble up, but a bullet blew through his chest and dropped him like a wet sandbag. No stumbling, no drama, just a straight drop. The wound didn’t kill him right away, he was left to die in a pool of his own
blood, still telling his mind he'd not been shot. That did it for the threatening ones.
The raider that was well into raping his victim was blown off the woman by the force of the explosive-tipped bullet entering his gut. Through the scope, a large pool formed beneath the
agonized man. He looked around dumbly, not quite understanding what had happened to him. His companion had run to a house when he heard the gun shots and hid there, confused; used to
being the predator, not the prey. The sniper used his remaining four rounds to shoot some of the unconscious men laying on the ground.
He then entered their camp as some of the raiders were coming-to. The sun was coming up, bathing the landscape in a pale red glow. He put a bullet in each raider that stirred, the
resounding blasts from his pistol had wakened a few from their alcohol induced sleep. When his gruesome task was finished, nearly every raider lay dead, some in their spilled beer and
rotgut. Evil laughter echoed in Adrian’s head as he stood over the writhing rapist that had tried to crawl out the cattle pen. He had a massive gut wound and was slowly bleeding to death. He
stared into his executioner’s icy blue eyes and examined his scarred face. There was no emotion, the eyes were distant and he moved away with cat-like grace. The man died there on the floor of the brahmin pen like the animal he was.
Adrian sat on the wooden fence and stared at the bound prisoners. Three ravaged women, and two broken men. He put his head in his hands as his combat (and drug) high wore off. He didn’t take another pill. For the first time in twelve years, he let the effects fade. The memories of his old home came back to him.
It was a massive underground vault, built to shelter people from the cleansing pillars of nuclear fire that ravaged the planet. He was born in the vault, his grandparents had entered it and made it their home and lived out their lives, fat, dumb and happy.
Adrian worked for eighteen years after he finished his mandatory schooling, as a technician, fixing computers and other broken things around the vault. He had hated the monotony of his
work so much, he left the vault with a small cabal of people that wanted to see the outside world. The group lasted for five days on the outside. Every person that had left, including Adrian's wife, Mara, died on the outside, except for him. He was found by a merchant party that had stumbled upon his failed expedition. He was carried back to the vault and treated for massive amounts of radiation poisoning. He vomited up everything he ate and wasted away to almost nothing but a walking skeleton. Eventually, he recovered from the poisoning. But the scars on his mind were still there. He lived in mortal terror of radiation for over a year, constantly taking Rad-X. When he was healthy enough to return to his job, he started chewing the tablets to get the full effect all at once and distract him from the daily grind. He turned to target shooting as a hobby, and when the novelty of that wore off, he started chewing Rad-X on the shooting range. As a result, he wound up putting a 10mm round into the range supervisor’s shoulder. Then he was cast out.
For the next eleven years, he wandered, honing his weapon skills to perfection. He had been constantly wandering north, his vault was beneath the ruins of Annapolis, Maryland. Now it was
just a memory that he tried to drown in drugs in alcohol. In a single moment of clear thought, before he took another pill, he realized what Maim was, and the voice put it into words for him.
[“I am the result of eleven years of indiscriminate killing and repressed memories. I am the result of eleven years of chewing anti-radiation drugs. And I am a representation of your ‘killer instinct.’”] Adrian felt nauseous, his head throbbed and his hands shook. Slowly, with a shiking hand, he raised his Desert Eagle, his best friend for eleven years, and shot the five helpless prisoners. Five obscene crimson pools gathered under the lifeless people. The nausea faded and so did the throbbing in his head. He was merciless, he was ruthless, he had no remorse, no regrets, and no sorrow. And in his own twisted way, had set the prisoners free.
He walked to the north, alone as always.
Epilogue-
The population of the surrounding settlements finally worked up the courage to investigate the abrupt ending to the raids. When they found the slaughtered camp and the dead prisoners, it was assumed the ex-raiders had shot them before the killers were all gunned down by the heroic stranger. He became the toast of the town, even though he was never seen again in those parts.
Adrian shot himself in Maine when he ran out of pills.
His justification: "Maim made me do it."