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Guest
Guest
The reflection of the wasteland sun off the waterhole burns my eyes, and I kneel down next to the shallow pool I have found. My homemade geiger counter, which I made from instructions I found in an old survivalist magazine and household items I ransacked from the last bombed out ghost town I had explored. The rad count is low and I splash some water onto my face. My trusted companion, a dog I found in the burned out shithole of what used to be a city before the war laps up some water to quench his thirst.
I do the same, cupping my hands until I am satisifed, then I take my water gourd and fill it completely. Out here, in the wastes, you don't find water very often.
My name is... Well, don't worry about my name. Its not too important. I am from what used to be Nevada. I was born and raised in a small town my father helped build named Sierra, up in the mountains. My father said many years before the war there used to be snow in the mountains, but now in the wastes it is too hot everywhere for there to be any snow. I am not really sure what snow is, but from the way my father talked about it, it must have been a grand thing.
I had lived with my father and mother and my sister in Sierra, but my father was awaynmost of the time on driving the gold caravans to California. My father was very old, almost
forty, but he was very strong and he had been driving the caravans for his entire life.
We traded the gold to different places in California because the Californians used the stuff as currency, and we didn't need any sort of currency in Sierra. Anything we needed the caravans found in abandoned towns or homes or traded the gold for and brought back to Sierra. Most of what we traded for was supplies like guns and ammo. Sierra was a prime target for raider attacks and we liked to be able to defend ourselves.
When I was seventeen my father took me on my first caravan. We took almost a ton of gold through the mountains to a miserable town called Needles. Before the war, Needles was known
as one of the hottest places in California, and after the war it was even hotter. The wretched town of Needles was larger then Sierra, making my home look like a shanty town. Needles had taken very little damage from the war as it was in the middle of bumfuck. No bombs were dropped on it; buildings almost 200 years old still stood, although they were heavily eroded by time and the harsh climate of the wastes.
About the only thing Needles suffered from was fallout from the bombs that fell on Andrew's Air Force Base, an old base west of Needles that was hit pretty hard during the war, but that was largely gone 200 years later.
The people in Needles used to tell me stories about how if you pass by Andrew's at night it still glows from the radiation and horrible stories about people who went there and came
back horribly mutated and deformed. I hadn't seen any mutants like they described when I went to Needles, and my dad told me not to listen to them, so I always passed their stories off
as a crock of brahmin shit and that they were just trying to scare me because I was young.
I wish the stories were bullshit as I look back.
The only thing Needles had going for it was the old Barstow Marine Corps Storage Depot, which the town raided for guns right after the war. Even 150 years after the war their surplus
was impressive, and you could get anything military you needed from a pistol to an assault rifle to a rocket launcher to a goddammed tank if you had enough gold.
The only reason we stopped by the hellhole was to get ammo to fight off the raider attacks. Needles had no problem dealing with raiders; the place was a fucking fort, walled off with machine gun nests poking out of holes in the fort walls. If Needles didn't want you coming in, you weren't goning to fucking get in.
I remember my first and only trip to Needles. I remember walking through the giant gates with the guards and how the real paved streets looked. I remember the glass windows
on some of the houses. I remember Mayor Dukakus for giving me my first and only rifle.
When we got to the city hall, which doubled as a giant armory nearly the size of Sierra, my father greeted Mayor Duke Dukacus of Needles with a hearty bear hug.
"Atticus you goddammed cretin how have you been?" Duke asked, and my father engaged in small talk with the burly but honest man and for some reason he brought up that I was seventeen and had never had my own rifle. The mayor's face lightened up and he looked me in the eyes and smiled. "Well I got just what you need, Son." He led us down to the armory.
The armory had rows of rows of every weapon imaginable. Mayor Dukacus led us down cooridor after cooridor of guns until he reached a large safe. He spun the dial on it which intrigued
me as I had never seen a safe before in my life. I had no idea what it was until it opened, revealing the best kept rifles I had ever seen. He pulled out a small black rifle that looked like a minature version of the other rifles that lined the armory.
"This right here, boy, is a Bushmaster M4 5.56mm Assault Rifle Carbine." He pulled a larger rifle off a gun rack next to the safe that the M4 resembled with his other hand.
"And this is an M16. You see this M4 son? Its like a mini-M16. This M4 is special though, son. Back in the days of the war every monkey had one of these here M16s, but only officers and
other high ranking people got one of these rifles," he said, motioning with his head to the M4 in his hand. He put the M16 back on the rack and gripped the M4 with both hands.
As soon as the mayor said it was special my father broke in.
"Duke, he don't need nothin' special, he just needs himself a rifle. I can't afford 'special.'" We had come with just enough gold to trade for a couple thousand rounds of ammunition, definetly not enough for a rare pre-war "special assault" carbine.
"Atticus, you've been bringing my town gold for the past fifteen years. And you've been given us one hell of a deal on it. Now let me give this to your son as a token of my appreciation, dammit!" He handed me the rifle and I studied the immaculate weapon.
It was so clean and poished that it looked like not even a round had been fired through it. It was much lighter then it looked, maybe six pounds at most.
"Now hold it right there Duke!" My father protested. "That ammo you've traded us saved our lives... time and time again. I ain't never given you no deal! Hell, that golds near worthless to us!" Each word my father spoke made me cringe like I was punched in the face.
My father was an honest, modest man. He didn't believe in getting anything for free and he didn't like the fact that I was getting this gift for free. But I WANTED the rifle more then anything else in my life.
Duke Dukacus grabbed my father by the arms and looked him in the eyes. "Atticus quit being so goddammed modest! By God, your making me sick! Most any normal a person would have just let their son take the gift and said thanks!"
In the end my father still insisted he paid for the rifle, but Mayor Dukacus only charged him a few pounds of gold for it. He also threw in four full thirty round clips for the gun. I could not wait until I could meet up with those raiders and blast me some with my new M4.
After we left Needles we headed back to the east. After traveling under the wasteland sun for almost a week we reached the beginning of the mountains. The mountains were a dangerous place; There were many places in the rough terrain that someone could pop out and ambush you from, so we'd send one or two men a little up front to scout out the area.
One day I asked one of our forward scouts if I could help him out. I wanted to see some action and I wanted to waste someone with my new rifle. I know, I know, I sound pretty
sadistic, but I admit I was a child wanting to play with his new toy.
Radick, our most experienced scout said he'd take me up front, teach me how to be a lookout. Before I left all the men gave me pointers and my father gave me his water gourd.
It was the last thing he ever gave me.
Since we didn't have to stay with the brahmin, which was why the caravan moved so slow, me and Radick got almost a days ahead of the caravan.
"Hmmm... All clear so far," Radick said, scanning the rocky mountains. "We're going to go up a little ways then we'll post and wait for the caravan to come up." We started up the mountains again, when Radick stopped me with his arm.
"Stop! I see something up ahead." Radick had us crouch behind a rock to make sure whatever was up ahead didn't see us, too. He pulled out a battered pair of binoculars and popped his
head up from behind the rock. The expression on his face changed from concerned to relieved.
"While I'll be damned... Its a woman, and a damn pretty one at that." He tossed me the binoculars and I took a look for myself. He was right, she was pretty. Her long, dark brown
hair wisped around in the wasteland wind and I couldn't help but think of my girlfriend back in Sierra.
"Shes waving over here, man. Think we should go talk to her?" I asked Radick, who shook his head.
"No, you stay here kid, I'm gonna go see if she needs any help. But be on the lookout, kid." He cocked his weapon, an old Heckler and Koch G3. He got up and cautiously ran up towards the woman, crouching to keep a low profile. When he got half way there, his side erupted in a splash of crimson, and he flew to the ground, screaming in pain.
Holy shit, I thought. Now that I had my chance to use my M4, I was scared shitless.
The woman ran off, and I could see from behind my rock that three raiders used her as bait. They slowly approached Radick's dead or dying body, and one of them emptied the rest
of his 10mm SMG's clip into Radick. I was petrified. I was alone. I had to do something, though. I figured if there was any more raiders out there they would have come out of their
hiding spots like these assholes.
Finally, I came to my senses and pulled the action of my M4 back. I popped up from behind my hiding spot, my rifle nestled comfortably in my shoulder pointing at the degenerate who emptied his rounds on Radick.
"GET AWAY FROM HIM, ASSHOLE!" I shouted, screaming at the top of my lungs. I wanted to stay behind my rock and cry, but the adrenaline wouldn't let me. "DROP YOUR FUCKING GUNS!" I
ordered to the raiders.
Instead of dropping his SMG the raider laughed and turned to his friends which were laughing, too.
"Easy there, buster. You don't wanna shoot your eye out, do ya?" His friends laughed more with him. I could feel my face turning red.
"I SAID DROP YOUR MOTHERFUCKING GUNS!" I ordered again, using my thumb to change the selector switch on my rifle to full auto. Instead of complying, the expression on his face changed from amused to pure hate. He quickly reached to his belt to pull out a new clip for his exhausted SMG, but before he could pop it in his weapon I pulled the trigger.
I moved the rifle back and forth between the trio, spraying their bodies with bullets and splattering them into the mountainside.
I held the trigger until my own clip was empty, then I promptly slapped a new one into my rifle. Learning from Radick's mistake, I moved from the rock, closely examining everything.
I really didn't want to end up like Radick, so I made sure there was no more raiders in the vicinity before I knelt besides Radick and checked his broken body for a pulse. It would be a miracle if he survived a savage attack like that, and unfourtenatly, (or maybe fourtenatly) for Radick miracles didn't happen much out in the wastes. He was stone cold dead.
My adrenaline wore off, and the tears began to flow. I was scared. I was more then a day ahead of the caravan, and I was all alone. Worse yet, I knew there could be more raiders in
the area.
I searched Radick's dead body, and took his brahmin jerky and his compass. He wouldn't be needing them anymore, and I needed to know which way I was heading.
I also lifted his wristwatch off his neck. It was the only still working clock in Sierra. We didn't really know how to read time, or what time was what, to us it was either night or day; we didn't really use the clock's 12 hour system. I always figured it was broken, way too fast. It would say the same hour twice in a day. I didn't want the watch for myself; his wife back home would probably want somehing to remember him by.
I leaned over to search the raider's dead bodies, but I didn't find shit I could use except an old zippo lighter. I tried it out and it still worked. I might need it to start a fire to keep warm tonight, I thought.
What to do? What to do... I finally decided first thing was first. I had to get the fuck away from here. I needed to turn back, I needed to find my father, I needed to be back with the caravan. Safety in numbers is a key to survival out in the wastes. If your alone, your almost as good as dead. Well, at least thats what I thought back then.
I walked for a few hours down the hill, and I was horrified when I saw what happened to the caravan. They had been hit by raiders. Dead bodies were strewn throughout the pass, riddled with automatic fire. I recognized several of my father's friends lying in pools of their own blood, along with faces I've never seen before. Raiders. At least we fought back.
Then I stopped dead in my tracks. My father. He was lying face down with his face turned so that his eyes were staring into mine. His dead mouth gapped open and a small pool
of blood had formed from the wound that blew the back of his head out. Behind his shattered skull was fragments of his brain.
I dropped to my knees, too shocked to do anything, even cry.
---------------------------------------------------------------
What do you guys think? First piece of Fallout fanfic I've ever
written, although its not set in California. Its based in the same time frame FOT is going to be based in and my hero is going to end up chasing some people east.
I do the same, cupping my hands until I am satisifed, then I take my water gourd and fill it completely. Out here, in the wastes, you don't find water very often.
My name is... Well, don't worry about my name. Its not too important. I am from what used to be Nevada. I was born and raised in a small town my father helped build named Sierra, up in the mountains. My father said many years before the war there used to be snow in the mountains, but now in the wastes it is too hot everywhere for there to be any snow. I am not really sure what snow is, but from the way my father talked about it, it must have been a grand thing.
I had lived with my father and mother and my sister in Sierra, but my father was awaynmost of the time on driving the gold caravans to California. My father was very old, almost
forty, but he was very strong and he had been driving the caravans for his entire life.
We traded the gold to different places in California because the Californians used the stuff as currency, and we didn't need any sort of currency in Sierra. Anything we needed the caravans found in abandoned towns or homes or traded the gold for and brought back to Sierra. Most of what we traded for was supplies like guns and ammo. Sierra was a prime target for raider attacks and we liked to be able to defend ourselves.
When I was seventeen my father took me on my first caravan. We took almost a ton of gold through the mountains to a miserable town called Needles. Before the war, Needles was known
as one of the hottest places in California, and after the war it was even hotter. The wretched town of Needles was larger then Sierra, making my home look like a shanty town. Needles had taken very little damage from the war as it was in the middle of bumfuck. No bombs were dropped on it; buildings almost 200 years old still stood, although they were heavily eroded by time and the harsh climate of the wastes.
About the only thing Needles suffered from was fallout from the bombs that fell on Andrew's Air Force Base, an old base west of Needles that was hit pretty hard during the war, but that was largely gone 200 years later.
The people in Needles used to tell me stories about how if you pass by Andrew's at night it still glows from the radiation and horrible stories about people who went there and came
back horribly mutated and deformed. I hadn't seen any mutants like they described when I went to Needles, and my dad told me not to listen to them, so I always passed their stories off
as a crock of brahmin shit and that they were just trying to scare me because I was young.
I wish the stories were bullshit as I look back.
The only thing Needles had going for it was the old Barstow Marine Corps Storage Depot, which the town raided for guns right after the war. Even 150 years after the war their surplus
was impressive, and you could get anything military you needed from a pistol to an assault rifle to a rocket launcher to a goddammed tank if you had enough gold.
The only reason we stopped by the hellhole was to get ammo to fight off the raider attacks. Needles had no problem dealing with raiders; the place was a fucking fort, walled off with machine gun nests poking out of holes in the fort walls. If Needles didn't want you coming in, you weren't goning to fucking get in.
I remember my first and only trip to Needles. I remember walking through the giant gates with the guards and how the real paved streets looked. I remember the glass windows
on some of the houses. I remember Mayor Dukakus for giving me my first and only rifle.
When we got to the city hall, which doubled as a giant armory nearly the size of Sierra, my father greeted Mayor Duke Dukacus of Needles with a hearty bear hug.
"Atticus you goddammed cretin how have you been?" Duke asked, and my father engaged in small talk with the burly but honest man and for some reason he brought up that I was seventeen and had never had my own rifle. The mayor's face lightened up and he looked me in the eyes and smiled. "Well I got just what you need, Son." He led us down to the armory.
The armory had rows of rows of every weapon imaginable. Mayor Dukacus led us down cooridor after cooridor of guns until he reached a large safe. He spun the dial on it which intrigued
me as I had never seen a safe before in my life. I had no idea what it was until it opened, revealing the best kept rifles I had ever seen. He pulled out a small black rifle that looked like a minature version of the other rifles that lined the armory.
"This right here, boy, is a Bushmaster M4 5.56mm Assault Rifle Carbine." He pulled a larger rifle off a gun rack next to the safe that the M4 resembled with his other hand.
"And this is an M16. You see this M4 son? Its like a mini-M16. This M4 is special though, son. Back in the days of the war every monkey had one of these here M16s, but only officers and
other high ranking people got one of these rifles," he said, motioning with his head to the M4 in his hand. He put the M16 back on the rack and gripped the M4 with both hands.
As soon as the mayor said it was special my father broke in.
"Duke, he don't need nothin' special, he just needs himself a rifle. I can't afford 'special.'" We had come with just enough gold to trade for a couple thousand rounds of ammunition, definetly not enough for a rare pre-war "special assault" carbine.
"Atticus, you've been bringing my town gold for the past fifteen years. And you've been given us one hell of a deal on it. Now let me give this to your son as a token of my appreciation, dammit!" He handed me the rifle and I studied the immaculate weapon.
It was so clean and poished that it looked like not even a round had been fired through it. It was much lighter then it looked, maybe six pounds at most.
"Now hold it right there Duke!" My father protested. "That ammo you've traded us saved our lives... time and time again. I ain't never given you no deal! Hell, that golds near worthless to us!" Each word my father spoke made me cringe like I was punched in the face.
My father was an honest, modest man. He didn't believe in getting anything for free and he didn't like the fact that I was getting this gift for free. But I WANTED the rifle more then anything else in my life.
Duke Dukacus grabbed my father by the arms and looked him in the eyes. "Atticus quit being so goddammed modest! By God, your making me sick! Most any normal a person would have just let their son take the gift and said thanks!"
In the end my father still insisted he paid for the rifle, but Mayor Dukacus only charged him a few pounds of gold for it. He also threw in four full thirty round clips for the gun. I could not wait until I could meet up with those raiders and blast me some with my new M4.
After we left Needles we headed back to the east. After traveling under the wasteland sun for almost a week we reached the beginning of the mountains. The mountains were a dangerous place; There were many places in the rough terrain that someone could pop out and ambush you from, so we'd send one or two men a little up front to scout out the area.
One day I asked one of our forward scouts if I could help him out. I wanted to see some action and I wanted to waste someone with my new rifle. I know, I know, I sound pretty
sadistic, but I admit I was a child wanting to play with his new toy.
Radick, our most experienced scout said he'd take me up front, teach me how to be a lookout. Before I left all the men gave me pointers and my father gave me his water gourd.
It was the last thing he ever gave me.
Since we didn't have to stay with the brahmin, which was why the caravan moved so slow, me and Radick got almost a days ahead of the caravan.
"Hmmm... All clear so far," Radick said, scanning the rocky mountains. "We're going to go up a little ways then we'll post and wait for the caravan to come up." We started up the mountains again, when Radick stopped me with his arm.
"Stop! I see something up ahead." Radick had us crouch behind a rock to make sure whatever was up ahead didn't see us, too. He pulled out a battered pair of binoculars and popped his
head up from behind the rock. The expression on his face changed from concerned to relieved.
"While I'll be damned... Its a woman, and a damn pretty one at that." He tossed me the binoculars and I took a look for myself. He was right, she was pretty. Her long, dark brown
hair wisped around in the wasteland wind and I couldn't help but think of my girlfriend back in Sierra.
"Shes waving over here, man. Think we should go talk to her?" I asked Radick, who shook his head.
"No, you stay here kid, I'm gonna go see if she needs any help. But be on the lookout, kid." He cocked his weapon, an old Heckler and Koch G3. He got up and cautiously ran up towards the woman, crouching to keep a low profile. When he got half way there, his side erupted in a splash of crimson, and he flew to the ground, screaming in pain.
Holy shit, I thought. Now that I had my chance to use my M4, I was scared shitless.
The woman ran off, and I could see from behind my rock that three raiders used her as bait. They slowly approached Radick's dead or dying body, and one of them emptied the rest
of his 10mm SMG's clip into Radick. I was petrified. I was alone. I had to do something, though. I figured if there was any more raiders out there they would have come out of their
hiding spots like these assholes.
Finally, I came to my senses and pulled the action of my M4 back. I popped up from behind my hiding spot, my rifle nestled comfortably in my shoulder pointing at the degenerate who emptied his rounds on Radick.
"GET AWAY FROM HIM, ASSHOLE!" I shouted, screaming at the top of my lungs. I wanted to stay behind my rock and cry, but the adrenaline wouldn't let me. "DROP YOUR FUCKING GUNS!" I
ordered to the raiders.
Instead of dropping his SMG the raider laughed and turned to his friends which were laughing, too.
"Easy there, buster. You don't wanna shoot your eye out, do ya?" His friends laughed more with him. I could feel my face turning red.
"I SAID DROP YOUR MOTHERFUCKING GUNS!" I ordered again, using my thumb to change the selector switch on my rifle to full auto. Instead of complying, the expression on his face changed from amused to pure hate. He quickly reached to his belt to pull out a new clip for his exhausted SMG, but before he could pop it in his weapon I pulled the trigger.
I moved the rifle back and forth between the trio, spraying their bodies with bullets and splattering them into the mountainside.
I held the trigger until my own clip was empty, then I promptly slapped a new one into my rifle. Learning from Radick's mistake, I moved from the rock, closely examining everything.
I really didn't want to end up like Radick, so I made sure there was no more raiders in the vicinity before I knelt besides Radick and checked his broken body for a pulse. It would be a miracle if he survived a savage attack like that, and unfourtenatly, (or maybe fourtenatly) for Radick miracles didn't happen much out in the wastes. He was stone cold dead.
My adrenaline wore off, and the tears began to flow. I was scared. I was more then a day ahead of the caravan, and I was all alone. Worse yet, I knew there could be more raiders in
the area.
I searched Radick's dead body, and took his brahmin jerky and his compass. He wouldn't be needing them anymore, and I needed to know which way I was heading.
I also lifted his wristwatch off his neck. It was the only still working clock in Sierra. We didn't really know how to read time, or what time was what, to us it was either night or day; we didn't really use the clock's 12 hour system. I always figured it was broken, way too fast. It would say the same hour twice in a day. I didn't want the watch for myself; his wife back home would probably want somehing to remember him by.
I leaned over to search the raider's dead bodies, but I didn't find shit I could use except an old zippo lighter. I tried it out and it still worked. I might need it to start a fire to keep warm tonight, I thought.
What to do? What to do... I finally decided first thing was first. I had to get the fuck away from here. I needed to turn back, I needed to find my father, I needed to be back with the caravan. Safety in numbers is a key to survival out in the wastes. If your alone, your almost as good as dead. Well, at least thats what I thought back then.
I walked for a few hours down the hill, and I was horrified when I saw what happened to the caravan. They had been hit by raiders. Dead bodies were strewn throughout the pass, riddled with automatic fire. I recognized several of my father's friends lying in pools of their own blood, along with faces I've never seen before. Raiders. At least we fought back.
Then I stopped dead in my tracks. My father. He was lying face down with his face turned so that his eyes were staring into mine. His dead mouth gapped open and a small pool
of blood had formed from the wound that blew the back of his head out. Behind his shattered skull was fragments of his brain.
I dropped to my knees, too shocked to do anything, even cry.
---------------------------------------------------------------
What do you guys think? First piece of Fallout fanfic I've ever
written, although its not set in California. Its based in the same time frame FOT is going to be based in and my hero is going to end up chasing some people east.
