Prologue: A Brief History Lesson
In the early morning hours of Saturday, October 23rd, 2077, the world ended. The once idyllic and "perfect" society of the early 21st century had finally unraveled after years of building tensions, nation wide paranoia of Communism, and ever growing arsenals. Despite all the science and advanced technologies that had been developed over the years to improve the quality of life for years to come, nothing could prepare humanity for the end it was so blindly running towards. What follows is a condensed timeline of what happened in the years leading up to Armageddon.
First, in 2052, went the oil supplies in the Middle East, throwing the region into a long and costly war with a weakened European Commonwealth. This war wound up costing both sides many lives and led to the dissolution of the United Nations. After the UN ceased to exist, many of the world's poorer, underdeveloped, countries went bankrupt and dissolved into civil unrest and anarchy
In the year 2053, came the plague. A disease of unknown origin, some said it was a government experiment gone awry others the communists, began killing thousands of people worldwide. Medical technology became the focus of the scientific community and a means to immunize the population was found. These events were followed by the total, thermo-nuclear, destruction of Tel Aviv by terrorists in 2054. This lead to the United States government closing their borders and enacting Project Safehouse, which allocated the funds necessary for the construction of massive bomb shelters nation wide dubbed "Vaults", a temporary comfort for a nation sliding down a slippery slope.
With the year 2060, came the end of the oil wars as the Middle East had finally run dry and the European Commonwealth broke into many nation states squabbling over, presumably, the last remaining natural resources in the eastern hemisphere.
Six years later, China invades Alaska over what many believe to be the last deposits of oil in the known world. This was met by a fierce counter attack by the American Armed forces and a bitter, decade long, struggle for the frozen arctic tundra, which led to the annexation of our neighbor to the north, Canada. Shortly after acquiring the Canadian territory, Alaska was reclaimed in early 2077.
Months went by, America the victor in one of the costliest wars in the nation's history thought things were beginning to look up, but that was until October 22nd. It was on that fateful day, the sky was filled with nuclear missiles and fire rained from the heavens, a true scene out of the book of Revelations. No one knows who started the war, but after two hours of nuclear devastation, no one cared. This was not out of apathy, but because there were too few humans left to care.
Now that you have a grasp on the past, lets jump forward a couple hundred years. 270 years have passed since the day fire rained from the heavens, and the world that we once knew is dead and gone. The only thing that remains is its withered and desolate shell. Despite the harsh conditions that now blanket the planet, humanity has prevailed over the nuclear holocaust. This is mainly due to the fact that we are a species notorious for our stubborn nature and an ability to persist that could rival that of the cockroach, but thanks to the Vaults and other modern technologies, a little infrastructure from the old world remains but not enough to return life to normal.
The life of a normal human in this future is bleak and chances of survival are slim at best. They do their best to live day to day above ground or nestled beneath the scorched earth of the wasteland above. Though faced with so much death and adversity, humanity has not given up yet.
For those not fortunate enough to reach a vault or other suitable shelter, they face a life not many would choose freely. Many of the people left above ground were exposed to ungodly amounts of radiation and have become the things of old nightmares, their skin rotting away and hair falling like autumn leaves. They have been dubbed ghouls, as they look like zombies from old horror movies.
For those who survived, every day is a struggle for their very lives, as the wastes are as punishing as they are desolate. The dangers of the wastes are many and can range from such benign things like irradiated water to more pressing matters like raiders raping and pillaging all in their path, slavers taking the younger members of society and women to sell to the highest bidder, or worst case, you would encounter the ravenous Feral Ghouls, that live in the dark places of the wastes or the blood thirsty and violent gangs of "super" mutants who roam the land with a murderous obsession for killing humans.
Under the harsh lands above, many of the vaults continue to operate at peak efficiency and life goes on as per usual, the denizens of the vault just waiting for their head of the vault, or Overseer, to give the all clear to go outside. Other vaults, however, have not been so lucky. Their structures crumbling to pieces and vital systems giving out, the dwellers of these vaults have had to leave their sheltered life and venture forth into the wastes to make a new life in Post-Apocalyptia.
It is in one of these vaults that our story starts. A vault built into a cave in the American heartland, Vault 136 to be exact, houses around three hundred survivors, all craftsmen and other vocational occupations. Little do they know, their lives under the sandy ground are about to be turned upside down and they will have two choices; face the dangers of the wasteland or death in their Vault…
One: Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire
On the maintenance level of vault 136, computers and monitoring stations hummed with electricity as they each ran a program vital to the operation of the Vault-Tech facility. Everything from the filtration of water to the cleansing of the air from the concealed, surface side vents, was run by a machine that was close to three centuries old, a fact that did not seem to bother the dwellers of Vault 136 in the slightest.
Two levels above the reactor and maintenance level were the bunks, which housed the descendants of 300 lucky lottery winners from a time when the earth was whole and untarnished by nuclear winter. Each of these people were sound asleep in their quarters, each dreaming their own dreams of a bright and promised future, with the exception of Tom Higgins, the head of the maintenance level.
Tom was sitting at his desk on the maintenance level, frantically scribbling on a piece of paper with a standard issue, Vault-Tech #2 pencil.
"Christ," said the balding man as he just noticed the vault tech logo on the side of the writing utensil "Is there anything they didn't make in this damned place?"
He doubted it, as the standard issue wrist mounted computer (known as a PIP-BOY) he bore on his right arm all the way down to the boxers he wore under his blue jumpsuit which was emblazoned with the numbers 1-3-6 stenciled on the back all bore the Vault-Tech logo. "But surely there had to be some sort of original material in this place," thought Tom, "it's just a matter of finding it."
He decided that he would ponder this question later, as he had more pressing matters at hand. He was pouring over long rolls of sensor data from the internal probes of the nuclear fission generator that gave this facility its power. According to the long rolls of paper, the generator had just recently begun showing signs of over heating, due mostly to one of the three chilling towers that cooled the generator beginning to fail. Tom studied one of these meter long sheaves of paper, which was adorned with a black line-graph that represented power being produced by the generator relative to the heat of the generator's interior workings.
Tom had been doing some math on a scrap piece of paper, and according to his calculations, things were not looking good. If his math was correct, and he sure hoped it wasn't, if the generator's interior temperature spiked at nearly 500 degrees, this would cause a massive meltdown of vital systems, the generator would literally go super nova, destroy the entire complex, and kill the entire population of Vault 136 in the process.
After checking his computations for the tenth time and running it through a computer to get a virtual rending of his information saw that the result remained unchanged. Sighing, he took this piece of paper and walked out of the office, the door closing with a metallic clack, and up the steel staircase that led to the atrium and common area. Tom pressed a button on the frame of a door at the top of the stairs, which opened, quickly with a loud thunk. He walked into the large, cavernous, two level room which served as a public gathering area during the day and saw that the room was empty aside from a lone security officer who sat by himself at a table, smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee. "Late night there Higgins?" asked the guard as Higgins drew closer.
Higgins knew this man; it was the head of Vault Security Henry Wallace. "You know me Hank," grinned Tom as he walked by, calculations rolled into a scroll in his hand, "Everything has to be ship-shape if I am going to relax."
"Good luck with that," said Wallace, lifting his cup in a mock toast then drinking the watery coffee down to its dregs, "Where you headed? Addressing one of those problems?"
"I need to see the Overseer," replied Tom "Is he awake? It's urgent."
"I think so," said officer Wallace, flicking his cigarette butt into a nearby trash can "But he isn't in a good mood."
"What's wrong now?" asked Higgins as Wallace joined him in ascending another flight of metallic stairs.
"Well, its that damned Roger Thurman again," said Wallace, "He has decided that he is going to make it his life's quest to badger the living hell out of the Overseer to open the Vault and let us out into the open. I wouldn't object if we opened the door and threw him and his small gang of nut-jobs out into the wastes."
Tom sighed heavily. Roger Thurman was a member of a small club that had formed in the recesses of the Vault that believed humanity belonged outside in the wasteland, "Helping restore mother nature instead of sitting on our asses underground," as Thurman had put it so many times.
"Let me guess, he's in there now, hassling the Overseer as we speak. Am I right?" asked Tom.
"Yup," said Higgins as another pair of doors slid apart, the sign above them denoting the area beyond as the Overseer's Office and Quarters, "Thurman went so far as to prepare a speech for the Overseer. I overheard him rehearsing to himself as he walked up there a few hours ago. Sounded like a pretty long filibuster to me."
They had finally reached the door to the overseer's office and they could hear muffled shouts coming through the bulkhead. Wallace slid his identification card through the reader and the door opened. Two men stood in the circular shaped office. The Overseer sat behind his desk, looking as if he had been forced to listen to fingers raking a chalkboard for an hour. He was roughly sixty years old, his head of white hair looked frazzled from what had appeared to be hours of running his fingers through it out of frustration. Roger Thurman stood in the center of the room. The tall, lanky, bespectacled man was red in the face, his long brown hair looking disheveled, the undoubted result of passionate point making and debate. Apparently, the two men had been arguing for quite some time, given the half eaten sandwich that was on the overseer's desk.
The Overseer looked up, Higgins could not tell if it was relief or annoyance on his face at the sight of another person. "If you would please excuse me, Roger, there are more pressing matters at hand," said the Overseer, indicating Higgins and Wallace.
Thurman looked at them and scowled. "Fine," snapped Thurman, "but remember you cannot hold us forever. There will come a day where we shall leave here. Better to have it on peaceful terms than covered in bloodshed."
"I have heard enough," said the Overseer, "Wallace, could you please escort Mr. Thurman to the common area?"
"I will take myself thank you," said Thurman as Wallace approached him. With that, Thurman stomped off down the hallway.
"I'll be getting back to my patrol," said Wallace, "Lord knows what mischief those teenage punks down in the dormitories are up to now."
As Wallace left the room, the Overseer let out a long, low, whistle and leaned back in his chair, massaging his temples.
"Thurman up to his usual hijinks sir?" asked Higgins as he walked closer to the desk.
"Yeah," said the overseer, opening his desk and pulling out a small cylindrical container whose label read, "Buffout", "He is being a royal pain in my ass. Hell, if he keeps this up, I'll probably die out of sheer frustration instead of the usual stroke that is so common in the men of my family."
The Overseer popped three of the small white tablets into his calloused palm and quickly swallowed them both. "I am not sure I can handle any more bad news, Tom. What is it you wish to speak to me about?"
"Sadly, sir, I think it is bad news," said Tom Higgins as he pulled up a chair, sat down, and proceeded to lay it out for the Overseer.
Higgins addressed the points he needed to make very delicately, but still made it a point to underline the importance attached to his findings. He saw the face of the overseer begin to look even more weathered than it had been when Roger Thurman was still in his office. After a half an hour of talking about the decaying life support systems of the Vault, the Overseer looked less than happy. "What you are telling me, Tom," said the Overseer, "is if we do not give the fission reactor a massive overhaul, the Vault's long dependable life support systems are going to fail?"
"No, not just fail," said Tom, "I am talking about a cataclysmic event. The whole vault will become uninhabitable. The amount of radiation released would make the place like Chernobyl. Anything breathing within these walls will die."
The overseer pressed his narrow fingers to his lips, contemplating this on top of all the other problems in the Vault at present. "What would cause the generator to overload exactly? Is there some set circumstance that could trigger it?"
"We are relatively safe, so to speak, if we reduce the power consumption of the vault until the generator is repaired," assured Tom, producing a chart of the power usage in relation to generator output, "If that generator spikes at over 1500 joules, then we are toast. The peak usage of the vault's power is usually around midday, when all the residents are awake and going about their daily tasks. If we could cut the power to certain areas of the vault, it can allow me and the maintenance crew to get our work done without the threat of an overload."
"Cutting power could hamper the efforts of the workers," said the Overseer, "But its necessary in the big picture. Tomorrow I will instruct the head of the power grid to limit usage to the key areas only until you and your men are done."
It was then that the pair heard a noise that made them stop in mid conversation. It sounded like a cough, or a stifled sneeze. Must have been Wallace on his patrol, the man had ungodly loud sneezes and coughs. They turned back from the noise in the corridors and set their plan of action onto paper, ready to be enacted in the morning. Tom got up and shook the beleaguered Overseer's hand, assuring his boss that this plan would work if they did things by the book. Tom Higgins left the office and headed back to his office, just had to get some logistics straightened out for the day ahead.
As he descended the stairs to his office, he saw a square of light on the floor. The door that had been shut when he left was now open. Curious, Tom Higgins walked towards it. When he rounded the corner, he stifled a gasp of shock and horror. Officer Wallace lay on the ground, his head soaking in a pool of his own blood, which had emanated from an orange sized dent in the back of his head. He thought of running, reporting this to the overseer, but another thought went through his head, "What if they are waiting for you at the top of the stairs?"
He noticed a small metal shelving unit on his right, a tool kit sitting on the middle shelf. He took one look at the shelf and then noticed a shadow moving about the room. He had to investigate this. If he left for the upper levels now, regardless of his fears of an assailant waiting for him at the top of the staircase, the assailant would get away and this murder would probably go unsolved or worse, get pinned on him. He took a deep breath, resolute in what he had to do, and quietly opened the toolbox, removing a large monkey wrench from the bottom tray. After testing the weight of the wrench, Tom began to creep towards his open office.
As he stepped over the body of officer Wallace, he edged into the room, his eyes scanning the dimly lit room. There was nobody there, just what appeared to be a schematic lying atop his desk. He got closer to the desk, seeing it was a schematic that showed the layout of Vault 136's power grid. As Tom pondered the meaning of this, a shadow moved from the corner of the office and before Tom could react, he felt a searing pain in the back of his head as what he could only assume to be the late officer Wallace's knight stick made contact with him. Tom Higgins fell to the floor, unconscious.
After a while, Tom came to, his head throbbing terribly. As his vision transitioned from a filmy haze to regular vision, he saw that he was no longer in his office. Instead, he was sitting in a chair located in the control room of the main power hub, two floors below his office in the maintenance level. He saw a man bent over the console, tracing his finger over the diagram of the power lines. He recognized the long hair attached to the head of the thin-bodied man before him. "Thurman?" he asked, making to get up but finding he was bound to the chair by some rubber tubing.
"Good evening Tom," said Thurman as he turned around, a smug grin on his face, "how's the head."
"It was you wasn't it?" asked Tom, his mind remembering all before his blackout, "You killed Wallace didn't you?"
"I did indeed," replied Thurman, his voice eerily calm, "He was an unfortunate casualty in the battle for the revival of Mother Earth. You, however, have the chance to help me do the job Wallace should have done. You are going to help me open the Vault."
"What are you talking about?" asked Tom as he struggled to get free but to no avail.
""I mean I heard you talking to the Overseer," said Thurman, "and you gave me the idea for our escape from this underground prison. I want you to bear witness to the beginning of a new earth."
"You are not seriously considering what I think you are considering are you Roger?" asked Tom his voice ringing with panic and disbelief, "That is suicide."
"No!" shouted Thurman, the madness in his eyes becoming evident; "This is the only way to get us out of here, above ground, and on the path of reviving our world."
"You are going to kill us all, you dumb shit!" shouted Tom, losing patience with the man. He struggled harder against his bonds, but to no avail
"Listen to me," said Tom, taking a deep breath and doing his best to retain a tone of reason, trying to talk the crazed man down, "If you overload the generator, the resulting radiation will kill everybody down here, including yourself."
Thurman walked to a nearby wall that was full of circuit breakers, examining them like a person examined produce at the market, deciding where to start. At the sight of this, Tom finally lost all control. He shouted, his forty two year old voice cracking like a teenager, "You are going to doom us all!"
"No," said Thurman, as he grabbed the long metal switch to the first breaker, "I am going to save us."
With that, he threw every switch one by one, snapping them as he went. Tom couldn't describe it, but he felt a surge of strength course through his arms. With a roar, he flexed outward and snapped the thick rubber tubing. He rushed Thurman from behind and slammed him into the wall. He threw a punch straight at Thurman's jaw, the fist connecting and snapping the head back into the steel of the wall. Thurman collapsed in a heap, unconscious. Tom ran over to the control console and looked at the readouts. All systems were melting down due to the sudden surge in power and the Geiger counter built into his PIP-BOY began to tick. Tom knew that the radiation would continue to climb to fatal levels in a matter of minutes, so he had to do whatever he could to hold it back, give the overseer enough time to get the people out of the vault. Tom acted quickly, flipping switches and entering commands into a nearby wall-mounted computer terminal, sealing all vents and doorways to the maintenance level and creating a temporary containment field. "But how temporary?" he asked himself.
"This is the overseer!" came a voice from the intercom, "What happened down there?"
"This is Higgins down in the reactor room," said Tom, noticing the steadily increasing tick of his Geiger counter, "Thurman's down here, he overloaded the generator, sir."
The overseer swore, "Is there anything that can be done?"
"I have sealed the maintenance level off to the rest of the vault," said Tom, noticing his skin beginning to burn, "You need to get everyone out of here sir."
"What about you?" asked the Overseer, "Is there any way to get you out?"
"No…time…" said Tom, it was getting harder to talk as his vocal cords were searing with pain, "Get…them…outta here."
Higgins couldn't speak any more; it hurt his throat too much. His vision was blurring, but he could see that Thurman was coming around, his hair falling out in large chunks. It didn't matter to him if he got alive anymore; all that mattered to him was that he took care of the son of a bitch that had unleashed hell on the vault before the radiation did. He grabbed one of the snapped off handles to the circuit breakers and staggered over to Thurman, who was now watching in muted horror as the skin melted off his hands. Tom summoned all that remained of his strength and hefted the jagged piece of metal into the air. He brought it down, as Thurman looked him in the face, more falling than stabbing, burying the shaft deep into Thurman's liquefying chest. Then, blackness came over him and nothing more.
2: A Hearty Welcome To Post Apocalyptia
The warning klaxons were crying out throughout Vault 136. Their siren song awoke one of the local residents, seventeen year old, Chris Redding from a peaceful slumber. He sat up in his bed, confused. "What the hell is going on?" he murmured, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "This is the Overseer," said a voice over the emergency PA system, "This is a Vault wide emergency! The reactor is melting down, and the resulting radiation surge will be lethal! Everyone is to evacuate immediately! There is not much time, so hurry!"
Dressed in nothing but his standard issue Vault Tech boxers and a white shirt, he ran to the next room and roused his younger sibling, thirteen year old, Sarah Redding. "Sarah!" he shouted, "We have to go, now!"
"What's the matter Chris?" she asked drowsily, brushing her curly blonde hair out of her eyes and slipping on a pair of Vault scrubs over her Vault tech underwear. "The Vault's being evacuated," said Chris, as he grabbed a set of pants from a nearby laundry basket, "We gotta go."
"What? Why?" she asked, her face going from drowsy to alert and confused.
"The Vault's generator is overloading," said Chris, "The whole place is going critical."
"So we're leaving then?" she asked, "Let me get some things."
"No time!" shouted Chris and he grabbed his sister's hand and took off out of their shared dormitory suite and down the rapidly filling steel coated halls, their bare feet slapping against the cold floor.
The corridors of Vault 136 were rapidly filling with its residents as they tried to file out of the Vault and into the entrance. Vault security was doing their best to keep the crowd somewhat orderly, but when the built in Geiger counters in their PIP-BOYs began to go off in a tumultuous cloud of clicks. Chris and Sarah were in the midst of the crowd when this happened and the result was a mass panic. Chris held onto Sarah with a vice like grip and together they fought their way out of the sea of people and into the entryway, where there was more room to spread out.
Vault 136 was built into one of the large cave systems in the region, which meant that the Vault Tech engineers had installed a small road and lighting into the long and winding entrance. Chris and Sarah scrambled with the other Vault dwellers, running for their lives in the dark cave exterior of the vault. Chris and Sarah ran hard and fast, their feet smacking against the paved road to the surface. They rounded a corner and there it was, the entrance to the cave with bright orange light of the sunrise shining into the dark cavern. Chris put on a burst of speed and together he and his sister emerged into the dawn light of the surface. They ran a dozen yards further from the entrance to the cave and stopped, each panting to recover their breath.
Chris looked up, clasping the stitch in his side, and saw the crowd of survivors milling about a few yards away. There were still people running out of the vault when a bright white light shattered the darkness of the cave as the fission reactor went critical. There were screams from the survivors, which were cut off by a loud explosion that rattled the teeth in Chris' head. The light from the cave shot straight up from the ground and into the sky, a pillar of nuclear fire. It was blinding, Chris had to turn his head away from the blast, shielding his sister with his body. The light illuminated the dawn sky, making it look like it was high noon. After a few seconds of light, the sky was back to normal.
After the sky had dimmed, Chris looked back at the entrance of the cave. He saw that the top of the entire cave system had been blown off; creating a canyon out of the cave system, which was aglow with radiation. He saw charred bodies scattered throughout the former entrance to the cave; apparently not everyone had made it out alive. Chris was in shock. What had happened? Why had it happened? What would they do now? These were just a few of the many questions that were swirling through his mind but there was one that he felt held the most importance, "Where is the Overseer?"
Chris scanned the crowd of survivors, all dressed in whatever they had been sleeping in before the blast. He saw a few people he knew; there was Fred Dixon, one of the maintenance staff, Joyce Phillips, an orderly in the medical bay, Harry Cheng, one of the Vault dentists, and a few others. All in all he would have to say that out of the three hundred men, women children, young and old that had been in the vault, around one hundred and twenty five had made it out alive. But their leader, the Overseer, was nowhere in sight. Then he heard his name, seemingly coming from somewhere else, it grew louder as it was repeated until finally he was back to reality.
"Chris," it was Sarah, she was coming out of the shock of what just happened. "What…what are we going to do now?"
"I'm not sure sis," said Chris looking his sister in the eye, "we will think of something."
"But we have no home, no refuge," she continued, her voice hinting that she was on the verge of hysterics, "Do you know where we are? This is the Wasteland! This is the literal definition of Hell on Earth! We're not going to last two weeks out here!"
"Sarah," said Chris reassuringly, "We are going to think of something."
"You won't leave me right?" she asked, the fear in her voice prominent, "We are a family, we have to stick together."
"That's right," said Chris as he hugged his sister reassuringly, "I'll protect you. Don't you worry, everything will be alright."
"And indeed it will," said a loud gruff voice from behind him.
Chris spun around and saw a man standing behind him with around thirty others at his back. All of them were dressed in the oddest of clothing, everything ranging from old military armor to makeshift body plates made from the ruins of the wastes and they had hairstyles to match their unconventional clothing. Chris noticed that all of the men were armed. This was a good sign, or was it?
"Who is in charge around here?" asked the man at the front. He was a gruff looking individual; his meaty face was adorned with a black tribal tattoo that covered his right eye and covered by a gray scrub beard and a thin film of soot and dirt.
There was silence. Most of the Vault dwellers were still in shock from their traumatic exodus from underground and had not the strength to answer this man. "Who is in charge here?" he asked again, his men fanning out from behind him and beginning to file through the crowd of survivors, giving them each the once over, "Is someone going to answer me or am I going to have to appoint a leader here?"
"I am in charge," shouted a voice from behind Chris. He turned and saw the Overseer emerging from the crowd, his jumpsuit torn and charred from attempting to get as many of the people out of the vault as possible, "I am the Overseer of this vault. To whom am I speaking?"
"Mr. Overseer," said the gruff man, "My name is Lieutenant Jonas Keeler, I offer you a warm and hearty welcome to Post-Apocalyptia and a proposition for your consideration…Well its more of an offer you can't refuse."
Chris noticed that some of the men that were milling about the survivors had marked the hands of certain individuals, mostly fit individuals and younger women, with charred sticks, drawing a large letter "X" on the back of their hands.
"We are going to offer a select few of you new lives, a roof over your head, a warm meal every day, and a purpose out here in the wasteland. Believe me, this is a better deal than what you could normally get out here, because I am sure this is a lesson you all will learn very quickly and that is the Wastes are a cruel and unforgiving mistress."
"So you are taking some of us away, is that it?" asked the Overseer, "Well, I am going to have to respectfully decline your offer."
"Nobody declines an offer from the Lieutenant!" shouted one of the followers from behind Jonas, who silenced her with a flick of his wrist.
"These people are my responsibility, and that is the way it shall stay," said the Overseer, raising his chin in defiance.
Keeler chuckled, "I respect your loyalty to your people, Overseer. It is a rare and admirable trait in such desperate times, but I am afraid that my terms are non-negotiable."
Before the Overseer could protest, Jonas had taken the sawn off shotgun from his belt and stuck it in the Overseer's stomach. He pulled the trigger, not even wincing when flecks of blood and gore splashed onto his face. There was a cry of horror from the survivors as they watched their leader drop to his knees, holding his intestines in his hands, dying a slow miserable death. He looked up at Chris and tried to say something, but no words came from his mouth. Sarah buried her face in her brother's chest, stifling a sob and looking away from the corpse.
Jonas waved his gun in a semi circle at the crowd of frightened vault dwellers, "Ok residents of…" he kicked the body of the overseer onto its stomach, reading the 136 on the back, "Vault 136, those lucky few of you who have an X on your hand will be coming with us. As for the rest of you, if you will gather over there by my friend with the vibrant green mow hawk, you will be sorted out. As you have now seen what happens to the people who say no to us, so Id be a sport and cooperate."
Chris looked over and saw the man in question, the green spiked hairdo setting him apart from the others. It was then Chris felt a hard tug at his arm. One member of the raiding party had taken Sarah by the arm and was attempting to drag her away. "Chris!" she shouted as her hand slipped from her brother's and she was dragged kicking and screaming off with the others.
"Hey!" shouted Chris, "She didn't have an X! She stays with me!"
"Sorry kid," said Jonas, eyeing Sarah's slender frame greedily, "Last minute addition. She should consider herself lucky."
"What the--," said Chris in disbelief, "No! You can't do this!"
"Them's the breaks, kid," said Jonas as a struggling Sarah was dragged over to him, "Get used to it."
"You mother fucker!" shouted Chris and as Jonas was ogling his sister, grabbed a sharp piece of metal from the ground and slashed at the raider's face.
Jonas winced as the metal sliced through his face, two of the raiders securing a struggling Chris.
Jonas felt his wound with his hand, not a deep cut but just enough to draw a steady flow of blood. "You got balls kid," said Jonas as he examined the jagged piece of metal and threw it aside, "I think you are the only person in a long while to lay a hand on me and for that, I think you get special treatment. Well better than the rest of your Vault anyway."
"String him up!"
With those words, the raiders restraining Chris dragged him away, close to where the other Vault residents were being lined up against a nearby wall. The raiders took a length of rotted rope and through it through the boughs of a nearby dead tree. They bound Chris' arms to his side with the knotted rope and hoisted him up until his feet were five feet above the ground. Chris struggled against his restraints as Jonas strode over to where him. "You get to witness what happens to those who roll over and take it out here in the Wastes."
Chris had noticed that the raiders who had not been with the selected Vault dwellers had lined up, their rifles in hand. "No!" said Chris, in disbelief about what he was sure to come, "You can't do this! I'm sure there is a way to work this out! Take me instead, I'm the one who sliced you up!"
"Work this out?" said Jonas, laughing as the vault dwellers that were lined up against the wall were beginning to piece together their coming end, "Son, this is the Wasteland, THIS how we work out our problems. You can't have any survivors coming along and taking revenge in our line of work. We leave no survivors; It's just good business."
With that, he raised his hand and all the raiders in the firing detail raised their rifles. Chris cried out, hoping against hope that this homicidal maniac before him would change his mind, but his cry was in vain as Jonas had lowered his hand. The collective barking of assault rifles, hunting rifles, shotguns, and handguns filled the air, a terrible cacophony of death. The residents of Vault 136 cried out in pain as bullets from the raider's guns tore through them. It only took a few seconds, but to Chris, watching from on high, it felt like an eternity as all the people he knew and grew up with were butchered like animals.
After the last of the bodies fell, Chris noticed that his face was impeccably dry. He then realized that through the duration of the massacre he hadn't shed a single tear. After a moment of personal examination, he realized why. There was a fire burning in his stomach, a cold and angry feeling that Chris could only define as pure and unadulterated rage. He looked up and saw Jonas sparking up a cigarette. "You know you broke your rule right?" Chris asked, his voice dripping with disdain for this man, "You left me alive, and I swear on the names of those people you just killed and those you are taking, I will find you and I will kill you."
Chris felt a chill run up his spine. Who was this talking through him right now? Chris had never been in a fight before in his life, he was not a killer. Yet as those words seemed to hang in the air, he found certainty in them, in the fact that these people who had died moments ago needed justice. Jonas took a puff off of his cigarette and blew the smoke out, grinning a yellow crooked grin, "Who said anything about you getting out of here?"
"The only reason you didn't die like a dog is because you would have been the one to seek revenge. Which is why I am making an example of you to your captured friends over there. This way they can see what happens when you try to cross me."
"As for your punishment, you are now bound and hanging from a tree. You will either die of dehydration, the local animal life that will be drawn here by the corpses, the Feral Ghouls who are attracted to radioactive craters like you old vault, roving bands of cannibals and Super Mutants or if the winds change, you will probably die a slow death due to radiation poisoning."
"Not to mention," Jonas added indicating the cut on his face with his middle finger, "you ruined my tattoo you dick."
He turned to the rest of the raiders who were looting the bodies for anything they could spare, like boots, watches, jewelry that had been handed down from father to son and mother to daughter. They did not bother with the PIP-BOYs, as they couldn't figure out how to undo the latches on the wrists. Jonas cleared his throat, all the raiders looked up, "Ladies and Gentlemen, shall we get the fuck out of here?"
With that the raiders all turned and left at a quick march, Jonas taking one look back at Chris who was hanging silently from the tree.
Chris watched as the group of prisoners and the firing squad wound their way up the dusty path and off into the distance. He was sure he saw Sarah looking back at where he hung, but the group was too far away to tell. He just hung there and watched as the survivors of the Vault 136 massacre faded into the distance.
He struggled against his bonds furiously, stopping only to regain his quickly fading strength. AS he struggled, the morning slowly turned to the afternoon, and the unrelenting sun beat down on Chris as he fought the rotted, yet sturdy rope. He had screamed his throat raw during the execution and his throbbing vocal chords only added to his discomfort as the unrelenting heat was making him extremely thirsty. He fought the ropes again, gaining a little more wiggle room but not enough to attain freedom.
After a few more hours of struggling, he heard a collective beep that came from his PIP-BOY and the PIP-BOYs on the corpses nearby that had started to smell and attract some rather large flies. That beep meant it was noon. He had to have been hanging here for at least six hours, and he was still nowhere close to being free. He had to keep fighting; every hour he stayed strung up was another hour in which the trail would go cold.
He fought his bonds, struggling more and more against his restraints. He soon realized if he hadn't gotten free by now, he probably wouldn't. What would he do if he got free anyways? He didn't know how to track anything. He didn't even know what way was north. The more he contemplated his demise, the more at peace he became. It was almost like going to sleep. He just had to relax and let it take him. "No," said a voice in his head, "You cannot give in. Those people, Sarah, they are all counting on YOU to do something!"
He tried struggling, but dehydration had set in and his muscles were sore from hours of fighting his bonds. He mustered all of his strength and gave one big jerk at the rope with a resounding battle cry. There was a faint pop and the rope snapped. He fell to the earth, smacking the back of his head hard on the ground. Stars erupted before his eyes and the world swam before him. He felt woozy, and drifted in and out of consciousness. The last thing he remembered was a face blotting out the harsh sun, he could not make out the features but he just remembered the words, "Get him on the cart, he's coming with us."
"Great," thought Chris, as he drifted back into the darkness, "What have I gotten myself into now?"