Anything drawn from Fallout line is the sole property of Bioware/Black Isle/ Bethesda.
The desolate waste was a vast expanse that tumbled out before her like so much garbage spilling from a hole torn in a black, plastic bag to an already filth covered floor. Her olfactory senses had long been accustomed to the stench that permeated the area. A thing would require a pungent oder indeed to stand out from the general stink of rot and decay. A harsh, grit filled breeze pelted her face with dirt and sand. The pilot's goggles she'd found just that morning protected her eyes from the sting her skin was not spared. She could scarcely recall the last time she'd bathed or had purified water to drink. She took a half-full packet of rad-away from the inner pocket of her bombers jacket and finished off what remained. She carelessly tossed the empty package aside, letting the wind take it, fluttering, to settle on the mounds of refuse that littered the land. Debris and dry earth crunched beneath her step, settling as dust on the toes of her boots. The sky above bore down on her like a physical depression, dark and daunting. The dull, tawny clouds seemed to drag slowly across the sky, pulled by the faster winds in the stratosphere. They did not look to be the type that threatened rain. There was still time to find refuge from the night.
Knowing that if she just kept walking she would find some miniscule pocket of what was now considered civilization, she drudged onward. If she was extremely fortunate, she may find temporary shelter with a bed for little to no caps in whatever hamlet lay ahead. There were other ways she could pay for any provisions the citizens might be willing to part with. She'd learned to use that asset to her advantage over the years. Her first experience was not so tainted as a form of transaction for food or meds. She had been genuinely in love, and he with her, or so she had believed. At the tender age of fourteen, all was well in her protected little world. He had been nearly twenty, and the subject of many a young girl's fantasies. Her father would not have approved, but there were many places to hide in the dark corners of the vault. Looking back now she thought little more of him than she did of the ones with whom she bartered for water and rest. Though in the darkness of night, while staring at the stars that peeked in through holes in the roof, she clung to the childish delusions of moments spent with him. The memories kept her sane while some gruff and dirty despot took his payment from her body like an animal in rut. It was a different time, then. Almost a different era, it seemed. The age of her innocent youth had been only a few years ago, but it was as if lifetimes had passed since those more care free days.
That way of living was lost to the defilement of the world outside the vault. She couldn't, or didn't want to, remember what had happened to rip her from the safe security of that place. It was just as well. There was nothing to return to. Everything she knew had been destroyed. Everyone who lived there, everyone she loved was gone. She was certain she was the only one to have survived. The past was lost and everything in it. She no more remembered that tranquility than she could remember the name of the man whose touch she would never feel again. Or what it was like to know the love of a father and mother. Now there was only death verses survival. There was only decay and rot eating at the edges of anything that lived. Now there was only the barren lands of a country that had lost it's name to a pageless, bookless history. There was only the wasteland.