Fallout 3
Game Moment
Bridge
I found myself at the edge of the ashen city, dark clouds hovering overhead as night-time quickly chased me down. Small stars appeared in the shadows above me, the earlier clouds dispersing. The sound of crickets chirping followed me ceaselessly as I stepped amongst the wreckage of an empty street. Cars, abandoned and ruined, stripped of interior, paint, doors, wheels, and anything else valuable to the looters of the Wastes, were lifeless corpses littering the street on all sides. To my left a wide building lined with broken, filthy windows reached the edge of the street where the road turned onto a bridge. To my right the buildings ended, opening up into a courtyard at the other end of the bridge. Where there should have been water was instead a clutter of useless things left behind after the war, piled there like treasure. This was a Raider camp – that was especially clear from the fences of piled up trash and the quiet noises of movement surrounding the bridge like a fortress.
Burning trash-cans and containers dotted the near distance and I knew that enemies surrounded these sources of heat for what looked like miles, waiting for me to approach. I pulled out my gun, ready for anything, eyeing the bridge with a keen eye. To get to the boat I had heard about from my Pip-boy radio transmission, I would need to cross and walk a little further south. I was already not in the best shape and could do with some more ammunition in my arsenal of guns, but in the Wastes, whatever you had would have to suffice. I had already lost too many battles over potential weapons. It wasn't a risk that could always be taken.
I was within metres of the bridge when the first bullet flashed by me and burned into the road at my side. Immediately, with my hoisted gun at the ready, I rushed toward the nearest cover: a mangled car lying on its side. I hid behind it, ducking low to remain hidden. It shielded me from most of the bullets, and I checked my weapon line-up again. My baseball bat would do little against the guns that were firing at me. My knife was the same story. I glanced up over the car to see a Raider at the foot of the bridge, firing away with a rifle. The gunshots were pronounced and deafening, displaying the power of the weapon.
Knowing that I would only end up with an crippled arm or leg or possibly an early ending, I rushed from behind my cover and immediately launched my attack, slowing down in the middle of the line of fire, taking aim, and firing three focused shots at the Raider's torso. The percentage of hitting him was high. The bullets ripped into his chest and in slow-motion. I watched his face contort in shock and pain, his gun-arm go slack, and his body twist on the spot as blood exploded from his chest. It was gruesome to watch, but the Wastes were bloody and brutal as I was quickly learning.
More bullets rained down at me as I quickly approached the bridge. Another Raider wielding a knife appeared over the curve of the bridge. Apparently he had been waiting for me. His face was twisted with anger and he released a string of swears, knife raised and already looking stained and bloody. Above the Raider a machine gun joined the fight as I reached its distance range. Bullets steadily hit my leather-armoured body and I had to quickly choose a target: the man running at me with the knife or the machine gun? Which posed more of a threat?
I stepped back away from the bridge stealthily and just as the Raider brought the knife down at my neck I aimed and fired two bullets into his head. The first bullet obscured my view as it hit. Blood splattered the scene, and I aimed with careful precision at his head a second time, my own facial expression changed into blood-lust. This time the bullet hit with such a deafening force that his head snapped back and ripped apart from his neck. His body thumped to the ground as the world changed back to its normal pace, and his head rolled away across the bridge as the machine gun continued to beat me with a steady pace of bullets.
I ran across the bridge, pausing for a second only to survey the area below that was being covered by yet more Raiders emerging from their stolen and salvaged goods. It was definitely a Raider camp on the other side of the bridge, and they were fighting tirelessly to protect it now that someone had stepped into their territory. The gunfire had clearly alerted them Positioned tactfully behind self-constructed barricades of rubbish and abandoned and burnt cars, they fired rockets from rocket launches and ripped into my armour with machine guns, each screaming out profanities at me.
As usual, I was outnumbered, but that only made it more thrilling.
Heart pounding, I rushed underneath the machine gun, tilting my view back to fire four shots into its body with my rifle. It exploded as the strong rifle bullets penetrate its black plates of armour, something normal bullets would never be able to do, and I rushed past the flaming and smoking debris, ignoring the bullets from below as they constantly pounded me and the bright explosion of rockets as they crashed into the bridge behind me. The bridge shuddered with the force of the onslaught, but I pushed on, ignoring the shaking.
I stepped off of the bridge and into the Raider camp successfully alive and ready for more action.