"And the answer," said The Judge. "If God meant to interfere in the degenerancy of mankind would he not of done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and to die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of his achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages. do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons."
Excerpt taken from Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy
Author's Note: Well, it's been a while since I've posted on This story was inspired by the book quoted above and will likely contain quite a bit of violence, as it concerns the exploits of raiders and their savagery. It might be long, or short, it really depends. I'll probably only be updating on weekends because I'm busy Monday through Friday.
The story takes place during the period of time in which the computer game Fallout Tactics is set, so there will be vehicles and a few towns of my own designs. It may continue up until the era of Fallout 2. If anybody knows a lot about Fallout's chronology, please drop a review and let me know if I've made a mistake. I would also appreciate any information on location: what state most of the Fallout cities are in, how many there are, stuff like that.
Well, onto the story, I suppose. Please read and review and hope you enjoy!
A whole town made of slums. The houses were dirty white, fashioned out of clay and adobe, with little square windows and little wooden doors getting loose at the hinges. There was a police station/jail with iron bars, a small town hall riddled with old bullet holes, a hospital that smelled of the dying.
There was a wooden arch over the barren road that led into town. On it's marquee was the clumsily painted name of the town, "El Topo". A fat lazy man in jeans and a rawhide vest, clutching a shotgun, was standing in a small guard post beside the arch. He wasn't paid for his job. He did it because of raiders.
In one of the houses a child was being born. The parents--a schoolteacher and his dishrag of a wife--were panicking because neither knew how to deliver a baby. The woman was lying on a rug, breathing roughly and screaming. Neighbors paid no attention. They were too concerned with their own matters, like finding enough money for food or finding a way out of that horrible godforsaken town.
The woman screamed. The man--his name was Percival --remembered something he'd read in a medical journal and said, "Push! Push it out!"
She screamed. She accused God of hate. Percival gritted his teeth and knelt before her displayed womanhood and for the next thirty minutes tried to calm her down, to make her push.
When the baby came there was blood with it and after an hour the woman was dead. Percival cradled the filthy child in a blanket. He looked at the corpse of his wife and considered calling the police, but in the end he took it outside into their small backyard with a spade and dug a makeshift grave and dumped her in.
The gravedigging took him two hours and when he returned to the house the baby was crying, bawling as babies do. Percival looked at that baby and was struck with the realization that he'd created a life. The thought depressed him. What good was life in this hell? All that child could look forward to was a life of painful work, hiding, fighting, being constantly afraid of radiation and death at the hands of a savage or a monster.
The child deserved better. Humanity deserved better. Didn't it? They'd caused all this agony themselves through petty squabbles. It could all be likened to a high school brawl: fists flying everything, curses. And then one kid pulls a gun and everybody else pulls a gun and all hell breaks loose, and in the end everybody is wounded and crying and broken. It was a fitting analogy. Nations were but children in the schoolyard of the world, and they were all about as like-minded.
Percival picked the baby up, cradled it in a blanket. There was brahmin milk in the refrigerator. He took some out and clumsily fed the child.
He said, "Your name is Victor Falta." The baby looked up at him with dull eyes. Percival felt a impotent rage then at that child: you killed my wife, she died because of you, your existence will ruin my life.
The rage came and went. His wife's corpse decomposed. Victor steadily grew, his father becoming less and less of a presence in his life, spending more time at the school and more time drunk every day.
Victor grew. He, like nearly all other children in that town and in that era of the world, began to develop a taste for mindless violence.
Author's Note: Hope you enjoyed it! Please read and review! Next chapter should come on Sunday or later.