This is a story I did for a teacher a year or two ago, when I was in college. At the time, I was experimenting with journals as a form of creative writing, so I made this, along with another journal based around the Office of Strategic Services which, in my AU, didn't cease to exist following the establishment of the CIA, and merely became the "domestic defense" branch of the armed services. A few minor tweaks were made to this journal to make it more aligned with New Vegas, though it is largely unaltered from its original creation.
October 23rd, 2077, 5:32 PM:
Hard to believe humanity could fuck up so badly. Your average Saturday afternoon, and everyone was just going about their business. I was on board a metro subway, going from Metro Center back to Bethesda, when everything started shaking. The tunnel directly in front of my car collapsed, crushing everything in its wake. Only a few other people were on my car, but I still whacked my shoulder pretty hard against one of the support poles the DCTA put in place for standing riders. Once we'd gotten out of the car, the other people and I moved back to the Tenleytown stop. Some frantic national guardsmen came storming down the escalator, and warned us not to go top-side. Two of the seven who I was with, a husband-and-wife, disregarded their warnings. I don't know what happened to them, but according to the national guardsmen, the whole city had been engulfed by fire. An atomic apocalypse, one said. They asked us if the tunnel leading into DC was blocked off, and proceeded on their own way. I'm not quite sure what happened to those guys either, but right now I don't care. The sky above us, so I could see from the metro exit, is blotted out by a cloud of extremely thick dust, like a sandstorm. Right now I'm really tired, though. I'm hurt, the city's been destroyed, and I just got off a hard day's work, with the overseer breathing down my neck. I hope to hell he was the first to die.
October 24th, 2077, approx. 7:30 AM.
I heard gunshots on the platform earlier this morning. Thank God I'd decided to sleep on the tracks, even if a train might've run me through. Had to lay low; they executed each of the other survivors who had been with me. God damn if we are already resorting to murder and looting, not even a day after the city is destroyed. Still waiting for some other kind of news, but the radiation is blocking any signals to the orbital satellite system wholesale. As far as I know, only D.C. got hit, but if it was the fuckin' reds – after we kicked their asses clean out of Anchorage -, then it's more likely that the whole U.S. got trashed. The government may well have ceased to exist.
My shoulder is still aching. The looters have left, but I'm not taking any chances: after scrounging around in the DCTA representative's office, I found a working AEP7 laser pistol. I think I'm going to go and see if the dust has cleared. If not, I'm going to find a restroom and drink some water. Then maybe I'll check and see if any of these offices has any food. Starting to get pretty hungry.
October 24th, 2077, 3:00 PM.
Well the café had some canned goods. Unfortunately, couldn't find a can-opener anywhere. What kind of contrived place keeps canned food, but no can-opener? Oh, wait, I forgot about our heavily bureaucratic society. I'll bet they had a designated schmuck manning the can-opener, and he left with the can-opener after work. Just my luck.
It's gotten very quiet. The shaking stopped hours ago, and the noise above – buildings collapsing, people yelling in agony, explosions – has really toned down. As a matter of fact, I haven't heard anything since about noon. I'm going to go south and see if I can loop back onto one of the other lines leading out of the D.C. area. I know it's probably paranoia, but I swear I can feel the radiation messing with my cells.
October 25th, 2077, 4:00 AM?
It took long enough to orient myself. As it turned out, the power kicked the bucket soon after the bombs dropped. Not a soul to be found, other than two dead people. Eventually I wound up on the blue line, which was, lo and behold, not blocked up. I've stopped at what I believe is Foggy Bottom, and after getting some rest I'm going to head to the Pentagon and see what's left. Hopefully there's some semblance of order there, but it'd be a prime target for the Chinese. My shoulder is still aching, and I think it's swelling. I can move it about, but it's hard to lift it up, and harder still to keep it in place for long.
October 25th, 2077, approx. 2:00 PM
My rest went pretty well – oddly enough, some National Guard soldier stumbled across me, and gave me some morphine for my shoulder, but then they ran off. Not sure where they're going, but they said they had received a signal from Air Force One, and were on their way to Adam's Air Force Base. I'm assuming that means that the Pentagon is still in-tact, at least partially. I went back to sleep after they left. I'm going to get a move on.
October 25th, 2077, maybe 7:00 PM
Maybe I should've seen this coming. The Pentagon? Completely obliterated. Nothing remaining, at all. Those soldiers, I wish they had told me this, but what's done is done. I'm going to trudge on to, maybe, the Franconia-Springfield exit. It's still a good clip away, but it'll let me out away from the focus point of the war. Maybe spare me the horrors of radiation. I've found some Rad medicine in a DCTA office, still very few, if any, living creatures around.
October 26th, 2077?
I've really lost track of time. Three days in a darkened place with no exit will do that to you. A lot of the metro outlets are blocked off, and those that aren't… well I can still see that damned dust storm.
October 27th, 2077, about 6:00 PM
I just exited the metro tunnels at the Franconia-Springfield stop. Virginia isn't anything like I remembered it – those dust clouds remain hanging out there, the surface of the metro station was absolutely leveled. There are cars and debris everywhere, and not a thing has survived. At this point, I'm nearly certain that the world has ended. Every direction I look, the place is an absolutely barren wasteland. Whose bright idea was it? I'd love to deck the guy in the face. Not like I had much before all of this anyway, but I worked hard for what I had. All for nothing, obviously.
On a lighter note, I've been learning the parts of my AEP7 laser pistol, taking it apart and putting it back together. It runs on a battery of Hi-Charge energy cells developed by General Atomics International. Not particularly rare; they were available at most hardware shops in the DMV area. The energy pulses from the battery, and into the light-wave converter, where it becomes a relatively harmless laser beam. It is the focus array that makes the AEP7, and I'm assuming its bigger cousin, the AER9 laser rifle, so deadly. A set of several mirrors condense the beam further, and then reflect it into a crystal array, which is contained within a titanium box. There's also this module next to the battery slot. I'm assuming it limits how much energy is expended at once, which would explain why the weapon doesn't fire a continuous beam.
October 28th, 2077, 7:45 AM
I met with a few people earlier. They were carrying parts of airplanes. For what, I cannot say. One of them offered me a device, a wrist-borne computer, in exchange for radiation medicine. The thing is a 3000-E model PIP-boy, one of the top-of-the-line variants of the popular wrist computer. Before this disaster, it would've cost me upwards of 1,500,000. With inflation, that really isn't so bad, but still. So, I took it. Gave them a bottle of my rad-purging pills, and they gave me the PIP-boy, easy as you please. When I asked them what happened, they looked at me flabbergasted. I was told it was the end of the world. I knew that was what must have happened, but I finally had confirmation. Unfortunately, I think my arm is getting worse. Nothing can be done about that right now, apart from applying morphine. I'm going to see if I can find a working Corvega.
October 28th, 2077, 12:25 PM
As I was searching for a working car – most of them were completely fucked – I stumbled upon this dog. At first I couldn't tell what it was, because it was so disfigured. Not only was it hairless, undoubtedly the fault of the massive radiation spike which had occurred almost a work-week ago (time passes pretty fast, it seems), but its body was covered in these oozing sores, and its skin was peeling clean off of its muscles. I was a couple yards to its left side, so I could see, in full view, the festering eye. It was like that part of his head had melted, from sheer heat or from radiation. I stopped in my tracks, and tried to size up the situation. I held up my AEP9 and studied his movements. He didn't seem to notice me at first, but then he stopped, lifted his nose into the air, and took a couple breaths, before turning towards me. No vocalizations but the sound of his breathing. His right eye, so I could see, was glazed over and swollen. He ambled towards me – perhaps he thought I was his owner. I sidestepped, and he walked right through where I had been standing. It didn't seem to notice. Blind and deaf, perhaps? Maybe the heat had made him blind, deaf, and mute. It probably fried the poor thing's vocal cords. And the peeling skin, probably a development from the radiation. I deigned to put him out of his misery, and, for the first time, killed another creature with my laser pistol. There was no recoil. It felt unreal; I had expected the thing to buck, as I had previously experienced with an N99 10mm pistol. But, I have to remember that lasers are just light waves, compressed. Energy has no mass, so it isn't possible for a laser pistol to have recoil.
I'm starting to feel hungry again, and I need to find more Hi-Charge packs for my pistol. There's a Super-Duper Mart down the street a ways that I saw while rummaging through the cars that line the streets. Next to it is a Howard's Hardware store, which is probably where I'll find Hi-Charge packs. I still haven't put on my PIP-boy, yet. I'm not sure how I'm really supposed to.
October 28th, 2077, ~6:00 PM
The Super-Duper Mart was pretty much picked clean when got there. I saw two other people scrounging for food together, but they and I kept our distance. I found a little vodka – Polack vodka, of course – and some boxes of Fancy Lad's snack cakes. Not to healthiest meal in the world, but it makes my stomach stop hurting, at least for a while. Same can't be said of my arm. The pain is getting worse, and I'm down to three syringes of morphine and some aspirin.
Howard's was a much better pick. Nobody thought to raid a hardware store when they need to satisfy their basic needs, like hunger and thirst. Not only was I alone, but I found a nice-sized backpack and some of those Hi-Charge packs, plus several other things – lo and behold, I found some of those outdoorsy-type foods, numerous pocketknives (I took several), and an N99 pistol under the front desk, plus five loaded magazines, totaling out to forty rounds. I think I'll save that for later, because I can recharge a Hi-Charge packet. I can't do the same for a normal 10mm round. The store was one of those outlets, where they only sell the surplus gear, so there wasn't much else there.
October 29th, 2077, 5:00 AM
I slept on a bus-stop bench last night. It's so creepy. Everything is quiet; nothing moving, nothing making a sound. I started talking to myself to ease my own fears. I'm glad I didn't have anything really resembling a family when all of this occurred. I imagine anybody who did was utterly devastated – if they survived. Last night, before taking my leave, I put the PIP-boy over my left forearm. At first, it was a loose fit, but then I could feel it contract – until I thought I would have to remove my hand. I felt some… things pierce my arm. I don't know what they are, but I felt really tired thereafter. The computer came to life, displaying the RobCo logo, and then resetting itself to match some of my stats… my weight, height, etc. The most important thing, though, that I could see, was its Geiger counter. Who needs rad medicine when you can completely avoid radiation to begin with?
October 29th, 2077, 3:00 PM
I have struck gold. After snooping around in a Corvega factory, I found a working model! Now I'm mobile again, even if most of the roads are destroyed or blocked off. It'll serve as my pack mule and my home until I can find a safe place to hunker down. Lucky me, it was one of the newer nuclear-powered models, so I don't need gas, or any kind of lube. The car is brand-new, but I might need to get new brake pads; they wear out pretty quick when you have literally four tons of weight bearing down on them.
October 31st, 2077, 2:00 PM
I almost forgot about this little journal while I was driving. Almost two days straight, wow! Well I made it out of Franconia, though it was a hell of abandoned cars blocking each and every road. Once I got onto one of the Podunk backroads, I managed to get up to a good clip – 25 miles per hour, which is actually pretty fast if you think about it. No radio stations – as per expectation, given what happened – but there are a lot of distress signals. Made it all the way to Lynchburg, though. Conditions here are the same as back in D.C.: a living hell-hole. Not entirely sure what to do, now. I could keep heading west and see if I can find my uncle, or I can go to one of the supposedly neutral countries – Canada or Mexico, maybe? According to some soldiers I stumbled across, the situation is the same all across the world. According to them, China attacked us, we attacked them and their allies, and those allies responded in kind. Their allies attacked neutral countries, though, launching their own nukes at other countries that weren't involved with the war. I'm going off to see if I can find some abandoned houses. Should still have food, if nobody's looted them already.
October 31st, 2077, 7:30 PM
I cannot believe what just happened. I was looting these houses, of course there were some corpses. They're everywhere. Not corpses like before the war, but like mummies almost. It's disgusting. But this is worse: one of those corpses – was still alive. I saw opened the front door of a house and saw this man standing there. He was wearing normal clothing and all, but he was hairless, and his skin was all dry and stuff. He just stood there. Then he heard me, or smelled me, or something, and turned to face me: his eyes, glazed over with a white film. He raised a kitchen knife and let out this ungodly howl, like a fucking banshee. Then, he sprinted – not just a run or a jog, but a dead-on sprint – towards me. I was utterly shocked. This man looked like a zombie, from one of those old horror flicks. Conventional knowledge says they don't exist, but here was this sprinting zombie. I stumbled backwards out of the door, and slammed it in front of the zombie, who collided with the door at full speed, nearly breaking it down. Didn't bother opening it like a normal person, he kept fucking slamming into it, over and over, until it finally shattered. I ran back to my car, dove into the passenger seat, and grabbed my laser pistol before he regained his balance. I took one shot – and missed. Somehow. The damn thing has no kick, and I miss. The thing is sprinting towards me again, so I raise my feet, and he collides with my feet, right on his chest. This time, there is no room for error. Thank God almighty, I didn't miss the second time: my super-condensed light beam tore through the zombie's skull. I pondered for several minutes, laying there in the passenger seat of my car, what the fuck had happened. But then I remembered that dog. Fucking radiation, it screws up science as we know it!
November 1st, 2077, 6:25 AM
I'm about to get rolling again. I rested in the back seat of my car last night, but I couldn't get any sleep. I'm terrified that I might get attacked by more of those zombies. I used to laugh at horror films, but now I know that horror films can come true. I thought radiation just causes cancer, but now I know better. I've decided to try and get to Toronto, and from there, perhaps further north. I want to find a place where there's no radiation, none of this foolishness.
November 2nd, 2077, 3:00 PM
Highways are too cluttered to keep going. My brakes are also getting much worse. Every time I even tap on the damn things, I get a nice screeching sound. I'm still at least a day away from the northern border, and I have to backtrack a couple hours to find new brakes and to find an alternative route. Wish I had a map of the area, but this is completely unknown territory to me. I don't even know what state I'm in.