The sun was getting low when I decided to check just one more house on the road for supplies. This house held more promise than any other on the block so far because it did not look quite as burned out as the rest. Once the bombs had dropped and leveled everything and killed all notion of society and technology a house with a looked door and only one broken window seemed like a dream come true. Still I knew enough to be cautious, walking around the house and checking the windows and seeing if I could spot anyone or anything inside. Deciding I wouldn't know for sure until I was actually inside I circled around the front and looked at the door shouldn't be too hard to force open.
"Alright baby time to give up the goods" I said as I drew my leg up and kicked the door near were the lock was breaking the door open in one hit. I rushed in with my rifle up sweeping it left and right looking for raiders that may try to kill me for my gear or a mole rat looking to take a chunk out of my leg. I let out a sigh of relive "All clear" I said to myself. I lowered my rifle letting it hang from the one point sling. A thing of beauty the rifle was, an M16 A4 with a RCO scope that made shooting pretty easy, not that I wasn't a decent shot without it. It fired single shot with the capability of three round burst if you felt like wasting ammo it could also kill someone from 500 yards out. Giving it an affectionate pat I walked through a hallway to the kitchen noticing the broken picture frames and the blacked photos on the ground. The kitchen was barren of anything of use, the food was decades past its expiration date but than it was hard to find food that was not. Somehow people of the waste had found out that certain foods wouldn't make you sick even past the date like fancy lands cakes and Salisbury steak. Also many of the prewar homes had food made to last through a nuclear disaster. Guess the people were paranoid and rightly so, for the all good it did them anyway. While there was not any edible food there was a bottle of clean rad free drinking water (well I assume it was clean). The water was too valuable to trade or sell which was my main reason for being here and scavenging the waste was not a livable job if you kept everything you found so I also pocket a couple of knives and pencils. After all someone was always looking to stab someone and the few people who knew how to write would always need some pencils, they would not fetch much but it was something at the least. The other rooms downstairs were all a complete bust nothing but empty cabinets and inches of dust. I made my way upstairs each step creaking in protest under my weight, weight which they haven't felt in many years. I entered the bathroom and found some toilet paper very useful for obvious reason and also very rare but the real jack pot was in the medicine cabinet. "Holy shit" I muttered as I opened it and saw an honest to god stimpak military grade medicine heal all kind of drug. It could and probably would end up saving my sorry life one day. The other stuff such as the minor pain killers were also expired but since it was medicine I knew that someone might be desperate to give me something for them so I put them in my bag as well.
Only one room left, a bed room at the back of the house on the second floor. I opened the door and my eyes were drawn to the bed were two skeletons lay, long past the point of where they would smell bad. They were locked together as if they had clung to each other in the final moments before oblivion descended upon them. I stood there staring at the pair wondering if they had been husband and wife or maybe brother and sister or even simply two friends that did not wish to die alone. I wonder what it would be like to have a wife and live in a house and my only real worries were if we wanted one kid or two instead of worrying about running out of water or dyeing a slow agonizing death from radiation poison. The quiet of the waste land was punctuated by a loud piercing scream of a woman. I jumped and my hands went instantly to my rifle and clicked it from safe to single shot. I ducked by a window and peeked my head out to see any hint of who had screamed and what had cause them to do so. I saw a woman running down the street with a look of terror on her face and hot on here kneels was a raider brandishing a very large and very stained combat knife. Many thoughts ran through my head first was sadly that I should leave her to her fate. If I shot the raider I would be down one bullet and draw a lot of attention after all a raider was never alone and I had no idea of where the rest were and how well armed they were. But I still considered myself an okay human and the blue suit and thing on the woman's arm marked her as someone who I very much wanted to talk too. After all it was not every day you got to confront someone that had betrayed and left you high and dry. I quickly got up and ran down the stairs and out the house in pursuit of the woman and her would be killer/rapist. The woman in blue did not get very far before she stumbled and feel hard to the ground. The raider laughed and pointed his knife at her and said "now now pretty young thing be a good little girl and don't scream or I'll have to cut out that tongue of yours." He stopped and pretended to think for a second "Well go ahead and scream I'll probably cut out your tongue anyway." His hands dropped to his pants as he went to undo his zipper but he would not get that far.
I come up behind him and leveled my sights on the center of his back, no point in aiming for the head smaller target might miss and waste a bullet. Even if the round did not kill him outright I felt confident I could handle one mortally wounded raider without trouble. I squeezed the trigger and round went through the raider and a mist of blood splattered across the woman's face who seemed too surprised to scream or simply had given up. I quickly took in her features. She had bright green eyes and blond hair that almost seemed to reflect the sunlight that fell to about the middle of her back. I guessed she was about five feet seven inches and of average weight. It was easy to tell she hadn't been in the waste land for long, her face was dirty but did not have perpetual dirty look of people who have been in the waste for too long.
"Come on lets go" I said to her quietly. Her eyes snapped to me and were as wide as dinner plates and her face was devoid of any color. She looked from me to the dead raider muttering incoherently. "I am not like him" I said as calmly as I could "I am not going to hurt you I want to help you." But her eyes continued to dart between me and the raider. I looked back at the raider and saw him twitching slightly. "Oh right I'll take care of him" I told her figuring that was what she was trying to tell me. I walked up to him and smashed the butt of my rifle onto the back of his head. One hit probably would have done it but just too be sure I hit him twice more on the final hit his head split open spilling blood and brain onto the ground. The woman looked at me with terror on her face and started to talk "you….. you" she never got to finish what I was because she passed out.
"Well shit you are not making this easy for me uh lady" I said and went over to check on her. She had no visible wounds besides minor cuts and bruises. However she was not sweating and had no water on her she must be severally dehydrated. I picked her up in a fire man's carry, had to get her back to megaton and get an IV and fluid in her. I got about ten feet when I heard people running up behind me. I spun around and fire a couple rounds from the hip at two approaching raiders. The rounds were not accurate enough to hit them but they did duck behind cover.
Fuck I thought I can't out run them not with the added weight of a person but for the brief seconds I saw them I saw no guns just a pipe and knife. I turned the corner down the street and went into the first house I could see to buy myself some time. I went over my options in my head, I could leave the body here and try to kill the raiders without any burden or I could use the body as bait. I couldn't just try and wait them out, for one, they would probably find them and two I wanted to get the woman to medical attention as quick as possible. I set the lady on the couch and looked out the window when I heard the sound of breaking class in the back room. Instead of running into the room I wanted outside the room rifle leveled waiting for the raider emerged. The slowly creaked open and I fired a shot and the raiders head exploded and he died instantly.
Before I could celebrate my victory the other raider had cleverly waited for me to be distracted and snuck up behind me and smashed a vase on the back of my head. I feel to the ground and rolled to my back so I could see the raider and too buy myself half an extra second of life. The raider lunged down at me with a small knife I instinctively put my hand up to block my face and the knife stabbed through it and I gave a shout of pain. I kicked the raider in the groin and he recoiled a little bit. I yanked the knife out and tried to bring the rifle to bare but the raider recover and was on top of me again. He grabbed my neck and proceeded to squeeze the life outta of me. One hand was trapped under the raider's weight so I used the other one and repeatedly punch every inch of the raider I could reach but I might as well have been flicking him. My vision started to blur as my finger searched the floor for the knife that I had recently removed from the hand and found it. I shanked it into the side of the raider but he did not let up just yelled as I continued to stab him half a dozen times before his grip relaxed and he slide off dead.
I rolled to the side sucking in air and clutching my bleeding hand, I was temporally numb to everything, the woman forgotten, where I was forgotten all I cared about was that I could breath and wasn't dead. I composed myself and wrapped my and with the dead raiders shirt and took everything of worth which wasn't much. I went back to unconscious woman on the bed only now she was awake. "Couldn't have woken up ten minutes earlier huh and given me a hand" I said a little bitterly.
"Help please" She screamed at the top of her lungs
"Hey hey shut it am not the bad guy here am not going to hurt you" I said trying to sooth her but to no avail she continued to scream. I leaped at here and covered her mouth "shhhh more of them will hear us" She sank her teeth into my hand I let go and hit her hard with my other hand, the one with hole in it. She collapse again and I started swearing and clutching my hand all over again.
The woman was once again out cold and I pondered if it was worth all this to save her but I knew I couldn't live with myself if I left her even after what her people did to me. I tied her hands with her shoe laces and picked her up and made the track back to my home in Megaton. The sun was almost down and I didn't want to be out in the open at night but I didn't have much of a chose. Damn I just want to sleep I thought as I left the house carrying the increasingly heavy woman.