Author's Note: My first story, hooray! ^_^ Well, actually it's just my first published story, but whatever. I hope you enjoy it! Reviews are appreciated as are helpful critiques and suggestions. I'm still getting the hang of writing properly, so if you notice an area that I can improve on don't hesitate to point it out.
This follows the main story and a few side quests, but in addition to my Lone Wanderer I will be adding another main OC eventually. Sorry if OCs are not your thing, but this is how it evolved for me and I promise to do my best to make the character worth reading about. Also I have changed some minor things with a few characters and locations, but for the most part I try to stay as accurate as possible. I'll try to stick to a regular updating schedule but forgive me if I'm late sometimes... college is eating me alive... o_O;
It is also worth pointing out that this story, like the game it's based on, is rated M for a reason. Violence, gore, swearing, drug use, and sexual themes are likely to be included. I won't be crass with it, but a Fallout fic without at least most of these elements isn't really being true to the Fallout universe.
Fallout 3 belongs to Bethesda Softworks. If it belonged to me, I would have fixed the weird diagonal running. :\
The sky was soot-black and there were no stars; that was as much as Lacey wanted to think about as she sat against the rotting wood of the debris-strewn, open-to-the-elements house. Unfortunately, her racing thoughts seemed to want to spite her. It was a common problem of hers, to think too much, and even a life-jarring event wasn't enough to derail her mind. She was hunched down in a pile of what basically amounted to garbage, hoping to maintain a low profile despite the fact that anyone could pop their head around the corner and see her. She tried not to think about it and simply took a deep shuddering breath; the latest in a long line of them.
The cool wind blew softly by, bringing with it the distant sound of something shrieking at the moon. Lacey brought her knees to her chest in response. Although frightened to her very core, something she hated just as much, she still found wind a curious thing. She'd been taught all about weather in the Vault but somehow it was different from what she'd imagined. Rushing air from a fan was one thing; she could see where it was coming from and knew such air was generated by a machine. But rushing air being generated seemingly from nowhere… she found it strange. Such could be said for the world, however; a world she was experiencing for the very first time.
She'd been afraid before in her life but never had she experienced such a terrible fear as what she was feeling now. Every fiber of her being simply screamed to go back to the Vault and pound on the big, round door, to beg to be allowed back in… beg for forgiveness. She sighed; that was no more an option now than it had been when she'd left. They would never let her back in.
She looked back up at the featureless sky, still amazed at how much empty space was up there, as she finally decided to contemplate what had happened.
Having been born in the Vault, she'd intended on living there forever. That was just how it was in Vault 101: "We're born in the Vault, we die in the Vault." So went the motto of the Overseer, the man in charge. Their dictator, Lacey supposed, since there was no negotiating with him. The Vault being far from perfect was a secret everyone knew, but they were all safe and it was that knowledge kept the masses complacent. Lacey's father, Dr. James Harper, had been the one to explain this to her. He'd never really taken to the hierarchy within the Vault, not really, and this was a trait he passed down to his daughter.
She sighed as she remembered her father; he was a good man. He'd raised her alone since Lacey's mother Catherine had died during childbirth, and Lacey counted herself lucky that he hadn't held that against her. Instead he'd held her up as a parent should and became the one person she could go to about anything, could trust with any secret. James was like the wind in her sails or some other equally sappy yet very apt metaphor.
But now he was gone.
He had suddenly left Vault 101 without warning, prompting an insane, chaotic upheaval of life for the remaining residents. Lacey had been violently shaken awake by her best friend Amata, daughter of the Overseer, and immediately been informed of several things that nearly knocked the air right out of her chest. Jonas Palmer, James' medical assistant and friend of the family, had been bludgeoned to death. The Overseer had refused to believe Jonas knew nothing about the doctor's escape and told his men to beat the assistant until he talked. The order to round up Lacey had been given at this time as well, and Amata had run as though the flames of hell were licking her heels to get to her friend in time.
Believing her to be in exceptional danger, (which was the likely conclusion) Amata had gone on to suggest that Lacey leave the Vault like her father had and try to catch up with him. The idea was terrifying even for someone as bold and level-headed as Lacey. They'd had plenty of lessons on how awful the world above was and how the radioactivity had rendered the planet uninhabitable. Mutants had even been brought up and extrapolated upon, but at the time Lacey didn't dwell on those things. She was forced to agree with the haphazard plan that Amata concocted which had Lacey stealing through the tunnels of the Vault, breaking into the Overseer's office and using a code to open up a secret passage which would then lead her into the entry chamber of the Vault and, ultimately, escape. The whole ordeal had been horrible and Lacey had been forced to seriously wound several officers with the 10mm pistol Amata had stolen from her father and given to her. She didn't regret it, given that it was necessary, but Lacey had known these people from birth and didn't relish the idea of hurting them even if they were chasing her down with deadly intent.
Upon reaching the entrance after a harrowing twenty minutes, Amata showed up in time to watch the big, cog-shaped door open to the outside world, which at that point consisted of a cave leading to a wooden door at the far end. Amata had wept and hugged her, saying Lacey was the best friend she could have ever asked for and that she wished her the best of luck on the outside. When Lacey suggested that Amata come too, the girl had refused without much reason; she would later suspect that Amata was too cowardly to leave the security of the Vault.
When a slew of armed officers poured through the door behind them, Lacey sprinted out the circular entryway and raced up the cave towards the light that was streaming in between the wooden slats of the door. A few shots were fired and she scrambled hastily from left to right as bullets clattered across the rocky ground. A loud, obnoxious honking noise caught her attention just as she'd nearly reached the end and she turned to look back as the huge door closed, rolling lazily back over the opening and forever sealing her outside of Vault 101.
Lacey shivered involuntarily against the wall; she knew the image of that big door closing and the nearly crippling terror she'd experienced in that moment would forever haunt her in her sleep. The sharp, compulsive urge she'd had to race back and slip inside the dark abyss, despite the danger within, was nearly as alarming.
Now she knew she should've tried to do just that. This world was terrible! She'd only been out here for little more than five hours and already she could tell her new life would be leaps and bounds worse than whatever it had been inside the Vault. The air was dirty, the ground dusty and dead, and the settlement she was currently hiding in was nothing more than an overgrown ruin. The roads were cracked with pieces lodged together at odd angles, old charred vehicles lined the streets, and the houses were so rotten and worn that it was a miracle they were even standing at all. Trash cans had been overturned, their nearly-ancient contents left to rot and shrivel in the sun. Even the mailboxes looked decrepit, with their droopy little flags hanging pathetically or snapped completely off. The whole place reeked of despair and Lacey wanted no more part of it now than she had when she'd first laid eyes on it.
Upon finally having gathered her nerve to exit the dank Vault tunnel, Lacey had taken her good, sweet time getting down the hill to this little town, all the while holding her pistol in visibly trembling hands. The sky had initially terrified her, as all the open space was something she was entirely unaccustomed to. Even when hidden behind rocks and the large hunks of charcoal that had once been cars, Lacey still felt severely exposed and her trembling had not dissipated for quite some time.
She found a hiding spot as soon as she felt brave enough to enter the town at the bottom of the hill, cursing her pale blue jumpsuit the whole way for being so conspicuous against the dull background. A strange round robot had been zipping to and fro along the street, the blaring radio on its face switching between patriotic music and the speeches of a charismatic man who spoke of the American government and something called the Enclave which Lacey had never heard of. At first this little robot had scared her so much that she'd ducked into the nearest building to await certain death. However, after about ten minutes of nothing consequential happening she'd realized that the strange machine would do her no harm; it was simply floating idly up and down the street. She'd relaxed, but not felt much better about her situation. From that point she had stayed within the charred remains of the house until the present, when night was falling.
The idea of being out in the dark in this horrible place terrified her more than anything thus far. Who knew what dangers were out in these wastes at night? Unbidden, Lacey's thoughts went to her teacher, Mr. Brotch, who taught of the grotesque mutations that would've occurred due to the radioactivity that seeped from the planet. He'd taught about the various effects of radiation on the human body and absolutely no part of that lesson had been pleasant. Her mind conjured up images of mutated body parts, extra hands, and rotting flesh so thoroughly decayed that the very thought brought both panic and bile rushing into focus. Even aside from the radiation, there could be all sorts of vicious creatures out in the wild that would leap at the chance to tear her apart.
She shivered, pressing her back even more tightly against the crumbling wall. It wasn't particularly cold but she felt like her very bones had frozen solid nonetheless. Her one solace was the worn leather jacket she pulled more tightly around her person. It was emblazoned across the back with a vicious, sharp-toothed green snake. The jacket wasn't originally hers, though.
On her way out of the Vault she'd run into Butch DeLoria, the leader of a Vault gang called the Tunnel Snakes who had always been nothing but trouble. Him doing everything he could to cause her great headaches while simultaneously trying to convince her to sleep with him damn near summed up her life's worth of experience with the stupid greaser. When she'd come across him during her escape he'd been bleeding from his arm and begged her frantically to come help his mother who was trapped in her room with a contingent of radroaches.
Lacey had obliged (making sure to state that her help was for his mother's sake, not his) and when the bugs had been smashed, Butch had forced upon her his Tunnel Snakes jacket as a token of thanks. She'd put it on after leaving the Vault and drew surprising comfort from it. She never would've expected to find something like comfort from a jacket that had Butch's scent all over it, but she supposed it was merely the fact that Butch was familiar and this place just made her want to die.
She swallowed uncertainly and again looked up at the dark sky. She could see a very thin haze of fog high in the air above her stretching from one horizon to the other and concluded that this "fog" must've been the remnants of the nuclear catastrophe that had ultimately put her in this mess to begin with. She cursed her ancestors' governments for being so short-sighted.
It took several more hours of terrified inaction before Lacey finally began to get weary, and a few more after that for her to finally succumb to sleep. As the calm darkness overtook her, she slumped down and curled up as tightly as she could manage, cradling the gun to her side and burying her nose in the collar of Butch's leather jacket.
Hope you enjoyed it, and I'd love to hear what you thought!