FALLOUT: Impact
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Super Mutants
Prologue: Massacre at Clifftown
The mole rat ambled out of its burrow, the morning light splashing across its ugly features. Its eyes, small and designed for seeing in subterranean environments, shrunk at the sudden brightness about it. The light hurt, but eventually the mole rat got over it and started down the slope from its home, beginning what would be a long day of rummaging and fighting for food.
Taking a liking to a strange shrub at the foot of the hill, the mole rat began some tentative sniffing with its whiskered snout. After a couple of seconds of checking the shrub, it identified what looked like some kind of berry hanging from one of the branches. Or what passed for a berry in the irradiated hell surrounding the mole rat.
It had just begun to nip at the berry when a rifle crack split the air, soon followed by a .32 caliber bullet sinking into the mole rat's head.
Amber King lowered her hunting rifle. The mole rat had caught her shot right above the eye, splitting its skull and tossing it sideways into the dirt.
"Nice shot, hon," Joshua said from where he crouched on the rocky slope next to her, "Little bastard's been eluding me for days."
"Thanks," she told her husband. She slung the rifle over her shoulder and started down the incline they had perched on. The mole rat's burrow had been in one side of a small canyon that lay below the shanty town she and Joshua called home. "I don't think he saw us coming."
Joshua followed her down, his boots sliding on the loose pebbles. "They never do when you're out here."
She stopped and turned back to look at him. "What are you doing?"
"What?" he asked, feigning innocence.
"What's up with all these compliments? It wasn't that spectacular. I just shot a mole rat. Besides, it isn't like-" she stopped, realizing what was going on, "Are you trying to get in my pants?"
Joshua's lips split into a grin. He moved in and wrapped one arm around her waist as he flipped a stray strand of hair out of her face. "So? What's the matter with that?"
"We're three feet from a dead mutant rat," she said.
"So coming on to you is bad now?"
"No, but this isn't all that romantic," she explained, "Wait till we get home."
A devious grin spread over Joshua's features as she pulled away. "Well, okay then."
Amber knelt down next to the dead mole rat. Blood was leaking from its punctured head and staining the ground beneath it, the puddle growing across the uneven ground. The creature smelled like shit, and from experience she knew that when cooked it wouldn't get much better. But food was food, and neither she nor her husband was going to pass it up.
Joshua pulled out his combat knife and offered it to Amber. She accepted the weapon and ran it along the mole rat's throat, spilling warm blood across her fingers. To some it would have seemed a futile action, considering the thing had taken a bullet to the head, but Amber knew as well as any wastelander that dead looking things weren't necessarily dead. Hell, one gander at a ghoul could convince anyone of that.
"Its dead," she muttered, "Okay, go ahead."
Joshua stared at her for a second, then shook his head and grabbed the mole rat around the stomach. "Why am I always the one carrying it?" he grumbled, hefting the dead animal over one shoulder.
"I'm sorry. I thought you got a kick out of being the big strong man," Amber joked, sliding his knife back into its sheath at his side.
"It's not that," he replied, "But would it kill you to pull your own weight?"
"All this complaining is just getting you further and further away from that nookie."
"Shutting up."
Amber laughed as they crested the rise and entered the trio of shacks that constituted Clifftown. As its name implied, Clifftown was surrounded on three sides by sheer cliffs, making the lone entryway the earthen ramp to the south of the town. It was a good defensible position, and if needed the inhabitants could hold out for quite some time against a raider attack.
Thankfully, the settlement's small size and out-of-the-way demeanor kept the actual conflicts down to a minimum. It also sat well out of the way of any caravan trade routes, another feature that made it appealing to the Kings.
Amber and Joshua had been married for six years, the first two of which were spent as slaves in what used to be Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, now known as the Pitt. They had escaped during a massive breakout attempt, and as far as they knew, no one else had made it. The escapees who were caught were tortured for seven days before being executed.
So if staying out of slavery meant less fresh food from the caravans, then so be it. And if any slavers did happen by who recognized them…well, the folks of Clifftown looked out for one another.
"Howdy Mr. King, Mrs. King," called Old Man Burns from his front porch.
Amber waved to him. "How's it going?"
"Same old, same old," Burns replied, adjusting his combat shotgun where it sat on his lap, "No one's coming, no one's going."
"That's just fine," Joshua put in.
Old Man Burns nodded in agreement and turned his attention to the wasteland sunrise, getting back to his self-appointed job of watching the perimeter. His wife, Agnes, had passed on about a year after Amber and Joshua had arrived. Since then he'd developed a bit of a drinking problem, something that was sure to mess with his aim. Burns knew this, however, and compensated for it by using a shotgun.
They passed by the second shack in town and waved to Bobby Shorten, the six year old who lived with his single mother.
"Hey Mr. King!" Bobby called from where he was loading his BB gun, "Momma wants to know if you can take a look at the generator later!"
"Tell her I'll be over after breakfast!" Joshua called back.
Bobby nodded and ran inside the house, letting his BB gun fall to the porch planks behind him. Amber looped her arm around her husband's midsection, embracing him as they walked the last few steps to the door of their own shack.
Joshua shifted the dead mole rat to his other shoulder and fished the key out of his pocket. He unlocked the door and swung it open, letting a column of light in on the darkened interior. They stepped through together, arm in arm, and only separated when the door had squeaked shut behind them. Amber unlimbered her hunting rifle and leaned it up against the doorframe, then pulled off her vest and tossed it on the bed.
Joshua set their catch down on the kitchen table, which aside from a generator, bed and dresser, was the only thing in the small dwelling. "Okay," he said, turning around, "Ready to eat-"
Amber smiled as he stopped dead in his tracks, watching as his eyes fell on her bare legs and the cotton pants bunched up at her ankles. She still wore her tattered shirt, but that would be off in just a few more seconds.
"Well?" she asked, "You kept dropping hints earlier. So, are we going to go for it? Or were you just blowing hot air?"
Joshua smiled and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Oh, I was dead serious."
He leaned in and their lips met in a gentle kiss, one of the things Amber loved about their relationship. He ran one hand through her hair while the other traveled down her chest. His fingers slipped under her shirt and had just begun to pull it up when a combat shotgun went off outside.
Joshua stopped, instantly dropping Amber's shirt. She watched as he opened the door, snatching up her hunting rifle at the same time. She pulled her pants up, her thoughts of love making vanishing as an inhuman roar grated against her ears. It was deep, throaty, and had more in common with an explosion than any cry she had ever heard.
The door flew open completely as Joshua brought the hunting rifle up to his shoulder and fired. Amber peeked over his shoulder and saw the bullet collide with sickly yellowish flesh in a plume of red. The monster Joshua had hit flinched at the impact, but otherwise seemed unharmed. It held Old Man Burns around the throat with one massive fist, choking the elderly man with ease.
It roared again and threw Burns across the main street of the town, his frail body breaking against the side of the Shortens' shack. The monster brought a Chinese assault rifle to bear and fired, the bullets panging off the shack wall near Joshua's head. Amber ducked out of the way, pulling her husband with her, as more rounds streamed through the open doorway and punched through the thinner parts of the wall, shredding the kitchen table as well as the dead mole rat resting upon it.
"What is that?" she asked.
"A Super Mutant," Joshua answered, racking the bolt on the hunting rifle, "Let's just hope it's alone."
"HUMAN! THERE ARE…uh…six? Yeah. SIX OF US!" bellowed the Super Mutant, "So come on out, stupid…HUMAN!"
Amber thudded her head against the tin wall. "Wonderful."
Outside, she could hear a door open and footsteps on the wooden front porch of the Shorten household, followed by a voice. "We don't mean you any harm!" Amber recognized the voice as belonging to Sheila Shorten, Bobby's mother. "Please, let us go! We don't want to-"
Suddenly, Sheila screamed, cutting herself off mid-sentence. Amber peeked out of a bullet hole in the wall and watched as the first Super Mutant grabbed Sheila off of her porch and tossed her back to one of its friends; one of seven more that had arrived. Aside from this amount of reinforcements telling her that the Super Mutant couldn't count correctly, it also made the situation much harder to squeeze out of.
"HAHAHA! Stupid female," shouted the first one, "Call Tyler up here. He will WANT TO SEE HER!!"
Another of the Super Mutants started back off down the hill to get whoever this Tyler was. Just as he disappeared from sight, however, the door to the Shorten house burst open again. Bobby ran out into the street brandishing a kitchen knife held like a sword. He waved it at the nearest Super Mutant, a yellow skinned monster carrying a minigun.
"Let my momma go!" he commanded, threatening the monster with his knife, "Or else!"
"Bobby, get back inside. Get back inside," Joshua whispered.
"HA! HA! OR ELSE! HAHAHA!" the minigun mutant laughed.
Without hesitation, Bobby ran his knife into the Super Mutant's exposed kneecap, forcing it in all the way to the hilt. The Super Mutant roared and squeezed the trigger on his minigun, bringing the barrels up to speed.
Bobby started to turn to run away, but never made it a step. A hail of 5mm rounds ripped his little body to paste, spreading him out across the dirt path like icing on a cake. Amber screamed despite herself, and as the minigun toting Super Mutant looked over to see what had made the noise, he caught one of Joshua's .32 rounds in the eye.
Bobby's killer groaned and fell to the ground, his massive body sending a seismic thud through the town. Amber saw another of the mutants turn toward their position through her peephole, a super sledge held in its grip. Joshua looked over at her, still reloading for another shot. His blue eyes were open wide, and for the first time in a long time, Amber saw that her husband was afraid.
"Get under the bed!" he ordered, "Stay down and be quiet!"
She wanted to tell him no, wanted to stand and fight, but couldn't bring herself to say anything. Instead, her legs moved her onto the ground and under the bed. She pressed herself up against the wall and curled up into the fetal position. She felt heavy thuds as the Super Mutant charged their shack, its footfalls rattling the thin walls.
Joshua fired, the light crack of the rifle quickly followed by a ting and a whistle as the bullet skipped off another shack; a clear miss. The bolt came back and a shell casing fell down into her view, landing next to his worn work boots. He pushed it forward, but from the sound of it, the weapon was jammed.
She heard Joshua curse under his breath, then a bone crushing crash as the super sledge met his ribcage. Joshua flew across the room and landed on his back, blood frothing from his lips. The hunting rifle landed next to the bed, its stock coming to rest less than a foot away from Amber's grip. The Super Mutant's leather boots appeared in the shack and its shadow fell across Joshua's tiny form.
Amber watched the mutant's silhouette as it brought the super sledge up for a final killing blow. She reached for the hunting rifle, fingers brushing the wooden butt.
"No."
Her eyes jumped to Joshua, locking with his own. They weren't afraid anymore, just concerned. He shook his head, silently repeating the plea. Slowly, reluctantly, she pulled her hand back, retracting it all the way to her chest. Joshua smiled at her, his face somehow retaining some normalcy despite the bleeding. Amber smiled back at her husband and slowly mouthed 'I love you.'
"DIE STUPID HUMAN!"
And then the super sledge broke his head into eighty-seven pieces and splattered the wooden floor with blood, brain and chunks of skull. An eyeball rolled under the bed and came to rest inches from Amber's face, causing her to cover her mouth to keep her whimpers from giving away her position. The Super Mutant started laughing as it brought its weapon down again and again on Joshua's corpse, each strike bashing out more blood than the last.
"KILL THE HUMAN! KILL THE HUMAN! KILL THE HUMAN!" it shouted in a poor attempt at singing.
Amber remained still, sobbing silently as her husband's blood sprayed under the bed and covered her in a slick layer of gore. As she lay there, she couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't the last time she would be covered in blood that wasn't her own.
And she was right.
To Be Continued
Author's Note: Hey, thanks for reading. I do have to clarify a couple of things about this before we go any further. Firstly, Amber is not a vault dweller. Never has been, never will be, because as a fanfiction writer, it is my duty to tell stories within the world of a fandom that are original. Secondly, this does take place in and around the Capital Wasteland area, mostly because I played Fallout 3 first and like it the best, though I did do plenty of background research for this. I'll stop wasting your time now, as this could get very long-winded. If you want more Fallout talk, including a fun little rant about why all you ghoul-sex-fic fans are decrepit fuckheads, go check out my profile page. Otherwise, please leave a review. I'd love to know your thoughts. Good, bad, or otherwise.