Guardian of the Wastes

I was born in vault 101, a place where no one ever enters and no one ever leaves. My mother died giving birth to me I was raised by my farther. On my tenth birthday I was given my entrance into the world in which I was to live. The pip-boy 3000 would give me communications; some where I would store my weaponry, and my introduction to jobs. I also met Jack, now the name Jack doesn't seem that bad, a Jack strikes you as blonde hair blue eyes, good person. This jack is an altogether different person he has black hair, an attitude and likes nothing better than making your life a misery. It is poetic justice that he became a hairdresser and me an overseer.

I never thought I would get this job, didn't want it really. It was a relief I had to run away. Easier to take my chances in the wastelands than face a box, full of people living there lives under the thumb of an overseer. I didn't want to make decisions for hundreds of people I could hardly make decisions for myself.

At six am, its dark , Vanessa wakes me up, she's urgent, brown eyes flashing, I remember being scared not really taking in what said all I got was "dads escaped…… overseer pissed………there coming" she bundled a gun into my hand, a clip of 15 bullets. I ran. I had an idea to check her story with the overseer. I didn't get there.

The first bullet, hit me in the shoulder. It was like a stone pushed into you. It doesn't hurt as much as you think, the bullet goes too fast for your brain to realise your hit. It's either me or him. I put it down to adrenalin when I had time to think about it. I lift the gun and shot him. People think when you take a life it's gone in a flash of a bullet but when that life goes everything goes in slow motion. The first thing I saw was the shield of his helmet shatter, the blood spurting like an uncontrolled full pressure hose, snaking at speed all over the corridor. Then the scream, inhuman in its pitch communicating hurt, shock and the flash of a person's life streaking through the brain before they die. I dropped still screaming, to the floor arms and legs flailing as he rolled in pain. I knew there was no choice, but to give mercy……… Bang.

It sounds stupid but I shot my way out of that vault it was kill or be killed. It was hard to kill those I had lived with. People who had protected me, help me when I needed it gave me shelter and advise, but by the time I regretted it I was already out of the vault.

Coming out of the ground like a rose blossoming from the waste the sun blinding me, burning my sun starved retinas, breathing fresh air for the first time in your life. imagine being under the duvet, air around you hot and compressed, lungs beginning to struggle the sense of relief as the heaviness is pushed back and fresh air rushes into your needing body. That how it was for me that day pushing my way out of the womb like earth into a bright new world. The wasteland was exactly that. Nothing, a dry desert but with roads forbidding it looked impossible to survive but survive I had to do. I hadn't taken my first human life to die now with resolve I knew I would survive.

It was a different world out of the vault. This isn't a cliché it was literally dog eat dog or man eat man. Hell had nothing on the waste land you've seen nothing until you've seen one man eat another. Babies murdered people taken to slave camps rape, murder, robbery, cannibalism and suicide. I was a member of this, a society based upon survival of the meanest I knew I had escaped my metal prison a home that had kept me safe for so long to enter a world that was the epitome of evil.

I knew I had to make a decision join or kill. I knew deep down I could be as evil as these but I decided to right the wrongs. It might sound like I decided to play god, what had given me the right to decide who should live and who should die. It wasn't like that I couldn't stand back and watch a beautiful world turn into hell. For as lo0ng as I lived I knew I would work to change things.

Today I feel no remorse, no regret, no sorrow. I have chosen my path some may consider It wrong, but hey, they don't live in my world they don't think with my brain, haven't had my life. Thinking back I knew that I was destined to be on my own, a crusader, an entity for goodness, an angel in a world destroyed by a day the sky rained of fire. Guardian of the Wastes

This is my world now, a new world, a better world.