So Cal, 2077

Two weeks after the Great War ended

Jeff grabbed his face as he looked in the mirror. He was hideous. Due to the recent bombings, he was now highly radiated, looking like a zombie from a horror film. Like a frightened girl, he screamed and ran around the ransacked house (or what was left of it). His mutilated family members were lying on the ground, dead as doornails. "Damn," he murmured. By his feet was a puddle of pinkish goo; upon further inspection, he found a cheap plastic hoop earring. Then it hit him: Jeff was standing in the remains of his mother.

Mortified, he ripped his feet from the gooey corpse, and ran out into the open. All his life, the former human had lived in Cambria, California. He walked about what was once a safe haven lined with white picket fences. Nothing of the past remained but his memories, the mirror, and a mailbox. Jeff ran his new, skinless hand over his now bald head nervously. There was nothing but radiation as far as the eye could see. There couldn't be much of anything; it was the apocalypse after all.

With a shudder, the ghoul hobbled towards the beach to find debris from the warheads that hit Moonstone Beach. The water was a murky green, and fish floated on top of the radiated sea like ducks on a pond. A charred surfboard remained stuck in the stand, where the dude who had last used it left it. What happened to the kid? Did he die or did he become a monster like Jeff?

Earlier that day, Jeff's father had finally come home from the war in Anchorage. It was a bittersweet reunion, not just because of the nuclear holocaust that would occur only hours after his arrival, but also due to the fact that while on the front, Jeff's father stepped on a frag mine and lost both legs. He would never be able to play football with Jeff ever again. When the bombs hit, the family of four had all sat down to eat a nice meal of roast beef and Salisbury steak. His sister, who was a picky eater, decided to eat a bowl of Sugar Bombs instead.

Jeff couldn't remember exactly what happened. All he could remember was a titanic boom, not being able to breathe, his father's hair turning to ash, the burning sensation against his skin, then black. The whole world had gone black. When he came to, he found himself in the rubble of his home. He walked to his parents' bedroom, trying to find them and found the hand mirror…and the cadavers.

For the next few days, Jeff looked around the ruble of Cambria, trying to find some food of some kind or maybe some chems to make him look normal again. There was some food and a few stimpaks here and there, but there were no people. At one point he had found a place in the side of a cliff, a giant door with the number 9. Intrigued and excited, the ghoul pressed the buttons on a nearby control pad to open the giant door. The lock disengaged, and the door rolled aside so that Jeff could get in. He walked in and found the area (known as a "Vault") bustling with normal people without the skin problems that Jeff had. They were all wearing jumpsuits with the number nine on them as well.

"What the hell is that thing?" a woman said disgusted.

"Don't let it near you! It's a zombie! I knew the zombies would come with the apocalypse!"

"It is going to devour our brains!"

"It came from outside the Vault. It is extremely irradiated. It will spread disease. Someone kill it, now!"

Before anything could happen, Jeff hauled his ass away from Vault 9. He ran until he thought he would have blisters on his blisters. He took refuge behind a squished car. A Pontiac. Jeff knew that there were things worse than the end of the world. Jeff wasn't raptured or saved from the terrors of war. He became persona non grata even in post-Apocalyptia. He lay on the warm, irradiated ground in the fetal position, crying. He wished the bomb had killed him. When they said that there are things worse than death, they were wrong.