Dear anonymous

This past week has made me appreciate life more than I could ever think was possible. I had been to hell and back, I guess this world is hell anyway but you know what I mean. Oh by the way my name is Talos I'm a 22 year old male I was born in Minnesota 22 years ago, I'm six foot one, and my ethnic background is white, but you would never guess since my skin is so tan from being outside all my life. I used to work for the crimson caravan, but that changed when we were ambushed by a bunch of raiders, everyone died except for me of course. Now I'm just a lonely traveler looking for the next cap I can get.

Well back to my story, it was a week ago today and I was just entering the DC area and walking along like I would any other day, but I had a feeling things were different in this part of the country. As I had walked through the blistering landscape I had passed old ruins that once were tall buildings a beacon of civilization also I could see rusted cars that once effortlessly took people from point a to point b, and now that is all long gone. There is no more civilization here in the wastes; people will kill for anything that they can get their hands on. After an hour of walking through DC I could see a settlement, it was probably megaton I had seen signs that pointed megaton in this direction. As I approached the walls of the town i heard a loud engine and I could see that there were old air plane wings that were being lifted up by a turbine engine, I was greeted by a robotron it said in its monotone robotic voice "welcome to megaton. The bomb is perfectly safe. We promise." That had made me quite nervous. After I passed through the gate I was confronted by a tall African American man. "Names Lucas Simms, town sheriff. And mayor too, when need arises" he said in his stern voice.

After I introduced myself we had talked about the bomb. And I had told him that I would disarm it if I could get a lot of caps because of the dangerous nature of work I was going to be involved in. he then told me that the town didn't have much money, also he had thrown a house in the deal so I would be stupid to say no to this. After remembering the science book I had read a few years ago and remembering the ins and outs of electrical components, I had tinkered with the bomb for about an hour and then finally disarmed the thing. I went to Lucas Sims and told him the deed had been done. He then handed me the caps and also a key to my new house. I walked to my house and entered and I knew it wouldn't be much but when I looked inside it appeared to be an average home of the wasteland. After buying some stuff for my house from the crater side supply I had thought to myself "what an annoying lady that was"

It was 9 pm and I had everything put together in my new house, I went to the refrigerator and grabbed a can of beans and a cold beer took a seat in my living room and ate. I was bored so I turned the radio on and heard a man that kept on calling himself three-dog, he had said what was going on in the wasteland and I was too tired to pay attention so I headed to my room and just fell in my bed so I can rest my aching body.

The next morning I had woken up to gunfire, it was outside the house. After throwing on my leather armor and grabbing my assault rifle, I rushed outside and had seen the sheriff and two other people taking cover from gun fire from what appeared to be raiders. Everyone else was either dead or being held hostage. The town was clearly outnumbered, I counted at least 30. I thought to myself how did they get passed the gate? After dodging gunfire I got to Lucas and the other men "we need to get out of here now!" Lucas yelled.

We sprinted our way towards the gate and right before we got there one of the two other men was shot dead. We all realized he couldn't be saved we kept on running until we got to springdale. After we caught our breath we started to talk about what had happened "we were taken by surprise, we thought it was a caravan but it was bunch of raiders in disguise when they got in they started to shoot and that's when the rest came in and finished everyone off, even…. Even my son" Lucas said in a sad depressed tone.

"My name is Talos by the way what's your name?" I asked the stranger.

"its Jericho, and I thought going to megaton would get me away from raiders, it seems like my past just keeps on following every step I take" Jericho says as he looks towards megaton.

"Well let's not just stand here, we need to do something" I told the two men.

"Like what? Did you see how many there were? That would be suicide, there's no return" Jericho yelled.

"I think I know where we can get help. We can go to the citadel, its east of the Jefferson memorial. It's the center of operations for the Brotherhood of steel in Washington DC" Lucas Sims muttered.

"Ok well than if that's where we need to go then let's start walking" I confidently said.

As we walked towards the citadel I had noticed a dead body, it didn't shock me because I have seen countless dead bodies in my many years of traveling this unforgivable country. But there was something different about this dead body. He looked like he had been tired and scared at the moment of death. He was shot in the chest, a surely sudden death. I kneeled down and I saw a name tag that read "timothy". He had a photo in his front pocket of his coat; it had some blood on it, on the photo I saw timothy, a beautiful blonde female, and a child; this must be his family I thought to myself. On the back of the photo there was writing it said "to the one I love, when you are so far from my heart. so keep this close to yours.. Love Lucy"

Now I have a sense of who this man was, he is still loved by a caring and passionate women that probably misses him dearly. "I must find this lady and give her the bad news" I said to myself.

I handed the photo to Jericho he looked at it for a minute. "it looks like they were standing by DuPont, I can recognize the buildings in the background" Jericho said as he stared at the photo.

"I'll go there when we get this situation settled, it's more important anyway" I said as we continued to walk to the citadel.

By now it was getting dark, so we set up camp and made a fire. Jericho pulled out a bottle of whiskey and took out three shot glasses. He insisted this will help relax our moods from the traumatizing day. So we all started to drink and not much later we were all starting to feel the alcohol course through our vanes. We started to tell each other stories. Jericho started with a story. "It was about 2 years ago and I was down on my luck and I was wandering through the wastes trying to find a place to crash for the night, I would have slept outside, but it was pouring so I needed to find a building. After finding one I had to break a window to get in because the doors were barricaded shut with nail boards, it was an old factory. I got in a and started to lay down in a room with plenty of ways to escape if I needed to. When all of a sudden I heard a noise down the hallway, it sounded like a bottle being knocked over and being broken. I suddenly jumped up and went from tired to wide awake. I slowly approached to area where I heard the noise and after looking around for a few minutes, I couldn't find broken glass anywhere at all. After that I was starting to get confused then I heard a whisper, but I couldn't make out the words it was all gibberish to me. After this I was starting to get freaked out, I inspected the building for about an hour and I couldn't find anyone. But I did find some jet which made me forget what was going on and I fell asleep. The next morning I woke up and there was wrighting that looked like blood on the wall and it said "you will die a lonely life if you don't change your ways" and that's what really scared me I wasn't sure if it was a prank or some higher being that was telling me this but it scared the shit right out of me so that's what changed my life and that's how I ended up in megaton" after we talked about Jericho's experience, Mr. Sims and I were teasing him about it when we heard something.

"shh guys be quiet I think I hear something" I whispered as I was crouched and looking around.

Mr. Sims stamped out the fire and Jericho loaded his assault rifle. "What is it now?" Jericho said in an irritated voice.

"I don't know, but whatever it is. It's pretty close, do you think it knows we're here?" Lucas said to me.

"I'm going to assume it does seeing how we were talking kinda loud, and we were sitting here in front of a fire" we were basically giving everything in the wasteland an invitation to come and get us.

As I was talking Jericho had seen the mysterious creature that we're looking for. It was a super mutant, it was large, it probably was eight feet tall he also was very well built and was covered in green skin with veins bulging out of every inch of his body. With no time to say anything, Jericho started to unload his clip on the large green brute. Lucas and I had instantly heard the gun fire and ran to Jericho; we had started to shoot as well. The super mutant dropped to ground and caused the earth to shake a little bit. I walked to him slowly and he was breathing heavily I pulled the hammer back on my revolver and shot him right between the eyes. The small amount of brains this creature had were all splattered on the ground behind him. After assuring everyone is ok, we re-lit the fire and sat back down. One bye one we all fell asleep and laid under the stars.

I woke up with the sun shining directly in my eyes, also Lucas was cooking something over the fire. "You hungry?" asked me while I was rubbing my eyes.

"Yeah what is it?" I asked

"Its mole rat meat, I think he wanted to be breakfast ha-ha" Lucas said while laughing.

"Where's Jericho?" I asked.

"Oh he's gone to nearest building to see if he can score a pack of cigarettes, he really likes cigarettes" Lucas said while flipping the meat.

The next thing I knew, there was a gunshot right where Jericho was. As Lucas and I grabbed our guns we could hear Jericho and someone else trading bullets. I had made sure my gun had been loaded, and then I looked around for any dangers. We ran over to the building that was nearly a pile of rubble, but was still recognizable as a building. We looked around for Jericho and then I heard his voice say. "haha is that all you got!"

I could see the men that were shooting at Jericho. They were in black leather armor "they're talon mercs" Lucas said while aiming down his gun sight.

Lucas fired one shot per person and killed each of them with a clean head shot. Their bodies hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. "It's about time you got here, I thought I was a gonner" Jericho yelled as he got up from where he was taking cover.

We all walked towards the bodies and looked for loot. Jericho fortunately found a pack of cigarettes on one of the men that had a dog tag that read "Thomas Jenkins", I found a journal that belonged to a Ralph willows I opened the page that was dated from two days ago.

"May, 3rd, 2277

I can't believe those raiders are actually hiring us to kill people. They want to take over Megaton and slave or kill whoever survives the attack. Surprisingly they're paying us 5000 caps for this job, it's probably because they don't want people to bring back others to take back megaton. Also I'm really surprised they had so much caps, they must be loot from a caravan. Now if we get this done I can afford to stay at Tenpenny Tower"

I licked my finger and turned the page that was dated yesterday.

"May, 4th, 2277

Well they successfully pulled off the attack; they said that three guys got away the sheriff, a guard for hire, and a wastelander. After tracking them we actually found them camping just a few hundred feet away. We're going to take shelter in this abandoned building for the night and get them in the morning while they sleep"

As I put the journal in my bag I looked at Jericho "did you surprise them or something, because it looks like they were supposed to kill us this morning while we were sleeping" I said.

"Yeah I was looking around and then I heard one of them yelling at the others to wake up, then they started to shoot at me." Jericho muttered while lighting the cigarette in his mouth.

"Well let's get out of here before more show up" Lucas said as he walked away.

We walked for a few hours and I was beginning to get annoyed because Jericho was whistling one of the songs that you can here on the enclave radio. As he was whistling I would space out and stare into the eerie wasteland and imagine what it must have looked like before the Great War; it must have been green as far as the eye can see and there would be background noise of cars and airplanes, also there would be bright blue skies with big white clouds. Finally we had arrived to rivet city. "What is the nature of your business?" the Rivet city intercom said.

"We come here bearing news of megaton; it is in need of dire help. It has been taken over by raiders" Lucas said in a worried tone while he held down the intercom button.

"We'll extend the bridge" the intercom voice said.

As soon as the both the bridge and city were connected we ran across the bridge and raced to the sheriff of Rivet city. His name was Mr. Hopkins. "We need help!" Lucas yelled at Hopkins.

"Don't just assume that we can help, we're strung out on resources as it is; we can't just send our few men there and get rid of your problems". Hopkins said in a surprised but angry tone.

"Well cant we come to an agreement then?" Lucas asked.

"Go on" Hopkins said slowly.

"If your men help megaton I will make sure of it that you get extra supplies and caps from megatons barter profits from the caravans" said Lucas as he had plead desperately to Hopkins.

They went into more detail about their agreement after a few minutes of hearing it I was beginning to get bored of them arguing about what amount of trade is fare, so Jericho and I went to the bar in rivet city. We walked down the stairwell and passed the rusted metal walls, and then we entered the bar that had been filled with a Smokey haze. "Welcome to the Muddy Rudder bar" the bartender told us.

"give me and the boy scotch on rocks" Jericho yelled as we sat down on the bar stools.

As the bartender was pouring the drinks I absorbed the atmosphere in the room. At one booth I could see an old man wearing a fedora smoking a tobacco pipe, in another I could see two men playing cards with caps stacked by each man on the table, and then I looked at the booth in the back corner of the bar, there sat a beautiful well figured red headed women, she looked to be in her early to mid twenties. She had a leather jacket on with jeans that had tears in them, they were most likely pre-war. We locked eye contact and then she grinned with her beautiful face, this made me grin too. She lifted her hand with one finger and did the come hither motion in a seductive manner. In a trance like state I got up and went right to her and sat down across the table from her. "well hello there, what's your name?" she said slowly in her beautiful voice.

"It's Talos, and yours?" I said while trying to have a confident looking face.

"What a strange name Talos, but it's nice to meet you my name is Susan" she said while grinning again.

Then she looked forward passed me and slightly up, just then a hand grabbed my shoulder "woh woh you don't want to get involved with this train wreck kid, she is trouble and has it all written all over her face" Jericho said to me as he stared at Susan.

"Now who are you calling a train wreck you low life scum, I for one am not a train wreck I am a proper women, you on the other hand I could call a train wreck" Susan said to Jericho as she had an angry looking face.

I then realized that these two had known each other. Apparently Susan used to be a prostitute at Moriarty's Saloon a few years back before Nova replaced her. I didn't want to waste my time with her so we drank up and left, Jericho went to go rent a room for each of us. After all of the trouble I had been through I just wanted to fall asleep, and fall asleep I did.

The next morning I woke up and got dressed, I walked in the inn lobby and there was some coffee, I drank some. After drinking two cups I went to find Lucas and Jericho, they were talking to some of the rivet city guards with Hopkins and briefing them on their new mission that was ahead of them, Hopkins started. "Ok boys yesterday three men have confirmed the rumors about Megaton, and these men need our help to take it back from those raider scum. The mayor of megaton and I have come to an agreement that would save us caps and bring more supplies this way, thus I have agreed for you men to aid these men to take back Megaton. That is all" Hopkins pronounced to the Rivet city guards.

All I could hear was the guards rabble on how this was not fair and that Megaton should have to protect itself, then Hopkins threatened all of the guards "now you listen here! I will fire all of whom that don't follow my orders, I can easily replace you and have you thrown in the wasteland with only the clothes on your backs" Hopkins angrily yelled.

The guards then stopped to speak and looked as if they were scared to say anything at all. "we will head out at noon, so make sure you have enough food and water to make the trip, we are going to attack at nightfall and get them with the element of surprise" Lucas said as he stepped in front of Hopkins.

I went to buy some supplies and ammo in the market area of the ship a few minutes after Lucas and Hopkins spoke, there were people all over the ship whispering to each other about the plan to get back Megaton. When I arrived to the trader named Flak I had asked for some assault rifle ammunition and some food and water. "is this for tonight's surprise attack? If so I can give you something that will give you an advantage over everyone" Flak said to me eagerly.

"And what would it be?" I said in a curious manner.

"its called a stealth boy, once you activate it you'll become invisible. This will allow you to sneak up on any enemy undetected, but remember you can only use it once and then it is as good as dirt" Flak explained to me.

"Hmmm" I thought out loud.

"Well?" flak asked.

"Yeah sure but how long will it last, I don't want to all of a sudden become visible at the worst possible time" I said.

"Only two minutes, so make sure you plan on what you want to do before you do it. Or you can just be fast and sweep in and kill all the enemies and be done within two minutes" said as I was pulling out my caps.

I paid him and then walked out of the market area; I met up with the posse. We walked a different way than we came, apparently it was a safer route according to one of the guards. As the sun set I could begin to see Megaton on the horizon. When we had arrived to Springvale, which is only about half a mile from Megaton Lucas had everyone stop and hide in a nearby house. "I wanted to stop here so I can go into more detail about the plan and so no one would see us and go back and warm the raiders over in Megaton. Ok first off I want to wait until it's about eleven, because the raiders will be either asleep or most likely drunk and more easily attacked. So first off I will have two of you men go survey Megaton and tell me where there are people and weak points of entry. Secondly when I find that out I will tell all of you and then some of you will surround the town and the rest of us will breach and kill whoever is inside the town. Am I clear?" Lucas said to everyone, he nodded at two men that he must have spoken to earlier and they left the house to survey Megaton.

We had all waited for a couple of hours before the two men had came back. "ok good news everyone there is a lot of weaknesses there, almost all of the raiders are either high off their minds or drunk, so this shall be fairly easy" one of the men spoke with confidence and a smile.

"ok good now let's head out with phase two" Lucas said as he waved his arm by the door signaling the men to get out of the house.

We had walked and as we were close to megaton five men went to their positions to surround megaton, I made sure my gun was loaded and cocked it. "are you ready for this kid?" Jericho said as we walked.

"Well of course I am, raiders are easy to kill. They're sloppy and uncoordinated" I said while looking at megaton.

I could hear screaming and laughing coming from behind the walls of the town, so knew there that we had the element of surprise. The gate to the town wasn't even closed all of the way. We kicked the door open to find raiders all over the place and stumbling some hade needles stuck in their arms. One of the Rivet city guards opened fire and that set off a chain reaction, all of the other guards started to fire their guns into the town killing any raider that was in sight. I could hear screaming and shouting for some of them to grab their guns. And that was when things started to get bad on our side. Suddenly the three Rivet city guards exploded in front of me, also I was thrown back by the explosion. I could see who did this, it was a female raider with a shoulder mounted rocket launcher. "you bitch! You killed my brother!" one of the Guards yelled in a crying tone.

He shot at her and finally killed her, this had distracted us and then I could see about ten raiders run out of Moriarty's saloon they began to fire, killing two guards. We took cover behind a steel wall, I could see fear in everyones eyes. I then realized Jericho wasn't anywhere to be found, then I could hear "fuck yeah!"

It was Jericho, he was on top of a building mowing down raiders with a mini-gun. He didn't know there was some raiders sneaking up on him from the side of the building where he couldn't see them. He was shot in the legs, he fell and hit the ground. He was still alive, but barely. He was then surrounded by at least six raiders. I felt so helpless, I couldn't get a clear shot because of the raiders that were by moriarty's saloon. He winked at me and I could see him pull a pin off a grenade, the next thing I knew there was red mist and body parts flying everywhere, where just only a few seconds before laid Jericho. After that I was in a rage, I activated my stealth boy. I ran to the men that were shooting at the men and killed all of them with my assault rifle. Afterwards everyone cleared out the town of raiders.

We all then settled and checked every house and building for any surviving raiders, the ones that were alive we took prisoner. "good job boy, it's just too dam bad that Jericho died, ill have these men take the bodies out and have others inform the wasteland that Megaton is once again safe again. Also there will be some guards here until we have our town stable again" Lucas said.

"ok good, and ill stay here too until things are running smooth here" I told Lucas while shaking his hand.

As I was shaking his hand I noticed at the corner of my eye a flash, and heard a bang and then felt Lucas's hand get limp. He was shot by a raider that was hiding. The raider was killed in an instant after the gunshot. I looked at Lucas "Talos, oh god it hurts! I don't think ill make it. I can trust you and I can tell that you have honor and respect" Lucas struggled to say as he squeezed his chest where he was shot.

"now Megaton is going to need someone to watch over it and make sure something like this never happens again" Lucas said as he pulled off his sheriff badge.

He gave it to me and said "wear it with pride"

A minute later he died from his wound, I then pinned the badge on my leather jacket. "what do we do now sir" one of the guards said in a confused voice.

"We do what he ordered" I said as I put my aviator shades on.

One thing I know from this experience is that you should never forget those who you most take for granted, they might just get killed one day.