Hunting Grounds
The alarm on her Pip Boy went off. The radio station was set to the Enclave and one of its German hymns
The Hunter moaned as she sat up in the abandoned bed.
Ugh… My bones feel like they haven't moved for twenty years…
She groaned as she remembered she was short on supplies. She hated having to make her way through the Vault's tunnels and back up to the surface. She had as much disdain for that as a kid not wanting to go to school. But it was either get out and get food, or starvation.
Maybe I'll find some snack cakes this time. Or, better yet, maybe some giant mole rats.
Fully clothed, she got her boots on, grabbed her gun, and made her way through the halls and up the various flights of stairs.
The place was drab and rusty, still with furniture and the like in shambles and various papers littering the floor. She had been living there a while, a few years at least. She could make time to tidy up a bit. But what for? It's not like she was ever going to have guests around here. Not to mention the Vault was so expansive, as if it could ever be pristine if she tried.
She stepped out through the Vault's main entrance and kicked aside a tin can. As long as she could make her way through it she should be fine.
Once outside, the Hunter trekked across the barren, grassless plain, surveying her surroundings. But as soon as her eye caught the shape of some kind of structure she kneeled on the ground like a lion trying to conceal itself in tall grass.
A charred skeleton of a house up ahead, decorated with chains and body parts on hooks, and other such gruesome trinkets.
The Hunter could see the armored people who no doubt cultivated those remains of a shelter. Raiders, with their ridiculous haircuts and spiked armor that only served to cover the lower halves of their bodies, leaving their shoulders and heads completely vulnerable. As usual, there was only three of them. They always come in threes.
Dirty savages… the Hunter thought. They kill not out of survival but for the sheer fun of it. She lied flat on the ground and reached for her hunting rifle. A wicked grin curled on her face. Well, I can play that game, too…
She pulled the trigger and soon the first Raider's head was blown into chunks of bone and blood.
Now that's odd. I'm quite certain these bullets aren't explosive…
Before the second Raider, a female with punk hair, could figure out where that shot had come from she got a bullet right between the eyes. The third one had spotted the Hunter, and just as he grabbed for his knife and started running in the Hunter's direction he got shot in the thigh.
That ought to slow him down, the Hunter thought as she reloaded.
The Raider barely had time to decide if he should run for it or kill the assailant, because the millisecond that he realized he was in a losing battle his eye had been shot out.
The Hunter let out a satisfied sigh. "My bullet punishes all without distinction."