Fallout 4

You Are Not the One

The first thing I remember is the gunfire. No…that's not quite right. Before that I remember choking…smothering. I couldn't catch my breath and I was cold…so very cold. I woke up inside one of those damned tubes. Well, the tech had called them tubes. I thought of them as glass coffins. I remember the feeling of dread when the lid closed. 'Decontamination' they had said. Yeah, what a fucking joke.

So, I wake to the sound of gunfire coming from somewhere not too far away. I managed to get the tube open but my first step planted me square on my face. My muscles were so cold and weak that I could barely move. I was on the floor in the tube chamber, cold and weak and alone. What a way to start the day.

My name is…well, you can call me 'Smith.' It's been 200 years since anyone knew my name so why change now? I'm what the locals call a 'Vault-Dweller' but not in the usual sense. You see, I wasn't supposed to be in the vault. I'm getting ahead of myself so let me start at the beginning.

I grew up in a little suburb of Boston, a little place called Sanctuary Hills. Mom was a school teacher and dad worked at the local Corvega plant. I was a typical snot-nosed kid, only child so Mom and Dad spoiled me rotten. Right up until I got into trouble…real trouble I mean. I was in high school, hanging out with friends and trying to look cool when this girl from another school gives me the eye. One thing leads to another and a few months later she tells me we need to get married. Great…seventeen and I'm gonna be a daddy. I thought about it for all of half a minute and then made the fateful decision to run away and join the Army. Recruiting was legal at 17 back then, what with the war and everything, so off I went to avoid things at home. Never even saw my kid, now that I think on it.

All the old war movies say 'War is Hell'. They were wrong…Hell has got to be better than that was. There are a lot of lousy jobs in the Army but overall the worst is the Infantry, which is about all I was qualified for. All the time I was hiking those miles in Basic Training I kept thinking of my folks trying to tell me to get an education and 'better myself.' I watched the field techs driving around in jeeps, fixing shit, then heading back to base. Yeah…they had the life.

Have you ever been to Alaska? It's cold. When it's not cold, it's wet. So, I spent the next three years being cold, wet or both. The place was crawling with Chinese so there we were, fighting a land war against a tough enemy that never seemed to end. Oh, they got younger, after the veterans were killed off early in the war, but even the young ones were tough as Hell and very determined to place a bullet or bayonet roughly in the center of yours truly. I wasn't having any of that shit so I got very good at killing the enemy in as many ways as possible. I'll say one thing for combat; the idea of rank becomes a bit fuzzy. We had everyone from Sergeants to Colonels training us because they were short on instructors. I once got to hip-throw my Captain during Unarmed Combat. He told me not to hold back, so I didn't.

I was never terribly smart but apparently being sneaky, blowing things up and killing people all came easy to me. I was promoted three times and busted back down twice. I would have been busted a third time but there was something about saving a bird colonel's life or some shit. I wound up with a few shiny ribbons, a really small pension (wounded in battle three times!) and a ticket home. Back to Sanctuary Hills where I had grown up. Everyone who had known me was gone. My girl, my kid, even my folks. They had died in a car accident my first tour in Alaska so I came home to a house that had been paid for with life insurance and then promptly sealed up for two years. What is a veteran with three years in combat by the time he's 21 supposed to do with his life, you ask? Well, I don't know about you but I became a drug dealer.

They say 'War Never Changes.' I'll tell you something else that doesn't change and that's secrets. Every little community has them and the sweeter it all looks on the surface, the rottener it is underneath. I took the little bit of money I had left after mustering out and bought a few choice supplies and household chemicals. It's amazing what you can do with baking powder, detergent, heat and patience. It wasn't hard getting on the inside track in the community. You host a cookout, make sure a couple of folks have a few beers too many and the next thing you know, they're telling you all about their terrible jobs, horrible marriages and how the whole world is galloping straight to Hell. In circumstances like that, helping out with a few home-made pharmaceuticals is just being neighborly, right?

For those that have never dealt drugs for a living, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. You start with a little Pep, they call it Jet these days, to keep tired workers awake. Mix it with a little Stim and now you get a really good high and a mild numbness. Very euphoric. Great for husbands who don't think their wives are 'excited enough' any more. I gave out a couple of samples at the cookout and the next thing I know, I'm cooking 6 days a week to keep up with demand. Once the money started rolling in, I could buy the real thing from local suppliers, mark up the price and sell that too. Day Tripper was the favorite that year but I sold everything up to and including black market cigarettes. Whole world is going to shit and these folks found the money to buy drugs, booze and smokes. Go figure.

All this leads me up to the Vault and the day that things really went sideways. It was just another day for me except that my original still that I used for making moonshine conked out on me. I dragged it out the back door, cringing from the smell the whole way, and then went back inside to figure out how to get rid of the damned thing before someone realized what it was and called the cops. Then I heard a knock at the door. Shit! One of my neighbors was here for a pickup! I let him inside and we chatted for a minute while I put his order together. I had the radio on in the background and suddenly we heard the Emergency Broadcast thing screeching.

"Oh shit!" Miller said as we both turned towards the radio. The announcer was trying to stay calm but his voice was cracking as he read the reports of bombs hitting New York.

"I gotta get to the Vault!" Miller said as he snatched the paper sack full of drugs from my hand, threw a roll of bills at me and turned towards the door.

"You have a pass for the Vault?" I asked angrily as I grabbed him by his sweater. "How the fuck do you rate the Vault?"

"I helped build the thing!" he shouted as he struggled with me. "Please! I have to get my wife and kid from the school!"

"Where is it?" I demanded as I slammed him against the wall and braced my arm across his throat. He was a desk-jockey and I was a former grunt…there was no contest. "Where is the pass to get in?"

He fumbled with the lanyard around his neck and fished out a plastic card with his name, the names of his wife and daughter and his driver's license all tucked into a clear plastic envelope. I didn't even hesitate. I slammed his head through the wall separating my living room from my bathroom and he went limp. I snatched the lanyard from around his neck, stuffed my pockets with chems, money and a gold watch I'd taken in exchange for a really good night with a redhead and headed out the door. Everyone knew where the Vault was, the construction had taken years, so I just followed the rest of the running people.

Luckily, I knew one of the guys at the gate. I pushed my way through the crowd of people begging to be let in and caught my friend's eye. I passed a roll of c-notes to him through the fence as I made a big show of holding my Vault Tech ID over my head and he waved me through. Five grand for admission proved to be cheap, in the end.

I was standing on the platform when we all saw the flash. They sent the elevator down as the shock wave raced towards us. Everyone was crying and holding on to someone. I muttered a prayer…yeah, you heard me right, I prayed like I really meant it as the blast roared over our heads. Then the overhead door closed and the world was locked outside.

The techs inside were all scrambling around, trying to do in a few minutes' jobs they thought they'd have hours or days to do. Most people didn't make it in, what with five minutes between the first warning and the bombs hitting nearby. I waved my ID and they never even bothered to look at the picture. It said 'White, Male' and I was so that was enough given the circumstances.

Then the bullshit started. We all got a nice, new Vault suits and an escort to the 'decontamination tubes.' My gut told me not to get into that fucking thing but I was so stunned from what had happened I went in anyway. Then the timer counted down and I felt a cold like nothing I'd ever felt before. I dreamed, or at least I think I did, but then the next thing I remember was the smothering, the cold and the gunshots.