Fallout 4: The Sole Survivor
Chapter 3
The New World

Every shudder and bump the elevator made sent Nora's heart racing, worried that any moment her hard won freedom might be taken away. Now that the prospect of freedom was right before her, she knew the thought of going back into the cold, damp dark underground silent bunker would haunt the edges of her mind for a long time. Don't think, don't remember what lies beneath. You're alive, Nora, You're ALIVE!

She knew her impatience made everything seem slower; an endless journey through a black hole cut in the crust of the earth with only the safety lights to illuminate the darkness. She could feel her ears pop from the sudden rise in elevation. This was taking too long! The clammy cold made her vault suit stick to her back. Maybe she would be trapped forever in this stupid elevator, immobile in darkness. Nora didn't think she could stand it for another second, could feel the panic, the sob rising in her throat-

Light!

Blinding, searing light came so suddenly upon her Nora gasped deep in her throat, almost choking on the clean, clear air that suddenly filled her lungs. The safety cage of the emergency elevator slowed, the hydraulics hissing as it came to a smooth stop.

Tears streamed down Nora's eyes, unaccustomed to the blazing brightness after having lived in semi-darkness for so long. Hand clasping a metal rail, she wiped away the wetness, waiting for the blurred landscape before her to come into focus.

This is the new world.

For a moment Nora stood stock still, confused. It was… the same. Those last chaotic moments before the bombs fell, when Nate clasped her and Shaun close to him as they made the mad dash for the platform, it hadn't given Nora much time to take in the surrounds.

But…

Yes, those shipping containers were there… and the makeshift platform with the Vault controls, the metal crane and beyond that….

How much time had passed since she had been frozen?

Nora stepped off the platform and simply looked. Clearly a great force had swept tree, container and debris alike violently towards the mountains as though a great hand had pushed them all down. She couldn't imagine how much energy it took to upend a bulldozer but it there it lie on it's back as though it were a gutted animal.

It took a moment to realize what the ringing sound in the back of her head was; it was silence.

True silence. No traffic, airplanes, human noise or even birdsong. It was disquieting.

A breeze gently rustled the vegetation that had taken over the site and the metal of the platform that overlooked the Vault 111 entrance groaned musically. There was the flutter of wings; strange misshapen black birds rose silently into the air and landed not twenty feet away in the dead branches of a tree. They pranced uneasily, jostling for position, but made no sound but for the clatter of wings.

Not all was dead then.

Cautiously Nora tested her weight against the steps and pushed through over grown creeping vines blocking the doorway of the tiny enclosure.

More jumbled masses of bones, or what was left of them; years of weathering had swept away most of the remains, except for a few unidentified fragments and a partial foot.

A cursory search added a few more rounds and a small medical kit that crumbled when Nora picked it up. She blew away dirt and wiped a thumb across the cold metal tube that read 'Stimpak Health Dispenser'. The medical paraphernalia was welcome and familiar – her own office had no less than two medical kits that had a '500 year guarantee' by Lee Rapid Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest manufacturing companies in the West.

Nora remembered a contact who had regular dealings with the medical staff's judicial needs. Apparently, not unsurprisingly, to remain ahead of the competition there had been experimental and dangerous trials that hadn't always ended well and lawsuits were aplenty.

Rising to her feet Nora caught a glimpse out the blown out window to the south side and gasped.

There were structures in the distance, Sanctuary Hills still stood!

Ignoring the squealing protest of the metal beneath her feet, Nora flung herself down the stairs and went home.

Retracing her steps down the path was a surreal and dizzying experience, almost as bad as the day she was torn from her home. The twisted, gnarled trees were as remembered but she had to fight massive and overgrown bushes, pushing around and past rock and boulder that had been uplifted and flung into the walkway.

Missing a step landed her foot into one of the many estuaries of the great Charles River and Nora jumped back, startled by the sudden desperate ticking sound coming the Pipboy on her arm.

It was going wild and almost sounded like…

Flipping between Location and Status she found a tiny bar that was red with radiation. Of course, that would make sense – there was a built in Geiger counter that was reacting to the levels of radiation in the river. From the readout it was low enough to not be immediately harmful but Nora stepped away all the same. Well, that answered the question whether or not the radiation levels were survivable.

She traced her steps downstream, carefully navigating stone and flowing water, taking note of the strange plants that were like a giant blood red water lily. It was beautiful and alien; great crimson leaves threaded with yellow veins. Nothing like that had existed when she lived in Sanctuary Hills. Had every grown in size? First those cockroaches and now a plant that looked like it belonged in the middle of a jungle.

It took a few long moments to adjust her brain to what she was looking at. Sanctuary Hills stretched before Nora, scoured, derelict, dilapidated. Completely abandoned.

Nora's heart sped up, unsettled by the complete lack of any life, anywhere. Oh God, I hope I'm not the only person out here.

The homes were gutted, skeletal remains and a few had completely collapsed in on itself. Rough vegetation and taken over most of paved roads, dotted here and there by streetlamps that stood out like leafless trees.

Nora made slow progress, trying to ignore the tightness of her throat, the rising terror of being completely out of her depth.

It was an eerie homage to the day the world ended; she could see furniture, television sets, standing exactly where they had been the day the entire neighborhood had run to the Vault.

Cars were still parked underneath carports, though through the passage of time the older models were rusted out lumps of metal, while the newer fusion-run automobiles seemed peculiarly untouched. There was even what looked like the half disintegrated body of a lawnmower abandoned in a sea of waist high grass.

As Nora stood considering the Callahan's residence and if it were structurally sound enough for her to perhaps make a shelter out of she became aware of faint sound.

It hadn't been audible at first, over the rustling of wind moving through the abandoned neighborhood but faintly… something mechanical and high pitched.

It sounded like someone trimming the hedges.

The ludicrousness of the comparison made Nora involuntarily snort as she sought out the source of the noise. Gun firmly in hand she crept along the side of the house, and gaped.

"Codsworth!"

Nora could hardly believe what she was looking at, but it was her propane propelled floating ball of a robotic butler – trimming a rampantly overgrown hedge that all but swallowed up the sidewalk and… her and Nate's home. She was home.

The robot propelled itself around and Codsworth's eyestalks rotated, almost as though confused.

"Welcome to our happy home, Mum. Can I get you a drink?"

"No, Codsworth – it's me. It's Nora, don't you-"

"Welcome to our happy home, Mum, Can I get you a drink?"

The robot didn't bother to wait for an answer before he went back to his hopeless task of maintaining the wild shrubbery. In a way, Nora supposed it made sense – if one was to assume it had been, oh God what- thirty years? Fifty? since the bombs had dropped and he had been trying to maintain a broken home, isolated with no one to maintain him…

A well of frustration rose up in Nora.

"Goddammit!"

She struck her foot against the side of a rusted mailbox that had fallen to the ground and jumped guiltily as it ricocheted off the dilapidated side of the house and hit Codsworth square in the back of his head, spinning him around.

"Welcome to our- ou-our, a drink?"

"Oh, shit, sorry Codsworth."

"Would you-you…. Mum? Is that… you?"


"Say it again, Codsworth."

"Mum, really…"

"Please, Codsworth."

"Very well, Mum. You and Sir and young Shaun dashed to the Vault a little over two hundred and ten years ago and I have tried my best, Mum, my very best to maintain in your absence but nothing gets nuclear fallout from vinyl wood, nothing!"

Nora sat on the weathered cement steps to her home and rubbed her face, wondering if she pressed hard enough into her throbbing temples she could make the headache go away. Two hundred years. It seemed impossible – a real life Rip Van Wrinkle but instead of crusty bearded old drunken men and waking up twenty years in the future it was a deeply unethical highly experimental cryogenic experimentation that put her right in the middle of a world she knew nothing about.

"They're… they are really gone, aren't they, Mum?'

She looked up in surprise; the anguish was true in his voice. Codsworth, the robotic butler whose loyalty was immovable enough to keep him tethered to his masters home for two centuries. How undeserving she felt of such faithfulness.

Gently she tweaked one of his eyestalks.

"I'm here, Codsworth, and I am going to find Shaun."

"What about Concord, Mum? Plenty of people there. Last I checked, they only pummeled me with sticks a few times before I had to run back ho-"

"What!? You've seen people!?"

Nora jumped up, clasping the rounded sides of Codsworth, whose appendages wriggled with anxiety.

"Yes, of course, Mum! They've always been here, in one form or another, if you would please-"

"Sorry, Codsworth."

Nora let go of him and started pacing.

"I have to go. I have to start looking, hell, I have to find out, well, everything I suppose. How did they survive? Where do they live? How do they live out here – there's nothing but irradiated water and a bunch of weird plants! "

"May I humbly suggest, Mum, that you keep your firearm close at hand. I am very sorry to inform you it is not a nice world."

Nora pushed the memory of ice and blood aside and replied,

"I know."

The cold hardness in her voice made Codsworth's eye stalks rotate with nervousness.

"I – I am ashamed to admit, Mum, that I would not be much use outside of Sanctuary Hills. I will stay here and maintain in your absence, as I have done in the past. You.. you will come back, won't you?"

Nora gathered her small satchel and checked the gun.

"Yes, Codsworth. I will be back, I promise."


It was almost like navigating a room in the dark – bumping along the edges of familiar things while mostly being lost in the dark. Technically, Nora knew where she was going – outside of Sanctuary Hills was the I-93 North West that led to Concord, the closest neighboring town. It would be a bit of a walk but it could be done within a day with luck. She could perhaps expect to reach it by nightfall if she kept a good pace and didn't run into any trouble.

It was with some surprise that Nora realized that she felt… fine. None of the fatigue or illness she had felt in those first days out of the frozen metal coffin in the cryogenic facility.

The day was long, hot and dusty. And strange. So quiet, so isolated, it was like being on the surface of the moon; still, covered by a fine dust, familiar yet so alien.

Even with the expansive amount of time that had passed everything was the same. Moved a few hundred yards by the force of the atom bomb, but like a strange washed out snapshot. Nora was following the broken pieces of what was left of the highway. Nature had already taken back large expanses of it; the yellow divider line was difficult to make out through the broken rubble and tawny plants.

Beside her was an unexpected and welcome surprise. Not far from Sanctuary Hills was the burnt out remains of one of the numerous Red Rocket refueling stations that should have been empty but for a large, beautiful German Sheppard dog.

Nora had almost shot the poor thing, until he had rolled over onto his back, tongue lolling and grinned at her. It didn't take long to see that he was a domestic trained animal; the bandana tied around his neck said he had an owner, once, and he had no fear or qualms about being close to Nora. In fact, it was all she could do to keep him from washing her with his tongue. Where, how and why he had been at the Red Rocket was pushed to the back of her mind. Nora selfishly didn't bother to look for anyone; she was starved of any connection to the living and felt her throat tighten with unshed tears as the dog gladly followed her as she set out towards Concord. He seemed just as happy to be with her as she was with him.

It eased her heart, some. She wasn't alone and this dog could defend himself and her better than she could, at the moment. Apparently the cockroaches weren't the only insects that had been mutated to frightening proportions and her companion was all too eager to leap into the air like a furry missile to take down a monster dragonfly the size of a large toy airplane.

Ignoring the joyful crunching noises behind her Nora surveyed the scattered and bleak landscape. They weren't far from Concord now; she could see the dark silhouetted shapes of structures against the dying sun.

No lights, no movement. Her stomach sank.

Evening had almost shrouded everything in shadow by the time Nora and the dog crept beyond the suburbs of broken, empty homes. The small city hadn't fared much better over the centuries; while most of the structures had survived they were sunken, unstable. The slight wind whistled through the dead silence, little groans of metal and settling debris made her jumpy and on edge. Her companion felt the tension too- his ears were alert, twitching with every small noise.

Large rusted out cars lay haphazardly in the road, flung over like a giant toddler had grown tired of them and hurled them against buildings, or lie forlornly in the middle of the broken street. Little pinpricks of light blinked to life; to Nora's astonishment the streetlamps still functioned. Such a strange thing to think the fusion powered electricity still worked, after all this time. It didn't help the décor much; everything still looked hollowed and worn, made that much more eerie by the stark shadows the sudden brightness caused.

It wasn't until she was almost to the center of Concord before she realized that she recognized she was heading towards the historic quarter (though one must suppose that the entire city is now a historic quarter). Wayward memories floated to the surface of her mind. Fallon's Department Store, yes, Nora had just returned a dress that had loose stitching and had fallen open on the side. Nate had found her peek-a-boo outfit hilarious and couldn't resist poking a finger through the hole, tickling her until she had cried…

The dog wound his way around Nora, whining and licking her wet face.

Nora wondered how long the ghost of her memories were going to haunt her in this new world. Not her world, not yet. Not while the memory of blood was still fresh.

Rising out of the darkened sky was a familiar landmark – the rising spire of a church, which must mean the Museum of Freedom must be a few blocks ahead of her.

Out of the silent night gunshots rang out, startling Nora, making her jump and setting her heart racing.

It was as though that single gunshot had been a signal for the night to light up in flashes of light, noise and screams. Yes, indeed, there were people here, and they seemed to be intent on recreating the war that had destroyed everything.

"No, dog-!"

Her companion slung himself low to the ground, teeth bared, ears back, and made a stealthy beeline for the commotion, sliding eel-like out of her grasp. Nora drew the pistol and, heart thumping painfully in her chest, followed.

He was much faster than she; barely ten steps and Nora heard an agonized scream and the furious barking of the dog. Terrified that she was about to lose her furry friend she launched herself running at a breakneck speed and rounded the corner of a brick building to see-

-to see blood and chaos. For a breathtaking and exhilarating moment she watched her companion in action. There was a perfect moment of stillness, perhaps exacerbated by adrenaline, fear and panic, that painted the scene before her like a still from a macabre horror film.

The man, who wore a strange and familiar uniform that lay crumped underneath a street lamp. Fusion generated light bright and clear as day illuminated the crimson pool of blood underneath him, smeared almost artistically across the white of the uniform, splashing out over the broken sidewalk before the door of the Museum of Freedom.

Her dog, ferocious, growling like a bear, like the three headed Cerebos of the underworld, jaws dripping in the blood of one of his attackers. Refusing to leave the fallen man, had he been his master, his only family in this harsh land?

The group of people who surrounded the fallen man, and her companion, all aggressive stances and dressed like… like the man who had held the gun to her husband's temple before pulling the trigger.

Mish-mashed pieces of armor, scraps of muddy colored clothing, heavy boots, spikes and guns. It was the eyes, though, the eyes that set the blood rushing in Nora's ears.

Demons. Monsters. Cold and black eyed and pitiless as the barrel of the gun that had destroyed her by taking that which was precious to her. There was a screaming roar in her head, blotting out sense and sound and blood, blood, blood, she wanted fucking blood.

Pain. Distant and coming closer.

Something had her ankle and Nora gasped, jerking as though cold water had been splashed on her face. She looked down.

The dog held on tightly to her ankle, whining in the back of his throat, sounding almost quizzical and worried. Everything.. ached. God! Her head was throbbing, her breath came in great gusty sobs, what… ?

Nora looked at her hand, which held the gun. The gun.. that was splashed liberally in blood. Her arms were coated with the substance too and all around her…

Someone whistled and without even realizing she whipped the pistol towards the sound before someone said,

"Whoa! Whoa there, I'm on your side! Trust me, after what I just saw I am definitely on your side."

On the balcony above her, above the entrance of the museum was a well-built man, leaning over looking at Nora as though he couldn't quite believe his eyes.

He had on the same strange uniform as the man who lay dead at her feet, that was like something out of a history museum. It was kind of a like a western duster, nearly reaching to his knees, with large over-sized lapels. Elbow length heavy-duty leather gloves and something that almost looked like a cravat around his throat topped with a tricorn hat. It tickled the back of her memory; Nora was certain she had seen something similar, somewhere.

He held a bizarre-looking rifle that was part sci-fi and part antique. The barrel glowed as though it had its very own fusion core in the center. Perhaps it did, she wished Nate were here to tell her.

"Hey, not to put too fine a point on it but I've got settlers inside, civilians! Decent folk who are about to get wiped out by more of those raiders. I… I need help. I need your help. Please."

It was all happening too fast, this wasn't how it was supposed to happen! Nora had come to Concord to seek help for her not… not play soldier for this man and a bunch of strangers. What could she do, she wasn't a fighter!

Yet, the carnage behind her said otherwise. Breathing deeply she asked,

"More are coming?"

"Yes! Please, help me! Take his laser musket; he won't be using it anymore. Hurry, we're on the top floor!"

He didn't wait for an answer but rushed back through the balcony doors and she was left alone with a choice.

Well. She had wanted to find people and she had found them. Her hands were shaking. Kneeling, she grasped the barrel of the long rifle that had fallen from the man's grasp, ignoring the blank opaque stare of the recently dead.

The dog barked loudly and wagged his tail, scratching at the door, as if he already knew her answer.

"What the hell, let's be heroes."

Nora slung the rifle over her shoulder and pushed the museum door open.