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"When I look up, I see people cashing in. I don't see heaven, or saints or angels. I see people cashing in on every decent impulse and human tragedy." –Joseph Heller, Catch-22.
Chapter 4: Mu (Vox Nihili)
I woke up suddenly in the darkness, looking around the darkened room around me. What did I do to deserve this? Living like scum, though the Vault wasn't that much better. The wind was howling above my head; a constant reminder of what I had signed up for. The hazy mist must have blocked out any traces of hopeful light that might have tried to come down here. I sat there for a few moments, blankly staring at the grungy wall in front of me. God, I can't sleep tonight. I don't know what it is. I tried to focus on the peeling paint, the broken tiles, or some sort of insignificant detail, maybe to get my mind off or something…
FLASHBACK
"It's what you want it to be, but for the most part, its hell," we both stood there in shock. The static permeated throughout the stale air. It stopped a few seconds later. We would never forget that horrible voice. That low, raspy tone; like someone's windpipe and larynx turned to sandpaper. I ejected the tape and replaced it with the Overseer's Data and put the Pip-Boy on standby. It's good thing it can recharge its own batteries with its miniature motor in there, that's all I knew about it. Frankly, I wouldn't want to tamper with it; if it still worked, it isn't broken and doesn't need to be fixed.
"I sure hope as hell you're not telling me not to put that tape back," I looked over toward the closed shower room door. Getting up on my ass just to put a stupid tape back was not something I was looking forward to do.
"Alright, fine. I'm thinking we'll need it anyway," she sighed in defeat.
"Glad to see you still have a bit of common sense, Megan," I smirked a bit. Winner her arguments seemed to be the most satisfying thing.
"Shut up."
"Where is this 'Smiling Buddha' place?" I leaned back into the wall. I tried to find an answer from the dim stars above my head. A light breeze howled through the place, trying to confusingly tell me where to go. Our maps were worthless, our data could be wrong, and who knows what kind of place the wasteland is? Hell, I don't even know how far away we're from the Capital Wasteland, it could be a few miles, it could be hundreds, or thousands of miles away. That's hard to fathom. I sighed at… well, I don't know; I sighed at nothing. That's really crazy, I'm sighing at nothing.
I laughed a bit, I don't know why. It seems odd to be laughing in this decrepit ruin, when the even the place I sit on is hostile to me.
"What's so funny, Todd?" Megan wondered as she sat down next to me, joining me in my stargazing.
"Could you have ever imagined our lives to have been so different so soon?" I mumbled blankly.
"Since when were you ever a deep thinker?"
"Since right now if that counts," I said sarcastically. "I'm sure as hell didn't think I was going to die outside the vault."
"I was just teasing, Todd. Geez," she pouted.
"Well, would've you liked to have been the Vault's pleasure worker?" I asked seriously.
"Of course not, Todd," she shook her head. "I probably wouldn't have been the entire Vault's pleasure worker. Think more specific, like the Overseer's bitch or something." She sighed; it was probably uncomfortable bringing up that topic. I would have freaked out if I was in that position, taking garbage duty over working for them any day.
"Oh, sorry for bringing that up…"
"Don't worry about it; I'm just glad I'm not doing that again, ever," she had a sigh of relief on her face. "Why? What did they put down for you?" she questioned.
"Health Inspector," I shrugged. "As if my room was ever neat and tidy to begin with." The GOAT had a sadistic sense of humor, giving us jobs we both hated and knew we weren't good at. That didn't matter now, though I wondered if there was maybe some way we could earn something. Megan and I both had a few bottle caps between us. At least that could be traded for something, everything has its own value right?
I wanted to focus on something other than what my next plan of action for survival is. I tried looking up at the stars.
"Hey, Megan," I murmured blankly my eyes still skyward.
"Yeah?"
"You see those three bright stars?" I pointed up into the night sky.
"You mean the ones close together?" Megan wondered.
"Yeah, those."
"What about it?"
"Those are part of the constellation Orion, with those stars being Orion's belt."
"What the hell is Orion? And more importantly, where did you ever learn that?" she wondered in astonishment.
"Orion was a hunter in Greek mythology, threatened to kill every beast on Earth, but... I uhh…" I stammered, forgetting what I was going to say. I knew I couldn't memorize the entire story off the top of my head. That was a terrible execution.
"And?" Megan inquired suspiciously.
"Mother Earth objected and sent a giant scorpion to kill Orion. The creature succeeded, and after his death, the goddesses asked Zeus to place Orion among the constellations. Zeus consented and added the Scorpion to the heavens as well," I finished quickly glancing at my PIP-BOY to see if I got the details correctly. I hoped she didn't notice that.
"Well, obviously you didn't know that one off the top of your head," Megan saw through that, she must have seen me take a quick glance off my PIP-BOY. "C'mon Todd, where did you get that from?" she raised an eyebrow, looking at me like she knew I was cornered in a battle of logic.
I sighed in defeat, "I read that off the overseer's tape."
"You can't fool me Todd..."
END FLASHBACK
I turned my head back over a bit in the darkness, watching Megan's chest rise and fall with the rhythms of her breathing. She was fast asleep on that filthy mattress and I could not resist that fragile moment of peace. Had I been alone in this, my first step was to probably gnash the bastard's head open with whatever what was in my hand or close to it. But this was Megan; I had to remind myself, because I didn't want to admit too much that we were, in fact, a team. I had to get my priorities straight, I just couldn't blow anybody's head off without thinking.
I dragged myself over to Megan's sleeping figure, somehow bringing into perspective of what I could lose in this high-stakes wasteland, subconsciously running my left hand over her forehead. Not knowing how long I did it for, I took a few shallow breaths. It seemed to put mind at ease for a bit.
The moment I looked down though, I saw Megan smiling at me in her sleep, her closed eyes innocently looking at me. It took me a while to realize it, but I silently cursed myself. What the fuck am I doing? Had they been open, I would've gotten an earful. I slowly pulled my hand back and looked at it bizarrely for a while, trying to imagine the possible consequences and scenarios in my head. Maybe I over-reacted but I hoped Megan doesn't figure out it was me. As I went back to my sleeping spot on a nearly decayed locker room bench, I tried not to think about it
I took a shallow breath in and wondered if I could survive the next day. Sleep soon overtook me; I guess I'll find out later.
Morning couldn't come by soon enough after I fell asleep. The sunlight pierced into my eyes, I must have faced the wrong way. I held my arms up as my eyes slowly adjusted to this foreign feeling of light. I don't know what time it is and I honestly don't trust the time on my PIP-BOY at the moment, though by my reasoning, it's around six o'clock. Give or take one or two hours. Very crude reasoning, I know but it's the best I can do.
Thinking it could hold up under my shifting weight, I tried stretching out on the decaying locker bench. It suddenly snapped under me and my ass hit the floor. What a waste of a good sleeping spot, thought it was better than sleeping on the dirty ground. Radroaches could bite my face while sleeping on the ground.
"Ow…" I grumbled.
After recovering from that unintended fall, I was surprised Megan didn't wake up after all that. I want to get moving so we don't become an easy target and hopefully find that "Smiling Buddha" place while we're at it. I hope it wasn't too far of a walk. The more we were out there, the more we were walking targets.
"Hey, Megan," I shook her a bit to get her to wake up. "C'mon, wake up. We're moving outta this place."
"Nnhh! Go 'way Todd…" she softly moaned, turning back over on the mattress.
I sighed; there was only one way to do this. I ejected the Overseer's holotape and put in the dead guy's one into my PIP-BOY and went into the playback options…
Set playback speed: ~.75
Pitch change: -1.5
Volume change: +2
Play…
It sounded like a mess with the distorted voices, scratches, and pops everywhere. The best part was at the very end. Hell, it sounded ridiculous and it was beyond words to describe how messed up it sounded..
"AAHH!" Megan squealed, finally awake. Scared out of her mind, but awake.
"Too bad the PIP-BOY doesn't have a camera," I was close from outright laughter, enjoying the look of terror on her face. "That was freaking hilarious. Hahaha," I chuckled.
Megan's initial shock turned to anger as she looked at me with her ever-familiar, cross green eyes. She took a deep breath in then deeply sighed out. I was confused as she walked up to me and…
*SLAP*
"Ow!" Damn it.
"Todd, are you sure we're going in the right direction?" Megan groaned. That must have been the thousandth time I had heard that question while wandering around for a while. I didn't have a clue where we were going. Did we go North, South? I couldn't tell, it seemed like we going in all directions.
"Not really," I shrug my shoulders. "If you haven't noticed yet, we've been lost ever since we left the vault."
"Can you at least ask for directions?"
"Why?" I asked. "We'd probably get shot or kidnapped before we even get to directions."
"Still," she fussed. "It wouldn't hurt won't it?"
"But we're nearly there, why would we need to ask?"
She stepped right in front of me, forcing me to come to a halt. She couldn't believe it. "How the hell do you know, Todd?!" She looked at me flabbergasted.
"Look at the signs," I pointed ahead. A crude sign was erected with only the letters, "SB" on it with an arrow pointing, from what I could orient on my PIP-BOY, southward. It didn't say how much farther we had to travel, though I'm sure the letters stood for the "Smiling Buddha."
After about an hour in the wastes from when we left the abandoned Sports Center, we finally arrived at "Smiling Buddha". It looked like a mess really, like one of the colonial forts they taught us in our pre-war history class. A few layers of sheet metal were wrapped around the entire town for what little protection they could afford or find. I could probably poke my finger though the shanty walls; it definitely couldn't stop a bullet fired out of my piece. A towering ship's mast was clearly visible from the outside, complete with a miniature platform at the top. I couldn't tell who that person was, but he was watching our every move with a primitive telescope or something, keenly watching our actions. Freaky stuff.
It seemed unreal that we could even encounter people here, much less a town. I hoped it the "Smiling Buddha" was actually Springfield. No that's not it, Springvale. At least no one was shooting at us on sight when we approached; that was a relief. I thought firefights were inevitable here.
"Welcome to the Smiling Buddha Indian Restaurant!" a Protectron robot in a thick accent was there to greet us. "Processing… error: 0u2m341f1e… This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My rifle, without me, is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than any enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will."
"Okay," I raised an eyebrow. "That was random." I tried to receive a signal from robot's ID transponder from my PIP-BOY. It gave us a reading as "c$BJ8;z2=$1c(J Jayaraman." Funny name, wonder who made that up.
"error: 1nv411d473… Please tell your friends!"
"As if there are any friends I could make in this world," I muttered sarcastically to myself. How cute and naïve.
We made ourselves through the dilapidated gates of the Smiling Buddha. I wasn't expecting much, probably a few peddlers, a place to grab an irradiated bite to eat, and maybe sleep on a rotten mattress for a night. Sounds like fun, but before I could even decide what I wanted to do, I was greeted by a very friendly…
"Who the fuck are you two?"
"What the fuck?" I turned around. I was going to punch the person somewhere near the face but seeing an AK slung over his shoulder. A mismatched quilt of camouflage adorned his stocky, slightly tanned frame. He gently lowered his bush hat brow a bit, I couldn't tell if that was a greeting or if he was annoyed at something.
"I don' trust vaulties like yous," he rambled. "All you dickhead twerps think yous can run this place." I wanted to punch this guy so bad if there weren't any people in this place. "Hope yah take a digga by a mutie," he turned to exit. What an asshole. Trying to ask anybody about my dad's whereabouts is definitely a lost cause here. These people are dicks.
We tried to get a sense of the place. It seemed like the place had an eerie feeling about us, like we came from another part of the wasteland. That ship's mast in the middle of the town was an odd fixture here, not to mention a lunatic looking down on everyone with a telescope. A slight breeze kicked up a flurry of dust as we both made it toward a makeshift market built around the mast. I hope I could trade my useless junk for something infinitely more useful. We wandered around the stalls of poorly constructed shanties. God, they looked awful. They must be so strapped for resources that they made our Vault looked like a fucking opulent palace where we could sit around and jack off to our Victory Food. There was a lot of things from a bite up to bangs, shoe dusters to shit doctors, even a map trader, how convenient. Lots of options, lots of unnecessary decisions for me to make.
I walked up to the shack. It had a dingy purple sign that had "MAPA YAWK'S" strung together of varying sizes, shapes, and colors.
"Name's Burt Yawkey," he rubbed his long, blonde hair back with his grimy-looking fingers. "Owner of Mapa Yawk's. What yah want?"
"You buy maps?" I enquired.
"You provide maps, I provide the stashers," he cracked a small smile.
"What are stashers?" I looked at him puzzled.
He looked at us shocked with his brown eyes, "You people can't be THAT new. Sure I've seen pretty green people from time to time but you's can't be that new."
"Unfortunately, we are," I shrugged my shoulders. Yep, brand fucking new! How about that, full of snot up our noses and think we can take over the world.
He reached behind his ear, grabbing a circular piece of metal with twelve teeth on it. "See 'dis," he said, twirling it around, before setting it down on the corrugated metal counter. "Dis a star washer, or stasher. Use it to buy and sell all sorts of shit."
"Oh? why twelve?" I wondered, still looking at the gears with curiosity only a dog would love.
"Don't ask me," he shrugged. "Probably 'cause ghouls can't count to twelve, fucking dumbasses. But enough talk, what'cha trying to sell?"
I showed him my useless map of the Capital Wasteland on my PIP-BOY, thinking it couldn't be possibly worth anything. It's a load of crap right now, it shouldn't be worth anything, only a worthless stack of information that I ripped off free from the overseer. He got his revenge by leaving me with the most useless map in all of post-apocalyptic human history.
"Why don'tcha come 'round back?" he jerked his head a bit.
"Oh, alright," I said with a degree of nervousness. I told Megan to wait in front, just in case he might try something unexpected and we'd both be screwed. I made my way to back of the shack where we tried for a few minutes of exchanging conditions to make a deal. I had no choice; it was probably going the only offer I was going to get in this town of paranoid, mistrusting pricks. His stasher offer was lower than I expected, and I could not see an end in sight. Negotiating forever to make a deal was not an option.
"I'm sorry," I said apologetically. "I don't think I can agree to a deal."
"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure we can work out a deal, especially for false information."
"Like what?" I asked skeptically.
"Like this," he pulled out a rifle from a decayed, dirty wooden crate. It was definitely worn, it's wooden stock dull and old with the passage of time, the barrel had rust all over it, and the sights looked like it was going to snap at any second. To top it all off, it must have been wrapped in tape before, I saw the sticky, pale, tape residue left behind, which was probably duct tape. Someone was really that paranoid about having their rifle stolen while they slept to have it taped like that. I don't know if it could still even fire rounds or not; if the outside looked like crap, who knew what the internal functionality of this rifle looked like. I didn't want to think about it for too long, having a rifle that would blow up in my face.
"Hmm," I looked at it carefully. At least the bolt looked alright and it's badge of honor, a "WEATHERBY" label still visible. It was barely salvageable. "How much?"
"35 percent of the map." Woah, what was he asking? It was a pretty big map.
"It's a pretty big map you know, Burt. 25 percent?"
"How about 33? That rifle, a clip, and 25 stashers?
I thought it over for a moment, I didn't want to be giving out too much information or any possible clues about what could be found if we actually made it to the Capital Wasteland.
"How about 30? Rifle and stashers, Burt?"
"You know it's real picky about ammunition, you know? Pawnin' the ammo around here is not easy."
"I don't care. That's my final offer." So what if I couldn't find the extremely special ammunition? I could make things work.
"Alright," he shrugged his shoulders, lighting a cigarette. "Just plug it in there," he gestured over to a badly beat up IBM computer with a screen cracked in a million places, displaying the status update in barely legible English across its chartreuse screen. Someone must of had a bad day and took the stress out on the screen.
I connected my PIP-BOY up. I was really uneasy but it was a hard decision, a rifle and information. Right now, I have a wimpy arsenal; an N99 pistol made by the lowest bidder that just happened to survive a long time. I can't count on that piece of lucky junk forever. It would probably jam when I needed it the most.
New hardware recognized, initializing CPM-86 v3.21…
Hopefully not a virus. I didn't trust this computer hooking up to my PIP-BOY one bit.
Initiated! Please type in a command. Loading...
P: Toggle Option /find
Scanning… file found! Please type in a valid command for docx Type in ? for a list of valid commands.
Initiate sbs copy /r 30%
Selecting 30/100 data ratio: transferring to host…
After the a few minutes, the transfer was complete. Thankfully Burt honored his end of the deal, giving me the Weatherby rifle with some stashers. Though I didn't care to think what kind of consequences would ensue from me being the source of false information, I'm sure Megan would have thought otherwise if she was standing next to me. After seeing me loot a dead body, she'd be really pissed off at me spreading all this crap information across this wasteland. Speaking of Megan, I said my goodbyes with my new rifle strapped over my back, keen on rejoining Megan and ditching this guy who would instantly drool over my contributions.
"Oh, there you are," she said as she recognized me. "How did the chat go?"
"Alright I guess," I shrugged casually.
"Pfft, yeah. I guess it's 'Alright, I guess' scoring something good," she said, tugging my jumpsuit a bit.
"Well, I can't just point it randomly around here without expecting to be shot. I'll show it to you later."
"Yeah, you're right," she agreed. "Let's find someplace to eat!"
"I'd rather find a room first," I grumbled, still kind of weary from wandering the wastes.
" C'mon Todd, you're no fun!" she teased me.
"There's usually a place to grab a bite near a place to sleep, lets go."
After wandering through the Smiling Buddha a little bit, we found an inn of some sorts called Antimony's. It was in decent shape, it didn't look too bad considering the number of shoddy buildings surrounding it. I was only there to get a room and maybe grab a snack, not to strike up a conversation over where my dad was. This town is really xenophobic as is already, I don't know if it's my looks or what that caused mostly everyone to look at me with suspicion. They'd probably give me a crap answer or try to claim some sort of bullshit ransom on me; like I could deal with both anyway.
I purchased a room for the both of us as well as a bit of food from the stalls around here that could last us a few days provided we didn't eat 3 meals a day. At least the owner didn't treat us like foreign mice or something, like most of the assholes in this place. That was a relief; I got to get her name later, just for business sake.
Megan was lying on the bed she claimed when she first got in, eating a stick with some sort of meat on it. I couldn't tell what it was. As for me, I ate into what was supposed to be fish curry with, "Pineapples and sea sponges added in just for sheer disparity and randomness!" as I combed through the Overseer's tape looking for any data that I might have overlooked. It's probably best to know which kind of fauna that would love to have us for dinner are encountered here too.
"I'm a soldier, значит я, И ответчик и судья" Oh, and that too.
I looked over more the information, trying to get a sense of how stupid I was in my previous assumption of only have to encounter people with basic body armor and pistols like ours anywhere at the very most. Oh well, nothing much I can do about it now. There was no way I was backtracking to the Vault. My information browsing was interrupted as I heard a bit of a commotion coming from outside our room. Thinking it was just a few random punks I didn't think too highly of it, but I got up and opened the room door just a crack and checked anyway. It's a good thing I checked, because I saw out of all people in this shelled out world, it had to be the Overseer and a group of thugs. Absolutely lovely.
It couldn't have come at a worst time, I'm sure it's him. Who else would go to such length to try to reclaim precious vault dwellers squabbling out in the wasteland? I'm sure he wasn't here to play nice and allowing us to return to the vault freely. Oh nope, he'd love to make an example out of us on why you shouldn't leave the first place. I couldn't tell what they were armed with, but I'm sure it beat my wimpy arsenal of pistol and an unloaded rifle. I want to know how he got out without alerting the entire Vault that he was just going to step outside for some fresh air.
"What is it Todd?" Megan asked me inquisitively. Fuck! She was so close in giving away the both of us!
"Shh!" I hissed, muffling her with my hand. "You won't believe it, but I think that psycho son of a bitch is looking for us," I whispered.
She knew what I meant. Even though I didn't want to, I was prepared for a fight. It was only a matter of time, my first taste of wastelander combat. Either that, or well, things could be worse.
I'll have to see about that. Wish me luck.
TO BE CONTINUED…
A/N: The Smiling Buddha
The Smiling Buddha was the code name the first nuclear test explosion by India. I'll quote this from wikipedia "It was also the first confirmed nuclear test by a nation outside the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council [US, Russia, UK, France, China] having been developed and executed with no foreign help or assistance." The location of the Smiling Buddha is located near the present day city Arlington, Massachusetts, roughly six miles from Boston. Initially, it would be largely unaffected by the combined nuclear strike but has the Wasteland slowly turned to dust, erosion would take care of the rest.
I want to thank, Argente for reviewing, zgreece for faving, alerting, and suggesting things to be put in, gdogg66 and rmctagg09 for the alerts with a bigger thanks to FireKunai for the review and a shout-out in her story, The Wayward Soldier. As always please read and review!