The ruins of Lexington retreated steadily, as Erin made her way step-by-step towards Boston. The wild dogs had been tenacious, but relatively simple to evade by running back through the post office and up, across the roofs. That horrible cage had served one final purpose as she had leapt off its side to reach the lip of the roof above. Once they couldn't follow her, Erin simply carefully made her way across the slopes and clambered down through a ruined home, onto the street once more. The brush had made Erin realise how vulnerable she was however, even with her new armour and Sturges' pistol. One starving dog, desperate enough to attack a human would have been bad enough, but a pack of three? She just couldn't face that many directions at once! She needed to be more alert to dangers, even free of the backstreets and ghoul-infested buildings of Lexington. Danger could be upon her at any moment! As if to cement her beliefs, the sound of an animal in distress reached Erin's ears. She immediately crouched, casting about for the source of the noise. Down the hill, just beneath the overpass, what looked like a grotesque, two-headed mutant cow, was writhing and pitching about. For a moment, Erin thought it must have been caught in another trap, but as she watched, a huge stinger arose from the dusty ground, quickly followed by an equally massive scorpion, its pincers clamped tight around the cow's foreleg. The stinger jabbed forward, two, three, four times, before the mutant cow finally grew still and the predator could eat. Erin gulped nervously and decided from that moment on, to stay on the roads…
Sticking to the roads proved to be harder than Erin expected however. She'd come this way several times herself, to get to the campus, but it had never been this rocky or hilly and the slopes had definitely not been so steep! Had the blasts been so great that they had smashed the ground even this far-? Where had the bomb even landed, come to that? She remembered glimpsing one detonate, before she and everyone else on that platform had ducked, or thrown themselves to the ground… Well at least after two centuries, the radiation should have almost totally faded. Erin shielded her eyes from the sun, as she peered at the Boston skyline. It didn't look like the city had been hit directly, at least? Suddenly, she blinked, as she realised she could see the silhouettes of men on the highway overpass and Erin pressed herself behind the rusted frame of a car that had long-ago been gutted by fire. She had to squint against the sun, but they all looked armed and with more than the shoddy pipe weapons the raiders had been. Could these be the gunners that Preston had mentioned had destroyed an entire town? It could be and with their vantage point, Erin could be easily picked off if she tried to test their friendliness. She decided to go around, crawling away and wishing her suit wasn't quite so blue, given how it stood out in the sparse green grass. For the first time as well, she was acutely aware of the curvature of her new behind… Even though she knew it wasn't anywhere near what she imagined, a part of her mind was convinced that her rounder cheeks may as well have had a target painted on them for any enterprising sniper.
The gathering darkness made Erin a harder target, as she slowly worked her way off the road (ever wary of something horrible clawing out of the dust) and then back south, but it did nothing to dispel her nerves. If anything, she was becoming ever more agitated. Every small sound was enough to make her freeze and wait, clutching her pistol and slowing her travel even more. By the time she had reached the road again, there was barely enough light to see by. There was no way she was going to make it to Cambridge that night, so she'd have to find shelter on the open road. The only question was where… As she sat behind the railing, Erin's alert ears picked up a heavy, regular thudding, getting gradually closer and closer. She shrank further into the darkness, hiding behind the remains of a streetlight on one side and the barrier on the other. Coming down the road towards her at a steady stride was something big, metal and with a swaying headlamp sweeping the road ahead. As it drew closer, Erin's jaw dropped. Power armour. Someone was wearing a full set of T-60 military power armour, still perfectly functional, despite two hundred years! The looming figure cut an intimidating sight in the dusk light, cradling a laser rifle in his hands and marching purposefully toward Cambridge with clearly no intention of stopping for the night.
As it neared Erin's hiding place, the armoured figure's tread abruptly stopped. Erin held her breath, afraid that any movement or sound at all would give her away as she tried her hardest to will herself invisible. The beam of the headlamp swung over the grass and dirt and metal as the evening insects chirped. Just as she couldn't hold it any longer, the stranger seemed to give up, turning and resuming its steady tread down the road. Erin slowly let out a sigh of relief and watched him go. He had an unfamiliar symbol on his chest that she caught a glimpse of as he turned – a sword over three gears and ringed by wings. He was probably part of some larger group, but if they had power armour, she was going to stay as far from them as possible, if there was even a chance they weren't friendly.
With the armoured titan safely a mile down the road, Erin stood and stretched, groaning and gritting her teeth. Despite being mostly healed, her leg was still sore after spending an entire day walking and so long curled into a ball. The light was well and truly gone now, but her Pip Boy screen made a great improvised flashlight as she searched for a place to safely sleep. She couldn't stay in the open, as even if she knew how to light a fire from scratch, the light would be seen from miles away and who even knew if mutated creatures even still feared fire? If the worst came to the worst, she could always try hiding inside one of the abandoned cars… The abrupt appearance of a truck from the gloom made Erin jump, almost as much as the leering grin of the skeletal driver leaning through the window. It was kind of amazing, in a morbid way, how well it was holding together after two hundred years… The trailer the unfortunate trucker had once been hauling however, was a greater godsend. Although it had long ago been pried open and anything of value hauled away, the shell still provided shelter from the weather and more importantly, from wild and hungry animals.
Erin crept inside the trailer, turning over a decaying cardboard box with her foot. A few insects and a scabrous-looking rat scuttled for cover, as she sighed and resigned herself to her temporary bedroom. If this kept up, she's just have to get used to the idea of living with a sore back. It wasn't as if she could carry a mattress with her everywhere she went, after all, but even a sleeping bag rather than these tattered curtains would be a godsend. Erin pushed the few remaining boxes out of the way (containing mostly stationary supplies, it seemed) and curled up, her makeshift blankets around her as she shut off her Pip Boy's light and closed her eyes. Sleep was elusive however and the cold, hard floor of the trailer uncomfortable. It was impossible not to compare then to now. A warm, soft bed, to a creaking trailer; a Salisbury steak meal or ready-made apple pie, to scavenged mystery meat and dirty water; friendly neighbours and bustling streets, to hiding from murderers and fleeing living corpses. Erin bit the inside of her cheek, as she trembled and tried to hold back the fresh sobs that had crept upon her in her miserable state, choking and coughing as her long minutes of wakefulness gave time for all the horrors of the last few days to close in on her again and that wasn't even touching on the echoing, nameless dread of two centuries of missed, post-apocalyptic history hanging over her and laughing like some cruel titan of myth. In the end, sleep at last came, but even that was plagued by fresh terrors, as the world burned black that was brilliantly bright and men drenched in blood and wearing leering smiles, raised hooks and knives and killed endlessly, their humanity sloughing from them like their skin until they were nothing but walking, rotting corpses that as one, set their sunken eyes on Erin, transfixing her as they advanced like jerky, remorseless corpse-puppets-!
Erin woke with a start and a scream that she couldn't tell was deemed or real. Her breath misted in front of her as she panted, clutching the blankets around her and silently affirming that she was awake and her dreams couldn't touch her. It was cold in a way that seeped through her blankets and even the insulated vault suit and settled right in her bones. She checked the green glow of her Pip Boy and sighed as it told her it was half-past just late enough to not bother going back to sleep and a quarter-to anything approaching an hour she'd like to be awake. Still, now she was awake (and the thought of retreating into a place where those dreams could reach her sent a reflexive flinch down her spine), she might as well start moving. Erin gathered her things and headed to the back of the truck, tugging at the door she had rolled down the night before. "Oh you have got to be kidding me," she muttered. She tugged a second time, then set her feet and heaved, applying all her new body's greater strength to the task and nearly straining something in her back. The roller door wouldn't budge. Of course. What a wonderful way to start the day. Erin sighed in exasperation and looked for another way out, quickly spotting a hatch in the roof that could be opened from the inside, presumably for when someone foolishly got themselves in the exact situation she had. She had to stand on tip-toe to pop the hatch open and then jump and cling on by her fingers to painstakingly pull herself up and out. As uncomfortable as it was to admit, every little challenge and difficulty she faced made Erin more and more aware that having a body that was actually somewhat athletic (and tall and attractive for that matter), was the only thing that had allowed her to stay alive in the post-apocalypse. As horrible as the thought of being changed without her knowledge was, she had to admit that in an odd way, whatever Vault-Tec had done to her had been a gift.
The world outside the trailer was cold and white. Thick fog clung to the land as if a cloud had fallen from the sky, shrouding the world in mystery and even seeming to muffle sounds in an insubstantial blanket. Erin slid down the side of the truck and peered around, closing her eyes and taking a long breath before opening them again. Like this, she could almost pretend that the world hadn't changed. The cars and shapes looming in the fog weren't wrecks and ruins; just quiet and still… It was a pleasant fantasy to indulge in as she resumed her lonely journey towards Boston. First however, she had to pass through Cambridge. Two centuries before, it had been a nice town, just over the river from Boston proper and home to the Commonwealth Institute of Technology. It had been a hell of a commute, but Erin had just finished her sophomore year there when everything went to hell. Nowadays, if the weather had been clearer, she probably could have seen the cracked ruin from where she stood on a slight hill.
The lurking horrors in Lexington had made Erin somewhat nervous about walking right into the middle of the town a second time, especially with her visibility so poor in the fog. Instead, she stuck to the edge of the town, trying to find a route that looked the clearest, even though after she crossed the river, she'd be even deeper into the heart of Boston and danger.
"How can anyone expect to live in a place like this?" Erin whimpered, peering into the obscuring whiteness. If her last encounter with the locals was anything to go by, then the only halfway civil people in the world were the ones she'd left behind back in Sanctuary… The electric buzz and flicker of a sign cut through her thoughts, causing her gaze to drift upwards. Neon tubes blinked in the shape of a green cross over the door to a shop, but the sign looked like it had been haphazardly fixed in place after the earlier one had been torn off. "A pharmacy? Maybe they'll have some antiseptic…" Erin blinked and shook herself as she realised she was talking to herself; it had just slipped out while she was distracted with worrying. Her grip on sanity seemed to be weakening worryingly, after all the stress.
The door to the pharmacy had long since lost any glass in its frame, as had its windows, but they had been replaced by nailed plywood. In one of the covered windows, someone had used white paint to splash broad letters on the boarding. 'Chems 4 sale. Thieves will be SHOT!' The warning gave Erin pause for a moment, before she gently pushed on the door. Whoever had painted the sign couldn't have survived long anyway-
"Huh? Hey, where'd you come from?"
Or maybe they had and were scrambling up from an old lawn chair, reaching for a shotgun and blinking blearily at Erin like she'd appeared out of thin air – that was possible too.
Erin flinched and held up her hands. She was caught in the open with no-where to run, so all she could really do was squeeze her eyes shut and wait for the shock. "I'm not a thief-!" she squeaked, amazed she wasn't tripping over her words in panic. "I-I just wanted to buy some medicine!"
"Not a-? Huh?" The man's shotgun slowed halfway to pointing square at Erin's chest. Its owner looked at least less savage than the raiders. He wore a threadbare, chequered shirt, patched many times over and over the years, while his pants were equally so ancient that any colour they once possessed had long since worn out. His black hair was a lank mess and dark stubble shaded the chin of a square face. "Then why're-? Oh! Oh right, a customer! Right…" The man's eyes kept slipping in and out of focus on Erin's face, idly gazing around the room before snapping back to her, as if he kept forgetting she existed. "Come on in, come on. We've got any kind of poison you wanna try, from jet to even a little psycho. 'Fact… Hold on a second." The man reached behind the counter and produced a small, cardboard box, shaking a paper packet from it. He picked a dull red pill from the paper and popped it into his mouth, swallowing and swigging from a hip flask before coughing and rasping harshly and shaking his head. "There we go. Much better! Sorry about that."
Erin recognised chalky red pills – the brain-enhancing drug 'mentats' had been a popular performance booster when she was at CIT, even if they had supposedly been restricted to prescription only… After the bombs fell however, she supposed such rules became even more ignored than they were in the dorms and bathrooms of the university. Still, seeing them taken so casually was just another small crack in her already fragile shell of familiarity.
"Nothing like a pick-me-up, am I right?" the man smiled, already looking more focused and alert. "Now how can I help you? Oh! The name's Oscar. I run the front of the store, while the others watch the road or take shifts out back."
"Ah- I'm Erin. Pleased to meet you." Erin offered her hand politely, relieved to at last meet someone outside Sanctuary, who wasn't immediately trying to kill her. Oscar's palm met hers with a solid smack as he grinned.
"Great stuff. So, what can I get for you today? You look like someone chasing a little mental boost, perhaps? Or maybe some buffout to keep everything fit and strong in the wild, woolly Commonwealth?"
"Uh-" Erin gulped, "Actually, I was just looking for some antiseptic, or maybe stimpaks?"
Oscar snorted, rolling his eyes. "Yeah, no. Listen girlie, this is a party shop, understand? We don't carry that lame-ass shit."
"But I thought this was a pharmacy?"
"It WAS a pharmacy," Oscar corrected her with a grin, holding up a finger to forestall argument. "We found it and figured, with all these raw chemicals lying around and our combined educations from all over, there's a hell of a market for something to take the edge off, right?"
"Take you for instance," he continued, appraising Erin as his mentat-enhanced brain picked up on tics and cues that might otherwise be missed, "You aren't looking so good, but it's not exactly something a stimpak can fix, am I right? You need some way to relax, but God knows, there's not too many of those out in the world, sooo…" He pulled a bundle of clattering keys from his pocket and popped open a secure cabinet behind him. Inside, Erin glimpsed shelves full of bottles, packets, syringes and tins, all containing pre-war drugs, or looking distinctly more home-made or recycled, before Oscar kicked it closed again. "Here we go. Life's a real bitch, but a little of this and the world's about a million times easier to cope with, am I right?" He shook a small, turquoise glass jar, covered by a label featuring several colourful flowers and a name. 'Daytripper'. Erin gulped. In one of her more misguided attempts to be social, she'd once allowed herself to be pressured into trying the drug. Daytripper was supposed to offer a 'happy escape' and as the world had spiralled towards its destruction, it had become more and more popular to take a capful of the stuff and forget all your troubles for a while. During her freshman year, Erin remembered sipping at a single spoonful, grimacing at the odd taste and drifting, giggling at everything… And then the hangover the next day when the amount of alcohol she'd been plied with made a re-appearance and her shut-in habits had returned. She'd never wanted or needed to take anything like it again ever since.
Erin reached for the bottle almost without noticing her arm was moving. Her fingers shook as she remembered the circle of other freshmen in the corner of the loud common-room, smiling and pushing the bottle and spoon towards her. She'd never wanted or needed it, but the memory of escaping… Of not caring, of seeing all the wonderful world…
Oscar tapped the bottle down on the counter, making Erin's gaze jerk away from her promised relief and to his face. "Sixty caps."
"What?!" Erin spluttered! If she took that much, she'd be dead inside of a minute!
"This isn't a charity I'm afraid," Oscar frowned. "It's sixty caps for the bottle, take it or…" he started to slide the bottle back towards him, "Leave it."
Of course, caps, currency. Erin closed her eyes and mentally shook herself for forgetting the small stash she'd picked out of the raiders' belongings. She quickly reached into one of the pouches on her armour and retrieved the back, spilling them onto the counter and counting them up. She could just about make the asking price, but it would clean her out almost completely. "I-I don't have enough," she whimpered, staring at the small circles of metal. "I can't afford-"
"Really?" Oscar remarked, quickly totalling the tokens with a practiced eye. "Looks to me like you've juuust got enough. Of course, if you don't wanna trip, hey, that's your call, right?" He let her watch as he poured the liquid ever-so-carefully into the bottle's orange cap and set it gingerly down in front of Erin's watching eyes. "But then this'd be going to waste... And you wouldn't even be thinking about it in the first place unless you wanted a bit of escape, right?" His voice was dangerous; poisonous even, but Erin couldn't help but listen.
She stared intently at the small capful of clear liquid, an oily sheen shifting over its surface. She didn't want to do this. She knew about how dangerous addiction was, even with modern recreational drugs, produced in a lab, rather than a run-down back-room. She closed her eyes and flinched, shivering at the memory of Jason's dying, mutilated body; or the grasping, dead fingers of the ghoul that had come so close to ending her life and in return, forced her to take its own.
She reached out, holding the cap in hands that now seemed eerily steady as she gazed at its rainbow sheen in the dusty light of the chem store. She opened her mouth and threw the viscous mixture down her throat before she could talk herself out of it.
