Hi! Hope you all enjoyed the previous chapter, and that the translation I made was comprehensible. Enjoy this second chapter.
Damian exited the cave and was immediately blinded by a bright, white, warm light. He closed his eyes and protected his face with his arm. A whistle reached his ears and he felt a draft in his hair. His eyes burned him. He opened them slowly, fearing that he had gone blind. To his great relief, the blur of light he perceived dissipated quickly.
He was standing on a small rocky mound, overlooking a road. In front of him, a desolate, rocky landscape, with large, thick black stems coming out of the ground. Trees. Quite different from what Damian had seen in the children's books he had read in the Vault as a kid.
He was speechless and gazed at this surreal landscape. The road under him was heading towards a small town with half collapsed wooden houses. The only things still standing were small one-story houses, a water tower, as well as a strange red cone-shaped sculpture and a large concrete building.
Damian took his eyes off the gutted houses. What amazed him the most, was the blinding star in the sky. The sky, grey, immense, oppressive. The sun. He had always imagined seeing the sky and the sun, based on photos in books or on the few Vault-Tec posters on some of the walls, and now he had them before his eyes. Damian turned his eyes to the landscape. He had never seen so much space. Never had his gaze been so far away, he who was used to always have a grey wall or ceiling in his field of vision.
In the distance, other, larger buildings stretched out. Two stood out from the others, a large obelisk tower, which dominated all the others by its size, and a large building topped by a dome.
The landscape that stretched before his eyes was the result of two hours of intensive bombing. Two brief hours, during which the atomic fire had engulfed the world. Two hours, to illustrate the culmination of the bloody struggle between the mighty of the old world.
By a banal gesture, with a single push of a button on a control panel, the leaders of the United States, Communist China and the European Commonwealth had sealed the fate of humanity, turning it from the dominant species on Earth, several billion strong, to a handful of survivors clinging to the water and air filters of their atomic shelters.
What caught Damian's attention was a heap of sheet metal. Parts of the construction looked like something he had seen in a book in the Vault on airplanes. Pieces of fuselage, engines and wings. Above, Damian noticed something slowly spinning in the sky.
Birds! He rubbed his eyes to make sure he wasn't hallucinating, but he wasn't. The birds were there, black and of various sizes, circling above this strange structure. As he listened, the young man could hear noises coming from this strange structure.
Everything seemed unreal. The barren, lifeless world, the radioactive desert described by the adults at the Vault, by the Overseer, by his father, it was all false. Reality quickly caught up with Damian. He didn't know how long his father had been gone. Looking again at the devastated landscape before him, he realized he could be anywhere. The young man felt insignifiant. A sand grain lost in the vastness of the new world that lay before him.
"Where are you Dad?" Damian whispered.
The wind blew gently, lifting sand and dust at the young man's feet. The adrenaline that had built up during his escape from the Vault was beginning to subside. He felt a pain in his left hand, where Chief Hannon had hit him. He took his Pip-Boy glove off and found that he had a bruise across his palm. He also had difficulty closing his hand. Damian grimaced and raised his head.
He was intrigued by this strange mass of metal and airplane parts. He decided to go there, if only to satisfy his curiosity. If people lived there, they could also tell him about his father and this new world.
Damian came down from the rocky mound that overlooked the area, passing human bones half buried in the sand and earth. The road he walked down was extremely damaged. The young man walked towards the ruined city he had seen. At the edges of the road, the remains, eaten away by the rust, of a guardrail and a strange, cone-shaped vehicle with a large shattered window and a leather seat inside.
When Damian arrived near the houses, he was even more seized by the state of destruction of the place. The wooden houses could hardly stand upright, some of them being reduced to a vulgar pile of charred planks. The road was littered with all kinds of trash, twisted cans, empty soda bottles, paper, rusty pieces of metal. It reminded him of one of the films he had seen in the Vault about the devastating effects of a nuclear explosion. The scale of the destruction he was witnessing was far worse than in the film.
He followed the road, looking steadily up into the sky at the swarm of birds that slowly circled. The young man fell on a corrugated, rusty iron panel, welded to two posts. On the sheet metal had been inscribed in yellow letters the word "Megaton", followed by an arrow roughly indicating the direction of the strange structure.
"Megaton". The first thing that came to Damian's mind when he read this name was the same film he had thought of earlier. The word referred to the unit used to measure an atomic explosion.
As he was about to go on his way, he saw a small metal sphere, a little bigger than a human head, covered with antennas, flying slowly in his direction. At first glance it looked like a robot, but Damian didn't know what model it might be. The robot was playing music, a lively, martial-sounding tune. The robot flew by Damian and completely ignored him. The young man watched it fly away before he went on his way. A remnant of the old world, a relic, built by people who had been dead for centuries, who continued to roam this desert as if nothing had happened and who endeavored to broadcast the same radio frequency that had been assigned to it.
The structure Damian had seen from the promontory leading to the Vault was a city. At least, that was the impression it gave. Big walls of metal, lookouts, masts held by cables and ropes. What he assumed to be the entrance consisted of several airplane wings surmounted by a jet engine.
Subjugated by this vision, Damian didn't notice the orange mass extending at his feet. He stumbled and crashed headfirst into the sand. As he turned around, he saw that he had stepped into what looked like a giant ant, almost bigger than him. He jumped and crawled quickly away from the insect. The ant did not move. Damian drew his gun and approached cautiously. With the tip of his foot, he shook the giant ant. The insect remained still. He noticed that the creature had a large hole in its head, a gunshot wound. As he looked around, he realized that there were three more bodies of these ants, all with gunshot wounds to the head. Proof that people advanced enough to use firearms were living in the area, contrary to what the Overseer had always repeated, that the outside world could not support any other life form other than mutant cockroaches.
Damian shivered, realizing that he probably would probably be dead, if those ants had been alive. He climbed a small slope up to the door. Just above the reactor, on a catwalk, a man dressed in military combat armor was looking at the landscape through a pair of binoculars. Damian noticed the sniper rifle that was on his shoulder. The young man went from surprise to surprise and was convinced that this world had more secrets or horrors in store for him.
Damian approached when a voice called out to him. He turned his head and saw a man in rags sitting in the middle of a pile of trash and a rusty car, waving at him. Damian approached cautiously.
"Water... Please... I need… Water..."
Damian looked at the man who had just spoken to him. His face was reddened by sunburn, had greasy hair and his clothes looked three times too big. The young man then realized that in the rush of his escape, he did not take any food or water.
"I'm sorry," Damian said sadly. "I don't have any water to give you."
"Please... I'm... So thirsty... I need... Water... Purified," the man begged with difficulty.
"Purified? What do you mean?" asked Damian.
"Clean… Water... No radiation... It's... One of the few places in the Wastelands where... You can find some."
The beggar raised his arm and pointed to the metal walls. Damian turned to the man and asked.
"What is this place?"
The beggar raised his eyebrows, revealing bloodshot eyes. Damian had asked a simple question, yet the man looked at him as if he had just asked him the meaning of life.
"It's... Megaton. You... Grew up in a hole... All your life?"
"Well, you're not far from the truth," Damian thought, nodding his head and walking away.
The ground shook. The engine above the wings of the planes was turning on, spinning faster and faster. Damian stepped back as the door, built with two plane wings, slid upwards, revealing a second large metal door. The engine stopped turning when a humanoid-shaped robot with a large yellow visor serving as its head approached and positioned itself at the entrance. The robot rotated its bust towards Damian in a metallic squeak.
"Welcome, to, Megaton. Have, a, pleasant, stay. »
Damian noticed that a white five-pointed star had been painted on the robot's bust. Just underneath, a small metal plate seemed to have been welded. Damian could read the words "Deputy Weld" on it.
"Uh... Thank you...," said Damian as he headed inside.
The town was built into a large crater. Sheet metal houses were built on large footbridges. A large, rudimentary staircase framed by two huge pipes led to the center of the crater.
"Oh, boy... More visitors."
Damian did not have time to observe the city that a large black man, approached him with a sigh. Straight out of a pre-war film about the conquest of the West, the man was wearing a long beige leather dust cover with a military pant and matching boots, as well as a large hat with curved edges. This vision amused Damian, until he saw the golden star pinned to the man's chest and, above all, the large assault rifle he carried on his shoulder.
The man sighed and stood in front of Damian, dominating him from his height. His small brown eyes probed the young man for a few seconds before a kind smile appeared on his face covered by an imposing beard.
"Name's Lucas Simms, town Sheriff. And Mayor too, when the need arises."
"I... Uh... I... I…"
"Hey, relax, kid. I don't bite."
Damian cleared his throat and calmly resumed.
"My name is Damian Franklin. I… I'm looking for my father."
"You're from this Vault, right? Vault 101."
Simms laughed slightly as he examined the young man's suit.
"Yeah... with that suit on his back, you can't go wrong."
"I... Look, Sheriff... Simms? I'm looking for my father, middle-aged guy, white, grayish hair. Have you seen him?"
Lucas Simms pursed his lips and seemed to think for a few seconds.
"Well, there was definitely this stranger who came by. He had a funny look on his face, kind of determined. He was also wearing a vault suit."
"Do you know where he went?" Damian asked hopefully. "When was it?"
"I don't know, sorry. I have enough to do in the city and I don't have time to keep the entry and exit register. However, I do remember that he stayed for a little while in the saloon. You'd better go and check with Moriarty, but watch yourself, that man's trouble."
"Where do I find the saloon?" Damian asked.
In answer, Simms stepped aside and pointed to a building on the other side of town on the edge of the crater. A large sign with the name of the place stood on the front wall of the building.
"Oh, one more thing."
Damian turned to Simms.
"Welcome to Megaton."
Simms walked away. Damian began to walk down the steps. A strange scene caught his attention. In the center of the crater, an elderly man was standing in a puddle of brown water up to his shins. The man was speaking with his hands raised, palms facing the sky. Damian could not understand a word the man said, as his speech was one of the weirdest things he had ever heard. Yet it wasn't this preacher who left Damian in shock.
A large oval-shaped object, half-buried in the water, seemed to be the recipient of the old man's words. As he approached, Damian heard the Geiger counter of his Pip-Boy panicking. He realized with horror that he was standing in front of a nuclear device. The inscription "C-23 Megaton" was engraved on the side of the bomb, along with the radioactive clover.
Damian took a few steps back. The people of this town had a devious sense of humor. Naming their city after one of these machines was one thing, building a city around it and, above all, worshipping the same machine that had destroyed the world two centuries earlier was complete madness.
"Don't panic, kid. That thing's not gonna blow. At least not yet."
Damian turned around and saw Simms standing behind him.
""Not yet"? Wait... You mean that thing's armed?"
"As long as no one tinkers with the wires and cables, the bomb will remain intact. And us with it."
"But that's crazy!"
Several people, seated at a counter behind them, turned around, obviously unhappy that someone raised their voice and disrupted their meal.
"Why do you live near that thing? If it ever goes off..."
"I'm not planning on getting vaporized just yet, kid, and as for why the city is built around an atomic bomb, you'll have to talk to someone else if you want an history class."
The Sheriff sat at the counter and began a discussion with a woman in a yellow jumpsuit who was standing on the other side. Damian took one last look at the bomb before he began his ascent to the other side of the crater.
The saloon was crowded. Loud chatters, clattering glasses and cutlery and the unpleasant crackle of a poorly tuned radio hit Damian hard. The smell of cold tobacco and strong alcohol also grabbed him by the throat. When he closed the door, he felt that all eyes had turned to him. The discomfort lasted a few seconds, until all the customers and people sitting at the various tables returned to their activities.
Damian was surely looking like a fairground beast, or at least a strange character, with his vault suit, his Pip-Boy, and above all, the dried blood on his face and hands.
The young man made his way to the counter. He slipped between a woman leaning against the counter, with short red hair and wearing a more than suggestive outfit, and a man with a shaved head, wearing leather jacket and pants with military boots and an assault rifle strapped on his back.
The woman blew the smoke from her cigarette and gave Damian a look full of innuendo. The young man looked across the counter. He realized that he had completely forgotten to ask Simms what Moriarty looked like.
He saw a man turning his back to him, his skull partially hairless. Damian tapped him gently on the shoulder to get his attention.
"Um... Excuse me, I'm looking for a man named Moriarty and..."
Damian uttered a cry of surprise and horror. He stepped back, spilling the glass of the man next to him at the same time. The man behind the counter had no nose and no lips. The skin on his face, as on the rest of his body, looked like it had been burned or torn off.
"What? You've never seen a ghoul before?" the man said in a hoarse voice, tinged with surprise.
"A... What?"
Damian couldn't take his eyes off the man's face. The man noticed the vault suit and the Pip-Boy and sighed sadly.
"I guess you don't have a lot of ghouls in your Vault."
"Uh... I... No... You surprised me, sorry."
"Hey!"
The ghoul turned his head to the man with the shaved head sitting next to Damian. His jaws were clenched, and he was giving Damian a mean look.
"You spilled my drink."
"I'm sorry Mr. Jericho, I..."
"Shut the fuck up, zombie!" shouted the man called Jericho, pointing an authoritative finger at the ghoul, still staring at Damian.
The ghoul looked down, petrified. Damian remained silent, not knowing what to do. He turned pale and felt a strange sensation forming in his belly when he saw the man pull out a knife with a serrated blade. He twirled the weapon in his hand and stuck the tip of the blade on the counter in a noise that attracted the attention of those around him.
"What's the matter, you lost your tongue vault-boy?"
"Jericho, put that away."
Damian turned his head and saw Sheriff Simms standing in the saloon doorway. He walked up to Jericho and laid his eyes on the knife.
"What are you gonna do with that?"
Jericho looked up at Simms and put the knife away.
"Come on, come on, what's going on?"
A man in his fifties, with gray hair and a well-cut goatee, dressed in a sleeveless leather jacket, a white T-shirt and thick pants made of several pieces of cloth, approached. Damian crossed his eyes, overflowing with mischief.
"Sheriff, you come to relax for a moment?" he asked with a forced smile.
"I'm here because I've heard there's trouble here."
Simms, Jericho, and the gray-haired man engaged in a discussion. The tone rose rather quickly, with everyone present obviously having a word to say. The blame quickly fell on the ghoul and everyone had forgotten Damian.
The young man crawled out of the crowd and got up. He found himself in a small corner of the saloon. A small purple lamp gave the place a relaxing atmosphere. Damian felt a presence with him. He turned around and saw a man in a striped suit, very clean, shoes polished, hat and glasses with tinted glasses. Damian thought this man was a stain on the dirty décor of the town.
Sitting in a leather armchair, he motioned for Damian to approach. The young man looked around him and approached.
"Finally, just when I was about to lose hope. My boy, I'm delighted to make your acquaintance. You may call me, Mr. Burke."
"Uh... Hello," Damian replied intrigued.
Burke leaned slightly to the side. He observed the inhabitants of Megaton, still in the middle of the argument. An expression of disgust and contempt appeared on his face.
"You, my dear, are not one of the inhabitants of this putrid pit, which makes you a person… Well, rather appreciable."
"I beg your pardon?"
Mr. Burke nodded scornfully at Simms and the others.
"Take a look at this. This place is a dump, a stain in the landscape. That's why it would be doing this world a favor if someone wiped this place off the face of the earth."
"What?"
"You see," Burke continued with a smile. "The bomb that this dump is named after is still active. All it needs is a little motivation."
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small rectangular object with wires in it.
"And that motivation... Is you."
"Are you out of your mind?"
Damian didn't realize he just screamed. Simms, Jericho and the other all turned to him as one.
"What's going on now?" sighed the Sheriff.
Simms broke away from the group and approached Burke and Damian. Jericho spat on the ground and gave the Sheriff a murderous look before heading for the exit. The small crowd dispersed and returned to its activities.
"Are you looking for trouble, kid?" Simms asked angrily as he addressed Damian.
"It's nothing, Sheriff," Burke intervened, getting up and readjusting his suit. "This young man and I were simply exchanging formalities."
"'Formalities'? You just asked me to detonate the bomb that's out there with that thing!"
Damian pointed to Burke's hand where you could see the electrical wires of the device. Simms turned to Burke, a horrified expression on his face.
"Are you crazy?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Sheriff," Burke replied calmly, unbuttoning his suit jacket and readjusting his tie.
Simms swung his assault rifle from his shoulder and fired the breech.
"You're under arrest, Burke," the Sheriff thundered. "Until I find out what the hell's going on here."
Burke sighed and raised his hands.
"All right, I'm coming, Sheriff."
Simms turned around and started to walk for the saloon door. Burke put his hand inside his jacket and Damian saw him pull out a gun with a silencer.
"Look out!"
Damian dove at Simms, just as Burke raised his gun, and pinned him to the ground. Burke fired. Simms growled as the bullet entered his shoulder. No one heard the shot, muffled by the silencer and the ambient noise. Several saloon clients turned to Simms and Damian, still on the bar floor. Burke fired a second shot but missed. The various customers dove for cover when they saw that Burke was armed. Burke fired a few random shots to prevent the customers from drawing and firing back.
Damian rolled onto his back and grabbed Simms' assault rifle by the strap and pulled the weapon at him. He aimed at Burke and pulled the trigger. The rumble of the assault rifle echoed throughout the saloon.
Burke was shot in the belly and chest and collapsed in his chair. Large splashes of blood had splattered on the wall and small dark red stars were beginning to appear on Burke's shirt and jacket where the bullets had hit him.
Damian exhaled loudly. For the second time that day, his body had reacted on its own. He dropped Simms' gun and left his head rest on the ground. The saloon was silent. Lucas Simms stood up gruntled and put his hand on his shoulder. One of the patrons crouched down and helped him up.
A young woman with blond hair tied up, helped Damian to get up. The gray-haired man with the goatee stepped towards the counter and grabbed the ghoul by the back of his neck. He pulled his face closer to the ghoul.
"Gob, if I hear one more time that you pissed off one of my clients, I swear I'm going to sew your filthy mouth shut so that everyone can finally drink in peace," he said between his teeth. "Do you understand me?"
The ghoul, his neck curled between his shoulders, nodded frantically, his eyes looking down on the floor.
"Well, that's a good zombie. Now go clean up this mess."
The ghoul slithered into the back room. The patrons finished their drinks and left the saloon, just after Simms had been transported outside. The man with the goatee turned to Damian and opened his arms as if to welcome him.
"Well, you then, you're a real angel fallen from heaven. Yes, our good Sheriff is lucky you were there."
He smiled smugly.
"Colin Moriarty, at your service. Sit down," he said, pointing to a stool in front of the counter. "Have a drink, I have a feeling that you and I are going to get along very well."
He turned his head towards the ghoul who had gone to fetch a bucket and a mop and headed towards Burke's corpse. Damian looked at the ghoul as he tried hard to pull the body out of the saloon without getting blood everywhere.
"Moriarty?"
"That's the one. Owner of Moriarty's. My little piece of paradise in this forgotten town."
He rubs his hands before putting them on the counter. Damian wasn't sure why, but the man made a bad impression on him.
"So, what can I do for you?"
"Well... I was told you could help me find my dad. Middle-aged man, White, gray hair. He must wear a suit like mine."
Moriarty's eyes widened. He stared at Damian for a few seconds, looked at him from head to toe and a smile appeared on his face.
"My God... It's you..."
Damian raised his eyebrows. He looked behind him, in case Moriarty had just spoken to someone else, but he didn't see anyone. Moriarty stared him straight in the eyes.
"The little baby-boy all grown up. You're a persistent little bastard, aren't you?"
"Wait... What are you talking about?"
Moriarty laughed.
"What? Didn't your father tell you? For almost 20 years, he's led you to believe that you were both born in the Vault?"
Damian was completely lost. All the questions he was asking to find his father only brought him more questions for an answer. Moriarty controlled his laughter and took a deep breath before he looked more serious.
"The lies we tell to those we love... It may have been a long time ago, but I won't soon forget your baby cries when you were in my saloon. You see, James took you to that Vault, to keep you safe.
Damian was sure that he was just messing with him. Everything Moriarty said didn't make sense. He knew his father's name, but there was no way he could have guessed it right the first time, and the whole story of being born outside the Shelter was nonsense. Why did James lied to him and how could they have got into a Vault that had been sealed for 200 years?
"You seem like a good person, you're just a little disturbed by all these revelations about dear daddy. So, I'm going to be honest with you. The Wastelands are a dangerous place and it would be unfortunate if someone took advantage of you."
He gave a wicked smile at Damian.
"Your father came here it's true, but he left, and I know where he went, only you see, in this world information is a commodity."
He tilted his head back, giving the impression he was thinking about something important.
"Let's say... 100 caps, and daddy's location is yours. Very reasonable."
"Caps?" Damian asked intrigued.
"Yes, caps. Bottlecaps. What, you... Oh, I forgot."
Moriarty walked over to a cash register on the counter. He opened it and pulled out a little soda bottlecap. The original red color had almost faded, and the aluminum was a little crooked around the edges. He put it on the counter and slowly slid it with his index finger to Damian.
"Looks like dear old dad forgot to explain the basics of Wastelands economy."
Damian looked at the small aluminum object in front of him. He looked up at Moriarty, who put the cap back in the cash register.
"I don't have any caps on me."
Moriarty smiled. A broad smile that made Damian uncomfortable.
"You saved our good Sheriff, but a gunfight early in the day is bad for business. So, to make it up to you and for old times' sake, I'll make you a deal. You see, before, in this noble establishment, there used to be a working girl. That girl's name is Silver, a junkie bitch. She borrowed quite a few caps from me, claimed she could supply me with drugs. The thing is, she took the caps and moved to the Springvale ruins to inject herself with everything she promised me. If you get the caps back, they're yours... Until you pay me with them."
He ended his sentence with a broad smile.
"So, I do your dirty work for you?"
"No!" Moriarty answered, frowning and looking outraged. "Who's talking about dirty work? It's just a favor, against another."
"Forget it," Damian whispered as he got up from his stool.
"It's up to you," sighed Moriarty. "I'm sure your father would be more reasonable than you."
Damian groaned inwardly and violently pushed open the saloon door. He leaned on the railing in front of the bar and bowed his head with a sigh. He raised his head and looked at the entrance to the city.
Damian walked resolutely towards the entrance, taking care to pass far enough away from the bomb as he crossed the center of the crater. When he reached the stairs, he heard a voice calling out to him.
"Hey, vault-boy!"
Damian turned his head and saw a man in rags sitting on a small stool next to a large two-headed cow.
"Sheriff Simms is looking for you, he's in the clinic."
The man pointed to a shack behind him. Damian decided it was in his best interest to get to Simms as quickly as possible. He climbed up the small ramp to the clinic and pushed the door.
Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Fallout 3 was the first Fallout game I played and I have a particular memory of my first time exiting Vault 101 and discovering the Wasteland and entering Megaton and I tried my best to express it with words. Untill next time and reviews are always welcome.