A/N: Hi! Here's an update real quick! I'd like to dedicate this one to my sister, a fellow Fallout 3 fan, who was incredibly stoked to learn I was writing a fic for one of our favorite games. 3
The darkness was stifling and the light coming off the clusters of irradiated mushrooms seemed more taunting than helpful. The Pip-Boy's flashlight was decent, but it was also a beacon to every mutated creature in the Metro.
Blake checked her ammo, touching the cool ends of the shotgun slugs in her belt and counting under her breath.
Twelve. She had four shots loaded and twelve in her belt. In short, unless the exit to the Metro was around the next corner, they were screwed. Then again, they could be screwed even if the exit was right around the corner. A group of raiders, ghouls, anything—
A tin can clattered somewhere in the dark behind her and she spun, bringing the shotgun up to her shoulder and waited.
Beside her, Charon shifted his weight. The sound had put him on edge, as well. "There's nothing here," he said, his deep, rasping voice a comforting sound in the suffocating silence.
She nodded, taking a deep breath. Water dripped somewhere and it echoed like it was all around them. Something scritch-scratched through the rubble and trash and the longer she listened, the bigger it seemed to sound. She held her breath, squeezing her eyes shut. She needed some light! Not the dull, mushroom radiation glow and not the 'please come eat me' light of the Pip-Boy, some real light.
Gunshots popped somewhere in the distance. Not in the tunnels, the sound came from topside, which meant the exit to the Metro might actually be just around the corner. Provided that it wasn't collapsed, or flooded—
Stop it!
Thinking like that wasn't helping, but she almost couldn't stop the panic from wrapping around her throat.
"Hear that?" she asked Charon in a tone that was almost glad. "We're close." She started walking again, hearing Charon's heavy boots falling in step behind her.
Voices echoed softly in the tunnel ahead. Raiders. She'd learned early on in her days in Waste, strolling wide-eyed through the ruins of Springvale, absorbing the destruction with child-like awe and fear, that voices were unique in a way that went beyond the individual. Groups had a voice of their own and no matter where they were, that never changed. That day, a faint instinct had flared at the man's taunting "What do we have here?" but it still took the first bullet slamming into her Kevlar vest to drive the lesson home. Instinct blossomed and melted into a core of steel.
She stepped around the corner, shotgun set in the cushion of her shoulder, the massive barrel preceding her into the glow of the Raiders' lamps.
"What do we have here?" one of them leered, a big man wearing spiked armor and holding a rifle.
Her shotgun spat fire and lead into his chest, hurling him backward over a chair as the rest of them opened fire. Charon's massive gun belched thunder beside her and another Raider fell. She took another down; it took two shots to punch through his heavier armor and her gun jammed with a loud shlank! The fourth one rushed Charon and slammed a knife into his arm as he reloaded. Blake pulled her pistol and unloaded half the clip into the man's back before Charon finished him off with a blast to the chest that opened him up like a bloated Bramin. The sounds of the fight echoed into silence, only broken by the soft sounds of Blake's light, adrenaline-fueled panting.
Charon scowled at the gash in his arm and kicked the Raider that had stabbed him. "Teach you to mess with me," he growled in fierce satisfaction.
"You okay?" Blake asked. Her voice only had the slightest quiver.
"I'm fine," Charon replied gruffly. "Let's get out of here."
"Agreed," she nodded, finally taking a regular breath. She took a moment to check her shotgun, scowling at the weapon for jamming. To her relief, the gun itself hadn't jammed, the round in the chamber was damaged. She was lucky it hadn't exploded in her hands.
They pushed through the sagging, makeshift Metro gate into the outside world again. Blake had one hand partially over her eyes to give her pupils time to adjust to the sudden overabundance of light. Another lesson from the Wastes she'd learned the hard way when she stepped out of the Springvale school basement into the glaring afternoon sun, and the rest of the raiders. She'd pressed her back to the warm, concrete wall and went full auto with the assault rifle she'd found inside, spraying the area directly in front of her until the slide clicked on an empty chamber, screaming in terror the whole time.
She never wanted to have a blind firefight again.
"It doesn't bother you?" she asked Charon when she realized he was barely blinking after being in the dark for so long.
"My eyes adjust faster," he told her simply.
"Lucky," she chuckled in a grumbling, teasing way that made him look at her in blank confusion. She glanced around, seeing nothing familiar. "Well, I've never been here before—"
An explosion rocked the ground beneath their feet and they both dropped into a crouch behind the meager concrete wall at the Metro stairs. More explosions thundered between the buildings and Blake started furiously reloading her shotgun and Charon expected her to drop at least half the shells. She never did.
"Rockets?" she asked, eyes sharp and searching the area around them. Somehow, the explosions felt bigger than rockets.
"Missiles," Charon said grimly.
"Missiles?!" she exclaimed and just managed to keep her voice down. "Like, pre-war, heavy artillery, attached to verti-birds, missiles?"
"Mhm," he nodded with a growl.
"Is it the military?" she asked and she almost sounded hopeful. If it was the military, then whatever they were fighting was probably huge, and she was still low on ammo.
"Mutants," Charon told her, still watching the open streets and shadows.
She paused and looked at him as the word sunk in. "Mutants?" Everything in the Wastes was mutated in some way. Two-headed Bramin, giant scorpions and huge flying insects. The worst thing she'd had to face down so far was a Yao Guai and it was only after she'd managed to kill it that she took a closer look at it and realized it was an irradiated bear. Something about Charon referring to these things as just Mutants sent a chill down her spine.
"Get down!" Charon hissed and dropped almost prone against his cement cover.
A hulking mass of yellow flesh came stomping up a side-street, half-covered in rough armor, teeth bared in a snarl, eyes filled with hate, a mini-gun in its hands.
Blake slammed her back against the concrete, clutching her shotgun to her chest like a security blanket. "That… that thing is huge," she said in a shaking whisper. She looked at Charon, eyes wide with horror. "Have you ever faced these before?"
"Mm," he nodded, still watching the Mutant.
"Can they be killed?" she asked.
"Anything can be killed," he told her and somehow, those words were immensely comforting.
"How do we kill them?" Blake asked.
Charon looked at her then, hearing the tone that said she was trying to form a plan. "You aim for the face," he said. "Never let them get close. They'll rip you apart. And you bring a lot more ammo," he finished grimly, showing her his shell count.
He had ten total.
Blake nodded shakily. "So, what do we do?"
"We stay here," he said. "And don't give them a reason to check this area. When they're gone, we leave. Fast."
She nodded to that. "Okay…"
"FOUND YOU!"
The guttural, bellowing voice almost launched her from her hiding place like she'd sprouted wings. Charon grabbed her arm, holding her still and put a finger to his lips.
Screams came from the other side of the plaza.
Carefully, afraid that the Mutants would hear the joints in her neck creaking, Blake looked at from their hiding place.
Three Mutants were across the plaza. One of them held a missile launcher as easily as a pistol. Another held a massive club that looked like it had been made out of a street-lamp. The one holding the mini-gun sprayed the front of a building and three people, two men, and a woman sprinted outside. The mini-gun buzzed to life and one man almost disappeared in an explosion of red mist. The Mutant with the club leaped forward with a laugh and smashed the woman into the side of the building, painting it with gore. It caught the last man and when he emptied his pistol into the Mutant's torso, it slowly pulled him apart.
Blake watched, frozen in horror, tears slipping down her cheeks as her body trembled so violently she didn't think she'd be able to stand.
"Let's go," Charon hissed at her softly and practically stuffed her through a gap in the cement when she just looked at him dumbly. "Run," he pushed her down the road until her feet did as he said.
"AHA!" A Mutant charged out of an alley, swinging a club. It reared the weapon back over its head—
Blake glared up at it through her tears, rage boiling in her blood, and shot it point-blank in the face. When it went down, she did it again, just because she could.
"THERE THEY ARE!"
She turned back down the street, chambering the next slug, then remembered Charon saying they'd need a lot more ammo to go up against these things, remembered her father always telling her to be smart.
This wasn't smart.
"Run!" she shouted and took off sprinting, Charon on her heels as they wound through alleys and ruined buildings until they couldn't hear the Mutants coming anymore.