"Wild World"

Prologue: Cold-Blooded Murder

Soundtrack: Aperture Science Psychoacoustics Laboratory – "You Know Her?"
Nate Howard struggled to rouse himself from the depths of unconsciousness. Every part of his body ached, and he was chilled to the bone. A quick glance around revealed that Nate was inside some kind of canister, the interior frosted over, with a single window looking out. Through the window, Nate could dimly see a similar canister. As he stared into the other canister's window, Nate's memory jolted.

A man in a yellow trench coat… "Vault-Tec calling…" Codsworth tending to Shaun… "Confirmed reports of nuclear detonations…" A breathless, panicked run… A flash brighter than a thousand suns… A roar like the end of the world… "Go! I'll take Shaun; just go!" A wall of black cloud approaching at impossible speed… Wailing alarms… "I love you so much…"

Nate leaned forward and slammed his hand against the glass, just as a face peered in from outside. "This little fish is awake, too," a voice said, muffled by the canister's thick glass window.
"Just leave him in there," another voice replied. "This pod's got what we need."
A bald man dressed in a leather coat approached the pod across from Nate's, which contained his wife Nora and baby Shaun. Nate weakly thumped his fist against the glass window, as the masked men opened Nora's pod. Nora stirred from her sleep and held tightly to Shaun.

Nate barely heard the words through the capsule's wall, but the bald man's meaning was clear; give me the baby. Nate shouted angrily and pounded against the metal wall again as Nora struggled with one of the masked men who tried to wrestle Shaun from her grasp. Nora struggled harder as the bald stranger pulled out a gun and pointed it at her.
"NO!" Nate heard Nora shout. "I'm not giving you Shaun!"
The gunshot cut through the room and turned Nate's blood to ice.
"NOOO!"

Chapter 1: Technical Difficulties

Soundtrack: Aqualung – "Strange and Beautiful"
Nate's eyes shot open as the ice retreated from the capsule's window. Shouting incomprehensibly, Nate pounded his fists against the glass. After what seemed like forever, the capsule shuddered and the door began to rise. Nate fell forward and collapsed to the ground, heaving up what little remained in his stomach.

The door of Nora's capsule stood obstinately closed. Nate struggled to his feet and slammed his hand down on the control panel's emergency override button. The door hissed and began to open. Nate glared daggers at the pod door. "Come on, come on, damn it!"
When the door was level with Nate's waist, he ducked underneath and shoved it the rest of the way up. A split second later, he froze in horror.

Nora lay slumped against the back wall of the pod, her dark hair falling over her face, the bullet wound in her chest an ugly dark red spot against the blue Vault jumpsuit.
Nate's eyes welled up, and he embraced his wife. "I'm sorry, Nora. I'm so, so sorry."
Suddenly, Nate's eyes snapped open. Nora's arm had wrapped around Nate's back. Nate turned Nora's head to face him, and recoiled in shock. In spite of her fatal wound, Nora's eyes were bright and fierce, though she gritted her teeth in pain.
"Nate," she coughed, every word an effort. "Find our son…please."

"I will," Nate promised, holding Nora's hand. "I'll come back for you. I'll save Shaun, and we'll be together again."
Nora coughed again, taking Nate into her arms. "Thank you, Nate… I love you so…"
Nate began to sob into Nora's shoulder, as he felt her breathing stop. A second later, Nora's limp hand fell from Nate's grasp, and her wedding ring fell to the floor.

After what felt like an eternity and a split second all at once, Nate gently removed himself from Nora's embrace and bent down to pick up her wedding ring off the ground.
"I promise," he growled. "I will track down the bastards who did this, and make them pay."
Nate activated the pod's control panel, and the door began to lower. When it had sealed into place, Nate pressed his hand against the glass to take one last look at his wife. "Goodbye, my love."

A siren sounded, as the Vault's huge door began to begin its opening process. Nate unplugged his recently acquired Pip-Boy from the control console, and stood behind the door's mechanical opener, tightly gripping the ten-millimeter pistol he'd found in a cabinet. After the giant roaches, he couldn't take any chances. Within a minute, the giant, gear-shaped seal had rolled to the side. Nate stepped through the door onto the elevator platform and pressed the button. With a hiss of pneumatics and the groan of tortured metal, the elevator began rising, carrying Nate upwards into the world. A light grew above Nate's head as the platform continued rising. Nate squinted and shielded his eyes, as the light grew brighter, until the world exploded into view. The platform shuddered to a halt, and Nate gazed around in astonishment.

The world Nate had once known was gone. In its place was a view that looked straight out of a nightmare. Everywhere, Nate could see collapsed structures, being reclaimed by nature. The bombs had unleashed their devastating force on everything. In the distance, creatures roamed. The horizon wasn't even visible in the hazy air. Clearly there were survivors of the nuclear war; a human city could be seen faintly in the distance.

Nate shook himself out of his trance, and began to pick his way down the hill, carefully stepping over rusted bits of metal and, disturbingly, human-looking bones. After a moment, Nate reached a dilapidated wooden bridge over a foul-smelling stream. Dimly, Nate recalled the breathless run over that same bridge as he and his family tried to escape the bombs. Soon, a familiar shape of a house came into view.

Nate walked through a gap in between two houses, and stopped short as he saw a familiar mechanical face.
"As I live and breathe!" Codsworth, Nate's faithful Mr. Handy gasped. "It's really you!"
"Codsworth?" Nate gaped, stunned. "What happened to the world?"
The floating robot's three eyes pointed in Nate's direction. "Well, apart from our geraniums still being the envy of Sanctuary Hills, I'm afraid it's all been rather dreadfully dull around here." Codsworth cleared his simulated throat. "Things will be much more exciting with you and Mum here again. Where is your better half, by the by?"

Nate swallowed the lump in his throat as Nora's still face flashed through his mind. "She…she was murdered," he managed to choke out.
Codsworth had no facial expressions, but if he did, Nate imagined he would look gobsmacked. "Sir, these things you're saying; these terrible things…I believe what you need is a distraction. Yes, a distraction, to cure this dire mood. It's been ages since we've had a family game night. We could play Blast Radius! Or Charades! Shaun does love that game. Is the lad…with you?" the robot trailed off.

Nate ruthlessly crushed down the surge of emotion that shot through him at Codsworth's innocent question, and fixed on an expression of thunder. "Shaun's been kidnapped, and I'm going to find him."
"An admirable goal, Sir!" Codsworth saluted with one of his three arms. "Shall I whip you up a snack before you go? You are two centuries late for dinner after all; you must be famished!"
Nate's jaw dropped. "Two hundred…years?" he managed to gasp.
"Around two hundred and ten, I should think," Codsworth replied, "Give or take a few accounting for the earth's rotation, and a few minor dings to the old chronometer. Now, how about that snack?"
"Codsworth," Nate said slowly, "Are you alright? You're acting strange."

It was the straw that broke the robotic camel's back. Codsworth made a noise that sounded eerily similar to a human blowing their nose. "Oh sir, it's been just horrible! Two hundred years with no one to talk to; no one to serve! I spent the first ten years trying to keep the floors waxed! But nothing gets out nuclear fallout from vinyl wood; nothing!" Codsworth's voice kept increasing in volume. "And don't get me started on the futility of dusting a collapsed house! And the car! The car! How do you polish RUST?"
"Codsworth, stay with me, buddy," Nate reached out, trying to calm the hysterical Mr. Handy.

"It's been just horrible," Codsworth repeated miserably. "The bombs came and all of you left in such a hurry. I thought for sure you and your family were…well…dead!"
"I'm not dead yet," Nate growled, "but anyone who gets in the way of me finding my son is going to wish they were."
"Excellent!" Codsworth's whole demeanor changed in an instant. "I would be honored to accompany you, sir!"
"No," Nate shook his head. "I need you to stay here and use the workshop. I need every single car part you can salvage."

Lee turned away from the robot butler and walked through his own front door. The house looked like it had been through hell and back. Every single window was missing, parts of the walls had holes in them, and most of the furniture was overturned. Nate paid this no mind as he headed straight to the master bedroom.
Nate lifted the tattered mattress out of the bed frame and deftly opened the safe set into the floor.

Codsworth entered the room, just as Nate lifted a black leather jacket, gloves, and a shotgun in a holster from the floor safe. "Sir," he began, "What are those?"
"Just some things from my time in the service," Nate replied quietly, slipping the jacket on over his shoulders and strapping the holstered shotgun to his left leg.
As Codsworth watched curiously, Nate donned the gloves and reached down into the safe again. His hand re-emerged gripping a set of keys.
"Aren't those the keys to your Corvega, sir?" Codsworth pointed at the ring with a military star charm dangling from it.
Nate shook his head. "Not exactly. I need you to open Shaun's eighteenth birthday project, Codsworth."

Codsworth twisted a key on the side of the house's garage after he had cleared out the rusted hulk of Nora's old Corvega. Nate crossed his fingers, praying that the house still had power. A shudder under his feet brought a smile to Nate's face. The floor of the garage began to open, revealing a sunken pit in the ground; a second workshop. The workshop and its contents began to rise from the hole in the floor, until the platform stopped with a rumble and a boom.

In the middle of the garage was a beautiful black car. Even with its engine and most of its panels and parts missing, it was clear the car was a gorgeous classic, designed for mind-numbing speed. Codsworth gaped at the vehicle in as close to astonishment as he could express. "Sir, you never told me what was in the workshop!"
"I was going to build this car with Shaun when he turned eighteen," Nate said sadly. "I'll have to use it to find him."
"I'll brew some coffee," Codsworth nodded his three eyepieces. "There's a Red Rocket station down the road, if you were looking for any resources, sir."
"Good plan," Nate nodded. "I'll start there."

Author's Notes:
Welcome to the CommonWaste.
I had this idea after I re-watched Mad Max: Fury Road, and honestly, I'm surprised more people aren't doing it. The Mad Max and Fallout universes go together like two peas in a pod! Two bullets in a mag! Two cannibal midgets in a fat guy's ribcage!
I'm following a lot of the main Fallout 4 storyline, with lots and lots of elements of Mad Max thrown in. One of my inspirations was the ArtStation page of Jomar Machado. The guy makes some fucking crazy cars.
Anyway, let me know if I should continue with this story.
For those of you that are wondering, I'm still going to work on The Infamous Prom Catastrophe and The Last Firefly, but later.

-the Seacopath