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There's an important AN at the end of the chapter
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"Let him think that I am more man than I am and I will be so."
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
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The cool, early morning light cast a dove blue hue over the horizon and Nora took a deep, bracing breath of air that left the faint, crisp taste of salt on her tongue. She could make out a lambent green glow coming from the top of the Kingsport Lighthouse that shone through the fog.
Who would've thought the lighthouse was still operational?
She was glad that they had gotten up early that morning to make this last leg of the journey, if only to experience the pleasure of the sun piercing through the haze to rise over the rim of the lighthouse in a slow, magnificent arc.
The modest, clapboard house located next to the towering lighthouse bore the abuse of being in such close proximity to the seaside, its whitewashed walls battered and chipped by the salt and wind. The hard dirt beneath her boots turned to sand with wisps of wild grass poking through as they got closer to the house, passing by a charming series of worn wooden posts that comprised the fence surrounding the perimeter.
"It's lovely," she breathed and paused for a moment to take in the rustic grandeur before moving towards the front door.
"Hello, is anyone home?"
Pistol drawn, she tapped her knuckles against the warped door frame and waited, but the only response she got was the distant cry of the seagulls overhead.
Nora pushed the door open and it creaked on rusted hinges, and a gust of wind brought a light dusting of sand over the threshold to settle upon the faded hardwood floors.
In the middle of the room was a large, threadbare couch positioned in front of the hearth, with sparse furniture and cabinets sprinkled around the rest of the space. A staircase in the corner led up to a second-floor where she found two beds pushed together and an empty dresser.
In an alcove off to the side of the living room she spied a desk with a blinking terminal, and after a brief moment of guilt, made quick work of hacking the password to find two entries.
She clicked on the first entry titled The Beacon.
"We have been charged by our brothers and sisters at the Crater to lead others to bask in the glow. We have brought in those strong with Atom's blessing to provide a beacon at the top of this tower. Their light shall draw the believers. The faithful should pray at the tower, then continue their pilgrimage north to the glowing crater. Praise be to Atom!"
A feeling of dread filled her stomach as she clicked on the second entry titled Heretics.
"It would seem that the beacon has also drawn Heretics who must be shown the glory of Atom. Those who will not join us must be cleansed, then we may use them to feed the Blessed in the tower. All glory unto Atom!"
Feeding heretics to the Blessed in the tower?
She set her knapsack down on the dining room table and slipped a couple of loaded 10 mm magazines into her pocket.
"Strong, we need to go up and check out the top of that lighthouse. I just found some concerning entries on that terminal."
He grunted in agreement and followed behind as she walked through the house, and just managed to stop himself in time from running into her when she froze a few steps out the backdoor.
Nora gasped at the sight of a crab-like creature, almost as tall as her, crouched over two dead bodies a couple of yards away. Chills raced down her spine as it dipped a large claw into their entrails and yanked upwards.
She lifted her pistol and fired, and the bullet smacked into the dense, hard shell that covered its back.
More annoyed than injured, it spun around and let out an awful screech that made Nora freeze, and she screamed as it bolted towards them.
Strong shoved her out of the way and met the creature head-on, and caught the massive claws as they swung down.
Its mandibles twitched to rip his throat out, but he leaned his head back enough to avoid them. He was too close to escape the smaller claws and they slashed the bits of his chest and arms not covered by armor.
"Strong! Are you all right?"
She scrambled up from the ground and lifted her gun but her hands trembled and she hesitated.
"Shoot the mirelurk," he grunted as one of the claws caught at his hip and she watched in horror as blood spilled down his side.
"Can you push it away from you first? I'm afraid I'm going to hit you!"
His eyes became hard as he turned his head to look back at her, holding the creature at bay as if it was more of a nuisance than a flailing mass of muscle and claw.
"No, kill it now."
Frustration rose like heat under her collar.
Why was he doing this?
Surely there were better ways to improve her accuracy than by putting himself in danger? How could she live with herself if she hit him right now by mistake?
Nora wanted to scream at him to stop messing around and throw the creature away from him, but the seriousness of his gaze made the remark die on her tongue.
Past the steel of his eyes she was shocked to find fear staring back at her and then she knew.
Knew that this was more for him than her, a reassurance that were something to happen to him, she might be all right.
Her breath caught in her throat and she fired.
The first shot burrowed into Strong's bicep and the second hit the creature in the small, soft space where its face peeked out from the shell, spraying Strong in a mist of blue blood.
The mirelurk slipped from his grip and fell to the sand with a dull thud, and she ran to Strong and grabbed his arm to assess the damage.
"I'm so sorry, I hit you," her voice wavered as she watched the wound trickle blood in a steady stream.
He scooped her up into his arms and kissed her with so much passion it took her breath away, and she couldn't spare a thought for the blue gore that smudged across her cheeks.
His hand tangled in her hair while the other wrapped around her waist and he held her tight to him as he dragged his lips down to her neck.
"Not hurt, you did good," his hoarse whisper made her tremble in his arms, and her heart filled with so much love for him she felt like she could burst.
He set her down and shot a wary glance up towards the beacon that radiated a sickly green glow.
"Let's go."
She took a moment to collect herself and reload her gun before entering the lighthouse to take lead up the winding stairwell. The stairs gave a concerning groan with each step Strong took behind her, and the closer they got to the top the slower Strong seemed to walk.
Perhaps the bullet wound hurt worse than he let on?
As the never-ending spiral of stairs continued Nora became lost in thought, speculating on what these disciples of Atom were referring to as the Blessed at the top of the lighthouse.
Maybe it was one of those glowing cockroaches she had seen at the USAF station?
She glanced down at her pistol and it bolstered her confidence.
If she could take down that mirelurk creature, she could handle an overgrown cockroach, or whatever they were called in this new world.
Granted, Strong had been holding the mirelurk back, but it was progress and she'd take it.
The monotony of the spiral broke and they were led outside to an observation deck, more a catwalk than anything, that encircled the lighthouse about ten feet from the top.
Nora wrapped her fingers around the cold metal of the guard rail and looked out at the ocean as the brilliance of the morning sun glinted off of the choppy water like bits of glittering diamond.
"Wow," she sighed, awestruck by the endless spread of blue that went out as far as the eye could see and melded with the sky at the hazy line of a horizon that seemed as inconceivable as it was infinite.
"Isn't it beautiful?"
Her voice was whisked away by the snap of the cool salted breeze and she turned around to find Strong with his back pressed against the wall of the lighthouse, tense with his eyes focused on the steel flooring beneath his feet.
"Are you all right?"
She frowned when he gave her a stiff nod and peeled his eyes away from the floor to look towards the small set of stairs that led up to the top. He abandoned the minigun, too bulky for the narrow stairway, and clutched his assault rifle instead.
"Strong will go first."
She opened her mouth to protest, but at his firm glare, she nodded and trailed behind him up the steps.
He took each step up to the beacon with a grave finality that worried her, and she was ashamed at her own ignorance when it took her a moment more to realize why.
"Strong, it's okay, you go back downstairs I'll be-"
"Stay back, lots of rads," his voice brooked no argument and in response, the Geiger counter built into her Pip-Boy squealed as she reached the midway point up the stairs.
Nora paused and bit her lip as Strong went up the rest of the way and unlatched the bar that kept the glass door at the top of the lighthouse locked. She could just make out a glowing, twisted creature crouched over the ravaged remains of a body before it unleashed a blood-chilling snarl and hurled itself across the beacon at Strong.
He landed a few well-placed shots before one of the creature's flailing arms smacked into his assault rifle and sent it sailing over the rail. Strong blinked in surprise before making a grab for the sledgehammer strapped to his back and the creature threw itself against his chest, pushing him back a half-step.
His leg brushed the guardrail pole and he made the mistake of glancing behind him at the sand one hundred feet below.
Strong frowned in confusion when his vision started to go black around the edges and his stomach seemed to drop out beneath him.
The creature raked its nails across his face and he smacked it aside as he fought to catch his breath.
What was happening to him?
The glowing, decrepit ghoul, more monster than man, lunged at Strong again, and in his haste to pull the sledgehammer from his harness Strong was knocked back against the guardrail and his heel slipped over the edge.
He let out a hoarse shout that chilled Nora to the bone and then she was back outside of the Boston Public Library again watching him fall three hundred feet from Trinity Tower.
Nora jerked her pistol up and fired and the creature stumbled back inside of the beacon.
"Strong, hang on!"
She sprinted up the stairs and Strong sank to his knees, eyes wild and unseeing as he struggled to breathe around the tightness in his throat.
Pools of glowing green blood had made the landing slick and Nora felt her heart skip a beat when her foot slid on the final stair and she flew head-first into the creature, tackling it to the floor.
She scrambled on top of the ghoul and hurried to pin its wrists down as it bucked with a violent strength beneath her. Its body was all dense, wiry muscle that she knew would throw her off any second and she looked around in desperation for her gun, which she found scattered out of reach a few feet away.
"Goddamnit!"
Nora tried to quell her growing panic as her eyes darted for a weapon and remembered the hunting knife that was strapped to her hip. She released one of the glowing ghoul's wrists and screamed as the creature slashed at her faster than she could blink. White-hot pain tore down her arm and across her hip but she pushed past it to jerk the knife out from its holster.
Nora plunged it through the creature's heart and it let out a throaty growl, and she swore for a moment their eyes met and she saw malice before its back bowed and it released a glowing cloud of radiation that filled the space of the beacon.
Nora rolled off of the dead ghoul and gasped for air as heat rushed over her and struck her with a crippling dizziness that left her head spinning. Her hands shook as fierce nausea bubbled in her stomach, and she swallowed it down to crawl outside to Strong who was now slumped against the landing guardrail.
His face was ashen and he wheezed as he met her eyes in a frightened confusion that broke her heart before he looked back down at his clenched hands.
"Shh, it's okay Strong, it's okay. You're having a panic attack, you're going to be okay."
Nora knew better than to crowd him, and knelt a few feet away.
"Look at me, my love," she spoke in a voice meant to convey calm, but it trembled as the radiation poisoning swept through her. He dragged his eyes away from the floor and met hers once more. "I know it's hard, but please try to take slow breaths. Focus on the safe, solid ground beneath you and it will get easier. You're going to be just fine, I promise."
He frowned in disbelief, but at her gentle, guided breathing he found the tightness that gripped his throat starting to ease. The next time he met her eyes Strong looked much less distressed and she sighed in relief.
He reached for her and pulled her into his lap, and she hissed when her injured hip pressed against him. Strong glanced down in confusion and his face became stricken as he began to notice the blood that had soaked through her vault-suit.
"Don't worry, it probably looks worse than it is," she whispered before leaning away from him to vomit, and then everything went black.
…
"Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt-"
"Break's over lad, we're getting slammed," Whitechapel Charlie called out with his distinctive Cockney accent before hovering back over to tend to the crowded bar.
James sighed and tucked the book that Nora had given him into his back pocket. He'd been meaning to start it all week, but life had gotten in the way, what with getting to Goodneighbor from The Slog in one piece and all.
He followed the Mister Handy robot out from the break room and took his place behind the bar of the Third Rail, the best and only bar in this nefarious town of Goodneighbor.
Long strings of light were strung across the reformed metro station ceiling, filling the bar with a dim glow that gave the eye just enough to play with without revealing the sordid affairs that took place in the shadows. The cracked, layered plywood that covered the floor was swollen with a lifetime of spilt beer that gave the bar a musty smell as iconic as the Union Jack-stamped Mister Handy robot that ran it.
…
Conrad Kellogg approached the suit-clad ghoul who stood guard out front of the Third Rail and the bouncer stepped aside.
"Ham."
"Kellogg, good to have you again."
Kellogg nodded and strode down the rusted escalator that functioned as the stairs to the bar, and was greeted with the sad, soulful crooning of the resident singer Magnolia.
Maybe he'd be getting lucky tonight, though Magnolia expected a lot of free drinks and a lot more hemming and hawing for her prim little snatch.
He settled on the barstool furthest from the door and waited for Charlie to bring him his usual, drumming his gloved fingers across the bartop.
Kellogg had wasted months now searching for the elusive Vault 111 survivor and the Institute was not as forthcoming with their flow of caps as they had been at the start, going so far as to threaten to cut off his funding for this little escapade altogether should he not deliver results soon.
The loss of caps hadn't bothered him, he could spend a few more years doing merc work and settle somewhere decent.
It was their threat to revoke the repair of his cybernetics should he fail to complete this job that had made him feel something so foreign and inconceivable he was paranoid someone would be able to read it in the lines of his face.
Fear.
"Evening, what can I get for you?"
Kellogg looked up from the counter and frowned at the ghoul that stood behind the bar.
"Where the fuck is Charlie?"
"Sorry sir, we're slammed tonight. What can I get for you?"
Kellogg grit his teeth and scanned the bar to find Whitechapel Charlie pouring drinks for a rowdy group of mercs at the opposite end of the counter.
"Double whiskey, Uisce Beatha, and a Gwinnett Stout. Remember that for next time."
The ghoul gave him a hurried nod and Kellogg eyed him as he splashed the amber whiskey into a passably clean glass and pulled a stout from the cooler. He slid the drinks over and Kellogg shot the whiskey down before sliding the glass back for a refill.
"Never seen you around here before," Kellogg said as the ghoul poured him another.
"Name's James, I mainly take care of the back of house work, but I help out Charlie when it gets busy like tonight."
"Hm," Kellogg took a leisurely sip of the whiskey, scrutinizing the ghoul. He seemed a little too clean to be a Goodneighbor native. "Lived in Goodneighbor long?"
James swallowed, disarmed by the calculating eyes of the gruff man, and glanced around for any patrons that needed service.
"No, just settled in earlier this week," he replied and turned to leave under the pretense of washing some glassware when Kellogg slung back the rest of his drink and slid the glass forward for another round.
"Where'd you come from before this?"
James poured a few generous slugs of Uisce Beatha into his glass and left the bottle on the counter.
"The Slog, it's a ghoul settlement that deals mostly in the Tarberry trade."
Kellogg brought the glass to his lips but froze as the name of the settlement rang a bell.
After the first week had passed with no luck in finding his missing vault-dweller, Kellogg had begun to put out feelers for rumors. He hadn't earned his reputation for being one of the best mercenaries in the Commonwealth for nothing, and the key to that success, aside from the killing, was the information.
When enough caps are offered though, it becomes a matter of distinguishing the quality of the intel over the quantity. He had received all manner of outlandish reports of his pre-war vault-dweller, from wiping out a horde of deathclaws in a suit of power armor to sightings of her roaming the Commonwealth with a super mutant on a leash.
Kellogg snorted and looked up to find that the ghoul had run off to serve another customer, and helped himself to another shot of whiskey from the leftover bottle.
One of his most recent reports claimed that Nora had been seen bartering at a settlement named The Slog before heading east, and Kellogg grinned as he watched the ghoul rush to pour drinks for a new group of people.
With this ghoul in his pocket, it would be a hell of a lot easier convincing the settlers of The Slog to keep him abreast of any news should his vault-dweller return to trade with that settlement in the future. He was sure that with a suitable amount of caps and pressure he could convince them to stall her, at least long enough for him to get there before she slipped through his fingers once again.
James snuck a glance over at the merc and jolted at the unflinching way the man stared at him, setting him on edge. He noticed that the bottle of whiskey he had left was now empty and let out a slow breath before making his way back over.
"Can I get you another round, or are you still working on that stout?"
"Keep the whiskey coming boy, I'll tell you when I've had enough."
James bit the inside of his cheek and retrieved a fresh bottle of Uisce Beatha from under the counter, filling the man's glass.
"Ever notice anything out of the ordinary during your time at The Slog?" Kellogg left the whiskey untouched, watching the ghoul.
"Not that I can think of," James picked up a rag and began to dry the glassware.
"I'm looking for a young woman from Vault 111, goes by the name of Nora." James felt the book in his back pocket sear his skin and paused for a moment before setting the cleaned glass down to pick up the next. "I'm a man who appreciates information, and I can make you very rich if you tell me what I need to know."
James nodded but kept his eyes trained on the glass as he worked at a stubborn smudge with his rag.
"I'm also a man who can make your life very diffic-"
A violent jolt flared in his neck and before Kellogg could blink his hand seized around the Gwinnett Stout he was holding and crushed the bottle, spraying himself and the counter in beer and shattered glass.
"Fuck!"
Kellogg glanced down at the blood that welled around the shards of glass in his palm and felt a flash of rage. James stared at him in alarm before scrambling to hand over a clean towel.
"Are you all right, sir? Let me get you another stout-"
"Fuck the drink. Here," Kellogg dropped a handful of caps on the counter. "I'll be expecting any information you and your little ghoul buddies from The Slog may have heard in regards to the woman from Vault 111." He jerked his chin at Whitechapel Charlie on the other side of the bar, "and make sure to mention that to him as well. I want him listening for any rumors of her that may pass through here."
James gave him a curt nod and Kellogg made his way towards the exit, the crowd parting for him out of an instinctual, animal fear. James scooped the caps off of the counter and went into the back to grab a broom.
When he got back to the bar he found Charlie tutting over the broken glass.
"What was that about?"
James swallowed hard and began to sweep the floor.
"Nothing."
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Dear readers, first off I just want to say how happy I am that you all are taking the time to read this story.
Unfortunately, my work is picking up more now and I will no longer be able to make the once a week posting deadline.
But please don't worry, I promise I will finish this story. I have had it heavily outlined and planned out from the very start, and there is a definite ending that I am working towards.
Words cannot express how grateful I am for every comment, view, and subscribe; they just make my day.
Thank you so much for reading!