1
"War. War never changes.
From the dawn of time, to the apocalypse that devastated the world in the latter half of the twenty-first century, it's all the same. Wars fought over competing ideals, for land or resources, or even over petty grievances, it's all the same.
People, young people, die under the orders of those sitting safe at home. At least, that's how it was until flames erupted from the skies.
The methods may change. The places, the weapons, the factions and the nations, but it always amounted to the same thing. Death.
What if it could change? What if we could stop war? Maybe not all of them. Maybe not for long, but what if we could make a difference? Just once. What if we could stop the death and destruction? Just once.
That's where you come in, my friend. That's your job.
We don't want to lay everything on your shoulders, but we don't have the time. We wish we didn't have to send you out there alone, but we have to. Because we no longer have the patients."
The light felt painful. Even with closed eyes, she could feel the searing heat of it, pricking at eyeballs that rolled and moved around in sockets that felt like a metric tonne of sand had lodged there, grinding away the precious, viscous flesh. She didn't want to open her eyes. Didn't want to expose them to the sun's heartless rays. Didn't want to wake from the dream that had been repeating, repeating, repeating.
Her hand moved, of its own volition, to cover her eyes and the pain, however brief, subsided. Still she didn't open her eyes, testing her body. Curling her toes in her boots. Flexing her fingers. She wondered why her left arm felt so heavy. Why, every time she moved it, she felt a tingle, a rush of something chemical and electrical running up and down her forearm?
"Well, looks like somebody is finally waking up." A woman's voice that, at first, sounded like an out-of-tune radio, squawking in some strange electronic dialect, then became more clear and human. "I could have sworn you were a goner there, for a while. Now, you just take your time, Patience. There's no rush. Here, have a drink."
Sour tasting plastic was pressed to her lips and she realised how dry and flaked they were. Tepid water dribbled onto those dry lips and she drank. It tasted filthy, but it also tasted like life. She couldn't have appreciated it more if it had come straight from a cool mountain spring. The water and the plastic detached from her lips and she found herself leaning upward, wanting more. Needing it.
"Ah, ah, ah. Not too much there, Patience. Don't want you throwing up in this fine dwelling we have here." The sound of plastic moving against plastic as a cap was returned to a bottle. "You'd been out in the sun too long, girl. Near dried into a husk by the time I found you. Damn if you wouldn't have left a beautiful corpse, though!"
"Where ..." It was little more than a croak. A cracked, feeble attempt to talk not helped by cactus needle scratching attacking her throat. She tried to cough. "Where?"
She pushed herself up by the elbows and tried to sit. An explosion of colours, a swirling maelstrom and a jackhammer put paid to that idea. Slumping onto her back once more, she tried opening her eyes, shaded by her arm. Blurred, distorted, inflamed, like looking at the bottom of a pool with a thousand watt arc lamp thrust in her face. She saw nothing.
"I found you just about half-a-mile back, just lying on the ground. Thought you were dead. I was gonna steal everything you had. Til you grabbed me." The bottle cap unscrewed again and more water dripped into her mouth. "I tell you, Patience, almost dead and you still near broke my wrist. You are one strong lady. Pretty, too."
"Why ... why do you keep calling me 'Patience'?" It still felt like a porcupine was trying to climb out of her throat, but she could, at least, manage a few words.
"Well, I figured that was your name. You kept mumbling it while you were out. 'Patience', 'Patience', 'Patience'." The voice seemed to move away and then return. "It is your name, right?"
"No. It wasn't 'Patience', it was 'patients'. From my dream." It was funny. That dream had been clear as day a second ago and now it seemed like a dream of a dream.
"If Patience isn't your name, what do I call you?"
"My name is ... is ..." It was a struggle. She could feel a name, her name, dancing out of reach, spinning a waltz with other memories behind a wall of impenetrable glass. Seen, felt, but imprisoned from her. Separated. "I can't remember. I can't remember anything."
She tried opening her eyes again, forcing herself through the pain and discomfort. Flickering eyelids like an old movie projector letting light through in a ditter-ditter-ditter of images. She screwed her eyes closed and tried again. Ignoring pain, and jackhammers, cacti spines and exploding rainbows, pushing past maelstroms and porcupines, she forced her eyes open. Struggled to sit up.
"If your name isn't Patience, but you can't remember your name, I figure I'll just keep calling you Patience until you do remember." The woman was coming into focus now. A toothy smile being the clearest image.
Patience reached out and found a wall with her hand. Or was it a wall? She squinted. It wasn't a wall, it was a sand coloured boulder. In fact, they seemed to be sheltered within the gap between several boulders, a rusted, corrugated sheet of tin draped as a haphazard roof. Stumbling, she meandered to the gap between the boulders and looked out.
It was a horror.
A wasteland of ash grey, sand scoured rocks and lifeless husks of trees. Scrub bushes and fingers of grass were few and far between. The sky, a hazy, sickly yellow, darkening to a mucous green. A billboard, half-burned, half-discoloured, washed out, peeling, proclaimed 'A giant leap for Nuka-Cola. A Quantum leap!' and, in front of the billboard, a line of cars. Abandoned, rusted and sand-blasted. Rotting hulks of a decadent society, now dust.
"Where the hell am I?" She collapsed to her knees, hands falling to the ground, gripping the colourless, sterile dirt.
"This. Is. Three. Dog!
Another beautiful day dawns in the Capital Wasteland, brothers and sisters. Another beautiful day! The sun is shining, the water, the clean water, is flowing, thanks to that mysterious Lone Wanderer, and it is finally getting out there. You, yes, you can partake of the sweetest of sweet tastes, coming to a settlement near you.
Speaking of the Lone Wanderer. No-one has heard from our hero in a long time. Have they died? Have they moved on to pastures new? Have they been abducted by aliens? Who knows?
If you're out there, friend, that old wagon wheel, Lady D.C. could use your help one more time.
It seems the Super mutants are organising. Word on the streets, and by the streets, i mean the through short wave radio, is they have a new leader and that leader has a plan for world domination!
Nothing like aiming high!
So, if you see our old friend from Vault one-oh-one, tell them we could use a helping hand. Or, maybe, some other hero could rise up from the ashes?
Because the good old Capital Wasteland could sure use a hero right now.
This is Three-Dog coming at you from deep in downtown D.C. and here's a little Pat Boone mellowing the mellow for all you uptight folks out there."
She could see the woman, now. Dishevelled, wearing a big coat covered with pockets, rips and tears repaired with untidy stitching, cloth flapping. She wore an old football helmet, the grill bent and dangling, attached by only one spur. She couldn't determine how old she was, weather or age had caused her flesh to wrinkle and sag, browned by the unforgiving sun. Despite that, she had a friendly face. Laugh lines and crows feet betraying a humorous nature.
The mattress looked like it had seen its fair share of dirt and oil and, what looked like blood. She wanted to sit down again, but balked at using the thing she had been laying upon only moments before. Even though, if she was going to catch anything, it was, in all likelihood, too late.
"What happened here? Where am I?" It was the same question she had already asked. Words in different places, but the same.
"Heh. You Vault Dwellers! Hide away in your metal caves and come up here hoping the world is all roses again." The woman chuckled.
"Vault Dwellers?" It wasn't a term she remembered.
"People like you, Honey. I've seen one myself." The woman pointed at her left arm. "Had one of those Pip-Boy things, same as you. Wore a fancy blue jumpsuit, same as you. Came from a Vault, same as you. They didn't have a shiny new sidearm like you, though, just a dirty old shotgun."
She lifted her arm and looked at the device attached to it. This was the thing that had made her arm feel heavy. A bracer, thick, with plastic and metal attachments and a small screen that showed nothing. She didn't want to switch it on. She didn't want to wear it, either, but it seemed to be locked in place. The gun the woman mentioned was in a holster on her hip. She couldn't believe she hadn't noticed it before. She didn't touch that. Didn't want to. Yet.
As she looked at the device, she also saw the arm of the jumpsuit the woman had mentioned. Bright blue, with brown leather accents, it was made from some strange material, a tight weave that gave it a pattern not unlike a shark's skin.
"You still haven't answered my question." Looking out between the boulders, she felt sadness weigh heavy upon her. "How did this ... all of this devastation happen to this place, whatever this place is?"
"War happened, Patience! War devastated it all. Here. Everywhere." The woman seemed to find it amusing. "Damn near two hundred years ago. Death from above. Didn't they tell you anything in your Vault?"
"I don't remember." She slumped to the ground, rubbing her forehead. "I don't remember a Vault, I don't remember my name, or how I got here. I don't remember anything!"
"You just relax. I'm sure it'll all come back eventually." The woman had pulled out a stick with some kind of meat attached to it, from one of her many pockets, and chewed, thoughts seeming to run through her head. "That Pip-Boy thing has a screen. Maybe it's got a holo tape in it? Might tell you something?"
She lifted her arm and examined the device, turning it to look it over. There was a switch on the side and, with a slight hesitation, she flicked it on. The screen remained blank for a second before starting to light up with a green glow. She could feel a slight hum from the device even as she watched random looking characters flicker on the screen and then the words "Vault-Tec Pip-Boy ... Loading. Stand by." appeared.
The words "Stand by" pulsed in a slow rhythm but nothing else happened. She was about to switch it off when the device beeped and something resembling a map appeared on the screen. A list of options could be seen at the top of the screen; "Status", "VATS", "Data", "Map" and "Radio".
Two dials on the device seemed to control horizontal and vertical movements on the screen and she tried to move between the options, only to be met by a message appearing. "Locked - Incorrect Location." All except for the "Radio" option that had "Galaxy Radio" listed. She didn't switch on the radio.
"It's not working!" She slapped the screen, but it made no difference.
"I know a certain someone who might be able to fix it. A real wizard with gadgets and gizmos." The woman finished the meat on the stick and replaced the stick in her pocket. "She might even fix it for free. She's strange like that. Likes helping people. I don't know how she keeps that store running, throwing away good Caps by helping people."
"Who is she? Where can I find her?" She was interested now.
"Woman by the name of Moira. Runs a store up in Megaton." The woman adjusted her football helmet.
"Can you show me?" She was eager, now, to unlock the secrets in the Pip-Boy device. She needed to answer questions about herself and the Pip-Boy might have them. Or, at least, some of them.
"Sure. You can't see because of the rocks, but if you head north-east ..."
"No, I mean, can you take me?" She saw the woman squint, thinking.
"It'll cost you. Saving a life is one thing. Leading you all the way to Megaton? Now that's a different matter." The woman waved her hand in a dismissive fashion. "I doubt you have any Caps. It don't look like that Pip-Boy is coming off your arm any time soon and I don't take kindly to guns. I tell you what, we find you some new clothes, you give me that fancy jumpsuit, we'll call it even. What do you say, Patience?"
"Deal." She had no connection to the jumpsuit. It was just clothing. She needed answers more than an outfit. It seemed like a good deal to her.
The woman spat in her hand and held it out. This was something the Vault Dweller, Patience as she seemed to be called now, did remember. She spat in her own hand, clasped the woman's and made a vigorous handshake. The deal was settled.
"The name's Valrie, by the way. I thought I'd tell you, seeing as you didn't seem to give a shit." Valrie pulled another stick of meat from a coat pocket and offered it to Patience. "Squirrel-on-a-stick?"
Patience shrugged and took the stick. She was, after all, quite hungry. At least Valrie hadn't charged her for it. Yet.
It was a wasteland, that was for certain. Patience (she didn't know if she could ever get used to that name, but it was all she had until she remembered her real one), couldn't believe the world she found herself in. A scorched and battered waste that had never recovered from the nuclear holocaust from two hundred years before. At least, if she believed Valrie. She had no other information that could dispute that.
In her mind, she had a vague recollection of a vibrant land. One filled with towering cities that almost touched the sky, of verdant woodlands and sweeping grasslands. Of birds circling in bright blue skies. People. So many people, flitting between those glittering cities in gleaming, fusion powered cars. Luxurious domiciles on wheels that were the homes of those people for the journeys, short and long, between place 'A' and place 'B'.
Now, here, there was nothing but cold, sterile rocks. Dirt brown bushes without a single sign of life. There were no birds in the sky. Not a single one. She realised, after some time, that there were no sounds. No chorus of bird song, that constant tinkling noise that few people had ever paid any attention to. The distant thrum of cars on freeways, another ambient sound that no longer reached her ears.
It was dead. The whole world, as far as she could see and hear, dead.
"Before we go on to Megaton, I just have to make a little stop." Valrie called over her shoulder as she picked her way over the rough, boulder strewn ground. "Got a friend over at Girdershade. She's as mad as a bag of mole rats, but she's friendly. She hasn't had a good time of it, of late, and I got something might cheer her up."
"As long as you get me to this 'Megaton' place. It's not as if I'm on a time limit." Patience found herself eager to get to the destination as soon as possible, but she couldn't think of any particular reason to rush.
"Time don't mean much in the Capital Wasteland, Honey." Valrie circled a large boulder. "There's daytime and there's nighttime. Not much need for any other kind of time."
It surprised Patience how spry Valrie seemed. Like a goat on a mountain, she skipped and jumped, picked her way, set her feet with care and moved with a surprising grace and speed, never seeming to tire.
Following Valrie around the boulder, she caught her first sight of the civilisation that once was and it laid heavy on her heart. In the distance, a clear vision of a once magnificent elevated section of freeway, now collapsed. Sections still standing almost as intact as they had always stood, other sections leaning in precarious ways against uprights and hills. Still other sections fallen to the ground in ruin. These freeways had once been a prime example of the greatness and ingenuity of the nation, now only a distorted echo of the past.
She leaned against the boulder, her head scraping against the grit of the surface. She couldn't remember the past, only vague flashes, a gut feeling of what had once been. The world of man had brought itself low. So low that she doubted it would ever reach such heights ever again. Not if the world was still like this after two hundred years.
"How did it come to this, Valrie? Why did they let it get this bad?" She almost whispered that. Unable to fight to give the question any energy.
"Told you. Nukula bombs dropped on us. Dropped on us, them, everybody." Valrie skipped back to Patience, adjusting her helmet on the way.
"Nuclear." Patience made an absentminded correction. "Nuclear bombs."
"That's what I said, nukula." Reaching in her pocket, Valrie pulled out a battered pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She lit one and took a deep draw, savouring it then releasing it through her nose. "Anyways, after Alaska was taken back from those Red Knees bastards, they didn't take kindly to it. Returned to Shiana and threw them there nukula bombs at us, so we threw ours right back at them."
"Red Knees? Shiana?" Patience furrowed her forehead, trying to work out what Valrie was talking about. "You mean Red Chinese and China?"
"That's what I said, Red Knees and Shiana! Who's telling this god damn story anyway?" She picked a piece of tobacco from her mouth and spat before taking another long draw from the cigarette. "But there's them that reckon they didn't use, whatchacall, normal nukula bombs. See after fifty years, hundred at most, things should have started getting back to how it was. Trees, plants, animals coming back. Radiation should have started clearing up. But it didn't. Never did."
"Damned fools. Nukes weren't bad enough. They had to make them worse." She almost felt like retching.
"Are you going to stand here all day, shitting yourself about shit that happened two hundred years ago?" Valrie wasn't angry. She said it in an as matter-of-fact a way as she could. "Can't change shit that's already happened. You just gotta do the best you can with what you got. Stories about dead dumbasses and worrying about it won't help nothing."
She had a way with words did this woman of the Wasteland, that was for certain. And Valrie was right. There was no point to feeling gut punched about things that happened so long ago. She didn't even remember the day before, let alone a year, ten years or two hundred years before.
If she could, somehow, regain her memories she could take the time to mourn those things she may, or may not, have lost. Right now, she only needed to find a solution for that and one of the steps to that solution was following Valrie. At least, for now.
The landscape didn't get any less rough as they travelled towards the place Valrie had called 'Girdershade'. She didn't know what to expect. She couldn't see any signs of habitation anywhere. At least, none that she thought could be liveable.
That was until they passed around a small hill and she saw one building, almost intact, a little distance to the east. It looked like a square building with, from what she could see, something akin to Art Deco stylings. She tried to catch Valrie's attention.
"What's that place?" She pointed to the building. Valrie looked once then, with clear intent, looked away, her face crumpling into a scowl.
"That's a bad place. Bad ju-ju." Valrie made it clear she didn't want to even look at the structure. "The Dunwich Building. If there's evil in this world, and I'm damned sure there is, that shit-hole has more than its fair share."
"Buildings can't be evil. People are evil. Things are just things." She scoffed at the idea of a building being evil.
"Is that right, missy?" Turning around, Valrie gave Patience an intense stare. "Then you go right ahead and see. And, if you come out alive, which ain't likely, I guaran-damn-tee you'll come out with white hair, not that steel grey you got now."
Patience touched her hair with an absentminded hand. She didn't even know what colour her hair was, or considered that she had any at all. She pulled a strand before her eyes. It was, indeed, grey. Steel grey as Valrie had said. She didn't know if she had coloured it that way, or if it was natural. Was she old?
Valrie spoke to her as if she were older than Patience, that was for certain. She didn't know if that was only the way Valrie spoke, or if she was younger than the helmeted woman. She wasn't even certain how old Valrie was, or if she had only aged premature due to her environment.
Regardless, Valrie had continued scrambling over the rocks, heading north in as straight a line as Patience could tell. She gave another glance at the Dunwich Building. She figured it wasn't the best idea to explore the ruin, even if she didn't have other places to go. It was unlikely that the building would hold the answers she needed. The sight of an intact building had distracted her, nothing more.
"How old are you, Valrie?" She followed Valrie, navigating loose rocks with ease.
"Me?" Valrie whistled through her teeth as she seemed to make some difficult calculations. "I don't rightly know. Never counted. Forty or fifty, I'd say. Could be more, could be less."
"And me? How old do you think I am?" She stopped as Valrie turned and took a good long look, her eyes moving from the soles of her boots to the top of her head.
"Well, your skin don't look like it's ever seen much sunlight but I'd call you pretty, beautiful, even, if you don't mind me saying. You work out some, or, leastways, you did. You got some big muscles on that body of yours. You got boobs, so you ain't a child, but you ain't that tall neither." Valrie clicked her tongue a few times as she tried to work it out. "I'd say in your twenties, mid to late. If you didn't have your hair all tied up, you might look younger, I guess."
Valrie shrugged her shoulders, adjusted her helmet, and continued heading north. It didn't make much difference, knowing how old she was, but it was something, anything about herself that could be real. Something she didn't need to remember because it was right there. An actual, honest-to-goodness fact that she could cling to. To give her a sense of self.
They soon came upon what looked like a campsite. A number of tables and benches scattered around and a derelict camper trailer were the only signs of what the place might once have been. There were bones, too. Scavengers had scattered most of the bones around. Some were still intact, including one was once a child. Patience squatted beside the child's skeleton and held back a choked tear.
Two hundred years these bones had been here. Caught in the waves of flame and radiation, seeming to have been unaware of the conflagration that had overtook them, killing them where they had stood or sat. She didn't know if it would have been worse to die in those flames, as these people had, or to have lived and suffered the horrors that came after.
"We've not got far to go. I'd like to get there before night falls." Valrie spat as she looked around, keeping a practiced eye on their surroundings. "Bad shit comes out at night."
She took one last look at the child's skeleton before rising and following Valrie once more. The older woman seemed to pick up the pace as the soon continued its lazy arc in the sky, heading towards the horizon, sending glittering beams of light through the haze of the ravaged air.
After about an hour, as Patience calculated, they found themselves close to a section of the elevated freeway that Patience had spotted earlier that day. Valrie had stopped, staring at the foot of one of the huge supports like a rabbit watching a dog in the distance.
Patience could see, now, what Girdershade was. A ramshackle collection of huts made from, what seemed like, anything that could be useful. Wood, corrugated iron, old doors, plastic sheets and chain-link fencing all came together to make some limited living spaces. It wasn't what Patience had been expecting. Not that she knew what she had expected, anyway.
"Something's not right." Valrie rocked from one foot to the other. It was clear she was ready to run, if she needed to.
"Like what?" Patience could see only one person, a female, moving within the rough compound.
"Like the brahmin is dead. Sierra would never kill that thing, it's like a goddamn pet to her." Valrie had pointed to an enclosure to the right where a creature lay on its side. Something like a cow, the creature had two heads. It had no fur, only raw, red flesh and it was dead. That was for certain. Valrie pointed to the person outside a hut. "And I don't know that son of a bitch from anyone."
"Maybe they're just visiting, like you?" Patience remained crouched, though, not trusting herself to be right.
"Doubt it." Valrie spat at the ground in anger. "What we got here is mother-fucking raiders."
Patience found her hand had slipped to the grip of the gun at her hip. She looked at her hand and then at the gun. She had no idea whether she knew how to use the gun or not. Even if she did, she wasn't sure she was able to shoot well, if at all. All she knew was that Valrie seemed determined to see if her friend was okay. And, without knowing anyone else in the world, Patience could see she may have to do what she could to help.