Disclaimer: Fallout is owned by Bethesda.

David's first step outside the vault was fairly underwhelming. His feet landed on rock, and he beheld a cave, obviously man-made. The controls for the vault were in front of him, at the top of some scaffolding and a catwalk. Just to leave on a dramatic note, he decided to use them.

Making his way up to the controls, he picked up a strange crispness to the air. Must be what it's like to breath the air outside. He didn't think it would be that different than the vault's air, but it was enough to make him marvel, even as the metal creaked and he walked up to the vault controls. Pulling the cord out of his pip-boy, he plugged it into its socket, opening the plexiglass cover over the button to open the door.

David pushed down on it with his fist, smirking because he knew that Joseph would be screaming about it. Then he very quickly turned around and left, knowing that he was likely to get shot if he stayed. That would suck.

There was a light some distance away, curving around a bit of the cave. Dust filtered through the stream, separating the beams of light and casting dancing shadows through them.

Without an ounce of hesitation, David walked through the light and out.

It took him a moment to adjust, with his arms held over his eyes. The light of the sun seared his retinas, and for a moment, he remembered the old warnings to wear eye protection in the Vault-Tec videos they had to watch in school. The other problem was the noise. He had never really considered that the outside would be so cacophonous, with the wind blasting by his ears and the shrill cries of birds. The books had always described birdsong as harmonious and melodic, not at all like this.

Slowly, he lowered his arm, still fighting to keep his eyes open against the harsh glare. The sight that greeted him wasn't unexpected, but it was still horrifying.

The land in front was filled with dull, lifeless colors. Leafless trees creaked as the wind pushed at them, and small, lumpy black forms stared at him, tilting their heads with curiosity. Brown grass sprung up in patchwork over the wastes, doing nothing but reminding those who saw it of what could have been.

With a sigh, David looked at the compass of his pip-boy. It informed him that he was facing north, so he turned around to see what was to the south. When he turned his gaze, though, he lost his breath at the sheer scale of destruction.

Atlanta. Vault 64's residents were all descendants of the chosen residents of the Capital of the Southeast, and they had passed down stories of the majesty of its titanic buildings, reaching past the clouds. Grand festivals held in the streets and a rich cultural history.

All of it, reduced to rubble and twisted steel reaching towards its former glory.

But it wouldn't be a bad place to look for supplies or shelter. Some of the buildings looked as if they had their lower floors intact, and if David could find a couple basements, he'd be set for shelter. All he really needed to find was food and clean water. Releasing a sigh, he started climbing past the mouth of the cave that held his previous life.

It was going to be a harsh journey towards his new one.

David was quickly learning that his plans for shelter needed some serious revision.

There were skeletons everywhere, left in various haphazard positions and weathered away through the years. The nuclear shadows left from the bombs were paranoia-inducing, always making him spin around when he saw a person in the corner of his eyes only to find the ghost of some long-dead man. What had surprised him, and led to the beginning of his dilemma, were the corpses. Or rather, what he had thought were corpses.

He had already slept through one fitful night, where each bang jarred him into a state of near-panic, and he had to watch for rad-roaches and hideous burrowing rodent-like creatures with no hair when he first found a corpse. His motivation for entering the building was the ammo, still on the shelves, that he was in dire need of. Several weapons were also still displayed on the walls, and he had slung as many as he could carry over his shoulders and stuffed more in a backpack he had found, but all of them were in terrible condition, only fit for scrapping. When he nearly tripped over a body that still had flesh on it, he was more than a little surprised.

It was when the corpse growled and started to get up that David began to question his own sanity. Its eyes glowed with the sickly green tint of radiation, boring into his as it pushed itself onto its feet, some gray skin sloughing off in the process. David could do nothing but stare at his waking nightmare as its bones creaked and the horrible sound of its loose flesh sliding against itself reached his ears. When it stood up on its ancient feet, it let loose a gurgling shriek and clawed at him with rotten fingernails and a stench beyond anything he could describe.

When the pain of the lines it raked across his skin registered, David realized that this was real, not some hallucination his mind had concocted. He recoiled from the blow, dropping the ruined guns he held in his arms. Taking several steps back as he heard the moans and growls of more of these horrors made flesh, he pulled out his 10mm pistol and fired into the monster's skull, blowing whatever brains it had left out the back of its misshapen skull.

It dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, but the report of the gun was answered with more roars and cries, and he could hear the tapping of bare feet against concrete outside. Peeking around the edge of a shelf through the store's destroyed windows, he saw at least ten of the corpses, all shambling towards him at a speed that should be impossible with the state of their bodies. Giving himself a second to breath and collect himself, the exile raised his gun with an outward calm belying his panic and began shooting.

The closest corpse's skull ruptured, covering the ground around it in gore and leaving its body to tumble over itself and trip two more of the horrors. The second bullet jerked back the chest of another monster, slowing it before it re-balanced itself and started moving again. The third bullet he shot went directly into its center mass and dropped it, its body splaying across the road.

After that, he had no more time to take aimed, concentrated shots. The horrors flung themselves through the windows, ignoring the faintly glowing green fluid welling through the marks the jagged glass made on them. He managed to down two more in sprays of luminescent blood before the remaining six were upon him.

They bit, clawed, and tore at him while he yelled and flailed, trying to throw them back just far enough that he could put bullets in them. With a lucky kick and swipe of his arm, he managed to get the one hanging off his right arm into the one behind it so he could put bullets in both of them, leaving him with no ammo in the pistol.

David had just begun to accept his end when the deafeningly loud crack of a sniper rifle rang through the air, and the head of one corpse and chest of another exploded in showers of flesh, bone, and blood. There was no time to question it, though, and so he didn't stop to consider it before he reversed the pistol in his hand and smashed it into another corpse's skull, cracking through the weakened bone and mashing the soft tissue inside. It let out one last gurgle before it slid to the ground, and the last one tackled him.

He managed to flip it over, as it had little muscle left. With a yell, David brought the pistol's grip down on its skull, smashing through it again and again, repeating the action until all that was left was a softly glowing mess of gore. He panted, taking a second to revel in the fact that he was still alive before he looked around, trying to find where the sniper shot had come from.

His scan of the road and rooftops revealed nothing. As far as he could tell, he was just alone as he had been.

Terrifyingly, achingly alone.

Setting up a makeshift workbench for his weapons wasn't as hard as finding a place to do it, but after three days of increasing paranoia, David had finally managed it.

It was difficult, since he had to stay on the outskirts. His Geiger counter would crackle at him like thunder whenever he traveled more than a couple blocks into the city, and he had been forced to use some scavenged Rad-Away he found in the basement of a long-forgotten clinic more than once. The process was especially terrifying, since it required him to sit still with an IV in his arm and the bag of fluid strung up in a make-shift gurney. He normally spent the time with the pistol in hand, eyes flicking about at every sound.

Food turned out to be less of a problem than David had thought, as he had managed to cook the radroach and rodent meat to get rid of the radiation. Water, on the other hand, was a little more difficult. He didn't have the tools to perform reverse osmosis or carbon filtering, so he had to rely on any bottled water he could find.

With the workbench finally up with all the tools he had gathered, though, he could finally pull apart all the useless guns he had been finding and put together some serviceable ones. The walking corpses wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem with a proper shotgun and rifle.

It was as David was stripping the third decrepit combat shotgun for serviceable parts that he heard the footsteps. Heavy and pounding, and unmistakably belonging to power armor. Grabbing the hunting rifle he had managed to restore and checking to make sure it was loaded, he crept up the stairs to find out whether or not his insanity had finally gotten to him, hoping against hope that it hadn't.

When he peeked around the corner, disappointment settled in. It wasn't Morgan, not that he had truly been expecting her. It also wasn't any form of power armor that he recognized. But it most definitely was power armor, and whoever wore it carried a very large nozzle attached to a tank fixed to the back of the armor, which meant that it was probably a flamethrower. Something else, a very long weapon, was strapped across the armor's back. The most intimidating part, though, was the way they just stood there, staring at him from the street.

The pitch-black power armor reminded him of the nuclear shadows, making him wonder if it really wasn't a hallucination. The eyes glowed orange like fire, and the amor didn't move at all, making it seem even more inhuman. Even though it activated nearly every flight response David had, he still forced himself to call out, rationalizing that the person probably already knew he was there.

"H-hello?" David cringed from the way his voice cracked and crumbled, barely coming out from days of disuse. He tried again, hoping it would be better. "Hello?"

The person shifted, the helmet turning to focus on him. "Good afternoon," said the person inside in a metallic, gruff voice, sounding like they were just taking a stroll. "I've been wanting to talk to you."

"What for?" David asked, both relieved and pondering new issues. This was a person, a human, which meant there were still people alive out here and not just the corpses. However, he wasn't really sure if he wanted their attention, given that they were obviously geared to fight a small army.

"Mind if I come in? I think we'd both benefit from some company," the man said. "Been wearing this suit for days, it'd be nice to take some time to move around on my own legs. Probably smell like hell, though, so I could understand if you don't want me stinking up the place."

Weighing his options, David's desire for actual human company outweighed his preservation instincts. "Alright," he said, lowering the hunting rifle. He probably couldn't have done anything with it anyways. "Come on down."

Servos whirred as the man's armored feet lifted, clunking down on the asphalt and concrete. David walked down the stairs, watching the man follow out of the corner of his eyes. In the power armor, he was larger than David by at least a foot, and far more intimidating. The ancient concrete stairs crumbled slightly as the man walked down, but less than he would've expected out of power armor that size. Finally, he walked to the center of the room as David pulled two broken down chairs to a slab of fallen ceiling that David used as a breakfast table.

Then, the armor popped open from the back, allowing a blonde man with close-cut hair and a scruffy, half-grown beard to step out. He wore a black bodyglove with some bulk to it, tipping David off that he was probably armored under it. When the man turned, pulling a pistol out of a holster strapped to the power armor's thigh and taking steps towards the seat that had been pulled out for him, David was also somewhat shocked to realize that the man was several inches shorter than him. Not of the ordinary, but it felt wrong.

"Richard Graham," said the man, sticking out his hand. He had green eyes and an assured countenance, a half-smirk seeming near permanent on his face. Hesitantly, David took the hand, noting that Richard made no attempt to squeeze or establish his own dominance. "Who might you be?"

Weighing his choices carefully, David decided his own name would be fine. After all, it didn't mean anything in this place. It didn't seem like anything did. "David King."

Richard sat down, placing his pistol down on the slab, pointing away from either of them. It was a boxy thing, looking more like a flashlight with a gun grip than a weapon. "I see you're from a vault," Richard started off, nodding towards him. "Don't get a lot of those these days. Most have already run their course."

Glancing down at his jumpsuit reflexively, David asked, "Who are you? I mean, really. I wouldn't expect most people to have power armor, especially considering all… this." He gestured around, indicating the state of the great city.

Nodding, Richard said, "Well spotted. I'm a man on a mission, and I need your help with it."

And now David had a very bad feeling. "My help?" he asked, laying his hand on the 10mm in its holster on his hip. "What could I possibly do to help you? I have no experience with anything in this hellscape."

"Then it's a good thing that my mission pertains to something not really of this hellscape. I need access to a vault, and that requires a pip-boy. I lost mine in a gunfight with the Brotherhood of Steel." Richard shrugged, displaying an air of nonchalance.

"Why would I help you get into a vault? Do you even have the authorization to do that?" David asked, sliding his left arm and pip-boy off the slab.

Richard's half-smirk turned into a full grin. "Of course, I do. I'm with the government of the United States of America."

"Don't bullshit me." David was unamused, his tone flat. "There's no way the government survived this."

"Why would you think that? I would think that the President and his people would have the very best protection of all in the nuclear apocalypse, seeing as they were the ones to commission the vaults in the first place," Richard said. He stood up, startling David into nearly pulling the pistol out of its holster. "Relax, I'm just grabbing proof. Or, well, all the proof I can provide."

Walking over to the power armor, he turned the wheel on the back to open it up again. After pulling some small chain out of a pouch on the inside, he slapped the armor to close it again and walked back to the table. "Here," he said, handing it over to David.

Taking the dangling chain, David grabbed the rectangular piece of metal with a glowing blue square hanging off the end and brought it to where he could read the writing. It read Richard Ethan Graham on the first line, a string of numbers on the second, the third denoting his blood type as B+, and the final one reading Catholic. When he touched the glowing blue square, a full-body holographic image of Richard sprung up. After examining it for a while, David finally nodded. "Alright," he said, a touch grudgingly. "What does the government need my help with?"

"We go by the Enclave these days," Richard said. "And like I said, I need to get into a vault. You have the materials to do so, and I'm guessing you know vaults pretty well. So, you help me, and I can get you someplace better to sleep at night, maybe a few friends too. Not a lot of those around these ruins. You're lucky I was there to bail you out of that situation with the ghouls."

David frowned. "Ghouls?" he asked.

"Yeah, when people get pumped full of radiation, they either die horribly or turn into a ghoul. Y'know, the grey-skinned rotting people that attacked you." Richard spread out his hands, a what-can-you-do gesture.

"That was you?" David asked, keeping his tone carefully neutral and clenching his jaw.

"Sure was," he said, pointing a thumb at his armor. "See that beaut of a rifle? Fifty cal, haven't found a target that I can't one-tap with it. Hell, can usually tap more than one at once, just like you saw."

"And why, exactly," David said, his voice much quieter, "Did you wait so long to talk to me?"

Richard shrugged. "Can never be too careful. Had to make sure you had the tools I needed and the skills necessary to join in. If you didn't, I would've just taken the pip-boy off your corpse and figured out the vault on my own."

That took David a second to process, blinking. "Thought you said you were with the government."

"Was the holotag not enough?" Richard said, his tone of voice dry and his eyes narrowing.

"I didn't think the United States government, built on the principles of freedom and equality, would be so callous with the life of one of their citizens, leaving them to die or lose their minds to paranoia," David growled, scowling across the slab. "If that's what the government is like now, maybe I don't want to help."

Richard snorted. "Take a good look around you. The only freedom around here is the freedom to commit any crime you want without any punishment. Equality doesn't mean jack shit other than a nice sentiment that most people don't have time to think about since they're too busy blowing each other's brains out the back of their skulls."

"There are more people?" David asked, losing his scowl. "Where are they?"

"Trust me, kid, you don't want to meet them. Murderers, rapists, raiders, and mutants are all that's left out here. Little warlords trying to carve out kingdoms of their own across the wasteland where they can be god. The Enclave is trying to change all that, get things in real order for the true citizens of America. We have a vision where the people can live without watching their backs for the next bullet, without wondering which of their friends will die next. Where we'll all live in the comforts of the Old World and be able to advance as a society again. Right now, that vision needs you." Richard stared into his eyes, hard and unflinching. "You've got a chance to take your place in history, to change this hellscape for the better for everyone coming after you. Will you take it?"

The man held his hand out. David could see his sincerity, the belief he had in this vision of his. Maybe this was his first step towards making things better for his vault. He didn't know what Richard or this Enclave needed, but if it would help put this broken world back together, what kind of man would he be if he refused?

David took his hand, staring back into his eyes with his own conviction. "Where are we going?"