Wally
Wallace Kovacs felt a familiar fear as he and his group approached Lexington. Three men and a refitted Mr Handy moved in a skirmish line, their weapons at the ready.
Up ahead, was a city that was dead, though not dead enough if the things he had heard from Trudy were half true.
He had seen the bodies of the raiders that had died in Concord earlier that day when they scavenged the scene for supplies and military hardware. The intersection before the Museum of Freedom was painted with the blood of young hoodlums in tattered clothing with homemade guns that reminded him more than a little of Detroit.
There were more of those thieving punks here, operating out of the plant that loomed over the city like some ancient fortress over its subjects.
Lexington was not a company town like the ones he had grown up in back along the rust belt, but Corvega was never about subtlety, at least not outside of the plant. Even now the building in its faded pastel colors proclaimed near ownership of Lexington, and whoever held that plant could hold Lexington, or at the very least keep someone else from doing so.
Below the complex, other things lurked in the shadows.
He didn't want to believe that there were creatures out there mutated beyond humanity that wanted nothing more than to eat his flesh, but after seeing a mosquito the size of a dog, he tried his best to take nothing for granted.
Long ago in the Marines, he had been to places like this. They had always been somewhere far away though, where signs were written in Spanish and the distances were displayed in metric. Here they were in American.
Somehow, it didn't quite feel the same seeing those same signs in familiar English as they walked down the overgrown and neglected Massachusetts avenue.
He thought about the company he walked with. His comrades who were supposed to have his back through this town.
There was Frank, whom Wally had known since the badge came on. He was a man who despite a good career for someone fresh out of uniform was falling apart even before the bombs even fell. Once he ran out of things to lose, he more or less lost his shit and became hell bent on killing himself.
An honorable discharge sure as hell didn't make him any safer. In the police force, he was once considered one of the most reckless men to be found from Robbury up to Salem.
Some of the stories were exaggerated, Wally didn't doubt. For someone said to have kept playing Russian Roulette with his own life, it was hard to believe he was still in one piece.
Then there was James who was only a few stages behind in grief. The man had lost everything with the end of the world. For the most part, he was still functional, but Wally wasn't about to treat the army captain like his CO.
The man blindly lashed out and attacked him when he talked back at Sanctuary.
Nobody had to tell Wally it was a stupid thing to say. He knew little about the wife of James Rodgers, and even less about him. Wally had seen James a few times before it all happened, but never with her as far as he recalled.
All he'd known was that the yellow lady that nobody liked happened to be an absolute bitch to much of the neighborhood. That her husband was deployed was well known. He'd heard from someone that she was the daughter of some general's favorite hooker, which might have explained her marriage to an army officer.
She was well connected, no doubt about that. There was an air about her that reminded him of some of the officer wives he used to know. "Dependapotamus" they all called those creatures. There was something sad about seeing your old CO who you once treated as a surrogate dad married to some fat fuck who seemed to think the enlisted ranks owed her salutes. Not that she was the fat and useless type or anything. What she lacked in those factors she made up for in sheer demeanor.
It made sense now though that James was that traitor who the neighborhood housewives asked around about. Small wonder the man was a recluse when on leave. Wally couldn't help but wonder what was really in it James.
Was it ambition? Marrying foreigners was frowned on as a general rule. If that foreigner had slanted eyes and spoke 'Engrish,' some might even call it career suicide. And yet James was a captain and a mustang if he'd heard right.
Was it a problem with being in a healthy marriage? He'd seen a few engineers earlier in his career take a vacation to South America or even the Philippines after one too many embarrassments in the dating pool only to come back with a new wife maybe ten years younger. They used to laugh at those sad bastards over lunch breaks. Real American men didn't go hunting for brides in the third world.
And yet she was probably the one who wore the pants in that marriage. Weirder still, she was possibly a bit older too.
Officers who acted like James right now, and maybe even Frank tended to get a lot of their boys killed, and Wally intended to see himself through this fight like a professional. He would fight to win.
With every step his sixth sense seemed to feel more and more on edge. He could smell the decay that seemed to come from everywhere around him once they reached the Super Duper Mart.
Trudy had said that much of the city still belonged to the ghouls. He had heard mentions of them earlier.
From what he heard it sounded a hell of a lot like those old holofilms about zombies. It was a lifetime ago, or several depending on how you looked at it, when he had his own fantasies of living in a zombie apocalypse.
It sounded like lots of fun at the time. No mundane jobs, petty office bullshit or stupid city ordinances to rule his existence by telling him where to cross the street. Law would begin and end with the barrel of a shotgun. Undead monsters and asshole neighbors alike would tell God who sent them to their judgement.
Since then, two deployments, a career, a wife and a daughter had done much to change his opinion. Now it was one of the scariest things he could imagine.
This was the world he and his family found themselves in. He had built a life for himself and those he loved. In the blink of an eye, all he had cultivated all those years was gone save for Kayla and their Elsa. Had things been less dire, he might have stopped to praise god for sparing his family for a while.
But now, he was travelling down the road he took every morning to work, marching into the heart of Lexington knowing full well they could be ambushed anywhere, by things that threw mankind's natural place on the food chain in doubt.
If Concord was an indication, there were plenty of animals that gave as good as they got if not a little more. Could that be a reason for why the rest of humanity had yet to unfuck themselves after all that time?
They made it to the Lexington Commons before the trouble began.
It started with a low growl from some place he couldn't see that turned into a loud but pitiful hack. Without even a thought, Wally flipped off the safety of his shotgun.
He heard another growl, this time somewhere else. Then another. Then from behind him yet another. All the while, the unmistakable smell of death got closer and stronger.
Frank took a position to his right at 10 o'clock, and that was enough for his own training to kick in. The aged marine scanned the commons at the 2 o'clock position facing down Massachusetts avenue.
they waited as the noises around them seemed to get louder for whatever horrors that made them to show themselves.
After a few long seconds, a figure rushed out of a building, and stumbled down the steps landing knee first on the cracked sidewalk.
Frank leveled his shotgun at the thing as it tried to regain its footing. Before he pulled the trigger, he saw its face.
It was the face of something that had been human once. A face that didn't even seem to feel the blast tear away arm and shoulder.
It just kept trying to run towards him, the remaining arm flailing wildly while leaping on shaky legs that could barely stand.
Wally never would have thought they could still run just as fast as they once could.
He pumped his shotgun, and fired at the monster once it was almost close enough to touch him. This time though, Wally aimed for the head and fired.
At that range, The blast didn't just separate the head. It practically turned it into dust. What remained of the zombie fell down from the knockdown power of the shot.
He looked around, and saw another one making a mad dash for Frank. A beam from his Gauss rifle hit it, and promptly turned to a charred ruin whatever hadn't been lost to the heat of the charge.
Another one came behind the first, which took a shotgun blast from Wally to its legs. It collapsed under its own weight, and tried to crawl onward until a single crank round from Frank burned it's decomposing head to a crisp.
Wally could hear another one coming off to his right, and turned just in time to see it fly out of a jewelry store and right into his path. It landed in front of him and the muzzle of his gun.
Frank pumped his shotgun and fired before it could get up, with the force of the blast nearly tearing the ghoul in two.
He scanned the scene around him for more hostiles, but it was over quicker than it had started. Five dried up zombies lay still around them with no casualties in their band.
"Codsworth? You alright?" James asked his robot.
Well, unless that was supposed to count as a casualty. One ghoul managed to tear away the new arm they had mounted from the Gutsy earlier in Concord.
"Tis but a scratch," replied the Mr. Handy with a voice as chipper as it were stoic.
"A scratch Codsworth? Your arm's off."
"No it isn't," retorted the mechanical butler. "At least not my arm."
"It's a military grade arm," argued James. "I don't have the tools to fix that kind right now."
"Oh well, Master James. You'll recall I've had worse. I may be only have a little Mr. Gutsy in me, but I can take whatever Lexington throws my way."
"Hey Guys!" Frank called out in a hushed but urgent tone, while he looked though the sights on his rifle.
"Yeah Frank?" asked Wally.
"I got a visual on the sky bridge. Ugliest suit of power armor I've ever seen."
Wally looked in the direction of the Gauss Rifle, and sure enough there was a figure on the bridge most likely staring back at them, and big enough that it had to be in a suit.
They spread out and shifted positions.
Suddenly the figure in power armor lifted what could only have been a heavy weapon and he saw other movement behind it...
"Shit, Fatman!" Frank cried. "Duck and Cover!"
They scattered even further as flashes emerged from the bridge and bullets kicked up dust.
"Contact! Follow me to the alley!" Frank loosed a round in the direction of the bridge and ran like a rabbit for the cover of the alley.
As they ran, they could hear the almost cartoonish sound of a Fatman in action. He had almost reached the safety of the alley, when saw the surroundings in front of him bathed in light before getting knocked face first into the gravel.
Next thing he knew, the noise around him blended together into a confused hum that hit his eardrums with fury. He opened his eyes, and saw the colors of the alley in blurs. He saw James, Frank, and Codsworth moving slowly around like faceless ghosts. Time itself was almost at a standstill.
James turned his head to look at him, and his boyish face began to regain some clarity as he began to creep in Wally's direction. After a few long steps, James bent down in front of him and mouthed a few words he couldn't understand.
Wally could feel himself being lifted by an arm. Time seemed to speed up just a little bit, and the sounds became more distinguishable.
This time he could vaguely hear Frank shouting "Go!"
So he put a foot forward, and then another. As James tugged on his arm, everything came back to him.
He began to run with the group down the alley until they reached the Worthen road, where the shopping centers began to meet the apartment complexes.
They found themselves at a basketball court where the two zones met, gasping for breath while crouched behind a concrete barrier. With all the noises around them, it was if Lexington itself had been given a rude awakening.
Whatever else emerged from beyond their line of sight attracted the rhythmic fire of lower caliber bullets. Some turret most likely.
He saw a raider emerge from a building, trying to follow the sounds of battle. It was a lone individual, and not a very smart one. Had the raider scanned the environment before stepping out in the open, he might have lived.
Instead, three ghouls were on him before he could get off two shots.
They could hear the young raider scream, as the monsters ripped him into pieces, and tore into his body.
Wally wanted nothing more than to turn away from the sight, but for some reason he could not move his eyes from a scene that would likely keep visiting him the rest of his life.
"Time to run," said James.
And so they did. Amidst the chaos along the road they escaped the heart of the Lexington shit show using a pair of rusted out twelve wheelers to hide themselves. The raiders and their turrets would be too busy fighting off the undead, for any of them to matter, but no need to tempt luck.
Before long, they lost their pursuers. A few blocks north, they stopped to catch their breath.
After a few moments, Rogders looked at him with baleful eyes.
"Alright Wally, The fuck we go now?" growled James.
Wally didn't bother to make eye contact, instead choosing to navigate the GPS on his pip-boy. It was a trick his boss used to pull whenever some bean counter from corporate, would stride into office like he had any kind of pull in the plant.
"Jalbert Brothers disposal. We'll have to swing around the town to the west and follow the railway."
"Seriously? A fucking junkyard?" James was the first to pipe up.
Wally nodded. "We and some of the boys at the plant had a few arrangements going on with the owners. Got a lot of things squirreled away, things that I'd say are worth a bit more right now."
"What kind of value we talking Wally?" asked Frank.
He felt himself grin as he looked at Frank. "You might say the very keys to Concord and Lexington. At least some of the more important bits." The former cop would probably blow a gasket, when he understood what they came for.
"You know Wally, most people go there to dump things. Not pick them up." Frank chided. "What do you have in there that could concern Concord?"
Oh, he's in for a surprise then, Wally cackled inwardly. "Let's just say me and some of the boys at the plant all had rainy day fund so to speak."
The former cop looked away and sighed, but said nothing. No words were needed. The truth of the matter was that beneath the pristine exterior of Sanctuary Hills was some pretty rotten stuff, and Frank knew it. Now all the idyllic beauty was stripped away, and with that the need for people to hide their true nature.
What Vault-Tec really saw in all of them, he still wasn't quite sure. For such a selective process there were some pretty shady people who made it through. True, some like Robert Reuven were slick operators who hid their dirty laundry from the world at large, but there were others like the Whitfields who seemed to practice criminal law with an emphasis on the former rather than the latter.
In his family's case, they started by approaching Elsa. She had been expelled from CIT in the spring of 2077 for "Un-American activities. After a few months of self destructive living and no doubt finding a place on every agency watch list, she somehow secured three slots in vault 111. There wasn't too much he had to do by the time the representative came to ask him and Kayla to sign the forms.
He made a grim smile. By what rights did Frank have to judge him, or his family?
They made their way to the tracks without incident where the train had stopped. It was a long mixed consist, that could only have come from Canada that carried everything from timber to ores, to even military equipment being returned from the front.
But most importantly, it had carried food meant to alleviate the constant food shortages that plagued Boston. It was easy to tell which rail cars held food. Boxcar after boxcar had long been torn open by looters after the fall of the bombs.
They would have looted the military railcars no doubt, except the security measures were not something that could be overcome by just anyone. Of course there were other ways in for someone crafty enough, but he didn't think the locals were much about hard work after seeing the state of Lexington.
"Hey James," Frank pointed to an armored boxcar. "Any idea what kind of cargo these is in here?"
"Hard to say," replied James. "A lot of resources had to get shuffled between here and Canada. I know General Babcock and his people were lobbying the Pentagon for T-60's. I heard one of the logistics guys saying there were about enough up here for to refit a battalion then lend out the T-45 suits for to the guard."
Frank frowned at the mention of Babcock. "Pretty sure the guard got both, in the end If I recall."
"That they did, Frank. He probably would have gotten them by Halloween if the situation was just another scare. Still had a cow though I'm told."
"Kind of ironic," The former sergeant grunted. "He was the one of the most vocal supporters of using Power Armor for riot control wealth side, as I remember."
The Counterinsurgency doctrines, or COIN strategy as the military called it for decades, had more or less gone by the wayside when China invaded Alaska. As much he disliked the ideas in practice, the new PR strategies favored by Chase, Babcook and the like were a disaster.
The hearts and minds approach, was generally successful in the civilized parts of the world like Canada, and yet General Babcock managed to fuck up the annexation of "little America." Had it not been for the extraordinary output and outspoken support from the president, he would have been fired for what happened in Edmonton, but the brass had grown arrogant in their careers, especially after the Geneva Convention ceased to matter.
When he was in the Marines, the counterinsurgency doctrine was freshly re-codified in the later years of the South Caribbean War after some first rate fuckups turned what should have been a one year occupation into a five year ordeal.
The Colombians had long resented the local influence of American companies like Frutas International, Agricola and even Nuka Cola. After the election of a Chinese-backed socialist, the Pentagon had feared a domino effect that would ultimately become a communist scramble for Latin America. Cuba and Ecuador were already exporting revolution. Cuba for the Russians and Ecuador for China.
When the incumbent president refused to back down, a popular uprising overwhelmed the presidential guard at the NariƱo palace, and lynched the president from a lamp post in the plaza.
Civil war broke out between the core supporters of National Unity and virtually everybody else, before splintering into a dozen factions. It wasn't long before the marines invaded Colombia in to protect the lives of US nationals not to mention Colombia's nicer neighbors.
A few years later, The spread of communism was cut down to size. The country stabilized under new management and everybody went back to attending mass, drinking Nuka Cola, and still resenting America.
Wally frowned as they walked alongside the tracks. As they did, he found himself staring at his pipboy.
"Guys, you think the three of us could find a way to open army cars for the way back?"
James stopped for a moment and looked at the inter-modal containers with their government markings.
"You know," Frank piped up. "taking from the dead was one thing, but I'm not sure how I feel about military property."
"Sweet Jesus Frank," Wally retorted. "Where in the zombie apocalypse movies does that keep the hero from getting his survivor's inheritance? We've already looted what I think used to be someone's private property to get the not so legal gun on your back, and we're going to end up mining everything from here to Sanctuary just to survive."
James stopped for a moment, looking thoughtfully at the train.
Frank heaved a sigh. "I know you're right Wally, but fuck. I hate this."
Wally rolled his eyes. "Really officer? You seem pretty comfortable doing things of questionable legality when it suits you. If that man wasn't a dealer, Boston PD would be doing it's best to keep you outside of court."
The Policeman's eyes narrowed. "Do you think those two would have let someone slap the cuffs on them?"
He shook his head. "Not at all, but that's beside the point."
"Ok, pal what is?"
"My point is that everybody else has the same justification you used to have in deciding when we should you know, fear for our life. Hell, now that I think about it, who the fuck do we justify our selves to?"
"Maybe God?"
Wally chuckled. "I like the idea, but what version of God are we talking about?"
"How about the one that influenced law in the first world?"
Only a dumb ass or a commie would dispute that God tended to elevate the godly parts of the world over the rest of the animals.
"Hmmm, fair point. But what would God want us to do out here?"
"Obey his commandments Wally." Frank didn't hesitate in his response.
"And what about the people who don't give a shit?" Wally gestured in the direction of Lexington.
The former policeman looked down at the ground, and then at a looted boxcar before he spoke. "I believe Vault-Tec already called on us to recolonize the world. The orientation more or less said we need to uphold common law by any means necessary until we have contact with any government authorities."
"I believe they also suggested that even government property is fair game until then, assuming they're still around somewhere." James commented dryly for the first time.
"As far as I can see gentlemen," the old marine gestured outwardly. "I think we are the government. How about we consider anything county, commonwealth or federal as our inheritance? I mean, we've paid for it all our lives with tax money and military service goddammit. I don't think anyone else out here can say that."
"Provided of course it doesn't have automated defenses in working order," said Frank.
"Let's get back to Remington on that one," he decided cautiously. "Had a talk with the doc this morning, while you two where out. A lot of the vaults were placed near military installations, and we might have a few IFF codes lying about. That is assuming that the other Vault-Tec staff didn't disappear with them. He also seemed to suggest we had a few things only the President would have."
The looks on their faces were priceless.
"Tell me that doesn't include any place with nukes," James was the first to find his wits.
"Maybe not us," he answered. "Remington says a general from Strategic Air Command visited the West Virginia offices. That can only mean one thing."
Frank shook his head. "I hope to god we don't have those kind of leftovers lying around."
"Well, it's only ten or so miles to the nearest silo," James remarked glumly. "Wonder if another vault has that one."
"Capital idea master James," the Mr. Handy piped up for the first time in the conversation. "I suppose we ought to see how the other vaults are doing after we find young Shaun."
Frank nodded in approval. "Let's ask around when we get to Fenway. There's got to be others just like us, I hope."
Wally looked at his pip boy and mentally calculated the route to 'Diamond City' as they called Fenway Park these days."Let's try to make it before nightfall, see if we've inherited the full mess from Uncle Sam."
Author's Note: It's been a long fucking time, I know. So long that a new Fallout title was announced since (honestly feeling some mixed opinions so far). This chapter and many more are overdue. Next one is already in the works and I'll try and see if I can get that pumped out a little quicker (might prioritize an update for Bring Your Convictions before that one comes.)
In the time since, I've been through a lot. I had a couple very busy jobs that didn't really give me the free time I used to have. There's also been an abundance of distractions in my free time from friends to room mates, some binge drinking and some kinda fucked up relationships. Oh, and now my ass is back in school.
