I finally managed to pick myself up off the floor and crawl towards the gunshots. The more I moved, the faster I thawed out. I spotted a water fountain next to a doorway and drank like there was no tomorrow. The cryo process had dehydrated me something awful and I gulped water until I was foundered.

The noise had died down and the water had helped loosen things up a bit so soon I was walking instead of crawling. That felt better…hands and knees on steel decking sucks. I found some dead…creatures…in the next hallway. They looked like roaches…big, horror-movie-sized roaches. Eat your dog for dinner roaches. What. The. Fuck? I spotted a security baton on a table next to the power room and decided going armed was better than not. There were no other sounds now, no signs of life. Eerie how quiet the world can get when you're alone.

I found a desk near the entrance with a working terminal. Apparently, the Vault staff had not been intended to stay after 6 months. When the food ran out, things got ugly, fast. Typical…everyone from the lowliest beggar to the highest king gets crazy when they're hungry. I found a pistol lying near the desk along with a lot more giant roaches. The first two had been crushed, maybe by a baton similar to mine. The rest were all burst by gunfire. My pistol held 20 rounds but there were no extras. Trigger discipline was going to be the order of the day.

I made my way outside and the light was blinding. I had been in the Vault Lord knows how long but my eyes were obviously not adjusted to daylight yet. I shaded my eyes and looked around. I didn't think it would be pretty but I wasn't prepared for the devastation. Wow…just…wow. It looked like every Twilight Zone episode after an atomic war ever. Only now it was live and I was one of the characters.

The guard shack near the entrance yielded a bottle of whiskey and I resisted the urge to sit down right there and get drunk. For all I know, I had already caught enough rads just walking around to kill me so what the Hell, right? Still, Mamma Smith didn't raise no quitters so I grabbed the bottle and headed out. There were a few crates on the ground, recently opened, and I thought about the shots. Someone else was alive all right and they weren't too far ahead of me. I quickened my pace until I crossed the bridge into Sanctuary Hills.

Some of the houses were still standing. It was a shock, seeing the place what felt like an hour ago, and now it was all gone. No way to tell how long we'd been frozen, maybe years. I heard voices and put on my sneaky hat while I crept around between the houses. I overheard a woman talking to her Mr. Handy robot…Codsworth was his name, I think. He was telling her that it had been over 200 years since the bombs had fallen. HUH? 200 YEARS? Oh shit! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! I left the woman crying about her dead husband and her missing kid and crept around to my old crib.

I had never really expected the bombs to fall. Hell, a lot of people didn't. Maybe we were just in denial. But it had happened and now two centuries had passed and we were seriously in the shit soup now. I broke down and took a hit off the whiskey as I snuck into my old place. Everything was right where I had left it from the trap on the safe to the busted still outside. I found another pistol, some boxes of ammo and a commando knife I had kept from my days in the Army. I'd take a lot of lives with that knife and I considered it a good luck charm. I found a few meds too and I was glad I had stashed it all.

A flash of inspiration sent me around the back of a neighbor's house and there, built up against the foundation, was a set of heavy steel doors. You have to admire people who plan ahead by building their own bomb shelter. It didn't look disturbed so I went on in. I was glad I did…it felt like a storm whipping up outside. I could hear the wind howling as I looked around. There was a light so there had to be power from somewhere. I poked around and found a safe, some supplies and three gold bars. No shit! Gold? Well, I guess if you want to prepare for the end of the world, there are worse ideas. Even more importantly, there was a mattress on the floor. It was stained and dirty and it felt like the softest thing I had ever slept on. Apparently, being frozen for 200 years, thawed and then climbing out into a radioactive wasteland makes you sleepy.

I woke up long after dark and the storm was gone. I had no idea of the time but it occurred to me that I didn't really have any appointments anyway. I chuckled, then I cried for a minute, overwhelmed by everything, then I hit the whiskey again. Enough of the pity party shit…time to get on with surviving. I wasn't dead yet so the rads must not have been too bad I guess. Time to roll out.

There was a tree fallen against the roof and I clambered up to get a better look. I could see for some ways but it didn't look any better from up there. I saw some lights in the distance. Lights meant power. Power meant people. I spotted something out of the corner of my eye and there, on the roof next to the chimney, was a military duffel bag. Score! Inside I found another pistol, some more ammo, more meds, an old uniform and a machete. More importantly, I now had a way to carry all the crap I'd been accumulating. If anyone ever asks how Man rose above animals, one of the answers has got to be the invention of pockets and other ways to carry shit.

I loaded up and rolled out, heading across the foot bridge. There was a corpse on the far side, male, recently dead, next to some weird sort of dog carcass. He had a long coat and some canvass pants that weren't too bad and it occurred to me that a shiny blue Vault suit might not be the best idea of local clothes. I changed into the dead guy's duds and hoped they made me look like any other drifter.

I was wondering what had happened to the woman I had seen earlier but I needn't have wondered for long. I found her body at the Red Rocket station a few yards down the road from the dead guy. There were a couple of big-assed rats working on her remains and what looked like a German Shepard. I shot the rats and moved closer to investigate. It looked like the rats had come right up out of the ground under her feet. The first bite had hamstrung her so she could neither stand nor run. Once she was down on the ground it was all over. The dog had killed three of the rats before they had swarmed him. What a shame…I liked dogs. I grimly searched her for loot, might as well call it what it was, and discovered she was wearing a Pip Boy. Score! The thing looked like it still worked and between that and the rest of her gear, it was quite a haul. I felt bad for her and worse for the dog. She had just crawled out of a frozen Hell, same as me, and all she wanted was to find her stolen kid. She hadn't made it a mile before the ugliness of the world swallowed her whole. Only the strong survive. That had been true before the bombs fell and now it was even more so.

I headed down the ruined road from the station, trying to head towards the faint glow in the distance. I was making my way through what was left of Concord when I heard gunfire. I crouched down and shook my head. Seems like everyone in the new world still wanted to kill each other. Talk about war never changing…

I crept around the corner and saw a guy on a balcony outside some old building popping off laser shots at a nasty-looking gang down on the street. Lasers? They still had lasers? Maybe things weren't as bad everywhere as I thought. A laser weapon needed to be cared for, tuned, and the ammo couldn't be made just anywhere. This was encouraging. Now I had a decision to make. Side with the smelly nasties on the ground or help the guy with the laser. The decision was out of my hands as soon as I heard a footstep behind me. I turned and narrowly dodged the tire iron aimed at my head. Suddenly I was rolling around on the ground struggling with a guy wearing nothing but pants, boots and a gas mask. It was a bit weird but he was being serious about killing me so I didn't have time to wonder about the weirdness level. I lifted him off of me with a well-placed kick to the junk and as he tried to regain his senses I put two in the side of his head. I wasn't sure if the sounds of the struggle were going to attract attention so I decided to go on the offensive.

Soldiers can spot other soldiers and killers can spot other killers. I was both and I could tell that most of these guys were amateurs. Most of their weapons were cobbled together from pipes and metal junk and they had no armor to speak of. I had better guns, more experience and the recent action had started to shake the rust off. I was back in the game and there were going to be some dead bodies soon to prove it.

I made my way across the street into the building there. I'd heard shots from the corner and sure enough, there was a guy sniping out the window. He turned around just as my knife caught him in the throat. I left him there and moved on. On the same side of the street, close to the museum, there were two more. Two targets meant no more knife work. Despite what you see in the movies, one guy has a tough time stabbing a dozen people to death before any of them do anything. I had a 10mm in each hand as I crept up behind them and put one bullet in each skull. The last one was on the far side of the street from me and I saw her take aim from behind some sandbags. I was in the open and there was nowhere to dodge to. She brought the gun to her shoulder just before she suddenly vanished with a scream and a burst of light. I guess the guy on the balcony wasn't such a bad shot after all.

He shouted down to ask for my help, said he had more raiders inside hammering on the door. Begged me to pick up the 'laser musket' and help. I saw the weapon lying on the sidewalk outside the museum and had no clue how it worked. Right…I would help but on my terms.

There are times when you want to sneak up on someone all quiet-like. Getting the drop on the enemy can sure even the odds when they're stacked against you. However, there is something to be said for the shock factor of an all-out assault. Sometimes, an unsuspecting enemy will break and run in the face of a frightening opponent. The trick is to look frightening even if you're not. In the movies, this is often called 'kick open the door and kill the monster.' I had no clue what I was walking into so I decided to try my luck. I took a pistol in each hand, checked to make sure they were fully loaded and then put my boot to the keyhole in the middle of the doors.

The moldy doors burst open and the whole scene went into a kind of slow-motion. Once your adrenalin gets to pumping and the shit starts flying your mind can do all kinds of cool things. The fact that I had popped some chems just outside the door didn't hurt either. I spotted two figures on the catwalk above me and put two slugs into one of them. The other spun to return fire but the Jet was flowing so I fired first. Nothing like watch a man's head explode. Very cool. The second guy dropped his shotgun, a sawed-off thing with a broken stock, and I caught it before it hit the floor. I heard footsteps to my right and turned as I knelt down. Amazing how effective this simple tactic is. You see, most people aim for center-mass on their target which is just above the waist. That means many shots fired in haste will pass through where your chest is. However, when you're kneeling such a shot will, hopefully, go over your head. That's exactly what happened when the third guy rounded the corner, blazing away with his revolver. I put both barrels into him for good measure and he died before he'd even hit the floor.

I moved through the ground floor and up the stairs. Enough of the assault phase of the operation, we were back to sneaking and shooting. I heard voices down a narrow hallway but I couldn't see anyone. A work light was shining right in my face and I didn't want to walk into what sounded like two guys while blind. Fortunately, I had picked up a couple of grenades from the dead woman and one of these rebounded nicely off the wall at the end of the hallway. The blast shook the dust from the ceiling and I heard a scream. I saw a leg and an arm fly into view and rushed down the hall. One man was dead and the other lying on the floor bleeding. I didn't waste the bullets on the second guy, letting my knife do the work. One of them had another shotgun and a handful of shells so I counted myself lucky and moved on. Up a flight of stairs I heard pounding on a door and angry voices. I'd found the raiders the dude outside had mentioned and they sounded pissed. A second voice told the first one they had other shit to deal with and to forget the folks trapped behind the door. The first voice agreed with promises of pain and torment to follow later.

The door jerked open and the man standing there was shocked as hell when the tire iron crashed down on his head. He staggered back and my kick sent him backwards through the crumbling railing. I dropped the iron and stepped through the door before his partner could react. His arm came up brandishing a pool cue. Seriously? You brought a club to a gunfight? Fucking amateurs. I blocked the cue with one arm while I put two slugs through his gut with the other. He stood there with this dumb look on his face as he went into shock. I pushed him over as the door opened and the guy with the laser called me inside. I didn't need any more prompting.