One thing that I learned quickly in the wasteland (everyone kept calling it 'the commonwealth') is that you can never let your guard down. I'd been thawed for two days and already I had a crew (they didn't know it yet), a tidy stash of guns, an even tidier stash of chems (they didn't know about those either) and a purpose. I was going to grab it all and shake it until it gave me what I wanted. I was young, strong, tough and patient. There were others out there, for sure, but I could wait. I'd grow stronger while they made mistakes and eventually I'd be king of the radioactive hill. What the Hell, a guy can dream can't he?
But those were big dreams and for now I was strictly small-time. Preston was asking me to help out some locals and food was hard to come by so our purposes dovetailed for now. I'm not about to scratch in the dirt all day for crops (which seemed to grow pretty fast for some reason, if they grew at all) so setting up farmers to feed me in exchange for protection seemed like a good deal. Anything was better than choking down radioactive leftovers. If I got lucky, I could snag some fresh meat while hunting. If you cooked it with the right plants you could get rid of the rads and it didn't taste half bad. Never thought I'd eat dog chops though. I wasn't hungry enough to eat roasted radroach (I saved the meat for the locals but, I mean, cooked bug guts? Really?) but as long as there was meat, taters and bread I'd be okay.
South of Sanctuary there was a little farm that I went to trade with. They'd had some raider trouble and I agreed to clear them out in exchange for a better price on the trade. It was on the way to the other place Preston wanted me to help anyway so two for one. Along the way, I bagged a deer so a good score all around so far. I arrived at the old USAF station, Olivia the farmer had called it, and heard, you guessed it, more gunfire. I was going to have to find out where all of the ammo was coming from in this place since everyone seemed to have some!
I snuck up on the station and found a guy and his dog (a real one this time, not one of the fucked-up skinless ones) fighting off a swarm of big flies. The flies were killed but then some more of those giant rats (Preston called them molerats) showed up. I shit you not, one of them had a bomb strapped to it! I was grateful that I hadn't arrived a couple of minutes earlier because I might have been caught right in the middle of everything. The dog took out the first molerat, the Jihadist molerat took out the dog and another molerat and the guy plugged the third one. While all this was taking place, his buddy was guarding the door to the station, just leaning in front of the window pretty as you please. Safety tip kids: Never stand guard duty with your back to a window! I grabbed him through the window and put a knife through the back of his neck while his friend was taking care of business outside. I crept around after the gunfire died down and found his partner leaning in the doorway on the upper deck catching his breath. I almost felt sorry for the guy as I put two through his head.
The inside of the station was dark, damp and smelled of sweaty bodies and leaking oil. It was worse than outside and I began to understand why so many raiders wore gas masks. A dog padded by and I was grateful that one of the guns that I'd picked up had a silencer on it. I hated killing dogs but a well-trained one is more loyal than a human guard and a lot better at detecting hostiles. So determined, I plugged the dog as he turned towards me and then promptly did the same with his handler as he rounded the same corner. He cried out as he fell and that's when the fit hit the shan.
I heard voices from somewhere below and coming from both of the two directions leading out from the entry room. To the right was a set of stairs so I turned that way. I heard footsteps behind me so I dropped a little present on my side of the support column as I headed down. I love landmines. They can't be bargained with, or reasoned with. They don't feel pity or remorse. They do their job, which is to blow up. It's a simple purpose but one I utilized as often as I could. I'd picked one up off of one of the raiders in Concord and this seemed like a good time to use it.
I heard a bullet snap into the wall next to my head as I took the stairs two at a time heading down. Yes, I was using myself as bait for my own trap but the footsteps behind me quickened their pace so obviously, it worked. I heard the blast, and the very satisfying scream that followed it, and smiled to myself. I saw another raider walking past a doorway up ahead, seemingly oblivious to what was going on upstairs, and I snuck up on him from behind. One stab to the back of the skull later and I was the proud owner of a hand grenade. Just what the doctor ordered. I heard at least two other voices up ahead and promptly decided that since they had donated the grenade to a good cause, I should give it back to them in good faith. Just being neighborly, I guess. I kept the pin though. I like pins…
The grenade sailed past the head of yet another guy standing in yet another doorway (you would think that raiders were all part of a really strong union or something, what with all the standing around leaning on shit all day!) and the look on his face was memorable. His face was eradicated a second later when the grenade went off but it was still memorable! While he and his buddies were staring, dumbstruck, at the grenade arching past, I was moving into the room, shotgun blazing. Shotguns are a tried and true weapon, used for nearly a century for everything from hunting to clearing a room. Unfortunately for them, I was using it for the latter. The gun roared as the grenade went off and blew the one guy all over the other guy. The shotgun shell finished him off and from there it was smooth…
Minigun. Wait…let me say that correctly…THAT WOMAN HAS A FUCKING MINIGUN! There, that's better. So…yeah…I'm trapped in a concrete basement with a crazed woman with a minigun…pointing at me! She hit the trigger and I got a brief idea of how the big lizard (Preston called it a Deathclaw. Seemed appropriate) had felt. The bullets chewed through the wall where I had been standing and I dove through the doorway I had just come bursting out of. I quietly wished for another grenade, which I didn't have, and thought about my options. I didn't think for very long because I didn't have many options and, oh, by the way, I mentioned the crazed woman with the minigun right? Well, she was following me and it's not like I'd covered a lot of ground. I thought back to my hand to hand instructor in the Army who had said, among other things, that 'A true warrior feels fear, but says fuck it anyway.'
Miniguns, like other large, heavy weapons, are wonderful for blazing away at a distance. In the close quarter conditions of hand to hand combat, however, they suck great big donkey balls. Ms. Crazy Woman found this out first-hand as she came around the corner and I exercised one of the few options available to me: I attacked. She swung the big gun around as I surged up from a crouched position and once I was closer to her than the business end of the gun it was all over…for her. I blocked the swing of the gun with my arm as the machete swung in an arc up and over my shoulder. The blade bit through the leather armor she wore and the carotid artery beneath. The arterial spray hit the ceiling, the wall beside us and me. She stared at me as the life pumped out of her, as if she couldn't believe that she was dying on her feet like that. Shock is a terrible thing and watching a person die up close and personal is no fun. I think that's why Man invented guns.
She slumped to the floor and I decided that leaning was actually a pretty good idea just then. I was gasping for air, because killing people is tiring, and I gulped down some water to wash the taste of cordite out of my mouth. I left the bodies where they lay, not like they were going anywhere, and I moved deeper into the station. I found the locket Abernathy had asked me about and decided to return it. I'd already found at least one other silver locket and if it got me better prices trading with them then what the Hell? Not like I could eat a locket anyhow.
The room beyond the next set of doors stunk of petroleum and I was not eager to walk in. Still, the doors had been locked tight so it was possible that the Mad Gunner and her friends hadn't managed to get inside. Little tip for surviving in a post-apocalyptic wasteland: In most cases, the best loot is behind the biggest lock. I slipped on a gas mask that one of the nearby souls wasn't going to need anymore and cautiously entered the room.
I hate bugs. Let me rephrase that: I REALLY hate bugs. I particularly hate them when they are big, glowing green and hissing at me. This one was all three so I snapped off a couple of shots and smiled at it popped. Giant mutant roaches should come with a warning label that reads 'Contents under pressure' or something. I saw a couple more of them, one as it reared up and bit me on the leg, and promptly went all 'wild west guns blazing' on the room. Another safety tip: Never fire indiscriminately when standing in a pond of flammable liquid.
I was on fire. Wow…there are shittier ways to die but right at that moment I couldn't think of any. 'Stop, drop and roll' didn't really cover 'bathed in flammable liquid' so I leaped clear of the flames as best as I could. I stripped off the leather armor I'd been wearing, and the smoldering uniform underneath and by the time the flames were out I was down to my skivvies and scorched skin.
Allow me to explain one of the wonders of modern medicine: The Stimpak. Back before the war (I'll have to get used to that phrase someday), a pharmaceutical company called Lee Rapid had developed technology for reclaiming Anchorage called a Health Dispenser. It was basically an ammo station with a chemical dispenser attached so that troops far from support could stay alive. The chemicals that were injected were a miraculous cocktail of stem cells, painkillers, tissue accelerants and all kinds of other things that a growing boy needs. Essentially the painkillers keep you from going into shock while the stem cells move to the damaged tissue. The accelerants speed the healing process up a lot while the vitamins insure that your body isn't consuming itself to stay healthy. One Stimpak usually dispenses enough drugs to heal a minor wound in less than a minute. More severe wounds require more than one Stimpak, of course. The process can even knit broken bones together and though this is not a pleasant process, it beats the alternative.
As I lay on the floor, watching the smoke roll off of my own body some part of my brain managed to fumble out a Stimpak and stab myself in the thigh with it. The euphoria alone was worth it. Sure, there's that sudden rush as the damaged tissue is replaced and your nervous system sends a great big thank you to your pain center but just the idea that 'I'm not going to die right now' is, in and of itself, very pleasant.
I lay there for a full minute, allowing the drugs time to work. When I started to feel cold from lying on a damp concrete floor, I knew I'd be okay. I got up, slowly, and hobbled over to one of the raiders I'd killed. His clothes were bloodstained and had a couple of new holes in them but they were better than rapid-healing pink skin so I stripped him and got dressed. I grabbed up the essentials and lamented not having a shopping cart. There was way more stuff than I could carry and no doubt locals would come by and strip out anything that I left behind. Fuck that. I'd done the work for it…I was going to keep it. I'm funny that way.
I went topside for a better look around. The raised platform revealed a couple of radstags (does everything have the word 'rad' attached to it these days?) and I grabbed one of the rifles I'd just acquired. I hit one and it went down but the other one bolted. Oh well, still enough for dinner. There was a cooking fire on the main floor so I went to collect the stag and bed down for the night. When I got there, I found, lo and behold, a crashed vertibird. Better yet, there was a PA frame standing right there in the open! I dashed back into the base and pulled the FC from the reactor in the basement. God bless the engineers who decided to make these things universal! I hiked the frame back to the base (and it really was a frame, plus one set of leg armor) and began to load up. I still had to leave some stuff behind but it was mostly junk anyhow. Talk about a good haul!
I trudged back to the Abernathy's and gave them their late daughter's locket. They were so pleased they agreed to the trade deal on the spot. They also agreed to partner with Preston's boy band (now introducing Preston Garvey and the Minutemen! Crowd cheers…) on the spot. I was lugging about a quarter of a ton of shit so we struck a deal and I traded some really crappy guns and some worthless .38 caliber ammo for a pile of food. Seems their farm actually produced more than they could eat. Go figure. I helped them set up a small radio transmitter that told others with ham radios that there was room to expand at the farm and then headed home with my plunder. The whole town turned out when I stumbled in with 200 pounds of meat, potatoes and veggies. As we sat around eating off of cracked plates with bent silver and everyone acted like it was the best day ever. When a good day is 'I didn't die', people are pretty easy to please.
I parked the PA frame (I wonder how many of those I'm going to have before I get done), cleaned my weapons (never go to sleep with a dirty weapon under your pillow) and bedded down for the night. Tomorrow I would finally go and check out the folks Preston had asked me to help and see what else I could find.
The world was fucked. Radiation, raiders, and mutated monsters all over the place. Humans are pretty fragile and now it looked like the whole world wanted to kill us even more than usual. I needed a plan. Once I had more details about the world around me, I would settle down to make one. Preston and the others were starting to look to me for advice. Okay…so I wouldn't tell them that I was a former drug-dealing low-grade maniac who actually enjoyed killing certain people from time to time.
Everyone has their secrets…right?