ACT 1 Epilogue

With the transfusion over, Joe was given water and more medical attention while he walked away from me. As he drank the water he looked at the end of the room. A woman stood there, waiting silently. She looked in his direction, but not at him. When he looked at her through his one good eye, he pulled himself from the table and pushed through the doctor that tried to sit him down. He limped over to her as she looked up at his face. Joe almost collapsed to the ground, and her eyes saddened. She moved to help him up. With a great huff the man picked himself up and hugged her as tightly as he could and she hugged back. He inhaled as he held Natalie close, and breathed heavily through his throat. The two stood standing for moments after that, silent, and holding each other. Joe didn't know she had been crying for him, or maybe he did, because he tightened his grip on her.

The medics kept me in Underworld for a few days as everyone was packed up and ready for the journey out of the city. Joe and I were handed a pair of crutches each to move around while I healed while we all received treatment for our collective injuries. After a week of bed rest I denied the crutches when they were given to me. It wouldn't have mattered; I was going to be walking with a cane for the rest of my life. Joe was forced to wear an eye bandage as he was checked regularly for cognitive damage. Joe's legs were set into place and wrapped tightly so he couldn't move from the bed he was in. What would have been a miserable fate for him was eased as he had a lovely nurse helping him and holding his hand as he slept during the day and parts of the night. Tremors from the past awoke him, but she stood there with him, holding his hand and talking to him when the nightmares were just too real not to ignore. She read to him every night, using the only book they both liked: a book that was crafted from the experiences of someone surviving in this wasteland. Underneath a dim-lit candle late at night she sat in a chair, reading the last few pages of the rulebook for scavengers, survivors, vault dwellers, lawmen, raiders, and random Wastelanders seeking guidance from someone who has lived through every last painful detail.

"… so keep your gun loaded at all times, a fight is going to happen no matter what you do, keep that in mind and you won't be stuck with a clicking gun." She said in soft words as he laid there and listened with his eyes closed, slipping back into a dream.

"And, most importantly…" She continued, "keep yourself close to others. The world we live in now is horrible, that's why we call it 'The Wasteland'. Lives are wasted daily for food and petty arguments, but the world doesn't have to be that. So keep people you trust around you. And if they trust you too, then you've survived the hardest part of this cruel world: being alone, because if there's anything worse than being hunted down by raiders, it's not having someone there to save you if you get shot by one of them."

Natalie closed the book, kissed her husband goodnight, and blew out the candle.

I awoke one day with a bottle of pills on my bedside. I turned over to them and read the label. "Painkillers?" It wrote. I took one. It wasn't.

When I awoke again Sarah and Victoria visited me. She had stitches in her face, but she wasn't swollen and bruised any longer. I hugged my daughter, and in an unexpected turn, I cried. When I released her, Victoria sat down next to me in bed and hugged me as hard as she could. It hurt me to move my torso, so I let her hug me as I laid back into my bed.

"Where's Joe?" I asked her.

"He left to go back to Megaton a couple days ago." She answered.

"Why?" I asked her.

The vault blast door was left open; no one in there seemed to even care about what would get inside. A freshly healed Joe walked inside with a hunting rifle and pistol on his hip. He put his rifle on his back and pulled his pistol out and walked. He looked around, static was constant through the intercoms. After minutes of silence in the vault he went to go and find the source of the static. He walked towards the Overseer's office, ready for anything. As he walked down the silent hallways, a sudden noise startled him. A man was rejecting bile somewhere near him. Painful moans followed soon after and it resonated all around Joe's ears as he walked closer to it. He walked past a body of a man in a vault suit. His face was white, his chest covered in blood and vomit. He slipped on it before he fell against the metal wall and died. Joe kept walking towards the sound. He found a man limping against the wall, using the cold and unforgiving metal walls as a crutch. The man's yellowed eyes looked up at Joe for a second as he fell forward and died on the ground. A blood and vomit trail followed the man, and Joe couldn't figure out what was happening. He passed more bodies; all stacked in a classroom as if they all were thrown in there like bags of garbage. The smell was awful, but Joe wasn't focused on it. He opened the door to the Overseer's office.

It was in disarray. Papers and wires were everywhere as if something large clawed through the area. He looked at the desk where a woman was slumped atop of it, limp as a bag of food. He reached his hand toward her and as his skin touched hers she awoke, coughing violently and upchucking more bodily fluids on the corner of the desk. It spilled off the end and onto the ground near Joe's feet. Her eyes looked up at him and she breathed heavily.

"You came here to kill us... didn't you?" She asked him.

"What the hell happened to you?" He asked her.

"Listen to me…" Rachel commanded him, even as she lay on her deathbed. Joe noticed wrinkles all over her face and hands.

"There's a baby here… it's something…" She slipped away for a moment.

"It's special, made to do great things…" She continued.

"Then I'll take it with me."

"Wait…" She told him tiredly as he tried to walk away. "Please…" She begged.

"I need to show you this before… be… before… I…" Rachel inhaled deeply and coughed a hacking and painful cough.

"It needs to be raised… find… Doctor…" Her hands felt for the controls to Project Legacy, the hidden test chamber right below Joe's feet. She was about to show him the answer to everything.

"Li… Madison Li—" She dry heaved and coughed afterwards. "Rivet City. And if you can't…"

Rachel pressed her finger against the hidden control panel. Joe lifted up his pistol and aimed it at her.

"Drop your hand, now!" Joe shouted.

"No… you don't understand… you have to—"

"Someone will raise that baby, there are people left here."

"Not for long… not unless its raised here…"

Rachel's head dropped against the desk in a puddle of her own bodily fluids.

Joe slowly lowered his pistol and cut the intercom wire. He left the office as Rachel's hand dropped limp on the Legacy scanner. Joe left the room as the hidden entrance opened, releasing an army of men and women. They began to clean the vault room, and fix what was broken. Joe walked through the vault corridors until he heard the wails of a baby. He ran through the halls and opened the doors, looking frantically around until he found a familiar room. His foot kicked over a book: "You're S.P.E.C.I.A.L.!" was the cover. He saw a crib covered in some sort of casing with a terminal connected to it.

This lounger broadcasted a simulation that took over the minds of many Vault residents, but was never used until recently. Joe stared into the pod as the baby cried and kept its eyes open at a screen inside the pod. The baby was connected to it as it stared into the screen. Joe looked at the outside terminal and read the screen.

"Current Age: Three

Next Incubation Release: Age Ten"

These pods were taking the people inside them captive and doing something horrible to them. But Joe couldn't understand this. The baby was hooked up to feeding tubes and protected by the pod. Joe took out his rifle and dropped his pistol on the ground as he quickly ran the butt of it into the glass. Joe shouted out a painful roar as he bashed the glass, again and again. Not a single crack, the glass was as protective as the walls around him. Joe huffed out hard breaths and grabbed at his throat in pain as he swallowed saliva. He calmed down and got to his feet again, aiming his rifle at the glass, but away from the baby. Joe squeezed the trigger and fell back from the instant ricochet. The bullet flew off to the side and scraped the metal walls. The bullet, now flattened, fell to the ground next to Joe. He picked up the bullet and looked at the glass: nothing changed. He tried the terminal: nothing. He tried breaking it off: just as strong as the glass. Soon Joe was helpless to this child, and so he backed away in defeat. He left the room and looked around for help. A man in a doctor's coat walked by him, staring at him.

"You!" Joe pointed at the man frantically.

"Is that your baby in there?!" Joe asked quickly as the man moved towards the entrance to the child's room.

"Yes it is. I'm James. Is there a problem?" He asked him.

Joe squinted at him. "Y-Yeah its… its inside kind of machine, what is it? You have to get it out of there!"

"What are you talking about? Who are you?" James asked him on the offensive.

"You need to get it out of there now!" Joe yelled.

"Lower your voice. Who are you? And what happened to your clothes?" James asked Joe as he looked at his tarnished vault suit and armor still left on his body from his fight to the death with The Raider.

Joe turned around towards the room, the cries of the baby stopped, all was silent. Footsteps trotted towards both men, and a woman emerged. Her belly was round, protruding. She was pregnant.

"James? What's going on?" She asked.

"W…What? Is the baby okay?" Joe asked her.

She rubbed her belly. "My baby's fine," She turned to her husband "who is this man James?"

"No… no that's…" Joe couldn't form words.

"Madison Li." Joe told him.

"…what?" The doctor asked.

"The… the baby needs to see her."

James' face changed. He swallowed hard and looked at the man with sweat forming at his forehead. Joe looked at him and then fast walked away. He stopped at the end of the hall and turned around.

"Hey…" Joe asked him. James turned around.

"Yes?" James asked.

"Are you a doctor?"

"Yes I am. For ten years."

Joe stared at him; his brain was telling him this man looked familiar. He had a resemblance to someone close to him but he couldn't put his finger on it. All he knew was that he was a doctor, and that baby was safe for the time being. Joe turned away and walked out of the vault, walking by Vault residents as they walked by and had normal conversations. As more and more healthy people walked by him, he turned to see all their faces, his ears looking for a cough and his eyes reading for signs of sickness. Where did these people come from? The vault was bustling again and Joe didn't know why. The intercom flickered on.

"All medical personnel please report to my office as ordered by the Overseer." A man's voice said to him.

Joe looked up at the intercom. He cut the wire. That couldn't have happened. Joe sprinted to the Overseer's office and opened the door. The security personnel looked at him with cautious eyes.

"Something to report, officer?" The Overseer asked him as he held his small baby in his eyes. Joe remembered seeing this man, except it was years ago and this man had somehow reversed his age. Joe remembered throwing this same man into the wilderness and leaving him to die. He held his baby, a girl. She was to grow into a woman who Joe saw die fifteen minutes ago. Joe backed away in fear and distrust. Joe sprinted away, pushing people out of the way as he made it to the entrance of the Vault. The blast door was shut. He was trapped, in his mind that is. He looked at the guard who stood near the controls.

"Open the door!" Joe yelled.

"What purpose? Scouting mission for the Overseer?" The guard asked.

Joe lifted his rifle up at him.

"OPEN THE DOOR!" Joe boomed.

The guard pulled out a 10mm pistol and aimed it at him. Joe fired the rifle into his neck and ran to the controls to open the door. What Joe didn't realize was that this decision would make sure that door would never open again as long as The Overseer was in charge. The blast door screeched and whirred as it slid open, exposing piles of skeletons sitting in front. Joe breathed heavily and looked at them. One wore a Vault suit, they looked like they were clawing at the closed door before they died. These weren't here. It was as if someone walked there on their own, died and decomposed in a matter of minutes. Joe closed the Vault door behind him and ran away. It would be years before that door would open again, luckily someone else would get the blame for his decision.

We transported the townspeople out of the city with the help of the residents of the Underworld and finally caught up to Joe. I held Sarah's tiny hand as Victoria and Joe walked with us to the entrance of Megaton.

It was dead, still, and smelled of its fate. The four of us looked around as the citizens of Megaton walked through the gates behind us, holding what loved ones they had left.

"Stay with your mother." I told Sarah as I handed her off. I limped forward, holding my cane and looking around.

The pipes I once crawled on to win a game and marry my wife were blasted apart and came crashing into homes below them. The hospital where my daughter was born was blasted apart and collapsing as doctors lay dead near their patients. People were lined up and shot near Joe's office: the place where the three of us would spend our working days to relax, play games and tell stories on hot, boring days. A grenade or fire bomb exploded at the front of the bar: the place where I learned that my friends were the most interesting people on the planet, the place where one of those friends vowed to teach me how to survive in the Wasteland while the other taught me how to live. It was the place where I slept, where I learned, where I proposed to my wife, and where Joe met his. The metal was taken away and the flooring was collapsed. Joe and I stared up at the bar silently, shoulder-to-shoulder. We stood there with only wind hitting our ears, and we then looked at each other, and then at the ground. Birds flew overhead, some ate the bodies of the dead and the sobbing friends and family of the deceased swatted them away and fell over to the corpses in dismay. We walked to my house: the place where I tested my maturity and raised a family there. Joe stepped over pieces of broken crutches and looked down. Natalie walked behind him as he painfully bent down to them. She grabbed his shoulder, but he rejected the help. He grabbed the broken crutch and looked at it in his hand. His wife had signed that one. "So I'm always close to my special armpit" it said in her handwriting with a heart and smiling face after it. Joe rolled his tongue in bitter remembrance and dropped it to the ground as I walked through my front door. It was off its hinges; my house was raided and looted. Food was taken out and all my cabinets and bags were swung open and left there. Sarah trotted forward as Joe held out his gun and looked around. She ran to the candy stash that was supposed to be hidden.

It was cleared out. Sarah's hand dropped from it and walked back to her parents. My dining table was broken from a fight, we could no longer eat there as a family, not that we would have. I slid my hand against the smooth guard rail as I walked upstairs. I stopped as my hand brushed past a stray bullet planted in the rail. I dropped my hand to the side and continued to walk upstairs. I went into my bathroom. I remembered when I was looking in the mirror and shaving one morning when my wife was about to tell me she was pregnant with our daughter. That mirror was broken; a bullet had cracked its side as it passed through our home. My medicine cabinet was raided and bottles of children's medicine were discarded as useless and dropped in our toilet. My family and I went into the master bedroom. Our sheets were taken, our closet had nothing left in it, our clothes were gone. Sarah ran into her bedroom excitedly to satisfy the feeling of being in her room again.

Her foot crumpled over paper at her feet and she looked down. The book given to her mother as a gift to pass down to Sarah when she was born was torn apart and the pages were scattered all around her room. Her closet was raided and the small clothes were thrown around and left there. An old crib that was put in her closet as an old memory was thrown against her wall and was broken apart. Her bed was flipped over and her toy chest was broken and some of the toys were taken for whatever reason. She grew up in this room; she still was meant to grow up there. Her family was behind her as she stood still and looked at the carnage that the looters had done. Her head went down, and she turned to us with tears in her face. I walked to her first and hugged her.

"This can be fixed. I promise it will be." I told her as her face was kept still and strong as her eyes just expelled water.

Victoria stood there and her face was dry. She bent down to her daughter and looked in her eyes with the most mature and loving look on her face.

"You still have us, they haven't taken that." She smiled as she kissed her daughter and hugged her.

"Let's go help clean up outside." I suggested.

"Let's go, sweetie." Victoria picked her daughter up and we walked outside to Joe who had exited a while back and kept looking around.

"Who would do this?" I asked.

"I dunno." Joe answered.

I didn't expect a genuine answer from him so I looked at him, and then looked away as he turned to me.

We heard rustling down the patch of destroyed homes and looked towards it. A man in a backpack sprinted from a house with his loot still being carried. He sprinted in our direction, and I just looked at him. Joe fired a round into the man's heart and killed him. He looked at me, as I didn't even move a muscle.

"You're kidding me, right?" Joe looked at my still face as the looter lie dead inches away from my feet. I looked up at him, and walked away, pulling my daughter's head away from the body. She didn't seem to care though.

"We can't stay here." Victoria told Joe, Natalie and I.

"Yes we can." Sarah spoke up as Victoria held her daughter's hand.

"I want to live in my room." She added.

"Sweetie—" Victoria stammered.

I looked up at my wife. "We can still live here." I told her, staring into her eyes.

"There's nothing left."

"You live in The Wasteland. Someone's said that before and ended up being wrong."

"We should—" Joe stopped and looked at me.

"I'll go clear out the rest of the town." He continued, fixing his sentence.

"I'll go with you." Natalie nodded as she walked with him. Joe smiled warmly.

I looked at Victoria and she looked back at me. I didn't walk with them.

"Hey." Joe called to me, remembering something much more horrifying than the ruins of Megaton.

"Yeah?"

"Are you feeling okay?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine now."

"No… stomach thing? Cough?"

"No? Why? Are you sick?"

"No, no… just wondering." Joe turned away and walked with a gun and his hand and Natalie waiting shortly behind him with a pistol.

I turned away and back to my family. "The house is clear, so…"

Victoria nodded silently and led us back into our damaged home.

Joe and Natalie stood at the collapsed rubble of the bar and he kicked over steel, exposing broken bottles of alcohol. Joe picked one half of a bottle up and glass and liquid fell out and onto the dirt below him. He tossed the bottle back into the rubble.

"What a waste…" Natalie mumbled.

"You're telling me." Joe responded.

"Can I tell you something, Joe?" Natalie asked him as she wrapped her arm around him and stared at the broken bar counter.

"Of course." He answered.

"I…" She choked up and couldn't complete her sentence.

"I think I'm pregnant."

Joe turned his head to face her, and gave her the warmest hug he could, not because he was hopeful for a better future than the one they have now, but because his future was right in front of him, and there wasn't a single threat to that anymore. They said nothing else after that.

They continued to walk with each other as they continued around the perimeter of the town, stopping at his office.

He opened the door to it, which was left creaking open after it had been kicked down by someone previously. Natalie gagged as the two stared at the body of a raider tied to a desk.

"OH MY GOD!" Natalie yelled in disgust.

"You leave them with one responsibility!" Joe coughed and spat onto the ground as they stared at the decaying raider as bugs ate its corpse, they seemed to have finished up the legs and rib cage, as bone was sitting there, popped out and exposed. That didn't stop the looters from coming in there, as the maps of town were ripped off the walls, files were thrown around and the place was stripped of everything. Joe stepped over the body, holding his nose as Natalie waited for him at the doorframe. The desk where his stash of hunting rifle rounds was looted, only a letter was left inside atop of intelligence about raiders. Joe picked up the letter.

"Meet me in front of the Nuka Cola Machine outside the town tonight. Go alone.

Chain"

Joe crumpled up the letter and threw it; it was useless to him now. He turned over to his side and saw a safe sitting next to his feet, it was broken before, but the lock was replaced only to be broken again. It didn't belong to him to begin with, it was owned by the last sheriff. What had held the town revenue that Joe counted maniacally with his two friends as they decided their big plans for this town was now gone, every single dollar. Joe left the office; there wasn't anything for him that he wanted. He stood at the beam that guarded people from falling from the height that Joe's office was located on: a hill perched over the crater in the middle of town. He stood next to Natalie as he remembered an awkward speech being given from outside his office to the people of Megaton: something that was discarded as unimportant, but now in the present, was one of the smartest decisions ever made in their lives.

Joe walked by Moira and her daughter as they lifted up their fallen sign of "The Craterside Supply" and tried to replace it back where it was above their broken-in door.

The citizens of Megaton took the bodies of their loved ones and took them outside, and as Joe and Natalie watched this, they soon followed. Word spread around time of the residents' plan, and so every person collectively stood outside.

The sun was beginning to rise over them, the chill of night still fading by the second. I stood with my family as we watched the bodies were stacked and placed on the farm. The crops were dead, their seeds gone and now the families that were taken were grouped together by the household and placed in groups as the ones who survived stared over them. Natalie and Joe held onto each other as the survivors stared silently, some whispering prayers and goodbyes. A shovel was passed on by an ex-guard and veteran of Megaton. He was there since the beginning, from the first attack of Megaton that almost took my life when I tried my hardest to take down a man that was always going to be stronger than me. This guard dug his shovel into the ground and dug the first grave for the family, and when the sun was out, he stopped and buried the dead. I left my family and took the shovel from him. I dug it into the dead farmland and continued to dig a grave while the family said their goodbyes. When I was done, they took the shovel from me and used it to dig a grave for another family, and in return they dug another family's grave and so on. When the funerals were done, the gravestones were placed by the families and friends of the ones who were lost—to be honest there wasn't a difference between the two at the time. Friends are the closest thing to a family, and in some special cases, even better than one. My family stood with me as the town took destroyed and burned memories and placed them on the grave, and for certain graves, were the tombstone itself. Necklaces, jewelry, tennis balls, inside jokes and memories, all placed on the graves of their family. One of them had a samurai sword stabbed into the ground. That family cried with a smile on their faces.

When it was done, the families wiped tears from their faces as people that didn't even know them before this held them—they were alone now, and so someone had corrected that and mourned with them. Joe held Natalie's hand and squeezed it tightly before he walked away from her and stood in the middle of the town, gathering their attention from them.

He stood there amongst the silent townspeople.

"This isn't the end for us—or them," He spoke to the families. "… and if we so choose… we will die at the place we call home, and be buried with our families: a blessing that these people below us were given." He told us, looking around to face them all to stare into their red, leaking eyes as the sheriff stood outside the ruins of the city he was born in.

That was all that needed to be said.

END OF ACT I

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